Legend of Ecta Mastrino Box Set 2

by BJ Hanlon

  It took only a glance to see it wasn’t the dematian king he’d met, but he knew the demon had power. He was connected to the talent. There was a great wind that began pounding through his ears and Edin saw grasses, small leaves, and scraps of unknown substances flying from the earth and heading toward them.

  Then they were moving again and the portcullis was slammed followed by the giant gates. Somewhere above them, he heard “loose” followed by curses. Then screams of incoming.

  Edin was set down on something hard and when he looked up, he saw a blurred light overhead and he thought he was in a room. He had to be in a room.

  “Are you okay?” Dorset said standing over him. He heard Rihkar talking with the guards. They seemed to be discussing plans of attack. He thought he heard ‘hundreds’ and ‘dematian mage.’

  Edin blinked the blurriness from his eyes and tried to nod. “Thirsty,” Edin said and it felt like an understatement. His throat had become extremely dry. Edin drank and it cleared his mind for a moment. Then his mind moved around again, slow like the fog, and there was only silence coming from around them. He glanced at Dorset who also seemed to be concentrating on the noise. The other three had gone, possibly to fight.

  “What happened?” Edin croaked out.

  “Don’t know, your twister took out a swatch of dematians and cleared the fog. But there were a lot more and they attacked.”

  Edin shivered and tried to push himself up to a seated position. He felt weak and frozen. Worse than when he was on the glacier. He sneezed and then coughed. He was getting sick at a time when he couldn’t be.

  “You can’t,” Dorset said and slowly pushed him down. “You need your strength.”

  Edin couldn’t even fight the strength of his geeky friend who had a red nose and bloodshot eyes. A few minutes later Rihkar appeared and said the dematians retreated back over the hill toward the mountains.

  “Maybe a hundred,” said Rihkar, “they launched a volley of spears and arrows that flew farther than any a man could ever shoot and then they retreated back over the hills and toward the mountains.”

  Dorset said, “so much for the wall Sinndilo is building.”

  “I’m guessing there is more than the one tunnel beneath our feet,” Rihkar said.

  “How many did the dwarves build?” Asked Dorset.

  “Don’t know, they were the highways of the small folk.”

  “And we don’t know what happened to them either?” Dorset said. “It’s not like they left a map for us to find.” He paused for a moment and looked thoughtful as Berka and Henny came into the small storeroom with a guard.

  “Who’s the messenger of the duke?”

  They looked at Edin who was carrying the missives himself. He hoped they weren’t completely soaked and therefore illegible. He also wondered what the letters said.

  “Me,” Edin said. “Though I believe I’ve caught a sickness.”

  “A healer lives near here,” the guard said. “I believe she’s got a healthy supply of mintweed.”

  Edin groaned, though he knew it’d help. “Take this, she’ll get you patched up right away,” the guard said holding out a small ring. There was a signet on it that reminded him of the duke’s heraldry. It was almost the same. “I’m Ashtol’s,” he paused. “I was Ashtol’s cousin.”

  “Thank you.” Edin said weakly. It took him a while to get on his feet again. Henny helped him cross a couple of streets and make it to a small building with the healer sign over the front door.

  It took a few knocks before an old man came to the door. When he saw the ring, he ushered Edin and Dorset in. The other three headed out to get a room at an inn for the night. Edin would need a good sleep and hopefully a bath. He was shivering like crazy now even with the cloak.

  After a long steep and a lot of near yakking up of the tea, Edin was able to get it all down. It was just as bad as he remembered.

  Henny appeared a bit later and led them to their inn. The name of which Edin didn’t know or didn’t care. They found rooms with beds. “No more of that blasted cold and wet ground.” The big man grumbled.

  As he laid down, he wondered why the dematians ceased their attack and then why they attacked in the first place? Were they testing the city’s defenses? Getting a better look at the split river that surrounds the city?

  He woke up in a cold sweat sometime in the night. His teeth were chattering and his body burning and sweating. Edin felt like a piece of steak that’d been frozen and thrown directly on a grill.

