by Logan Jacobs
“Oh no, you won’t do any such thing!” he cried. “You so much as sneeze on that tree without my say-so, and I’ll curse you all for the next five generations!”
Aerin and Lena both jumped up at that, Aerin to restrain Lavinia, and Lena to attempt to placate Ellis.
“We’re not going to steal anything,” Aerin said through gritted teeth. “We’re good people, and we don’t want to get cursed. We’re all going to get along.”
“We want to help you, really,” Lena assured Ellis, who was still looking daggers at the ranger.
"What is the item you want us to retrieve for you?” I asked quickly, hoping to move the conversation along before Ellis could change his mind about working with us.
"And who stole it?” Maruk asked.
Ellis didn’t answer right away, and as his sullen stare drifted from me to Lavinia and back again, I wondered if the elf was going to respond at all.
“A fellow by the name of Burrowes took it,” he said at last. “Adalbert Burrowes. As for what it is, it’s a charm, like these.” He gestured to the various objects he hung around his house as if that was a sufficient description.
There didn’t seem to be much of a theme in their designs. Some were made of bits of colorful glass, while others were constructed of dried grass twisted into braided patterns and woven with dried flowers. Some were nothing more than broken pieces of old animal bones threaded on a string. To be honest, most of it just looked like random junk to me.
“Uh, right, and how can we recognize this particular charm?” I asked when I realized Ellis wasn’t going to elaborate any further.
The elf drew in a long sigh and sucked his teeth as he reached for one of the charms, which was little more than a few twigs lashed together into a ring with a small red stone hung on a string at the center.
“It’s made of wood from my tree,” he said, “shaped like a six-pointed star, and there’s a bit of obsidian in the center.”
“Oh, is it a charm to ward off sprites?” Lena piped up, and her large, violet eyes were wide with enthusiasm.
Ellis’s perpetual sour expression softened slightly as he turned to Lena, and he almost looked as though he was about to smile.
“That’s right,” he replied. “Now the damned things keep chewing up my aloe plants.”
Lena nodded sagely. “Yes, I imagine they’re quite a nuisance. I’m sure you’re very eager to get your charm back.”
“So where can we find this Burrowes guy?” Aerin cut in. “Do you think he still has the charm? He wouldn’t have sold it?"
“No one out here to sell it to,” Ellis replied, and then he spat out a gob of thick saliva onto the dusty floor. “Nah, he’s still got it. Took it just to spite me, the bastard. He and his family are holed up a few miles north of here. Just follow the river upstream, up the canyon a ways, and you’ll find ’em. They live in the caves in the hills.”
Ellis’ lip curled into a sneer as though he found that distasteful, and I couldn’t imagine what Burrowes’ living space must be like if it could elicit such a response from the elf, given the state of his cabin.
“Alright,” I said, “and do you mind telling us why you think we won’t survive to get your charm back?”
We didn’t have much of a choice but to try unless we wanted to risk the elf’s curse, but I thought whatever forewarning we could get could help us.
“Whole family’s a bunch of fierce warriors,” Ellis replied. “Some of the strongest I’ah ever did see. Big muscles. Lotsa weapons. They’ll kill yous mens, then they will take your women and make them their slaves. And I’m not talking about cooking and cleaning none either.”
“Oh dear,” Maruk said. “Perhaps we should consider a--”
“An’ they don’t take kindly to strangers,” the hermit continued. “Or anyone, for that matter. If they don’t skin you alive or enslave you or boil your bones, you’ll be crushed in a cave-in or eaten by a dragon.”
“Dragon?” Lavinia asked as she rolled her eyes slightly.
“Aye,” he growled. “A big one. Bigger than the mountains even. Why do you think I haven’t tried to get the charm back myself?”
I decided it was probably better not to tell Ellis that based on his living quarters, I didn’t expect him to have made the effort regardless of the danger, so I didn’t answer his question.
