The Serpent's Orb

by Guy Antibes

They ate their next meal at a ramshackle inn three hours to the west of Reoja. Jack was a little disappointed that he didn’t spend more time in the capital of Lajia, but as he thought more about the patriarch, their current path felt like the right one.

  “There is a small market in town. We need to buy Lajian clothes, or we will stick out,” Quist said.

  Helen pursed her lips. “We stick out anyway. Lajians are duskier than all of us, don’t forget hats, caps, or whatever. I’ll wear male garments.”

  Tanner nodded. “I’ll buy the clothes. We need to fill up the bags on our packhorse with supplies, so why don’t you purchase food, Helen? Quist, you watch the horses, and I’ll take Jack. Let’s meet here in a half hour.”

  Soon, four Lajian-looking riders rode out of the little village heading west toward a crossroads that would take them south, according to the map Tanner had purchased in Reoja on the way out. Lajia seemed hotter to Jack, so the lighter Lajian clothes they all wore were more comfortable. Quist’s idea was a good one.

  Quist rode next to Jack, and Tanner and Helen seemed to be swapping stories ahead of them. The wizard leaned over.

  “Have you made any headway with that book of yours?” he asked.

  “Not a lot. It is too dense for me to get much out of it. Maybe we could read parts of it together, and you could explain what I don’t understand?”

  Quist smiled. “Sounds like a good approach. One thing I was wondering about. Didn’t you tell me that Aramore Gant sensed your objects of power?”

  “He did the first time I met him in Bartonsee.”

  “I thought so! That is a fifth level manipulation and an aspect that I never was able to learn myself. I can sense an object when I touch it, most wizards can, but without touch? That is a learned ability. I had never connected that with the restriction to the first three manipulations placed on the Alderachean clergy.”

  “But what if the higher-ups can practice higher levels?” Jack said. “I didn’t think anything of it.”

  Quist looked ahead, seemingly in thought. “We did the right thing leaving Gant behind. I trust him even less, now. There are enough open questions that disturb me, the murders of the two aides, for example. What if the patriarch committed them?”

  “What?” Jack said. His voice made Tanner and Helen turn around. “Let’s stop and talk this out.” Jack was getting more than anxious.

  They rode off the road and stood at the edge of a farmer’s field.

  “Quist thinks the patriarch might have killed his aides,” Jack said. “What do you two think?”

  Tanner rubbed his chin. “If you think of the murders that way and the blood covering the front of the Ppatriarch’s robes, it is very possible. The wounds weren’t made by fighting men. It looked like they kept stabbing each other until one of them died, but there weren’t that any wounds on the men’s hands, now that I remember the two bodies. Inexperienced fighters will try to grasp the blade rather than the wrist of the person wielding the weapon.”

  “To my way of thinking, it is more likely for one person to kill the pair than for them to kill each other fighting.” Helen looked at Tanner. “How many fights have you know of where both parties died?”

  “None,” Tanner said. “The patriarch could have given them both fatal blows, and then carved them up to make it look like a fight.”

  “Same here.” Helen looked at her hands. “If that is the case, do we have any reason not to think the patriarch will be after us?”

  “He isn’t after us,” Quist said. “He is after the Serpent’s Orb.”

  A shiver shot through Jack. “And I have the seeker, but why?”

  “Power,” Quist said. “What else motivates a man of Gant’s former standing? It isn’t Alderach, of that you can be certain.”

  “But what if we are wrong?” Jack asked.

  “Would you rather have the patriarch in our midst thinking as we do?” Helen asked.

  “No. So it doesn’t matter if we are wrong or not.”

  “Only at the end when we confront a Black Finger wizard,” Quist said.

  “Then let us train properly for that confrontation,” Tanner said.

  “As if we haven’t been training already,” Helen said as she mounted her horse. “Let’s get going.”

  ~

  Tanner spread the map of Lajia out on the table. They had been on the southern road for three days without any evidence of being followed by Aramore Gant. “The cube,” he said to Jack, “place it here.” He pointed to where they currently were.