  The room was dark and he heard someone sleeping in the twin bed next to him. Soft snores of his roommate.

  Edin laid in the bed, half awake and half asleep for most of the rest of the night. He threw the blanket off himself only to be so cold less than three seconds later that he had to pull it back on.

  He’d never be able to deliver the messages like this and few people were excited to meet with a sick blotard. Not even healers enjoyed it.

  He’d have to have someone else deliver the messages to the High Priest and the Earl of Carrow.

  Maybe it was for the best. A magus delivering these messages may not have been the best idea in the first place. Especially to the High Priest Vewto.

  He tried again to fall asleep but could not. After hours, he pulled his near frozen self from bed. There was a dawning of gray light outside. Still no sun.

  Edin hoped to get a bath, a very hot and steamy bath.

  Edin dressed in the damp clothes in his sack and threw his cloak on over them. He shivered and his teeth chattered like dematian talk. Edin tried to sneak but woke Dorset.

  The first sign was the bed creaking followed by, “What the heck, Edin?”

  Edin shivered.

  “Why are you—”

  “A hot bath…” Edin pushed out. “Need it.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me, you bloody blotard? You’ve got a damned flu.” Dorset threw a robe over him. “Stay here.” He grumbled and rushed out, leaving Edin alone in the cold room.

  Edin sat and looked out of the window and knew another dreary day was coming.

  A few minutes later, Dorset returned. “Twenty minutes,” he said. “I’m laying down now. If you need anything wake me.” Though his words offered help, he laid and turned around so his back faced Edin. Not a very helpful look.

  Edin grew impatient, that was easy when you’re sick and annoyed and your teeth are chattering. He crept down the stairs into the main room at the inn. He found the baths through a hallway. It was steamy inside and he saw the attendant who offered wine.

  “Tea,” Edin said. “With a bit of whiskey if you have it.” His resolve to not drink already in the sewers.

  It wasn’t mintweed, thank the gods, and the whiskey and tea seemed to clear his sinuses a bit and broke up the congestion in his chest. Edin stayed in the steamy bathhouse for an hour or more. He nearly passed out in the tub and only woke to full attention when he snorted a bit of water into his nostrils.

  After he finished, he headed back to the room with his old clothes on and feeling the dirtiness and crustiness of them. After a whiff, he gagged.

  On the end table was a steaming cup of something. “Mintweed tea, your majesty,” Dorset said, his face embedded in his pillow.

  Not the bedside manner of his mother. Heck, it wasn’t even as good as Horston. “Thanks,” Edin said, but didn’t touch it.

  After a bit, the rest of the team gathered in the room. Edin tried to smile at them but was far too sick at the moment. He could barely talk. “In the pack,” he said, “three letters. Henny, use the letter to commandeer a ship, hopefully one that is ready to leave today or tomorrow.”

  “Dorset can you—”

  But Dorset interrupted and said, “I’m going to see if there’s information in the library about the dwarven tunnels.”

  “Me too.” Said Rihkar, “if we can find out where those monsters came from, maybe we could close the entrance off.”

  “There are hundreds of caves in the mountains
,” Berka said. Exhaustion was in his face. “The range is nearly five hundred miles long.”

  “But we saw the direction they were coming from. Northwest. And the mountains are only a few miles away,” Rihkar said.

  “If there was anything, it was probably destroyed during the purges,” Berka said.

  “Maybe,” said Dorset, he seemed a bit annoyed with Berka, and right then, Edin couldn’t care less. For now he needed to concentrate on not yakking again.

  Dorset continued, “it’s our only choice. I know they wouldn’t be in Delrot, the ancients that worked there cared little for the underground of Bestoria.”

  An idea came to him then, a great one. “Then do me a favor, see if you can find a great lake somewhere in the mountains. It’d be large and completely surrounded.”

  “Why?” Berka asked and he could feel the eyes turning to him.

  Edin closed his own eyes and threw a hand over them. “I have a hunch.” Edin said. “And Berks, I need you to deliver the other two letters.” He glanced up. “To the High Priest and the Earl…”

  Berka looked uneasy but nodded and took the two missives from Edin’s pack.

