by Garry Spoor
Circling the streets again, she searched for a suitable place to land. She found it in a vacant alley, between two shops, nearly six blocks away.
-Brace yourself, Vesper. We’re going in for a landing,- she warned the yarrow.
The hawk came in low, slowing down long enough to drop Vesper off safely, before trying to land herself. She made two hops and a roll before she was back on her feet.
-Yes. Not so perfect, but at least I didn’t hit anything this time.-
-Don’t like flying,- the yarrow complained.
-That’s not entirely true. You just don’t like landing.-
A quick survey of the alley came up empty. There were no clotheslines or scarecrows to provide her with anything to wear. Fly into the pub might get her there quicker, but probably wouldn’t go unnoticed, and walking down the street naked was not an option.
-Now what do I do?-
-Change,- Vesper suggested.
-Into what?- she asked.
The last thing she wanted was to attract attention, so it would have to be something more domestic, like a cat, although a skunk would get her into the pub easier. Erring on the side of caution, she chose a dog.
A Callor hound exited the alley and walked along the street with a yarrow perched on her head. So much for being inconspicuous. Surprisingly, it didn’t attract as much attention as she thought, but then most of the vir she passed were mystics. It was hard to shock a mystic, and she should know—she’d spent three months in the Tower. The place was filled with such oddities that a yarrow riding a dog was not all that remarkable. A few civilians did stop and stare, but most likely thought it was some part of the celebration.
Having never been to Yuton, Kile decided to follow the masses, which led her to the pub she was seeking. It was a quaint little place called the Fat Gopher. A line of people stood outside the door, all waiting to get in. Off to the side was a small hand-painted sign: Tales of the Wild Hunter as told by Alex the Wise.
-Alex the Wise?- Kile barked and accidentally startled a few vir.
There was also a list of four different showtimes. It would seem Alex the Wise was taking advantage of the situation, but she couldn’t blame him. Although she wasn’t too fond of his portrayal of her, she knew his heart was in the right place.
Passing the row of vir, Kile put her front paws up on the window ledge to sneak a peek, but all she could see were the backs of more vir. It was standing room only. Having no idea what time it was, she didn’t know if the show was about to begin or about the end.
-Rainbow lady,- Vesper said, lifting his nose to the air. Kile received a vision of a pink-haired woman wrapped up in a rainbow and knew exactly who the yarrow detected. She had the smell of candy, old books, and… was that a frog? Probably not.
Hopping down from the window, Kile moved around to the back of the building. The Fat Gopher was now bordering the new desert. It was only six feet away from the back door. Standing on the edge, looking out into the wastelands, was a young woman with purple hair, dressed in multicolored robes.
Emara turned around when Kile approached. On seeing the dog with the yarrow on her head, the mystic’s eyes widened.
“Kile?”
Kile stopped in her tracks and quickly looked down at her paws. She was relieved to see she was still a dog.
Emara hesitated before running up to her.
“That is you, isn’t it?”
The dog nodded.
“By the great mystics, this is incredible. You’re not cursed, are you? I mean, if you were cursed, I think I can reverse it. Magic seems to work better these days, now the black cloud is gone. There must have been some connection between the two, but we’re not sure what. Too bad we couldn’t study it longer, but with all the destruction it wrought, it’s probably better that it’s gone, but look who I’m talking to. I mean, you’re the reason it’s gone… aren’t you? We all saw you flying in on that dragon. A dragon, can you imagine that? Well, I mean you don’t have to imagine it—you were riding it—but I never thought there were still dragons in the world. I thought they were all gone or made up. I wish I could have seen him up close, but he’d probably eat me, and I don’t think I want to study a dragon from the inside out if you know what I mean.”
Kile sat down and listened to the mystic ramble. In a way, it was kind of refreshing. Emara suddenly fell silent.
“I’m babbling again, aren’t I? I’m sorry. Did you need help?” she asked before slowly walking around the dog. She examined Kile from every direction before standing in front of her again.
“I’m thinking… probably an air glamour. They can be pretty tricky, but I’ve never seen one this good. In fact, I can’t even detect the magic. Maybe it’s a shadow curse. That would be something to see. They say I’m influenced by that sphere too, but they don’t teach it at the Tower, not that I mind. I have a hard enough time learning the spheres they do teach.”
Kile shook her head.
“So if it’s not magic, what is it? It’s a transformation, isn’t it? I’ve heard of this, but I’ve never seen it. Are you stuck? Can you turn back? How can I help?”
-I need clothes,- Kile barked, although she knew Emara couldn’t understand her. She found communicating with the vir difficult at the best of times, while in animal form, it was damn near impossible. Looking around the back of the Fat Gopher, she found nothing she could use to help her explain her plight to Emara. She tried picking up the hem of the woman’s robes and shaking them.
“What? You want me to follow you?” the mystic asked.
Kile dropped the robes. -Okay, that’s not going to work. Now what?- she said, looking around for some other means of getting her point across. Crossing over into the desert, Kile started writing in the sand with her paw.
