by Thomas Head
“That is not why—”
“I know your precious Bib Bladderwrack died this morning. Young boys. Cutthroats, right outside his own pub. Now I said try it!”
Cullfor gathered himself, breathing deeply. His eyebrows raised, he bit down. The taste was enough almost enough to dissolve the sudden rush in his chest. To dissolve his questions. Almost. He could not help but wonder if Walt had gone insane. Probably not, he thought. The nonsense was likely just some trick of the mind, used to distract his buyers, because as he chewed, he could sense him searching his face for interest.
Suddenly, Cullfor was struck by an idea. He lowered his eyebrows with some effort and relaxed. He thought of nothing, until his countenance was a calm sheet of ambiguity. But Golden Walt left, waving off his obvious attempt at nonchalance.
Cullfor grunted as he watched him go. Sort of stupefied, he felt less like he was looking at an old business acquaintance. It was more like someone you see and wonder where you’ve seen them before.
Golden Walt came back with a tiny, almost thimble-sized, wooden stein. He was filling it from a metal keg, hardly larger than the stein. Dark liquid dripped like syrup, a drop at a time.
“Big Bib could never beat Goldy. Not at the more delicate crafts.”
Cullfor recognized the smell. Dragon’s Brew. The liquor was nothing less than the essence of the truffle, condensed over a great length of time. Flecks of gold-grounds were added, then mixed with the blood of sea turtles, salamanders, and beasts known only to half dozen men on the isle.
Supposedly, it was once used during the Ringby Wizard Trials to test for presence of the unseen verve of the world, the force that most men call magic.
He brought it over and handed it to Cullfor, slowly.
Cullfor took the minute little stein, handling it as one might a wasp. He looked down at it, then Walt. He had heard strange tales of its power. He had never dreamed he’d get a taste.
When he sipped, the flavor tickled the sides of his tongue a moment. It practically danced in his mouth. Then it then swept straight to a spot in his heart reserved for only the most joyous moments from deep in his youth. His face bunched in ecstasy. There was nothing with which to compare the taste, not even truffles themselves. It filled his senses like a pleasant fever.
There was slow rumbling hum between his eyes, so that when he closed them, he melted. The wheel of cheese in his pack did likewise. He did not care.
He said, “Utterly… gorgeous,” but the words came out like the growl of lion.
“Nooo...” Golden Walt said. He seemed frozen as he steepled his fingers. One eye narrowed.
Then his hog began to hiss.
Both men turned to it. The yellowed tusks were vibrating as it lunged straight toward Cullfor.
Squalling, he rolled away, splashing himself out of his chair. In the next instant, he was pinned to a corner. The beast was frozen only as Walt held him back by the collar. Cullfor did not move, or even dream to.
Very slowly, he whispered, “Walt! Madness has come to this place, I know that now. And I will take my leave….”
“At least she is no monster,” Golden Walt responded, his own whisper flat and distant.
“What? Monster? Has someone scooped out your head?”
“You are loved by the Beast of the North, yes. But did you think you might suffer less because of that?”
“Walt. Damn. Whatever. Yes, I thought precisely that. I thought whatever your witless, moldy mind needed me to think”
“You stand at the pillars of Choice, old boy. All of Void spreads throughout your brain. Now tell me...”
“Wha...?” Cullfor asked breathlessly.
“Do you see God?”
“Walt!” he whispered. With terrible care, he moved his uninjured leg under the swine. “What the frosty hell are you talking about?”
The hog was still hissing, patient as a coiled viper.
“Wizard, it is simple. I asked you if you see God.”
“No dammit,” he said.
Suddenly the small metal keg of Dragon’s Brew exploded. The noise was impossibly loud, like a crack of thunder.
Man and beast froze, stunned.
While the world deflated into stillness, Walt did not even look up from the truncated handle of his keg.
“You never were a fellow of good taste.”
Then a fearsome commotion of oinking and grunts erupted, from both Cullfor and the pig as he spun in a recital of sideways kicks, scampering upright. He managed to roll over, unsheathing his halfling sword in the same motion.
