by Rain Oxford
“What does Baltezore have to do with Cennuth?” I asked.
Dantur paled slightly as shock flashed across his face. “He never told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Baltezore is Cennuth’s brother.”
Chapter 12
The silence was long and tense as Merlin and I digested that bit of shocking news. Both of us felt betrayed by Cennuth, although Merlin had more right to be. As Baltezore’s brother, it was Cennuth’s responsibility to defeat Baltezore, not Merlin’s. Merlin’s mother died because Cennuth didn’t stop Baltezore.
Dantur pulled a small stone out of his pocket and with a flash of golden light, it transformed into a piece of the scroll. I took it from him. “Cennuth ordered me to protect you, but I really care about you,” Dantur told Merlin.
With an emotionless tone, Merlin said, “I hardly even know you.” Then he walked away.
Dantur grabbed my arm as I started to follow my friend. “Tell him that if he wants to talk, I’ll be in the village we first sold a sword to.”
I considered trying to convince Merlin to do it because I knew Merlin would regret it otherwise. Dantur might not have deserved forgiveness, but Merlin deserved to not hold a grudge. On the other hand, Merlin had a lot of regrets. Dantur was alive, so Merlin could move on. I nodded that I would tell Merlin and walked away.
I caught up to Merlin as he drank from a brook. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nothing has changed except that I know the truth. I wonder if anyone from my past ever told me the truth.”
I sat next to him. “We could talk about that, I guess. I was born so that my mother could kill me and steal my magic. I’m sorry Cennuth trained another wizard to protect you so that you could fight his brother.”
Merlin laughed. “If anyone else in the universe said that, it would be with sarcasm, yet you are entirely sincere. Hold the crystal over the scroll. Hopefully, it will tell us where to find the next piece.”
I did. Instead of words, as I was expecting, an image appeared of a pearl ring with a child-sized band. “That isn’t what I was expecting.” I looked at Merlin, who was staring at the ring. “You recognize it?”
“I made it. When I learned that Madelyn was ill, I made it for her, but she died before I could give it to her.”
Madelyn was a girl in a neighboring village he had been friends with as a young child. They used to go diving and search underwater caves. She didn’t tell him that she was sick until it was too late, but at least her last days were fun for her. It made me appreciate mages of my world more.
“She can’t give you the scroll, though,” I said.
“No, but perhaps it is hidden there.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go.”
“Unfortunately, we cannot go just yet.”
“Why not?”
“We need to return to our time. The damage we could do now is inconceivable. Furthermore, your magic can get you killed here. We might have a more difficult time finding it in our time, but I trust Cennuth to have made it possible. Alas, we cannot return to our time yet.”
“We have to find Gmork.”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t he have found us by now?”
“I assumed he ran into trouble.”
I sighed. “Great. We’ll go find him instead of getting the scroll. We shouldn’t have brought him.”
“He has already served as a distraction.”
“Exactly. I’m going to be upset if he gets hurt. If you don’t care enough about him to help him, we need to send him back so that he’ll be safe. What he did was horrible, but his death won’t make anything better.”
“You are right, young sorcerer. If I knew why he betrayed me, maybe I could forgive him.”
“Do you have a potion to make him tell you?”
“I do not want him telling me under duress. He should have more honor than that.”
We wandered back to Merlin’s mother’s village, figuring that Gmork probably returned there if he got away from the soldiers uninjured. Eventually, we stopped for the night. “It sure is nice not to have to worry about vampires, werewolves, or ghosts attacking us in our sleep like we do on Caldaca.”
“Yes, we only have to worry about bears, snakes, and bandits here.”
* * *
When we reached Merlin’s childhood village the next day, Gmork still hadn’t returned. Merlin could, however, follow his trail by smell. “He has not been back here, so his scent is faded, but not multidirectional.”
I followed him into the forest in the direction Gmork had gone. As the day wore on, Merlin had a harder time tracking because Gmork had backtracked several times.
We finally found him as the sun was setting. His foot was trapped in a bear trap and he was limp on the ground, barely conscious. He also had a gruesome wound in his side.
I waved my wand at his foot. “Free him.” Glittery white magic spilled out of the wand into the trap and the trap disappeared. Gmork whimpered quietly. “Merlin, will healing potions from my world work on him?”
“I made one that will. Although healing potions from this world are less effective, it should be safer for someone from this world. If it does not work, we can try one that Mason made. Gmork is tough; he should be fine.”
“What happened to your side?” I asked, getting the potion bottle Merlin described out of my bag.
“I was running from the soldiers and doing an exceptional job of keeping them distracted, when I saw a boy in the forest. I recognized him as a much younger Merlin and directed them away from him. Then, some silly girl started shouting from the direction Boy Merlin was in, and I had to face the soldiers to keep them from finding him.”
I was a little shocked. It was possible that if Gmork hadn’t been there, Merlin would have been caught as a kid.
“Did you kill anyone?” Merlin asked aloud.