“Great, well, we’ll go right now,” I said with a quick glance at the others to confirm they were ready. It was still fairly early in the day, and we didn’t really have any time to lose.
Ellis’ only response was to sniff noisily and then wipe his nose with the back of his hand, so we filed back outside to discuss the next steps in our mission.
“He seemed nice,” Lena commented as she tapped one of the wooden wind chimes on the porch to make it clink together.
“Was he? I must have missed it,” Maruk muttered, evidently still upset about having a cactus launched at his face. Of course, I was sure the mess in Ellis’ cabin and his overall unrefined way of life was probably just as offensive to the orc as his security measures had been.
“He’s full of shit.” Lavinia pulled a map from out of her pouch.
“I agree,” I said. “It seems unlikely that a strong group of warriors would just steal his talisman, and if there was a dragon as big as a mountain, well, it wouldn’t live in the mountain. We should still be cautious, though.”
“Sure,” Lavinia said as she spread the map out against the railing of the porch, and then she marked out the route Ellis told us to take in charcoal … or she tried to, anyway. A breeze kept blowing up the edges of the map, and the railing was nothing more than a cracked old log nailed between the support posts. Finally, with a muttered oath, she shoved the map back into her bag and rounded on us again.
“Follow the river,” she said sharply. “We don’t need a map for that. We know where the river is, we can get back from here.”
She was right. The oasis valley where the rest of the caravan was currently camped at was an unmistakable line of green that cut through the hills. I could see it from here.
“We should stop back at the camp along the way. I want to tell Uriel where we’re going,” I said as we left the shade of Ellis’ tiny porch and tramped back down the path toward the gate. I knew the caravan couldn’t exactly leave without us, but if we were going to be passing by the camp anyway, it was probably worth mentioning we’d found the tree and had this small errand to run before we could return with the wood and sap.
“Good idea,” Aerin said as she adjusted her pack on her shoulder. “I can get some better supplies in case we have any more incidents with the local flora. I’m sure someone has tweezers or pliers.”
“At this point, full body armor might save us time,” Lavinia said with a smirk, and then she cast a sidelong glance at Maruk.
“I’m already wearing armor!” the orc protested. “The spines went through my armor. You’ll see. Just wait, you’ll get pricked too, and then you’ll understand.”
“Right,” I interrupted, “so let’s all be extra careful on the way back to camp, and if everything goes smoothly, I bet we can be back before nightfall.” I kept my tone light and hopeful in an effort to keep an argument from breaking out. It was miserably hot, and none of us had gotten much sleep in the past forty-eight hours, but if we started picking fights with one another now, we were just going to make things worse for ourselves.
Little else was said between our group as we followed our trail back toward the oasis camp. Thankfully, we all managed to avoid the cacti along the path this time, and we reached the camp without any other incidents.
Uriel saw us almost immediately. He excused himself from the group of merchants he’d been speaking to and came over, and Liam, one of the guards from before, followed him. It didn’t take long for them to realize we were empty-handed, and the old man’s face furrowed in a worried expression.
“Were you not able to find the tree?” he asked. “I was sure that was the spot.”
“We found it--” I started, but Liam cut me off.
“You know you were supposed to bring something back?” he asked, his lip curled.
I didn’t know if he was purposefully trying to pick a fight or not, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was just as tired and stressed as the rest of us, and I ignored him as I addressed Uriel again.
“We found it, but it was fenced in on someone’s property,” I explained. “We spoke to the owner. He says it’s his tree, and he wouldn’t take any money, but he said he’ll let us take some bark and sap if we get something back for him that was stolen. That’s where we’re going now, we just wanted to give you an update before we left.”
“How long is this going to take?” Liam asked angrily. “We’ve lost enough time as it is, and we’re going to move slower now that we lost those two teams. Why didn’t you climb over the damn fence and take it?”
“That’s not how we do things,” I said firmly as I met the other man’s eyes. “It won’t take long. The place we need to go is only a few miles upriver.”