“What is it? What are you trying to tell me?” Emara asked. She stood behind Kile and looked over the dog’s shoulder. “Cl… clo… clots? No. Clothes. Clothes? Oh, clothes, you need clothing. Of course you need clothes. Transformation spells can only change the mystic’s body, not what they’re wearing. I can see where that would be a problem.”
Emara thought for a moment and quickly removed her outer set of robes. She held them out to the dog. Kile was not surprised to see the mystic’s undergown was equally colorful.
Closing her eyes and falling into her Edge, Kile embraced her vir Hi’kruul.
“Thanks, Em,” she said, wrapping the multicolored robes round her and tying them tight. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I couldn’t find something to wear.”
“Oh, it’s great to see you again, Ki, but you have to tell me how you did that. I’ve learned nothing of transformations in the Tower. I mean apart from elemental forms, but nothing like that, and you can do it without having to concentrate, that’s incredible.”
“It’s a little complicated. All I know is, it has something to do with me being an Orceen, although, to tell you the truth, I’m still trying to get the hang of it.”
“So, you didn’t learn that at the Tower?”
“No, I… learned it someplace else. Look, Em, can you tell me what happened here?”
“What do you mean?” Emara asked. She looked a little confused. “You flew in on a dragon and stopped the black cloud.”
If only it was that simple, Kile thought.
“Well, yeah, I kinda already knew that. I meant, how did you and the mystics get here, and what happened afterward?”
“Oh, that, that’s easy. We sensed the disturbance, you know, in the energy fields. It didn’t take long before the Elders found it and we, well, we zapped on over. By then the cloud was expanding, and all the animals were going crazy. They were running everywhere, through the cities and the town—they were all trying to get away from it. It was complete chaos. The only thing we could do was surround it and try to contain it. I’m afraid a few mystics did attempt to get a closer look, you know, to study it, but after that, I kept them all out.”
“You kept them out?”
�
��Well, yeah, I am the Grand Magus of the Tower, sort of. I mean I will be after I finish my studies, but I’m pretty much in charge while we’re here… and I’m not comfortable with it.”
“Yeah, I know what that feels like,” Kile said, remembering her time in the outpost of Moran. “So, how did you contain it?”
“We tried to contain it. We didn’t actually succeed, but we did manage to slow it down. We threw everything we could at it. Even with all the mystics working together, we couldn’t stop it. We tried varying the fields and reversing the energies, we even tried Partexing the elemental flow, and you know how difficult that is.”
“No, not really.”
“Oh, well, it’s a matter of—”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes. Well, anyway, as I was saying, we managed to slow it down. That’s about the time the military came. Well, I say military, but it was actually the new Hunters. Some Level One was barking out orders and he even sent a few men into the cloud. We tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. Only when nobody returned did they start to wise up and begin the evacuation. They were keeping ahead of us, clearing out the people as the cloud grew. We didn’t think it was ever going to stop. The Hunters kept moving everyone farther and farther away, and then the dragon came.
“I can honestly say, we were all panicking at that point. A growing black cloud that was destroying everything in its path and a dragon, all on the same day. Some people even believed it was the end of the world. Thankfully, Alex pointed you out. He recognized the dragon and even knew its name, but when the dragon flew into the cloud and disappeared, we didn’t know what to expect. After that, the cloud seemed to slow down, but it was about… I don’t know, two days before anything else happened.”
“Two days?” Kile exclaimed.
Was she actually in the Maligar for two days? It all seemed to happen so quickly. Could time be that screwed up?
“Yeah, I’d say it was about two days,” Emara continued. “We started rotating the mystics off the front line so they could rest. The Hunters even tried to take up the slack, although the range of their skills was limited, but we weren’t going to refuse any help. We did have a few of them delivering messages around the perimeter, so that was a big help. It was around the evening of the second day when there was this… I don’t know how to describe it, it was like a ripple or maybe a pulse of energy and then the cloud simply collapsed. It dissipated.”
“So, what happened after that?” Kile asked.
“Well, nothing, at first. We kind of stood there and waited for it to start up again. Nobody was willing to cross the line, if you know what I mean. It was Alex, who first stepped into the Shia desert. He said he had been in the wastelands before and there was nothing to it. That’s when the Hunters and the military started to recon, or whatever it is they call it. You know, they sent small groups into the desert to see what they could see. On the morning of the third day, one of the Hunters arrived with a message saying a large black horse broke through the lines, farther up north, and ran into the desert. We knew what it meant, so we waited until there was more information. About two hours later, another Hunter arrived saying soldiers spotted the horse, and he was standing over a survivor. From the description, we knew it was you and so Alex and I came here. We arrived in Yuton late last night, but the king already set up his own headquarters in the Manor House and wouldn’t let anyone in.
“It wasn’t too long ago that Alex talked to some tall blond-haired man, I think he was the king’s personal physician. They seemed to know each other. He said you woke up and you punched the king in the face. After that, we kind of expected your execution.”
Kile laughed. “It wasn’t that bad. It was a slight misunderstanding.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. I’d hate to have to bail you out of another trial.”
Walking to the edge of the desert, Kile looked out to the horizon. “It seems to go on forever, doesn’t it?”
The mystic came up to stand beside her. “Forty-eight thousand square miles.”
