The Horsk Dragon

by A. R. Wilson

  “If there were such a committee, they have greatly failed at their task.” He kept his face half turned away.

  One by one, the men at Trebor’s table looked down, lost in thought.

  “Alright.” Jurren stood to place his hands on the other table. “What is going on? Has something happened?”

  Only Trebor’s eyes turned to acknowledge Jurren. “You tell me. Has something happened in Primmitt or Evolni?”

  The tone suggested something. Something obvious. Jurren searched his mind trying to think what the question implied. Had something happened lately in one of the towns? The last time he remembered hearing news from Primmitt was some time ago. Tascana was with him that day, sitting on his lap, and no more than seven years of age. Someone in Windervail Inn relayed a rumor from Primmitt about a half-man half-beast lurking in the woods of Tutelage Pass. Clearly a story fabricated in an attempt to attract adventure seekers, which is why it stopped circling within a few weeks. Was there another story since then?

  “I don’t know if anything has happened in Primmitt lately. The last news I heard came ten years ago.”

  “Exactly.”

  The word fell like a hammer on an unsuspecting nail.

  Lines deepened on Trebor’s face from a man in his fifties to a man in his seventies. His eyes held the dull look of a slave beaten until the hope of youth succumbed to the reality of years passed. He dropped his gaze.

  Jurren turned to Arkose. “When was the last time you remember hearing word from Primmitt or Evolni?”

  Arkose paused the drink in his hand. When he shrugged, Jurren repeated the question.

  “I dunno. I remember something about a man-beast thing, but that was a long time ago. No one wants to travel through that mountain pass unless they have to, and I never have to.”

  “Exactly.” The single word pounded the nail a little deeper.

  Stories and travelers used to come from the two towns often. Jurren had even hunted there on several occasions. Then, for some reason, he stopped venturing that far to the southeast during his autumn excursions.

  “Exactly.”

  Come to think of it, even the names of the towns had not been mentioned in… ten years.

  “Do you have news from Primmitt?” Jurren dragged his chair a few feet to sit at the other table.

  “I do, but I doubt you would believe me.”

  “After today, there is much I would believe.”

  He watched the man’s eyes trace over his face, settling on Jurren’s nose.

  The barmaid brought four ales to the table, and Jurren pulled out the coins to pay her before Trebor’s men had a chance.

  “Well, since you are a tracker, maybe you’re the best person to tell. We went to visit some friends in Southam.”

  The scrape of wood against wood barked behind Jurren, and he hoped it was Arkose scooting closer to listen and not one of Ellam’s lady friends.

  Trebor’s hand absently fingered the full glass in front of him. “I asked, ‘What news from Primmitt?’ and my friend fell silent. Said there was nothing new. Which in and of itself is news. My friend wouldn’t say anything else. Started acting strange like I asked something uncomfortable. I decided to seek out a distant cousin of mine. He took a little persuading, but he finally told me what my friend could not. Apparently no one, not a single known person, had returned from there in almost ten years.”

  The voice of Arkose pushed over Jurren’s shoulder. “What do you mean no one has returned?”

  Trebor narrowed his gaze.

  Since Arkose had used Trebor’s home town as a curse word, Jurren thought it best to go along with the story for now. “What have the leaders of Southam discovered so far?”

  “That’s the thing.” Red lines crept in at the corners of the man’s eyes, and he picked up his ale to take a long drink. “No one is allowed to ask. Anyone heard asking about either of the towns, or the disappearances, is sent to look for the lost and never returns. It is as though a nightmare of nothingness has gripped that place. People don’t dare ask, and at the same time they don’t dare leave. My cousin refused to come to my home with me. Refused! And when I asked him why, suddenly someone knocked at the door. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Did he give you any more information than that?”

  With pursed lips, the man looked down at the table. “Someone knocked at the door. That was the last time I saw him.”

  The sound of something dragging across the floor came loud and clear. Jurren looked in its direction to see Keep pulling a stool toward them. Then Jurren noticed every patron in the tavern watching the exchange between him and Trebor.

  Great. Just great. Would this get them pulled back to Shevenor’s bench?

  The elderly man put a hand on Trebor’s shoulder. “Hello, old friend. I wondered why you never made it to the bar.” Keep looked at each of them. He took a few moments to situate himself on his stool. “I don’t know why I have not put two and two together, but Trebor is right. No one has heard from or seen anyone from Primmitt or Evolni in the last ten years.”

  Jurren followed Keep’s gaze with his peripheral vision as the elderly man paused to take a long look around the room. All eyes were fixed on the cheery barkeep who had suddenly lost his smile. Rosamie stood in the doorway at the far end of the room. When Keep looked her way, she tucked back in the restaurant.

  The barkeep sighed and continued. “I know each of you by name. I know your wives, your children, and your places of business. I have watched many of you grow from youth to adulthood. You tell me all manner of aspects of your lives, but it was not until tonight that I realized none of you, or any before you for several years, have brought word from the villages beyond Southam.” He paused, somehow pulling the twinkle back in his eyes. “I think I will have a talk with Epilone tomorrow. He would be the best to try and make sense of this. So until then, enjoy your evening. This night is young still, and until we have been given reason to worry, let us eat, drink, and take of all the delight life has to offer us.”

