Lieutenant Jarhad glared down at him, and Giorge faced ahead of them again. It wasn’t a very interesting view, though; lots of pine trees and men riding horses on an old, overgrown road.
“Well, that’s what they are, and she started tying knots. I couldn’t see them, of course, but if you watch their hands and imagine that they are playing with strings, you can sort-of follow the movements well enough to see what kind of knots they are making. At least, with the simple spells. Some of those complicated ones look like they’re weaving a blanket without a loom. This one wasn’t as complicated as that, but it wasn’t simple enough for me to follow, either. Kind of like when you tat lace. It can be simple, complicated, or anywhere in between.”
“Giorge,” Lieutenant Jarhad grumbled.
Giorge fought the urge to smile. Instead, he shrugged and continued. “Well, she cast a spell and whatever Darby had done was undone and she opened the secret door that led to the passage that led to the tunnel system under the temple ruins where the nexus was located.”
“Was located?” Lieutenant Jarhad interrupted.
Giorge frowned. He had let that slip, hadn’t he? It didn’t matter, of course, since he was going to tell him about that, anyway—but in his own time. He nodded. “I’m getting to that,” he said. “It was clear that Darby had already been there—his spell told us that—but we didn’t know how far ahead of us he was. You see, the nexus isn’t easy to reach when you know where to look for it, and it’s a lot more difficult when you don’t know where to look. And,” he emphasized it to highlight its importance, “Embril wasn’t seeing any disruption in the nexus. She was certain he hadn’t found it yet. Of course, she was wrong about that.” So far, what Giorge had said was mostly true, and that made it easy to tell the story. But the rest—the lies—had to be just as believable as the half-truths.
“You know,” he said, “Embril can run pretty fast when she sets her mind to it. You should have seen her scampering through those corridors with that pretty blue robe of hers fluttering out behind her.” He smiled at the memory, and then continued. “But she wasn’t fast enough. Darby had already taken The Tiger’s Eye. We just didn’t know it yet.”
“The Tiger’s Eye?” Lieutenant Jarhad repeated. “Embril mentioned that before you left. What is it? What does it have to do with the nexus?”
“Oh,” Giorge said without thinking, “It’s a ruby about the size of my head.” He barely paused as he added, “It’s a sort of focal point—at least, that’s what Angus said it was when he described it to me. The magic comes up through the ground and hits it, and then The Tiger’s Eye spreads it out all over the place. Without the focal point, the magic sort of spills out all over and goes wherever it wants to go.”
Giorge didn’t give the Lieutenant time to respond. “We found out it was gone when we got close to where it was supposed to be,” he said. “The closer we got, the more apparent the disruption in the nexus became to Embril. I couldn’t see it, of course, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have understood it. That’s when we started looking for Darby. We thought he was still in the tunnels, since he hadn’t left the temple ruins and we hadn’t seen him on our way down to the tunnels. But after doing a pretty thorough search, we realized he wasn’t down there anymore. Somehow, he had gotten out without us seeing him.” He shook his head. “It was probably a spell. Angus can disappear entirely—” he glanced behind him “Did you know that? He played a trick on me once. That’s how I know about The Tween Effect. He made himself disappear and dropped the mushroom dust into the fire. The smoke—”
Giorge suddenly stopped talking, ducked under Lieutenant Jarhad’s arm, and leaned out so he could look behind them. The orange glow was still there, and it seemed brighter than before. There was more smoke, too. He could even smell it in the air, and they were miles away from it. What if the fire reached the dried mushrooms they were burning to create The Tween Effect? What if…
Giorge slid back into position in the saddle and said, his tone firm, fearful, “We need to ride faster. If those fires reach the mushrooms,” he shook his head. “It will be like the difference between the faint scent of smoke we are smelling now and sticking our heads in a chimney flue. The Tween Effect is that faint scent of smoke, what we’ll feel when those mushrooms start to burn is the chimney flue.”
“We are riding as quickly as we dare,” Lieutenant Jarhad replied. “If we ride faster, the horses will tire more quickly and we will cover less ground.”
