Saveric slammed the butt of his staff into the ground. Detta yipped.
“Enough! I am out of patience. Give the Stave to me. Disarm, and you can go wherever you please.”
“No.” She stood upon the word and it was strong as stone.
“You would be my enemy?”
“You are mine,” she said. Her heart beat steady. Her mind cleared. She felt as if her whole being had emerged from a cave into sunlight. She smiled at him.
Saveric shrugged again, but this time the staff twitched. Her own staff was torn from her grip, and floated across the clearing in an instant. Saveric let go of his staff to grab it out of the air.
He uttered an ugly laugh. “Gods, but you cost me a burden of work. Had I known it was so easy, I should have taken the thing from you at the start.”
Strength sang inside her, but the song was all her own. It was a song of the wind.
“You did try,” she said. “Remember?”
That stopped him. “I do,” he said, mostly to himself. “You stopped me.” It was nearly a question.
Talysse supplied the answer.
“Turpin’s staff is dead,” she said. “The gemstone is just a pretty rock.”
“A feeble attempt,” Saveric sneered, but uncertainty colored his words. He raised Turpin’s staff threateningly, then paused, waiting for her to quail in fear. He moved it back and forth, but nothing happened. He shouted a string of words, then motioned again.
“I told you,” Talysse said, “There’s nothing left. It’s just a stick.” She said the words as clearly as she could.
Saveric snarled like a wounded animal. He threw the Stave of the Archmage to one side, and bent to pick up his own, cursing all the while. The freshening wind carried his curse across the field.
Talysse took hold of that wind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jehan snatch Turpin’s staff from mid-air and hurl it back at the wizard. She sped it with the wind’s sinews.
The staff became a missile, a javelin hurled by a trebuchet. Talysse kept it stable, flying true.
Saveric had two moments left to him. He spent one on a curse, the other in beginning a defensive spell.
He had two moments. He needed three.
The staff struck the wizard in his right temple. The gem shattered as it broke open the wizard’s skull, and both fell in pieces to the ground.
They were still picking up fragments of the gemstone when the soldiers arrived. On horseback, they quickly filled the little clearing. They isolated Gonsallo from Jehan by surrounding them separately, and they nearly ran Detta over. Talysse stood next to Saveric’s body, the remainder of Turpin’s staff in her right hand. The captain rode directly up to her and was about to speak, but she was done with fighting.
The wind still swept up the valley. As easily as she had picked up the staff, she took hold of two strong currents. One she wrapped around Saveric, then rose into the air on the other. She hovered high overhead.
“Go home,” she said. She pointed with the staff and the horses backed nervously.
“Your leader is dead. I have killed him. Go home, or I’ll do the same to you.”
She had meant it to sound grander.
One of the soldiers aimed an arrow at her. She watched him. He loosed, and the arrow flew. She nudged it, then threw it aside, and it tumbled to the ground. The soldier lowered his bow.
“Go home,” she repeated. “Saveric is dead, as you see.” She let the body fall. Something snapped as the body struck the ground, and the captain paled. Without a word, he turned his horse and rode away, followed by his men.
Talysse used the last of her strength to land safely, then she sagged and fell against Detta.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Companions
Two days later, the hunter elves brought the four companions to the town of Foix. They would not go inside, leaving Talysse and the others at the gate.
“But we will tell the tale,” the elves said, “of she who brought down the black tower, and slew the awful tarrasque.”
Talysse protested that all four of them had had a hand in that. The elves bowed, did not reply, and walked away with a swift, easy gait.
“They will tell it in their own way, Talysse,” Gonsallo said. He walked now with only a slight limp. “You have lived the story, but now it goes on without you. One day you will perhaps hear it sung in a fine court somewhere, and you will hardly recognize yourself.”
“I don’t want people just making things up,” she said, scowling after the elves.
“Then you want them not to be people,” Gonsallo replied.
“Come,” Jehan said, “let us go inside.”
Brasc had left word with the Count of Foix about a certain young woman and her companions. The count gathered them up, fed them well, and rested them long. He was young and gracious, and Talysse said to Detta he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Detta ducked her head at this declaration, and Talysse saw her glance in the direction of Jehan. She smiled.