Gmork glared at him. “No. A few of them lost arms, but I did not kill any of them.”
“Good. We need to return to our time. I know where we must go to get the next piece of the scroll.”
“And I suppose you do not trust me,” Gmork said.
Merlin took a moment before answering. “Not yet.”
I levitated Gmork all the way back to the village, and since it was dark and everyone was asleep, I used it to get him into Dantur’s house. We decided to rest for the night. I was dreading this, but I knew I needed sleep.
Once again, Merlin told a story to distract me and I fell asleep much faster and easier than the previous night.
* * *
The next morning, Merlin sent me the mental image of the portal I needed to draw. Gmork wasn’t fully healed, as he still limped heavily, but he wasn’t bleeding. When we stepped through the portal, we appeared in the middle of a town. It wasn’t like the villages or cities of my world.
There were four-story-tall buildings made of brick and wood on both sides of the narrow, stone road. The road was covered in gross water and muck. Everything was dirty. Almost every single building had a chimney that was pumping smoke into the air. People were everywhere, and most were shouting at each other. The only thing I could smell was muck and rotten food.
“Move!” a man shouted. He was riding in a covered carriage that was pulled by two horses. We moved out of his way, but it was a tight squeeze.
Merlin shuttered as one of the wheels almost splashed him with a puddle. “This is the era I avoid over any other. Do not touch anything; the diseases of this age are brutal.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Exactly the same place, but more than three hundred years later. We will have to walk to Madelyn’s village.”
“How will you know it? So much has changed.”
“I know the direction to go in, and I will recognize it by the river carved into the mountain that Madelyn and I used to dive and swim in.”
* * *
It took a long time to get out of the city, but the smaller villages we passed were more lik
e I was used to. There were even travelers on the way. Children were surprisingly fascinated by Gmork. It was only adults who were afraid of him.
We finally reached a village at the base of a mountain, which Merlin said was familiar. I got a bad feeling as soon as we saw it, though. The citizens were going about their chores quietly and quickly. They were thin and wore nothing colorful. No one looked at us. I didn’t need my wolf senses to know they were afraid.
“Is this normal for the era, too?” I asked.
“No,” Merlin said. “Such oppression as this does not become popular for some years yet.”
At that point, I intercepted a woman carrying a pail of water. “Excuse me, can you tell me---” I cut myself off as she looked at me. She had a huge scar on the left side of her face. It consisted of two lines crossing each other. It was intentional. “What happened?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she turned away and pulled the hood of her gray cloak up to hide as much of her face as possible.
“She may not be able to speak,” Merlin said.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her before continuing on the path. There were not many women outside, but of those who were, they all covered their faces. In fact, they all had cloaks and cloth face masks. The men glared with suspicion. There weren’t any children that I could see. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I,” Merlin agreed.
Gmork didn’t say anything.
At that point, a man and woman emerged from the nicest house I had seen so far and approached us, smiling. He was a thin, older man with slightly less dingy clothes as the other villages. The woman with him was thin as well and had a hood over her hair. I saw a crossed scar on her cheek and the back of both hands.
“Welcome to our village,” the man said. “I am Lionus, the chief, and this is my wife, Merry. The exits are that way and back the way you came. Please enjoy the scenery on your way out.”
“Is that how you tell people they’re not welcome?”
His smile faltered. “No. No one wants to spend more time than they have to here, though. We assumed you would want to run as fast as you could.”
“Actually, we’re looking for something. It’s a child’s pearl ring, hundreds of years old.”
His smile fell completely. “I’m afraid you’re in the wrong village. None of us have any jewelry.”
“Then maybe you know about a piece of a scroll?”
“None of us can read. Now, if you will excuse me, there is much to be done. I suggest not being here after dark.”
I really didn’t like hearing that. The last person who told me that was a vampire.
We continued on the path towards the exit. At the end of the town, however, a large boulder was in the middle of the road with a sword sticking out of it. It wasn’t very impressive; the blade could have been sharper and the wooden handle looked cheap. Although it had colorful jewels in the handle, they looked fake and ugly. Above it was a sign.
The Sword of the One True Hero
“What is a sword like you doing in a stone like this?”
“Pull it out,” Merlin said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Nothing good ever came from inside a stone. Besides, someone left it here for a reason.”
“Humor me, young sorcerer.”
I reached for the handle and the sword popped out of the boulder, practically throwing itself at me, and landed at my feet.
“He did it!” Lionus said, suddenly behind me.
“No, wait! I didn’t touch it. It fell!”
“You are the hero we’ve been waiting for!” The rest of the villagers quickly surrounded us, actually looking excited and hopeful rather than afraid.
“I’m not!”
“You will go on a heroic quest to---”
“I’m already on a quest! Merlin, tell them!”
“Woof,” Merlin said with a smirk.
I gave him my best scowl and turned to Lionus. “What is this quest?”
“As you can tell, all of our young women are hideous.” All the women covered their faces simultaneously in shame.
