The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (4 page)

“Show yourself!” Hobart growled, stepping toward him and
jabbing at the air with his sword tip.

“Careful, Hobart,” Angus said. “You don’t really want to
stab me, do you?”

Hobart turned toward Angus, dropped his sword to the ground,
and rushed forward with his arms spread wide.

Angus ducked, sidestepped, and laughed heartily. “What’s wrong,
Hobart?” he asked. “Don’t you like surprises?”

Hobart turned toward him again, but this time he didn’t rush
in. Instead, he said, “Surprises?”

“Yes,” Angus answered, stepping up close to the fire and
sitting down across from Giorge, well out of range of the smoke. Once seated,
he gave the umber thread a light tug and the knot holding the spell in place
quivered, loosened, and released its magic. There was but a brief moment of
translucence, and then Hobart glowered at him and said, “That was a foul trick,
wizard. It would be wise not to do it again.”

Angus shrugged. “It’s one of my new spells,” Angus said. “It
bends the air around me to make it appear as if I’m not there.” Angus watched
Giorge, tweaking Puffer to keep the smoke blowing his way. “I wasn’t sure if it
would work, though; I haven’t quite mastered it yet.”

“It worked,” Hobart said, picking up his sword and sheathing
it. “I couldn’t see you at all,” he added, sitting back down.

“You’ll have to work on making less noise, though,” Giorge
said, sniffing and shaking his head.

Angus nodded, keeping his eyes on Giorge as the young thief
waved his hand in front of his face again. Then, quite abruptly, Giorge’s eyes
narrowed and his nostrils flared. He looked straight at Angus and demanded, “Why?”

“Why what?” Angus replied, pretending to reach out to warm
his hands to conceal tweaking Puffer to increase the strength of the breeze.

“Why did you do that?”

“You like surprises, don’t you?” Angus answered. “Did you
like that one?”

Giorge pursed his lips and shook his head. “That’s not the
reason,” he accused. He straightened his back and his fingers began to twitch.

“I didn’t,” Hobart said.

“I thought you told us about your new spells,” Ortis said.

“Most of them,” Angus admitted, half-smiling as he studied
Giorge. He was fidgeting now, rolling his shoulders and making furtive, jerky
glances into the darkness about the camp.

“You should have warned us,” Ortis said. “Hobart might have
killed you.”

“It needed to be a true test,” Angus said, studying Giorge
as he almost turned completely around to see what was behind him. He smiled and
asked, “Is something wrong, Giorge?”

Giorge snapped his attention back and hissed, “Quiet!
There’s something out there.”

“Here?” Angus said, not bothering to look. “I thought the
caravan stops were fairly secure.”

“They are,” Hobart quietly said as he set his broadsword
across his lap. He held his hand on the hilt as he asked, “What is it, Giorge?”

“I don’t know,” Giorge hissed. “Something’s watching us.
Can’t you feel it?”

Hobart frowned as he scanned the darkness at the edge of the
clearing. Eventually, he shook his head.

“Ortis?” Giorge asked, his whisper intense, almost frantic.

Ortis had been studying the edge of their camp for some
time, his hands on his bows with an arrow held close by. He shook his head.

Angus half-smiled and said, “I don’t feel anything. Are you
sure you’re not imagining it?”

“I’m not!” Giorge snapped, glaring at him for a moment
before quickly turning his attention back to the darkness. He drew his short sword
and held it at his side as he crouched close to the ground.

Angus’s smile faded into a slight frown as he watched his
companion becoming more erratic. Had he used too much? It had seemed to be such
a slight amount; it shouldn’t have caused such a strong, rapid,
violent
reaction.

Giorge was twisting and turning at strange angles, as if he
were desperately trying to see in all directions at once. He had a throwing
knife in his other hand now, and he seemed to be on the verge of throwing it.
“Have you felt this way before?” Angus asked, a bit of concern creeping into
his voice. He hadn’t intended
this
to happen. He adjusted Puffer to blow
the smoke away from Giorge, away from the others.

