Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1)

by Thomas Head

  Outside, though, he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and the servants and I begged him to come back.

  As long as the storm raged, he would pace back and forward the full length of the hunting-room. It was a hellish eternity. His face would wrench in a seizure of fury, until his eye would be caught by some object the boy had played with. The stout dwarf would freeze, then swallow. He would bend, slowly, and pick it up. He would put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of the dead.

  Then he would set himself down, gazing at the leaping flames of the log fire. I felt nothing but the agony of our utter helplessness.

  Afterwards, the lanterns that we had placed on the oak center table began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet, which reflected the white dazzle. The whole scene burned the eyes shut as great icicles hung from the naked branches of the sheeted pines, and snow was wreathed among the cedars.

  * * *

  After lifting the canvas from the camping ground, we sought in vain for more trace of the fugitives.

  There was none.

  We dispatched a dozen different search parties that morning, Halvgar leading those who were to go on the river-side of the hall. I took some well-trained rangers picked from the elvish servants, who could track the forest to every elf haunt within a week’s march of Goback.

  A few of Addly’s guards came. We both knew they showed up more out of curiosity than to help, but we needed help. I put them on a trail with instructions to report back that night.

  As soon as they left out, I hunted up an old, wrinkled elf. Batt was a hunting guide I used now and again. Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was not at all the picturesque figure that was typical of elves. He was more like a dwarf—which might explain why we got along so well, as these days I had more in common with those little fellows than my own countrymen. Instead of the blue face paint, he wore a dwarven stocking cap with earflaps tied under his chin. His longshirt was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat of some well-to-do human, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above the beaded skin shoes favored by the elves. The old Yrklander was as silent as an animal, and the dwarves hereabouts had nicknamed him The Mute. Or perhaps his name was Mute, and they called him The Bat. I can’t recall which. I just knew that what he lacked in speech, he made up in an almost animal-like acuteness of the senses. It was commonly believed that Batt possessed some nameless sense that big game possess, by which he and they could actually feel the presence of an enemy or a predator before any man or dwarf, or even the other elves.

  For my part, I would be willing to pit that “feel” of Batt’s against the nose of any wolfhound.

  “Batt, old fellow. Good to see you,” I said. I was puffing the long stem of a clay pipe to calm my nerves. “I wish I could say I called you for one of our hunts.”

  The old elf nodded.

  “Listen, let us get right to it. There’s an elf, a bad elf, a half-human cur…” I was particular in describing him as half human, because Batt was full elvish Yrklander. “The filthy son of a whore stole a dwarf maiden and a little lad from Halvgar Hall a day ago, sometime in the morning.”

  As Batt digested the information, he began to lick the air as if tasting it for an answer. I raised by eyes imploringly, hoping he had something.

  Batt just fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated even more. My lesson learned, I just watched. In time, he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf that held them to his waist tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for me to go on.

  “Um… well, yes. Let’s see. That elf, Killroot, he guides for the Dellish—”

  “Keelroot tuh weetch?” Batt asked, speaking for the first time I’d ever heard.

  “Yes! He and his little band disappeared with the woman and the child.”

  The Mute’s eyes went back to the snow.

  “Listen, Batt, I’ll make you a rich man if you take me straight to the place where he’s hiding.”

  Batt’s eyes looked up with the question of how much.

  “Five reels of silver a day,” I said. This was four more than we paid for the hunts, and those could last for a week.

  No sooner were the words out of my lips than he darted off into the forest like a rabbit.

  “Well, damn it, elf.”

  I did not even begin to follow before I lost sight of him, but knew his strange, silent ways, and I confidently awaited his return.

  How he could get two pair of snow-shoes and two poles inside of five minutes, I do not attempt to explain, unless some of his numerous half-breed youngsters were at hand in the woods. At any rate, he was back again, equipped now for a long hike. So I laced on the racquets, having to watch and imitate him, and before long we were skimming over the drifts like a boat on water.

