Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (40 page)

Chapter 85

__________

It was unusually cold out as Cullfor and his newest, strangest, and dearest friend in the world, stood and bundled themselves against a patina of spring sleet, which still fell sideways out of the white sky.  Their oats were gone, and the fire was just a black scar on the rocks. 

They looked at one another, each red-faced from the cold and each one’s hair a crazed gnarl of straw. 

He had never seen a woman quite so beautiful.

Then they snorted, laughing.

__________

Twisting down a creek bed, hunkering, they paused before the dip of a dry waterfall, where they shared a hand and trudged up out of the spongy creek until they crested its rocky ledge.  Bent and low in a surprising cold breeze, they stood staring down the opposite slope at a lonely little hovel.  It met the eye with as much grassy roof as pub.  But it was, indeed, a pub.   As sure as his dry mouth, it was a pub. 

They were in the borderlands between his beloved Arway and Delmark now.  This was still relatively flat country.  A small road ended or began at its door, as is known to happen.   Cullfor could smell the beer.

“Where there’s beer, there’s breakfast,” he whispered.

She smiled. 

Knowing they needed supplies, namely oatmeal and matches, he looked at his pinky, at Dhal’ birthday ring.  It should be more than enough for each.  It should also buy them some new shoes and a change of clothes, both of which they could use—not only for their wear, but for the notion of looking different, however slightly, than the last time the monk had seen them.  He could head out west from here, but it was unlikely that a dwelf and a halfling could ever fully immerse themselves in the land of men.  If he went north, up into the more mountainous borderlands, they could travel without sticking out like a pair of miniature thumbs, for halfling and man lived together, somewhat peacefully, in these borderland burgs.  Tenholly, Bonny Fumbling, et cetera, they were all were made up of equal parts human and halfling. 

In time, he settled the matter in his head. 

North it was.  For now.  Perhaps all the way to the wilds of Dragonfell, then west and south… that would be safest.

But that would also take months.

He put it out of his head, set his gaze beyond the pub, further downhill.  The road curled down, falling away to an ancient confusion of hedges.  The browning sprawl of a town formed beyond.  Bonny Fumbling, if he was not mistaken, which meant they had somehow skirted Tenholly altogether.  He knew Balturshot was just a bit further north of that.

He focused. 

Yes, this was Bonny Fumbling, named for some peculiar snow or some such, which had fallen during the summer, just after some human had defeated some halflings but let them live…  It was not far off, maybe two miles.  He could see the entirety of its sprawl from here—its scattered and wooden squalor thickening until it congested nearer its center.  Beyond that, the sullen murk of a wide grim castle rose. 

He again looked at the pub, licking his wind-cracked lips.  From the dark rosy windows spilled thin claps of stomp-music, rising and falling out of tune with the distant snorts of wild laughter.  There was something happy and tiresome about it, something that let him know that the people inside had been there all night.

He smiled, kissing the top of her head.  Then he once more smelled the pub’s pleasant stink on the wind as they walked swiftly past the bittersweet clamor inside.  The wind blew the grass around their feet.  He could not look back.  Not with so few steps between them and all that wonderful beer.

With quick, thirsty carelessness they went without words until they reached the hedges.  When he turned and looked uphill, a pair of thin gray figures stood outside staring at him. 

There was an odd stillness in their silence.  And there was something lonely and menacing the way their frozen little eyes contrasted the gay noise behind them.  He shivered and thought to nod, but turned.

He had felt stares like that before.

He thought he could smell the crisp, animal-blood scent of a fight floating now on the wind.

__________

It was a shock to see a plank road of steps, cutting through the hedges.  Commerce or convenience, with time, had superseded what was likely once planted as a system of defense.  It was difficult to say if it was refreshing or depressing.  They stepped onto it the planks sinking or sliding underfoot until they were practically dancing to stay on the trail. 

At its end, near the edge of town, an enormous white startled them with a large
woof
. 

Their startled leap made it leap back too. 

When he saw the tail go down and the head drop, he patted the wet jowls and looked up.  The town was razed not so long ago, evidenced by a meadow of new roofs that was sprouting from the roots of the old foundations.

He looked at Bunn.

“What do you want?”

“Oats and clothes.”

He laughed.  “We
need
oats and clothes,” he said.  “What do you
want
?”

As she winked at him, he felt a cool lightness wash through his stomach.. 

__________

He walked lightly with her through wispy crowds, looking.  Throughout the potted streets cauldrons were alive in upstairs rooms.  The aromas began slithering around his senses, a warmth of smells:  Ale and melting butter.  The smoky roasted scents of all manner of meats.  And the ghosts of last year’s vegetables boiling amid a bouquet of cabbage and pork-fat stock.

Everywhere, it seemed, people were looking at them without actually setting their eyes on him.  He hoped it was only because they were strangers. As the roads thickened with more and more people, he took her hand again. 

Cullfor halted, another sense buzzing.  It was not terrible here, but there was a current.  A halting behind the casual movements.  But hunger could do that sort of thing, he told himself. 

Attracted to a human monger, who was standing some nice red fillets in stalls at the front of his store, he looked at Bunn.

She seemed to understand he was uncomfortable with her watching him haggle.

“Go ahead, sweetness.”

He worked himself across the mud of the alleyway, then halted and stooped over the edge of the stall.  Gently surveying the wares, it felt like sizing up a new lover.  He had to curb a simmering sense of joy.  Aside from the fresh fillets, there was huge a selection of salted fishes inside.

“Three copper a pound,” the monger said.  “Netted and dried week last.”