Liam scoffed and rolled his eyes, and Uriel put a hand on his shoulder.
“The gods know everyone could use a rest after last night,” the old man said gently, “and it’s better we don’t go making enemies in these parts or taking things which don’t belong to us.”
Liam didn’t look any happier to hear the lecture from Uriel than he had from me, but he didn’t argue and instead turned away to rejoin the group of guards where they sat along the water’s edge.
“Don’t mind Liam,” Uriel said apologetically. “He’s young and … spirited, we’ll say, and well, losing the captain hurt him more than I think he’d like to admit, perhaps even to himself.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want to keep you, but is there anything you need before you head out?”
“We’ve had some trouble with some cacti growing along the trail,” I admitted. “We thought we’d see if anyone here had some tweezers or something we could borrow in case we run into any more."
“Cacti?” the old man repeated. “What kind?”
“I don’t know what you’d call them,” I replied, “but they grow up pretty tall, and they’ve got a lot of little spines.”
“Do they prick you if you so much as brush against ’em?” Uriel asked.
“Yes!” Maruk answered emphatically, and Uriel gave him a somber, knowing smile.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about, I’m afraid,” he said. “’Round these parts, they’re called hellhounds, on account of how they seem to jump onto you, and it hurts like the nine hells when they do.”
“Aptly named,” Maruk sniffed.
“What you need is a comb, that’ll get all those little spines out better than anything else,” Uriel told us. “Wait right here, I’ve got one just for that purpose.”
The old man turned and walked over to one of the wagons where he rummaged around in the back for a moment before he returned to us with a broad, fine-toothed wooden comb. It was too large to be a hair comb, but otherwise, it looked like one. There was a bit of twine threaded through a hole in the handle so it could be tied to one’s belt for ease of access.
I took it and nodded to Uriel.
“Thanks,” I told him. “We’d better get going.”
“We’ll be here.” He smiled as he nodded back. “Let us know if you run into trouble, I can get Liam or some of those other boys to help you out.”
“We can handle it,” I assured him, and with that, we parted ways once again.
Following the river turned out to be a small blessing. It was still hot, but the heat wasn’t so unbearable beneath the shade of the palms, and even when the trees gave way, the rocky slopes of the canyon that rose up on either side of the river kept the worst of the sun off us, and the river nearby helped cool the air. The water was low enough now that there was a solid strip of muddy bank all the way through the canyon we could walk on, so we did.
The mud was slippery underfoot, and I was tempted to take off my boots and walk in the water, but I didn’t want to be unprepared if danger arose, so I ultimately decided against it. Predictably, Maruk complained about getting mud on his boots until Lavinia threatened to lob another of those hellhound cacti at him. There weren’t any in sight, and I figured it was too wet or shady in the canyon for them to grow here, but the threat was enough to make Maruk lay off his rant about the trouble with cleaning leather after the stains had set, anyway.
For a time after that, the only sounds were from the insects that droned around us and the soft sighs of the breeze as it ruffled the long grasses that grew along the bank. Despite the events of the previous night, despite the trouble we were in now just trying to get the materials to fix the wagons, I was able to find some comfort in the stark beauty of the landscape around us. Occasionally, a cloud would pass over the sun and cause the temperature to drop just a few degrees more, and without the distraction of the heat, I was able to appreciate the freshness of the air and the gentle caress of the breeze. The river, wide and calm, was almost like a sheet of glass on my left as it flowed placidly by, and it almost perfectly reflected the stunning blue of the sky above. The rust-colored canyon walls on either side complemented the color of the river and the sky beautifully, and the grass here was a bright, lively green quite unlike the dry, brown tufts we’d seen in the hills.
In those brief moments, I could almost understand why someone might want to live out here, but then the clouds would pass, and the sun would beat down just as relentlessly as before, and my thoughts would return to the task at hand.
