He reached the stable and fed his little unicorn, but even with it as dark as it was, the poor animal seemed so frightened of him that it would race by him or try to go over the sides of the stall when he tried to approach with the curry comb. With a whimper, he stepped out and latched the gate. He meandered about for a time in the shadows cast by the rising moon, listening to the calls of toads and spring peepers beyond the castle's great stone curtains. In time he found his way to Spitemorta's bower, where he fell asleep on his knees with his head against her door.
When he raked the curry comb against the door in his sleep, Spitemorta hiked her skirts with a knitted brow and came to see. “Pissant!” she said, throwing open the door.
“And what's a mouthless little snot doing at my door with a curry comb?”
“Unnh!” he begged, rolling onto his knees before her.
“Very well Pissant,” she said, stepping inside for the Staff. “You did come quickly enough with the huffy general and some right hot tea.” She unfastened the Heart and passed it across his face, giving back his mouth.
His eyes flew wide as he felt of his face.
“But you leave me with a problem,” she said, tapping at a tooth. “If I give you back your face, I'm taking orders from the general. So why don't I give you his face?”
With a gasp of shock, Pissant grabbed at what certainly felt like someone else's face in place of his own.
“And then I get to watch you die the way I always wanted him to,” she said as if they were all going to get to play a giddy game of croquet.
Pissant's whimper of terror was nothing like Coel.
“Damn you!” shrieked Spitemorta as she leveled the Staff, setting off Pissant in a blinding flare of purple light. “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! It's never my way!”
Demonica appeared, kicking aside the glowing coals enough to close the door, gave a long suffering sigh and winked out.
Chapter 187
Veyfnaryr spent the next week with Dyrjinyryy, brooding and dancing out the revelations from Spitemorta's visit. There was nothing for it. His dear first mother was no goddess at all. It meant that he was no more holy than she was, but that was of little consequence since he was the very first magically endowed thunderman of the Dyrney ever to be. And his endowment was formidable.
What did matter was how to deal with Spitemorta when she found out that he and the Dyrney could never cooperate with her demands. “Neron is turning into a friend,” he said as he tugged on the cord which ran to a bell in Badharan's room.
Badharan appeared at once, still chewing his early evening breakfast.
“Thunderman?” he said, bobbing his head with a hurried swallow.
“That Elf bucket,” said Veyfnaryr, sitting forward on Neron's old throne. “Have Fnayirgy get it half full of water and meet me out at the hog wallow. And go find King Neron and show him out there too. I'll be waiting.”
Badharan bowed and vanished into the shadows.
Veyfnaryr stepped out into warm evening, alive with the whistles of spring peepers from the lake and the twittering flights of courting woodcocks all about in the darkening sky. Beyond the orchard, long gone wild with briars, wild plum and sassafras, he came to the woods at the far end of the island from the castle ruins. Far enough into the timber for the brush to be replaced by echoes from the trees, he came to the hog wallow. An old sow heard him coming and stopped blowing bubbles in the mud to look up. With a woof of alarm at the sight of him, she splashed out of the wallow and ran away into the timber with her eight pigs belching and trotting behind. He sat on the bank and had just begun squeezing the velvety smooth mud between his toes when Neron, Badharan and Fnayirgy came tramping through the leaves.
“Ah, Thunderman...” said Badharan as he stumbled across a stick in the dark. “I have both of them with me.”
“So I see,” said Veyfnaryr. “And it looks as though you'd best go back in while you can still find your way.”
“That's all right,” said Badharan, keenly curious about what was developing. “I don't mind waiting to go back with you all.”
“I'll tell you all about it later,” said Veyfnaryr, giving him a shooing wave of his hand as he began wading about in the mud. “Bye.”
Badharan gave a dignified bow and hurried away for the orchard.
“I have Elf-water-haul, Thunderman,” said Fnayirgy as he squatted by the bucket.
“Is it be for our head-nod that I hurry-haul-plopped? And is it head-nod to talky-talk about it?”
Veyfnaryr nodded. “So where-be did you that gnydy-ball plop-katoomp?” he said as he squished from foot to foot in the mud.
“Maybe just could-was right where you next foot-spot,” said Fnayirgy, standing up and pointing.
Veyfnaryr was down on all fours at once, feeling about in the manury smelling hog mud for quite some time. “Ha!” he cried at last. “Got it.” He tramped straight to the bank of the wallow, climbed out and began washing the skinweler and his muddy arms in the bucket.
“So what-be gnydy-ball for?” said Fnayirgy, squatting again to watch him wash the ball.
“Go talky-tell Badharan to help you give mead jug a good, good-hoot juicy-quaff, top to bottom.” said Veyfnaryr. “Bye.”
Fnayirgy bobbed his head with a look of glee, sprang to his feet and scampered away into the blackness.
“You must have thought this was a right queer place for a talk,” said Veyfnaryr.
“Well I allowed there was a good reason,” said Neron. “But I have to admit that you all had me puzzled for a spell.”
