by Guy Antibes
Whit nodded. “They aren’t just looking for Varetta’s burial site.”
“You can try the dunes at the eastern end of the bay,” the server said. “People are always finding strange things over there.”
“We will check the dunes out,” Gambol said.
They headed east, over the river’s bridge, and kept to the shore road driving through sleepy fisherman villages along the beach. They rested their horses at a crowded roadside stop. There were horses, donkeys, and carts tied up, showing that it was a popular place.
A trestle table opened up, and Whit and Zarl found bar stools to sit on at the ends.
“We have a little more than an hour to get to the dunes,” Jonny said, smiling slyly. “What about a little misdirection?”
“What do you mean?” Argien asked.
“We can tell the server that we know where there is a treasure at the dunes and all we have to do is dig it up,” Jonny said.
“What good will that do?” Yetti asked.
Whit laughed. “What are the odds that Deechie and his friends stop here and ask if two carriages of foreigners stopped?”
“High,” Razz said.
“Ah,” Yetti laughed. “So they will spend a great deal of time digging up the dunes?”
“Why not?” Jonny said. “If they follow us, we can direct them to where we want them to go.”
Whit smiled at the thought. It wasn’t a concept that came easy, but Jonny had a more devious mind.
They paid for their horses to be watered and tasted some local pixie wine. Whit took the watered version along with most of the others. Fistian and Jonny savored the full-strength stuff.
“Where are you headed?” the server said after bringing seconds.
“Dunes. We hear there are artifacts to be found there,” Jonny said.
“Don’t get too disappointed,” the server said. “I haven’t heard of anything of use anyone discovered save a coin or two dropped from someone’s purse or pocket.” She laughed. “But, if you think you have a tip, good luck to you.”
“We have a good tip on where they are, but don’t tell anyone,” Jonny said.
“I’d never do any such thing,” the pixie woman said.
The way she said it gave Whit hope that she would easily pass on the information, if asked.
Whit finished his wine and stood. “We need to get going. It will be a long trip back to the inn from the dunes.”
They left the road stop and headed east. Whit smelled the ocean. It tempted him as he looked right from atop the driver’s box on the second carriage. Jonny led the two carriages, and Whit could have let go of the reins, and the horses would have followed the carriage ahead, so he could look around at the scenery and still drive the carriage.
He enjoyed listening to the roar of the ocean, although Gambol told him that since the bay was exposed to the open ocean, the waves were larger than most of the Perisian coastline that faced the islands of Aeria and Faretheewell. Whit hoped there would be enough time to wade in the ocean and walk on the beach before the trip back to the inn.
The dunes began to appear behind a small rise that jutted from the ocean. Once over the small hill half a mile or so from the shore, they looked down at sandy hillocks on a large field of rolling dunes at the bottom of a rocky cliff. The rise was a spur of rock that rose up one hundred feet. There were a few scraggly trees on the top, but Jonny said the plateau at the top of the cliffs continued on past the southern point of Perisia.
When they got closer the road disappeared underneath sand, and they parked the carriages on a flat grassy patch that extended from the small spur to the sandy area. Whit counted eleven wagons and an open carriage on the patch along with a few hobbled horses.
“This is a popular place,” Whit said.
Jonny nodded. “It would be better to walk without shoes.”
Yetti squealed with delight as she ran toward the dunes and stood wriggling her feet into the sand. “This is fun!” she said holding her arms out and shuffling through the soft sand.
From where she stood the dunes occluded the rocky jumble at the base of the cliffs. Whit guessed it was half a mile to the end of the bay.
“Can we get to the ocean from here?” Yetti called.
“I’ll go with her,” Zarl said, his big feet now bared to the world.
Argien, Razz, and Fistian followed the other two, leaving Whit, Gambol, and Jonny.
“We need to dig some holes?” Whit asked.
Jonny nodded. “Do you have shovels?”
“One in each carriage,” Gambol said.
