The Sorcerer of Wands: Azabar's Icicle Part 2

by Jem I Kelley

  “Certainly someone who looked a lot like him, don't you think?” replied Aden. “I don’t know what an Amari would be doing in a market in Dazarian though.”

  Bliss puffed out her cheeks and then blew out the air in them with a whoosh.

  “It did look like the water seller.”

  Aden continued to search the edges of the clearing for clues to Spud’s murderer. He pushed down some stinging nettles with his boots, and then inspected the ground there for clues.

  “I thought all the Amari left this world years ago.”

  “Perhaps one didn't. But why would one stay behind, and why be secret about it?”

  Aden was puzzled by the possibilities of the water-seller's identity, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

  “Amari are the least of our worries right now, though.”

  “True. We've got our artefact world to think about, and this murder, and why Spud mentioned the name of a sorcerer who died a thousand years ago – when he choked.”

  Aden climbed the boulder and sat upon it next to Bliss. He remembered that Duncan, the priest, had said that this sorcerer, Azabar, had commanded bugbears when he'd invaded the North many hundreds of years ago. Aden pictured bugbears and a sorcerer attacking the walls that his parent's sheltered behind, up in Novogorad, now in the present, and he shuddered. Then another thought hit him.

  “Marti comes from Novogorad, I'm surprised he said he hadn’t heard of Azabar.”

  “He did say the name sounded familiar…” Bliss looked carefully at Aden, seemed to guess his thoughts, and narrowed her eyes: “We’ve already got things totally wrong about the powder on the Grey Hind. Don't start suspecting Marti of bad things now, Aden.”

  Aden felt irritation well up inside of him. “It's my parents that are in danger up there, Bliss. I'm allowed to be nervous.”

  And before Bliss could reply, another idea struck Aden. “What if Azabar’s Icicle has been found? That wand that can make a giant ice-golem once each day. An ice-golem could smash Novogorad’s walls, letting the bugbears in. We have to warn someone.”

  Bliss’s face was firm. “Warn someone about what? That Marti is involved in some Azabar cult? Do you really think that's likely? Anyhow, Plumbert’s off to Solant now, and we never mentioned to him what Spud said when he died. If he finds out we kept this from him, he's going to be miffed.”

  Aden glared at Bliss as anger momentarily surged through his veins. He took a deep breath and allowed himself to calm down.

  “You’re right. I’m getting carried away. There’s a lot of strange stuff going on, and Marti isn't quite what he seems; but anything else is guesswork. So what do we do?”

  Bliss shrugged, and put her hand on top of Aden's.

  “Keep our eyes and ears open? I think maybe we should have told Plumbert about what Spud had said, but we didn't. Not sure how to go about doing that now.”

  Aden shrugged. “Nor me. I guess we're suckers for wanting mystery and adventure, and don't want the grown-ups to take all the fun away.”

  Bliss smiled wanly. “Only... since Spud's murder, fun and adventure is getting scary and complicated.”

  A sharp cry pierced the air, followed by the sound of groaning, causing the hair on Aden’s forearms to stand on end.

  The noise came from near the clearing in the trees, but from the opposite side to where they’d entered.

  Bliss was on her feet.

  “W... what’s that?”

  Aden jumped off the boulder and stared at the direction of the noise.

  “It’s not night this time, let’s take a look.”

  Bliss paused for a moment, before nodding, and jumping off the boulder to stand beside Aden. “Okay.... but let's be careful.”

  Together they raced through the undergrowth.

  The trees thinned and the friends found themselves on a lawn dotted with statues. Surrounding the lawn were oaks and beeches. Aden noticed flower beds circled many of the statues and standing beside one was Hamble’s friend, Arple.

  On one leg, and jumping from side-to-side the man held his other foot with both hands.

  “You all right?” shouted Aden.

  Arple turned his head, “Happn, fine,” he shouted in reply. Dropping to the floor, he began to pull the laces from a boot.

  “We’d better see what’s wrong,” said Aden marching towards the man.

  Bliss tugged at his elbow.