Giorge grew suddenly still and turned abruptly toward Angus.
His mouth was open, but he said nothing for a few seconds. His eyes widened as
he nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “In The Tween.” He was breathing heavily and
his hands were twitching. “It’s like The Tween, but a lot worse. Don’t you feel
it?”

“No,” Angus said. “Ortis?”

“I have sensed nothing,” Ortis replied. “Nor have I seen
anything.”

“Nor I,” Hobart said. “But we’re not in The Tween, so we
shouldn’t be experience its effect.”

“I am!” Giorge almost shouted, his eyes darting about,
testing the darkness. “It’s horrid!”

“It’s in your mind,” Angus said, his emotions torn between
concern for Giorge, the excitement of having one of his questions answered, and
a vindictive satisfaction. “It will pass soon enough.”
I hope
, he added
to himself.

“How do you know?!” Giorge half-screeched.

“Because,” Angus said, his voice calm. He concentrated,
bringing the magic around him into sharper focus. If Giorge attacked him, he
wanted to be prepared. “I caused it,” he finished.

“What!” Hobart said, turning toward him, his sword sliding
half out of the scabbard.

Ortis stared for a long moment, and then asked, “The
mushrooms?”

Angus nodded slightly, his eyes held steady on Giorge. He
was breathing heavily, his eyes were wide and dilated, and he looked as if he
needed to pounce on something and drive his knife into its heart. And Angus was
the something in question. Would he attack? Had he been driven so close to the
point of madness by that small, intense burst of smoke? How powerful were these
mushrooms? Could they kill him? He shrugged and said, his voice lame, almost
apologetic, “Surprise!”

Giorge’s breathing almost stopped completely, and then he
snorted and started laughing. But his white-knuckled grip on his sword and
knife never wavered, never faltered. When he recovered somewhat, he said, “I’ll
take first watch,” and scampered to the edge of their camp and quickly pranced
around the perimeter. His eyes were cast outward into the darkness, and his
short sword and knife held at the ready. Periodically, he rushed into the
darkness, thrusting one or the other out in front of him. Then, after a few
seconds, he would return and resume his hectic patrol.

“I’ll keep watch on
him
,” Ortis said. Then another of
his constituents turned and asked, “Why did you do it, Angus?”

Angus shrugged. “When I put my robe on the morning we left
Hellsbreath,” he said, “I found the mushrooms were still in my pocket. I had
forgotten all about them. There wasn’t time to test them before we left, but I
still wanted to know what would happen. So I tossed them into the fire and used
Puffer to blow the smoke toward Giorge to find out.”

Giorge darted into the darkness again, and one of Ortis
stood up and moved in his direction.

“It better wear off soon,” Hobart said, his voice low and
threatening. “We do not do such things to each other.”

“It will,” Angus said.
Or will it become permanent?
he asked himself.
One or the other
.

“If it doesn’t….” Hobart muttered, his glare fixed and
unwavering. After a few seconds, he said, “This had best be the end of it,
Angus. I won’t tolerate much more of this feud of yours.”

Angus shrugged. He hadn’t intended such a powerful reaction,
but he should have expected it. The effect in The Tween was rather mild, but
the smoke was far more diffuse, so much so that it was nearly undetectable.
There, it only caused mild paranoia, a sense of being watched by something just
out of sight. It wasn’t an intense feeling; it was more of a vague impression
that preyed upon one’s fears and created a desire to flee—and the longer you
stayed in The Tween, the stronger that urge to flee became. But Giorge had
gotten a sudden, intense, concentrated dose.

At least he had his answer. The mushrooms caused the
paranoia that was felt by anyone who entered The Tween, and that meant there
was a purpose behind it. Something on that plateau was burning the mushrooms,
something that didn’t want others in The Tween. And the dwarves seemed to have
had a hand in it. Why? What did they hope to gain from it?