The pig seemed to comprehend the metallic shring. It halted, winded. Its stance was low and cagey. A predator’s stance. As he began to back up, Cullfor and the swine shared an uneasy war of stares. It lurched a bit.
Cullfor tilted his head, raised the blade higher. He kept moving, picking his way with heavy caution back all the way through the long cottage.
At the door, his own cudgel bashed him in the ear.
“Idiot!” Cullfor squalled as his head slammed into a low doorway.
He limped outside, his ear ringing. The world was shifting and spinning as he began to run.
“Show your face ’round here again,” he heard, “and I’ll break this ugly cane off in your rose hole.”
Outside, the pain in his head grew.
“Rot in hell!”
“Aye, that I’ll do! But you will not, Cullfor. You’ll rot in your own Godless half-n-half body for a half of a millennium, ye beast!”
“Pah! It’s the frozen depths of hell for me!” Cullfor said. He was shaking, furious as he skirted off further into the woods. “And you’ll recognize me there, ye balls-out loony coot. I’ll be the one lathering up your mother, so I can bang her proper, from stem to stern!”
Golden Walt roared something that could have been a laugh. Maybe it was. Cullfor couldn’t say; he just hobbled more quickly. And save for the pound of his feet, he heard nothing after that.
Finally, deep in the consuming maze of tree trunks, Cullfor growled his frustration. At himself. At Walt. At everything. He tromped onward, shaking his head under a dappled light. He felt utterly alone in his sanity, alone in the woods around him. Something deep inside him was feeling increasingly miserable, and familiar.
Chapter 64
“Dancing with the devil? No, I don’t know his moves. I know this: If the devil spins you, spin again.”
—Lord Uncle Fie Wyrmkiller
__________
Deep in the forest, Cullfor realized he might have been better off trying to steal a boat than a horse. It was like stealing a man’s boots, he figured—unless he had more, it was doubtful he could ever catch you. But that was probably more ridiculous than walking. Skulking around, trying to steal a boat could take weeks, and in all that while he’d be going nowhere. As it was, he was making some progress northwest, even if, right now, he was lost. Cullfor looked around at the unfamiliar woods, trying to orient himself. Though he had ventured hundreds of miles west into the disputed, southern border of Delmark on raid after raid, this was the length of travels northwest. There was a sullen weight in his head, and a growing sense of something larger and more sinister in the air as tried to think of how close he was to Delmark. But he had no energy to consider it.
So in time he slung off his pack. Hoping to collect some measure of himself, he sat against a tree, still shaking. His pack, he noticed, was covered in fatty liquid from the ruined cheese. An inspection of his trousers revealed a similar stain. The wounded leg was draining. He rubbed the sore spot, wincing at a spongy bruise. It had spread down his thigh. There was a vicious pucker of flesh where the arrow had entered. He tried to recall if it hurt more than yesterday. It was hard to tell. In the end, he decided it was feeling no worse or better.
Thank God that pig didn’t bite it.
“Swine,” he muttered.
Very soon, thinking of the pig became thinking of crispy bacon. Of course bacon becomes the only real thing to a hungry person.
He wanted some beer, too. He thought about a long mead-table. He imagined it full of bitter pints, served by those chubby maids at Pluck Bird Pub with their hair in tails and their pumpkin-heavy breasts about to spill from the top of their blouses to smack you in the face. He thought about a sore belly, full of smoked pork, scrambled eggs, and bitter beer. And, oh Lord, his pipe. Sweet God, how had he forgotten his pipe?
His slow huff dissolved into a snore.
Soon he was frantic, amid a nightmare about his aunt. She was nude and screaming under the claw a large dragon, being eaten piece by sinuous piece, the cheeks of her bare backside ripping apart like spongy white apples on a northern, rocky beach. A milky white leg dangled from the creature’s mouth, dripping with sheets of crimson as it looked up at him, and laughed.
__________
Cullfor woke shivering, cold in the way that only sleeping outside can make a body feel. It was late on what he supposed was the same day. The sun was a muted lantern in a distant gray mist ahead.
