by Dave Gross
“What are the chances they would let a half-orc—I mean, a Pathfinder, have a look inside?”
“Marginal to nil on either count,” he said. “But even if Bishop Senir does not allow me access, perhaps he can tell us more about the nature of her search.”
As we approached the village of the freaks, which is how I thought of it even if I didn’t dare speak the word in Azra’s hearing, the Sczarni halted, even Malena. “We wait here,” she said.
“I can’t believe you’re still scared of the place,” I told her.
“We cannot believe you are not scared of it,” she said. “I tell the others it is because you are a brave prince.”
“But what do they say?”
She flicked her thumb beside her ear. I caught her meaning: crazy.
The freaks greeted us with as much enthusiasm as on our first arrival. Tudor assumed the role of storyteller as he recounted the events of the night he spent in the old village, fighting ghosts with werewolves at our side. Azra gave me a warning look, but I wasn’t going to correct him. The villagers had so little else going for them, they needed a bard, even if it had to be a giant, speech-impaired, nose-picking idiot. Actually, after listening for a few moments, I preferred Tudor’s story to most of the bard tales I’d heard in Egorian taphouses. What he lacked in finesse, the big fellow more than made up in enthusiasm.
We stayed only long enough to accept several baskets and jugs of provisions, enough to fill most of the wagon interior. Azra kissed a few ugly babies and gave reassuring hugs to young women who had begged her to pray to Desna that their children should be born free of the worst curses that plagued them. When I heard that, even I had to draw the wings of the goddess on my heart, but I had a feeling nothing was going to get better for these people until they moved out of the shadow of the mountains.
Before we left, Azra showed the boss her folding tinker’s table and set him up with a stool inside her wagon. The air had cooled enough that she left only two of the side panels open, giving him a little light and a little shelter from the breeze as he studied his dead Pathfinder’s journal. He thanked her, and almost as an afterthought, he took me aside and removed one of his little booklets from his coat pocket.
“Let us try an experiment,” he said. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he thumbed the booklet as one might riffle a deck of cards. A stream of deep crimson poured out of the pages and expanded in a cloud before us. Within seconds, the gas contracted to form a large red stallion, complete with bridle and saddle composed of some weird purple material that looked more like mushroom than leather.
“Mount up,” he said.
“Are you trying to get me killed, boss?” I said. “You know these things hate me.”
“Perhaps not this one,” he said, appraising the fantastic horse with a curious expression, as if something about his spell had not come out the way he’d expected.
“Say, you cast a spell!” I said, realizing the importance of the moment. “What about your ...? You know. Your little problem?”
“I found a solution in Count Galdana’s library,” he said, smiling proudly. “Go on.” He gestured at the horse.
Luminita’s kick hadn’t killed me, but this beast looked even stronger than Azra’s donkey. I approached it warily, but the conjured horse made no reaction, even when I raised a hand to stroke its neck. Its mane was translucent flame, but I felt no heat as my fingers ran through its silky hairs. The beast lifted its head and blew, but I heard no sound even as I felt its cool breath upon my hand.
“Do not dawdle,” said the boss. “It will not remain with us all day.”
I’d seen it done many times before, but getting my foot in the stirrup and throwing my leg over the horse’s back was harder than it looked. I ended up climbing awkwardly up, finally managing to get myself in the saddle and take the reins. It occurred to me then that I had no idea how to command one of these things. I slapped the reins as I’d seen riders do, and the horse bolted. I hung on for my life, the boss’s laughter vanishing behind me. I looked back to see Azra scolding him with a gesture, but whatever he said in reply made her join his laughter.
I had an impulse to run ahead and show the Sczarni my new steed, but instead I pulled on the reins and turned back toward the wagon. I’d endangered them both enough already, so I wanted to stick close to Azra and the boss. Besides, riding circles around the wagon was good practice in steering. As a bonus, it unnerved Luminita and annoyed the hell out of Azra.
It was going to be a very good day.
