The Tiger's Eye (Book 1)

by Robert P. Hansen

  Then he found the village. Fellwood? Isn’t that what it was? Voltari’s map didn’t show the village, but it was there. He was there. And it had an inn. Nargeth…. He had given her a gold coin! How could he have been so foolish?

  He was naked.

  Where were his things? His heartbeat quickened, despite his efforts to calm it, and he stood up. He surveyed the room quickly, finding his backpack next to the table—which had a basin, ewer, loaf of bread, and slab of cheese placed on it. He paused only long enough to rip some of the bread free before tossing the empty basin on the mattress and putting his backpack in its place. He opened the backpack and was relieved to see the scrolls Voltari had given him still there, seemingly undisturbed. He took a breath and drank from the pitcher to wash down the dry, crumbly bread crumbs before biting into the cheese. It had a tangy, peppery flavor and bits of it pasted themselves to his teeth as he chewed. He quickly counted the scrolls—they were the correct number—and took the first one out. He unrolled it far enough to recognized it, and then moved on to the next one. He continued checking them until he had confirmed that all of the scrolls were still there. But his map was missing, and so were his clothes.

  He looked under the bed and in the bedding, and walked around the small chamber three times before he conceded it was a waste of time. At least there was a chamber pot, and the air was warm enough that he didn’t need any clothes. Still, he felt almost trapped in the room without them, and he needed to leave the room to find out what had happened.

  He draped the coverlet over his shoulders and wrapped it around himself. It was still warm from his body heat, and it trailed behind him a few feet as he hobbled up to the door. He tried the latch—It was locked! He tried it again, rattling the door on its hinges. He stood there trying to decide what to do until he heard footfalls on stairs.

  He backed away from the door and concentrated, bringing the magical energies around him into focus.

  There was a key in the door.

  It turned.

  He dropped the coverlet and reached for a soft crimson strand and wrapped his right index finger around it. He felt the weak, quivering of its power, and prepared his mind and body to receive it and redirect it into the simple knots of the spell.

  The door opened inward, and a frumpy old woman stepped in. In her arms were Angus’s robe, tunic, leggings, undergarments, and boots. She almost dropped them when she saw him standing there naked, his right arm craning outward toward her, his left apparently ready to pounce on something that wasn’t there.

  “Goodness,” the old woman gasped, coming to a stop just inside the door. “You are a sight, aren’t you?” She smiled, a jovial smile with an undertone of irascibility. “My yes, a sight indeed!” she chuckled, moving past him to lay the clothing on the mattress. When she turned back, she ordered, “Sit you down, now.”

  He let the magic slip away as he reached down for the coverlet and wrapped it around himself again. “Nargeth?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, giving him a firm but friendly nudge toward the bed. “And you be?”

  “Angus,” he replied.

  “Sit, Angus,” she said. “Let me tend to those feet.”

  He studied her for a long moment. She wore her gray hair in a bun beneath a bright orange scarf that contrasted wildly with her simple gray homespun dress, food-spattered apron, and mud-colored leather boots. He sat down on the mattress next to his clothes and slid his hand into the folds, of the tunic.

  She stepped forward, put her hands on his knees and knelt down in front of him. He braced himself to resist her weight, but it was a surprisingly light touch. Once she was on her knees, she slid back and reached out for his calf. She lifted it until it rested on her thigh, and then deftly unraveled the bandage. She let it slip to the floor and did the same with the other foot. When she finished, she levered herself up again.

  “You will be as good as new by morning,” she said. She turned, walked out of the open door, and came back a few seconds later with a small clay pot in her hands.

  “What’s that?” Angus asked.

  “Healing balm,” she replied. “Now, pick up the bandages and move you back. My back is too old and crinkled for bending like that.”

  Angus did as instructed, and she set the pot beside his feet and pried open its lid. A pungent, almost floral aroma arose from it, and when it struck him, he wrinkled up his nose.

  “That’s a fierce smelling concoction,” he said.

