Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter 62

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Cullfor kept his head down, embarrassed for reasons even he didn’t quite find clear.  He began walking, too quickly, his wounded leg complaining.  When he got to a spot between cottages, he heard a loud, but distant harrumph.

“Good lord,” Ghelli yelled across.  “The wizard is assuming much of his own abilities, I think.”

Cullfor felt eyes plopping on him.  As he halted, all the scattered conversations seemed to settle, then re-ignite with his name.  He straightened his back, and turned to them.

“I assume nothing, young master.  Nothing but your mother’s virtue.”

Ghelli’s eyebrows rose, visible even across the field, and a great thunder of laughs erupted from the halflings around him.

Cullfor shook his head.  He began hobbling more quickly up to the rise.  In time he frightened some crows from the eyeless corpse of the pigger.  His helpers and sisters were bloated, turning bluish.  There were no soft parts left.  No time to mourn them.  He saw something shiny, half-buried under the hoof of a piglet.  Cullfor pulled it tenderly from the gunk.  It was a silver ring with a large, jade oval.  He studied it, his eyes watering.  D~H~A~L was entwined around the ring in a fine example of old Arwegian knot-runes.  It was beautiful.

The pigger had spent a year’s wages on his aunt.

Then something else was yelled from the village, something about money.  It was loud enough that he had to look back, but it was only to see one of the halfling warriors making a slapping motion.  Cullie found it unclear what exactly was meant, and he shook his head again. 

He placed the ring on his pinky.  Whatever they were going on about, their neighing laughter reminded him of where he might be able to by a horse.

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Exhausted and grim-faced, Cullfor trekked onto the sunken old road out of Gintypool.  Every step sent crashes of pain sweeping up his wounded leg.  As he wound across the bumpy and gorged hilltops, the road only made it worse.  There was not so much as a plank left.  The paving stones had been stolen away long ago to local hearths and fences.  But he was almost thankful for the distraction.  Uninvited realities were already coming fast.  The vast path ahead.  Finding her.  Bringing her home.  And to what?  It already seemed so long and impossible that his quest felt like a childish delusion.

Thundering hell, but this is stupid.

Thinking about Uncle Fie focused him.  His lord-uncle was a rarity among men.  He knew that.  He had loved his nonsensical, merry rants.  He had loved him dearly.  But he was unable to cry.  Not yet.  The cut was too fresh, and he understood that when it began to heal, it was going to hurt like nothing had ever hurt him before.

Cullfor went all day in this manner, until dusk finally seeped out of from the tree-filled hollows to once again to rise into the sky. 

Finally, he let himself pause.  He was deep in the forested road to Muttondon.  Below him, far under the road, a few farmsteads came alive with laughter and firelight.  They sat tucked into the folds of the landscape, echoing the empty noises of joy.  As the hearths flickered, shadow-fingers of oak danced up the hillside.  He watched for a while, vaguely envious. 

Then he caught an odd smell.

Cullfor smelled the air.  The odor was faint and skunky, but strangely appealing.  And it was familiar.  “What in the shivering depths?...”

He deigned to his knees and knuckles, smelling the road itself.  When he recognized the odor, he recoiled.  He had caught a whiff of it before, demon’s breath.  This was the smell of a dragon wraith, a shadowflyer, the thing created when a dragon does what only the dead should do—untangle its soul from its body.    

One had been here, very recently.

As he stood, Cullfor was already rethinking his route.  He began looking around.  He sucked his teeth.

What was it Uncle Fie had said?   Not everyone can sense them, but they are very real, these…  dragon wraiths.  But while they were essentially spirits, they were more than that.  You do not hunt a shadowflyer.  Ever.  Not even the old ones.  They cannot be defeated with steel because they will break your mind; they will seek your innermost demons and turn your own steel against you.  This is why you do not bury the memories of war, you burn them.  And you did not speak the curses your enemies utter. 

Cullfor huffed, silently, realizing that while all that Fie had said was scary as hell—it really made no sense.  At least no sense that was applicable. 

Then he felt a pair of eyes. 

He stood very still.  The pupils ticked across his eyes slowly, a rhythm to match a heartbeat.  It was the same feeling as last night.  He was on the same trail, and the same crumbling tollhouse was just ahead.

After what seemed like an hour, he remembered the other way to Muttondon.

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It was getting colder as Cullfor traced off the road.  He cut over a few hills, coughing as he wrapped his cloak around him.  He trekked another half-hour through thickening woods.  When he emerged onto the new path, something stomped the ground.

He froze.

A small sniffing noise cut through his ears.  Then suddenly a small heard of deer exploded from invisible poses. Wide-eyed, Cullfor watched them leap across the path in a clatter of hooves.  The bounded down the slope opposite the trail, snorting.  He was still clutching his chest when they suddenly paused.

Beyond them, somewhere downhill, was another noise. 

A half a minute passed.  He heard some sort of rustle.  In the next instant, the deer were bouncing back up the hill, straight at him.  Cullfor gritted his teeth and crouched, covering his head.  The beasts were all round him, slipping and snorting.  Just as suddenly, stillness returned.

When he was certain they were gone, he gathered himself and stood up.  He went to the edge of the slope.  But he could not bring himself to peak, much less piss defiantly down the hill.

There was the smell again.

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Morning had not come, but Cullfor could plainly see his destination.  Covenloft Tower loomed at the edge of Muttondon like a phallus.

Being new to any sort of thievery, he had to remind himself to sneak, and he had to remind himself, more than once, that if he ever wanted to get the ladies out of Arkenstowe alive, he desperately needed a horse.

