The King's Spy (The Augur's Eye Book 2)

by Guy Antibes

  “What is a surly pixie?” Zarl asked with a smile.

  “Most pixies are lighthearted and carefree. I’m sure you’ve noticed. We laugh and joke a lot, then there are the more serious types who rule us. The worst are surly pixies. Their hearts are a little shriveled, if you know what I mean. They like to fight and argue and show their anger continually.”

  “I get your point,” Whit said. “Is there a way we can circumvent the village?”

  The innkeeper shook his head. “Not and reach the ruin from this side. However, if you are heading to Lilypond, the road goes through the ruin and down the other side of the hill and it is faster to get to Lilypond from there than coming back to the main road through here.”

  “Can we get there this afternoon?” Whit asked.

  “Yes, you can. Getting all the way to Lilypond might not be possible, but there are inns between here and there.”

  “Thank you,” Gambol said.

  The innkeeper nodded to them and left. After a good meal, they piled into the carriages and headed to the ruins.

  Two hours later, they entered a village and slowed to a stop at the village green. The main road went around the park and proceeded on the other side. The two carriages were side by side for a short conference.

  “Shall we stop for some liquid refreshment?” Fistian asked.

  “Is this the village we were warned about?” Gambol said poking his head out the carriage door.

  “We’ve passed through four villages already,” Argien said. “This one looks pleasant enough. We can make a quick stop and be on our way in a quarter hour.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Zarl said.

  Whit looked across the grassy park and spotted a pub on the other side. “There is a pub on the square. We can stop there. It’s too early for the place to be filled with customers.”

  They proceeded around the green. There were some children playing on the turf. Two poles were set up in the grass that looked like a practice setup for scout practice. Everything looked almost idyllic. This couldn’t be the dangerous village the innkeeper had warned them about.

  There were only a few patrons in the pub, and while the pixies didn’t welcome them with open arms, they didn’t grumble and curse them. The ale was as tasty as most of what was served in Perisia, and they were soon on their carriages heading toward the last village on the map before the ascent to the temple ruins.

  They left the village and entered an old wood. The road was gravel and unusually well-kept compared to what they had been riding on. Whit thought there must be a lot of traffic on the road.

  They rounded a bend and stopped. Twenty pixie men stood behind a fallen tree. Not all the branches had been lopped off, but Whit could see the tree was freshly harvested.

  “Stop!” a voice yelled from behind a leaf-filled branch.

  “We can’t do otherwise,” Razz said from atop the carriage that he drove.

  Whit was driving the other carriage and stopped behind Razz.

  “What do you want?” Gambol said poking his head from inside Razz’s carriage that he shared with Fistian.

  “All your possessions, the horses, the carriages, and your clothes,” the pixie said. The others laughed at their leader’s demands.

  “What if we refuse?” Whit asked.

  “Then we will give you all a thumping and take everything, anyway,” the leader said.

  “Maybe more than a thumping,” a voice behind the leader said to a chorus of assent.

  “If our lives are at stake, then yours are too,” Whit said. “I’d say you were from the village behind us. I wonder what your wives, children, and girlfriends will have to say when some of you don’t come back. I’ve been in fights before, and I know how to take care of myself. We all do,” Whit said.

  “You’re bluffing,” the leader said.

  Argien flew out of Whit’s carriage and shot a bolt of lightning that lit the branch next to the leader on fire. “Is that a bluff?” the angel asked. “The bolt burns a pixie the same as that branch. Imagine the pain.”

  Razz threw a stream of water at the branch extinguishing the fire. He followed it up by sending a globule of water the size of a watermelon and encased the same branch with the ball of water. “If we don’t burn you, we can drown you.”

  Zarl left the carriage. “And if we don’t do either, I can crush you.” He raised his arms and ground his hands together. The branch disintegrated where it met the trunk. “Imagine your arm or your leg pulverized. You’d have to drag yourself through life.”

  The confident look on the pixie’s faces faded.

  The leader stared at the globe of water still encasing the fallen branch. He reached out and pushed his forefinger against the surface. It didn’t poke through.

  “Maybe we were a little hasty.”

  “Perhaps you can remove the tree so we can be on our way, and we won’t count this little episode against you,” Razz said with a sneer.

  “Perhaps not.” The leader motioned for the pixies to move the tree. They could barely budge the thing.

  “Don’t attack me,” Zarl warned as he walked up to the tree and used his magic to levitate the tree and push it into the woods before he released the spell, crashing the trunk to the forest floor. He stepped up to the leader. “You’d best be on your way back to your village.”

  The pixies, eyes wide, rose into the air and vanished into the woods.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Razz said.

  Zarl and Argien returned to their seats in Whit’s carriage, and they proceeded down the road with Argien looking out the back to make sure they were out of danger.

  They rode into the last village before heading up a steep hill.

  Razz stopped and climbed down to the ground, followed by the remaining five travelers.

  Zarl took a deep breath. “I was bluffing, were you?” he asked Argien.

  “Of course. I couldn’t use that spell against anyone. If my parents found out, they’d have me drawn and quartered.”