  People murmured joyful sounds, followed soon after by many raising a glass to Keep as he smiled his way back to the bar. Conversations picked up as the noise of the tavern returned to its normal volume.

  Looking back at Trebor, Jurren saw a table filled with furrowed brows and slumped shoulders.

  “I think I’m going to turn in for the night.” Ellam stood up, his lady friends now wandering to another table. “See you in the morning, gentlemen.”

  “As will I. This has been a full day.” Arkose ran his hand along the back of head before pushing his chair back to the table. “First thing in the morning?”

  Jurren nodded. “Absolutely. We leave at dawn.” He turned back toward Trebor to find their group also standing to leave. “Friend, allow me one more question.”

  The road-weary man stopped without looking back at him.

  “Did you go after your cousin? Did you venture into Tutelage Pass?”

  With his head half-turned toward him, eyes lowered, he shook his head. “I’ve not the strength to travel into places from which no one returns.”

  A barmaid apologized as she moved to squeeze between them to get the empty glasses from the table. Jurren stepped out of her way, watching the four men retreat to the exit.

  “Will you have another?” The barmaid wiped her ale-soaked rag across the table. “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “I think I’ll finish what I have first.”

  “Suit yourself.” She gathered all but Jurren’s half-finished glass.

  Tired, confused, and worried, he pushed his chair back into place. A memory drifted forward from the night before, rattling his thoughts. The strange odor from Kase still hung unresolved in his mind. He was clueless as to where he knew that scent. A connection lay somewhere between it and the disappearances in Southam. His gut warned him to look deeper. But at what? It was like a great chasm had formed, trying to make him forget. Never had he misplaced information like this before. Where h
ad he experienced that smell?

  The night terror! That odd sensation he felt the morning he awoke from a bad dream. A strange odor hung in the air. Closing his eyes, he placed himself back into that moment, then fast forwarded to the night he confronted Kase. It was the same smell. Had the boys been in the shelter the night before? No, that was not possible. The odor had been stronger that first morning than it was when it came from Kase. If the boy had been the source then he would have been the stronger of the two smells. Unless Kase picked up the smell from the shelter. But if that was true, then why did neither Ellam nor Arkose pick up the scent on their clothing?

  Oh, this is absurd! It’s nothing more than a scent. A weird smell. Why did his mind keep coming back to it? Maybe it was because part of being a tracker is recognizing odors for the things they suggest. Or maybe since he had traveled through so many places, there were few things he could not recognize.

  Whatever it was, he grew tired of dwelling on it. He wanted to dwell on Kase. Wanted to focus on how to prevent an attack from happening again.

  A voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “The bar’s closing, Jurren.”

  Rosamie.

  Looking up, he saw the tavern empty except for her and Keep.

  “Yeah, I know. My mind’s a little too full for sleep.”

  “I know what you mean.” She took a seat across from him. That same strained tone spilled through, and this time, she did not try to hide it with a smile. Pulling a ribbon from a pocket in her apron, she tied her long hair back at the nape of her neck. “I can trust you, right?”

  “On my honor.”

  She fussed with her hair some more, and Jurren noticed her eyes twice flicked in the direction of Keep. The old man hummed a drinking song to himself while putting up chairs for the night.

  “Jurren… I heard something two nights ago that put a chill down my spine. I can barely even think to repeat it.” Tears started to well up as she continued to glance back and confirm Keep was oblivious to their conversation.

  “I can imagine.”

  “An old wizard came through here from one of the villages in the Great Northlands. He arrived the day before my father left for his journey. I overheard the wizard talking about something being wrong in Southam.” Her voice tensed into a whisper.

  “Go on.”

  She bit her lip. “I know I shouldn’t eavesdrop like that, but something about him just rattled me. Most practitioners of magic seem so at peace with themselves. This one was different.”

  What Rosamie saw as an inner peace, Jurren saw as inner arrogance. Had the circumstances been different, he might have said so.

  “Did you get his name?”

  “No. He kept lowering his head and knotting up wrinkles all over his face like he carried a great weight inside him.”

  “What exactly did he say about Southam?”

  “It wasn’t so much about Southam, it was more about the Avian Expanse.” Her voice choked into a whisper.

  He must have heard her wrong. No one says Avian Expanse aloud. The first time he heard someone speak those words was also the last.

  Three years after arriving in Bondurant, he asked a friend what was beyond the southern border. Since he was a newcomer when he pointed to the edge of the nation’s map, he was allowed the same benefit given to young children when crossing into a taboo subject. His friend told him of the legend surrounding the great canyon’s formation eons ago then warned never to speak of it again. “There is no reason to discuss barriers that cannot be crossed” was the final thought on the matter. Though the reason behind the taboo was never clear, Jurren obliged his friend and did not bring it up again.

  Primmitt and Evolni were the towns closest to the Avian Expanse, yet even they did not speak of it. Rosamie had to be mistaken.

  “The wizard said ‘Avian Expanse’?” Jurren used the same hushed tone his friend used when describing the place.

