Fable: Blood of Heroes
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Authors: Jim C. Hines
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Fantasy, #Genre Fiction, #TV; Movie; Video Game Adaptations, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Epic, #Sword & Sorcery
BY JIM C. HINES
Fable: Blood of Heroes
MAGIC EX LIBRIS
Libriomancer
Codex Born
Unbound
Revisionary
THE PRINCESS SERIES
The Stepsister Scheme
The Mermaid’s Madness
Red Hood’s Revenge
The Snow Queen’s Shadow
JIG THE GOBLIN
The Legend of Jig Dragonslayer
Goblin Quest
Goblin Hero
Goblin War
Fable: Blood of Heroes
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2015 Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
D
EL
R
EY
and the H
OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Microsoft, FABLE, LIONHEAD, the Lionhead logo, XBOX, and the Xbox logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries and are used under license from Microsoft.
ISBN 978-0-345-54234-2
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54235-9
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
www.delreybooks.com
www.lionhead.com
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Edition
Dedicated to the memory of that legendary Hero Sir Whitefeather Cluckwarbler the Quick, also called the Courageous, the Strong, the Daring, and the Chicken. He was an inspiration to generations of poultry to come.
(In the end, Sir Cluckwarbler ultimately came to be known as “the Tasty” …)
CONTENTS
T
here was a time when Yog would have lit the candle with an act of Will.
Of course, there was also a time when she’d had her own teeth, walked without the assistance of a stick, and didn’t wake up four times a night to piss.
These days, she needed to conserve what power she had. Her gnarled fingers eased a lit taper through the open jaw of the centre skull. Inside, a fat tallow candle sat as if in a pool of its own hardened blood, melted and spilled over the past months. A bud of blue flame appeared at the end of the wick. Yog withdrew the taper and sat back as a sweaty, smoky smell filled her hut.
She extended her Will into the candle. The flame sputtered. Tallow bubbled and splashed within the skull. Lines of smoke escaped through square nail holes in the top of the cranium, giving the appearance of ethereal horns. A bit escaped to drip through the nose cavity like rivulets of hot snot. The image was appropriate, considering who was magically bound to this one.
This was the smallest of the three skulls arranged on the wooden table. Like most of Yog’s possessions, the skull was strapped into place. Strips of old leather crisscrossed the bone, securing it to her work desk.
Two other skulls bookended this one. The one on the left was slender, blackened by soot and ash. To the right was the largest of the three, broad and strong, with a layer of thickened bone over the brow. Each contained a matching candle, but Yog left them unlit for now.
Once the flame in the centre skull was burning steadily, Yog peered into the eye sockets, concentrating on the small blue glow. The walls of her home faded into shadow. She followed the flame out through the shadows of Deepwood and the marshes of the Boggins, to the town of Brightlodge, a town that appeared not so much planned as vomited onto an isle atop a waterfall, splattering bridges and buildings in every direction. The tower stretching out over the falls—Wendleglass Hall—looked as rickety as Yog herself.
She barely recognised this Albion, so different from the Old Kingdom. This was an Albion just beginning to crawl out of the darkness, like toads digging themselves out of the dirt after a long winter. It was a land where most people lived their entire lives without venturing more than a stone’s throw from their villages … mostly because venturing farther tended to bring a sudden and painful end to those lives. Often involving thrown stones.
How long had Yog hidden away from the world in her hut in Deepwood? And then word had begun to spread throughout the land: Heroes had returned to Albion.
Yog hadn’t believed the rumours at first. Heroes had been lost with the destruction of the Old Kingdom. Gone was the bloodline of men and women who could call lightning from the sky with an act of Will or wrestle a bear and win.
To the average man, Heroes were a foreign concept. Much like hygiene. Their return was as far-fetched a story as the one about the redcap with the enchanted, chicken-drawn sled who flew through the winter skies to sneak down people’s chimneys and set their stockings on fire. Preferably while the owners were still wearing them.
Yog looked beyond the blue candle flame onto the streets of Brightlodge, settling her awareness into the senses of a creature who crouched in an alley behind a half-full rain barrel, the same creature whose blood and hair were moulded into the candle. She had never used such measures in her prime, but the candle eased the strain on her Will, just as her stick did for her body.
The sounds and scents of the street filled Yog’s hut. A dog barked in the distance. The building to the left smelled like burnt bread. A breeze carried the stink of weeds and dying flowers. As for the creature itself, a redcap named Blue, his scent was enough to make Yog’s eyes water.
She felt the single drop of blood that tickled the side of Blue’s face. He wiped it on his sleeve, then reached up to adjust the filthy, pointed cap nailed to his skull. Two nails protruded from his brow like the antennae of an insect, while a third jutted from the back of his head.
Redcaps were a miserable, pathetic breed, but this one had shown himself to be surprisingly skilful. Skilful, that is, when he wasn’t distracted.
Blue plunged his hand into the rain barrel to retrieve a drowned mouse. He giggled to himself as he fitted the sodden corpse into the pouch of his slingshot and sneaked towards the mud-spattered road.
