Most will acknowledge that a person of depressed mood can easily become a blight and a wet blanket on the spirits of everybody else. Abjection and ill spirit can exude from the one like a cloud of pernicious germ to infect all else, reducing each in turn to a similar state of faded vitality and sapped cheer.

So it was with the morning sun rising above the shades of Crickwood. Like a maiden freshly arisen in the sunlight itself, full of a sensibility for her own youth and beauty and equally disposed to a prejudice towards the wellbeing of all the beloved world, she leaves her bed and goes out to share in the general goodness of life, only to immediately be met with her sister, who has slept horribly, has a headache, and can’t imagine what nitwit would ever believe that life is something worth bubbling over. The rays of light and cheer are abruptly diverted and dimmed, the warmth and vigour cool to tepidity, and the spirit falls unexpectedly under a shade of viscid desolation. Thus it was that as the morning sun rose ever higher in glory above the world, the abyssal floors of Crickwood remained in sorrowful oblivion.

After three successive days of conducting the most squalid expedition imaginable under the imperishable morbidity of Crickwood’s intimate recesses, it was Harlow’s forgone conclusion that he thoroughly hated the place from the core of his very being.

It was with an unlooked-for sense of astonishment, then, that the winding course of himself and Mr. Gates that morning abruptly opened into a secluded glade that was actually rather pleasant. Here the sun frolicked about in golden rays upon a meadow of dancing grass while buxom flowers waved flirtatiously in the bath of soothing brilliance. A few berries could be found here and there whose plump succulence called out seductively to a stomach long since frustrated with an ever contracting ration of distinctly banal victuals.

Harlow was absorbedly trying to remember all the childrens’ rhymes he knew about which wild fruits were good to eat and which were deadly poison when at his side Gates surreptitiously touched Harlow’s arm and directed his attention to a point across the glade.

A man stood there, just under the shade of the brooding trees.

He was a heavy set sort of man and wore a wide black felt hat pulled low over his features and a voluminous greatcoat of dank blue, which yet could not conceal the protrusions of a substantially proportioned backsword buckled at the waist beneath.

Gates hissed something inaudible. Meanwhile it occurred to Harlow that he was familiar with this man somehow. Then he recognized him.

“Well hullo hullo! If it isn’t the Honorable Gareth Larch! What-ho there, Larch, what-ho! What on earth brings you thus far into Crickwood? Ah, searching I suppose. I was wondering the other day where you were, I hadn’t seen you amongst any of the parties we’d formed when I was last in touch. Er, I say? Mr. Larch?”

Harlow was being ignored. This came as a bit of a shock, particularly as the wordless rebuff came from such as that masterful listener Gareth Larch. Harlow was interrupted in his snubbed astonishment when he noticed how the man Larch was staring intently at Gates with a curious look of habituated hostility.

An unpleasant and wholly unwonted sort of smile abruptly played across Larch’s lips.

Then he spoke.

“Well well well, The Hawk himself. I suspected something was afoot with your lot in Gandburgh, but I didn’t expect you. Is your ever wayward self really the best your side could come up with?”

“You insult me, sir, but that is encouraging, as it reminds me once again what an abysmal amateaur you are. For my part I didn’t think your kind had any particular interest at all in these parts, and apparently I was at least partially correct. The Black Speakers can’t be all that serious about things around here, otherwise they would never have entrusted the matter to such as yourself.”

Larch bristled visibly.

“You underestimate me, Hawk, you underestimate me greatly, and that is a deadly mistake.”

“If by that you mean that your vastly overblown perception of yourself is even more inflated than I already knew, then yes I would call it a deadly mistake indeed..for yourself. You’ve always been a vain sap, Kador, and the Black Speakers know it as well as I. A sensible spy would never do anything so silly and dramatic as kidnapping someone right in front of an entire village. A grand spectacle to be sure, but as always your ego is your undoing.”

“You seek to irritate me, I think.”

“Always. It’s very amusing to irritate stupid witches, especially you, Kador. It’s marvelously funny, and gets people to make mistakes.”

Suddenly, Gates drew his sword and brandished it aloft with the tip piercing the sky with a flash and a crack like thunder.

Larch swore something terrible in a foul sounding language that Harlow had never heard the like of before. Larch raised both his arms in response, limbs and fingers splayed out as another crack like sharp thunder shattered the air.

Silence hung over the glade.

Each man stood motionless, Gates with his sword aloft and Larch with his arms spread high. Harlow suddenly thought he felt a ringing in his ears, bearing down on him and driving him into the ground like some great heavy hand.

Gates was beginning to mutter something under his breath. Larch was still holding his arms out, and the hum in the air was getting stronger. Harlow realized he was now on his knees, feeling ever more pressed into the earth. Gates’s muttering was now becoming rhythmic, and slowly he lowered his sword so it was held vertically directly before him with the flat facing towards Larch. Larch remained immobile and the humming and ringing was becoming more intense.

Gates’s cadenced murmur was becoming an all out chant. He began to advance slowly towards Larch, his sword held before him, each step taken cautiously like one walking on uncertain footing. Larch still didn’t move even as his body became visibly more tense. The ringing and humming continued. Gates was nearly within sword reach of Larch now.

Abruptly, it ceased. Harlow collapsed exhausted on the ground, but the contest was over. Larch had lost.

In a second there was a flash of steel, and Larch’s sword had whirled into his hand.

There was a battle the like of which Harlow had never seen in his life. Two broad blades sung through the air and glided across one another in a wheeling dance of looming death as sword arm orbited fighter in swirling arcs rotating and counter rotating which each cut, parry, and thrust amidst vitally timed step and lunge.

Gates was getting the better of it, though, and Larch apparently knew it. A few exchanges more, and Larch abruptly threw himself backwards onto the ground and raised his left arm, contorting his hand into a foul sigil.

