Path of the Specialist

by Pedro Urvi

  Lasgol went up to Isgord and tapped him on the shoulder with two fingers. Isgord turned like lightning and gave him a furious glare. He pointed to the north. Lasgol pointed northwest with his two fingers and drew a curve with them. Isgord shook his head, insisting on going north, and pointed in the same direction again. Lasgol shook his head and insisted on going around the caribou. Isgord ignored him and went on northwards. Lasgol decided to detour to the northwest.

  They separated, each following their own path. He was grateful not be near Isgord. He was finding it increasingly difficult to control himself when they were together. He had always managed to repress the urge to wring his neck, but lately, since the climbing incident, he could barely manage to. He feared that he would lose his self-control and end up being expelled from the Shelter. He needed to be alert and to rein in his anger. Sigrid would not think twice about throwing him out if he attacked Isgord, however much he might deserve it. And he most certainly did.

  He reached the position he was looking for, crouched down behind a fallen tree and readied his bow. The caribou was not far away. He assessed the direction of the wind and waited. Isgord’ll expect me to approach from here, so he’ll try to arrive first and get into position. Mistake. He’ll be in too much of a hurry and frighten off the animal, because it’ll see him coming. Or rather smell him. He waited for a moment, feeling relaxed, confident that this was the best strategy, given the location of the target and the direction of the wind.

  Nor was he wrong. The caribou emerged from the forest ten paces away. Isgord was following it from not far behind, unable to shoot because he had no clear target through the trees. The animal passed beside Lasgol, who was staying well-hidden, waiting for an opportunity, without seeing him. He took a deep breath, stood up, aimed and released, all in a single fast fluid movement. The distance was very short and clear of obstacles. The caribou fell dead without knowing what had happened.

  He went up to it to make sure it was dead and not suffering.

  Isgord was running toward him. “You stole my quarry!” he shouted.

  “How can I steal something you didn’t have?”

  “I had it! It was mine!”

  “What you had was a running caribou that you weren’t going to hit,” Lasgol said calmly, although he was beginning to get angry.

  “You’re a thief.”

  “I’m no thief. I took up my position and the quarry came there.”

  “Because I guided it towards you.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose!”

  “You should have seen it coming. I did.”

  “You’re a cheat!”

  “You’re a sore loser.”

  “At least I’m not a stinking traitor.”

  Lasgol snorted in disgust. “Here we go with the same old story.”

  “You’re a traitor. I knew it the first day and I know it now. You always will be.”

  “That’s not true. I never betrayed Norghana.”

  “Didn’t you? You helped the Western League, don’t think I don’t know that. You helped Darthor. You betrayed your King, you conspired with the enemy.”

  “Prove it if you’re so sure,” Lasgol said. “King Thoran let me go free without charge.”

  “He’ll have done that for a reason. There must be foul play involved. The King knows you were with the West, and so do I.”

  “He doesn’t know that, because he didn’t try me or sentence me. Therefore I’m innocent.”

  “You’re Darthor’s son. What more evidence does anyone need?”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “How come not? Darthor was your mother and you helped her, I haven’t the slightest doubt about that. You were with her when they tried to kill Uthar and take the capital.”

  “They were trying to bring down the Shifter who was posing as Uthar.”

  “Don’t try to talk your way out of it. You were in the Throne Hall. How come you were there?”

  “I was fighting with the King’s forces.”

  “That’s a lie! You were with the enemy!”

  “Prove it.”

  “I don’t need to. You might have fooled Thoran, but not me. I’m more intelligent and I know you were helping Darthor and the West, just like the traitor Egil Olafstone. I know you both very well. But you won’t get away scot-free, either of you. You’re both traitors, and I’m going to make sure you get what you deserve.”

  “Death, I suppose...”

  “You’ll be sentenced and hanged, or else I’ll make sure I’m the one who’s judge and executioner.”

  “You don’t have the power to do that. You’re a judge of nothing, and if you want to be an executioner, then that just makes you a vile murderer.”

  “I don’t care what you say. Your excuses mean nothing to me. I know what you are. You don’t fool me and I’m going to bring you down.” Isgord’s eyes were filled with abysmal hatred as he said this.

  Lasgol looked him in the eye. Without fear, calm, suppressing his own inner fury.

  “I thought your hatred for me was because of the trauma of losing your father. That was understandable, up to a point. But now I can see clearly that it’s not that. You’re a contemptible creature, unscrupulous and dishonorable. This hatred of yours is just an excuse to justify yourself in going so far as to try and kill me. You want to kill me, but that’s because your heart’s rotten. You’re a despicable creature, and one day you’ll get what you deserve. It’s just a matter of time. It’ll happen.”

  “It won’t be at your hand.”

  “Maybe not, but it’ll be the end of you, after all.”

  “We’ll see about that. I’ll kill you before then.”

  “It won’t be here. Sigrid is watching you.”

  “I’m cleverer than that old crone. Here or outside, I’ll kill you.”

