by Logan Jacobs
I frowned, but if Aerin's comment had offended Magdalena, the other woman didn't show it.
"I'm not sure what it is exactly," Magdalena replied with the same bright smile. "That's just what my tea leaves said this morning."
“I thought you said you read bones?” Maruk asked.
“Yes,” the golden-haired elf said as she smiled at him.
“But you just said tea--”
"She doesn't know," Aerin interrupted the big man as she gave us a pointed look, "and those spiders she told us to follow in the Shadow Delves tried to kill us, so maybe tea leaves, or bones, or moon mist, or whatever tactic she said she is using isn’t all that reliable."
"Well, they can be difficult to interpret sometimes," Magdalena admitted, "but you did find what you were looking for after you encountered the spiders, didn't you?"
Aerin raised her eyebrows at me.
"Uh, could you give us a minute?" I asked, and Magdalena nodded. I ushered the others aside while Magdalena petted Merlin. "We were going to go get the medallion at some point anyway," I said quietly. "If she just wants to tag along, what's the harm? We don't have to go on any of her predictions, it'd be like any other bounty."
"She's not a fighter," Lavinia answered. "We'll have enough to do without protecting her on top of it."
"We've done escort missions in the past," Maruk said diplomatically. "It's not really different."
"Except that they paid us then," Aerin pointed out.
"We could charge her, then," I suggested. I looked around the group. "Besides, having an alchemist around could be useful. She could make potions and medicines if we need them. So, any objections to bringing her along if she pays for us to guard her?"
"She's got to pay for her own food and lodging, too," Aerin said. "She's not part of the guild."
Lavinia shrugged. "Fine by me."
"I'm alright with it too," Maruk said, and then he looked over at Aerin. "You're the one who said you wanted extra coin out of our next bounty, after all."
Aerin almost looked like she regretted having said that, but after a moment, she nodded. "Yeah, okay."
We walked back to Magdalena and Merlin, and the elf woman looked at us expectantly as she stood.
"If you want us to protect you on the way, we're going to need you to pay us," I told her, "and you'd be responsible for your own food, rooms at inns, and that sort of thing."
"Oh, of course!" Magdalena said with a smile. "Naturally, I would pay you. Do you accept Morelian silver?"
I cast a glance to Aerin.
"Sixty pieces for the whole trip," Aerin stated, "and we'll need half in advance."
"I can bring it by tomorrow morning!" Magdalena said brightly. "Would you be ready to leave by then?"
"That'll work," I replied.
"Oh, this is so exciting!" Magdalena squeaked as she clasped her hands together. "I'll meet you back here tomorrow morning!" With that, she dipped a quick curtsy and skipped off down the street, and the little bells on her skirt jingled as she went.
"So, the enchanted medallion bounty," Lavinia said as she pushed open the door into our hall, "that's the one we won from the Stewards. I didn't remember the bounty documents saying it was in the Canterrose range."
I walked past her toward the slim desk we'd set up in the hall where we kept our guild charter and other important documents and opened the drawer. The papers we'd gotten from the Stewards were at the top, tied together with twine. I took them out and spread them over the desktop.
"Enchanted medallion, cures all ills..." I read aloud as I skimmed the page, "... last seen in possession of the rogue mage, Aurelius Gellen... Yeah, it says here he's hiding out somewhere in the Canterrose Mountains." I frowned. "How did Magdalena know that? This wasn't a public bounty."
Aerin had been confident in her assertions that divination wasn’t real magic, but somehow Magdalena had known both that the bounty was to collect a medallion and where that medallion was meant to be. I remembered that Lavinia and Maruk hadn’t realized that they used mana for some of their physical attacks. Perhaps it was the same with divination, and Magdalena used mana differently than a mage would. I decided to keep an eye on her during our trip to see how she practiced her divination.
"She must have heard some of the Stewards talking about it before," Aerin replied dismissively as she came to look over the documents, and I knew that was her just trying to think of anything to explain it. Magdalena hadn’t been in town long enough to hear of it, I was certain. "The Canterrose Range is really far east. We can go on foot until we reach Gilamar. That's a merchant stop right on the edge of the desert."
