The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (21 page)

“
It’s a road which is free
to travel,” I replied.

“
And are not all roads free
to travel on Earth?”

“
No, there are Toll Roads,”
I explained.

Hydan frowned, “That seems rather
rude, to require a toll to walk, or swim, down a road!”

I shrugged.

Hydan considered, “On Earth I would
stick to these free ways.”

Myrka sniffed at his answer and said,
“I’d kill the bastard who thought they were going to collect a
toll, and then proceed down the road, as is my right.”

I smiled, “What about you,
Toji?”

“
Oh, I would pay the toll,”
he replied.

“
Really, that is very
normal of you,” I noted.

But he continued, “Then, I’d go to the
lord of the road, and politely ask him why he was charging for
travel on his road, and if I didn’t find his answer honorable, I’d
challenge him to a duel, and kill him.”

I sighed, “Well, that’s not going to
earn you any Brownie points on Earth.”

“
Brownie points, how do you
spend those?” he asked.

“
Well, you don’t spend
Brownie points,” I answered.

“
Then I have no need of
these dull-colored points,” Toji decided.

I shook my saeran head, and said,
“Never mind.”

Once we were all in the supplied
robes, which Hydan suggested we use so we would blend in with the
local mundanes, we headed up the stairs.

About halfway up, Hydan reminded us,
“Don’t do any magic, as long as we seem like simple folk, we might
get under the sense of Morgain, or her minions. I will keep a
glamour running to deflect simple sense probes.”

We entered a larger chamber, which I
found very odd. I had kind of pictured a common room of an old
tavern, something like the pub in Amesbury, or a more rustic
version of the same thing, but this room was more like a bathhouse.
There were several alcoves around the walls, and in each one was,
well, a hot tub, or cold tub, I suppose. These were round wooden
slat objects; about ten feet in diameter and several of them had
saerans soaking in them while drinking from very large mugs. There
was a semicircular half bench attached to the back of each, so
saerans could sit there soaking their feet if they didn’t want to
be completely submerged.

A saeran Innkeeper came over and
blinked at us, and then said, “Ah, travelers from afar! Welcome to
The Slimy Serpent, the best Inn here in Pelen, and, in fact, the
best Inn for thirty mectors!”

“
The only Inn, now that the
Inn at Berare is gone,” Hydan noted.

The saeran looked sad, “Yes, I knew
the proprietor; it is a sad time in Abal. The Derkaz sorceress is
winning, and who knows what will happen in the future. It’s better
to drink and absorb now, for there may be nothing left
tomorrow.”

“
Hear hear,” Hydan agreed
and tossed a shell to the proprietor of the Inn.

“
Sir!” the Innkeeper
exclaimed, looking at the fine workmanship of carvings in the
shell.

Hydan grinned, “I expect your best
craalm, and a tub, by a window! Oh, and bring us your finest
chum!”

“
You shall have it! Come,
your tub awaits, as does your fine brew and chum!” he exclaimed,
leading us off to an alcove with a window, made of small squares,
which faced the main road through town.

As we got into the tub, I asked, “What
in the hell is chum?"

Hydan grinned his pointy saeran teeth
and answered, "You'll see!"

I scowled at him, and then asked, "OK,
then tell me why you think this Inn has been spared in the
war?”

The Innkeeper came back at this point,
carrying a large wooden pitcher. He must have heard my question,
because he blinked his translucent eyelids a couple times, and then
answered, “The Slimy Serpent has nothing the Island Witch wants or
needs. There are no wizards or sorcerers here, nor are there any
left outside of the cities, unless they are staying
hidden."

Hydan then asked, "Why was the Berare
Inn destroyed?"

The Innkeeper replied, "Rumor has it
some foreign wizard was staying at the Berare Inn, which is why it
was razed to the ground. Morgain seeks anyone with the power, and
brooks no harboring of fugitives.” Here he leaned in closer and
said, “She has spies everywhere, for she pays well for even a hint
of a mage still hiding in these lands.”

“
Well, they won’t make a
clam off of us! We haven’t got a magic scale on our bodies!” Hydan
exclaimed.

Then I asked, “But, didn’t you have
any mages living here before the war?”

The Innkeeper nodded, “There were a
few, and life was much better back then. The mages were helpful,
healing the sick, helping in making things the town needed, it has
been hard without them.”

Hydan spoke sadly, “Yes, where we come
from it is very much the same.”

The Innkeeper nodded, and then he
lifted the very large wooden pitcher he had set on the ground while
we chatted, then said, "Your chum, it is a fine blend of veckle
heads, striped morker livers, and our own secret blend of some rare
seagrass herbs. It is quite refreshing!" Then he poured the cloudy
mixture right into our tub!

It smelled like week old
fish.

I started to get up and out of the now
murky tub water, but Hydan held onto my arm, and then I felt it,
kind of a tingling on my scales, and a warm sensation, somewhat
pleasurable.

He nodded his head and said softly
near my ear, "You feel it now? That is your skin-absorbing
nutrients from the chum mix."

The Innkeeper headed to fetch our
drinks.

When he was out of earshot Hydan spoke
quietly, “She has no use for killing mundanes, there is no point to
it since they cannot rise up and challenge her without mages on
their side. All she has to do is keep them from getting magical
aid. Better yet, by rewarding the mundanes for turning in visiting
mages, she has a spy system throughout the lands. She need only
make an example out of someone now and then to keep these mundanes
in line, which is the real reason she probably burned that other
Inn. I doubt there was really a mage there anyway.”

A male saeran kind of staggered past,
one of those large mugs clutched in his long-fingered hand. “More
craalm!” he bellowed. Then he turned and saw Myrka looking at him
stoically from our tub. His large black saeran eyes squinted a
moment and then a grin spread across his lips, exposing some of
those pointed teeth. “Wow, nice swimmerets!” he slurred.

