by Logan Jacobs
Lavinia didn’t look too convinced, but I knew she didn’t have any better suggestions because she didn’t try to argue with me.
When we got back to the guild hall, Maruk, Lena, Emeline, and Yvaine had already returned, though unfortunately, they hadn’t had any luck finding leads, either, so I told them about Aerin’s sign from Theira and my plan to check out the village.
“I’m going, of course,” Aerin said. “I think that’s what Theira wants me to do.”
“I’ll go, too,” Lena offered.
“I should be there,” Maruk said with a dutiful, if somewhat resigned, tone. “In case it’s dangerous.”
“I’m sure as hell not going to some stupid library,” Dehn insisted.
“Alright,” I said. “The five of us will head for the village tomorrow while the others keep researching here in the city. Now everyone get some rest, you’ve earned it.”
Chapter 6
When we left the next morning at dawn, I half expected that Aerin and Maruk would change their minds about joining us to check out the village, but the healer’s and the shield warrior’s senses of duty won out over their hatred of getting up early, and they shuffled out the door after Lena, Dehn, and me just as the sun began to peek over the horizon in the east. A few wispy clouds remained of the previous days’ storms, but already I could tell that we were in no danger of getting caught in the rain again as we made our way to the stables just outside the wall and saddled up our horses.
It was still early, but already there was someone at the gate. At first glance, I thought he must have been a farmer, but then it occurred to my sleep-addled brain that he was leaving the city, not coming in and that his cart wasn’t piled with fruits or vegetables, but rather with long, cylindrical glass jars filled with little pebbles that looked like rock salt crystals. Then, as I peered at the crystals and wondered where they’d come from and where this man was taking them, I noticed that the little crystals were glowing, and the realization settled over me like a damp blanket and sent a shiver up the back of my neck. They weren’t pebbles or salt crystals, they were mana, solid mana.
I’d never seen anything like that in all my time here. I didn’t even know mana could exist in a solid state like that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe it.
“Aerin,” I whispered as I nudged the elf and gestured to the cart, “what is that stuff?”
“Mm?” The redhead rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand and squinted over in the direction I was pointing. “You mean the mana jars?” She yawned. “That’s how it’s transported when they need to take it out of the city.”
“I thought the mana the Mage Academy collected from our tithes was used in city projects,” I said. For some reason, I felt that it was important to keep my voice down, though the man driving the mana cart was several yards away and paid us no attention whatsoever as he chatted with the guards at the gate. “Why are they taking it out of the city? Where are they taking it to?”
“I dunno, they do that sometimes,” Aerin replied sleepily. “They sell it to alchemists or send it to the other universities who don’t have as many mages to tithe.”
“Do they do that often?” I was still surprised that I’d never seen it before or even heard of this apparently common practice, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that had settled over me.
“Not really.” Aerin didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Maybe I was just still on edge because of what Murillo had said about the Academy keeping track of rogue mages and Eamon Maderel’s special interest in our guild over the past several weeks. I felt eyes on my back any time I was in the city, but especially since our meeting with the archmage. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said about Maderel recommending us specifically. I supposed I should be flattered, and to be honest, a part of me was, but it made me nervous, too. Sure, his attention was good now, we got first access to a lot of good bounties, and people in the tower and the city were a bit friendlier to us than they’d been before we became the High Mage’s favorite guild, but how long would someone like Eamon Maderel have to look before he realized I wasn’t who I said I was?
As the mana cart pulled away, I tried to let my anxieties go with it. It wouldn’t do any good to fret about it, at least not for the moment. I resolved to learn more about how the Mage Academy tracked rogue mages when we returned from scouting out this village. I would find out which rogue mages they knew about and how most of them were caught, if not by guilds like us as I’d always assumed was the case. I could ask Murillo a few questions, at least, and pass it off as a mere curiosity about the mage he’d mentioned when he offered us this bounty. I’d always tried to stay out of the Mage Academy’s affairs as much as I could, but it was clear to me now that I would be able to hide better if I knew more about how they operated. I wanted to find out more about this solid mana, too. I wasn’t sure how just yet, but I was sure it could be useful to me.
I clicked my tongue to urge my horse forward when the guards waved us ahead, and then I took a deep, calming breath. After we left the mana cart behind at the first fork in the road, we didn’t pass by any other travelers for most of the morning. Merlin quickly grew bored with riding on my shoulder, and either trotted alongside the horses and chased mice and grasshoppers alongside the road or sprouted wings and took to the sky above to pester the sparrows and other small birds that made the mistake of flying too close.
We were set to reach the village which was called Olin, by about mid-day. The day promised to be clear and cool as the morning wore on, and my spirits improved. We’d see if there were any leads on the Shodra in Olin, and even if there weren’t, we could be back in Ovrista by nightfall and wouldn’t have lost much time at all for our trouble.
“Do any of you know anything about these magical items Archmage Murillo wants us to find?” I asked when we stopped for a break along the side of the road. I had already memorized the short list the archmage had given us and had been rolling it over in my head so much as we rode that the words had almost lost their meaning. A gemstone, a knife, a ring, and a chalice. I wondered what they were supposed to do, how exactly they could augment a mage’s power, and I hoped that given the legendary nature of the objects, the others might know something about them that I didn’t from stories they’d heard growing up.