She swept her finger from a point marked on the map in red across a vast empty expanse to the mountain ranges on the other side. "We'll need to join a caravan to cross the desert, though. It's too dangerous to go alone, even for us. You don't want to get too far from a source of water, and we wouldn't be able to carry everything we'd need on our own. Besides, there are bandits and all sorts of other nasty things roaming around out there."
"How long will it take us to reach Gilamar?" I asked.
"Walking, it’ll take a few days at least," Aerin said. "Why?"
The truth was, I was still thinking about Magdalena's warning that there was a time limit to our mission, but I didn't want to say that to Aerin.
"It might be worth it to get a carriage to take us there," I said casually. "Especially if the desert crossing will be slow."
"I'm in favor of that," Maruk put in. "We'll have more than enough opportunity for exercise in the mountains, I'm sure."
"Agreed," Lavinia said.
Aerin frowned, and I put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll see if anyone's heading that way that can let us hitch a ride for free before we hire one, okay?"
"Okay," the elf replied as she scuffed her boot against the floor.
"We'd better go get packed," I said as I gathered up the bounty documents and folded them up again. "Everyone, go get some rest. We've got an early start tomorrow."
Chapter 2
We met Magdalena the next morning right at dawn outside the guild hall. The alchemist's honey-blond curls were pulled back from her lovely, heart-shaped face with a magenta scarf that was fringed with tiny colorful beads. She wore a deep emerald traveling cloak over her dress and worn leather boots that sported numerous colorful stains, though if they were from paint or potions, I couldn't tell, and she had a pack of her own slung over one shoulder. She'd tied a few feathers to one of the straps, and there was a jar stuffed into an outside pocket that appeared to contain the bones of some small animal and a few dried flowers.
She was sitting on the steps when I opened the door. I wondered how long she'd been waiting there and why she hadn't bothered to knock, but she jumped up when she saw us with a bright smile.
"Good morning," she greeted and dipped a little curtsy. "I brought the silver, and I'm all ready to go, of course." She reached into her pack and fished out a small leather pouch that she handed to Aerin.
Aerin checked if it was for the correct amount, then pocketed it with a nod. I could tell she still wasn't exactly thrilled to have Magdalena join us, but I hoped that would change over the next few days. I didn’t want Aerin to be unhappy, but Magdalena was sweet and seemed eager to help. If we were going to be spending the next couple of weeks together, it would be better if we could all get along.
Maruk was still half asleep, and Lavinia wasn't much for small talk, but I didn't want Magdalena to feel unwelcome, so I tried to break the ice as we made our way through the cobbled streets toward the city gates.
"So, Magdalena, you said you're from Morelia originally?" I asked. I'd remembered her mention it when we'd first met in the black market, but I'd yet to find a map that showed more than the country's northern border. All I knew was that it was south of Ovrista, across a narrow sea.
"That's right," she answered. Despite the early hour, she seemed as chipper as she had the previous evening. In fact, I realized she'd seemed
to be in a good mood every time I'd met her. "And you can just call me Lena if you'd like."
"Oh, sure, Lena," I repeated. "That's pretty. Have you traveled a lot?"
"No, I'm afraid not," Lena replied, and her brow creased slightly. "I was born in Morelia's capital, Mavara, and I spent my whole life there until I'd saved up enough to come to Ovrista."
"What made you want to leave?" I asked.
"Too much competition," she answered. "There are a lot of alchemists in Mavara, but I knew I'd be better off in another big city."
"You'd be better off if you actually stayed at your shop," Aerin pointed out.
"Business has been slow anyway," Lena replied with a shrug. "I've been experimenting with a few different potions using that blood you all got for me from the Dovar-cu, but I think the flowers from the mountains are the ingredients that I've been missing. Once I get this potion right, it'll really turn things around for me, I know it."
