The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (2 page)

Or a master wizard.

Fanzool smiled and let the threads of his spell slip from
his fingers, freeing the magical energy to return to its normal state. Perhaps
he wouldn’t have to visit Voltari after all? It would be a simple matter to
locate this Angus—he had the coin—but he would have to prime for the spell
first….

2

Angus frowned as he closed Braden’s
The Origins of the
Fishmen Invasion
. The tome was thick with anecdotes about how the fishmen attacks
had begun, but there were few facts in those stories. Most of the accounts were
sensationalized narratives with nasty descriptions of the battles and grandiose
platitudes of the king’s prowess and generosity. He suspected some of them were
lies, especially the ones claiming the fishmen had “six inch claws and rows
upon rows of dagger-sharp teeth.” He had seen fishmen, and they didn’t have six
inch claws, and their teeth were not much different from a dog’s. Still, they were
entertaining stories. But he wasn’t looking for entertainment; he was looking
for information.
Credible
information. A set of facts that he could draw
upon to devise a course of action, and those facts were sorely lacking in this
tome. But what choice did he have? Embril had said it was widely acknowledged
as the authority on the origin of the fishmen incursions, and few of the other
tomes on the subject of the fishmen dealt with those origins—and when they did,
they simply repeated parts of Braden’s stories. So, what had he learned from those
stories? What were the facts to be gleaned from Braden’s outlandish tales?

One thing was certain: the attacks had begun as small,
seemingly independent incursions. For nearly two generations, the fishmen
attacked a village here, a village there, but never the same village twice—never
in the same
area
twice. The attacks were sporadic, with perhaps a half
dozen a year, and most happened near harvest time. The fishmen never went far
beyond the border of the Death Swamps, where they lived, and they never stayed
long after their attacks. It was as if they were testing the village’s defenses
for weakness—and there were plenty of weaknesses! For a generation, King Dib
had been slow to respond; he left the villages to their own resources, which
were sparse at best. Most of those first attacks were massacres, bloody ones
the way Braden told them, with few survivors. The villages might have been
forgotten entirely if King Dib hadn’t been concerned with the taxes they owed….

Angus frowned. That wasn’t a fact; that was an impression,
one he couldn’t justify. Yes, King Dib sent his tax collectors out with
soldiers to guard them, but he did that throughout the kingdom after every
harvest. It was just coincidental that they were the ones who found the
villages in ruins, since it was the only time King Dib sent
anyone
up to
The Borderlands. If there had been a larger population, a greater need for the
grain, or even a bit more foresight, King Dib probably would have sent patrols
into The Borderlands instead of accepting the losses of a handful of villages
each year. After all, the lost grain was relatively negligible—

Facts. Not conjecture, no matter how well-supported it is.
King Dib did not send patrols into The Borderlands for two decades, but when he
did, they were largely unsuccessful. The fishmen just attacked villages that
weren’t being guarded. Then things changed. The population of the kingdom was
growing rapidly, and a new trade agreement had been reached with the Western
Kingdoms. He needed as much grain as he could get, and that meant he needed to
protect The Borderlands from the fishmen. He built forts along the edge of the
swamp and sent out frequent patrols between the villages. But only at harvest
time….

The fishmen responded to the increased human presence with
fire. It happened during the early summer, long before the grain went to seed.
The fishmen made a broad incursion, one that ranged the length of The
Borderlands, and burned everything. Villages, fields, even the forts were
burned. The forts burned quickly, too; they had been hastily constructed from
wood and had thatch roofs. The way Braden described it the forts were
firestorms waiting to happen. But King Dib rebuilt them, this time with stone,
and manned the length of the border with spotters in tall towers that could
send warning of an incursion. It worked for a few years.

Fact: That fire was a message, Angus was certain of it. But
of what kind? The most likely message was “Go away from here,” and that was
what Braden and the other scholars had concluded. But that didn’t sit well with
Angus. There was more in that message than an attempt to oust the human
settlements from The Borderlands. There was something symbolic about it,
something reminiscent of what King Urm had done to the Plains folk. If—

There was a heavy thud on his door, and Angus looked over at
it. He didn’t recognize the knock, but something stirred in his mind. Despite
the heaviness of the hand on the door, something told him the one wielding that
hand was trying to be quiet. But the strength of the arm was too great for a
gentle rap, a soft summons. He rose slowly and approached the door with
caution, then almost laughed at himself. What—
who
—was there to be
frightened of in the Wizards’ School? He shook his head and opened the door.