He got moving northwesterly again, favoring his good leg, rubbing some warmth back into his arms.
His eyes were sticky and sore, and almost immediately, he was unable to dispel an odd feeling, like being trapped in some upper room of his own mind, watching in silence as the trees went by. He stumbled through the remains of the afternoon, vaguely out of himself. Pleasant thoughts gave him no control over the feeling.
Too soon the day was gone. He trekked under an odd black and blue sky, hungry.
When he slowed to look in ruined pack for something to eat, what he found was minimal. The truffles he scraped from the bottom of the pack were awful. Compared to the Wizard’s Brew, they had a ratty, caramelized taste.
Finally he paused for a rest.
At the base of a cleared hill, he leaned against a tree. He looked up, a bit surprised that a cottage stood at the pinnacle.
Here, some of his worry melted. Cullfor smiled. This was a comely abode, a lavishly carved model of Arwegian workmanship. A grand and sturdy chimney graced the west wall. It was glistening with that wet look a cold night lends to rock. Smoke was pouring from it, fading with a slight breeze into the thinnest of veils.
He felt relaxed. In his nice dark spot he looked around to see that there were no geese or dogs around.
Then he just sat, reveling in the simple luxury of lurking.
Perhaps for the civilized air of the place, perhaps the easy smell of the lively wood smoke, nostalgic ruminations began to spark. He let his mind drift: He thought about fighting alongside old Uncle Fie, laughing with him. Sweet, rollicking God, but he was a big monstrous thunderbolt of a man. And a living saint. He called Cullfor “his feisty devil”, a moniker he cherished. He once said that we can praise the saints all we like, love all the women we want, and we can worship what heroes we will, but God only puts generations of these insufferable beings on His earth for one reason—so that from time to time such folks as Cullie Stonebreaker might spring forth from the cold gray muck of the races to mark as fully damned evident what a person—be they human, dwarf, elf, or some mix of all three—might strive to become.
Oh, he loved him.
But he was wrong, and while some part of him knew it, he could never admit the truth. Men could not strive to become what he was. Not as far as he knew. He leaned back, rubbed his collarbone. One was either born like him, or not. Again he looked up at the cottage. Repairs had been made here and there, but they were not performed by the same expert hands that had crafted it.
Suddenly he felt a rush. There was a sneeze inside the byre. The sneeze of a horse.
Cullfor got up on all fours and crawled nearer, edging toward a cathead-shaped cutout on the door. As he peered through, his head spun from the darkness, from the slope of the hill. There was a growing sense of the wrongness of this.
Then he tipped forward, and the door swung open.
In the blackness he saw something. A horse. It stood at the far end of the barn, facing askance from its stable, rocking.
Cullfor leaned back and felt behind him. He picked up a rotten crabapple. It was pungent and soft, and he filleted the pulp with his thumb and spread it across his palm. When he stood up, he did it slow as a growing tree. He began easing toward it, lightly, until he could see that it was not a horse.
It was an ass.
But it would have to do.
The flecked and uninspiring beast backed up, whisking its tail. It made some pitiful noise, little more than a hiccup.
Cullfor made himself small and unthreatening. He looked at the ground, facing away. He drew closer. Frozen, he just stood a moment. Then he gave it an easy pat on the neck.
When it seemed comfortable, he fed it the crabapple pulp, which it consumed it in a frenzy of gums. Well after the crabapple was gone, it continued to lick at his fingers.
“Easy, old boy,” he whispered. “I need those.”
It nudged his neck with its bony head. The poor beast was skinny, its hide stretched over a lumpy row of vertebrae. He eased his hand along the ribs and felt them all. Its poor hips were almost ripping the hide. Then he felt the neck and discovered a horror. Course rope was half-buried in the flesh.
Cullfor felt his temples warm with anger. It was lashed to the barn wall with the rope.
Abruptly, a high guttural whine issued from behind the animal. Cullfor crouched, looking in every direction.
As the noise wound down, it took him a minute to realize the beast had only, albeit powerfully, broken wind.