“When Spitemorta was here, she gave this to me to keep her informed of our progress on the tasks we're not about to do for her,” said Veyfnaryr as he put a foot into the bucket and splashed water onto his leg. “It's exactly like the one Dyrjinyryy used to watch my birth. So, do you know anything at all about these things? We call them gnydy- balls, but I believe her name for them was skinweler.”
“Skinweler. That's the name all right. It would be 'liathroid teilifis' in Jutish Elven.”
“How dangerous is it?” he said as he washed his other leg. “Dyrjinyryy thinks it's the purest evil that ever was. He wants to throw it into the well in the orchard where he dropped the one Demonica gave him years ago.”
“I'd at least put it in that bucket of muddy water for right now. It's dark enough out here that she probably can't see a thing, even with the moon a-coming up through the trees, but you certainly wouldn't want her seeing you in my company.”
Veyfnaryr dropped the skinweler back into the bucket as if it might be venomous.
“So it really ought to go back into the wallow or down the well, then?” he said, wiping his hands on his legs.
“Well it could be useful if you know what you're doing.”
“I don't see how. I certainly have nothing to say to Spitemorta.”
“Of course not,” said Neron. “But you might want to use that ball to watch her daily addresses to her subjects, or even to see where she is and what she's doing.”
“Spy on her?”
“As long as you have a clear understanding of the dangers. Unless you take precautions, the minute she knows that you're watching her, she can see you. And you definitely want to keep your ball covered when you aren't using it, or she can spy on you.
Keeping it in a bucket of muddy water might be just the thing.”
“What else can one do with it?”
“Scrying balls are made of more than one kind of quartz. Until skinweleriou showed up, the only kind of scrying ball known needed a magically endowed person to use it every time it was used. Ordinary people simply could not. Then at about the time that Spitemorta and Demonica came by the Heart and became a threat to the world, someone who may well have been Demonica herself, discovered a new kind of quartz that only needed a spell from someone with magic to make it usable by those without magic. Spitemorta handed out hundreds of these new skinweleriou and began using them to give addresses to her subjects. And, two people with
this kind of ball can see and talk to each other across any distance.”
“It may as well be down a well,” said Veyfnaryr with a snort. “Spitemorta's the only one I know with one, and she's the very last person in the world I want to talk to.”
He looked up suddenly as a loon gave a shivering cry from somewhere quite nearby through the trees, answering a call from far across the lake.
“Well I don’t blame you for that,” said Neron, turning toward the cry. “But you verily do know someone besides her with a ball like that.”
“And who would that be?”
“I have one.”
“My word! And you use it to spy on Spitemorta?”
“Well, I haven't yet, but those are certainly my intentions.”
“And you think you can get away with it?”
“I know enough to be wary. And my lineage has right smart magic of its own.”
“My first mother is one fearsome witch to have as an enemy,” said Veyfnaryr. “I can certainly see why you'd want to keep an eye on her.”
“And what about you?” said Neron. “You're already convinced that she won't like it when she finds out that you haven't done what she wants.”
“Oh my. When I merely had the nerve to ask her why she wanted all of the Beaks dead, she made the hair on my arms stand up. I'd guess she'll try to punish us, don't you think?”
“It would certainly fit her. I hear tidings time and again about those defying her in the slightest way ending up as targets of her wrath. That's why your father and your brother live in hiding where I do. If you and the Dyrney don't do what she wants, she'll be murderously angry.”
“Do you think she'd try to destroy us? I mean with magic.”
“I wouldn't put it past her,” said Neron as the nearby loon cried out again. “If she's really furious, it might be more satisfying to her than using her army.”
“She'll fail,” said Veyfnaryr. “Magic doesn't work on the Dyrney. That's why they put me here, don't you know. With me here, the Dyrney have their own magic.”
Yea. That's why my people had so much trouble when the Dyrney would raid us.”
“I'm sorry...” said Veyfnaryr.
“And so am I,” said Neron. “That was blundering for me to bring it up. You have a good heart and I wish I had put it some other way. But I am glad that you all are safe from her magic. Just remember that she could still knock down the castle upon your heads. And she does have her soldiers...”
“Like the metal-head hoo-hoo we still have chained up?”
“Did the wounded fellow die?”
“Yea. Just like the others whose unicorns we ate.”
Neron quickly thought back over the meals he had eaten lately. “Well that's good, then,” he said. “You're not so daunted by her army, either...”
“I should have told you, I suppose,” said Veyfnaryr. “But I allowed that you'd had enough of her soldiers on your way here. Anyway, the only meat you've eaten since you've been here is goose and deer. Badharan told me how highly you regard unicorns.”
He fell silent, studying Neron in the light of the rising moon for an awkwardly long spell.
“I'll truly miss our talks when you're gone,” he said at last.
“Gone? You mean I'm going somewhere?”
“Back to your own people, I should think,” he said, idly breaking twigs into short lengths and planting them in a neat row in the thickest mud of the wallow. “It won't be safe for you here. And if Elves are anywhere about, it would have to be very much more perilous for us, too. Being lazy and uncooperative with her might be one thing, but being in league with Elves would make us her mortal enemy. So I'm sending you back. But first I have a request. Well, maybe two or three requests.”
“Anything,” said Neron, quite taken aback by all this.
