Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1)

by Thomas Head

  She could hardly look at it. They had set on her on a led reliquary, and as she wrapped her heels around it, she closed her eyes. The air was gritty and wet.

  The dwarves were still binding her with calf gut to the gunwale. She almost welcomed the security of it. When they were done, she opened her eyes to watch them set the sail. They slipped backwards and sideways, climbing on the beast, which made it shiver and rock. Still, despite the beast underfoot, they worked the ropes expertly, threading it at intervals like giant breeches. Before she could understand what pattern they were making, they were done. They began pulling the deflated bladder of canvas up the mast.

  Suddenly the wind caught, and it uncurled in an instant, whipping from their hands. They thudded with hard knocks beside her. As they got to their feet, the others laughed. When they moved out of her way, she noted the odd pattern on the sail’s cross.

  It was the mark of the Dwarf-King, Jorigaer Bloodhelm.

  Her stomach became unhappy. She closed her eyes again, surprised to find the air more comfortable now. The wind did not chill the skin the same way it did on the river.

  Suddenly, the vessel lifted wildly.

  She leapt up in a panic, the gut rope whetting lively rips across her wrists and waist. A gauntleted hand grabbed her shoulder, and she gripped the boat’s worn wood, reeling from the pain.

  As they pounded down once again, she righted herself. The wind picked up, buffeted them in warm wet sprays as she rubbed her wrists.

  Hurting, she thought about her husband. The pain melted into the pit of her stomach. It was an ache too soon and too deep to think about for very long. Still she could not stop the images from flashing into her mind of his dull anger, frozen on his dead face. She thought about his contorted body on the ground, about how stupidly proud she was that the sight had not made her cry.

  Strength, it had felt like.

  Finally, she looked back at the handmaiden. There was a scourge of new bruises across her throat. She had been vomiting over the edge, evidenced by the pale neck and cheeks. The edges of her lips were already baked from the wind and salts. She looked just as miserable as they both felt, but there was enormous comfort in seeing her.

  Their eyes met, briefly. With their looks alone, they shared the surprise at their care. These dwarves were not tender, but they were far less brutish than she had envisioned. When they were tossed atop the wood pile, it had been to secure them, not rape them.

  We are going to be bait. The assassins he sent to Arway, just short of a dozen, had all met the same grizzly fate. He is taking us to lure the wizard into Yrkland.

  She ventured another glance at the enormous creature beside her.

  Or else we are going to be this beast’s next meal.

  __________

  Stepping inside his cottage, Cullie shook, angry with himself for allowing the halfling boy to cheer him up. But such is life, he told himself. It cannot help but put its heel on fallen men and squeeze strange things out of them.

  Plus he realized he was mad at himself. The lad’s offer was getting heavy in his head, and that was nobody’s fault but his. He wanted to sit. But he knew what his mind would do if he did.

  To business: What would he need to take? Nothing came to his numb mind.

  He hobbled through his house to the lean-to. He opened the door to the comfortable wattle and mud-brick room. The onion bin was tipped. Under it, the money was dug up.

  Gone.

  “What in the four corners of hell?” he whispered. “Cool Laney …”

  He started roaring, his fist in his mouth. But he had to get over it. Had to act. It was a matter of minutes before the new lord’s warriors came in and started making claims. He was certain his own little cottage had nothing of value. Just his bed. His finely-carved furniture. But he had to check. His most valuable items were blocks of salt and jars of spices, some from the other side of the world. They might fetch a price, but at the coast of lugging all the jars, then finding a buyer in Muttondon.

  There was only the wand, which he had foolishly left behind. The wand focused a wizard’s powers, and, given the right woods and enough time, even amplified them. It was trick of the thumb, really. A well-worn wand could focus the might of some old wizards to an accuracy that bordered on the impossible

  In the end, he found little. Some piss jars. Rags and a bowl. A little food. Leave it all, he told himself. Except for the flat wheel of cheese.