Whit and Gambol retrieved the tools and a tablecloth to be used to cover the sand if anyone wanted to sit and look at the ocean before the three of them strolled to the beach.
There were curious onlookers strolling through the dunes. It looked like most of the visitors headed to the beach from the soft tracks in the sand. They passed a fire pit.
“Why don’t we dig here?” Whit said. “The place should be easy to spot by Deechie’s group.”
A few pixies stood watching them dig up the fire pit. Gambol hit something metallic and pulled out a dented pot with a burned-out hole in the bottom.
“A relic!” Whit said loudly. “I think it is the one we’ve been after.” He took the tablecloth and used his belt knife to cut a square out to wrap the charred pot inside. “Let’s dig a little more to see if there are any others.”
They dug up the fire pit for a few more minutes before the three of them continued to the beach. Along the way they made more holes in the sand, but Whit knew those wouldn’t last long.
Other than the wind blowing gritty sand through every crevice of Whit’s clothes, the seaside was wonderful. He entrusted their treasure to Jonny, who didn’t need to wade in the ocean. The water was colder than Whit had expected, but with the surf coming in and retreating, it was fun to wade. Yetti had the most fun. She flew above the surf and then would stop and drop onto water that didn’t even reach her ankles close to Zarl. Razz and Argien joined her. Whit waded into the water with Gambol and Fistian, who looked longingly at the flyers.
Yetti sat on the tablecloth. “We should have brought some towels,” she said. “Then we could get wet.”
“You can visit the beach tomorrow at your inn, but I’m afraid it’s time to leave,” Jonny said.
They piled into the carriages and turned around. Just as they exited the grassy part, two carriages passed them. Sedge stuck his head out the window of his carriage and waved hello, shouting. “You beat us here!”
“We did!” Whit yelled from the driver’s box. “Have fun. We did!”
The encounter brought a smile to Whit’s face. The magic college team had taken the bait, and there were probably enough pixies who saw them find something in the fire pit to make the trip worth it. He had to admit, it was worth it just to see dunes and wade in the ocean.
The trip back to the inn was longer than they expected, and the group ended up spending the night in a tiny inn not far from Willeton. They provided a shower to clean off the sand but had to pay for the use of clean towels.
They had eggs, bacon, and a hot cidery drink that Jonny recommended. Whit was quite pleased with it, and by the time they reached the inn, it wasn’t yet time to prepare for the midday meal. The food crate was on the doorstep of Zarl’s villa. Everyone changed clothes and gathered in Zarl’s common room.
The travel had worn Yetti out and after lunch, Jonny suggested they rest up and have a true vacation day before leaving the seashore. They had been on the road for long enough.
“Let’s go to my villa and take a good look at our treasure,” Whit said to Gambol and Jonny, while others cleaned up the kitchen area. He uncovered it and frowned. “We should clean this up,” he said. “Maybe we can file the hole to make it look like it was meant to be there.”
“I can do a drawing of the pot with dimensions and a few views,” Gambol said, chuckling. “If they steal the thing, all we have to do is show them Torius Pott’s part with the r
ainbow-colored finish.”
“You want them discredited or stopped altogether?” Jonny asked. “I can arrange it.”
“No,” Whit said. “I just want to mess with them. They think they can follow us and grab the components so they can claim they found them.”
“I wouldn’t call Greeb Deechie someone who would stand to be shown up by elves or pixies of any kind,” Jonny said. “He is the kind of person who will do anything to reach his selfish goals.”
“Aren’t you that kind of person?” Yetti asked. “Wouldn’t you do anything for your revolution?”
Jonny bit his lip. “That is my reputation, but no. My purpose is to keep Ritta Misennia from doing something stupid. I’d like changes in how Perisia is ruled, but a real revolution would get a lot of my friends killed.”
“Your little army that camps out at your pub?” Gambol asked.
“I count them as friends, but there are more. I get more from them than they do from me,” Jonny said. He looked like he regretted saying it.
