Fool's Gold (45 page)

“Cattak?” Quirk said to the man. He tugged his forelock back at her.

“Yes,” Will said. “You see, he and I got to talking after you introduced us. And I asked him if he could assemble a few tons of lead in a few days. And once he got past cursing me out for being a crazy man, he set down to work, and he did it.”

He smiled at Cattak. Cattak tugged at his forelock again.

“So,” Will said, “once that was done, Cattak and Quirk drove two wagons full of lead into the Consortium camp, disguised as merchants' wagons.”

Balur stared at the wagons, did the mathematics. “There is being no way,” he said, “that you could be moving several tons of lead from those wagons to the pay wagons before the dragons were attacking.”

Will nodded again. “That is true.” His grin was back. “But it was pretty easy to move the false silk covering off our wagons onto the dragons pay wagons.”

Cattak clearly had his cue. He reached behind him, gripped the silk fabric, and tore. A great swath of it came free. Beneath was a solid wooden wall, painted black and banded with iron.

Balur felt his jaw go slack.

“You see,” Will went on, “Cattak had been acting as a scout for a while, so he knew exactly what the Consortium pay wagons looked like. So he could create replicas easily enough. Then we just filled them with the lead he'd looted, disguised them with a silk covering, and drove them into the Consortium camp. Then when everyone was distracted by the fighting, he moved the coverings from our wagons to their pay wagons. Then Lette and I jumped on the fake pay wagons full of lead, and went off to have them be burned. We jumped off just in time, and went and hid. Meanwhile, Cattak took Quirk's merchants' wagons and went and hid as well. Then once everything had all died down, we all headed back here.”

“So.” Balur licked his lips. “Those wagons. They are being full of all the gold the Consortium was going to use to pay fifty thousand soldiers?”

Will's grin was particularly smug this time, but Balur didn't care one jot. “Yes,” he said. “We did it. We ripped off the dragons. We stole so much of their gold we can write the words, ‘Fuck off, dragons' in eighty-foot-tall letters right across this plain.”

He beamed at them all.

“We're rich.”

There was whooping. There was hollering. There was cheering and dancing.

Quirk slipped away from it all. She was, she supposed, happy for them. And Will was right, she grudgingly admitted to herself. His plan had saved far more lives than probably any other could have done. But she had no real interest in joining in their celebrations. The corpses of the dragon were too close, their call too loud.

She approached, scattering crowds of gathering crows. Already the stench of rot was ripe in the air. She ran her hand over a rim of ragged meat, tracing the course of an exposed artery, already mentally cataloging it for later.

So much dragon and so little time…

She clambered into the splayed-open corpse of the dragon, feeling the meat slick beneath her feet. She followed the course of the vein, counting its branches, trying to discern the muscles it passed through. As she worked, and tried to control the quiver of excitement in her hands, she thought she could perhaps understand the celebrations of the others a little better.

After a few yards she found the vein's passage was blocked by a lump of hardened magma. The whole corpse was spattered with cooling chunks of black rock sprayed by the volcano that ranged in size from pinheads to apples. She plucked this one off the corpse, careful not to disturb the tissue beneath.

As she moved to toss it away, something caught her eye. A sharp yellow glint she had only just exposed. She hesitated, examined the rock more closely, wiping and picking at it with her thumb.

Out of the rock emerged a small nugget of gold. It gleamed dully in her palm. Beauty incongruous in the battlefield.

Slowly Quirk took in the whole breath of the plain they all stood upon. Splatters of magma were everywhere. They spread out across the field of battle in a slowly dissipating arc to the west of Hallows' Mouth.

The gold had not disintegrated when the volcano blew. It had not been scooped up by the hand of some god and whisked away to the heavens. It had been melted. It had mixed with the rock. And it had been spread over this field.

Tons of it were being slowly churned into the mud by cavorting, drunken soldiers.

Standing in the corpse of a dead dragon, Quirk rolled the nugget of gold between her fingers.

She was not proud of much of what she had done in Kondorra. But looking back on everything that had brought her to this point, she could say she had gone out into the field, studied the beasts, and survived. She had seen them up close. She would have their corpses to study. She could take samples, and interview people here. She had more than enough information to write the definitive text on dragons. And when she returned to Tamathia, she would be the most famous thaumatobiologist alive. Her debt would be paid. The kindness of others would be rewarded.

There were happier endings, perhaps. But she was a realist. Perhaps this ending was happy enough.

She looked over to Lette, and Balur, and Will, They were dancing and drinking now. Just like everyone else. Would any more gold really improve things? From what she'd seen, too much wealth wasn't really good for people actually.

After a long moment, she pocketed the nugget, and silently went back to her work.

Will's afternoon passed in a happy blur. A lot of it was spent lying out in the grass. Lette was resting her head on his chest for most of it, and he had a mug of ale in his hand more often than not.

“So,” he said to Balur, as the sun started to dip behind the mountains on the distant horizon, “
you're
the prophet now?”

Balur shrugged. “You are being dead. Somebody was having to step up.”

Will wasn't sure if the logic of that statement hung together perfectly. Still, it hung together well enough that he wasn't the prophet anymore, and he could definitely live with that.

“So,” Lette said, “is that it then?”

“That what?” Balur took a long draft of his ale.

“Your better life,” she said. “The one we came to Kondorra to find. This prophet thing, that's your answer?”

Balur considered this. “To be fair,” he said, “the whole better life thing was being far more of your idea than mine. I was being completely happy with continuing to murder folk for coin.”

Lette nodded. “That sounds like most religious leaders I've known.”