  That young Ghelli was right. This was not a thing for which a man could buy help.

  He went to the hunting room next. It was large, hot. It held the loom. Strewn across it was the thickest of several wool packs. It hung alongside the sheath to his best sword. The incorrigible oaf who made had insisted on keeping it to halfling dimension. He was surprised, later, to discover the sword was itself a finely tuned instrument. As a dwelf, he was nearly five feet tall with what amounted to a human’s frame; how the old halfling had known he would be better off keeping the weapon the size of a dagger was still a mystery. When he had bought it, Old Lew had said the steel spoke to him. It hadn’t. It was impossible. He had marked this as some odd halfling trick, or superstition. And yet Cullie had come to master the smallish weapon.

  He set it aside and grabbed the wool pack. Testing it, he put the flat of wheel cheese inside and tied it to his waist. It was suitable.

  His purse yielded an extravagant, but inadequate, breakfast of truffles. Under a chain mail tunic, there were a few reels of silver and copper. For the next seven or eight minutes he got himself free of his tunic and britches. He winced, noting the wound on the back of his thigh. It would be nastier before it improved. But knowing this was hardly a tonic. Already, the smell was worsening.

  He hobbled back into the bath chamber, then made a crude dressing by mixing vinegar into a pot of cheese butter. It was difficult work applying it, worrisome to see the thin lather sink into the wound.

  When he stood again, he was shaking.

  And he was still angry.

  And he was hurting like fifteen hells.

  He carefully belted the open area with the butter’s cloth and put some more shin bindings around it. Then he went back in the main and put on his lord’s pants, binding them to a comfortable firmness. Next, he opened his clothing chest. Inside he found a shirt and a newer tunic without sides. There was also an old black woolen cloak. He put the open tunic over his own shirt and wrapped the cloak on, broaching it with a small clip of iron.

  He looked down at the sword, drew it, and sighed. He laced the sheath to his belt and grabbed the little weapon.

  It struck him as odd that no one was coming in yet. Were they granting him some time? He doubted it. The way of things was starting to fray, the old order of things. Decency. Respect. They were the real fairytales these days.

  More likely, they were giving him time to mull over his own stupidity.

  Which was decent enough, he supposed.

  In his care corner the chest was much larger: full of trinkets and broaches, and other things the halflings had paid him with for the unusual services he sometimes provided. There were even female items, belts, painted bone lockets, and some beads of glass, bone, and stone. Nothing worth taking. Yet he snatched a small scrap of the handmaiden’s aromatic bath wool. He had stolen a few years ago for reasons he still found difficult to remember.

  He sniffed it and pocketed a bitter memory, that of him calling her an idiot. Slowly, he tied the bath wool around his wrist.

  There was some more money, two old silver Vyrk coins. Five reels of copper. Then suddenly he realized how stupid he was being. Walk to Arkenstowe? People would think him a fool for even attempting it.

  Then he put the coins in his purse and growled to himself: Let them think what they want, and kick them in the face with every hoof in hell if they didn’t understand.

  Chapter 62

  __________

  Cullfor kept his head down, embarrassed for reasons even he didn’t quite find clear. He began walking,
too quickly, his wounded leg complaining. When he got to a spot between cottages, he heard a loud, but distant harrumph.

  “Good lord,” Ghelli yelled across. “The wizard is assuming much of his own abilities, I think.”

  Cullfor felt eyes plopping on him. As he halted, all the scattered conversations seemed to settle, then re-ignite with his name. He straightened his back, and turned to them.

  “I assume nothing, young master. Nothing but your mother’s virtue.”

  Ghelli’s eyebrows rose, visible even across the field, and a great thunder of laughs erupted from the halflings around him.

