Hunter's Bounty (Veller) (22 page)

“Of course, I will meet you there.” Morgan said as he held out one hand to
Erin. “Do you require a lift my dear?”

“A lift?”

No sooner had the words left her mouth then she felt as if she was being pulled through a hole in space, only to find herself sitting in an overstuffed wing back chair in the middle of a field. Morgan sat across from her in a matching chair, his yellow robes pooled about him, the cup of tea still in his hand.

“Such an obnoxious individual.” Morgan commented.

“Where are we?” Erin asked as she looked around the clearing, but she couldn’t see anything that looked familiar, not that there was anything to look at, the only things around them were a few trees and a lot of grass.

“Don’t worry
. We’re still in Aru, the Setton province to be exact.” Morgan replied.

“Setton… the
Setton Province. You said a spot just outside the city walls.”

“We are outside the city walls.”

“We’re about a three day trek outside the city walls.” Erin exclaimed.

“That would depend on what city you are referring to.” Morgan replied. “I never specified, now ask me your questions, and I will answer the best I can.”

The problem when dealing with mystics was that they never did anything the easy way.

“I need to know what Kile can do.”

“You want to know her edge.” Morgan said with a grin as he waved his hand. The cup of rosemary tea disappeared. “How much do you think you know?”

“It is an edge like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of before.”

“This is true.”

“She’s a freak… isn’t she?”

Morgan rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Such a harsh word for something we don’t yet understand. I prefer the word that Kile used, she is a… miscellaneous.”

“Call it what you want, it still doesn’t fit the definition of the mystic arts that I was taught when I was at the academy.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it dear, but what Hunters know about the mystic arts is about as much as a blade of grass in an open meadow.” He said as he stretched out his arms.

“Fine, I’m not really here to discuss the merits of what the Hunters know. I need to know what Kile is capable of if I’m to bring her in.”

“Regrettably, I cannot help you.”

“Why not? You said you would.”

“And I will, but I can not tell you what she is capable of, since I don’t know.”

“But you’re her teacher.”

“Please understand, yes I was her teacher, but as you have pointed out, she is… in your words… a freak. Her edge does not fall into the same categories as most hunters, she is unique, and because she is unique, I have no idea what she is capable of. What I do know, from my time with her at the academy, is that she has a strong connection with the natural realm, possibly a bit too strong, and that may be the problem.”

“Problem? What do you mean?”

“As I observed her during my time as her mystic arts instructor, I noticed a few qualities about her edge. To start with, she can communicate with animals, to such a degree that she can actually experience what they experience. She can see what they see, feel what they feel, it is a very unusual gift, one that I have not seen and have only read about in old books dealing with the alva. She also has the ability to command, or control animals when she puts her mind to it, an ability that affects her… quite deeply.”

“Deeply? How deeply?”

“I fear that it may strain her very psyche.”

“Are you saying she could go… mad?”

“It is possible. What you have to understand is that she walks the line between our world and the natural world. As long as she maintains that balancing act, she is fine.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“There’s no telling what could happen. It is unprecedented in the mystic history. You must realize at this point that she identifies more with the natural world than she does with our world.”

“Thank you Morgan.”
Erin said as she got up, with a little difficulty, from the overstuffed wingback chair.

“I hope that what I’ve told you will help.”
The mystic replied. “But think on this, you are not hunting just a girl, nor are you hunting an animal, but some combination of both. At the moment, she is running and that makes her unpredictable, corner her, and that makes her dangerous.”

“Thank you, I will keep that in mind.”
Erin replied.

“Then with that, I bid you good luck.” Morgan said as he got up
from his own chair. “And please give my regards to your obnoxious friend. Tell him I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

Before
Erin could say anything more, the yellow mystic waved his hands and she felt herself being pulled back through reality to stand once again inside the Iron Table. Grey quickly jumped to his feet at her sudden appearance.

“Where did you go? What did he tell you?” The Hunter demanded.

“That’s not important.” Erin replied dismissively. “What is important is we have to find out where she’s going now.”

“Last report from the guards that tried to pursue her was that she was heading south, and at a good clip too.” Folkstaff replied.

“Then I guess that’s where we’re going.”

***~~~***

13

“This doesn’t make any sense what so ever.” Kile said as she flipped through the burnt pages of the book. “It’s just too damaged.”

The girl was reclining on the back of the Mountain Pony, her head on his neck her feet propped up on his backside as Grim kept a steady pace going absolutely nowhere. Vesper rode between the Pony’s ears keeping a look out since the yarrow had proven that his eyesight was sharper th
an either of theirs. A simple squeak of a warning and the Mountain Pony would move off the road to avoid any unwanted attention.

“Okay, what do you make of this one.” Kile said as she bent the book back and started to read. “What we did, we
did for King and country, and the deeds that I have written within these pages may have just doomed us all, but if history cannot forgive us our sins, I can only pray that the gods may. It is…”

-It is what?-

Grim asked.

“
That's just it, I can’t make out anything more, the handwriting is too faded and half the page is missing. Didn’t this guy think to use decent ink?”