“Just what everyone knows,” Aerin answered after she took a drink from her canteen. “A lot of the stories contradict each other, of course. Some say the Shodra were created by the gods and passed down to mages in times of danger to help them serve the faithful. Some say they were created by a cult of manipulators back during the civil wars to give them an edge.” She splashed a little water into her hand and ran it through her thick red hair. “It’s impossible to know what the truth is at this point.”
“Do any of the stories say what the Shodra actually do?” I pressed. “How they work?”
“Sure,” Aerin replied. “Each of the items is supposed to help a mage with their magic in a different way, but exactly how is just as mixed up as how the Shodra came to exist in the first place.”
“Well, what are some of the stories?” Maruk prompted. “Perhaps they’ll still provide us with some sort of clue.”
“Um, well, the people who say the manipulators created the Shodra claim that the ring makes whoever wears it impervious to any magical influence or attack,” Aerin said. “This old elf who used to live near my parents’ shop all the time used to say that the chalice could purify any liquid poured into it.”
“Could it?” Lena asked with interest.
“I don’t know.” Aerin shrugged noncommittally, but I could tell by her tone that she didn’t have much faith in the idea. I was a little surprised by her apparent skepticism regarding the Shodra, especially given how certain she was that a drop of wax was a message from her patron goddess meant to lead us to one of them.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked. Maruk was right, anything we knew about the items we were looking for might help us find them.
“I think my neighbor was a few arrows short of a full quiver,” the healer replied frankly. “He also used to say that sprites came into his house every night and turned all his furniture upside down.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of that.” Lena frowned sympathetically. “You have to put an iron horseshoe over your door to keep them away.”
Aerin, Dehn, and Maruk stared blankly at the alchemist for a moment.
“Right,” Aerin said eventually. “Well, look, there are a lot of stories about the Shodra, and that’s all most of them are, just stories. If we chase down every weird knife or strange gemstone people tell us about, we’re going to waste a lot of time on false leads.”
“We may not find much more to go on,” I pointed out gently, and Aerin frowned.
“I know Theira is guiding us,” the elf insisted. “We’ll find a lead at this village, I’m sure of it.”
“Alright,” I replied. It was probably best not to push her further. Lavinia and Dehn had given her a hard enough time about it already. I stood and held my hand out to help Aerin to her feet, and she squeezed my hand gently. “Let’s keep going, we’re not far.”
I had just swung myself up into my saddle again when Lena gasped behind me.
“What in the hells is that?” Dehn demanded a second later, and I turned to see something colorful blooming up on the horizon that took me a few seconds to process. At first I thought it looked like the rising sun, scarlet red and billowing up over the distant hills, but of course, it wasn’t the sun. My next thought was that it was a swarm of pixies, or an explosion, but as the thing grew, the knot in my stomach untwisted as I finally recognized it.
“It’s a hot-air balloon,” I said with a slightly relieved laugh. “I didn’t know you had those here.”
“A what?” Dehn looked from me to the still-growing spot of bright red canvas in the distance with a suspicious frown.
“It’s a type of aircraft,” I answered. “The passengers ride in a basket that’s attached to a balloon, and you fill the balloon with hot air and it floats.”
“That sounds fascinating!” Lena said. “Can we go see it?”
“That’s really far east, Lena,” Maruk said. I thought the orc looked a little greener than usual. “Shouldn’t we be getting along to this village?”
“It looks like they’re taking off now, anyway,” Aerin added with a sympathetic glance to the warrior.
“Maybe another time,” I suggested, and the alchemist nodded and threw a regretful look over her shoulder at the balloon as it continued to rise slowly but steadily in the distant fields.
We started off again, with Merlin weaving along the path ahead, and I couldn’t help but look back a few times myself at the balloon. I’d only seen them once before at a festival back on Earth, and even then, only from a distance. I was surprised that I’d never seen them here before, but perhaps they weren’t as common. Lena and Dehn didn’t know what they were, at least, though I suspected Aerin and Maruk had some familiarity with the crafts.
It only took another hour of riding before we passed a weather worn sign that directed us to Olin, and a mere fifteen minutes after that before the little village itself appeared before us, nestled between clumps of trees and neat fields separated from one another by neat stone walls. It certainly didn’t look like the sort of place that would have some kind of zombie curse like Tepeyol had told us about, but then again, it was always the most normal-seeming places that had the darkest secrets, wasn’t it?
The few people we saw along the road as we entered the village cast wary looks in our direction. Ordinarily, I would have attributed that to the fact that we were a rather strange mix of individuals, even for an adventurers’ guild, but now I had to wonder if the villagers’ suspicions had anything to do with the curse.