There was a large man—a half foot taller than himself, half
again his own weight—dressed in a navy blue tunic, dark brown breeches, soft
brown boots, and a fur-lined brown cape that nearly reached the floor. “Angus,”
the large man said, nodding to him. “I trust the winter has seen you well?”

“Hobart?” Angus said, a bit uncertain. He had never seen
Hobart out of his armor, and this man, though towering over him and
well-muscled, looked too small to be Hobart. Had the armor distorted his size
that much? He lifted his gaze to the blunt edge of the chin and met the
walnut-colored eyes of his companion. “It has indeed,” he said. He smiled and
stepped aside, wondering at Hobart’s flowing yellow locks. They were draped so
precisely over the man’s shoulders and down his back but somehow seemed to be fleeing
from his forehead. They had gotten a little closer to escaping than what he
remembered. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“It has been a while,” Hobart agreed. He paused to look
Angus over and made a quick assessment. “You’re paler than I remember.”

Angus laughed and stepped aside. As he ushered Hobart into
his room, he said, “I’ve spent the whole winter cloistered inside these walls.
It will be good to get some sun again.” He paused and said, “I assume that’s
why you’re here? To tell me when we’re leaving?”

Hobart nodded. “It is but a short trip,” he said. “Perhaps a
ten-day, two weeks at most. Giorge wants to gather fletching eggs.”

“Fletching eggs?” Angus asked. “Whatever for?”

Hobart laughed and said, “If you ever ate a fresh one, you
wouldn’t need to ask. They are a delicacy, and they roost four days’ ride south
of here.”

“Isn’t it a bit early for egg-laying?” Angus asked. “There’s
still snow on the ground.”

Hobart shrugged. “There may be snow here, but not in the
lower elevations. We’ll ride out of it in about two days. But it is a bit
early; most of the eggs will be gathered in about two or three weeks. We’re
hoping to get an early claim to avoid the squabbles that can happen.”

“Claim?” Angus asked.

Hobart nodded. “There won’t be many egg hunters out yet,” he
said. “Once they get there, they’ll lay claim to an area and it’s theirs for
the taking—unless someone wrests it from them. We should get there before most
of the egg hunters do, and that will give us a lot of area to choose from. It
will also mean there will be fewer eggs.”

“There must be a lot of these fletchings,” Angus said, “for
there to be so many hunting their eggs.”

“Yes,” Hobart agreed, “and we want to keep it that way.
There are strict limits to the number of eggs that can be taken. If there
weren’t, the fletchings would die off and there wouldn’t be any young to
replace them, and there would be fewer eggs to be had. But enough of this,”
Hobart said. “There will be plenty of time for questions on our ride there.”

“All right,” Angus said. “When do we leave?”

“Can you be ready tomorrow morning?” Hobart asked. “I know
it’s short notice….”

Tomorrow!
Angus frowned.
So soon?
He had
expected more notice than that, but it wasn’t that important. He had already
done most of the research he had set out to do, and what remained could be postponed
until they returned. “You said it was a short trip,” he said. “What will we do
afterward?”

“We’ll return here,” Hobart answered. “Commander Garret is
planning to take a large patrol into The Tween to see if there are any other signs
of fishmen up on that plateau. He’d like us to go with them as guides. We’re
the only ones who can do it, but they can’t leave for at least another month. The
snow will still be heavy up there until then.”

Fishmen
, Angus thought, wishing he had found out more
about them.
Why had they been so far from their home? Why had the dwarves
helped them? Why did they burn The Borderlands?
“Any word from The
Borderlands?” he asked.