Giorge frowned. He knew that was true, but it didn’t change the fact that it would be even more disastrous if they got caught in a cloud of mushroom smoke. He shuddered, remembering how intense the paranoia had been, how certain he was that they were being watched, how much more intense every sound had been…. What would it do to Lieutenant Jarhad? He was already suspicious….
“Darby got past you,” Lieutenant Jarhad said. “Then what?”
“Yes,” Giorge said, trying to put the memory back away, even though it didn’t want to go. “Like I said, Darby might have used a spell. It could have been the one that Angus used, or it could have been that Concealment spell Embril cast on us. Or it could have been something else. I don’t know. I’m not a wizard.” It was important to keep repeating that he wasn’t a wizard, since it would make it easy to ward off some of the more difficult questions Lieutenant Jarhad might want to ask.
“We couldn’t be that far behind him, though. Embril said the disruption in the nexus had just begun. It was expanding rapidly, thought, and she wanted to get The Tiger’s Eye back quickly. Anyway, Darby had somehow circled around behind us and was making his escape. We went after him, of course, but it was too late. We had wasted too much time trying to find him in that dungeon instead of going directly to the nexus to see if it was still there. By the time we made it back outside, he had already taken the horses and was riding across the valley. He took both of them, by the way, and there was no chance of us catching up to him on foot.”
“Why didn’t Embril fly?” Lieutenant Jarhad asked. “She can easily cover more ground than a horse—even one that is ensorcelled with that Swiftness spell.”
Giorge nodded. “She tried. But she said the disruption in the nexus made the magic act funny. The spell didn’t work right. She almost injured herself when she jumped off the rubble and flopped to the ground.” He shook his head. “That’s what happens when a nexus is broken. The magic doesn’t work right.”
He paused to see if Lieutenant Jarhad wanted to say something, but when he didn’t, Giorge continued. “It took half a day to catch up to where he had left our horse, and by that time, he was long gone. We couldn’t follow after him because he had cast that spell Embril had used to prevent us from making a trail as we passed over the plateau. Soft something, wasn’t it?” He asked. He knew the answer, but pretending he didn’t might help to distract Lieutenant Jarhad from looking too closely at what he was saying.
“Soft Passage,” Lieutenant Jarhad said. “It shouldn’t have lasted that long. Embril’s spell didn’t.”
Giorge shrugged. “Maybe he cast it differently? Maybe he cast it again? I don’t know; I’m not a wizard. Whatever it was, he didn’t leave a trail when he left that valley, and we couldn’t see him. He was gone.”
“Then how did Embril know to go north?” Lieutenant Jarhad demanded.
Giorge shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he made it sound like a weak answer, like he was reluctant to admit it. “I think it had something to do with her becoming a horse. They sense things differently than we do. Maybe the spell doesn’t work on them the way it does on us.”
Lieutenant Jarhad was silent for a few seconds, and then asked, “What caused the volcano to erupt?”
“You heard what she said when we left,” Giorge reminded him. “All she wanted from me was to take her to where Angus said he had found the nexus, and I didn’t ask her anything else about it. I assumed she knew what she was talking about.” He shrugged. “Apparently she did. She said that vol
canoes would erupt if the nexus was taken, and that’s what’s happening. It’s not just one volcano that is erupting, it’s a bunch of them. So far, only the nearest one is obvious to us—but the dwarves know better.” He paused and muttered, “Another reason to ride faster.”
Lieutenant Jarhad stiffened a bit behind him, but there was no change in the horse’s gait.
“It’s why I’m here,” Giorge added. “To warn you to hurry. She told me to take our horse—which was still under that Swiftness spell of hers—and catch up with you. She wanted to make sure you got off this plateau as soon as you could. Then she went galloping off to the north with that red tail of hers flopping up and down like a Banner flag.”
“But—” Lieutenant Jarhad began.