  “We don’t know him very well, and this isn’t far from where Spud was killed.”

  “He doesn’t look like a murderer to me.”

  “How many murderers do you know?”

  Aden rolled his eyes. “Really?”

  Within seconds they'd both reached the druid.

  “What’s wrong?” said Aden to Arple. He noticed a smell surrounding the man. Mint, rosemary, chives and sage came to mind.

  Arple pointed to a garden fork, before fastening a large handkerchief to his foot. Red blossomed on the cloth.

  “Speared meeself with the sharp end 'O that I did. Danged idiot. That’s what yer get when ya starts to day-dream on a digging job. What you two doing?”

  Aden nodded back up the slope to the woods.

  “Looking at where Spud got murdered.”

  Arple’s eyes widened beneath his unruly hair before narrowing in suspicion.

  “Heard about that. Last night weren’t it. Just up there, eh? You two found the body?”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t do it,” said Bliss.

  Arple’s eyes swivelled rapidly from left to right as if he were determining an escape route.

  “Ha! Didn’t say ya did. Never thought it neither. Funny business though.”

  “Not for Spud,” said Bliss. She looked at all the statues around them. “Where are we? What are all these for?”

  “Where are we? I thought you two lived in this city all yer lives? That’s a bit like a sailor asking me what a jib is, ain’t it?”

  Aden put his hands on his hips.

  “Haverland’s pretty big, and we don't normally come to this part of it.”

  “Ah, right, I see. Not your patch eh? Would ‘ave got beaten up by the local kids when you was young if you strayed this far, eh?”

  “There would have been trouble,” said Bliss.

  “Fort as much,” said Arple, possibly smiling, though his mouth was covered by his dense beard and Aden couldn’t be sure. “Well if you don’t know much about this place, let me tell yah. This yer, is part of Marchant park, as yer probably do know. It’s a strange park, is old Marchant. It’s divided into different areas by strips o’ woodland. Boundaries of trees some might say. There’s the central area with the fishing lake… he he he… that’s where you lost the giant fish, so you must know about that part; then there’s this statue area and the gorge area and finally there’s ‘questrian area where-in all they nobs rides their horses.”

  Bliss made a face.

  “Not all rich people are bad.”

  She made a motion with her arm, and added: “So this is the statue part of the park, is it? What’s the idea?”

  Arple put the boot back on his foot, and threaded the laces in a loose fashion. His weathered face winced with pain.

  “This is all about them nobs, er rich people. People who have more money than’s good for them - they has a statue erected here if they feels like it. Kings and yer like get statues put in squares, avenues and Cathedrals. This place is fer commoners with plenty O’ gold to spare who want themselves immortalised.”

  He indicated a statue of a court jester, complete with bells on hat. It stood on a wide plinth, fully twice the size of a real person.

  “Take that ‘un. What a waste of money.”

  Aden smiled. “I suppose the jester who commissioned it, liked it.”

  Bliss pointed at the flower bed around the statue.

  “You look after that?”

  “Happn so, It’s part of the park ain’t it? Still, it’s no real problem to old Arple. If he ain’t day-dreaming t
hat is. I’d better take meeself down to me hut, to get something on this foot; before I gets lockjaw or worse. You two come with me, and I’ll give you a couple of those cuts from yer big Cod I promised ya. Are you up for that?”

  The mention of food, and it being near dinnertime, caused Aden’s stomach to grumble.

  “If you’re not worried that we’re going to murder you.”

  Arple laughed.

  “I am partly, I gotta admit. But I can’t be rude ta friends of Hamble’s, now can I?”

  Chapter 46: the Derelict Tower

  The next week slipped by. A quiet week was unexpected, but since coming home to Haverland, Aden’s life had been as predictable as the weather.

  Hacknor didn’t pull them over the coals for getting ink on the paper in the Cathedral library; which meant, either Duncan hadn’t told Thalding, or Thalding hadn’t told Hacknor, or Hacknor was feeling lenient. On balance, Aden decided the most likely explanation was they owed Duncan a favour.