Cullfor said nothing.  He realized suddenly that fish were too
in
expensive—he was going to have to buy the clothes first, just to get enough smaller monies to buy them.

“Three copper then,” he said.  “I’ll be back shortly enough.”

The monger harrumphed. “You wear a ragged cloak,” he said.  “Too ragged, I’ll wager.  The wealth behind that confidence is an easy thing to spot to a veteran-enough eye.  Take the fish, master, and come back when you have small enough coin.”

The monger tossed him a bundle of the fillets, and thought the words were kind enough, the way he tossed the bundle of fish as his feet felt hot-tempered and impolite, as if throwing alms to a beggar.  Cullfor looked down at the fish and cocked a narrowing eye.

In the end, he just bent and scooped up the bundle.  When he stood, looking for Bunn, he saw a human man running at him.  And the man never slowed.  Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he decided to fight him without magic.  Which was more or less precisely when he threw Cullfor violently onto the stall.  As he flew, Cullfor grabbed at the man’s wrist.  Taking hold, he snatched the man’s thumb and bent it back until he heard a crack.

The man squalled.

Cullfor stood, breathing. 

The fellow was holding his hand.  The monger was wide-eyed.  Cullfor saw a second face, then in the next instant a lengthy piece of wood.  A blow caught him crookedly across the forehead.  He felt himself crash backward onto a cart, pain exploding down his face.  Something slimy was spilling all around him.  It was eels, he noted with some horror.  Lots of them.  Hundreds.  He stood again.  Trying to get away now, footing was impossible.  He slipped and fell into the wriggling and living slime of the eels.  Then a third man sat on him.  He was chunky.  Tough.  Cullfor growled and rolled, throwing the man to the ground.  Amid a flourish of grunts and strangely sincere apologies, he twisted the large man’s arm until he felt the shoulder pop loose from the socket.

Staring at a fourth attacker now, a very fat man, Cullfor crouched.

“Hell’s black fire, man” Cullfor grunted.  “Think about this.  Think very damned carefully, fellow.”

The fat man nodded, drawing a blade. 

“Not what I meant, ye idiot.”

More attackers were circling around him.  Nine, maybe a dozen.  And the monger began withdrawing into the shadows.

Cullfor shook his head.  He grabbed the fat man by the wrist, pulling down with his natural forward lean.  Watching him splash down, Cullfor stepped on his wrist and stood ready.  Frozen, he saw Bunn, wide-eyed and breathing across the alley. 

He turned toward the smallest two.  Then he paused, sharply aware of three options.  The knife in his boot.  Magic.  Or the delicate silver ring on his pinky.  Puffed up, he balled his fist, thinking. 

All around, they were slower. 

But they were still coming. 

Cullfor spat.  He pulled the ring from his finger.  Charging the smallest of them, he showed them the ring and tossed it over their heads and across the alleyway, away from Bunn.  The ring flew toward a carted ass.  The dozen or so muggers followed the arc of the delicate ring, running at it like a prized, wingless bird that had taken unexpected flight, and the ass turned to the sudden rush.  Laden with barrels, it was both stuck and lurching away.  It whined and bucked with the load, louder and crazed until buckets of eels launched.  People screamed.  The crowd dispersed in all directions at once.  Cullfor was dodging, punching as the great riptide of the villagers shifted in a swath toward him.  Elbowing anyone in his path, he ran and grabbed Bunn’s open hand.  Running, he was surprised to find her laughing.  More surprising, he found it contagious.  Cullfor pulled against the impossible tow of people, snorting with unwanted chortles.  Leaping over some, knocking others down, it was hard to breathe, seeing people’s face as they were waylaid by his sloppy foxing.

As the north winds collected between the hedges, he looked back for the muggers and saw that they were gone.

They had cleared the crowds.  And the town itself.  Breathing, laughing like Mad Hamm himself, he heard something rustle behind him.

Cullfor started to turn but stopped.  His soul quivered.

Bunn looked at him, and he looked at her.  He understood without looking that something bleak and wicked stood behind him.

He took a pull of air and turned. 

At first he saw only a lightening-scarred tree.  Then a thick blue shadow rose before him.  A seven-foot tall dragon stared at him.  It was fifteen feet long with sallow eyes and a rattling white tongue.  Pale feathers bristled atop its head and back, cascading in shivers down its body.  Its eyes narrowed, the glare so stony it seemed knifing the thin orbs would not make it blink.  And yet for all the details he could see it was just a shimmer of a thing.  A ghost clad with all the fear and wonder of hell.

Now it was rustling in and out of the world—never fully there nor fully gone.

A thin stream of piss trickling down his leg, Cullfor stood, wondering not at the reality of the shadowflyer—it was too real to dismiss—but at why it was suddenly more vivid.  sort of world lets a thing so outlandish loose in the sober light of day?

Then the beast lunged toward him.

Cullfor crouched, and fast as a sneeze he held his knife, growling as his gathered his fear into his arms.

The shadow-beast halted and coiled.  Between its eyes was a high, lonesome cackle

Then Cullfor could see his aunt through it.  She was thin, grim and solemn, standing in a meadow among dragons.  He had not thought of her in some while. 

“Auntie Dhal?”

The creature responded with a terrible noise.  It roared, and the sound of it was like a thousand-foot root, ripping from hot clay soil.  It was unbearable.  It was coming from his own bones.

And the world blinked out.

__________

In the twilight of consciousness, Cullfor allowed his eyes to open.  The blurry image of an angel was bent over him with a spoon.  She was smiling. 

“Eat another bite, sweetness.”

She was always beautiful.  Her beauty existed before she did.