Matt knew his chance when he saw it. “People of the Church! You have seen this impostor for what he is, a feeble and powerless trickster! Avoid his snares, avoid his web of deceit, for you know the source of lies and traps! Go now, go quickly, and never hearken to this man or any like him again!”
That galvanized Banalix into action as he saw all his gains slipping away from him. “Deceiver yourself!” he screamed. “You claim to be of the forest? Then let it judge you!” He chanted in the foreign language again, pointing up at the ancient oak, and a branch the size of a grown tree groaned downward to swat at Matt.
CHAPTER 14
With a horrendous cracking, the branch began to split from the trunk. It wasn’t just going to swat at Matt, it was going to fall on him! Quickly, he chanted,
The fall of the branch slowed, then stopped, one huge burl only inches from Matt’s head. Then, incredibly, it started to rise again, the base cleaving to the trunk, shaking, trembling, then stilling, and the branch stretched out whole again. Matt told himself he must have been imagining the huge sigh of relief that seemed to surround him.
The crowd burst into cries of awe!—and fear. Those closest to Banalix tried to crowd farther away.
The false druid pointed at a dead tree behind Matt and screamed a verse. A groan began, softer, then louder and louder, as the tree leaned to fall on Matt.
He hoped Cowper’s ghost wasn’t listening.
The trunk seemed to roll, changing the direction of its fall. Banalix stared in horror, then turned to run crosswise, out of the path of the tumbling skeletal branches—but the tree swung about, following him, tracking him, as it fell faster and faster, then slammed down on top of him. Banalix screamed in pure terror, then screamed again and again, for the tree had enough branches left so that it hadn’t crushed him, only formed a prison around him. He grabbed the dry old sticks and shook them, trying to break them, but they must not have been quite as dead as they seemed, for they held him penned in.
“Go now, quickly!” Matt boomed. “Go back to your cottages, back to your beds, and never follow such a deceiver again!”
The crowd broke and ran, howling with fright. Their voices faded away, and the clearing was still, except for the sobbing coming from the hollow tree.
Matt stood still, absorbing the whole of the night, letting the adrenaline ebb. When he trusted himself to be gentle, he whispered,
“Can you hear me, Banalix?” he said softly, but the spell seemed to have worked—he could scarcely hear himself, and the druid kept whimpering with no sign of having heard him. Matt jumped down from the stump and went slowly toward the dead tree, where he knelt down and gazed in at the prisoner.
The man stared at him for a frozen moment, then recoiled, hands up to defend, crying, “Who are you?”
“A wizard,” Matt told him, “one who’s on the side of the Church at the moment—and who knows what you’re trying to do.”
The man stared, then whispered, “For the Church? You are a godly wizard, and you defeated the powers of the Old Gods so easily?”
“Sure,” Matt said. “They don’t really exist, you know. The only power you had was some minor spells your boss taught you—and their impact comes from the music of the old language, not the strength of the old gods.”
Banalix began to tremble. “But he told me the Old Gods live!”
“He lied,” Matt said simply. “He’s out to gain power, and he saw that he could do it by reviving his own version of the old religion. He even put together a mixture of excuses for people to do all the things they enjoy, but that have bad effects later on—guaranteed to win him converts, and by the time they realize all their partying has brought trouble, your boss figured he’d have them so securely under his thumb that they couldn’t get away if they wanted to.”
He almost felt sorry for Banalix as he watched the expressions that chased each other across his face as his wonderful new world collapsed around him. Finally he groaned, “I am lost!”
“You can find a way to rebuild,” Matt told him. “For openers, tell me what I want to know, and I’ll release you.”
“Tell you… ?” A crafty look came into the druid’s eyes.
“Don’t think you have anything to trade,” Matt said quickly. “I have plenty of other ways of finding out, and I won’t at all mind leaving you here to starve.”
The last part was a complete lie, of course, but Banalix didn’t know that. He stared at Matt in horror for a minute, then quavered, “The Chief Druid! Surely you know that!”
“Yes, I guessed that much,” Matt agreed. “Tell me his name.”
“I dare not! He will discover it, he will smite me down!”
“You can’t really believe that.” Matt’s smile held a little contempt “You know that most of the ‘magic’ he taught you was only trickery, don’t you? And the few genuine spells are pretty feeble. I doubt very highly that he’ll know if you tell me his name.”
Banalix stared at him a moment, then whispered “Niobhyte” very softly.
The name meant nothing to Matt, but he couldn’t let Banalix know that. “Very good. Now, tell me—what’s your real name?”
The man flushed and looked away. “Jord,” he said.
“Jord.” It was a peasant’s name. “And what did you do for a living before Niobhyte conned you away?”
“I was a serf on the estates of Lord Manerring,” Jord said reluctantly.
Matt nodded. “Well, then, I would recommend you go back to your home village and stay there, at least until this is all over.”
“I dare not!” Jord seized two branches and shook them, trying to break out. “Niobhyte will slay me if he learns I have failed and gone meekly home!” He shuddered. “And I will roast forever in Hell, for I have blasphemed and lured people away from God!”
Matt stared at the man a moment, then asked, “You mean you didn’t believe a word of what you were telling those people?”
“I believed it,” Jord told him, “but now that I have seen the power of the Old Gods so easily defeated, I can believe no longer!”
“So you fall back on the religion in which you were raised.” Matt nodded. “Well, then, repent and confess your sins, and you should be safe from Niobhyte’s power.”
“But he is a sorcerer! A real sorcerer! Repentence will not save me!”
“It will save your soul, at least.” Matt was beginning to have misgivings about having busted up Banalix’s act—but could he really have let the man suck other people into the kind of tyranny he himself seemed to fear? “It might save your body, too, if you stay in the sanctuary of a church until this is all over.”
Jord stared at him for a moment, then said, “Might.”
“There are no guarantees in this life, I’m afraid,” Matt told him, “especially when the country is in such upheaval. But I know a church that should be safer man most for the duration, and maybe when it’s over, Niobhyte will have lost. If he has, he won’t be in a position to hurt anybody.”