  “Independent, are you?” Gambol said with a smile. “I would be happy to fight a pixie but not so many.”

  “I counted nineteen,” Razz said. “I wasn’t bluffing, but I only have the ability to make a few of those water blobs unless I’m wading in a pond.”

  Whit just nodded. He would do what was necessary to save his friends, and he was relieved he didn’t have to test his resolve. He didn’t want to pull out the magic-killer wand since he never tested it, but if everyone’s life depended on it, he would. “Let’s see if there is a place to stay.”

  “This isn’t a very large village,” Fistian said, looking around them. “There is a general store. We can inquire there.”

  Whit and Gambol walked into the small pixie-sized store. He wished Pin or Yetti had come along. The storekeeper looked at them, not pleased.

  “Foreigners aren’t very welcome here,” the pixie said.

  “We are looking for a place to stay the night before we visit the ruins at the top of the hill.”

  The pixie frowned. “There are no rooms for rent in the village, you’ll have to camp, and we don’t have a place to camp, either.”

  “Can we buy food?” Whit asked.

  “I am a merchant,” the pixie said matter-of-factly.

  Gambol and Whit bought whatever the pixie had. None of it was particularly fresh, being late in the day, but they would have to eat what they could find.

  “Is there camping at the top of the hill?”

  The pixie nodded. “It’s flat up there with a good-sized copse. What few pilgrims come through here, stay up there with the caretakers. There are no believers in the village.”

  Whit bought enough food for a full day, and Gambol helped him carry everything to the carriages.

  “We move on to the ruin,” Gambol said. “We might have to go through our purchases when we reach our destination to see what is rotten and what isn’t.”

  Whit’s impression of pixies hadn’t improved. The good road took
a turn in the village to the north which left them on the west road which was rutted and rocky. The going was slow, and the horses complained at the steep parts, but they eventually made it up to the top of the hill which was more of a plateau. The woods occluded most of the view, but they found a suitable campsite at the end of a meadow that had been used many times and stopped as the sun was going down. It would be too dark to go further.

  “My stomach is grumbling. Let’s go through our food stock and see what we have to work with,” Razz said after he unhitched the horses and hobbled them in the meadow.

  Whit and Argien flew over the meadow and spotted a spring, the source of the small stream that flowed at the side of the campsite. They landed and both cupped their hands and drank the cool, clear water.

  “This is better than the swill the pixies served us at the enemy village,” Argien said.

  “And better than any water Razz or I could pull from the air,” Whit said. “That is never very cool.”

  Whit didn’t like to drink spelled water because it always tasted flat and warm. They walked back to the camp making sure the stream flowed clean. Argien insisted.

  Gambol and Fistian had already sorted through the purchased supplies.

  “Not as bad as I thought. We have enough to keep us alive from now until tomorrow at dinner, but most of that will be soup and porridge if the water is good.”

  “It is,” Argien said.

  Whit was assigned to create a fire with the wood that Zarl had collected. Gambol and Razz were the cooks, and soon they had a couple of pots boiling on the fire over the portable grill they had brought with them.

  “This is pleasant,” Zarl said. “I’ve slept outside plenty of times back home, but I know I’m among friends here. I hate to say it, but I’m glad Deechie isn’t here, and I’ve always been anxious around Yetti.”

  “She is intimidating,” Razz said. “She means well.”

  Zarl just shrugged. He let the others take their shares and ate what was left. Whit wondered what kind of anxiety Yetti caused in the ogre.

  “Pin could have helped us,” Whit said, “but using him so much makes us dependent on him. We are just starting, and I’ve learned more on this trip than I thought I would.”

  “Like what?” Argien asked.

  Whit didn’t know if he was going to needle him or not, but he assumed not. “We had more hostile natives. Perisia isn’t the only closed country we will be visiting. I thought we passed the test.”

  “What test? Whose test?” Argien said.

  “Our own test,” Gambol said. “If we are to be successful, we need to be more seasoned. I reckon we have just gotten some seasoning.”

  Argien laughed. “I’ll accept that. We were lucky, though.”

  “There is good luck and bad,” Zarl said. “Deechie always creates bad luck that we need to practice overcoming.”

  “I’d guess you really don’t like him,” Razz said, with a snicker.

  “I don’t,” Zarl said, looking a bit angry. “I don’t trust him at all, and I’ve met plenty of humans. He is the worst.”

  “I think we will be experiencing the worst human for the rest of the summer,” Fistian said. “Maybe we should break his legs.”

  “If we did that, we might as well return to Herringbone,” Gambol said.

  Whit heard a rustling in the woods. He stood, followed by the others. Whit wanted to have a weapon in his hands, and he realized that none of them did.

  A pixie woman wearing a worn hooded cloak walked into the campsite, lit by the orange light of the campfire.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  Whit stepped forward. “To visit the temple ruins,” he said. “We are in Perisia on an archeological expedition from the University of Herringbone, and we decided to look at the ancient ruins. Are you a nun?”

  “Nun? No. There haven’t been true nuns for centuries. I am the caretaker and I live with my faithful workers, one being my husband. There isn’t an organized group worshipping the saintess. Saints are no longer in vogue, but you are welcome to visit the ruins. If you could wait a few hours after dawn to visit I would appreciate it. I am not an early riser, but the rest of us are.”