  A lot of people who’d been cold towards Aden had thawed. Discovering Grimus was leader of a gang of crooks and almost getting killed in the process, led to a sympathetic attitude towards him from many. Negative articles on the Wall became as rare as icy puddles in summer. The thing about the Wall, Aden had to admit, was it amplified gossip for good or bad; and at the moment the going was good.

  A policeman (not Plumbert) paid the friends a visit during the week and told them they were no longer official suspects in the killing of Spud because he was murdered in a very unusual way; in what unusual way, the policeman wouldn’t say. This led to intense speculation by the friends. What sort of way could you kill someone which would automatically exclude them from suspicions, and why wouldn’t the police tell them (or anyone for that matter) what that way was? Aden thought rare poisons must have been involved. Bliss said she’d heard assassins in the East could kill by touching ‘special death spots’ on the body.

  Between embroidering stories concerning Spud’s death, the Wall enjoyed itself with character assassination of Grimus. Had Grimus killed Spud? Was Grimus in the pay of Dazarian? Did the murder three years ago of little Sett Green have anything to do with Grimus? Could the failure of the potato crop be the work of the man?

  ‘I thought Grimus was suspect when he short-changed me on a bracelet sale’, says one source. ‘I knew Grimus as a lad; he made money selling toffee-apples out of season. Always on the make even then’, said another article.

  Spud’s murder changed the late-shift routine on the market. All the younger children were instructed to be escorted back to their house at the end of the day, as a precaution. This ruling by Hacknor affected the friends little as they continued to operate under the curfew Plumbert had imposed on them before his departure for Solant.

  Marti-Bart introduced two of his skeletons to the market. Because of public sensibilities, the skeletons worked at night. Marti promised to monitor their activities for a trial period. Plumbert made sure the night-watchman kept a check on Marti; ostensibly this was for the man’s own safety, though Aden wondered if the market foreman was scared the skeletons might damage the market somehow.

  Granddad Todd used the artefact to travel to the new World near the end of the week and reported nothing changed. He could see the green patches and the blur in the distance, but not any movement; perhaps, he’d said, it was too far away to spot people anyway?

  He’d taken candles into the dark interior of the tunnels that Aden had sweated buckets of fear exploring, and found two rooms, both empty. The walls showed traces of paint, long faded; dust lay in piles. He'd given the rooms a sweep and brought in a stool so he could sit and look from the tunnel entrance with a cup of tea in-hand.

  ‘Stuffing hot there,’ he said. “I reckon I’d melt if it weren’t for the shade of the tunnels.’

  ‘Think about what you going to call the world’ He’d said. ‘After all it’s your artefact disc, and so you get to give the world a name. Can’t go around calling it ‘the disc-world’.

  “What about Sandy?” said Bliss, as she and Aden reached the last of the carved steps that ran like a long thread from the mountain ledge, to the valley floor far below.

  It had been a long descent and the heat’d pummelled Aden’s body. Once, he’d touched the top of his hat and wondered if it was about to catch fire, so hot was it. It didn’t and he was glad of the protection it gave.

  He put his hands to his knees and let his tongue loll. His shirt stuck to his body, and drops of sweat tickled as they slid from his armpits. He sucked his tongue to bring moisture to it.

  “Sandy? It doesn’t sound right. Not like Argent or Adventurine.”

  The weekend, and Saturday morning, had come so quick the friends were almost unprepared for the adventuring that lay ahead. The evening before, they’d told Bliss’s parents they were going fishing tomorrow and would be back before bed-time. Martha replied they’d be back during the day because they were still under curfew, even on their day off. So they promised to be back by tea-time, instead; which, thought Aden, probably wasn’t the sort of thing Kurt or Sally’d done when they’d gone exploring.

  Granddad Todd promised to say he’d seen the friends leave the house at seven in the morning. The friends hadn’t left the house; they’d gone to the roof and used the artefact disc from there.

  Aden fetched a skin from his haversack and poured water into his mouth.