He grunted.
In the next instant, several more sporadic disturbances barked from the ass’s rear. He watched a burst of watery dung tear from its hindquarters. The poor beast was incontinent. Probably dying. Cullfor breathed and thought a moment, then decided not to try to remove the rope from the neck until he had better light. He gathered a crude, thief’s brio and sawed the rope with his dirk. Another moment passed. The ass nudged him playfully.
The he heard something...breathing.
He turned to find a shadowy, bent outline stared at him from the door. He twisted behind the ass, startled as he reached for his axe.
It was an old woman.
“It’s about time you came,” she said.
“Say again?”
“You heard me the first time, dwelf.”
The world seemed to vibrate a moment, then slow down. Cullfor shifted his weight, released his grip on the weapon. “What? Madam, who the hell do you think I am?”
“A monster,” she said flatly, “a mandragon, who is so stupid he thinks he’s a wizard.”
“Thundering hell, woman. The jesting and pranks, it all goes too far in the neck of the woods. Way too damned far.”
She slapped a knee and wagged a rat’s tail finger. “Jests and pranks. Ha, ye either a damn liar or a fool! Boy, I am only going to say this once. And only once. Get from behind that ass, have some stew, and learn something for once in your ignorant life.”
He looked off, as if there were some kind of answer on the wall. There was none. So he began looking at her while he patted the ass’ neck. She had a crazy smile, but he sensed something more than lunacy here. Not wisdom, exactly. He had no word for it, but he recognized it.
“Alright dammit.”
Without penning it up, he again patted the ass on the neck again. Then he approached the old lady.
As the beast broke wind behind him, he sighed. He kissed the top of her head, and as she pulled him out of the barn, he closed its door. Arm in arm they padded together toward the glow of the old cottage. Along the way, she squeezed him, always looking up at him. She began sputtering over and over that it was about damned time to learn something.
About damned time…
Cullfor squeezed back, looking down at the top of her balding head. Nearing the door, he felt odd. He thought just for a moment to insist upon some measure of reason. But his chin tightened with the vaguely mean feel of it.
__________
Inside the cottage, the pleasantly stale air
blasted him. It felt wonderful, the way a long bolt of wool that’s been in the sun feels wonderful after a cold swim. Landing himself in a padded wood sitting nook, he leaned back, nuzzling close to the hearth while cold aches oozed warmly from his back. Instantly, much of the fatigue drained from his legs. He propped his feet on a stack of firewood.
His misgivings were evaporating, fast. Cullfor watched the old woman shuffle to an inglenook, his eyes already growing heavy.
As he poured herself into some cooking, she became oddly excited. She shook her fist as she fidgeted. She stirred more times than necessary for a simple dish like the gourd stew he smelled. She was talking to herself, saying things he could not quite work out.
Then she turned to him.
“Where were ye raised, lad?” she blurted.
His eyelids rose.
“Over in Gintypool. Before that it was Goback, in Yrkland.”
“God’s sake, Yrkland! Backwater magic! Primitive. But I suppose a hammer is primitive too, and it’ll do just as good for busting skulls as a fine sword.”
Cullfor had never felt precisely this mix of curiosity and doubt. “Magic,” he harrumphed.
“Yes. Learn it, and you may stand a chance on this fool’s quest. Scoff, and the buzzards will be eating eat your guts soon enough.”
“Instead worms like God intended,” he said.
“Where are the two ye seek?” she asked.
He knew she could not possibly be talking about Aural and his aunt, so he had no idea why he answered, “Arkenstowe… I hope. Though I haven’t got a damn clue, really. The dwarves who stole them bore the mark of Jorigaer, but dwarves trade all over Ivornon and half of hell for all I know.”
“No,” she said.
No? There were a few fluttering thoughts put into what she meant by that. Whether she was loony, or lonely. Maybe a witch. Who knew? He leaned back into the chair, vaguely suspicious now, which was somehow a relief as a knot seemed to unwind around his heart… but it could have been a serpent leaving its own eggs to rot.