They probably had one guild or another poking around here every few weeks, hoping to put an end to the curse and get a little money for their trouble. Having your dead friends and family come back from the grave was probably traumatizing enough, and since the villagers had worked out their own solution, I expected they didn’t take kindly to anyone prying, especially if the people prying were really only in it for the money. Maybe if we made it clear that we didn’t want anything from them except information, the people here would be a little more receptive of us.
“Let’s try the tavern first,” I suggested, and so we meandered down the packed-dirt streets until we found the single tavern in the village, a place called the Twice-Dead Man, of all things. At least they seemed to have a sense of humor about it.
We left the horses tied up outside, and I persuaded Merlin to climb onto my shoulder as we entered the little thatched-roof building. Since it was the middle of the day, I hadn’t expected there would be many patrons, but it seemed that a good number of the villagers had their lunch here at the same time, because there were about fifteen people seated around the tables inside.
“Alright,” I whispered to the others, “remember, we don’t want to give away exactly what we’re looking for, so be vague, just ask about any magical items that might be in the area, and see if there’s anything noteworthy about those ruins nearby.”
With that, we split up. I figured we’d be more approachable and the villagers would be more inclined to open up if we weren’t all ganging up on them. Unsurprisingly, Dehn headed straight for the bar and ordered himself a drink. There were a few other patrons there, all of whom looked just as tough and surly as the halfling, so I thought at least he might be able to get something out of one of them.
Maruk, Lena, and Aerin each found marks of their own among the rest of the farmers and shepherds seated around the tavern, and I made my way with Merlin over to a gray-haired old man at one of the tables near a window. He raised a bushy eyebrow expectantly as I approached, and I gestured to a chair.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked. “I was hoping to take advantage of the light for some reading.” I held up one of the books I’d brought as an excuse.
The man gave an affirmative sort of grunt and went back to his stew, and I sat down and pretended to read for about a minute. Merlin dropped to the floor and began to search beneath the table for scraps.
“My friends and I are just passing through,” I said casually. “We’re traveling salesmen, we buy and sell rare magical items.” I hoped that seemed plausible. The village was a ways off from the main roads, but if the man thought that there was anything strange about the route we’d decided to take, I could just claim we were trying to avoid the usual competition, though I did wish I had run this excuse by Aerin, who would no doubt be more than convincing.
“Not interested,” the man mumbled without looking up from his stew.
I cleared my throat and studied the page of my book as I sought for another way to broach the topic, secretly relieved that the man didn’t want to buy anything from me as I, in fact, had nothing to sell to him. As the seconds dragged on and the farmer neared the bottom of his stew bowl, I decided to go with a more direct line of questioning. He’d probably appreciate that, anyway, I figured.
“Do you know about any rare magical items in the area?” I asked, again, with care to keep my tone casual. “It seems like all the best treasures were buried away for centuries under someone’s barn, you know?” I tried for a laugh, but the farmer didn’t return it.
“Don’t know about anything,” he grunted. Then he tipped the last bit of broth into his mouth and scraped his chair back abruptly. Before he left, he fixed me with a scrutinizing glare, then he brought his empty bowl up to the bar.
I breathed out a sigh and ducked my head down to check on Merlin. The puca was sitting up on his haunches and gnawing on a crust of stale bread that he’d found. He looked like a very convincing scraggly black tomcat, except for his paws, which were more like those of a raccoon or an opossum. I nudged him with the tip of my boot. “Hey, cats don’t have opposable thumbs,” I whispered.
He cocked his head slightly and chattered in an anno
yed sort of way, then shoved the rest of the bread into his mouth and dropped down onto all four paws as his little fingers shortened into appropriately catlike toes.
I cast a surreptitious look around the rest of the tavern to see if the others were faring any better than I had. Dehn had managed not to start any fights, but I realized that was only because he apparently hadn’t spoken to anyone but the bartender, and was on his second pint of beer.
Maruk was having an animated conversation with a pair of shepherds, but when I managed to catch a few words, it occurred to me that they were just discussing the quality of certain types of wool.
Across the room, Lena’s shoulders drooped as the farmer she’d been talking to got up and left, and when I found Aerin again, the redheaded elf caught my eye and shook her head sadly. Damn.
There were still a few people we hadn’t spoken to, but when I looked around again, more than a few looked away quickly just before I could meet their eyes, and I knew we’d already set ourselves apart. I remembered the suspicious looks we’d gotten on the road and tried to console myself that the villagers were probably just mistrustful of strangers by nature, but that didn’t change the fact that we still needed someone here to open up to us.
I closed my book and moved on to another table where three men sat around nearly empty mugs of beer. Before I had a chance to get a word out or even sit down, one of the three, a tall human with bright orange hair and a wide nose, held up his hand. “We ain’t interested.”
“I haven’t said anything yet,” I pointed out.
“Not interested,” the man insisted with pointed enunciation. “You and your friends had best be moving on, lad.”
“We don’t mean any harm, we just--”
“Good,” the orange-haired man interrupted. “Now be on your way.”
I sucked my teeth. Provoking these people wouldn’t do any good, I knew, but it was hard not to be annoyed by the man’s attitude. What harm was there in asking a few questions? The man continued to stare at me until I turned and joined Aerin at her empty table.