Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (7 page)

Kali rode up next to Pancras.
“Got any livestock with you? Our mounts could do with some variety.”

“We might could do a trade.” The
farmer regarded the three atop the lizards. “What have you been feeding them?
Are you fresh out of meat?”

“I’ve been conjuring boggins for
them.” Delilah smiled and twirled her staff. It flew out of her hands and
landed near the farmer’s feet. He skipped back and stared at it like it was a
deadly viper, poised to strike.

“Magic?”

Pancras reached down and touched
the man’s shoulder. “We can pay with Etrunian talons for any food we eat. We’re
just passing through to Muncifer, but a night amongst good folk would be
welcome.”

The farmer nodded at the
minotaur. “Put on a show for the kiddies, and we’ll feed you for free.”

* * *

“A show for the children? No, no,
no, no, no. I’m not a wandering trickster.” Delilah shook her head, and she would
have stomped her feet in protest were she not sitting on her lizard. Kale
dismounted and retrieved her staff as the farmer rushed off to tell the others
about their guests.

“It’s no big deal, Deli. Make a
few glowy boggins, maybe shoot some fire into the air, and they’ll be
satisfied, right?” Kale handed Delilah her staff. She snatched it from his
claws.

“Yeah, putting myself on display
like some sideshow.”

Edric laughed. “Maybe Pancras can
conjure up some bones to chase the kiddies around.”

Kale’s eyes widened. He spread
his wings and bounced on his heels. “Oh yeah! That’d be great.”

Pancras nudged Kale with his
foot. “I think that would be an extraordinarily bad idea. Animating the dead
when you have an intact skeleton prepared is one thing, but doing it to some
random dead person who’s buried in a forgotten grave in the middle of a field?
You never know what you’re going to get.” He dismounted. “I will not animate a
bunch of chickens for mere entertainment.”

Kale stared at the dirt and
shuffled his feet. “Do you really think there are a bunch of dead people buried
under us?” He tried to imagine what kind of war would be fought over a
nondescript field in the middle of nowhere.

“Probably not. But I’ll bet
there’s an unmarked grave somewhere around here, or a starving, lost traveler
interred within the earth by the passing of time.” Pancras led the group into
the center of the caravan village.

Kale bowed his head and grieved
the lost traveler Pancras described.
What a lonely end.

In the center of the makeshift
village the farmers and tinkers formed with their wagons, stood a roaring
bonfire. Each of the half-dozen wagons had a retractable awning with a small
cooking fire burning in front of it. The farmer who greeted them showed them where
to secure their horses, and a few people helped rope off a separate area to
prevent the lizards from eating the livestock. Kale followed Pancras and the
farmer as he showed them around the makeshift village.

“I am Vasily.” The farmer placed
his arm around a stout woman wearing brown leathers. “This is my wife Magda,
and over there in that mass of chaos are my children, Alla and Yegor.”

Pancras regarded the crowd of
children who observed the draks secure their lizards in the makeshift pen. “I’m
curious. You don’t seem to be alarmed to suddenly have a minotaur and a bunch
of draks in your midst. I also haven’t seen any farms nearby.”

Vasily spread his arms and
smiled. “Our farms are small compared to the land that surrounds them. This
place is almost in the middle of all of them. We are used to minotaur and drak
traders from Muncifer. They’re fair to trade with and leave us alone when
they’re not interested in trading.” A scowl overtook his smile. “Not like the
soldiers who come through. They take what they want without compensation.”

Magda spat on the ground.
“Etrunia thinks these lands belong to them. Muncifer says no. A curse on Prince
Gavril and the Manless.”

Pancras rubbed his right horn.
“We’ve just come from Almeria. You’ll be pleased to know Prince Gavril is dead.
Princess Valene now rules, alone.”

Magda took her husband’s hand and
gazed toward the heavens. “Then Anetha grant her greater wisdom than her
husband had.”

Delilah trotted over to them and
tugged on Pancras’s sleeve, recoiling when she brushed against his gloved,
withered hand. “We’ve corralled the lizards in their pen, but someone’s going
to have to watch them. Edric says he needs your help with your horse. He’s too
short.”

“Oh, we’ll take care of that.”
Magda pushed her husband toward the horse. “Help our guests, Vasily.” She
grabbed Pancras’s hand to keep him from following. “Now, you’re going to tell
me all the news from Almeria.”

The minotaur glanced over his
shoulder at Kale and silently begged to be rescued. Kale waved at him, smiling,
and then joined his sister and Kali at the nailtooth pen.

* * *

Magda brought forth a stool for
Pancras and tended the fire while she questioned him about the current events
in Almeria. “You must tell me everything about Gavril’s death. He was such a
loathsome man. I want every detail.”

“It was rather anti-climactic.
That is, the people just seemed to go about their business. Of course, there
was a lot of snow, so perhaps they celebrated in their homes. Or didn’t. I
really can’t say.” Pancras was not about to reveal that he was directly
responsible for the prince’s death. Loyalists might enjoy an opportunity for
revenge, and one could never ascertain another’s political views on sight.

“I imagine a lot of things will
change in Etrunia now. Princess Valene is not Etrunian, you know.” Magda leaned
close to Pancras and lowered her voice, as if she were sharing state secrets.
“She’s from Vlorey, to the north. You can always tell them Vloreyans. You know,
by their dark skin. Quite striking.”

“Yes, so I heard.” Pancras
decided indulging the woman was probably the best way to deal with her
gossip-mongering.
Just a humble traveler here. No need to fear a minotaur
wizard.
Without regard to veracity in rumors about Etrunian farmer
superstition, he suspected most common folk would react poorly to learning he
used to create undead for a living.

“The snow was heavy in Almeria,
too? Bad winter. Worst in years. Not the worst I’ve seen, mind you, but not the
best either.”