Kile looked at her in disbelief.
“Well, that’s what we think, anyway,” Emara explained. “A few of the Hunters ran the perimeter and some of the mystics crunched the numbers. They don’t all agree on the exact size, but it’s somewhere in that area.”
“Forty-eight thousand,” Kile repeated. It was still impossible to believe.
“It never reached Riverport,” Emara added.
“Thanks, Em. Look, you mind if I borrow your robes for a while?”
“No, of course not, keep them. I have plenty, and besides, they look good on you.”
“Yeah, somehow, I don’t think so,” Kile said, pulling the hood of the robes over her head. Vesper curled up around her neck.
~~~***~~~
Kile felt more uncomfortable walking back through town as a vir than she did as a dog. It seemed more people noticed her in her brightly colored robes than as a Callor hound with a yarrow on her head. What made it worse, is every so often a mystic would stop and greet her, thinking she was Emara. Kile simply threw them a silent gesture and kept moving. There was no need to get bogged down with too many questions, although she couldn’t help but wonder why they were still hanging around. She thought the mystics would be eager to get back to the Tower, now the Maligar was no longer a threat. Who knows, maybe this was some kind of field trip for them. By the way some of them were acting, it was as if they had never seen the outside world.
“Okay, Vesper. Where is he?” she asked the yarrow when they were finally far enough away from the masses. The last thing she wanted was to give the mystic the impression their next Grand Magus was a person who stood in the middle of the street, talking to herself. Emara had enough quirks to live down.
-Over there, far side, close,- the yarrow answered and Kile saw, through his words, where she needed to go.
She followed the yarrow’s direction through the streets of Yuton. It was a quaint little town, with its stone buildings and scattering of trees. In a way, it seemed at home sitting on the edge of a desert. Most of the buildings were small, except for the Manor House, which spanned nearly six blocks in both directions and looked like more than a simple dwelling. Not only did it house the self-proclaimed important people of the town, but it was the general hub of official activity. This was where all the paperwork went to die.
Continuing for another three blocks, Kile found the stables. It didn’t have a name and seemed to be part of the Manor House. Out in the front, a middle-aged man with curly black hair and a long shaggy beard was mending the fence.
“I hope Grim didn’t have anything to do with that,” she mumbled to herself when she approached him.
The curly-haired man didn’t look up and was preoccupied with his work. Kile was afraid to disturb him for fear Grim did have something to do with the damage. She didn’t want to bring any more attention to herself and thought of sneaking into the stables to see if the mountain pony was there.
“Can I help you, mystic?” the man asked while continuing to work.
“I hope so. I think you have a mountain pony sheltered here.”
That got his attention. He stopped what he was doing and slowly looked up at her.
“Aye. That we do,” he said suspiciously. “He’s in the far northwest corner. Chose the stall himself, he did.”
She politely thanked him and took her leave. The man shook his head and went back to his fence mending. Kile had no problem letting him think the mystics were responsible for the mountain pony, especially if he was the one who did damage to the fence.
For a city as populated as Yuton, the stables were empty. Grim was the only horse in the northwest corner, which is why he chose it.
-Wow, what’s with the outfit? You look as if you were attacked by a fruit stand.-
“And it’s good to see you too, Grim.”
-No, I mean it. It’s hideous. I feel dizzy just looking at
you.-
“I’ll have you know a very good friend lent me this.”
-She can’t be that good of a friend if she let you walk around looking like that.-
“Are you seriously ragging on me about my appearance? Have you looked at yourself lately? You’re a tangled mess of black hair. I’m not even sure you are a horse.”
-Oh please, I’m the most handsome horse you’ll ever see.-
Kile laughed. “It is good to see you, Grim. I mean it.”
-I know, but try not to get too sappy.-
“So, have any problems getting here?”
-Nothing worth mentioning. Have any problems defeating the Maligar?-
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
-So, does that mean it’s over?-
Kile thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “I supposed so.”
-Good, that means we can get out of here.-
“Not yet, I’m afraid. I still have a few unanswered questions.”
-Oh, please, child. Let it go. You did it, you defeated the Maligar. Bask in the glory of your victory and let’s get the hell out of here.-
“It’s not that simple, Grim.”
-It never is with you.-
“Look, we can’t leave now. It would be… rude.”
-Never stopped us before.-
“There are still a few things that are bothering me.”
-Such as?-
“Well, such as, who sent the Hunters into the wasteland to kill Ravenshadow and the valrik? Someone must have hired them.”
-The king, obviously.-
“You see, that’s just it. Roland believed the Heart of Nilak was going to take care of the valrik. Why would he risk sending in Hunters? And what about Galan? He knew what the Heart was. Why wait until they were on the border of the wastelands before stealing it and running all the way to Shia to release it? The Heart came to Azintar first. He could have released it then. Why bring it to Balaa? And where was his tree?”
-His what? Now you’ve lost me.-
“His tree. There were four trees around the Heart and three more in the distance. Boraro, Creech, Elmac, and Heaney were standing near the Heart when the Maligar was released. If Galan released it, shouldn’t his tree be there too?”