He slunk through the forest, then went lightly to the base of the tower.  This wasn’t the same part of town he’d left out of the night before.  It was sleepier.  In fact the old halfling at the zenith of the watchtower was no doubt drunk or asleep.  Hell, he was probably not up there.

Just to be sure, he crept around to the other side.  There was nothing, just a sleepy little church and the abbey at its side.

He thought about the penalty for stealing a horse.  He had no idea what it was.  He tsked and stared upward at the stone merlons again.  The sky beyond was black and starless.  When he was certain nothing stirred in the tower, he returned his attention to the abbey and the stable at its side.  The abbey walls were already alive with the small clattery noises of prayer and breakfast.  There was time.  They would not emerge to their chores until prayers were complete.

He walked low and quietly past the abbey. The stable was just beyond it, on a ramped platform of stone.  It was only slightly apart from the abbey proper.  Each of the buildings was long and squat, and awkwardly plain.  The plank sidings had gaps.

Cullfor slunk into the alley the two buildings formed.  In the darkness between, he paused.  He began listening at the places where the planks were loose and warped.  He heard nothing from the stable, so he squeezed passed a lean-to, which smelled as though it held hay and oats.  When he emerged, the town of Muttondon fully revealed itself.  He had never seen it at this hour, from this angle.  There seemed to be no gaps for alleys or roads.  Nothing but crooked rows of roofs with no linear pattern he could discern.  The entire village was crowned with a veil of wood smoke.

Nearing the stable’s back door, he looked around him again.  Someone was laughing in the distance.

He took a breath and pulled a crankbar, which protruded crudely from the lock’s workings.  Prying it open with magic would surely bust the iron, causing a loud snap that he surely didn’t need.  So he worked at it with nothing but muscle.  And worked some more.  Despite an effort that left his hand shaking, it hardly budged.  He felt around in his cloak for something to pick the lock.  Nothing was small enough to fit.

He caught himself wanting to leave.  Taking another long breath, he had to push thoughts of the handmaiden out of his head.  She would love coming along on something like this.  She made adventures out of tragedies.

Don’t think about this.

An idea hit him.  The halfling-sized sword; he could use it as a fulcrum.  He unsheathed it, and studied the tip a moment.  Then he looked at the door.  There was a space between the iron brace that held the lock to the door.  He inserted it, gingerly, from the top.  Then he pulled down with a soft yank, and it loosed the entire ironworks with striking ease.

Cullfor kissed the tip, sheathed it, and pushed the door open.

Inside was markedly neat.  It was vast, despite a low ceiling.  Every manner of vine and flower was carved into the beams.  He stepped further in.  Running his hand along the stalls, he slowly soaked in the sight of each horse.

When Cullfor had passed them all, gloom mined into his belly.  He almost punched something.  They were each vibrant and healthy.  But they were Watershed ponies—too short for a man, and filled with the curiously playful manner of all things Arwegian.

He patted one’s head, leaning against one of the carved posts.

Then a sudden, screeching sound reverberated. 

A door
.

Cullfor ducked, retreating into one of the stalls.  He was shaking from the pain in his leg as he knelt beside a little black horse, which was staring him in the face.  While he crouched, his mind raced.  He could feel his pulse in his head.  Against the rush in his chest, he struggled to slow his breath.  When it was apparent he could not, he began reaching for some excuse...

Just grooming them?

No, sweet lord no...
Looking to buy one.

He peered over the stall.  But no one had come in.  The shock of that took a minute to overtake him.  He rose again.

Nothing.

No, he had heard something.

Then, after a few seconds, he heard a
phwooshing
sound.  He panicked, looking. 

A pair of yellow eyes ignited over him.

Cullfor grunted with some embarrassment, realizing it was only an owl.  He had forgotten how big the damn things get.  He grinned and patted the horse, stepping out of the stall, where he stared up at the bird.  Flapping its wings in the rafter, it revealed a wingspan nearly half as wide as he was tall.  The wind was actually fanning him.  When it settled, it puffed itself up.  It stayed fluffy, looking at him.  Its head was constantly moving in short bursts.

Then it looked at him sideways.  While it continued to stare, stretching its neck down at him as if to give him a good look, Cullfor stared back.  But soon he felt himself bending under the weight of the gaze.

Good lord.  Of all the damned things. 

Cullfor rubbed his face and left.

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In a black mood, Cullfor hobbled through Muttondon on no particular road.  Ahead, the eastern sky was starting to turn the world a shade of gray-blue that reminded him of that dragon he had imagined seeing on the longmonger’s vessel.  His leg was hurting, but there was a peculiar, free sensation growing with the morning.  It is a curious feeling, and seeing the sunrise, he tried to imagine what might be causing it, but nothing significant came to mind.

He put it out of his head, deciding that it did not matter what it was.  It mattered that it
was
.  Then he huffed at his own fleeting thought.  He needed to concentrate.  Needed a horse.  He had to get to Arkenstowe as fast as possible.  Who knew what the Dwarf-King was planning?  He only knew that time was not his friend.

He knew a few merchants hereabouts.  Big Bib Bladderwrack was probably his best bet.  He was certainly fond of old Uncle Fie, and he might know of a vessel that was going to—no… The more he thought about it, the more he realized that sailing there was impossible.  Halfing merchants traded with the dwarves frequently. 
Too
frequently.  They would be suspicious of anyone wanting passage to Arkenstowe, which was not a town; it was a fort.  And one doesn’t just hop off the boat and walk up to it from the docks.

Damn it, he needed a horse.

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