  * * *

  In the maze-like confusion of snow and underbrush, no one but Batt would have found and kept that tangled path. At places, there were great trunks that had fallen across the way, but Batt planted his pole and took the obstacles in a leap. Then he raced on at a gait which was neither a run nor a walk, but an easy trot, which was common to the elvish natives of this wilderness. Again, though, I had been schooled to his ways, and his pace, and I kept up with him at every step. However, to be honest, we were going so fast I lost all track of my bearings. We might have been in some crystal-walled cavern as we pressed over the brushwood, now packed with snow and crusted ice. Branches snapped like glass when we brushed past. I tried to discern a trail by the broken thicket on either side, but that was in vain.

  Then I noticed that my guide was keeping his course by marks, which were cut into the trees. At one place, we came to a steep, clear slope. The earth had fallen away from the sheer hillside and snow had filled the incline.

  Prodding forward to feel if the snow-bank were solid, Batt promptly sat down on the rear end of his snowshoes and slid quick as a hiccup down to the valley.

  I came leaping downhill behind him, clumsily, from point to point with my pole, risking my neck at every bound. Then we coursed along the valley, the elf’s eyes still on the trees. Once, he stopped to emit a gurgling laugh at a badly hacked trunk, beneath which was a snowed-up sap trough.

  I looked at it too, but I had no idea what Batt’s mirth was about.

  “Where to, Batt?” I asked with a suspicion that we were heading for the elvish “village” at Leafy Lore.

  “To Leafy Lore?”

  Batt agreed with a grunt.

  Then he whisked suddenly around a headland, then up a narrow gorge, which seemed to lead to the very heart of the mountains. It was a lonely place somehow, and it might have sheltered any number of fugitives.

  In the gorge, we stopped to take a light meal of dried herrings and biscuits. By the sun, I knew it was long past noon and that we had been traveling northwest. I also vaguely guessed that Batt’s object was to intercept the human merchants form Delmark, if they had planned to slip away from the Trollwater River through the bush, where they could meet eastbound longboats. But not one syllable got spoken on the matter.

  Or any other matter.

  Clambering up the steep, snowy banks of the gorge, we found ourselves in the upper reaches of a mountain. The trees fell away in scraggy clumps, and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the crest. Batt paused and grunted. He licked his pipe-stem significantly and pointed his pole to the hilltop.

  The dark peak of a solitary skin tent appeared above the snow. He pointed again to the fringe of woods below us. A dozen skin tents were visible among the trees and smoke curled up from a central camp-fire.

  “There,” he said, which made four words for the day.

  The Mute fell back behind me as we approached the camp.

  The campers were evidently thieves as well as hunters—frozen pork hung with venison from the branches of several trees. The sap trough might also have belonged to them, which would explain Bat
t’s laugh earlier. There was another rig for sugaring-off on the outskirts of the encampment.

  As usual, a pack of savage dogs flew out to announce our coming with furious barking. I would swear the creatures recognized him as one of their own, because on seeing him, they left off with vicious snarls.

  Then my heart sank, noting the signs of permanency—rock wall shelters, pits dug out for latrines, et cetera. .

  “Not the elves we’re after,” I said

  Batt shoved me forward with the end of his pole and a curious expression showed on the dull, pock-pitted face.

  “What?”

  He nodded forward, urging me along.

  It was a strange thing, approaching these folk. Though they saw us plainly, they sat stolid and unflappable, after the manner of their race, waiting for us to announce ourselves. Only the shrill-voiced children, who rushed from the skin tents, showed surprise or interest in our arrival. Elves, both male and female, were hunched about the fire, above which simmered several pots with the savory odor of cooking meat. I don’t think a soul so much as turned a head on our approach.

  Some of the women and half-breeds were heaping bark on the fire. Elves sat straight-backed round the circle. Vagabond Dellishmen lay in their kilts in all variety of lazy poses amid the hides and skins.