The boss hadn’t warned me exactly when the phantom steed would vanish, so when it slowed and stopped beside the wagon, I first kicked its flanks to get it moving again. It turned its face to gaze at me, and then my ass hit the ground.
At least everyone else got a laugh out of it. Azra hooted along with the Sczarni, and even Luminita brayed in triumph at the fall of her tormentor. I noticed Dragos and Cezar were among the few who did not so much as crack a smile at my misfortune, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t the best idea to clown around in front of the malcontents. It might give them ideas.
Despite the anti-Radovan faction, the Sczarni set up a splendid camp that afternoon. They ringed the fire pit with carpets and cushions, and at Malena’s behest they broke out the box drums and tambourines. Cosmina, one of the old women, cajoled Dragos to fetch his fiddle. When that failed, the older one known only as Baba set her eye upon him, and he grudgingly fetched the instrument. He tuned the strings and played a few sorrowful fragments as the rest of his family prepared for supper, which they began cooking when Milosh, Fane, and Sandu returned naked from the hunt, each carrying three or four hares.
When I finished helping Azra unhitch the wagon, we brought a basket of carrots and squash to Baba and Cosmina, who shooed us away as they prepared the food. The boss remained rapt in his examination of his late colleague’s journal, making notes in a fresh book of his own in between outbursts of self-recrimination for leaving his previous journal in the grave. It was good to see he was not immune to rash decisions.
He looked like he needed a break, so I fetched the most potent weapon on hand to entice him out of the wagon. I popped the cork from one of the jugs the freaks had given us and took a deep sniff. It was mead, and not half bad.
The boss raised his head as he caught a whiff. “How is it?” he asked. I poured some into a leather jack that had been hanging from the wagon ceiling and offered it to him. He gestured that I should sip it first.
“You don’t pay me to be your taster,” I said, but I tried it anyway. It was thick stuff, sweet but not very strong. I shrugged and passed it to him. “It’s all right.”
He sampled it and made a sour face. “Ghastly,” he declared.
I reached for the jack, but he pulled it back. “I’ll finish it,” he said, turning back to his notes. I returned to the campfire, where three rabbits were roasting over the fire as Cosmina spitted three more to replace them. I dropped onto the carpet beside Azra, but she got up the moment I opened my mouth to speak.
Fine, I figured. I had only wanted to ask her why she decided to accompany us to the Monastery of the Veil. We hadn’t talked all day, so I assumed something had passed between her and the boss after we left the village of the freaks. If she wouldn’t tell me, I’d have to ask him later.
Malena settled down next to me, cozy as a cat. “The witch does not like you,” she said.
“I’m getting that impression.”
“I like you.”
What she lacked in subtlety she made up for with a swell delivery. Her low voice put a thrill at the back of my throat.
“That’s a pretty good start to mending my broken heart.”
“She broke your heart?” Malena said so seriously I almost laughed.
“No, sweetheart,” I told her. “Don’t you know hellspawn don’t have hearts? That’s what makes us so hard to kill.”
Milosh brought me a bowl of stewed vegetables and roast rabbit fresh from the spit. I decided I
could get used to having servants and sycophants, but old habits kicked in. “Take this to the boss, kid.”
He looked perplexed. “But you are boss.”
I liked being called that, but it didn’t change my mind. “Not your boss, kid. My boss.” I pointed at the wagon. “Fetch me one on the way back.”
Still confused, he ran off to obey. Malena plucked at my open jacket and found a hole in the shirt beneath.
“I think it is the prince’s blood,” she said, drawing the shape of a heart over my breast. “It makes you powerful enough to gather all the wolves of our land, all the scattered clans of our people. Maybe strong enough to one day to rule all of Ustalav.”
“Sorry, princess,” I said. Her eyes lit up at the word, and I knew which of my fine parts most interested her. She fancied my hypothetical principality. I gently removed her hand from my chest, not that I didn’t like the way it felt there. “I’ve already got a job.”
She frowned, but it was just for show. “That is not your true calling,” she said. “The Harrowing was true. Long has it been said that the heir of the Prince of Wolves would one day return to Ustalav and reunite the Sczarni families.”