  Jack put the cube on the map. The direction pointed southeast and went through one of the larger cities of Lajia. “Rugiz,” he said. “Is that where we are headed?”

  “Who knows? But it is in line with the cube, and we can’t wander aimlessly looking at the cube every hour,” Tanner said. “So we head there. It looks like three or four more days’ worth of travel.” He pointed to symbols on the map, “It looks like we will be riding over a swamp soon, so who knows if that will slow us up.”

  “Let’s spend a day resting,” Helen said. “The horses have been carrying us for a week, and we could all use some time out of the saddle. The patriarch might decide to seek out Simara Khotes since he doesn’t have access to the orb seeker. He might even arrive in Rugiz before us. I, for one, don’t want to be tired from travel if I have to fight him.”

  “You can’t be afraid of a single man, can you?” Tanner said with half a smile.

  “Do you think he will do everything on his own? A man used to that kind of power will hire people to do his dirty work unless he has no choice.”

  “He was going to get us for free,” Jack said.

  Another group was already at the last camp just before the swamp when they arrived, but they heard the squeals of children playing, so Tanner thought it would be safe to see if there was space for them.

  Four wagons were drawn up in a loose square with cloth draped between the ends creating an enclosed space so that they couldn’t see in. Three men came out from the center with swords drawn, and they didn’t look friendly.

  Tanner dismounted, with Jack joining them. “We wondered if there was enough space for our little group close to here?”

  “You aren’t Lajian,” one of the men said.

  “Ah, you are observant,” Tanner said. “We have business in Rugiz and decided to spend a day here to rest before going through the swamp.”

  The men looked at Jack, Tanner, and the mounted Helen. “You are well armed for simple travelers,” the same man said.

  “And so are you,” Tanner said. “We only want to stay here for a day to rest our horses, as I said.”

  “There is a clearing over there,” the man pointed to the far end of the campsite. “We don’t use that. Do not enter the circle of our wagons or you will be punished.”

  Jack gulped. The way the man said it, it was clear he meant maimed or even killed.

  “Then that is what we will do.” Tanner extended his hand. “I am Tanner Simple, and this is Jack Winder. The woman is Helen Rafter, and the little man is Ozzie Quist.”

  The man grunted. “We are the Soffez family.”

  Jack was interested in the way the man put it. “You are a family?”

  “Can’t you hear our children at play? There are three units among our group.”

  “It is good to hear the voices of children,” Jack said. “Reminds me of home, and I am far from home.”

  “Across the sea in Corand, if I am not mistaken.”

  Jack nodded and smiled. He didn’t get one in return.

  “We will be making camp then,” Tanner said.

  They avoided the wagons, keeping close to the edge of their camp and rode into a smaller clearing, but it had a firepit with rock and log benches. Jack thought it better for their purposes anyway.

  He looked back at the wagons of the Soffez family and was curious about why they identified themselves that way. The man had said three units, but if each wagon held a family then what of the four
th? It was curious, but they had a packhorse, so three riders and a horse that carried their supplies. Maybe it was the same for them.

  They set up camp. Helen made up the fire while the rest of them scavenged for wood. The Soffez family had done a good job scrounging the local area, so Jack moved along the edge of the high ground that faced the swamp below. He finally reached an area that the family hadn’t yet gotten to and began to gather wood.

  He heard voices below him and carefully looked down. Men wearing green clothes were threading their way along the edge of the swamp, gazing up at the forest. They were all Lajians as far as Jack could tell, and looked even less friendly than the Soffez family. He kept the wood he had gathered but moved through the forest as quickly as he could without making too much sound. He dropped the wood at Helen’s feet and ran to the wagons.

  He yelled from one of the curtains and waited impatiently for one of the family members to arrive. “I saw men coming up from the swamp. They were too stealthy to be friendly,” Jack said. “They all wore green.”