  Cullfor shook his head. He began hobbling more quickly up to the rise. In time he frightened some crows from the eyeless corpse of the pigger. His helpers and sisters were bloated, turning bluish. There were no soft parts left. No time to mourn them. He saw something shiny, half-buried under the hoof of a piglet. Cullfor pulled it tenderly from the gunk. It was a silver ring with a large, jade oval. He studied it, his eyes watering. D~H~A~L was entwined around the ring in a fine example of old Arwegian knot-runes. It was beautiful.

  The pigger had spent a year’s wages on his aunt.

  Then something else was yelled from the village, something about money. It was loud enough that he had to look back, but it was only to see one of the halfling warriors making a slapping motion. Cullie found it unclear what exactly was meant, and he shook his head again.

  He placed the ring on his pinky. Whatever they were going on about, their neighing laughter reminded him of where he might be able to by a horse.

  __________

  Exhausted and grim-faced, Cullfor trekked onto the sunken old road out of Gintypool. Every step sent crashes of pain sweeping up his wounded leg. As he wound across the bumpy and gorged hilltops, the road only made it worse. There was not so much as a plank left. The paving stones had been stolen away long ago to local hearths and fences. But he was almost thankful for the distraction. Uninvited realities were already coming fast. The vast path ahead. Finding her. Bringing her home. And to what? It already seemed so long and impossible that his quest felt like a childish delusion.

  Thundering hell, but this is stupid.

  Thinking about Uncle Fie focused him. His lord-uncle was a rarity among men. He knew that. He had loved his nonsensical, merry rants. He had loved him dearly. But he was unable to cry. Not yet. The cut was too fresh, and he understood that when it began to heal, it was going to hurt like nothing had ever hurt him before.

  Cullfor went all day in this manner, until dusk finally seeped out of from the tree-filled hollows to once again to rise into the sky.

  Finally, he let himself pause. He was deep in the forested road to Muttondon. Below him, far under the road, a few farmsteads came alive with laughter and firelight. They sat tucked into the folds of the landscape, echoing the empty noises of joy. As the hearths flickered, shadow-fingers of oak danced up the hillside. He watched for a while, vaguely envious.

  Then he caught an odd smell.

  Cullfor smelled the air. The odor was faint and skunky, but strangely appealing. And it was familiar. “What in the shivering depths?...”

  He deigned to his knees and knuckles, smelling the road itself. When he recognized the odor, he recoiled. He had caught a whiff of it before, demon’s breath. This was the smell of a dragon wraith, a shadowflyer, the thing created when a dragon does what only the dead should do—untangle its soul from its body.

  One had been here, very recently.

  As he stood, Cullfor was already rethinking his route. He began looking around. He sucked his teeth.

  What was it Uncle Fie had said? Not everyone can sense them, but they are very real, these… dragon wraiths. But while they were essentially spirits, they were more than that. You do not hunt a shadowflyer. Ever. Not even the old ones. They cannot be defeated with steel because they will break your mind; they will seek your innermost demons and turn your own steel against you. This is why you do not bury the memories of war, you burn them. And you did not speak the curses your enemies utter.

  Cullfor huffed, silently, realizing that while all that Fie had said was scary as hell—it really made no sense. At least no sense that was applicable.

  Then he felt a pair of eyes.

  He stood very still. The pupils ticked across his eyes slowly, a rhythm to match a heartbeat. It was the same feeling as last night. He was on the same trail, and the same crumbling tollhouse was just ahead.

  After what seemed like an hour, he remembered the other way to Muttondon.

  __________

  It was getting colder as Cullfor traced off the road. He cut over a few hills, coughing as he wrapped his cloak around him. He trekked another half-hour through thickening woods. When he emerged onto the new path, something stomped the ground.

  He froze.

  A small sniffing noise cut through his ears. Then suddenly a small heard of deer exploded from invisible poses. Wide-eyed, Cullfor watched them leap across the path in a clatter of hooves. The bounded down the slope opposite the trail, snorting. He was still clutching his chest when they suddenly paused.

  Beyond them, somewhere downhill, was another noise.