Harlow was slammed back into the ground as if a year’s worth of wind had been unleashed all at once in a blast directly over his head. For a moment everything went black.

Harlow looked around, pushing himself sharply up on his elbows as one abruptly free from restraint.

Across the glade, Gates was stretched out on the grass. Larch was nowhere to be seen, and the air was still.

Harlow leaped to his feet and blundered across the field to where Gates lay.

Gates was lying flat on his back staring up at the sky, blinking occasionally.

Gates sighed.

“He was well prepared. Had to keep him talking and distracted before I could start counting off the jinxes. Fortunately for us, Kador is a dolt. Always has been. He’s only gotten away temporarily. We’ll get him yet.”

“What on earth was all that about? What has gotten into old Larch, and what on earth was all that…..all that ringing and thunder, or whatever it was?”

“Apparently your acquaintance with Kador….Larch, you called him?.....Apparently you don’t really know him as well as you think you know him, or didn’t you know he’s a witch?”

“A what! Surely not?”

“Oh yes indeed he is.”

“But I say, witches and all, that’s all superstition!”

“Most of the time, yes. Serious witches, the ones with real ambition and connections, don’t bother with randomly hexing and cursing things anyway. That kind of nonsense is really more the stuff of Kobolds and the like.”

“Kobolds, you say? What next, are you going to tell me you talk to fairies?”

“Not very often, they don’t approve of me.”

“Oh for goodness sake, Gates! What on earth are we going to do? Larch has run off.”

“Oh, he won’t go far, I expect. Back that way, you see….”

Gates waved vaguely in the direction of the trees as he lay in grass.

“...Back over there before we came out into this bit of meadow I’m fairly certain I saw a mound of stones or something. I’d wager half a meat pie that it’s a barrow. Not Kador’s encampment, certainly, he’d never have chosen to confront us this close to where he’s holed up, but we’re definitely in the right area. And that wolf we’ve been following can’t have made it much farther, not in the shape it looks to have been in. If it weren’t very close to home by now it probably wouldn’t have tried anymore to keep going and we’d have found the body.”

“At least it won’t be in any sort of shape to give us trouble, when and if we do catch up with it.”

“Not so lucky, I’m afraid, there’s definitely more than two all told, judging by the tracks I’ve seen over the last four days. I’d say Kador had at least four or five to begin with. Still, with two down that only leaves us with two or three more. Hopefully.”

“I’m not liking this, Gates. Not one bit.”

“Pity, I was hoping you had a bit more of a reckless thrill seeking spirit than that. Somebody needs to feel secure in all this.”

“You’re worried Gates?”

“Unlike our friend Kador, I’m not stupid. Therefore I’m positively shaking in my boots, or would be, if my legs could move. I was closer to Kador than you were when he pulled that variant of a left handed Simon’s Bottle back there, and I expect the effect will take a bit longer to wear off. Let me see, how does the rhyme go?

Simon cursed the wind, his crops it blew away

He took an empty bottle, and cursed the wind to stay

Corked inside the bottle, entrapped in glass or clay

Each morning he would catch the wind, and add a bit each day

Till full at last to breaking past

The bottle burst at once.

Once round and twice again through wind

The thought of Notus in the mind

Whose storms arise to seek and find

To wear down hill and mountain grind

A tower tall with window small

So thread the thought of Notus

Then raise one hand formed in this sign

And say at once the word

That’s a Simon’s Bottle. Easy to remember, hard to do. Kador’s a big fool, but he’s got skill. That’s why they put up with him, I think. That, and I suppose that he’s not all that different from the rest of them when all’s said and done. That’s how they get to be what they are in the first place, I think. The thirst for power is always the bedfellow of ego. Some witches are just smarter about it than others, that’s all. Did you say something, Barnstabrake?”

“Oh nothing, I’m just despairing of ever again feeling like I live in an ordinary, comfortable, predictable world where a chap can just sit down for a pint without ever having worry about having to conduct a conversation with the doormat.”

“That’s the first step to being able to deal with the world properly: understanding its true nature. Besides, I expect that were you ever to meet a talking doormat (never met one myself) it would have a quite a pleasant disposition, given that so many of them have cheerful things like “welcome” scrawled decoratively into their bosoms, unless of course there were instead wholly bitter after a lifetime of being walked all over by everybody.”

“You, sir, are utterly mad.”

“So I’ve been told many times, but that’s never stopped me. I think I can feel my legs again.”

“I hope I wake up in a moment and find that this whole bally fortnight has been nothing more than a bally dream and that I really am just in my bally bed in my bally home.”

“This is the reality of the Fairworld, my friend. Queer, unpredictable, and magic everywhere. It’s always been that way, whether you knew it or not. You might as well get used to the idea. Like when you first learned about the birds and the bees. You do know about that? Right, yes, I thought so, but you seem to know so little about everything else in this sheltered little kingdom of yours that you can’t blame me for uncertainty. Right! I think I can stand now, if you lend a hand.”

A few tangled and stumbling moments later and Gates was teetering unsteadily on his feet.

“Right, back to tracking. I say, fetch me my sword, will you? I’m still a bit wobbly. Thank you. Now then, we came out over there, so...hmmm….yes, there! This way! Whoops! Steady there! Still a bit wobbly I think.”

“Perhaps we better wait.”

“No more than absolutely necessary. Kador isn’t through with us yet, not by far, and nor are we through with him. It’s only going to get more dangerous from here, and we’ve not much time, I think. Come on! I think you’ll have to lend me an arm for a bit. Steady!”

In a few moments, the two men were again swallowed in the gloom of the woods. Somewhere in the distance, there was a blast of a small horn sounded from tiny lips.