Hobart slowly nodded. “A strange one,” he said. “The fishmen
didn’t attack last harvest, and the patrols that went into the Death Swamps came
back without making contact with them. It’s as if the fishmen had retreated
deeper into the swamps than the patrols were able to follow. Or,” he frowned
savagely and set his jaw, as if the thought were both difficult to form and
intolerable to say, “they aren’t there anymore.”

Angus nodded. It was the same as what he had heard from
others. The harvest in The Borderlands had been reaped without any sign of the
fishmen. If it weren’t for their presence in the Angst Temple….

“I will be ready in the morning,” he said. “When and where
would you like to meet?”

“Will you need to prime for spells?” Hobart asked.

Angus thought for a moment and shook his head. “No,” he
said, thinking of the new spells he had mastered and how he was looking forward
to using them—
if
the opportunity arose to do so.

“We’ll leave just after dawn, then. Meet us at the south lift
area. There should be plenty of traffic at that time, so we shouldn’t have to
wait long to descend.”

Angus nodded. “All right,” he said, standing. “I have some
things to attend to before I can leave. Would you mind?”

“Of course,” Hobart said, standing. His cape swished over
the floor as he moved toward the door. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

After Hobart had left, Angus closed his eyes and ran through
the list of things he had planned to do over the winter. He had done most of
them, but there were so many less urgent tasks that remained, tasks like the research
he was doing on the fishmen. It was more curiosity than anything else, but he
couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that, that there was
something happening that was buried deep beneath the surface that meant far
more than what lay above it. He sighed. It didn’t matter, not now. He needed to
get ready to go.

He went to the corner and picked up his backpack. It was
still much as he had left it when they had arrived back at Hellsbreath just
before winter blew in. The scrolls and map were on top, and the rest of the
gear was below it. He removed the scrolls, piling them neatly on the table while
making sure he didn’t disrupt their order. The black robe, neatly folded, was
next, and he took it out and set it on the table. He would have to wear it,
instead of the loose-fitting gray robe of an apprentice that he had been wearing
while staying at the Wizards’ School. The apprentice’s robe had helped him move
about the grounds without drawing too much attention, and it didn’t matter to
him that it didn’t reflect his true status. But when he left, it would be in
the black robe Voltari had made for him.

The padded leather tunic and strange black breeches were
next. Should he wear them? Did he even want to take them with him? The black
robe made him itch terribly, but when he wore the tunic and breeches beneath
it, that itchiness disappeared. But there was a risk to wearing them. He unfolded
the tunic and ran his fingers along the blackened edge of the holes left behind
by the fire. It still smelled faintly of smoke and sweat. “I should have fixed
this,” he muttered, wondering why he had not taken the time to do so. He had
had four months…. But it was still serviceable, if in disrepair, and he set it on
the table.

The breeches were next, and he ran his fingers over the
silk-smooth surface, wondering again what the cloth was wrought from, why it
seemed to mold itself around his legs as he put them on, why they hadn’t
ignited like the tunic when the flames had touched them. “I should have asked
someone about these,” he muttered, shaking his head and setting them on the
table. He didn’t have to make up his mind about wearing them until morning, but
he would take them with him. And one of the heavy gray apprentice robes. They
were warm.

He reached into his backpack and gently lifted out the clay pot.
Why do I keep this?
he wondered. It had been half full of healing balm
when he left Nargeth’s Inn, but now it was empty. There was no point to keeping
it, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it out. Perhaps it was a reminder? A
memento of the burns he had endured? But why would he want to remember
them
?
To keep from forgetting the mistakes that had caused the burns? So he would
remember to focus, to not let his concentration lapse again? To remind him of
the arrogance that led him to cast that spell in the first place? He set it on
the floor next to the table. It would be staying. Perhaps one day he would try
to convince Ulrich to sell—or give—him more of that wondrous cure, but not now.
There was no time.

He smiled as he brought out his old inkwell. It was a clumsy
thing, wrought badly from a single casting of iron, but it didn’t leak, and
that was important. He glanced at his desk, at the silver inkwell from the
Angst temple, one of several they had brought back with them. It was delicate,
finely wrought, but it leaked through the stopper when it was turned on its
side. He would have to leave it behind and take the old one. Perhaps he should
give it to Embril? A token of thanks?