“Tell me more about this prince,” I said. This addition of the “heir” could have been her way of elaborating her original scam to make it seem more plausible. Still, the boss had told me the fellow his Pathfinder had been seeking was some traitor who had surrendered his land to the Whispering Tyrant. That didn’t sound half so romantic as the Prince of Wolves, and if they were one and the same, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be related.
I saw the boss emerge from the wagon, bowl in one hand, drinking jack in the other. I could tell by the weight that he’d refilled the leather tankard with mead. When he came to the fire to sit beside Azra, she noticed it as well. She took it from his hands and drank it half down while he stared at her, astonished. She returned it to him and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
The witch had her good moments.
“Our babas tell the story best,” said Malena. “But you still have not enough Varisian to hear it from Baba, I think.”
“I’d rather hear it from you,” I said, trying to make up for rebuffing her advance.
She smiled. “It was after the fall of the Last King of Ustalav,” she said. “Among those who resisted the Tyrant were the three princes whose names their father buried lest his adversary learn to conjure with them.”
“So the Prince of Wolves was not the last king of Ustalav?”
“Listen to the story,” said Baba, who had been eavesdropping all this time. She filled another bowl with grilled vegetables and laid half a roast rabbit on top before handing it to Milosh, who brought it to me.
“The eldest prince was a great warrior, and the queen his mother gave him a blade blessed by the goddess Pharasma,” said Malena. Her voice assumed the rhythm of a tale learned by repetition. “Its slightest touch would destroy the restless dead. But when he faced the Whispering Tyrant in battle, he could not come close enough to strike his foe. The adversary cast a mighty spell that boiled the warrior’s blood within him, taking the sword as his trophy.”
I saw the boss lean forward, offering Malena’s tale his rapt attention.
“The second prince was a bishop of Pharasma. His mother gave him a mace invested with the power of all the bishops of the land, who knelt to kiss the hem of his garments when he summoned them. He led their greatest paladins and clerics in the first crusade against the Tyrant, which men have since forgotten, to their shame. Again the adversary hurled spells from afar, shredding the flesh of the noble soldiers with fragments of their own shattered bones.
“The third prince was a witch, and the queen had no gift for him. His mother was a devil sent by the Whispering Tyrant years earlier to seduce the king, but instead she had come to love him and bore his son. The child was given to the Sczarni, whom the king had promised lands of their own in return for raising the boy to adulthood. After the death of the queen’s sons, the king acknowledged his son and charged him to fight the adversary. Instead, the prince fled into the countryside.
“The king and all his folk believed the prince a coward, and yet the Prince foresaw his father’s death and strove instead to wage a secret war against the Tyrant. First he bestowed the gift of fang and claw upon his foster family, although his mother’s lineage prevented him from sharing it with them. In his service, they slipped through the forests of Ustalav and stole into the secret places where the Tyrant stored his greatest wealth, the artifacts of ages past, the spells of ancient wizards, and secrets the gods whisper in the vast darkness that aches between the stars.”
She paused, and we waited silently for her to continue. When it became clear that she had finished, I asked, “What happened to them?”
“Someone betrayed the prince,” she said. Her eyes moved toward Dragos, but she stopped short of looking directly at him. “One of his people.”
“That’s some story,” I said, but when I looked over at the boss, I saw him squeezing the bridge of his nose as he often did when comparing disparate clues to assemble into a conclusion. I had been ready to scoff at the story, as Azra did, but if he was taking it seriously, maybe I should do the same.
“It is a lie,” said Dragos. “A fairy story for children, not for men. Tell them, Baba.”
Baba ignored him.
“Tell them!” he demanded. She turned her back on him and reached for my bowl. I handed it over, and she refilled it before passing it back.
“Bah!” Dragos spat. He stalked away from the fire. This time no one followed him, not even Cezar.
Chapter Seventeen
Monastery of the Veil
The Monastery of the Veil must have been conceived by an architect whose dramatic instincts rivaled those of Velasco Morova, who remained the Chelish Opera’s most celebrated set designer more than eighty years since his death at the hands of a mob of House Thrune supporters.
