Go Quest Young Man

by K. B. Bogen

  Chesric looked from Erwyn to the fire and back. “Good point.” He used the point of his sword again, this time to open the door slightly.

  Erwyn moved his bedroll way from the door.

  “Decided not to sleep by the door, huh?”

  “Too drafty.”

  “Too drafty. Not drafty enough. Ye sure are difficult to please, all of a sudden.” Chesric replied testily. But the edges of his mustache twitched upward.

  Smiling, Erwyn plopped atop his bed and sat staring into the fire. Flakes of snow drifted down through their makeshift chimney to melt, hissing, in the flames. They passed the rest of the evening in silence, the warmth of the fire helping to soothe tired muscles and aching joints.

  They retired for the night hoping the snow would stop and allow them to resume their journey the next day. It didn’t.

  They awoke the next morning cold and sore and half grumpy. Erwyn’s half, anyway.

  “I wish ye’d stop bein’ such a wet blanket.”

  “I am not a wet blanket. This is a wet blanket.” Erwyn peeled his cover off and turned it over. “I’ve reversed this thing five or six times, and it never seems to get completely dry. Maybe if I threw it into the fire ... ?”

  “Nah, as wet as that thing is, it’d just get steamed. Anyway,” Chesric rushed on before Erwyn could comment, “we’ve got some time on our hands. You handled the edification; I’ll handle the education. It’s time fer sword practice.”

  “In here? With the fire?”

  “You think you’d rather do it out there?” Chesric nodded toward the door and the blizzard behind it. “A little sword dance around the flame’ll do ye some good. Teach you to think fast.”

  He was already thinking fast. But not fast enough to come up with an excuse not to practice. At least, not one Chesric would accept. He could only hope the snow would clear soon and end his current misery.

  The cold white blanket continued to fall for days. Chesric busied himself with something he called “callys-thenics,” and trying to teach Erwyn to use the assortment of weapons and equipment in that bottomless pack of his.

  Erwyn mostly worried. He worried about the drifts of snow building up against a door made of sand. He worried about the piles of snow building up atop a roof made of sand. He worried about accidentally releasing the spell that held the castle together and waking up buried under a mountain of sand and ice. He worried too much.

  One morning, no snow drifted through the hole in the ceiling and Erwyn noticed a tiny shaft of sunlight bouncing off the soot-blackened crystals that had formed around their chimney.

  “Looks like we might be able to leave today,” observed Chesric.

  “With all that snow piled up against the door?” Erwyn’s voice squeaked again. “Not to mention the ten- or twenty-foot drifts we’ll have to trudge through to get across the valley?”

  “No fear, we’ll find a way through.” Chesric chuckled. “We have to. We’re out of firewood.”

  Chesric crossed the room that had been their home for the last few days and carefully opened the entrance.

  Outside, bearing a perfect imprint of the door, was a wall of snow higher than the opening. Erwyn nudged his way past his companion. At which point the entire drift collapsed into the opening.

  Erwyn jumped backward, yelping.

  Too late. Snow covered his pants to the knees. Clumps of it melted into the tops of his boots faster than he could dig them out. He sat down on the floor, thoroughly soaked and miserable, glaring at Chesric from beneath a lock of hair grown too long to shove back on his forehead.

  Chesric stood there with a smile poking from between his beard and mustache. Erwyn could see his friend’s sides quivering. Chesric was laughing at him!

  The boy’s eyes narrowed in sudden anger. The old man shouldn’t be laughing at him.

  “A GOOD WORKMAN ALWAYS SELECTS TOOLS THAT CAN BE REUSED OVER A PERIOD OF TIME. THE SAME CAN BE SAID OF EVIL WORKMEN.” — Sorcerers’ Almanac, Section Five: On Things to Watch Out For

  That didn’t make sense. Why was he so angry all of a sudden?

  Words formed in his head, power gathered around him. He felt giddy, as though something pulled him outside himself, forcing him to be a spectator to his own actions.