  A half a minute passed. He heard some sort of rustle. In the next instant, the deer were bouncing back up the hill, straight at him. Cullfor gritted his teeth and crouched, covering his head. The beasts were all round him, slipping and snorting. Just as suddenly, stillness returned.

  When he was certain they were gone, he gathered himself and stood up. He went to the edge of the slope. But he could not bring himself to peak, much less piss defiantly down the hill.

  There was the smell again.

  __________

  Morning had not come, but Cullfor could plainly see his destination. Covenloft Tower loomed at the edge of Muttondon like a phallus.

  Being new to any sort of thievery, he had to remind himself to sneak, and he had to remind himself, more than once, that if he ever wanted to get the ladies out of Arkenstowe alive, he desperately needed a horse.

  He slunk through the forest, then went lightly to the base of the tower. This wasn’t the same part of town he’d left out of the night before. It was sleepier. In fact the old halfling at the zenith of the watchtower was no doubt drunk or asleep. Hell, he was probably not up there.

  Just to be sure, he crept around to the other side. There was nothing, just a sleepy little church and the abbey at its side.

  He thought about the penalty for stealing a horse. He had no idea what it was. He tsked and stared upward at the stone merlons again. The sky beyond was black and starless. When he was certain nothing stirred in the tower, he returned his attention to the abbey and the stable at its side. The abbey walls were already alive with the small clattery noises of prayer and breakfast. There was time. They would not emerge to their chores until prayers were complete.

  He walked low and quietly past the abbey. The stable was just beyond it, on a ramped platform of stone. It was only slightly apart from the abbey proper. Each of the buildings was long and squat, and awkwardly plain. The plank sidings had gaps.

  Cullfor slunk into the alley the two buildings formed. In the darkness between, he paused. He began listening at the places where the planks were loose and warped. He heard nothing from the stable, so he squeezed passed a lean-to, which smelled as though it held hay and oats. When he emerged, the town of Muttondon fully revealed itself. He had never seen it at this hour, from this angle. There seemed to be no gaps for alleys or roads. Nothing but crooked rows of roofs with no linear pattern he could discern. The entire village was crowned with a veil of wood smoke.

  Nearing the stable’s back door, he looked around him again. Someone was laughing in the distance.

  He took a breath and pulled a crankbar, which protruded crudely from the lock’s workings. Prying it open with magic would surely bust the iron, causing a loud snap that he surely didn’t need. So he worked at it with nothing but muscle. And worked some more. Despite an effort that left
his hand shaking, it hardly budged. He felt around in his cloak for something to pick the lock. Nothing was small enough to fit.

  He caught himself wanting to leave. Taking another long breath, he had to push thoughts of the handmaiden out of his head. She would love coming along on something like this. She made adventures out of tragedies.

  Don’t think about this.

  An idea hit him. The halfling-sized sword; he could use it as a fulcrum. He unsheathed it, and studied the tip a moment. Then he looked at the door. There was a space between the iron brace that held the lock to the door. He inserted it, gingerly, from the top. Then he pulled down with a soft yank, and it loosed the entire ironworks with striking ease.

  Cullfor kissed the tip, sheathed it, and pushed the door open.

  Inside was markedly neat. It was vast, despite a low ceiling. Every manner of vine and flower was carved into the beams. He stepped further in. Running his hand along the stalls, he slowly soaked in the sight of each horse.

  When Cullfor had passed them all, gloom mined into his belly. He almost punched something. They were each vibrant and healthy. But they were Watershed ponies—too short for a man, and filled with the curiously playful manner of all things Arwegian.

  He patted one’s head, leaning against one of the carved posts.

  Then a sudden, screeching sound reverberated.

  A door.

  Cullfor ducked, retreating into one of the stalls. He was shaking from the pain in his leg as he knelt beside a little black horse, which was staring him in the face. While he crouched, his mind raced. He could feel his pulse in his head. Against the rush in his chest, he struggled to slow his breath. When it was apparent he could not, he began reaching for some excuse...