Chapter 9: Nimurah the Sorcerer

At mid-day they came to a small clearing in the forest, where a small pond was in the middle. The clearing was a perfect circle, and had they not had the wolves they would not have been able to find their way out. The clearing's borders were made so, that they completely covered the exits there had to be. A completely sealed wall. They were thirsty, so they walked over to the pond to drink some from it. As they approached it, something touched Mongswai and NeeNee, but as they turned around, nothing was there. When they turned again, to face the pond and the wolves, there was a fizzle in the air, and as Mongswai turned to look at NeeNee, he saw, that her hair was standing right out from her head. He must have looked pretty funny, too, because she had a small smile on her lips. Then she turned to face the fizzle: "Oh, come on Nimurah. Can't you do any better. We noticed you this time," she said to the strange entity in front of them. And, as a the fizzle began to become more and more solid, a voice talked: "Damn. I never get it right. He-he, I see you have found the man you were talking about. Now, tell me: What are you up to?" NeeNee told the small, old man with a stick that appeared right before them, that they were out for the Child and what had happened so far. "I see. So you came to me. Well, come with me into my humble home" he said, waving his hand at something that was presumably not there. He walked in the direction he had pointed out, and suddenly disappeared. NeeNee told Mongswai to follow her and she walked towards the place, where Nimurah had disappeared. NeeNee took his hand and called for One Tooth to follow them. Then she told Mongswai to close his eyes. When he did, she pulled him in through the door to the house. "Now you can open you eyes," she told Mongswai and he did. And what sight meet him! The house was not exactly a house, more of a castle of wood. An enormous tree! They stood in the hall. In the middle was a lake, the one they had been drinking of, and the hall was so big, that he almost could not see the ceiling. Well, as a fact, the ceiling was hidden in leaves, so he couldn't actually see, if there was a ceiling, or if there was only leaves between them and the sky. "Ah, yes, you noticed it!" Nimurah said. "There is no ceiling, my friend. It's so nice that way. I can sit inhere all untroubled by nosy people and observe the sky. But you were here because of the Child." he continued. "Follow me."

They went up one if the many staircases that went from the hall in all directions, also the one they had just come in from. "This is actually a gigantic living tree some thousand years old or so," Nimurah said to Mongswai as they were walking up the stairs. "I found it one day about 600 years ago or so, and it was in a dying condition. I felt that I could not let that happen, and I also was in need of a home, after all I had just come out from the academy, so I put to work some of my friends from there and in a couple of years we had a tree as healthy as any and a home for me. We are there!" During Nimurah's little story, they had gotten up the stairs and they were now in what seemed to be a mix of a alchemist's workshop and an old fashioned scientific laboratory, like one from any 50s horror movie, just that this one had a more, say, friendly feel to it. It was, as the hall, quite a large room and on all the walls there were large shelves with all sorts of mysterious looking things on them. "Feel free to take a look around." Nimurah said. "Make yourselves at home; I have to find some things for you." Mongswai, NeeNee and One Tooth walked slowly past the shelves and looked at the many strange things that were on them. Mongswai stopped in front of something that looked pretty much like one of the first transistors. "Oh, never mind that," Nimurah said. "It's a silly little thing I fiddled with some time ago. I found it at the east side of the Maeichrantru mountains along with some old metal scraps and some glass. I didn't know what it was but it seemed interesting, so I brought it home. I never figured how to put it to use anyway." he continued, while almost crawling onto one of the shelves in the other end of the room. "Ah, here it is!" he proclaimed and pulled himself and some bottles and bags out from the shelve. "Come over here" he said and went over to the large table in the middle of the room. He placed the thing he had gathered and put them on the table and summoned a belt-pack to his hand and started to put the things into it while he told them what the things were for. "This is a potion for healing" he said while putting a flask with a blue liquid into the pack. "You'd only want to use it scarcely, as using to much will to strange things to your body. And this red one here is a flying potion." He was talking about a very small red flask that he was placing into the belt-pack. "You only need one drop to fly for one hour, not very much, eh? Please be careful with it. If you take to much you'll just end up flying around for a far longer time that you wanted to. ehr. Yes.