“That’s not nice at all.”
“Actually, it’s intentional. For fifty years, a monster has lived in that mountain.” He pointed to the mountain. “He used to attack us all the time, so we sent our strongest fighters. They struck a deal with the mountain monster. Every year, if we give him our prettiest girl, he will leave the rest of us alone. That was why mothers started disfiguring their daughters.”
“That’s horrible!”
“It’s horrible to give them a scar so that they won’t die?”
“It’s horrible that you were put in that position in the first place.”
“They’re not all scarred as babies. Girls also dye their hair weird colors or paint blemishes on their faces. The problem is that he rejected our girl last year and destroyed the village and our crops. Now, we have no girls left that are pretty enough for the monster. We need someone to protect us.”
“When is he supposed to take his sacrifice?”
“Before the sun rises on the night of the full moon.”
“When is that?”
“Tonight.”
“Of course it is.” I looked at Merlin and Gmork. “Do we have time to go monster hunting?”
“You can’t face the monster,” Merry said. “He’s far too dangerous.”
“He was the only hero strong enough to pull the sword from the stone. It has to be him,” Lionus argued.
“Again, that’s not how it happened.”
“What kind of monster are we talking about?” Merlin asked. Many of the villages scrambled away from him in shock.
“It doesn’t matter,” Gmork said. “We can take any beast.”
“It is a hideous creature with a thousand sharp teeth and terrible claws,” Merry warned.
“I don’t like the idea of the monster killing helpless girls,” I said.
“We must be quick,” Merlin said. “And more importantly, you must be careful.”
“Do you always treat him like a delicate little flower?” Gmork asked.
Merlin scowled at him. “Only when he is near enemies.”
Merlin teased people he liked, including me. It was clear to me that although they were best friends as children, Merlin didn’t feel that friendship anymore. Or perhaps the problem was that he didn’t want to.
“I’m a curse breaker, not a warrior, but this is an adventure, and I can do things other magic users can’t do here. Let’s do this.”
* * *
We headed towards the mountain, where we found a cave much like Cennuth’s. The path led to it and ended with a large stone pole on either side of the path, each twice as tall as me. I aimed my staff inside the cave and the crystal lit up. The cavern inside led to three small tunnels. “This will be easy,” Gmork said. “I can barely fit in those tunnels, so anything that lives here would have to be smaller than me.”
“Unless it is full of giant spiders,” Merlin pointed out. “Remember how small their burrows could be?”
Gmork shuddered. “I remember. I will never forget a dog-sized spider shooting out of a rat-sized hole at my face.”
I noticed that the ground in and around the cave was dirt, not grass, and there were numerous hand-length-wide holes in it. “What do you think those are?” I asked Merlin, pointing them out. He approached one of them, sniffed it, and growled.
“They are nothing I have to worry about,” Gmork said, marching past him. The instant he stepped onto the dirt, thick snakes shot out and flew at his throat and face. I tried to stop them with magic, but their scales reflected magic, so it did nothing. Thanks to Gmork’s incredible speed and thick fur, he was able to shake them and make it back onto the grass unharmed. They stopped attacking then.
“You really showed them,” Merlin said. Gmork snarled at him, but he was clearly bothered.
“Maybe I can go invisible.”
“I suspect these creatures hunt by smell or bo
dy heat,” Merlin argued. “Certain species of hive or swarming insects release a sound or scent to cause the rest to attack. This does not appear to be the case because more would have attacked.”
“Unless there are only ten and they made multiple holes,” Gmork said.
“Body heat alone would not likely spark that many to attack at once.”
“What about invisibility and levitation?” I asked.
“There is only one way to find out.” Merlin gestured to Gmork. “Ladies first.”
“Age before beauty,” Gmork retorted.
“Oh, but my soft downy fur cannot withstand their fangs like your coarse, straw-like fur. And you are much better at running away from danger than I am.”
Gmork growled, and Merlin growled back. “I’ll go.”
“No,” Merlin said.
“I will go, but you had better not let me fall,” Gmork grumbled.
I made him invisible, levitated him into the air, and carefully directed him towards the cave. Once again, snakes shot out of the holes, and they weren’t confused by my curse at all; they did everything they could to latch onto him. I pulled him back and dropped him in the grass. The snakes instantly released him and slithered back to their holes.
Gmork panted without getting up. “Are you hurt?”
“I am fine.”
“We are only wasting time and risking our lives at this rate,” Merlin said. “We will return to the village to learn more information about the monster.”
* * *
“I told you it was impossible,” Merry said.
As soon as we rejoined the village, everyone gathered around us again. This made it harder to give them the bad news.
“It’s not impossible. We will just have to figure out another way.”
“We can’t ask that you risk your life again. We have to somehow make one of our girls pretty so that the monster will take her.”
I studied the girls as the hope in their eyes was crushed. They spent their lives hiding their beauty and now the village depended on them. “Okay,” I said. “That is the plan, then.”