Whit leaned closer. “Are you a spy?”
Jonny laughed. “Aren’t we all spies of one sort or another? You were commissioned to contact Ritta. I do my part for those who think like I do.”
“Ritta isn’t one of them?” Gambol asked.
“She is one of my friends,” Jonny said, evasively.
“And King Quiller? Is he one of your friends who thinks like you do?” Whit asked.
Jonny pursed his lips. “I don’t think I can answer any more questions.”
“You don’t have to. You are as much your king’s spy as I am a spy for mine,” Whit said. “All we want is to take any artifacts that we find out of Perisia. Our goal is to reconstruct the Augur’s Eye.”
“That isn’t a simple goal,” Jonny said. “Your chances of finding all the parts are almost nonexistent.”
“Almost,” Gambol said. “But we know where a lot of them are, and the magic college team doesn’t.”
“They know enough to follow you,” Jonny said.
Whit nodded. “They are an impediment, and I’d rather they weren’t following, but it is what it is. I will continue, no matter what happens.”
“Even if it costs you the life of your teammates?” Jonny said.
Whit blinked his eyes. “No, not their lives, but everyone knows we can be attacked and injured.”
“Or killed,” Gambol said. “Whit is right. We all know the risks.”
Jonny nodded. “Is an old broken machine worth it?”
“I’m not sure, but the effort to make the Augur’s Eye work is centuries old. I’m not sure I can easily let my ancestors down,” Whit said.
Whit was more than eager to complete the quest. The challenge to rediscover an ancient magical device appealed to him as a challenge but also a fulfillment of what he and his mother had been brought up to do. What bothered him was why she hadn’t pursued any of the parts? He could understand maintaining a low profile to continue to keep the project secret, but he knew his mother was strong enough to have told her wood elf relatives that she wasn’t interested in being the chief of Whistle Vale and his parents had never mentioned the Eye and its history to him. All he knew came to him after both were gone.
It was a mystery he couldn’t solve in Perisia and that meant he had to continue on. No matter what, Whit had a contest to win and a team that was willing to face danger to show the College of Magic that they were as good or better than the magic college expeditioneers.
Jonny shook his head. “You have more invested than the other team, that is for certain,” Jonny said. “Where do you go next after Willet’s Bay?”
“Hopefully King Quiller will speak to us again. We want his permission to remove the parts that we find.”
Jonny looked out the window, but there were no ocean views from the villa cluster that the inn management had assigned to them. “I’ll see what I can do. The political situation in Garri is precarious, but the countryside is less so, despite your experiences. I’ll see what I can do. Don’t get your hopes up. I’m no minister, and my influence doesn’t extend very far.”
“I can understand that,” Whit said.
They spent the next half hour cleaning the pot. Fistian pulled out his toolbox and modified the hole in the pot so it appeared intentional. He even had a solution that gave the metal an iridescent finish and another that aged the metal enough to make the modifications look old. “It’s not meant for this, but it does the trick, don’t you think?” the gnome said, holding it up for the other two to examine.
Gambol took the pot to admire Fistian’s work. “I’ll make the drawings and leave it out on my desk until we leave,” he said.
Whit and Jonny smiled.
“You think they will steal it?” Jonny asked.
“Not if, but when,” Gambol said.
Chapter Twenty-One
~
Y etti arranged to have towels delivered to Zarl’s villa for them to use. They walked along the paths in the inn’s villa clusters and ended up at a small cliff overlooking the beach, which stretched out of sight to their left in the misty morning air. Instead of a looming cliff, the northwest side of the beach ended in a jumble of huge rocks at the bottom of the small overlooking cliffs.
“There isn’t much in the way of usable beaches to the north,” Jonny said. He would join them for the morning and then had to return to Garri at midday.
Whit didn’t care about where the beaches started or stopped. He had vowed he would swim in the ocean. It would have been something to tell his father about. The thought crept up on him unawares. His father and mother both would have listened intently to his observations the way they always had.