  Lasgol thought of what Viggo and Astrid had said and shook his head. “You’d better be very careful, here and when we get out of here.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “It’s not me you need to be afraid of.”

  Then Isgord understood. “You can hide behind your friends all you want, but sooner or later I’ll catch you on your own, and then there’ll be no-one to save you.”

  Lasgol knew that Isgord would not give up in his determination to kill him, but for that to happen they would have to be alone, without anybody knowing about it. Perhaps the Ice Gods would prevent it. Most likely not. He would deal with it when the time came.

  “Until then,” Lasgol said.

  “Get ready. I’m going to gouge your eyes out.”

  Lasgol nodded at him, accepting the challenge. He bent down and began to prepare the catch to carry it, ignoring Isgord. He knew it was not a vain promise. It was a promise of death, and he took it as such. The next time they were alone and nobody knew about it, Isgord would try to kill him. He would stop him, although he still did not know how. But he would. He had no choice.

  Seeing that Lasgol was ignoring him, Isgord left, spewing venom. Lasgol felt he had gained a tiny victory. Feeling rather more cheerful, he prepared the carcass and took it back to the Lair. It took him some time, as it was a job for two people and he had lost his agreeable partner. When he got back he said nothing about it to his friends, not wanting to stir things up even more. It was his own problem, and he would have to solve it himself.

  He spent the rest of the day in Wildlife instruction, which he liked more and more, for all its difficulty. At nightfall, when he came back to the Lair with Astrid to have dinner and rest after the long day, someone came out from inside, walking fast, and nearly collided with them.

  “Move over!” he said rudely.

  “Sorry, sir,” Lasgol said.

  They moved over to let him through. It was Enduald, the person of restricted height,

  Lasgol and Astrid exchanged a glance. They did not need to speak to know what they were both thinking, and they followed him at once. The stranger was u
nmistakable, not only because of his small size but because he was dressed in black from head to foot. Lasgol could not help wondering what this character was doing there.

  From what they had found out after discreetly asking the Elders, Enduald visited the Shelter occasionally, then vanished, not to be seen for a long time. It was obvious that there was not much love lost between Sigrid and the little man, though the Elders had not explained why. In fact they had only told them one or two things and refused to give them any more information. They appeared to be annoyed at having to talk about the subject at all, so they could not go on asking.

  Enduald crossed the river, but then after entering the forest he seemed to change his mind and turned east to go back to the Lair. Astrid and Lasgol followed him unobtrusively. Enduald began to climb the hill above the Lair. He did so bent over and making an obvious effort. When he reached the Pearl at the summit, he was breathing heavily. Astrid and Lasgol stopped beside a group of oaks to the east of the great white sphere and hid behind it. It was already dark, and the only lights were a few oil lamps below, in front of the entrance to the Lair, which would soon go out. The Elders were no friends of fires.

  “What’s he doing?” Astrid asked. They were both hiding behind two oaks, sitting with their backs against the trunks.

  Lasgol turned and looked carefully until he saw Enduald. He was a striking figure who wore his blond hair in a queue, with very large grey eyes in a face that was almost beautiful. It was striking, although Lasgol still thought he looked like a gravedigger. Black was a color little used among the Norghanians, who preferred bright red and white, even blue. But not black, which was considered to bring bad luck. This man did not seem to be superstitious, or else perhaps he thought he already had enough bad luck for a whole life with the way he had been born.

  “He seems to be inspecting the Pearl. That’s weird.”

  “Yes. All this is weird, and this place – the less said, the better.”

  “The Shelter or the Lair?”

  “Both,” she said, shaking her head. “I liked the Camp better, it was more... normal...”

  Lasgol smiled. “It certainly was. But on the other hand, this place is more... interesting.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it that. To me it’s just weirder.”

  “Maybe because we got used to living in the Camp and we felt it was home. We spent a lot of time there.”

  “Four good years,” she said with a smile.

  “I wouldn’t say they were all good,” Lasgol said, also smiling.

  “Deep down they were, and you know it.”

  “Yeah... that’s true,” he had to admit. They had experienced and learned a lot in the Camp.

  Astrid looked at the Pearl for a moment from behind the tree. “He’s not moving. He’s resting one hand on the rock sphere with his eyes closed. What can he be doing?”

  Lasgol shrugged. “Meditating? Feeling the power of the sphere?”

  “Does it have Power?” Astrid asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “It certainly does. I’ve felt it when I touched it.”

  Astrid gave him a roguish look and smiled. “My, you really are weird...”

  “You mean special,” he said with a smile.

  She chuckled. “Yes, of course, special.”

  “That’s why you like me.”

  She shook her head. “Not for that, for sure,” and she gave him the same roguish smile.

  Lasgol exhaled and shook his head. “We’d better watch what he’s doing.”

  For some time they watched him, but the dwarf neither moved nor did anything except lean against the Pearl, which was strange. What did he have in mind?

  “I’m thirsty,” Astrid said suddenly.

  “I haven’t got any water with me.”

  “Me neither.”