With three tiers of turrets rising smoothly out of the highest peaks of Ulcazar, the Monastery was as much a testament to the genius of its engineers as to the daring of its creator. During both the six-hundred-year reign of the Whispering Tyrant and the centuries of civil strife that followed, the Monastery had remained inviolate, a sanctuary for devotees of Pharasma and a treaty ground for warring counties. Today, even direct rivals of Count Senir deferred to his status as Bishop of Ulcazar and Master of the Monastery.
I am loath to describe our return to the Senir Bridge, even in this new journal whose pages are for my eyes alone. There were other paths that would have led us to the Monastery, but even the best of them would have taken us much longer to traverse, and I could not be certain that any of them would accommodate Azra’s decrepit wagon. It was a tinker’s shop on wheels, yet she was no tinker. And although the sweet and pungent aroma of the herbs she kept within the cabin ameliorated the effect, I could still detect the pong of mold within the floorboards. For the favor of conveying me to our destination, upon returning to the Vaults of Abadar in Caliphas, I should gladly pay her to have a new cart built. Such thoughts returned my mind to the loss of my cherished carriage, memories even more unpleasant than facing the reminder of the attack on the bridge.
In daylight, the bridge looked far less sinister than it had while under pursuit. There were signs of recent repair, as fresh limestone blocks had replaced those that had presumably been dislodged by the fiery blast, whether cast by my forgotten self or, more likely, invoked by some other force. I noticed blackened stone blocks among the fresh ones, their positions suggesting that the blast might have come from beneath the bridge, not merely beneath my carriage. Judging from that evidence alone, it was all but certain that the explosion had been prepared in advance of our arrival.
As we crossed the bridge, I peered down at the river below us through the open panels of the wagon. The drop was well over one hundred feet, leaving me no conceivable hypothesis for Radovan’s survival of such a fall. Granted, I had always valued
his durability above his fighting prowess, although the latter was not inconsiderable, yet I had to agree with him that it was a miracle he had survived. Either Desna favored him far more than even he liked to boast, or else some other force had shielded him from destruction.
I was relieved that the Sczarni had refused to accompany us up the mountain, even before I could raise the subject of leaving them behind rather than ask the Bishop to harbor such scum. Whether the werewolves awaited us upon our descent or not, I did not care. Or rather, I could not decide which outcome I preferred. If they could be trusted, they could prove formidable allies in our search for the cache of Lord Virholt, yet it was the height of folly to trust them collectively. I had no doubt that Dragos and Cezar fomented rebellion every moment they were out of sight of Radovan, and while her attentions suggested she curried my bodyguard’s favor for her own purposes, Malena’s motives could range from gaining influence over their “prince” to subverting his judgment or even insinuating herself closely enough to assassinate him at a weak moment. For his part, Radovan could not always be trusted to make sound judgments in feminine matters, and Malena was beautiful in her coarse manner.
Thus we arrived at the gate to the monastery with only Azra driving the wagon and Arnisant padding loyally beside the wheels. I had weighed the impropriety of allowing Radovan to arrive mounted on the phantom steed while I sat beside Azra, but he so delighted in riding the beast that I could not deny him the pleasure. It was also fascinating to observe the difference in the animal that I summoned for myself and the monster that appeared when I conjured it for him. Variations in appearance were possible in the spell, but I had made none consciously. My earliest experiments with the spell were unfortunately limited by my peculiar handicap, but I saw now that it seemed to react not to the desires of the caster but to some unspoken requirement of the recipient.
Secretly, I also enjoyed the way Radovan had earlier charged through the Sczarni from time to time, scattering them and evoking whoops from those who felt loyalty or feigned it, and scowls from those who rankled under the yoke of his usurpation. I wonder whether he did so for the very reason of flushing out his opposition from his supporters. His mind is certainly keen enough to devise such a ploy, even though his street manners often conceal the full extent of his intellect.