  Then I saw a curious sight. A dwarf sat among them.

  I had known, as everyone familiar with Dwarven family histories must know, that the sons of old cutters sometimes inherited the adventurous spirit. It is what lead some of them, namely my friends, from the pleasantries of Yrklandic life for the wild life of the no man’s highland between our two countries. The same happened to men from my homeland too. I was aware this spirit frequently transformed Dellish earls into rangers and descendants of preistly blood into common woodcutters. But it is one thing to know a fact, another to realize it.

  In this case, the living embodiment was Delthal, a dwarf from Goback. He had shaved all but a few years’ growth of beard. The son of a bastard was clad in elvish skins, lying at full length on his back among that villainous band of nondescript elves.

  Something of my surprise must have shown, because as Delthal recognized me, he uttered a shout of laughter.

  “Hullo!” he called with the saucy nonchalance that made him both a favorite and a torment at Goback Pub. “Are you hear about the taxes?” he asked, and he sat up making room for me on his fur robe.

  I said nothing, shaking his hand heartily and accepting the proffered seat.

  “No, but I’ll wager it’s dodging money troubles of some sort that brings you here,” I said. The young dwarf had been one of the most notorious borrowers I had ever known or even heard of.

  “Clever human!” he laughed, giving my shoulder a clap. “I see your time was not wasted with me. Now, what the devil,” he asked as I surveyed the motley throng of angular, coarse-faced she-elves and hard-looking males who surrounded him, “has brought you here?”

  “What’s done the same to you, Delthal?”

  He laughed the merry, heedless laugh that had been the distraction of the pub. Then he looked with the assurance of privilege across the fire into the hideous, angry face of a big she-elf, who was glaring at me. She must have only just emerged from a warm tent, because she was all but naked. Neither cold nor shame kept her from sitting in the snow across from me. She had pointy ears, of course, but this one had pointy teeth as well. Her bare nipples were pierced with agates, and her loin cloth, sagging and agape, was leaving nothing for my inquisitive eyes to imagine. In all, she might have been a great, blue statue of some ancient goddess, a symbol of fury, or cruelty.

  “Do you need to ask with such a bevy of naked, blue-faced maidens?” asked Delthal.

  “Indeed…. Yes, well, this one evidently objects to having her camp invaded,” I said, as there was something like a duel between the elf’s questioning eyes and mine.

  “The dwarf wants to know if the lady objects to having your place invaded!” Delthal tole the she-elf.

  At that, the woman flinched. She looked to Delthal. She did not understand our words, of course, but I think she was suspicious we were laughing at her. There was a vindictive flash across her face, then the usual impenetrable expression of the elf came over her features. I noticed that her cheeks and forehead were scarred, and a cut had laid open her upper lip from nose to teeth.

  “You must know that the lady elf before you is the daughter of a shaman. And she herself is a fighter,” Delthal whispered. “Quite a good one.”

  I might have known she was above common rank from the extraordinary number of trinkets she wore. Pendants hung from her ears like white bats from a blue eave. She had a double necklace of polished claws and around her waist was a girdle of agates, which told me that she was of a more southerly, wilder tribe. In the girdle of the loin cloth was an ivory-handled knife, which had doubtless given as many scars as its owner displayed.

  “Now, Delthal, nonsense aside…” I began.

  “I’ll put it aside with all my soul, if I still have one,” he said, lying back.

  I told him my errand, and that I wished to search every skin tent for trace of the lost woman and child.

  He shut his eyes, irritated.

  “It isn’t that we suspect these folk, you know. But the kidnappers might have traded the clothing to them—”

  “Oh! Go ahead!” he interjected impatiently. “Don’t beat round the bush! What do you want of me?”

  “Could we possibly have a look around without this one drawing that blade?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll do the tents with you. Yargisi, get off with you,” he muttered.

  But the she-elf didn’t move so much as an eyebrow.