Will decided he would sleep better at night if they changed the topic.

“What about you?” he said to Lette. “Who are you going to be, with all your newfound riches?”

Lette looked at Balur. Just for a moment. Then down at her ale.

“It is being all right,” Balur said quietly. “I am understanding. In Analesia there is coming a time sometimes, when a tribe is getting so big that the desert can no longer support it. Then we are gathering together all the weak little pussies we are no longer wanting to be in our tribe, and we are shoving them off to find their own place to live. Or more often die.”

Will had a strange sensation that that story was meant to be touching.

Lette nodded. “Our tribe of two has grown too big for these parts?”

“Well.” Balur shrugged. “My tribe is having fifty thousand more people in it now. And I am not sure there is being enough room for deadweight like you anymore.”

Lette weighed that, and smiled and put her arm around Will.

“Personally,” she said, “I've always felt like two is the right size for a tribe.”

If Will had died at that moment, he would not have considered his life poorly spent.

But he didn't die. Instead he saw Firkin walking toward them, and his moment of sunshine-bright happiness disappeared behind a cloud.

“Oh shit,” he said. Because if there was one person who might not be thoroughly convinced that Will was dead… it was Firkin. Indeed, Firkin might well prefer Will to be his prophet—someone he could push around, someone who was not big enough to push back.

“Good morrow,” the old man slurred as he approached, waving a wineskin at them. Then he looked at the wineskin. “Wait,” he said. “This isn't morrow. It's wine.” He put it to his lips, tilted his whole body back. He came back up smacking his lips. “Yes,” he said. “Definitely wine.”

He looked around their group, squinted, tilted his head on his side. “Morning, Will,” he said, and sat down heavily.

“Evening, Firkin,” Will said.

“Tiring shit, this being this mouth-of-the-prophet thing,” Firkin said. “Lot of shouting.” He rubbed his throat. “Parched half the time, I am.” He took another hit of wine.

“Right.” Will nodded. He felt curiously alone in this moment. None of the others seemed to want to save him. “And, erm…” He struggled for an angle of approach. “How is the prophet?” he said.

Firkin arched an eyebrow. “Why don't you ask him? Sitting right over there.” He nodded at Balur.

Will felt relief so overwhelming it almost bowled him over and left him lying on the floor.

“Balur's the prophet?” he said, not quite trusting this was as good as it sounded.

Firkin shrugged. “Was telling me he was. Said the prophet wanted beers and whores in that order, and he was the prophet so I should listen to him, so to get them for him pronto. And I said ‘beer and whores, thus spaketh the prophet' and suddenly they were everywhere.” He blinked several times, and rubbed his bald head.

“But…” Will was terrified of pushing the subject but he had to know. “He told you back in Athril that I was the prophet.”

Firkin nodded. “You said you weren't. He said you were. Now he goes and says he is.” He shrugged. “I just say what the prophet says. I'm not going to argue with him. Look at the size of him.”

Will looked at Balur.

Balur nodded. “I am being pretty magnificent in the size arena, it must be being said.”

Will wasn't sure what to make of it. Because it seemed amazing, and he wasn't sure that amazing things happened to him.

Firkin grinned a gap-toothed grin at him and clapped him on the shoulder. “We did it, Will,” he said. “Just like we used to talk about on those long, lazy days years ago. We took down all the dragons, we freed the people, and we got rich doing it.” He suddenly and unexpectedly grabbed Will in a tight hug. “I'm really fucking proud of you,” he said in a voice thick with emotion.

Will was struck dumb. He stared.

“All right,” Firkin said, standing up. “Off to spread the good word and all that. Like butter on bread it is. Except using your mouth of course. Can't do that with butter. Well, maybe you could but the bread would be getting all wet.” He shook himself. “Only stopped by to rest my legs.”

And then he staggered away, sipping occasionally from his wineskin.

Will watched him go. The clouds seemed to be lifting inside his head.

“You realize,” Lette said to Balur, “that you're stuck with him now. Oh prophet.”

Balur shrugged. “I can be keeping him in line. Look at the size of me.”

Lette snorted out a little laugh, turned, and looked at Will. “What about you, then?” She leaned forward, kissed him. For a minute the world was all about the softness of her lips, and the smell of her hair. She pulled away. “What are you going to be?”

Will kept staring after Firkin for a moment longer, then looked at her. At the world beyond. The celebrating crowds. The dead dragons. The blue sky and the white sun. And suddenly he knew exactly what he was going to be.

“Happy,” he said. “I'm going to be happy.”

I have wanted to be an epic fantasy author since around the age of nine. Now, for better or worse, I am one. These are the people who helped me get here, and whom I can never thank enough. My parents, who indulged my geek side, and took me on my first trip to Middle Earth. Greg McClenaghan, who introduced me to D&D and lent me the Dragonlance Chronicles—I wouldn't be half the nerd I am today without him. Adam Brown, the self-proclaimed comedy genius and my first partner in literary crime. Paul Jessup, Natania Barron, Michelle Muenzler, Jacques Barcia, Jaym Gates, Harry Markov, Berit Ellingsen, and the rest of the Broken Circles writing group, who are a constant source of inspiration and amusement—everyone should be lucky enough to know people as good as them. Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, who introduced me to my agent. Howard Morhaim, the aforementioned agent, and quite possibly the only real wizard I have ever met. Will Hinton, my editor, who took a chance on me and this series, and whose advice and enthusiasm have been utterly invaluable. And finally, my wife, Tami, my muse, my first editor, my champion, and the princess in the tower who rescued me. Without her none of this would be possible.