-Why do you even care? Obviously the book is useless.-

“Then why try to burn it?”

-Because it’s boring
… It was probably just burned in the fire.-

“No, this was burned long before the fire. I think
whatever was in this book. Brian Tally probably didn’t want anyone to read, so he tried to burn it.”

-Sounds like a good idea to me.-

“Yeah. But then why save it? Why hide it away?”

-Why read it?-

“There may be something important in this, something that will give me a clue as to why this Brian Tally was killed.”

-Probably because he wrote a boring book.-

“I’m guessing it’s something more than that.” She replied. “He’s saying that he did something that history may not forgive him for.”

-Because he wrote a boring book.-

“You’re not helping Grim.”

-I’m a Mountain Pony, what do I know about literature.-

“Not much, that’s for sure.”

-Well old learned one
. We are coming to a fork in the road. Which way now?-

She
looked up from the book, craning her neck to look behind her, or more precisely in the direction Grim was moving, but nothing looked familiar, not that she thought anything would. She had never been this far south before and had no idea where she should be going. At this point, until she had a better idea of what was going on, one place was as good as another, besides, if she didn’t know where she was going, how could the Hunter get there ahead of her.

“I don’t
know.” She replied dismissively as she turned her attentions back to the book, flipping through a few more pages. “You choose this time.”

-I chose last time.-

“Fine, just… keep going right.”

-We keep going right and we’ll end up back where we started from.-

Grim replied as he casually took the road to the right.

-You’re missing one possible connection in your book.-

“And what would that be?”

-He said ‘what we did’, who are the ‘we’? Maybe your dead friend in the forest is part of that ‘we’-

“What, you think David Draw helped Brian Tally do what ever it is that he did.”

-And got himself killed for it.-

“Then Arthur Linny was probably also a member of this group. So all we have to do is find out who the other members are. If we could get to them before the assassin does, then we can catch the assassin.”

-That’s assuming that there are any more members left.-

“Well…. yeah, I guess so. Otherwise all the members are dead and we’re back to where we started from. But then again there was another something in here that might help.” She replied as she quickly flipped through the book. She stopped on a particular bunt page and started to read. “Of the young Hunter, he has received his pay for the part that he has played in this dark conspiracy. If the king had truly known what this man’s part had been would he have understood? Would he have knighted this hunter? For my part, I do not believe so.”

“What do you think? You think he meant a Hunter as in a Guild Hunter, one of us?”

-You’re no longer a hunter.-

“Thanks, like I needed you to rub that in.”

-Just pointing out the obvious.-

“If it’s actually a Guild Hunter, then not all the men in this dark conspiracy were assassinated, since none of the men were Hunters.”

-Twenty one hunters have gone missing, eight more were found dead. How do you know that one of them wasn’t the hunter in the book.-

“Where did you get those numbers from?”

-Some of the other horses were talking.-

“Well, I suppose it is possible, but giving the flair that the assassin went about carrying out these assassinations, and the general age of the three men that are already dead, I figured the hunter would be a lot older, and if he was killed, we
would already know about it.”

-The book did say it was a young hunter.-

“Yeah, but the books old.” She said as she spun around and sat up on the Pony’s back. “This is what I got so far. A group of men needed a hunter to help them do something that they believed to be right, but was so bad that they all went into hiding. Now someone is seeking revenge for what they did, and is killing them off one by one.”

-An interesting story, but what did they do? And who wants revenge?-

“No, not just revenge… justice. Ravenshadow said he wanted justice. These men must have done something to Ravenshadow and now he’s seeking his justice, and I was supposed to be kept out of the way long enough so that he could frame me.”

-That’s a bit egotistical, why you.-

“Steele said that Guild Master Latherby supported me at the academy and because of what happened he’s losing support within the council. If I went on a killing spree, he loses his credibility with the council and the Sons of Terrabin take over.”

-And why would this Ravenshadow want the Sons of Terrabin to control the Hunter’s Guild?-

“I have no idea.” She replied. “But so far you can’t deny it does make a certain kind of sense.”

-There are a lot of things that make a certain
kind of sense, that doesn’t mean they are right.-

“Well, no, but it’s the best I can come it with so far.”

-What about the ring?-

She
looked down at the ring she was wearing on her finger, it seemed like the safest place to keep it at the moment. There was a familiarity about the crest on the ring, she had seen in on a few of the bounties that had been posted to the board back at the Guild house, including her own. Those bounties would have been the ones scripted by the crown. The crest was similar to that of the royal crest, but as similar as it was, there were distinct differences. The most noticeable difference was that the royal crest had the symbol of a bird over the engraving of a tree. This one had a horse beside a similar looking tree. That meant the ring could have belonged to royalty or it could have been a forgery, she knew as much about jewelry as she did the royal family and that wasn’t all that much.

They plodded along in silence a little further down the road when
she started to flip through the pages of the book again. She had been through it back to front and back again but it was the only piece of evidence that she had, and the only thing that even suggested that it knew what was going on. If only she could talk to books, then maybe she’d get some answers, of course, with the damage this book had sustained, it was probably very sick or possible dead already.