The (sort of) Dark Mage (Waldo Rabbit) (46 page)

“No,” Waldo aid. “I don’t mind.”

Alice was taken off guard when he placed a hand behind her head and pushed her back down. Her lips were on his again, but
he
was kissing
her
. For just a second she stiffened, not from opposition, just from surprise. Not only was he initiating this but he was kissing her very eagerly.

It felt wonderful.

She relaxed and leaned into his lips. One hand remained at the back of her head, as if to ensure she would not try to get away. The other was slowly running down along her back. His mouth eagerly played with hers. His desire was strong, and her hunger dissipated and quickly vanished.

Waldo had never done anything like this before; she was the one who always had to start things. Having him be the aggressor for a change was a bit exciting. She liked it. If his hands started to roam she wouldn’t mind. Alice thought she might be ready to let him do whatever he wanted.

After several minutes of kisses and soft touches he stopped and looked up at her cautiously. “Are you full now?”

“Afraid not, still hungry.”

“All right then.”

They went back to their very eager kissing and touching.

XXX

Eventually they had to stop and get going.

“We need to reach Middleton before dark.” Waldo said. “My grandfather will want to avoid entering a city if he can.”

“So that means were safe now?

Waldo shook his head. “My grandfather is determined to come after us. He will never stop. I have a few wards that can keep us hidden, but he will track us down eventually.”

“Then what can we do?”

“For the short term get into the city and find my second monster. For the long term we will have to keep moving until I can figure out some way to deal with him.”

“All right darling, I trust you know best.”

XXX

At long last they reached Middleton.

Waldo was pleased that the horrible ball of fire was still in the sky. There was still time to get everything done today. Depending on what sort of Great Monster was waiting for him their odds for survival would greatly improve.

“A vampire would be best,” Waldo told her as they approached the city. “A really vicious, bloodthirsty vampire.”

“As long as it’s not another succubus it’s fine.”

“You understand that I will have to perform the same binding ceremony I used with you?”

“You’re going to kiss her.” Alice said unhappily.

“Or him, but I promise there will be no flowers this time.”

“I guess that will have to do.”

Waldo sent her a sideways glance. “I can’t return home until I have three monsters bound to my service, defeated a knight, and found a certain treasure.”

“I know darling,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I have to like it though.”

They continued on for a bit when she turned to him. “What sort of treasure?”

“Something very precious and very well guarded, It will be the hardest part of my quest and I can’t even begin to consider it until I have taken care of the other parts.”

Alice nodded, apparently satisfied.

They entered Middleton through the south gate. The guards manning it were most respectful to him. They mentioned that the city gates shut at sunset and reopened with dawn. One of them offered to send a message to the Baron of his arrival. Waldo waved that away, the last thing he wanted was to draw more attention.

Twelve hills dominated the city. Each was surrounded at its base with a fortress wall with towers. Even from a distance one could see mine entrances carved into each hill, along with roads spiraled down from top to bottom. There was a steady flow of traffic going either up or down those long twisting paths.

From different sections of the city filthy, black smoke rose from multiple chimneys. There was a constant, never ending, ringing that filled the air. When Waldo first hard it he’d thought it some sort of bell. There was no order to it though, and no halt. The buildings here were a bit different from the ones Waldo had seen in Stratford. Nearly all were just one or two stories tall, and unlike in the previous city very few of them were painted. They were a mass of grey and brown stone, jammed together amid a confusing tangle of roads.

“What a depressing, noisy place.” Alice said.

“It’s disorderly.” Waldo said in condemnation. “Who would design a city like this?”

“Cities aren’t designed darling. They’re like children; they’re born and then they grow. No one can know how they will turn out”

Waldo shook his head. “Alter was planned out from the very start. The streets are all impeccably straight, and the buildings are all uniform. It’s a place of perfect order.”

“Then from what I hear it’s probably the only one in the whole world like that.”

“That’s undoubtedly so. More’s the pity.”

“We’ll need to find a place to stay and eat. We’ll also need to replace everything we lost. That means backpacks, clothes, blankets, traveling supplies, and I suppose we may as well get a tent too.” She put a hand protectively over her purse. “It’s a horrible waste of coin, but I guess there’s no avoiding it.  Maybe I’ll get a job to help pay for everything.”

“All that can wait. The most important thing is to find my new servant.” He began casting his detection spell. “
Taranos evel monstri desu noratal est aki est avaratos
."

As soon as the spell was complete Middleton managed to give him another surprise.