  That feeling he recognized! It felt just like the trip through the forest, right before he met Sharilan.

  Sparks collected at the tips of his fingers, building, ready to leap toward the unsuspecting man.

  Horrified, Erwyn tried to stop himself, stop the completion of a spell he didn’t know. But he couldn’t. The spell’s energy had built too high.

  He had to direct it somewhere, or it would backfire. On him.

  Still sitting in an undignified position on the floor, he swiveled toward the entrance at the moment the spell was unleashed.

  Lightning crackled, blasting through the open door of the sandcastle.

  The backwash of the spell dried Erwyn’s soaked clothing, scorched the sand in front of him. But outside ... outside, the spell vaporized a path through the snow for more than a half mile!

  “Well, that solves us the problem of clearing a way out of here,” Chesric observed casually. But his eyes told the truth. He knew that blast had been meant for him.

  “Th-that wasn’t me!” Erwyn shivered in the cool air. “I d-don’t even know that spell. What happened?” He looked up at Chesric, his eyes wide with fear.

  Chesric regarded his young friend for a long moment before answering. “I’m not sure, but I have an idea or two.” He paused, considering. “This might be reaching a bit, but ... ”

  Erwyn, in the middle of scrambling to his feet, stopped. “But what?”

  “I was thinking about Sharilan.”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, I’ve heard that she has this, well, habit of frying anyone who has the misfortune to anger her.” Chesric paused again, stroking his mustache. “Your little ... outburst ... reminded me of a description I once heard of one of her tantrums.”

  “It felt like one, too. But how ... why ... could she really do that? Use me like that? Long distance?”

  “Maybe. But I suspect she’d sort of need some help. You tell me. You’re the sorcerer.”

  “The wand! She gave it to me.” Erwyn finished standing up, then reached into the pocket where he kept the length of petrified wood.

  “I don’t think so,” Chesric replied. “Too obvious. There must be something else.”

  The old man looked from Erwyn to the pack lying innocently in the corner.

  “Did you ever get close to her? Less than arm’s length?”

  Erwyn tried to remember his meeting with the sorceress, but it was like trying to remember a dream.

  “I think so. I’m not sure, but I probably did get pretty close to her. It was a small clearing.”

  Something bothered him about that meeting. Or at least his memory of it. He didn’t usually have trouble remembering things. Important things. But the more he tried to remember of that brief encounter, the harder it became.

  While Erwyn stood with his hands pressed to his temples, striving to clarify the memory, Chesric picked up the boy’s pack. “Perhaps there’s something in here.” He handed the bag to Erwyn.

  “I doubt it. It would probably have to be something I’d have near me all the time. Packs can get lost or be carried by someone else.” He sighed. “Might as well have a look, though.”

  He sat down wearily and rummaged through his belongings. Flipping through his spellbook, he found nothing unusual among its yellowed pages or leather bindings.

  A similar inspection of his journal revealed no more information than the spellbook.

  Erwyn sighed, gazing at the journal. He was hopelessly behind on his accounts of his travels. But it probably didn’t matter, since the accounts were just fiction. Real life
seemed to be a little more interesting just now.

  He finished his inspection of the pack’s contents. Nothing there. The pack itself, though showing signs of wear, revealed nothing unusual either.

  “Ah, well. If it’s here, we’ll find it, sooner or later,” Chesric said philosophically.

  “Personally,” Erwyn replied, “I’d rather find it sooner than later.” He repacked his things and climbed to his feet. “I guess we’d better move. There’s no telling how long the castle will last.”

  Chesric glanced apprehensively toward the ceiling, then gathered his own pack. They left the shelter of the building and realized for the first time just how much shelter it provided.

  Outside the door, the wind raced across the drifts of snow, slipping icily across the crevice cut by Erwyn’s blast.

  Hugging his still-ensorcelled cloak about him, Erwyn turned to close the door to the castle.