Myrka scowled, “Move along, citizen, I
have no interest in a liaison with one of your kind!”

I moved over in the tub near Myrka and
whispered, “Careful, they can’t know we aren’t natives.”

The saeran, a pretty big one, I noted,
immediately changed direction and headed for Myrka, “Liaison! What
in Morgain’s barnacles are you talking about? I want to lay some
eggs with you, Sweety!”

Then he reached out a hand toward
Myrka’s upper arm, which she had draped over the side of the
tub.

Myrka moved back, and her left hand
came up out of the water, her palm pointed at the
saeran.

“
Hold on there, Myrka!” I
barked.

But she sneered and said, “This… fish,
dares…”

I interrupted, “To think you are a
desirable saeran, nothing more,” I said, trying to remind her she
shouldn’t reveal herself as a sorceress, let alone a Derkaz
sorceress like Morgain.

I turned to the saeran and said, “This
is my wife, good sir, so I would take it kindly if you would move
on to a more fertile hunting ground.”

He blinked rapidly, which was a very
saeran mannerism, I’d come to discover, and then said, “Would you
sell her to me?”

Myrka tried to move around me, but I
stayed between them and replied, “No, she is not for
sale.”

He scowled at my statement, and
considered his next move, at which point Myrka said, “May I kill
him?”

I turned and noticed the blue energy
which had flowed down from her hand and onto her knife blade. She
was currently gripping the hilt tightly with her right hand, but it
was mostly hidden inside the sheath. I kept my body between the
saeran and Myrka and whispered, “No, and stop using your
power!”

The blue glow stopped, and then I
turned back to the saeran.

He had heard Myrka's earlier threat
and his grin was wide, “She’s a feisty one!”

“
No doubt, she cut off the
hand of the last male who tried to touch her; I have a few scars
myself.”

He laughed, lifted his mug in salute
and said, “You’re a braver male than I! Good night and good luck!”
And then he staggered off.

“
You should have let me
kill him,” Myrka snarled, but turned away and moved back toward the
edge of the tub.

That’s when I saw the little saeran
girl, she was the equivalent of about a twelve-year-old human girl
in size. She was crouched down and peeking out from behind a
counter where the workers of the Inn prepared the drinks. Her eyes
were wide, with a look of astonishment.

I frowned; I hoped she hadn’t seen
Myrka’s use of Derkaz.

She ducked her head back when she saw
me looking at her.

You would think sitting in a tub of
cold water after having been in the river for hours would be the
last place you would want to be, but with the chum in the water, it
was strangely soothing to the saeran bodies to relax and
absorb.

The Innkeeper showed up with our mugs
of craalm, which turned out to be a strange oily beverage with a
fishy, but oddly pleasant flavor. I guess saeran taste buds liked
different things than humans.

We inquired about rooms and arranged
for two for the evening. As we headed upstairs I felt something
odd, call it a hunch, or maybe it was one of these ‘senses’ things
mages can do. I looked with my peripheral vision and noticed the
same little saeran girl kind of dogging our heels, darting from
cover to cover, like we were circus animals she wanted to
see.

As the rest of them went around the
bend into a new hallway, I ducked behind a post and waited. A
moment later the little saeran girl came up the stairs. Just as she
got there, I stepped out and said, “Boo!”

She leaped back, hitting the wall, and
I reached out and steadied her so she wouldn’t fall down the
stairs.

“
Hang on there, little
guppie,” I said and gave her a friendly smile. That’s when I
noticed the nautilus Glyph on her cheek. In the dim light, the blue
of the Glyph blended into the blue color of her skin and scales, so
I had missed it.

Some of the quick fear which had shown
on her face subsided, and then she smiled ruefully at me, “I didn’t
think you saw me following you.”

“
Well, I did, and now I
think I know why you think we are so interesting, you can see our
Glyphs, can’t you? And you know what these mean.”

She nodded, “I haven’t seen any other
free mages since my parents were killed.”

“
Free mages?” I
asked.

She nodded, “Not controlled by the
Island Witch.”

Interesting, I thought.

She continued, “We don’t see a lot of
strangers anymore, not since the war. Most people stay home, or in
their own villages. And certainly no one with a Glyph, they don’t
want to run into the Island Witch or her Living Husks, and get
taken.”

“
Living Husks?” I
asked.

“
Yeah, her servants,
saerans she has captured and turned into living dead. They’re like
the dead husk of a fish which has been lying in the sun too long,
rotted, dried, and stinking, but they move like they are
alive.”

I nodded, “I’ve dealt with some
creatures like that before.”

She sighed, “But there are worse
things, there are mages who have been turned. Eventually, they are
going to find me and then make me into one of those things. I don’t
want to be one of them, I’d rather die first,” the girl stated
sadly.

I looked at her for a moment, and then
said, “What’s your name?”

“
Ziny,” she answered pertly
and awarded me with a kind of crooked smile.

“
Well, Ziny, you’ll be
fine, they aren’t looking for a little girl like you.”

Her smile faded. “They took my
parents, but my mom hid me from them under the floor,” she stated
sadly. “The Innkeeper was a friend of my mother, so he took me in
after the Living Husks left.”

I had an instant hatred for Morgain,
and her foul husks. To Ziny, I said, “Don’t you worry, just keep
your head down and everything will be fine. I’ll see you later on,
OK?”

The little waif nodded, her big dark
eyes watching me.

As I turned away and left her, I felt
terrible, for no apparent reason.

I caught up with the others, who were
together in the first room we had hired; they wanted a chance to
talk in private. I noticed the beds were not like a human bed, they
were a soft gel-like substance, which formed around your body, kind
of like lying in dense jelly, but it didn’t stick to you at
all.