  She nodded and put her hands over her mouth. There were a few choppy breaths before she started again. “He told of recurrent dreams, vivid dreams, telling about a great force of evil gathering strength in the south. Beyond the Avian Expanse.” This time her whisper faded until she mouthed the last two words in silence. She fidgeted along the edge of the table, then with her hair as though trying to find something that could bring her comfort. “He sensed something he couldn’t see, something too dark to see, like a bat in a starless sky, but much more than that. More like a giant, shapeless cloud or a shadow. A great sadness was moving. A sadness that will someday enter Bondurant.”

  “Who else have you told of this?”

  “I can barely talk to you about it.” She gasped a few more breaths. “I wish I knew why it troubled me so. You know I give little thought to the wizards of the north.” Her shaking head dropped into her hands. “He was so… so scared.”

  “I better call on Shevenor.”

  “No! No, you can’t!” She grabbed his hands and darted a glance over at Keep, who had turned to look in their direction. Pulling her hands back, she pushed her voice into a whisper. “Promise me you won’t say anything. Promise! These wizards have their own affairs to see to. If this were something worth telling one of the leaders, I think he would have said something.”

  “You know better than to keep this a secret.”

  “Jurren, if that wizard finds out I listened to his private conversation who knows what he might do?”

  “What happened to ‘I don’t give much thought to the wizards of the north’?”

  Her face pinched into a scowl fast enough to pull a muscle.

  Jurren did not flinch. “If this stays silent for too long, the result could be far worse than the possibility of a wizard’s curse. Surely you see that.”

  “All I know is I asked you to promise me to keep this between us. How many times have I made that request of you, Jurren?”

  He sighed. Their relationship was as close as two friends could be. She knew his heart belonged to Heluska, and he knew her heart belonged to the inn. It made it easy to trust her intentions when her words pushed the limits of their friendship. Giving him a room for free, helping him to negotiate hunting prices with her father, letting him stay in the tavern after all patrons were ushered out, giving preferred care to his horses in the stables. The list went on. But what she was asking went beyond gracious gestures. This was an entirely different matter. She heard what the men from Corrinor had said and somehow she found out about the attack in Gaulden Forest. Had the need for her own personal safety blinded her from seeing the connection between all these things? Whatever shadow that wizard saw was already here.

  “I am sorry, m’lady.”

  The daggers from her piercing eyes bore into his scalp as he walked away. How long had it been since the last time she was angry with him? Eight years… or more?

  Keep wished him a good night from the other side of the bar where he stood stacking the last of the glasses. With a wave, Jurren returned the gesture and pushed through the doors.

  Thankfully, the burn of Rosamie’s glare lessened as Jurren made his way into the night. Moonlight silhouetted much of the town streets into darkness.

  Many twists and turns wound through the narrow roads of Kovarilos between the inn and Shevenor’s home. Perhaps the walk would give Jurren sufficient time to plan his words.

  Zemarick called from above, screeching a cheerful cry. With a few whistles, Jurren directed the bird to continue hunting. The white-cliff falcon made a few circles overhead then perched on the sign of a nearby shop. His head pivoted back and forth as he watched his master.

  “I need to focus right now, my friend. Believe me, we will talk more about this later.”

  The bird stared back. At least Zemarick had an excuse for his ignorance. But what was going on with everyone else?

  Ellam said something back in Gaulden about a spirit of forgetfulness blanketing the land. Perhaps his idea held more truth than theory. People disappearing, robbing, attacking, prophesying destruction. These w
ere not things that should go unsaid. So why was today the first day these things came to light?

  In his youth, a mentor once told Jurren, ‘Seek first an understanding, then an opinion.’ That advice always came back to him when dealing with the unexplained.

  Well, experience taught him that forgetting an event prevented learning from it. If people were collectively forgetting events linked to each other, then it would prevent learning if the events were related. Like Ellam said, once one person at Windervail Inn started talking about a robbery suddenly many people spoke of robberies. Yet this news was forgotten until Ellam saw a road sign that triggered the memory.

  Could there be such a thing as a spirit of forgetfulness? If so, its purpose would be to prevent people learning from certain events. Which then begged the question as to why?

  By the time he reached Shevenor’s door, Jurren had forgotten he intended to use the walk to organize his thoughts. Wondering about the reasons behind everything consumed him to the point that he now stood with his hand raised to knock without being sure if he knew what good it would do to have this conversation.

  Habit pushed his arm to knock, knock, knock. Now he had to follow through.

  A few moments later, the door creaked open. Shevenor’s previously meticulous hair swirled from the effects of sleep above his squinted eyes.

  A tense hand held a small lamp. “This is hardly the hour for a house visit, Jurren.”

  “My lord, please accept my apology.”

  Shevenor studied him for a moment, then shook his head and stepped back from the door. “Come in.”

  “I don’t want to risk waking your wife.”

  “She can sleep through anything. And I mean anything.”

  Jurren wasn’t sure what the man meant by the emphasis on the last word, but he was not here to ask questions. Following his guest’s lead, they went to the main table of the living area with the small lamp as their only light.

  “In the tavern tonight, there were some conversations I believe you should be made aware of.”