Although he walked with his friends, he suddenly felt lonely and isolated. His emotion was far deeper than missing them. Whit was part of his parents, and they were gone. What did that make him? An orphan just as he was exiting his teen years? He didn’t feel so young, just a withered hollow shell of an elf or whatever he was. He had picked up pixie magic so easily. Would that have made his mother proud? Whit shook his head. He’d never know.
Whit shook off the depressing thoughts and decided he would write a little journal on the morning’s activities…something to toss into the fire before he left to return to Garri.
Yetti punched his arm. “You aren’t allowed to look so glum,” she said. “That is my job.” She smiled at him. “Enjoy yourself today. When we get back to Herringbone, the ugliness of life will return.”
“Is your job at the Magister’s Club ugly?”
She grunted. “More than ugly. It is sinister too.” She shivered. “And dangerous if something ever went wrong.”
“Why?” Whit asked.
She looked around to see if any of the others were walking near them. “The Magister’s Club is where the different factions in Ayce meet to discuss things.”
“What things?” Whit asked.
“How should I know? I don’t go near the library when they meet,” she said. “There are arguments, but enough people are there to keep any faction from blowing up the meeting. At least that is the theory.”
“So, when I saw Canis and Donna Ristian coming out of the same meeting, they weren’t part of the same group?”
Yetti rolled her eyes. “Hardly! Canis is there for the king’s government, or some of them, anyway, and Magister Ristian, as she prefers to be called, often represents the College of Magic.”
Whit stopped, looking out to sea, but he envisioned his encounter with Donna Ristian at the Magister’s Club. Canis and her being in the same meeting confused him, but now he wasn’t sure what to think. His impression of the political situation in Ayce became closer to the kind of agitation he observed in Perisia.
Did that mean that Ayce wasn’t any more stable than Perisia or other known shaky governments in his world? He didn’t know, and he couldn’t worry about that any more than he could his parents and all that went before. He had to stay focused on the present, and the present was below him.
Larger waves than what hit the shore on the southwest side of the bay broke on the sandy beach. He might as well have fun and enjoy himself as Yetti had counseled.
He helped Yetti down the rickety steps to the beach. Whit took off his shoes and put them on the tablecloth he had used the previous day.
“Time to get wet!” He said to the others as he ran toward the surf and waded in to his waist, feeling the waves pound against them.
One of them knocked him off his feet and he went under. He emerged from the surface of the water laughing and launched himself into the air, cavorting about the waves like any pixie would. The funk that he had experienced was gone, and he dove into the water as he would one of the little lakes around Whistle Vale and swam in the sea.
He discovered that the sea was full of salt water, and it stung his eyes. Whit thought of a spell and a big bubble of fresh water appeared around his head as he swam allowing him to see what was under the waves. He was surprised that there was so much life that he swam through.
Where the water was deeper than Zarl was tall, there were little fish and other creatures that Whit didn’t recognize. He launched out of the water again and floated on his back three feet above the sea, letting the water drip from his clothes. Whit could see why pixies would enjoy a pleasure inn, because playing in the ocean was fun.”
Yetti joined him above the water. “You look like a huge pixie!” she said, giggling, but then her face turned a bit serious. “Zarl and Fistian are jealous. Maybe you should talk to them.”
“I can’t carry them into the water,” Whit said, but he knew he’d have to do something. “Let me try something. I promise I’ll see them next.”
Whit dove into the water and evacuated a bubble of water, doing a reverse spell. He took a breath in the air bubble, and it worked, although the air tasted odd. He experimented with the spell while he was below water and found it persisted. Zarl and Fistian would have to be careful.
Soon everyone, even Jonny, were in the water with bubbles around their heads walking on the bottom of the ocean, trying to keep from floating up. The waves made them waver in the water, and that ended up making everything more fun. Fistian’s bubble popped, but he immediately swam for the surface and let the waves carry him to shore.