  As he led the way to the first of the little homes, she began grumbling under her breath. The she-elf was not to be dismissed. When I followed Delthal, she rose and closed in behind. At times her great, pendulous breasts actually rested on my shoulders. But as I searched, the Mute, fearing foul play, loyally brought up the rear of our strange procession with his walking pole at the ready.

  * * *

  That search saw my hands groping through robes and skins and blankets and in foul-smelling, vermin-infested piles of refuse. In other words, it was fruitless. And the big she-elf’s nipples were lurking over my shoulder at every turn, her gashed lips grinning an evil, malicious challenge down at me all the while. I thought she kept her hands uncomfortably near the ivory handle in the agate belt, too. But Batt, good fellow, never took his beady eyes off those same hands, and he kept a grip on the walking pole.

  So we examined the tents and made a circuit of the elves around the fire, but found nothing to reveal the whereabouts of Shiri and the child.

  “And why is that tent apart from the rest? And who is in it?” I asked Delthal, pointing to the lone tent on the crest of the hill.

  The fire cracked so loudly I became aware there was ominous silence among the loungers of the camp. They were listening as well as watching. Up to this time, I had not thought they were paying the slightest attention to us. Delthal was not answering, and when I faced him, I suddenly found the she-elf’s eyes fastened on his, holding them to whether he would answer or not.

  There was a nameless suspicion getting possession of me. “Why don’t you answer, dwarf?”

  The spell was broken. He turned to me nonchalantly, as he used to face debtors in the pub and spoke gently, with downcast eyes, and a quiet, deprecating smile.

  “You know, Fie, we should have told you before. But remember we didn’t invite you here.”

  “Well?” I demanded.

  “Well,” he replied in a voice too low for any of the listeners but the she-elf to hear, “there’s a very bad case of plague up in that tent and we’re keeping the man apart till he gets better. It’s her father. That, in fact, is why we’re all here instead of camping nearer the ships—the traders won’t let us. You Dellishmen call the elves primitive, but they themselves think that the elf’s sickness would travel over Dag
onfell’s frozen bays and infect the their whole crew!”

  “Nonsense,” I said.

  “Yes, it is. At any rate, their fears are not completely unfounded, Mister Fie. It is the plague, after all. You must go. It is not safe.”

  “Well then… thanks, Master Delthal.”

  But he did not offer me his hand when I made to take leave.

  “Come,” he said. “I’ll go as far as the gorge with you.”

  * * *

  He stood on the embankment and waved as we passed into the lengthening shadows of the valley.

  I hurried down the gorge as fast as my snowshoes would carry me. Then I remembered that Uncle Jickie had said my countryman’s superstitious dread of this disease knew no bounds. That recollection checked my sudden flight. If the elves had no such fear, why did this band not have more sick among them? It would be more like elf character to stay and die with the victim. This man might, even though he was a shaman, be a Dellish mongrel, or some other type of trader, but I couldn’t afford to be tricked—I ordered Batt to lead me back to that hut.

  The Mute, wise old bastard, seemed to understand I had no wish to be seen by the campers. He skirted round the base of the hill until we were on the side opposite from the tribe. Then he motioned me to remain in the gorge while he scrambled up the cliff.

  There, he paused. I knew he received a surprise as soon as his head was on a level with the top of the bank because he froze.

  He curled himself up behind a snow and gave a low whistle for me.

  When I was beside him, we were not twenty pole-lengths from the tent. There was no appearance of life. The tent flaps had been laced up. A solitary watchdog was tied to a stake before the entrance.

  I breathed, thinking. Down the valley, the setting sun shone through the naked trees and dyed all the glistening snowdrifts like they were streaked with blood. The faintest breath of wind, a mere sigh of moving air, came up from the woods with faraway echoes of the Dellish traders’ voices. Perhaps this was heard by the watchdog, or it may have felt the disturbing presence of my half-wild guide, because it sat back on its haunches, lifted its head, and let out the most miserable howl imaginable.