Giorge returned from the darkness, crouching and looking
over one shoulder and then the other as he continued his patrol of the
perimeter. He was still intense, but his breathing didn’t seem to be as labored
as before. Were the mushrooms wearing off? If so, what would it mean? How would
they be able to cope with it? If only they had had time to investigate it
further! No, that would come later, when they went back to the plateau with the
soldiers. He turned to Hobart and said, “Commander Garret will need to know about
this. If they go near the fires and the things tending to them throw mushrooms
on them, his men will act just like Giorge—or worse.”

Hobart frowned and clenched his teeth as if he were trying
to hold onto his anger as he fought against the urge to acknowledge the truth
of what Angus said. But the truth won out, and he nodded sharply. Then he
turned away from Angus and began studying Giorge’s behavior more closely. “He
will want details,” he said, standing and walking over to Giorge. When he
reached him, he grabbed Giorge’s shoulders and they began a low, intense
conversation.

“Will you need time to prime in the morning?” Ortis asked.

“About half an hour,” Angus said without turning. “I’ll take
last watch if you’d like.”

Ortis nodded and two of him prepared for sleep. “I’ll wake
you,” he said as he closed his eyes.

Angus continued to watch Giorge until he finally showed
signs of calming down, and then he, too, prepared for sleep.
Another piece
of the puzzle
, he thought as he closed his eyes.
But what will the image
be?
he wondered. He had no idea what it would be, but as each new clue fell
into place, it added to his disquiet. Then he set aside his unease and embraced
the delight of the new discovery and the success of his new spell. Soon, sleep
settled on him like a warm blanket of snow.

2

“Why do they call them fletchings?” Angus asked as they left
the road and followed a narrow, mud-packed trail heading west into a grove of
loosely-packed maple trees. “It’s not a very appealing name.”

“Their wing feathers make the best fletching material for
arrows,” Ortis said, taking out one of his arrows and nudging his horse a
little closer to Angus. “Hear this?” he asked, taking his finger and rubbing it
along the mottled brown fletching of the arrow. It made a soft humming sound,
like the vibration of a harp string that had been barely nudged to life. “They
hold their shape, like all feathers do, but the webbing between the barbs isn’t
as brittle as most. A lot of feathers peel apart when you rub them that way,
but not a fletching feather. They hold their structure for a long time before
they become unstable. If you’re careful storing your arrows, they last even
longer. The feathers near the wing tip are best.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Angus said. “But I would have called
it something else, something that gave an idea of what it looked like.
Bluebird, redbird—something like that.”

“Oh,” Giorge said as he joined them. He slouched a bit in
his saddle, but other than being tired from a lack of sleep, he didn’t seem to
be suffering much from the mushroom’s effects. Still, every now and then, there
would be a noise in the trees and he would twitch, gasp, and crouch down even
further in his saddle. Sometimes he muttered in Millie’s ear and patted the
horse’s neck, but whatever he said was always too low for Angus to hear. “They
have another name for them,” he said, a hint of his resurgent grin curving his
lips upward and tickling his dark brown eyes. “It’s ‘big ugly brown thing.’”

Ortis shook his head and said, “No it isn’t. The locals call
it ‘fishmonger’s bane.’”

Giorge nodded, “Yes. It eats
a lot
of fish. It has
to; otherwise it wouldn’t be able to stay big and ugly.”

“Fish?” Angus asked as they twisted around a very large,
very old maple. He looked up, trying to see one of the fletchings’ nests among
the budding maple branches. Aside from a few very large squirrel nests, there
were no signs of nests at all, and he began to wonder why. “Where do they catch
them?”

“The Lake of Scales,” Giorge said. “You’ll be able to see it
pretty soon. It’s an impressive sight. See that volcano?” he asked, pointing
through the branches at a volcano near the north end of the western horizon. It
was a nearly dormant volcano some distance just south of Hellsbreath Pass; it had
been belching out a bit of smoke for years but no ash or lava. “The lake runs
from the south edge of that volcano to,” he moved his hands south, past two mountains
before stopping, “that mountain. It’s less than a mile wide, but it’s long and
runs fairly deep along the western edge of the valley floor at the base of the
mountains.”

