Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (23 page)

Chapter 50

The field before us sloped away from the farmhouse, and Dhal and I found a rocky ledge and sat, watching Cullie.

Here
in the cool afternoon light, Dhal gave me her tale.

It
is not a glorious tale, she told me.  But I suppose it is somewhat romantic, in its own sad way.  And I’ll say this, most people, whether they have a good life or a bad life, cannot put the “where” and “why” together to know exactly how  it all come to where they were.  I can, for I have only the narrative of how I came to be.  You see, it is in the telling that a life gains a sense of direction.  To see it, to be a part of it, one is often blind to its arcs and its themes.  We are more than our tales, handsome, just as we are more than our names.  But our names identify our person.  And our tales identify our lives.  At any rate, my father was a handsome man, a trader, I am told. He admitted to my mother once that I was almost half elf.  He was staring at one, contemplating something very stupid when heard someone call her their wife.  He decided to let the she-elf go.  There would be others, elves and women alike, coming along for favors from the rich traders while they were frozen in the bay. When a second group had stopped, my father had had more time alone on the ice, moments to think, and moments to become lonely.  He wanted a soft company.  He wanted a heartfelt voice and a warm breath on his neck, if only for a night in the comfort of his blankets.  Someone to talk to.  But he said none of these women approached him.  He suspected they feared the look in his eye.  But they said nothing.  And when they did not, curiosity had won out.  He went to his cabin and looked into a mirror of polished silver.  A pustule stared back at him.  He had the plague.  Such is life, he told himself.  It cannot help but put its heel on fallen men.  In the end, too, he realized he was mad at himself.  A dwarf lad he had saved from the river, had fought him off, and when at last he had him back ashore, the lad kept apologizing.  The apology was getting heavier and heavier in his head, and he knew something was wrong.  That he had saved a suicidal dwarf was nobody’s fault but his, he decided.  He wanted to sit, he told my mom.  But he knew what his mind would do if he did.  He needed to ride out for help.  He found it in a branded woman.  My mother was a healer.  But she was too good at it.  She had been prosecuted as a witch by the High Court of Ivornos, and banished from the Ivornon Empire.  She had been banished to a small isle known as Patris.  Soon, though, word came to the courts that boats had been piloted to seek her out, and so she was banished again, this time into the Eastern Wilds.  Though I do not know what she meant by it, exactly, she said that, here, her life had become little more than her situation.  She mere lived.  Worse than that, it was as if she merely
existed
.  But when she met my father, she had again found in him the stirrings that, once, long ago, had made her heart so gentle.  I would suppose that is why she loved him.  I cannot say.  My father, Dhefur, was the one man she failed to heal.  And Rheal, my mother, died giving me life.  If she had not sought company and comfort with the dwarves of Beergarden, if she had not told them her sorrowful tale, I would not be able to tell even this much.  Indeed, I would not have lived to tell anything to anyone.  But I did.  And I can. 

Chapter 51

The sun was high
, just past its zenith.  The air was cool, though, veiled in a hint of the ocean’s salts.  When I looked at Dhal, she smiled at me so warmly I felt almost intoxicated.  My arm was damp with sweat where we had held each other. 

I
pulled my arm free, and kissed her, and I was humored when she yawned, seemingly trying to focus.  Then I followed her gaze through a grove of tall walnut trees to a great, sluggish caravan. 

The king’s
party was coming. 

As the
procession approached, I was not surprised at the jolliness, nor the great enormity of its revelry and noise, but at the flocks of swallows that swooped almost playfully around them like tremendous, animate clouds.  A fog of them surrounded the wide, merry parade that stretched from a half a mile, from the smallish stretch of airy woods at the north of the valley down toward the river. 

The leviathan
came slowly, merrily.  And by the time it arrived, cresting one of mossy, meandering hillsides, the sun was an orange sliver, low over the western hills

Chapter 52

I stood, leaning against an old apple tree.  With narrowing eyes and a smiling face, I wondered and studied at how these Watershed Folk worked, at how much was brought.  There was a surprising amount of wealth in this land of halflings, and I could only speculate at how they came about it.  Where they plunderers, these little men? Did they employ stouter folk than their own?  In my thoughts, these people were very much human, though smaller, and I wondered if they were truly like us.  Certainly we were alike in their fondness of merriment.  Were their thoughts purer?  Where they philosopher farmers, poet warriors?  Did their thoughts run so remarkably deep as their generosity?  It was all such a happy scene, the very air warmed on their arrival.  I could only imagine they were magic, each of them, a lost colony from some ancient, happier land, smiling sojourners, or the children of seafaring jesters. 

There were no
squires, I noted.  Soldiers had donned only what armor they would bring, so there would be no blood-sport.  And they did not employ so much as a shield-wife to help with their loads.  Even the two or three clerics I saw did their own work.  Or at least they aided in it, for by necessity, they had help; I watched as they guilted a few younger halflings into being taught how to unpack the Holy Implementia properly, how to unroll the wine from consecrated blankets, how to set up the relics, gingerly removing from reliquary chests.  But most of the work seemed to have been done by professional porters; drafthorses were carted and artfully laden with the king’s cargo, which was handled by three dozen or so scurrying halflings who had piled everything just so.  Hundreds of things were all unbundled and unlashed from several lengths of rope.  And the smaller bits of luggage began to arrive:  eating tools, some oil and cooking tools, and some cloth and chairs and tables.  There were little women all around, aiding the porters, and the five hundred or so halflings that crowded the field had organized a half a million small things, then began dancing and singing almost immediately.

In watching the
nonsensical fun, I felt the same decadent sense of abundance I had with the my uncle and friends in in Goback Tavern.  Already the meadow was being transmogrified into something that resembled a hamlet.  There was a growing calm in my mind.  Bread or oatmeal was boiling in every pot across a hundred small fires, and the meadow was alive with those smells.