  “Neither are some of us,” Argien said. “We look forward to tomorrow.”

  “Do you need an escort back to the temple?” Whit asked.

  The woman looked surprised. “That is nice of you, but I don’t think so. I live in a compound adjacent to the temple. I saw your fire and feared there would be robbers.”

  “Do you get attacked?” Gambol asked.

  “Occasionally, from the two villages that you passed through. There is nothing to steal, however, and the criminals are generally youth trying to prove themselves. You are foreigners so you might not understand. We can talk more tomorrow. If you will excuse me.”

  “Of course,” Gambol said, giving the woman a bow.

  She disappeared in the darkening wood, leaving Whit’s group looking at each other.

  “That is a brave woman,” Razz said.

  “We don’t know how long she observed us. I’m sure we didn’t look like criminals,” Zarl said.

  Whit agreed. He yawned. “I’m going to sleep. I’ll be underneath my carriage.”

  Razz nodded. “I’ll take the first watch,” he said.

  They worked out the night’s watch, and Whit cursed himself for not thinking about doing such a thing. That was a mark against his leadership. He yawned again and left the group.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ~

  B reakfast was a conglomeration of the remaining food they had brought with them from the inn and the remains of their lunch from the day before. Whit told himself that it was food and all it needed to do was fill his stomach, even if it wasn’t particularly fresh.

  They took their time breaking camp and filled their water vessels with the clear spring water before trundling down the road toward the temple ruins. The woods stopped abruptly when they entered a large field filled with crops. A little further out, Whit could see a pasture filled with sheep, goats, and a small herd of cows on the other side of a low rock wall.

  The compound consisted of stone buildings with thatched roofs. Whit counted five buildings, but only one looked like a dwelling, with a thin column of smoke curling out of a brick chimney. There were a few figures out and about, walking and flying, but what drew most of Whit’s attention was the temple ruin on a low rise looking out over a cliff.

  “That looks like it will have a nice view,” Gambol said, riding on the driver’s bench with Whit.

  Whit followed his gaze to the temple. “What do you think?”

  “About an old temple?” Gambol asked. “It looks like a partial ruin to me, but we will know soon enough.”

  They stopped the carriages at the compound since it didn’t look like there was a road directly to the temple.

  “You have a nice farm. There is more land up here than I expected,” Whit said.

  “The temple might have had a nunnery or a monastery. The story is it had gone totally to ruin where the compound stands, but the fallen stones from the temple provided the caretaker a few centuries ago with enough building materials to create this compound. There are five of us to work the land and protect the temple,” the woman said. “If you wish to come in, you can ask more questions. We have our own vineyards and can offer you the best wine within a day’s travel.”

  “That sounds great to me,” Fistian said.

  “It has been many years since any folk other than pixies have visited. If you don’t mind putting up with my questions, we can provide you with a lunch and a tour of the temple before you leave.”

  “I appreciate leaving before night,” Razz said. “I don’t relish the ride down from the mountain.”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “It’s faster to go down on the eastern side. It looks longer on a map, but the road is better, and the villagers are friendlier,” she said. “We do leave the temple hill often enough to know what k
ind of people live around us.”

  The woman made introductions since the carriages attracted the four workers. She showed them into the residence which was larger than Whit had guessed.

  They sat in a large room that served as a workroom, a kitchen, and a living area that had seating for them all. Most of it looked worn, but the bulk of the furniture wasn’t that old.

  “Sit down,” the caretaker said. She pulled back her hood revealing blue-green hair that went well with her bluish skin. The woman wasn’t as old as Whit had thought, perhaps as old as Gambol but much younger than Pin. “You said you come from Ayce?”

  Whit had each of them give a quick biography, which prompted questions, not only from the caretaker but from the other farmhands.

  “Let me tell you the story of Saint Varetta. She was born thousands of years ago, like any other pixie, the daughter of a successful fisherman who conducted his profession on the gentle waters of Winnet’s Bay. Varetta grew up doing good deeds as she helped her father’s business even though she was undersized and sickly.

  “She often took unsold fish and walked miles distributing it to the poor and destitute. Occasionally, she would take carts of fish distributing it along the way to Garri, which wasn’t the capital of Perisia at the time.

  “Eventually she entered a nunnery or a retreat, no one knows exactly which, dedicating her life to good works. Saint Varetta was out in the fields when elf marauders from what is now Serincia caught her and violated the poor girl, who could do little to defend herself, leaving her for dead.”

  Fistian frowned. “There wasn’t anyone around to save her? What kind of a nunnery would allow a nun to be out unaccompanied? That would never happen where I come from. Although we don’t have nuns, we respect gnomish women.”

  “There is more to the story,” the caretaker said. “Her rescuers arrived to see Saint Varetta rise from the field, taller, straighter, and healthy. Her body was covered with sparkling motes and holiness seemed to glow in her eyes. She plainly grew in grace, even as she walked from the fields to the nunnery as other pixies gathered to find her attackers.