  She chuckled as she reached into the pot with two fingers and plucked out a small glob of thick, yellow-brown goo. “Ulrich makes it,” she said, spreading the paste-like goo over his feet. “He has an herb garden outside the village. What he can’t grow himself, he gathers from Maple Wood. If it’s not there, he buys it on his annual trip to Hellsbreath. Sometimes he loses himself in the mountains for a while.” She wiped her fingers around the lip of the pot and replaced the lid, pressing it down until it sealed. Then she began rubbing the ointment into his soles.

  “It seems to work well,” Angus said.

  Nargeth nodded. “Best healing balm outside Hellsbreath’s temples.”

  Angus frowned, “How much do I owe you for it?”

  “Already paid for,” she said.

  Angus frowned and started checking his pockets; they were empty.

  “You need not worry,” she said. “Check the boots.”

  Angus frowned, picked up a boot, and heard things rolling around inside it. He upended it, and the garnets fell out in his palm. The other held the coins he had brought with him from Blackhaven, all but the gold coin he had given her. He looked at Nargeth and raised his eyebrows.

  She shrugged. “Only fools cross wizards,” she said. “And you paid well enough when you arrived.”

  Angus nodded. “How long have I been here?” he asked.

  “Two days,” she said.

  “Two days?” Angus repeated. “My feet healed that much in two days?”

  “Aye,” she said, smiling as she began wrapping up the bandages. “Best healing balm north of Hellsbreath.”

  “I’ll say,” he agreed. “How much will it cost me for a pot like that?”

  Nargeth shrugged. “Ulrich doesn’t sell it to outsiders.”

  Angus frowned. “Perhaps if I talk to him?”

  Nargeth shook her head.

  “Well,” Angus said, pointing to the pot next to his feet. “What about that one?”

  Nargeth frowned, sighed, and said, “You paid for it.”

  He smiled. It would no doubt come in handy wherever he ended up.

  “You come from the south?” Nargeth asked as she picked up the pot and set it on the small table.

  Angus shook his head. “No. Northwest. Blackhaven Tower.”

  She turned from the table and and eyed him shrewdly. “You know that foul wizard?” she asked.

  “Voltari? He was my mentor.”

  “Don’t speak his name!” Nargeth half-shouted, wringing her hands and looking about the room as if she thought Voltari was about to appear.

  Angus straightened his posture and waited. When Voltari failed to appear, she took a deep breath, squinted at him, and said, “I don’t allow magic in my inn.”

  Angus relaxed and smiled at her. “No worry there, Nargeth,” he said. “Once I’ve recuperated, I’ll be heading south. From the look of it, I’ll be leaving in one, maybe two days.”

  “Hellsbreath?”

  He nodded. “How long does it take to get there from here?”

  “Three, maybe four weeks by foot,” she said.

  He frowned. It hadn’t looked that far on the map. In fact—

  “My map,” he said suddenly. “It wasn’t in my backpack. Did you take it?”

  Nargeth nodded. “Ulrich wanted to see it.”

  Angus frowned. “I need that map—”

  “He’ll bring it before you leave,” she said. “He said it was an old map and wanted to study it while you slept.”

  Angus frowned a l
ittle longer, and then shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it now, and if Ulrich brought it back, there was no loss. He sighed and asked, “Can I walk on these bandages?”

  “Certainly,” Nargeth replied as she moved toward the open door. “Get you dressed and come down to the common room. There’s a fine stew waiting for you, and I’ll send word to Ulrich that you wish to see him.”

  “Thank you,” Angus said. “You have been kind.”

  She grinned, looked him over again, and said, “For a gold coin, you can have more, if you like.” She pushed out her ample chest and laughed, noisily closing the door behind her.

  9

  A large bowl of stew was waiting for him when he limped gingerly into the common room. He had decided to wear the robe without the reinforced tunic and trousers, and was already regretting it. It chafed against his skin. The stew was an odd mixture: potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, corn, onions, meat—Nargeth called it a red quisling, a domesticated bird nearly as large as a chicken—seasoned with salt, sage, basil, garlic. It was edible, but the taste was far from desirable. Still, he was hungry, and he ate as much of it as he could stomach before turning away. The ale helped.