“There are several villages on its shores,” Ortis added. “They
form a loose alliance of traders, mostly; no one has been able to unify them
into a kingdom. A few have tried, of course, but they are an independent lot
and will have none of it.”

The maple trees were thinning, now, and Angus frowned.
“Where are their nests?” he asked. “I don’t see any in these trees, and from
what you’ve said, there should be lots of them.”

Giorge grinned. “They don’t have nests in the trees,” he
said. “They have aeries.”

“Aeries?” Angus asked, frowning at the unfamiliar word.
“What are those?”

“You’ll find out pretty soon,” Giorge said, urging Millie to
a faster gait and pulling ahead to join Hobart and another Ortis.

“An aerie is a nest,” Ortis explained. “But it’s not in a
tree.” Then he, too, urged his steed forward.

Angus kneed Gretchen into line with the last Ortis following
a short distance behind him. A few minutes later, they emerged from the trees,
and spread out, side by side, near the edge of a deep canyon. There was about
twenty feet between the tree line and cliff edge, and Hobart and Giorge had
stopped in the middle of it. When Angus joined them, Giorge pointed at a long,
thin, blue expanse that spanned the base of the three mountains and said, “That
is the Lake of Scales. It kind of looks like a skinny blue snake from up here,
doesn’t it?”

The view was spectacular. The mountains, snowcapped and
haloed in puffy white clouds, topped the horizon, and their slopes were heavy walls
of mottled patches of granite, mostly gray and black but with a few
brownish-red outcroppings. There was a small sprinkling of pine trees scattered
about, but it was mostly steep, bare rock. The sun was beginning to creep past
their peaks, and long shadows were forming between them. At the foot of the
mountains were a few low hills and fallen rocks, and in front of them was the
long, thick, squiggly blue line of the Lake of Scales. He couldn’t see any
details for the villages on its shores; they were little more than blobs of
color and wafting little bits of smoke. He frowned. “How far are we from those
mountains?” he asked.

“A lot further than it looks,” Hobart said. “Remember how
long it took us to get over that plateau? This is at least twice that. And,” he
gestured with his gauntleted hand at the blackish-brown valley floor, “all of
that will be grain for the Western Kingdoms. Tyr would love to have it, of
course, but it’s too far out of his reach. Hellsbreath is about as far as he
can go right now. If he tried to extend his reach any further than that, it
would weaken his forces too much.”

But he wants to go further,
Angus thought.
Like
his forebears
.

Giorge dismounted and handed his reins to Hobart. Then he
came up to Angus and asked, “Do you want to see the aeries?”

“Are there any near here?”

Giorge grinned and nodded. “If there’s a winch, there are
aeries.”

“They must be fairly large to see them from up here,” Angus
mused.

Giorge nodded. “They build their aeries in the fall, and it
takes a week or two to get it done. They use mud from the lake and straw from
the grain harvest to build them. After they finish their breeding season in the
spring, they molt and shove the aerie out of the crack. That’s how the
villagers gather the feathers for their arrows. They wait at the bottom of the
cliff and gather up the nesting material. They have to be quick about it; the
freshly molted feathers blow away pretty easily, and they’re the ones they use
for fletching. But the rest of the aerie doesn’t go to waste; it makes good
fertilizer and they spread it around over the grain.”

Angus nodded and handed his reins to Ortis. He dismounted and
followed the scrawny thief to the edge of the cliff. Giorge kept walking until
it looked like he was going to walk off the cliff, but at the last moment, he
stopped with his toes jutting out over the edge. Then he bent over at the waist
and looked down. When Angus joined him, he surprised himself by stepping just
as close to the edge and leaning over in much the same way. He half-smiled as
he realized that a stiff breeze would easily upset his precarious center of
balance, and an even lighter one would do the same to the gangly little thief.