  The man’s face showed alarm. “An enemy! You need to flee, or you’ll be caught up in the fight.” He left, and Jack heard excited voices before he returned to the camp. Helen looked up. “What has got you all upset?”

  “I think enemies of the Soffez are on their way to attack them. The man I talked to told us to flee.”

  Helen looked around. “I’m not one to shrink from a fight, and our horses are stripped of their saddles. Do you think we can break camp before the others come?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Then we will fight. I don’t know what side the Soffez family is on, other than their own, but anyone sneaking up on them won’t be any better.” She looked for her weapons and armor over by her saddle. “Get some protection on,” she said, “before you get Tanner and Quist.”

  Jack strapped on his sword and jammed the helmet on his head. He already wore his wand since he had been using it to break down some dead branches. He ran north from the camp along the road and spotted movement further in.

  Tanner and Quist were burdened with arms full of branches.

  “Someone is attacking the Soffez family,” Jack said. “They will probably be coming through our camp. Helen has already been warned.”

  Tanner looked at Quist. “Stay here,” he told the wizard, who didn’t object. Tanner had his sword at his waist, but his armor was back at the camp.

  “They might have already reached Helen,” Jack said.

  The pair of them ran through the forest and ran into Helen, creeping through the trees. Jack pulled his weapons out.

  “There were too many for me, maybe thirty. I came north hoping you would find me. We can attack them from the rear when they engage with the family,” she said.

  Tanner nodded. “First, let’s find a straggler and see if they will give us an idea of who is who.”

  Jack heard a crack in the forest. He turned to see two of the green-garbed men attacking them. He raised his wand and stopped one of them with a bolt through his thigh.

  “Wizards!” the injured man said. The other stopped and fled back the way the two of them came. The captive looked at the points of three blades and looked up with a sneer. “You are going to kill me?”

  “No,” Tanner said, getting down on his haunches. “We have no sides in this fight. You attacked us, so we defended. What is going on?”

  “The filthy Soffez family is what is going on,” the man said grimacing with pain. “They have taken one of our daughters to start another one of their family units.” He spat the words out. “We can’t allow that to happen.”

  “Why not?” Helen said. “Did she go willingly?”

  “Sweet talk often turns the head of a young woman. You should know.”

  Helen unexpectedly blushed. “Sometimes the sweet talk means there is love,” she said.

  “It matters not. The Soffez will pay for their abduction. So it always is with them.”

  “Why?”

  “Their kind take unsuspecting women for their wives.”

  “Are they kidnapped?”

  “What? Of course not! If that were so, then the authorities would seek them out. The women always come voluntarily.”

  Tanner looked at Helen. Jack could see they were communicating with their expression, and he had no idea what they were communicating until Helen slammed her pommel on the man’s head.

  “He was in pain, now he will be unconscious for a while. It is a mercy,” she said with a smirk.

  “Time to join the Soffez,” Tanner said.

  Jack wasn’t so sure, but he followed the other two through the woods. They moved toward the edge of the forest and crept through the trees, hearing the sounds of battle get closer. The fighting was fierce, but with the three of them fighting the less skilled attackers in the rear, they cut a swath through to the wagons.

  Soffez men and women fought the attackers at each entry to the wagons. One of them was already burning. Jack used his wand to distract the men in green and soon the attackers looked behind to find injured men behind them at the feet of Tanner and Helen.

  The Soffez men shouted a truce, and at that, the men in green dropped their swords. The injured littered the camp. Jack wondered, for the first time, if maybe the patriarch’s healing powers would have been needed.

  Tanner, Jack, and Helen walked to where the leaders stood.

  “Who are they?” one of the men in green said.

  “We are sharing the campsite with them. Other than that, they are Corandians visiting our country. They seem to be on our side of this conflict.” The man nodded at Tanner who nodded back.

  “We want our daughter back.”

  “Your daughter? She is an orphan, or so she told us,” the Soffez man said.