  Edin hoped Berka would deliver them. “When you have finished we’ll set out—”

  “You’re not leaving until you feel better,” Rihkar said. “I won’t have you trekking through the mountains while ill. You are still my son you moron.”

  “We can stay a day, two at the most. Keep me updated with the search for the tunnels,” Edin said. He needed to find Arianne and the tunnels may help. If there was a map with an underground river, he could follow it to the giant lake.

  Edin closed his eyes. He hoped he didn’t have to talk for the rest of the day.

  He did, but it was very little. Edin sweat and shivered for the duration and he thanked the woman who took his clothes to be laundered and the man who served him a warm chicken soup with carrots and peas. Edin was in bed for the rest of the day drifting between awake and asleep and that weird in between.

  He found more mintweed tea on the table next to him at one point and drank it despite the taste, then fell back asleep. He heard soft talking near him but didn’t look over. At one point, he heard someone scream outside though he still had no energy to be inquisitive.

  Through it all, he felt a presence in the room. At one time he woke to the feeling that he wasn’t alone. Edin looked around but there was nothing there. No one around. It was creepy and harrowing but he pushed it to the back of his mind.

  The next morning, he guessed, somehow, the sun was out. A yellow light pushed into the room and through his eyelids. Edin rolled over and dug his head deeper into his pillow.

  After a few moments of realizing he was awake and didn’t feel like a total waste of life, he looked up toward Dorset’s bed. Empty.

  Edin turned over as the sun, which had been so bright only a moment ago, was suddenly covered by more clouds.

  But at least they were the thin clouds that moved rapidly and there were open sections where the sun and the gods, if the latter existed, could peer down at the upper town of the double layered city. Edin pushed himself up and stretched. A moment later he sneezed, but it was only one and not a constant succession like would’ve happened only a day earlier.

  Edin saw tea on the end table. It wasn’t steaming but it smelled of cold mintweed which was usually worse than hot mintweed.

  Edin ignored it and set his feet on the hardwood floor. He took a deep breath, though not as deep as normal, and pushed himself to his feet. The room swayed for just a moment. Edin pressed a hand to the wall to steady himself and the wobbly world.

  A few minutes later, he was dressed in clean clothes and felt twice as good as the day previous. Three times maybe. Then he noticed Dorset’s bed didn’t look to have been slept in.

  Outside, he tried to remember what the other guys’ room number was. He could barely picture it from when they took up residence. Across the hall he guessed.

  He took a few steps and then knocked on the door. Then he knocked again and leaned his forehead against the wall.

  A few moments later the door opened. Edin blinked as he was looking at a small child. Extremely small, nearly the height of his hip. Then Edin saw a beard and mustache. Edin was astonished and he gasped. “Are you real dwarf?” He didn’t let the man, no dwarf answer, “my gods…” he swayed slightly. “Tell me dwarf, what do you know of the underground cities and rivers. What of the tunnels?”

  The little man glared at him. The statue in the peak above Olangia showed a rather broad-shouldered man, with square features and strong. This guy, dwarf, didn’t look like that.

  He growled, a low, unintelligible growl. “I ain’t no dwarf in the racial sense ya big eared ape. I’m a little person.” Then the door slammed shut and he heard grumbling behind it.

  It took Edin a moment to work it through his mind. “A midget!” Edin gasped while laughing.

  “Blast you in the face!” The man cried through the door.

  Edin laughed and instantly felt bad as his chest hurt. He tried the room next door, no answer, then the room to the right of his own. Still no answer.

  “Where are you guys?” He said to himself.

  The world outside was gray and light in patches but he couldn’t tell where the sun was and there wasn’t a clock in the room. Downstairs he found an innkeeper wiping out mugs and having a conversation with some thick-shouldered man that had long, feminine hair that drooped to his shoulders.

  Edin stumbled up to the counter and took a seat.

  “Feelin’ better are we?” the innkeeper said.