Waldo took in a sharp breath. “Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“This is going to take longer than I expected.” To his eyes Alice was now ablaze with reddish light. When he looked in the direction of the city he spotted hundreds, possibly thousands, of similar lights. Stratford had had a grand total of four! It had been very easy to distinguish Alice’s signature from the much weaker lights being given off by the other three. The sheer number of lights he was looking at now made that impossible. There were some monsters in every section of the city, but most of them were concentrated within the various hills. Each hill was so flooded in reddish light there was no way to distinguish from a distance if one of them might be stronger than all the rest.

He quickly explained the situation to Alice.

“Why are there so many more monsters here than there were in Stratford?”

Alice shrugged. “How should I know?”

Waldo shook his head with helpless frustration. “I was hoping to find my new familiar right away, but there’s no chance of that. We’ll have to trek through this entire place until I can spot the strongest light.” He glanced at the horrible ball of fire and estimated they had a couple more hours of day light remaining. Searching at night would make the glows more distinctive, but it would be dangerous to wander about a city filled with uncivilized barbarians. “Let’s find a place to stay tonight. We can begin searching tomorrow.”

“All right darling.”

XXX

The reaction Waldo received was similar to that in Fall River. People would nod at him respectfully, but make sure to keep a safe distance.

He noticed that there were a great many more city guard here in Middleton than there had been in Stratford. They traveled the streets in groups ranging from four to ten. All of them looked to be quite well armed, wearing chainmail and iron helms. They were mostly armed with swords though a few carried spears or double headed axes. Perhaps one in three of the men he saw were members of the city guard. Even most of the commoners were armed, nearly every man who wasn’t wearing chainmail had a long knife or even a short sword tucked into a belt or in a scabbard.

“The people here seem very well armed. Do they have bandits nearby?”

Alice frowned. “Not that I’ve heard of, the land is pretty safe outside of the marshes.”

“Then why does everyone have a sword?”

“I have no idea. We would get merchants at the Inn all the time. They sold bars of wrought iron, tools, nails, and blades or they were passing through to someplace else. I can tell you the ringing is from all the blacksmiths working their forges, and all that smoke come from the fires melting iron from the ore.”

“You seem to know a bit about this place.”

“Oh it’s nothing; men always love to talk about their work and their homes. They call Middleton the Iron City because there is so much iron in the ground here. The blacksmith’s guild is based here because there are hundreds of them working all day long, from sun rise to sun set. They say that if you live here you didn’t even notice the ringing.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“They all told me it stops with sunset.”

“I suppose I should be grateful for small favors.”

“I bet we’ll be safe as long as we’re here.” Alice said trying hard to look at the bright side. “Your grandfather wouldn’t want to come into a place with so many armed men. Would he?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t think he will. Though I suspect he would be more worried about running into a White Mage than any number of city guards. I’m sure he’ll wait until we leave to come after us again.”

“Well, at least we’re safe for now.”

“We are never safe,” he reminded her quietly.

“Don’t worry darling, I’ll keep you safe.”

As they walked along a twisting street, a large cart with two shoulder high wheels came around a bend. The cart was piled high with sacks. It was being pulled along by a goblin. The creature wore a leather harness around its wide chest and an iron collar about its thick, bulbous throat. The collar was connected back to the cart by a thick chain that rattled with each shuffling step.

Walking beside the cart was a small man wearing a leather apron and holding a worn riding crop in his right hand.

“Keep moving you stupid beast.” The man said. “We still have to make one more delivery after this.”

To emphasize his words he struck the goblin on his arm with a loud audible ‘thwack.’

The monster gave a slight grunt, but did not otherwise acknowledge being struck. He did not look back at his apparent owner or in any way hurry his pace. The common people walking along paid no mind, though Alice noted that the squad of soldiers who had just passed were watching.

Waldo didn’t seem to pay any notice.

“Did you see that?” Alice demanded.

“What?”

“That man! He hit that defenseless goblin for no reason at all!”

“So?”

Waldo’s rather indifferent reply earned him a sharp look.

It was clear she was upset with him, but he had no idea why. “I told you there were a large number of monsters in this city. It’s not surprising they’d be used as draft animals. I saw a goblin pulling a cart in Stratford too.”

“That would have been Noorook who works for John Millen. Mister Millen would never beat Noorook. Well, not unless he did something to deserve it of course. Just now though, that goblin was hit for no reason at all. It was like how some people will whip an ox or a mule to make it move.”

“Then I suppose he was hit for the same reason.”

“Goblins are different from oxen or mules.”