  He was still sitting at the table when a woodsman walked in. He wore a light brown tunic, brown trousers, and dark brown leather boots. He held a bow in his left hand, and his right hand rested lightly on the hilt of a sword whose tip dangled below his knee. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, but the woodsman was clearly ill at ease. A quiver of arrows hung easily over his right shoulder, and he carried himself like a mountain cat entering another male’s territory. His hair was a mass of brown with bits of leaves and twigs tangled in it. His face was painted with two green finger-streaks from the left brow to the right ear, and a third ran down the bridge of his nose. He scanned the room quickly, nodding to the other customers, and moved rapidly to Angus’s table. When Nargeth stepped out from behind the counter, he waved her off with a glance.

  “You are Angus,” he said, his voice clipped, harsh, accusing. “Friend of Voltari.”

  Angus studied the newcomer’s posture—A snake ready to strike? A cat about to pounce?—and nodded slightly. “Ulrich,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  “Blackhaven Tower is a blight on the land,” Ulrich barked, his voice sharp, as if he were stating an uneasy fact. “The dead must stay dead.”

  Angus did not respond. There was no need to; Ulrich obviously had a firmly set opinion, and anything he said would be pointless.

  Ulrich shifted his quiver and sat down across from Angus. “Tell me, Angus,” Ulrich asked, each word sharply accented. “What business have you in Woodwort?” he demanded.

  “Woodwort?” Angus asked.

  “Here,” Ulrich snapped. “This village.”

  “Only rest and recuperation,” Angus answered. “I will be leaving in a few days.”

  “For Hellsbreath?”

  Angus nodded.

  “Business?”

  Angus smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile—at least he hoped it wasn’t—nor an unfriendly one; rather, he was acknowledging the boundary they were forming between them. “Perhaps,” he said. “What is it to you?”

  Ulrich returned the smile easily, shrugged, and said, “Idle curiosity.”

  “Well then,” Angus said. “If that is all it is, you’ll be disappointed. I have no idea what I’ll be doing there.”

  “You should visit Ungred,” Ulrich said. “He will make you a proper pair of boots.”

  “My boots are fine,” Angus objected.

  Ulrich shrugged. “His shop is on The Rim.”

  “Well,” Angus said. “I’ll look in on him if I can find the time.”

  Ulrich nodded, rose from his chair.

  “Ulrich,” Angus said. “You have something of mine. I would like it back.”

  Ulrich nodded again, and before Angus could complain, he turned crisply and walked out of the common room, as if he were a cat that had just made up its mind to leave.

  The next morning, Nargeth brought the map up to his room. He thanked her and, after she left, unrolled the scroll to see what damage Ulrich had done to it. But it wasn’t damaged; Ulrich had added a considerable amount of information to it. Woodwort was now marked, as were a dozen other villages on the road between it and Hellsbreath. He had scrawled BLIGHT over Blackhaven Tower. A short distance southwest of Woodwort, he wrote FRIEND, and underneath the mountain dwarves he had crossed off IMPASSABLE and replaced it with TAKE WINE. Finally, some distance northwest of Hellsbreath, a considerable distance from the road and villages, Ulrich had written ELHOUIT ACHNUT. Angus didn’t recognize the language, but it didn’t matter; it was a long way from his destination.

  Angus memorized the changes and rolled the map up to put it beside his backpack. Then he took out one of the scrolls. It was a spell he knew well, and it didn’t take him long to prime himself for the sequence of knots and reorient the threads of magic within himself to be receptive to those around him. But the second spell was completely new, and he wasn’t at all sure what it would do. He studied it for nearly an hour before setting it aside as hopeless. He was tired, and his head was beginning to ache from the effort of trying to imagine how the various knots fit together and how the threads of magical energy would interact with one another. In the end, all he knew for sure was that it was a powerful, complex spell involving both earth and flame, and all spells involving the sphere of flame would burn things. The question was always about how it burned them. Since it was mixed with earth magic, it would probably use lava, but it wasn’t at all clear to him.

  He turned to the next scroll….

  10

  Angus stayed at Nargeth’s inn for six days, spending almost all of the time studying his new scrolls and organizing them into three categories: those he understood well, those he thought he understood well enough to risk casting, and those he didn’t understand beyond a superficial level. He put the last ones on the bottom of his pack so he wouldn’t accidentally grab one of them in the heat of battle. When he finally left, he set the map on top of the scrolls with the pot of healing balm pressing down on top of it.