  Edin wobbled his hand and blinked. For a moment his vision blurred again. He really wasn’t back to normal. Who knew how long it’d be until he was?

  “My companions? What room are they in?”

  “Next to yours, though they disappeared out the doors bright and early this morn.” He paused, grabbing another glass, spat in in and began wiping it out. “At least the one-armed guy and the big man. The others I haven’t seen.”

  “Did they say where they were headed?” Edin said. He didn’t know what to do but he really did not want to be in that room anymore.

  “One left this for ya.”

  Edin took it and broke the seal. ‘Edin, at the university library, if you’re feeling better and wake before I return, come there. It’s on Elleir St., Rihkar. P.S. Dorset is annoying the heck out of me.’

  He wasn’t sure about how he felt at the moment but thought maybe a walk would be good. “Where’s the university library on Elleir?”

  “Street is ‘bout half a mile south. The university is near the castle,” the innkeeper said.

  “Thank you,” Edin said and pulled the cloak over his shoulders. It took him nearly an hour to push through the crowded streets. Overcrowded by the look of them.

  People who looked like country folk were begging and being swatted at by the guards. A young kid, maybe two or three waddled up to Edin and held his hand out. His soft blue eyes were crusty around the edges despite the tears forming in them.

  It was a good sales ploy, only Edin didn’t have anything. Apparently, someone had taken the small coin purse the duke gave him.

  “I have nothing,” Edin said, his heart breaking for the child. Then the kid let tears fall and boy did they, he wailed and whined. Guilt crashed over Edin like a giant wave he could summon from the depths.

  Edin checked his pockets again and found nothing. Not that he expected to find anything. He sidled past the kid to the right and kept his head down. He suddenly wanted a wide hat that could hide his face.

  Everywhere he turned there were more people. So many of them begging. They smelled of the farms, forests, and fields from which they’d come. There were other people standing around metal barrels with flames burning in them.

  A line of men on carts was coming through the street and the men were screaming at people to get out of the way. Guards grunted and pushed and looked generally angry.

  H
e stopped about halfway to the library to lean against a wall. Edin tried to catch his breath and to steady himself. This walk was not a great idea, he thought as he watched a group of thuggish people push past. Maybe the Raven’s folk.

  As he was about to move, he spotted someone. A figure beneath a dark hood that seemed to be staring in his direction. Edin stared back, his eyebrows raised. He couldn’t see the face, but he could feel a sort of heat and hatred from the man’s glare.

  Then someone, a large man carrying a huge barrel over his shoulder, blocked Edin’s view. When the man passed, the dark hood was gone.

  He knew he was being watched and started off with his head down. A few minutes later, he found the street, big letters on a building read Elleir. An arrow to the right and toward the headwaters of the branching river said, University; Government; Palace. Another to the left said, Docks; Hightown Merchant Quarter.

  Edin scooted around the corner. To the right, he spotted a small alley between a wooden building and a wrought iron fence with bushes pressing through the bars. He could barely see over it, but saw trees, shrubs, statues, and a fountain. A park, like the one he’d been sleeping in when Foristol had found him.

  Edin ducked in there and waited. After a moment, he peered around the corner, waiting for the follower to show up. The cloaked person reminded him of the two Por Fen that had been conversing with Merik as he went to meet the duke. Did the Inquisitor send men to spy on him? Or were they here to assassinate him?

  It was almost ten minutes that he waited. But the dark cloaked man didn’t come around the corner. People glared at Edin with anger while others offered him pitying glances. He didn’t know why.

  A guard stared at one point and seemed poised to attempt to speak with Edin before someone screamed and a commotion happened to the east that took the guard’s attention.

  Edin caught a glimpse of a small boy, or maybe a girl as the hair was long, in a faded and threadbare red tunic darting through a crowd. A woman shouted after him or her and although her words were muffled by the cacophony of people around, he knew she was yelling ‘thief!’

  Edin finally stepped out and pushed through. His pure white cloak seemed to stand out as it always did. He wondered if Suuli and the Foci Dun Bornu were around and again thought of Yechill. He’d left the warrior in the Northlands and alone.