The count informed them that the wagoneers had gone on to Bayonne, which was only a few days distant. Jehan brought up the question of what they might do next. The four of them gathered in Talysse’s room—Detta had her own but refused to sleep there—to discuss leaving and what that might mean.
“The fragments of gem we recovered from the Stave will provide us with money for some time,” Jehan said. “Or perhaps we will divide it among ourselves.” He added that last after a pause. Talysse looked at him but he kept his face expressionless.
“What do you mean?” Detta asked, but Talysse knew what he meant.
“No,” she said firmly, “we will not divide. Not the gem, not ourselves. You are all too dear for me to leave you. Besides, I owe you my life.”
“And we owe you ours,” Gonsallo said.
“Wherever we go, it will be together.” She said it as a question, though, and looked at each in turn. They each nodded in reply. “That’s settled, then.”
“I didn’t think it was unsettled,” Detta said.
“So where, then?” Jehan asked.
“Should we go to the Syndicat?” Gonsallo asked. “Tell them what has happened?”
“I do not think that wise,” Jehan said. “They do not know who we are or where we are, and I rather like it that way. I’m done with wizards for a while.” He paused. “Your pardon, mademoiselle.”
Talysse made a face at him and he smiled in return.
“I would go to Bayonne, first,” Talysse said. “I want to see the wagoneers again, maybe even travel with them for a time. Besides, I owe Brasc a pony.”
“He will not fault you for losing it,” Gonsallo said.
“Probably not,” Talysse said, “but I bet he doesn’t refuse it.”
Jehan chuckled at that.
“I also want to go back to Saldemer.”
“Truly?” Detta exclaimed.
“Truly,” Talysse said. “I expect you will want to go home.”
Detta looked down. Her fingers intertwined. “I am compagnon, Lyssie. My home is with you. Besides,” she looked up, “I find I rather like traveling about. I once thought my vill was my world. Now I want to see all the vills of the whole world, and so love my own all the more. I don’t especially want to fight wizards and monsters, but I will if I must.”
“I know that, tante.”
“Though I do hope when we come to a river, we will cross on a bridge.”
That brought laughter from all.
“Even so,” Talysse went on, speaking mainly to the two men, “Detta needs to let her family know she is all right. You must bring your best manners, to show the quality of her new friends.”
“We shall be honored to be known in the vill,” Gonsallo said solemnly.
“And after?” Detta prompted.
Talysse shrugged. “And after, and even after? That’s too far away. Jehan here has more labors ahead of him, and Gonsallo must write his songs. Let’s you and I go along for the ride, tante.”
&
nbsp; “What will you do with the Stave?” Jehan asked.
“Keep it.”
“But it’s drained of power,” Gonsallo said. “Now it’s just a stick.”
Talysse looked at it, balancing it on her fingertips.
“It’s a quarterstaff,” she replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Afterword
Later legends speak of the Silver Witch and the Man Who Died, and of their friends Ardetta the gnome and Jehan the chevalier. These legends tell of how the Companions went east, into the Empire of the Trolls, and there battled the Troll Emperor himself. They speak of expeditions against the kobolds in the mountains of Illyria, against Frisian pirates, and even into the wide sands of Africa where the Lizardmen dwell.
Some of the legends may even be true.
THE END
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A song attributed to Gonsallo of Cerdanya
She jumped from the tall sea tower
and flew
high across the brown reeds of the marais.
The white horses of the gardiens bore her
to the Arelat city,
where young men dare the horns of black bulls.
She rode in the painted wagons of the routiers
along dusted roads, over deep rivers,
into the mountains where prowls the fierce tarrasco.
She was the silver gull,
the child of great promise.
With her came the gnome,
the trovador,
and the elf chevalier.
Mighty wizards trembled at their approach.
Visit https://altearth.net/ for more about Altearth
Goblins at the Gates, 2017
Mad House, 2016
The Garden of Hugo Vuerloz, a novelette available only to subscribers of the Altearth Chronicle
“The Carrotfinger Man” - short story at Aphelion Magazine
“The Roadmaster” - short story at Bewildering Stories
A Child of Great Promise: An Altearth Tale Page 28