"What alchemical properties do these flowers have?" I asked. I didn't know much about alchemy, at least not the sort of alchemy that was prevalent in this world, though I could already tell that it was a bit more complex than turning lead into gold.
"The clans in the Canterrose Mountains have been using the flowers that grow there in their folk medicines for thousands of years," Lena explained. "The scent of the flowers is supposed to provide one clarity of thought, and the ground-up roots can cure all sorts of ailments of the throat. I heard that if they're prepared properly, the extract from the boiled stems can be made into an elixir that allows a person to breathe where there's no air."
If that were true, it certainly would be useful. "So the potion that you're making with the Dovar-cu's blood, it'll allow someone to breathe underwater?" I guessed. The Dovar-cu was a river monster, so I figured that was where its blood fit in with the rest of the potion ingredients.
Lena's eyebrows went up. "Oh, no, it would give someone the ability to talk to fish," she said. "Well, not all fish, just brown trout, and only during a full moon."
"What?" Lavinia stopped and turned to Lena. "What good would that be to anyone in any circumstance ever?"
The elf blinked at her. "You've never wanted to talk to a fish?"
Lavinia stared at the alchemist for a moment, and I couldn't really blame her. Lena's tone seemed perfectly sincere, but it was hard to believe she wasn't trying to pull some kind of joke.
"No," the ladona woman answered definitively. "No, the talking puca is more than enough for me, thanks."
At my heel, Merlin hissed and swished his tail.
"That was going to be my big break," Lena said miserably as she chewed on her lower lip. She then cast a last, hopeful look around at the rest of us. "You wouldn't want a potion that would let you talk to a brown trout during a full moon?"
Maruk shook his head, and Aerin rubbed her temple and muttered, "You have got to be kidding me."
For Lena's sake, I tried to stay positive. "Maybe there's something else you could do with the flowers that would appeal to a wider audience," I suggested.
"Oh, I see what you're saying," Lena replied with a nod. "It should work on all species of trout."
"Actually, it might be better to drop the talking-to-fish angle altogether," I corrected quickly. "Aerin, you have great business sense, maybe you can give Lena some suggestions."
The redheaded elf shot me a look, and I could tell that she was torn between being flattered by my compliment and annoyed that I'd dragged her back into the conversation.
"Well, a potion for breathing underwater would be a great start, if you could get it to work," Aerin said. "Legend has it that some alchemist from Alistela managed it hundreds of years ago, but there are no surviving recipes, and no one else has ever been able to recreate it. Whoever did would make a fortune overnight."
“I suppose I could give that a try instead,” Lena said as she twisted a strand of her hair between her fingers. “I don’t really know why anyone would want to be able to breathe underwater if they couldn’t speak to any fish while they were there, but I’ll take your word for it.”
The sun was beginning to peek over the hills in the east by the time we’d made it to the city gates, but already a number of wagons and carriages were lined up on either side of the walls. Aerin and I had agreed upon a carriage fee the previous night, but I knew we needed to make that stretch as much as we could. The painted stagecoach with the team of four silky-coated horses was definitely out of the question, though I was sure it would have been Maruk's first choice.
No, we needed something more… economy-class.
At the end of the line, I noticed a wooden cart hitched to a pair of flea-bitten mules. The driver, a man with a long, somber sort of face, stood nearby with his hands in his pockets and a piece of straw in his mouth. It wouldn't be nearly as comfortable or as fashionable as the other options, true, but it was more within our means. We could probably afford to get a ride all the way to Gilamar and shave a few days off our trip.
"You're sure we can't just walk there?" Aerin asked as we approached the man. "I mean, what's a few days, in the grand scheme of things?"
"We talked about this," I reminded her. "Time is money, right? The sooner we get the medallion and get back, the sooner we can start on the next bounty. It's an investment."
"I suppose so." The redheaded elf sighed. "Alright, I'll go talk to him."
The rest of us waited nearby as Aerin approached the driver. They exchanged a few words, then a few coins, and then Aerin turned and waved us over.
"He can take us all the way to Gilamar," she said. "We should get there by this afternoon."