Pancras craned his neck to check
on the draks. Kali juggled various bits of junk she found lying about, while
Kale led the children in clapping to a rhythm. Delilah looked on while leaning
on her staff, and Edric conversed with one of the tinkers.

“Why the interest in Almeria? I
would think folk like yourselves would be happiest left alone.”

Magda tossed the stick she used
to stoke the fire into the flame and stretched. “Born and raised just outside
the walls of Almeria. When Gavril came into power, my family decided they’d had
enough and left. My parents died that first winter out here, but I met my
Vasily just after. We’ve been together ever since. It’s a hard life, but it’s
honest and true.”

Pancras respected that. Farms
like the one Vasily and Magda worked dotted the plains. They were far enough
away from each other that everyone had their privacy but close enough that help
was never more than a few days away.

“I’d better go see what’s keeping
Vasily. He’s supposed be bringing back some chickens to cook.” Magda wiped her
hands on her shirt and strode toward one of the other wagons.

Pancras stumbled, almost losing
his balance as he slid off the stool meant for humans. Delilah rose up straight
when she noticed him approaching.

“So? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Looks like it’s about
dinner time. Have you done your magic tricks?”

A cheer went up from the children
who surrounded the draks. They turned from Kali’s juggling and shouted in
unison. “We want magic! Magic us!”

Delilah pursed her lips and
passed her staff from hand to hand. “Kale, why don’t you show them how you can
breathe fire?”

Before Pancras protested, the
children cheered, and Kale tossed back his head, loosing a gout of flame into
the air. The collective oohs and ahs from the children drowned out any cautions
Pancras offered. Kale flapped his wings, lifting himself from where he stood,
and let loose again, spraying an arc of flames above his head. He landed and
bowed to the clapping of tiny hands.

“Fire! Now do magic! Magic,
magic, magic!”

Pancras nudged Delilah. “That was
a short diversion. Surely, you have something to show them.”

“Don’t you?”

Pancras shuffled his feet,
kicking a small rock. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea right now.” In truth, he
had not attempted any conjurations since returning from the dead. Though he
still felt the threads of thaumaturgy woven throughout the world, even the
thought of using it caused a tickle in the back of his head. It was not a
pleasant sensation and felt fiendish.

“All right, fine. I’ll give them
something to look at.” Delilah stomped over to the makeshift pen where the
nailtooths were contained. She swung her staff in an arc in front of her,
shooing the children away. Blue tendrils swirled around her head as she spun
and pointed her staff into the pen.

“
Kalee’steen enoch leetiké
goyna!
”

Dozens of boggins appeared in the
pen, accompanied by multiple popping sounds. The children’s squeals of delight
turned into shrieks of terror as the nailtooths pounced upon the boggins two at
a time, rending the furry balls and tearing into them with toothy maws.

Covering his eyes with his hand,
Pancras backed away. He heard Delilah chuckling under her breath.

“Aita’s bloody bones! What is
going on here?”

Pancras noticed a tall, rotund
man approaching. His face was drawn together like he’d endured a lifetime of
eating sour foods. Firelight glinted off his shiny bald head, and his eyebrows
furrowed into angry Vs, a fuzzy wedge splitting his face in two. It was the
tinker with whom Edric had been speaking.

“You call this entertainment?
What sort of minstrels are you?” He snatched up a screaming boy, patting the
lad on the back as he spun on Pancras.

“We’re not minstrels, just
travelers.” Pancras held up his hands and stepped away from the angry human.

“This is what passes for entertainment
among you bull-headed, scaly bastards?”

Pancras bit his bottom lip hard
enough to draw blood. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation. He felt the
crackle of Delilah’s sorcery in the air.

“This passes for feeding our
mighty steeds, you fat… rock-headed looking…”

Pancras glanced past the man to
regard Delilah. Ethereal sapphire swirls danced around her hands and the head
of her staff. Pancras narrowed his eyes as he glared at her and shook his head.
“Everyone, calm down. This is just a misunderstanding.”

Edric pushed his way through the
crowd. “All right, all right. Look, the drak got carried away, all right? The
lizards were hungry, and she conjures the boggins to keep them from eating
whatever sheep or cows we might find. Better those boggins than one of your
sheep, eh?”

“That’s right.” Pancras nodded in
agreement with Edric, patting the human on the shoulder. “It was an ill-timed
feeding, I’ll grant you.” The crunching of bone and slurping sounds emanating
from the nailtooth pen punctuated his point.

“Hey, they got to see some real
magic though, right? Not just kiddie tricks.”

“Stop helping, Kale.” Pancras
took the man by the arm. He turned him toward the pen. The nailtooths had
finished with their meal and now groomed each other. “See? No harm done.”

The tinker shook off Pancras’s
grip. “No harm? Tell that to our children when they wake up screaming tonight
with dreams of torn-up beasties in their heads.”

“Oleg!” Magda shooed away the
remaining children and observers. “Oleg, your boy needs you. His horse threw a
shoe, and he can’t handle her alone. Get back to your wagon and leave these
folk alone. Their ways are different is all.”

Oleg grumbled. With one last,
withering glance at Delilah, he stalked toward his wagon. Magda shook her head
as he departed. “Always bending his iron, that one. They’re going to see sheep
slaughtered sooner or later.”

She stared at the draks, Edric,
and Pancras and placed her hands on her hips. “Well, what are you waiting
around for? Dinner’s on the fire. You want to eat, you’ll help me with these
vegetables!”

* * *

Fire-roasted chicken with root
vegetables was a greater meal than Delilah expected to find as they journeyed
across the plains of Etrunia. She thought about complimenting Magda, but
between the woman’s interrogation of Pancras about all things Almerian and
Vasily’s nonstop stories to Kali and Kale, she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.