“Take Badharan with you,” he said, switching from twigs to rolling out balls of mud. “He won't want to go, but he's been my teacher and a tireless help to me, and nothing must happen to him.”
“Gladly.”
“Now. Can you teach me to travel by spell?”
“Certainly,” said Neron. “But if I'm to do that, it's not likely that you'll be able to do it without a skinweler, since you're not an Elf.”
“I don't understand.”
“Humans need to scry the exact spot they wish to travel to by spell so that they don't end up trapped inside a tree or a stone wall at their destination. The Elven traveling spell, called taisteal, will never trap the traveler, even without scrying. We need to at least start you out with a skinweler. Do you mind if I go get mine? It's in my panniers in our room.”
“Not at all,” said Veyfnaryr, turning about suddenly to find where another cry of the loon was coming from. He looked above the trees to see just where the moon had risen to. “Run on ahead. We'll meet in the library.”
Neron was getting all of the colliding with things in the dark that he wanted by the time he reached the library, so he was quite relieved to find Veyfnaryr sitting between two pairs of candles, studying Razzmorten's Compendium of Magic.
Veyfnaryr closed the book and looked up. “I guess Demonica hadn't yet found the new quartz when he wrote the book,” he said. “Well. Where do we begin?”
“I'd allow that Spitemorta is asleep,” said Neron. “So shall we have a go at traveling by spell?”
“By all means.”
“We'll need to see what we can manage to scry, first,” said Neron. “Get your skinweler out of the water and dry it off. I'll trot out to the hall with mine and we'll see if we can see each other in them.” And with that, he found his way out the door. He looked at his ball, already swirling with rainbow hues.
“Ha!” cried Veyfnaryr, suddenly looking out at him. “There you are.”
“Now,” said Neron, tramping back in. “Let's see if you can find things without there being a second ball.”
“Yea!” said Veyfnaryr. “There's Badharan.”
“Splendid! Now have a careful look at some place nearby where you'd like to travel to. Look at the exact spot where you want to appear.”
“There's the hog wallow. What do I have to do?”
“Well if that's indeed where you want to go, empty your mind of everything but the very picture of the exact spot where you want to be and say... Now wait. What language do you want to use for your spell? Old Niarg? Elven would be: lean ort...”
“Dyrney speech?”
“Very well, think or say: phnirr dyrija.”
“Wait,” said Veyfnaryr as he stared into his ball. “I see something. I want to try a different place... All right, phnirr dyrija!”
Immediately Veyfnaryr sank amidst a booming splash as a loon went smacking away in terror across the water.
“Aah!” cried Neron, stumbling backward into a pile of books as Vefnaryr returned in a sudden explosion of water.
“Hoooeee!” cried Veyfnaryr, pummeling his chest with a fistful of feathers.
“Ooot! Ooot! Ooot! Ooot! Ooot!”
“My word!” cried Neron, whisking at the water soaking his front. “What on earth happened?”
“He got away,” cried Veyfnaryr, strings of his sopping black hair plastered to his bare chest and shoulders as he frolicked about, flinging water. “But I got every one of his tail feathers! I've tried all my years a-growing up here to catch a loon, and I've never come close. But next time I will for certain.”
“So this is lake water...”
“Yeap,” said Veyfnaryr, rubbing an eye with his wrist. “There's no way they can see me coming. All I need to do is pick a spot shallow enough to not go under. So. You said nearby. How far away can I actually go by spell?”
“Probably any place you can picture in your mind, no matter how far away, once you work up to it and know what you're doing. But I have no way of knowing for sure.
You'll have to go a little further each time to see how it goes. Short trips are nothing for me, but I went from here to Castle Niarg a time or two and was exhausted for days.<
br />
Human wizards can manage the longer distances by drawing on power stored in staves.
You'll figure out what you need to do if you only attempt a little more each time until you have it.”
“And it can be any place at all?”
“Anywhere you like so long as you picture in your mind the exact spot where you'll end up,” said Neron.
“And I need the skinweler to find a place to see in my mind, right?”
“Yea. And you'll have to have some idea of the direction you need to point the skinweler in order to find the spot to picture in the first place.”
“That's no good at all,” said Veyfnaryr, taking a chair with a sigh and folding his arms. “I've never in my life set foot outside the Jutwoods. And I'm pretty sure that I have more fingers than the number of times I've been off this island and beyond Jutland Lake, so I don't know the direction of any place.”
“Well,” said Neron, holding aloft one of the candles. “We used to have all sorts of maps here about.”
“What's a map?”
“A picture of the lay of the land...”
“In books?”
“Once in a while,” said Neron. “But the ones I remember in here were all sheets of parchment or paper in rolls.”
Veyfnaryr looked very lost. Presently they had Badharan helping, and they spent the next couple of hours rummaging through the piles of books and broken furniture, until at last they came across three or four score maps in rolls, mashed completely flat. At last they had a legible one of the Northern Continent spread out across the top of the reading table.
“This is north,” said Neron, pointing to the map. “And here we are. This is Oilean Gairdin. And this is Niarg Proper, where Spitemorta is. So where in this room is north?”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 197