“There’s one,” Giorge said after a moment, flinging his hand
to the left. “You can’t see much of it from here, though; the bulk of it is in
the crack. That’s how to find them. Look for the cracks and outcroppings. They
use the same ones every spring, and the locals know where they are. It makes it
easier for them to find the eggs. Most of the aeries will be lower down than
that one.” He paused and pointed again, this time further down and to the
right. “Like that one. It looks like a big aerie. We’ll have to work our way down
to it later this afternoon. It might even be a shared roost; the fletchings do
that sometimes when the crack is big enough. We’ll have a better chance of
finding eggs in it if it is a shared roost. It’s still early in the breeding
season, and a lot of the fletchings haven’t laid any yet.”

“We?” Angus asked.

Giorge nodded. “You and I. We’re going to collect the eggs.”
He grinned. “But not right away. You’ll need to get some lessons on climbing
first, and that big nest is a good starting point. It will be fairly easy to
reach; the crack comes almost all the way up to the top, and there will be a
lot of handholds and toeholds. We’ll have to get started pretty soon, though;
the fletchings return just before dusk.”

Angus frowned. “How do you find the aeries if you can’t see
where they are?”
If I could fly, it would be simple
, he added to
himself.

Giorge shrugged. “Trial and error, mostly. We’ll go down
about fifty feet and then move horizontally. I’ll go one way and you’ll go the
other. We should be able to see the cracks above and below us for a good
portion of the cliff, and then we’ll drop down another fifty feet and come back
together again.”

“We’ll what?” Angus asked, standing up straight again. He
frowned but didn’t move away from the edge.

Giorge straightened up and grinned at him. “Surprise!” he
said as he laughed and abruptly turned toward the others. “Let’s get set up!”
he shouted. “If Angus is a quick learner, we’ll be eating fletching eggs this
evening!”

Angus watched him scurry back to the others, and then turned
back to the cliff. He stared down its near-vertical face for a long moment
before walking back to the group. Ortis handed him the reins to Gretchen, but
he didn’t climb into the saddle. Instead, he turned to Giorge and said, “That’s
the surprise? You want me to climb down that cliff with you to get some of
those eggs?”

“Yes,” Giorge grinned. “Isn’t it exciting?”

“I’m not sure I would say that,” Angus said, shaking his
head.

“If you don’t want to do it,” Hobart said, “we won’t force
you to. Giorge is an old hand at climbing, and he can gather the eggs on his
own. It will just take longer.”

Angus closed his eyes, sighed, and slowly opened them again.
When he did, he looked at Giorge and said, “You know, if you had told me about
this, I would have primed for my Flying spell and we would already have eggs to
eat.”

Giorge’s grin never wavered. “I know,” he said, “but what
fun would
that
be?”

“More fun than falling to my death,” Angus said.

“That’s not going to happen,” Hobart said. “We’ll be using
ropes and harnesses. There is a winch by the trees, and if you slip, you won’t
fall far.”

“You’ll do it then?” Giorge asked, his voice hopeful, almost
childlike with anticipation.

Angus rolled his eyes, mounted his horse, and looked at
Giorge again. Then he tilted his head to the side and half-smiled. “Yes,” he
said, “I think I will.” As soon as he said it, though, he began to wonder
why
he had agreed to do it. He wasn’t a mountain-climbing egg-thief; he was a
wizard. He had never climbed a cliff before, so what would ever possess him to
think he
could
climb a cliff? Or had he climbed cliffs before? Was it
part of his past creeping into the present? He had had that kind of feeling
before, that deep sense of déjà vu that couldn’t be explained away. Would it
happen again, when he nestled up against the cliff face? Would he instinctively
know
how to climb a cliff? If he did, it wouldn’t be an instinct; it
would be a memory he couldn’t quite capture. Or his nightmares come to life. In
them, he often climbed walls and slid into bedrooms to slit throats. But he
hadn’t had any of those nightmares in months, not since the Truthseer had read
him.

He shook his head and scowled at Giorge. He should have told
him about the cliff. It would have been so much easier, so much simpler to just
fly down and gather up the eggs. Then again, even if he had primed for the Flying
spell he still might have climbed down the cliff face. But if he had, he would
have had the security of knowing he could cast the Flying spell if he slipped.
What would he do now if he slipped? It was a question he couldn’t answer, and
one he hoped he wouldn’t have to answer.

Ever.