“Look, Lieutenant,” Giorge cut him off and turned around to face him. “I’ve told you what I can, all right? Embril didn’t tell me any more than she told you when we left. I really don’t have the answers you want to hear.” And the answers I do have, I don’t want to tell you.
They rode in silence for nearly an hour, and then Giorge suddenly felt dizzy and slumped forward. He moaned and lifted his hands to his temples. He closed his eyes and clamped his teeth down on the bile threatened to erupt from him. He slid to the side, and Lieutenant Jarhad wrapped his arm around him to keep him from falling. Then he stopped breathing….
18
“You may not take the beast,” Hardnose Ironbutt told Embril. His beard reached nearly to his knees and had hints of gray—rare for a dwarf—that bespoke his advanced years, but his bold black eyes were as sharp as the edge of the axe strapped to his belt. She was certain it was not ornamental, despite his plump, barrel-shaped body.
“I must,” she said. “I will need my beast when I leave your roads.” It was strange to call her horse a beast, but there were few words in dwarf for the animals that dwelt above ground.
“You do not take my meaning,” Hardnose grumbled. “The beast will not fit in the road. It narrows.”
Embril frowned. In dwarf, tunnels were roads, and when they narrowed, the height of the tunnel lowered. “How narrow?” she asked.
Hardnose looked up at her and said, “You’ll bang your head.”
Her frown deepened. She barely topped the low part of the horse’s shoulder. There was no way that it would be able to squeeze through the road. But how could she leave the beast—horse—with them? They didn’t know how to tend to its needs, and there wasn’t anything in their tunnels that it could eat. They would have to take it out of their mountain and let it go. The volcano…
She had tarried too long with the dwarves already. It had taken several hours for the newcomers to be accommodated, and she was one of the last ones to plead her case to the elders. Fortunately, Griselda and her father had vouched for her, and the elders had agreed to let her use their roads. But they were not inclined to do it quickly. They had even suggested that she stay with them until the mountain calmed down—which could take years. Fortunately, they were not keen on that idea, themselves, and did not protest overmuch when she declined them. But they were adamant about sending an armed escort to help her through the tunnels to where their cousins lived. It had taken a long time to convince them that she didn’t need an escort and that she would travel far more quickly without them. They were skeptical, but once she showed them the effects of the Swiftness spell, that skepticism would go away. But she had planned to cast it on the horse, not herself, and now…
She turned to the horse and removed the supplies she thought she would need and then handed the reins to one of the dwarves standing nearby. He did not like it. Neither did the horse. “If I am able to return,” she promised the horse, “I will come back for you.” Then she turned to the elders and asked, “You will care for the beast, won’t you?”
They looked at each other, and then Hardnose said, “For a time.”
She nodded. It was more than she expected. Dwarves were not fond of beasts, especially ones that were almost twice their height. “I will need a map,” she said, “and solitude so I can cast the spell.” She wasn’t sure she remembered the sequence of knots for Swiftness, but she had to try. At least the magic inside the mountain hadn’t been as heavily influenced by the disruption in the nexus as the magic outside the mountain had been. She should be able to use it effectively—for now.
Hardnose stood up and gestured for her to follow him into a small antechamber. “Here, you will find solitude,” he said. “We will prepare a map. Be sure to follow it precisely. There are many roads that have been abandoned and lead nowhere.”
“Thank you, Hardnose,” she said.
He bowed slightly and walked out of the room.
She closed her eyes and steadied herself with the mantra before bringing the magic into focus. In the time that she had been waiting, ripples had begun to form in the strands of flame. The nexus is still expanding, she thought as she reached for the strands she needed. They were mostly air and flame, and she was very careful in choosing from among them. She concentrated on the knots, and as soon as she wrapped the last one around herself and tied it off, she felt a surge of energy run through her, almost as if she were floating on the ground instead of standing on it. Is that how the horses had felt when she had cast the spell on them? Spry and unencumbered?
She stepped out of the antechamber and back into the main hall. She waited impatiently for the elders to address the needs of the family unit standing before them, and then Hardnose waved her up to them. She ran—not because she needed to, not because she wanted to show them how fast she could be, but because she felt like running.