  “We treat all the young men and women in the village as our children. You have stolen her.”

  A younger Soffez walked up, holding a bleeding shoulder. “She came freely. It wasn’t too hard since you have been starving your ‘daughter’ after stealing her parents’ possessions.”

  “They were of our village. When one of us departs, why let their things go to ruin?” the man said.

  “Stealing all the food in the house?”

  The man looked a bit sheepish. “The village has to eat.”

  “Winna needed to eat, yet you left her with nothing. She willingly came with me,” the injured Soffez said.

  “She is the property of the village. We can do what we want with her.”

  “Is that how you treat a daughter?” Jack said. “She has paid for her freedom, as far as I can tell since you seized her dowry.” Jack didn’t even know if they had dowries in Lajia.

  “Stay out of this, Corandian,” the green dressed man said.

  “But he speaks the truth. Leave us or the fight will turn deadly. Look behind you. Those men can’t fight, but they can be killed if you press us. It looks like we even have a wizard on our side,” the Soffez leader said, looking at Jack, who responded by waving his wand.

  The green leader gnashed his teeth. “We give you our parole,” he said. “May we stay long enough to bind our wounds?”

  “We will even help,” the young Soffez man said.

  Armed members of the family stood guard as all the attackers were seen to. The man Jack had shot in the leg hobbled into the camp, leaning on his sword. Jack remembered a branch he had found and fashioned a crutch for the man.

  The Soffez family fed the attackers before watching them walk along the road, heading northwest to their village.

  “We will set up sentries,” the Soffez leader said. “I am Heros, leader of these units of the Soffez family. You may eat with us tonight if you are willing.”

  Tanner smiled. “We would be delighted since our own meal was significantly delayed. We will tend to our own wounds and retrieve Quist, who isn’t a fighter, and return.”

  Heros chuckled. “That will be fine. Our evening meal was delayed as well.”

  ~

 
“Do you often take young girls from villages?” Tanner asked after dinner was served.

  “Of course we do. We travel in family units all over Lajia selling our wares. Soffez families are encouraged to attend markets since we always have a supply of unique items. Some we make and others we buy,” a young Soffez man said.

  “We generally have two- and three-unit families, but one of our young men caught the eye of an impoverished village girl to the east. It is an insular village, so we didn’t know their ways. To create a family, a young man finds a village girl and brings her along. Inbreeding among our clan is forbidden. If it is a young girl who finds a man, she generally stays behind. We won’t accept just anyone to travel with us. There are many thousands of towns and villages with Soffez blood running in their residents’ veins, even many in the cities,” Heros said.

  “Does this kind of thing happen often?”

  Heros shook his head. “I have heard of such things, but this is the first time I have witnessed it. What is more common are robbers seeking to steal our goods. We were wondering about the four of you, but four is never enough against a three unit family group.”

  “Do you have four-unit families?” Jack asked.

  “Not for long. We Soffez have our own town that manufactures many of our goods. If a family is too large, one of the units returns to our home. That is enough about us. What brings you to Lajia?”

  Jack guessed that the village they just fought wasn’t the only insular one in Lajia.

  “We are on a quest,” Tanner said. “Jack’s master, a wizard whom all four of us know, had a valuable bauble stolen from him. We tracked the thief to Lajia and suspect she is in the city of Rugiz.”

  “You are on a road that does not come straight from Reoja, why is that?”

  The man was sharp, thought Jack.

  “We might be pursued by another, a powerful wizard who is after the same thing, so we take a slightly different path to Rugiz.”

  “An object of power? It must be very strong to lure you across the Northern Sea,” Heros said. “There are objects to be found in Lajia, but most are in private collections. I can tell you no more.”

  “I respect that,” Tanner said.

  Jack looked across the fire at Helen talking to a Soffez woman. He hoped she was getting much the same story that Tanner was. Quist had found a grandfather fond of the liquor the Soffez carried. Jack wondered who was getting information from whom.