"See?" I said quietly. "We're already saving money. Now we won't have to stop at an inn for the night."
"You were right," Aerin admitted with an exaggerated eye roll. Then she grinned and butted me on the arm. "And thanks to my tremendous bargaining, I even got us a discount."
"Nice work, Aerin," I said.
The driver watched us with drooping eyes as we all climbed aboard the cart, but if he had any reservations about transporting an orc, a dragonkin woman, a pair of elves, a human, and our mangy tomcat, he didn't voice them. His mules, on the other hand, seemed a bit warier, especially of Merlin, and I guessed that they could sense the puca's true nature.
To keep Merlin occupied and prevent him from harassing the mules, I dangled a silver necklace I'd brought along for just such a situation before the puca's face. I'd taken the necklace from his own little hoard of shiny jewelry and various bits of junk, but after my trick with the butterfly the previous day, he didn't trust as easily. He pawed at the pendant at the end of the chain experimentally, and it swung back and hit him in the snout. He wrinkled his nose and sneezed, but satisfied that the necklace wasn't about to vanish into thin air, he took hold of it and began to play with it as our driver flicked the reins and we set off.
We reviewed the bounty documents and the maps along the way and discussed strategies for dealing with the mage who supposedly had the medallion. There was only so much planning ahead we could really do at this point though, and after an hour or so, the conversation turned to casual chatting about the weather or what we might have for dinner. Maruk and I tried to bring our driver into the conversation a few times if for no other reason than that it seemed rude not to try, but after a few disinterested grunts and monosyllabic responses from the man, we abandoned the endeavor.
As the sun rose and we traveled east, we began to leave behind the shady green forests and rolling hills that surrounded Ovrista. The land became flatter, and the forests thinned until, by about noon, there were no trees to be seen in any direction, and the only landmark on the plains was the road that our cart rolled over. As the sun continued its journey west, even the grasses began to subside, and more and more they were interspersed with patches of dusty bare earth.
I knew the desert had to be close.
Just as Aerin had predicted, we reached Gilamar by midafternoon. Our driver dropped us off at a small w
aystation about half a mile outside the city proper that had feed and watering troughs for the horses and other beasts of burden that passed through. I noticed a set of tracks in the dirt that appeared to belong to some sort of enormous bird, each one easily as long as my arm, and I cast a glance around in the hope that I could catch sight of whatever left the tracks. Aside from a few other men and women who stood by their own carts and carriages with their horses, however, there was no one else at the waystation, and the city streets were so crowded that it was impossible to make much out from this distance.
We thanked our driver, and he nodded back mutely as we turned away and walked toward the city.
Aerin had mentioned that Gilamar was a stopping point for merchants on the edge of the desert that separated the Canterrose Mountains from the rest of the continent, but I'd imagined something more or less like the old mining towns in the Sierra Nevada, a few inns and shops along the main street and not much else. I quickly realized the error in my assumption.
Caught between the clear blue sky above and the featureless plains below, Gilamar seemed out of place, as though the whole city had been dropped here accidentally. Though I suspected it could rival Ovrista in size, Gilamar lacked the former's neat structure, its walls, its gates, and its orderly streets. Rather, I thought that there was something almost organic about Gilamar as we rode toward it in our little cart. It seemed to blossom out like a rose, the buildings like petals that spread out from the crowded center in every direction with no apparent uniformity or structure.
It wasn't a city that had been set out on blueprints and built according to design, I could tell that much. It must have started out as I'd expected, just a place for travelers to rest as they passed through and little more, but it had grown over the ages, a few buildings at a time, each added when it became necessary and not before. This much was obvious by the architecture alone.
As we passed through the city, I could see the disparities between the designs and the ages of the structures. The older buildings at the center were smaller, made of wood and plaster and bearing the traces of old paint on their weather-worn facades. The newer buildings on the outer edges of the city were mostly merchants' shops, as far as I could tell. They were constructed of brick, and they featured larger windows with smoother glass than the old town, and their brightly painted doors were no doubt meant to signal to potential customers.