He drew back the mouse and aimed at a thick-built man arguing with a street vendor over a pair of cabbages. The mouse struck the back of the man’s head and dropped neatly down his collar. It was too waterlogged to do any real damage, but the man screamed like a balverine had fallen from the sky and crawled into his undergarments.
Blue giggled and vanished back into the shadows. He paused briefly to study the moon, as if contemplating how big a slingshot he would need to knock it out of the sky. Eventually, he sighed and tucked the slingshot back into the rags he wore for clothing.
“Stupid humans. Stupid town. Stupid dead cow. Stupid mistress, sendin’ Blue out to—”
“Hello, Blue,” Yog said, projecting her words directly into his skull.
Blue squealed and looked around furtively, as if terrified the shadows might lash out to punish him.
Yog enjoyed startling the redcap. It was one of the few pleasures she allowed herself these days. On a good day, she could make Blue soil himself. “Tell me of your progress.”
Blue jumped again, then pulled a skeletal finger on a leather thong from his shirt. The finger had come from the same redcap as the skull in Yog’s hut, another crutch to supplement her Will. He brought the finger to his lips and whispered, “Mistress?”
“Have you completed your task?”
“Alehouse. Dead mouse.” Blue tended to rhyme when he was anxious. Or manic. Or drunk. Or when he thought it would annoy her.
It was Blue who had brought her the first confirmation of the rumours, letting her know that Arthur Brutus Cadwallader Wendleglass, the self-proclaimed King of Brightlodge, had put out a call for the Heroes of Albion to gather in his little town.
For Yog, the news was like awakening from a dream. Emotions she had thought extinguished lifetimes ago flared hot once more. She might have thanked King Wendleglass personally … if the fool hadn’t managed to get himself killed by the White Lady in the midst of his own Festival of Flowers.
Wendleglass certainly threw a memorable party, but the man had been an idiot. Even a redcap knew better than to pick the White Lady’s roses.
“Show me,” she said.
Blue waited until nobody was looking in his direction, then scampered around the bakery and down a darkened street, crossing through Hightown in the general direction of Wendleglass Hall. Someone dumped a chamber pot into the street. Blue jumped, then scampered up the side of the building. He hung from one hand and used the other to pick his nose and flick a nugget at the woman’s back.
He scampered over the rooftops until he reached the back of a loud, raucous inn called the Cock and Bard. Shoulders hunched, he crept closer. One hand stretched towards the door, but it swung open before he touched it. Blue yelped and dived behind a pile of empty crates and refuse. He waited, a small slingshot in one hand, as a woman tossed scraps into the street.
Once the woman had gone, and a pair of dogs had emerged to fight over the scraps, Blue tugged open the door. He peered into a kitchen that stank of spilled beer and questionable meat. He pointed to a small wooden keg, the side of which bore a brand in the shape of a dead cow.
After all these centuries, Yog was still capable of surprise. “You did it.”
“Aye,” said Blue.
“The ale was properly prepared?”
Blue nodded, making the tip of his cap flop back and forth.
“You didn’t piss in it this time?”
He shook his head even harder.
“Or put frogs or snakes or anything else, living or dead, into the keg?”
“No bugs, no slugs!”
“Well done. Return to the library and rejoin the others before—” A woman in a stained apron stomped through the kitchen and froze when she spotted the redcap. Yog sighed. “—before you’re seen.”
The woman drew breath to scream, then hesitated. “Are you here to spend your coin? We serve the twenty-third best ale in Albion.”
Blue shook his head again.
“Oh. All right, then.”
Now
the woman screamed.
Blue jumped up and fished a snake skull packed with pebbles and dried mud from a pouch at his belt. He loaded his slingshot, aimed, and loosed the missile in one smooth motion. He missed the woman completely but struck the glass lantern hanging on the wall behind her. Blue whooped with delight as the lantern shattered, spraying flame and oil over the wall.
Bad enough Yog was stuck with a redcap serving as one of her three Riders. She had to pick one with a particular love of setting things on fire. It was a miracle Blue had gone two days in Brightlodge without setting the whole place ablaze.
Blue yanked the door shut and scampered away.
Yog extinguished the candle and rubbed her eyes. Blue
had
made sure the keg was delivered safely to the pub. The rest was as much Yog’s fault as anyone’s. She was the one who insisted he return to the pub so she could see for herself. She might have been better off ordering him to jump from the top of Wendleglass Hall.
Not for the first time, she cursed her fortune. The woods were full of creatures far more powerful and dangerous than a half-mad, bloodthirsty changeling. But her power wasn’t what it used to be, and her plans required a redcap, at least for now.
Assuming the pub didn’t burn to the ground, it wouldn’t be long before she confirmed the ale’s effect on the townspeople. Yog and her Riders would soon reclaim their former strength and glory, and Albion would cower at the mention of her name.
If all went well, perhaps she’d let Blue burn Brightlodge to the ground as a reward for his service.