  “Anyway, the place is rocky, not sandy.”

  “Rocky is a rubbish name for a world,” said Bliss.

  Aden’s eyes swept across the valley floor. Boulders and stones littered the ground to the horizon, quiet and still; lifeless brush-strokes of reds, yellows and grey that defied the eye to make sense of. The green patches in the distance shimmered in the heat as nothing more than a faint suggestion. On either side mountain-sides loomed, their slopes streaked with colour.

  He stashed the water skin back in the haversack.

  “Okay, we pass on Sandy and Rocky.”

  Bliss wiped her forehead with a sleeve, then lifted her covered hands before Aden.

  “Well it’s hot. That’s what, bloody hot, and we’ve only got this far. I’m sweating like a pig, so why have I got to wear gloves?”

  “Because otherwise the sun would burn you so bad it’d look like you got a couple of well done lobsters on the end of your wrists. That’s what happened to Kurt on his first desert expedition. He always made sure he covered up afterwards. Think what your mum would say when we returned ‘from fishing’ looking like that.

  Bliss lowered her hands and a smile grew on her dark skinned face.

  “I think she’d have a heart attack. None of my family have ever had sunburn, and now I come home from fishing on a cloudy autumn day and my skin’s turned red? She’ll think a sorcerer’s been at me.”

  It’d taken an hour to get to foot of the mountain. Even wearing shirts with collar up, and wide brimmed hats, the heat was hard to bear. Aden felt knackered.

  They found rest in the lee of a boulder. With such a huge sun in the sky resting occasionally in shade was important. They relaxed, taking sips from their water skins. The water tasted funny with iodine crystals dissolved inside, but this was necessary to keep it disease free. One of Sally Blaine’s expeditions, to find the Arachnie giant bluebottle, had half the expedition members die from fouled water, Aden’d discovered.

  Walking and resting formed the pattern of the expedition for hours as they picked their way across the simmering ground. Half an hour walking, then half an hour rest.

  Aden took off his shoes, and massaged his feet, as the two rested beside a boulder the size of a house. The air hung silent and hot. It reminded him of being close to Ted’s bread ovens in Haverland. Suffocating heat, would be the word of for it: pervasive and sapping.

  There is no life here, he thought, staring at the parched ground. The opposite of Adventurine, where there is so much. No monsters either, he thought, disappointed. He’d scrutinised every boulder he passed when he
’d reached the valley floor, and they’d all been uneven in shape – not a symmetrical Boulder Beeble amongst them. Nor did Boo-Slang Blimps drift in the skies.

  He wiped the sweat from his face, wetted his throat from the water skin, and allowed life to seep into his body. An expedition, he decided, was harder to do than read about. Neither Kurt nor Sally mentioned the water in their canisters became so warm or their soles of feet so painful.

  He took a sandwich from his haversack and inspected the solid shape.

  “Want one?”

  Bliss pulled something into view and her face fell.

  “No, I’ve got my own hard dry sandwich.”

  A bite left Aden’s mouth filled with a sawdust-like lump.

  “None of the books I read about Artefact World expeditions said your sandwiches got like this. They said expeditions could be tough, they were right on that score, but they could have mentioned the sandwiches.”

  Bliss bit into her sandwich and made a face before chewing slowly.

  “This isn’t much fun is it? Nothing like what I thought it’d be. I just hope we find an abandoned city smack full of treasure. Most expeditions I’ve heard of end in lots of treasure. I reckon putting up with this grokkin heat is the price you gotta pay.”

  Aden paused in his meal.

  “I think a lot of expeditions didn’t find anything. It’s just no-one talks or writes about those.”

  Bliss stopped chewing. She had the astonished look on her face.

  “You’re joking?!”

  “No.”

  “Even Kurt's expeditions?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean we walked all the way through this grokkin heat and we might not get anything at the end of it?!”

  “I did say that we might not find much when we first talked about the expedition.”

  “I thought you were teasing me.”

  “No.”

  Bliss looked at her sandwich, frowned, and stuffed it back into her haversack.