Ellis had said that Burrowes lived in caves in the hills here, and he’d made it seem as though they would be impossible to miss as long as we continued to follow the river. Still, as we pressed on and the sheer walls of the canyon began to break up into features of the landscape that you could call hills, I scoured every crevice and overhang for any sign of the caves we were meant to find.
“Hey, Maruk, come over here,” Lavinia said.
“What do you need?” the orc asked as he quickened his pace and caught up to the ranger.
“Just walk there,” Lavinia told him, and she guided him to be slightly in front of her on her left. “Sorry about making fun of you earlier. I bet those cacti really hurt, and it wasn’t your fault you fell into them.”
“Getting soft on me now?” Maruk seemed surprised by the apology, but he obviously appreciated it.
Lavinia nodded along solemnly. “Well, you know, Maruk, I just want to be a better person.”
“This is certainly a good start,” Maruk said with a smile. “When we return home, I have some books you might be interested in reading. I think the first you should probably start with is Sorokin’s Examination of Morality. It’s a pretty basic treatise, but it will give you the necessary groundwork you need to dive into more involved texts--”
Maruk cut off suddenly and stopped short. Lavinia met his frown with a wide-eyed innocent expression that looked completely out of place on her.
“You’re just using me for shade, aren’t you?” Maruk accused.
“What? No, that’s not true! I want to hear more about morality.” Lavinia tried to sound shocked, offended even, but it was evident this had been her design all along.
“What was the name of the philosopher I just mentioned?” the orc asked.
Lavinia’s gaze roamed the surrounding hills as though she hoped they might provide some sort of answer.
“Erikson?” she ventured at last.
Maruk rolled his eyes and began to turn away, but Lavinia caught his arm.
“Wait, see, this is why I need you to teach me,” she insisted. “Patience is a virtue, right?”
Maruk stared her down, but when Lavinia didn’t budge, he sighed heavily.
“Yes, it is,” he admitted.
“Alright, great, I’m learning a lot already,” Lavinia chuckled as she elbowed her friend in the ribs. “You’re a great teacher, keep g
oing.”
“Well I think I ought to inform you that deception is generally frowned upon,” Maruk pointed out. He seemed to decide he should take advantage of the opportunity to talk about his favorite philosophers while he had the chance, however, because he then launched into a lecture about honesty and sincerity while she followed just beneath his massive shadow. To his credit, Maruk made Lavinia work for it, and he quizzed her as they walked.
As we continued, I began to notice the wavering pattern on the stone sides of the canyon had begun to shift. What originally appeared to be nothing more than the natural pattern of layers of rock built up over time began to look deliberate. Here and there, there were sections that seemed to have been painted over in darker and lighter shades of the rusty color. I noticed Lena looking closely at the stone walls as we walked by as well, but before I could remark on it, the honey-haired elf woman did.
“It looks like the stone’s been painted here,” she said.
“What?” Aerin asked with a frown as she followed Lena’s gaze. “What do you mean? It looks the same to me.”
“See this darker stripe?” Lena pointed out as she traced her hand along the wall at shoulder-height. “It’s not natural.”
Aerin shook her head. “Okay, whatever.”
“I see it, too,” I said, and Lena shot me a grateful look. “That color wasn’t there before.”
Lavinia and Maruk looked as well, then.
“Why would they paint the wall like this?” Maruk wondered aloud.
“Maybe it’s like a guideline,” I suggested. “Maybe it means we’re getting close to those caves Ellis told us about.”
“I hope so,” Aerin said before she threw back her head and took a long drink from her canteen.
Aerin’s tone was somewhat doubtful, but I felt confident in my theory, confident enough that I quickened my pace and took the lead down the canyon. It wasn’t long before my suspicions were confirmed. The steady line of darker color on the walls suddenly zig-zagged in a way that definitely wasn’t natural, and then it broke off abruptly. In its place were depictions of other things, drawings of cacti, palm trees, lizards, and gryphons.