Hardnose narrowed his eyes at her and unrolled a map on the arm of his chair. “You are here,” he said, pointing at a small room. “Follow this path,” he said, tracing along several intersecting tunnels. “When you reach here,” he tapped another small room, “ask for directions.”
“This letter,” one of the other elders said, holding out a small scroll, “will ensure that they help you to the next city. That one is near to your people. They will take you to them.”
“I am in your debt,” Embril said as she accepted the letter.
Hardnose rolled up the map and handed it to her. “Dig long and dig deep,” he said to her.
She smiled. It was the kind of farewell that a dwarf only gave to someone they liked or cared about. “May your axe never be dull,” she replied, bowing. Then she oriented herself to the map, found the exit she needed, and ran around the dwarves and into the tunnel. She almost tripped over her robe twice before she could come to a stop and arrange it around her so that it wouldn’t slip under her feet. Then she ran as fast as she could, knowing that it would be days before the spell would unravel and she would grow tired. She needed to get as far as she could before that happened.
At first the way was lighted by some sort of creature growing on the tunnel walls, but it darkened quickly and she had to stop. She brought the magic into focus and reached for the tamest-looking strand of flame. It was a bit warmer than it should have been, but what choice did she have? She cast the Lamplight. It was a bit too large, a bit too bright, and a bit too warm, but nowhere near what it had been like when she had cast it in the Angst temple. But when she lifted it up to her shoulder, she heard a faint crackling, like when grease dropped down from a spit and sizzled in a fire, she pulled it down quickly and attached it to her hip, instead. Then she reached up to touch her singed hair—and almost screamed.
She started to run.
19
It isn’t possible! King Tyr thought as he stared at Argyle. It isn’t possible!
But there he was. Argyle. The real Argyle, bathed in a green aura. How—
Argyle looked down at him and clenched his fist. “I control him now,” Argyle said in a calm voice as he raised the massive hand and brought it down as if it were a club.
King Tyr’s eyes widened as the fist came toward him, but he couldn’t move. It wasn’t fear that paralyzed him; it was Argyle’s hideous appearance.
He was even uglier than he had remembered—perhaps it was because he was naked and had a sickly green glow? He was repulsed to the point of immobility; he didn’t know where to move to escape from the ugliness, the disorder, the chaos of the situation. Then the fist came to a stop a foot away from his face. The fingers flexed open, and one of them pinned him down. It pressed down, and the pressure grew to the point that it was difficult to breathe.
“No,” Argyle said. “It would not do to kill a king—if that is what you are.” Argyle grinned, his horrid breath spewing thick, warm spittle on King Tyr’s face. “Not yet, anyway.” Argyle straightened up and backed a step away. He began flexing his arms and looking around the room, completely ignoring King Tyr as the king eased himself into a sitting position and then stood up.
King Tyr’s legs were shaking as he turned his gaze away from Argyle—and saw Phillip’s slumped form. There was a smear of blood on the wall, but he seemed to be breathing. King Tyr hurried over to him, keeping a wary eye on Argyle as the monstrosity explored the room. Phillip was alive, but for how long? He frowned. He had invested too much time training Phillip to have to replace him so soon. Phillip needed a healer, and quickly. He glanced back at Argyle—long enough to have his revulsion renewed—to confirm that Argyle was still ignoring him, and then half carried, half dragged Phillip through the disorder and to the open mirror. He was almost to it when Argyle howled, “Be gone, you foul beast!” and waved his arms around as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
“Now, Argyle,” Argyle said as King Tyr gently let Phillip fall to the ground so he could pull the mirror door shut behind him. “Surely you remember—”
King Tyr lifted Phillip onto his shoulder the way he had seen workmen do when they tended to the castle. It was difficult—there was warm, wet blood on Phillip’s back, and more blood was running from the wounds in King Tyr’s right hand—but he managed it. He started up the stairs.
Angst (Book 4) Page 21