  The slab of solidified sand swung closed with a muffled thud. And the entire structure collapsed into a heap at Erwyn’s feet.

  The two adventurers stared at the sand dune. All that was left of their home for the last several days.

  “At least now we know how long the spell lasts,” Chesric observed.

  Check Your Bags Before You Leave the Inn

  We Don’t Need No Stinking Beaches

  “SOMETIMES IT IS EASIER TO MOVE THE WHOLE MOUNTAIN THAN TO REDUCE IT TO THE SIZE OF A MOLEHILL.” — Sorcerers’ Almanac, Section Six: On the Successful Use of Magic

  “Yeah. As long as we need it. But not long enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think I forgot something.” He patted his pockets, trying to find the something.

  “Nothing important, I hope.”

  “No. Just the wand.”

  “The wand!”

  Erwyn tried to look apologetic. “I think I set it down while we were going through my pack.”

  “Could you have put it in the pack when you repacked it?”

  Chesric turned from an appraisal of the mound of sand in front of him. His expression told Erwyn that the old knight didn’t hold much hope of finding anything under the remains of the castle, much less a tiny branch ten inches long.

  “I can look,” Erwyn replied, “but I don’t think it’s there. I distinctly remember setting it on the ground. And I don’t recall picking it up again.” He sat down and began once more to unpack his stuff.

  The sun overhead seemed pale in comparison to the warmth of summer, but it still melted some of the snow. It trickled onto the pathway, right where Erwyn was sitting. And melted snow was still water. His pants were soaked again.

  To make matters worse, the wand was definitely not in the pack, or in Erwyn’s pockets. Which left the sand. He looked up at Chesric.

  “I don’t suppose I could just leave it there?”

  “Somehow, I can find it in me to doubt the wisdom of such a move.” Chesric smiled grimly, crossing his arms over his chest. Erwyn took that as a sure sign that they would stay where they were until the wand was found.

  He glared at the sand mound, then wearily rose to his feet and approached it.

  “By the way,” he said casually and began sifting through the mound, “what happened to your accent?”

  “My what?” Chesric joined the boy in his search with no outward reaction to Erwyn’s question.

  “Your accent. Up until a short time ago, you sounded like some uneducated wanderer most of the time, except for an uncanny knowledge of magic.” Erwyn continued to sift through the sand, scooping up handfuls and depositing them in a pile behind him. “But since this morning, you seem to have acquired a bit more polish ... ugh!”

  At that moment, Erwyn struck water. Or, more precisely, mud. The sand where he was digging had fallen atop a drift of snow. Melted snow. And melted snow was ... well, he’d covered that before. His hands were cold and wet, and covered with cold, wet sand.

  He tried to wipe the sand off, but only succeeded in smearing it around. Now, the front of his pants was covered with wet sand, instead of just wet water.

  Erwyn stopped for a moment and examined his backside. As he suspected, he’d already gotten sand on the back of his trousers, too. Globs of the stuff.

  Well, at least the front matched the back. Erwyn sighed and returned to his digging.

  Chesric, without pausing, replied to Erwyn’s unfinished question in a voice that came from somewhere at the top of his nasal passages. “Perhaps being in such close proximity to such an obviously educated gentleman as yourself has rubbed off on me a little, young master.” He emphasized his statement with a bow and flourish, then returned to his work.

  “Do you normally talk like that?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, were you using your real voice earlier?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, are you going to tell me what you really sound like?”

  Chesric smiled and kept digging. “Nope.”

  Erwyn sighed. Someday he’d find out.

  The deeper they dug, the harder the digging became. Both of them were damp with sweat.

  “Rats!” Erwyn tossed the edge of his cloak behind his shoulder for the fourth time.

  “Problem?”

  “I can’t dig in this stuff with a wet, sand-coated cloak clinging to my arms.”

  “So, take it off.”