  The road to the south started out as two narrow ruts cut between thick groves of maple trees, and by the third day it was a carved path through the forest. Then it turned southeast, gradually leaving the densely forested foothills and entering long, sloping, wooded hills. Most of the trees were still maples, but there were also clumps of pine and oak. Beneath them, in the undergrowth, were a myriad of flowers—pink, blue, yellow, white, large, small—and thousands of tiny white butterflies, blue moths, and honeybees. He thought about tracking down a beehive, but decided against it; there was no sense wasting time only to end up stung to death. Still, his magic….

  At the end of the first week, the nauseating stench of stagnant, standing water drowned out the sweetness of the flowers, and mosquitoes replaced the butterflies. Fortunately, the road only skirted the edge of the swamp for two days, and the villages were close enough together for him to find lodging and food at the end of each day’s walk. Then the road forked, with one prong continuing to skirt the southern border of the swamp, and the other heading due south. He took the south road, and by the end of the next day, he had escaped the stench altogether. The villages were further apart, but there were well-established campsites along the way. For four days, the road lay between gradually steepening, rocky foothills heavy with brittle brown grasses, berry bushes, and thorn-encrusted shrubs on one side and rolling, grassy hills on the other. It was easy going; the road was well-traveled, and there were wooden bridges over the rivers and streams that could not be easily forded.

  By the end of the second uneventful week, Angus was tired of hills.

  Low, rolling hills lined with tall brownish-green grass in need of rain. Flowers reeking of powerful, sickly-sweet odors that overwhelmed his sense of smell. Honeybees, butterflies, and moths fluttering all about like massive tiny armies patrolling their kingdoms.

  High
hills dappled with a patchwork of trees—maple, pine, oak—and a rich variegated undergrowth of tangled clumps of the same tall grass, more brown than green. Long peals of shrill birdsong grated on his nerves and gave him a steady throbbing at the base of his neck.

  Steep foothills riddled with berry-bearing thorny thickets, maple groves, and snakes. Lots of snakes. Thin little brown ones that lay in wait on the thickets’ branches, occasionally striking out at a passing songbird enticed by the berries. Gray-black ones large enough to swallow his hand huddled on the ground. And the bright yellow ones that screamed poison.

  Long, arduous climbs up the hill left him breathless, and the quick, easy glide down the other side left his knees quivering. Then up the next hill….

  Little village after little village after little village after little village.

  There were brief moments between villages when he encountered fellow travelers, but most of them had followed the same dull pattern: greet each other, ask about the road ahead, and continue on. When riders came up behind him, he had to step off the road to allow them to pass. He was always wary during these encounters, but they had all proven to be benign interludes. Occasionally, he shared a meal and pleasant conversation with his fellow travelers, and once he had camped for the night with an eccentric old dwarf who had been driven nearly mad from claustrophobia before he’d finally fled topside and found peace.

  He fished in the evenings when the river was near enough to his camp, but mostly all he did was walk. Then, early in the evening of the fifteenth day from Woodwort, the well-traveled ruts turned into mortared cobblestones fitted neatly together. The cobblestones were alternating two-foot square slabs hewn from gray-green and reddish-brown granite. He had been told to expect them, and he knew what they meant: Wyrmwood, a major crossroads where the east-west road from Tyrag intersected the north-south road going through Hellsbreath.

  Wyrmwood was a thriving town with hundreds living there, and even though he couldn’t remember having been there before, he navigated through the streets as if he had been. The town was constructed in a pattern of concentric rings. Beyond the outer wall were the farmers and cropland. The outer wall was a low, three-foot high stone barrier constructed of granite blocks held together with mortar. It was fairly new, judging by the rough granite surface and slightly weather-stained mortar. Just inside the wall was a ring of one-floor, thatch-roofed hovels and single-room shanties. Figures moved furtively among the mud streets like small packs of dogs prowling in the shadows, yipping and laughing as they nipped at each other. Ruffians? Workers heading home? He brought his robe a little closer about him and dropped his consciousness to a slightly deeper level, bringing the magical energy into the periphery of his awareness. No. Miners. Coal mines to the west.