  “We’ll go to the river later.”

  “At the Camp we could go to the central well and get water whenever we wanted.”

  “Yeah, it was more convenient,” Lasgol agreed. “Did you know that the well was the most vital spot in the Camp?”

  “Was it? There was water not far away, in the rivers and lakes.”

  “Yes, but in case of an attack, the well was the most important spot to defend.” He smiled. “Without water, the war would be over.”

  “It did look ancient, that’s true...”

  “It was. Egil told me it was one of the first things to be built in the Camp, the well and then the House of Command. Although the latter was added to bit by bit. The original was no bigger than our second-year cabins.”

  “Egil... another of his studies?”

  Lasgol smiled and nodded. “You know what he’s like, he can’t help it. The history of the Rangers and the Camp is something he finds really fascinating.”

  “Fascinating...” Astrid repeated, smiling. “I like Egil, he has an incredible mind.”

  “He certainly does. He told me that when the first Rangers settled there they built their settlement around the well, exactly a hundred paces around, making a closed circle they could defend. There are still a couple of buildings standing from that time, though most of them were lost in the great fire that forced them to rebuild part of the Camp.”

  “Egil’s a ‘well’ of knowledge,” Astrid said with a giggle.

  Lasgol laughed and had to cover his mouth with his hand so that Enduald would not hear.

  “The well is the epicenter of the Camp, according to what Egil worked out by consulting ancient maps of different parts of it that are kept in the Library. Though as it’s forbidden to copy them or take them out, he had to make his own measurements.”

  “And what conclusion did he come to?”

  “According to his calculations and measurements, the Camp was originally built to a definite pattern.”

  “Really? I had the impression that it had gone on expanding from that original circle you were talking about, without much planning.”

  He smiled. “Well, you’d be wrong. It has a very particular design, and Egil was sure it was originally carefully planned and very well carried-out, because it’s a pattern that’s found in nature.”

  “What pattern?”

  “A four-leaf clover.”

  Astrid was thoughtful.” The four leaves...” She looked at all four directions as if she were beginning to understand. “The four Schools...”

  “Exactly. Quick thinking.” He smiled broadly. “The Camp began around that well, with the base buildings around it, and then it expanded into the four leaves of the clover which hold the buildings and domains of the four schools.”

  “Egil’s amazing.”

  “He likes to understand things.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Terribly...”

  “He’ll be all right, don’t worry. He’s very smart, and he knows how to look after himself.”

  “I do worry. You know who he is... and there’s a price on his head. I’m afraid of what might happen.”

  “Nothing’ll happen to him. He’ll be fine at the Camp.”

  “I hope so.”

  “He will,” she insisted, to encourage him.

  Suddenly they heard footsteps in the distance.

  “Someone’s coming,” Lasgol said.

  A figure appeared through the trees, although they could barely make it out. They moved to a position where they could get a better view. The stranger came closer; it was a man wearing a hooded cloak and a Ranger’s scarf. That brief look told them that they did not know him, or at least were unable to recognize him in such a dim light.

  “Who can it be?” Lasgol asked Astrid in a whisper.

  “I’ve no idea, but this is very strange. There’s never anybody in the Shelter except the Mother Specialist and the Elders, and now suddenly we’ve got two strangers among us.”

  “And one we didn’t even see coming.”

  “Very strange...” Astrid commented. She nodded. “In the end Viggo’s going to turn out to be right...”

 
; “Let’s hope not,” Lasgol said. He did not want any more trouble, or at least no more than they would have in any case with the training and the final test in which they would risk everything. He did not want any more mysteries or compromising situations. But for some reason, it seemed that these things followed them wherever they went. He snorted in annoyance.

  The Ranger handed Enduald a large satchel, then left the way he had come without a word. Enduald opened the satchel, looked inside, closed it and hurried away.

  They looked at each other in puzzlement.

  “What’s going on here?” Lasgol wondered.

  “I don’t know, but we’d better find out. I don’t like it.”

  Chapter 12

  The following day, after physical training, Gisli assembled his pupils in front of the Lair. Lasgol always looked forward to Wildlife instruction. The Elder was fully prepared for a day out. He was carrying all his equipment, from his Ranger’s belt to the knife and axe at his waist, his compound bow and his knapsack. He was wearing the hooded cloak of the Elder Specialists, with a scarf around his neck. The large brown patches on the green material were there to blend in with the forest vegetation and disappear into it. The curious thing was that even in the middle of a clearing like the one they were in, it was hard to fix one’s gaze clearly on him. At times he seemed to melt into the landscape behind him. Lasgol knew that Egil would find this ‘fascinating’.

  “Today is the day for working with our potential Beast Whisperer.”

  Lasgol began to feel nervous. This meant him.

  “This is going to be fun,” Erika whispered in his ear.

  “But as our potential Beast Whisperer is also a potential Tireless Tracker, we’ll work on both aspects.”

  Luca patted Lasgol on the back. “Cheer up, you’ll cope perfectly well.”