  “Right. Then I can just freeze to death. That wind is cold.” He stopped complaining long enough to think about it. Would it really be that much colder without the cloak, as wet as it was?

  “Or,” Chesric added, digging into another mound of mud, “you could simplify this by rebuilding that castle.”

  Erwyn considered the idea for a moment before replying. “I doubt it. So far, I haven’t managed to create one castle on purpose, remember? Then again, how do we know it isn’t the wand that does the work? The damn thing collapsed when I closed the door, and I didn’t have the wand!”

  “Could be, could be. But still, isn’t there some way we could get this done a little faster? At this rate, we’ll be here for a week.”

  Erwyn had been digging furiously since he’d answered Chesric’s question. Now his jabs at the sand got slower and slower.

  “Maybe, just maybe ... ”

  He stood, wiping his hands on his pants, feeling the weight and texture of the sand beneath his palms. He thought about what he would do, remembering the feel of the wand when he last held it. Carefully, he built his levitation spell, spreading it over the entire area of the sand mound.

  With the size and weight of the wand in mind, he tried to filter it from the sand. Then he lifted the entire mound.

  Before, levitation had been effortless, or mostly effortless. But lifting a mound of sand the size of a castle, even a small one, required real effort.

  He neck muscles tensed, straining, as though he were actually lifting the sand himself. Which he was, in a way.

  The mass of sand rose slowly, inch by weary inch.

  He added more power to the spell. Sweat trickled into his eyes, running down the back of his neck in rivulets.

  He fought the urge to reach up and wipe his eyes. He needed all his concentration.

  When the sand cleared the ground by four feet or so, Erwyn risked a glance underneath. There was the wand, just two feet ahead of where they were digging. Two feet and five or six hours of work, the ordinary way.

  Licking his lips, Erwyn said, “Chesric, you’ll have to go under there and get it.” His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t hold this spell and get the wand, too.” He closed his eyes. He just couldn’t bear to watch.

  He heard Chesric’s boots scrape across the ground, followed by grunting, as though the old man were lifting something heavy. Erwyn opened his eyes quickly. Not-watching was worse than watching. His imagination conjure
d up worse things than reality.

  Chesric, hunched over to avoid hitting the slab of sand overhead, inched toward the wand. Twice, he looked apprehensively from the sandy roof, to Erwyn, and back again. In spite of his fears, he continued on. He reached the wand and grabbed it. Then he paused, holding it in both hands for a moment, as though praying.

  “Hurry,” Erwyn whispered, “I can’t hold out much longer.”

  Chesric risked one more anxious look at the slab. Then he scrambled backward, away from the slice of sand.

  Erwyn shook from the exertion. He didn’t even notice when Chesric crawled out in front of him.

  “Just one more minute, one more minute ... ”

  “You lose this?” Chesric held out the wand.

  Erwyn jumped. His concentration broken, the sand fell to earth, sending clouds of grit into the air.

  “Yeah. Thanks heaps.”

  Coughing and only half conscious, Erwyn fell on top of the sand. His breathing was ragged, but he smiled and took the wand from Chesric.

  “I sure hope this thing was worth all the trouble.”

  Chesric sat down, massaging Erwyn’s neck. “All this and more, I suspect. All this and more.”

  Interruptions, Interruptions

  Hold On While I Recharge My Batteries

  “THE EASIER THE ROUTE, THE MORE LIKELY IT IS THAT SOMEONE ELSE IS USING IT, AS WELL.” — Sorcerers’ Almanac, Section One: On Getting the Lay of the Land

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  He had rested, eaten, and dried out, and now Erwyn felt ready to continue their trek.

  Chesric indicated the slash through the snow, the walls of which were already turning to slush in the sunlight. “I thought we’d follow the path you so conveniently cut for us. After digging through all that sand, I’m not really in the mood to dig my way through the snow, as well.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t do all that much digging. Besides, it goes in the wrong direction!”