It was wonder,
I thought, that these fine people had remained so nebulous, so unseen to the men of Delmark and Dragonfell.  Some said it was because their war with the trolls had kept those fearsome beasts from invading our land.  Others said it was because they paid great tithes and ransoms to our King Gulltop.  I had no idea.  But that they were was enough.  And it was difficult to describe the incredible happiness that the thought of this brought. 

It was nearing dusk.  I gather
ed Dhal into my arms, as much to steady myself as to show my love, and amid the crazed greetings, I would feel the same happy closeness from hundreds of people, folk I had never met. 

Then, a
s she and I kissed each other’s heads, King Alberik’s hearty, elongated greetings floated over the enormous noise of conversation and laughter.  Relatively unseen, he sifted through the crowd, unguarded, nudging past thousands of faces. 

We met at a
spot where a great open fire rose like a whirling pillar. 

When he stood before us, I saw why he was their king.  His face was the epitome of jolliness and merriment.  His was blond and fat,
but more muscular than I had supposed.  His was smiling widely with ruddy cheeks and a pair of happy eyes that twinkled with a cornsilk glint.  He chinbeard was spectacular.  He spread his arms wide and said

“Forgive my bluntness, King Fie, but by damn it is good to meet you!” 

“My thanks, liege.”
I stammered.

“
Come!  Let eat and drink and talk, then you can thank me, liege.  Thank me with a few good tales!”

I
bowed.  “Then I assure you, my liege, you will be thanked beyond reckoning.”

I had heard it said once that the King of Delmark never got a moment’s rest.  As a youth, I had taken for granted that this was an exaggeration.  But when a trader came into Goback Pub, talking of
a dinner he’d shared with King Gulltop, he said that in the two hours they dined, not three minutes passed without him being asked to sign something, grant something, or otherwise acknowledge on thing or another.  It was therefore somewhat amazing to me that the other halflings had simply let us be.  Though many were sitting near the king, laughing and drinking across from him at the head of the mead bench, none bothered him with business or requests.  Mead-benches downhill from him were alive, rocking with laughter.  But nearer, they all simply went about drinking, which they did a seriousness and focus that approached the amusing.

After what could have been
an hour of two of drink, the maids came.  A score of them.  They came with armfuls, stacking the table with oddest assortment of food I had ever beheld.  Before us was heaped large piles of fish and smoked pork.  Then came eggs.  There were links of sausage and dozens of toasted bread slices.  The next wave plunked down an array of fried creatures, varying in size from hamster-pigs to something that resembled a river-weasel.

When they were done, there was feast enough to feed
half the people in the meadow, but it was apparently
all
for our bench.

The last thing to arrive was more beer.  It came in
a two-gallon barrel, scored with plain lettering that read ALBERIK’S BROWN SOUR.

King Alberik
made a soft, happy noise.  He drew a breath, closing his eyes as he wrapped his little pudgy hands around the barrel.

Then he glugged, for a full minute.
  I must confess, I marveled.  I studied the dark rivulets streaming down the ripe cheeks and watched his gullet as it engorged and bobbed, ballooning like the belly of a winded toad.  When the little man clunked barrel down, it sounded half-empty.  He wiped his mouth.  Then he nodded to it.

“Drink, l
iege.”

I
allowed himself a grin.  To be heralded as a king was not something a body is easily adjusted to, not even when the moniker comes from another king.  But king or not, life had brought me to admire a certain amount of decadence.  Precisely this amount, to be honest.

“We’ll need another!”
I barked.

The king roared in laughter as I drew long breath. 

I drew the bunghole to my lips and started drinking, the weight shifting swiftly down through my core.  When I glanced over the barrel, across the table, I noted that King Alberik wore a serious face, visibly impressed by the long
bloop bloops
of the depleting contents.  When the barrel dropped with a hollow thud, he winked in admiration. 

“Excellent!”  t
he little man roared. 

He
scooted himself forward on the bench, which I only just noticed was built to human proportions—an honor for which I would later need to thank him.  Then he pulled a long, dangling backstrap from the fried river-weasel and offered the other strip to me.

I
belched.  I raised the unusual meat like a mug of bear.  When King Alberik did likewise, I turned to everyone at the table.

“
Here’s to the king of the halflings!  Peace and bacon be with us!”

Everyone at a dozen benches around us roared with approval, and soon thereafter the king and I
shared pounds of roasted flesh and a near-instant fondness.  There was also a growing, mutual awe.  I was nothing approaching fat by Dellish standards, but my stomach had a Bee’s Logic, a near supernatural ability to do what seemed impossible.  As for King Alberik, I had not ever seen such glorious gluttony.  Not from anyone, not even Mighty Kenzo, who was widely regarded as the girthiest, hungriest dwarf in all Yrkland.

An hour passed.  Then half of another.  The small crowd that had gathered around them doubled. 
Night had begun to stud itself with a spread of dewy stars in the west.

Finally,
King Alberik brushed the yellow egg crumbs from his chest.  “Let us talk of your tale, King Fie,” he belched.  “I would imagine that whenever one is knocked cold as a warrior and awakens a king, one has any number of questions dancing through their mind.”

“
One in particular, sire.”

King Alberik
grinned.  he rolled his neck and leaned back, crossing his little booted feet on the table.  He unpacked a small pair of silver and jade pipes from his trousers.  He stuffed them both with a pinch of hemp-in-clove leaf, tossing me one across the bench.  He struck a small, flint-tipped matchstick and lit it, drawing deeply, before he tossed be a match.  Then he smile.  “It is an interesting tale, one that came to me with as much surprise as it did good tidings…”