Going into each meeting, the man had warned one fortune teller after another that he would only pay if they could make him believe that they actually had the gift. So far, most hadn't wasted more than five minutes of his time. Some he had waited to speak to longer than the conversation lasted. Dorgred told them that he wanted to know more than just his fortune and they smiled telling him that they delivered for coin; but not one could read that he was a wizard so he refused to give them anything before walking out the door.
"That one might have been the weakest scammer of the bunch!" the wizard complained. "When I asked him to tell my fortune to prove himself, he actually was clueless enough to talk about my future sailing. Bah, I went on one extended trip by boat. I am not some captain that he can read my stars and wish me a good voyage... the idiot."
Evic nodded and pushed off his seat, a bench outside the latest pretend psychic. The boy was chewing on a snack from a vendor a couple stalls away prompting Dorgred to point at the food and say, "I am not paying for that either. You've made me go to all these useless hacks for nothing, Evic, so the odds of you earning your coin are beginning to look as likely as my payment of these incompetents."
"I promised to guide you to every fortune teller or seer in town, just because you keep finding that they're fakes doesn't mean I haven't done my part," the boy said cocking his head to the side coyly. "Well, I guess your failure is my failure though, isn't it?"
Folding his arms and grunting dismissively at the boy, Dorgred was less than yielding. He was the one that was supposed to judge if the kid had earned his coin and what kind, the useless running around of Mariport for days was only making the wizard's feet sore and his attitude grumpier by the minute.
Evic looked thoughtful as he rubbed his chin. "Well, you certainly have been hard to please. These have been all well known and somewhat lesser known in their field, so let me ask what you are truly looking to find in this search?"
"I've told you time and time again. I need to find a seer that can tell more than just a single person's future. If he can't tell me what is going to happen with Ensolus and Southwall, the Dark One and this war, then he is useless."
"Hmm," the boy hummed and spent nearly a full minute before he acted like he had come to a decision. "Well, I guess that there is only one other that might be able to help you here. Come, I'll take you to her."
"Evic, don't waste my time," Dorgred warned but found his feet following the boy anyway.
He turned and followed a side street for a couple blocks before turning back to the same street they had originally been on in the first place prompting Dorgred to call out, "What was that for? We could have stayed on this street the whole time and saved an extra two blocks of walking."
"There was an accident in the way. A pair of carts collided blocking the street. It would have taken a lot longer just to wait for them to clear the path," Evic replied barely slowing his steps.
Dorgred looked back and, as the boy had said, the wizard could see the crowd formed around a pair of men yelling at each other beside a pair of overturned carts. He hadn't been able to see them so far away from where they left the street to move to the side street. Chalking it up to a good set of eyes or perhaps the boy had taken the time to scout the path ahead while he had been with the last fake fortune teller.
They continued for a way before Evic stopped in the lane to wait. Some men were using a block and tackle to raise a heavy crate to the upper level of a warehouse creating a space to be avoided by foot traffic. While the wizard was impatient, he supposed that it was just safe thinking to wait.
A shout from above them preceded a loud snap as the rope broke. The crate dropped to the stone paving narrowly avoiding the men below with their guide ropes that had been used to lift the crate. Dorgred noted the cracks formed in the pavers realizing that the box had been even heavier than he realized and very solid. The wood outer casing cracked making the proposed lift all but impossible now until they either shored up the weakened bottom and sides or found a new box.
Seeing the danger over with, Evic led Dorgred on without commenting.
Turning from the road a couple blocks past the accident, Evic led him up a smaller street with less foot traffic. A man was leading a pair of horses pulling a loaded wagon filled with canvas bags filled with grain. The wheels creaked and groaned on the axle with the weight. Like the crate, Dorgred was surprised at the apparent weight of the cart.
Evic was catching up to the back of the cart when he moved to the left making the few people walking there annoyed by the shift of his walking into their path. Dorgred followed wondering at the boy's behavior when a loud crack was heard and a rumble moved through the ground to be felt through the soles of the wizard's boots.
Looking at the merchant's wagon, as the man cursed, Dorgred was surprised along with the other passersby to see the cart tilting drastically to the right. The horses whinnied as they tried not to be tugged over with the weight of the load. Thinking that the axle had probably broken on the rickety wagon, the wizard noted that the wheel had broken, but not because of the weight in the cart. A large hole held the wagon's wheel in its broken form.
The hole hadn't been there only a moment before, but an apparent sink hole had let the stone above give way with nothing below it to hold the pavers for a few feet.
Dorgred looked at Evic and the boy looked at him in surprise. "Aren't you coming?"
"How did you know to step away from that?"
Shrugging, the boy waved him onward without explanation.
When they arrived at a gate, Evic pushed his way inside without knocking or otherwise giving the owner notice. Dorgred looked around at the serene garden of someone with a green thumb that could rival a nature wizard's. Plants were in bloom here, though in Ensolus winter made it below freezing. Grass and flowers were huddled under blankets of snow or ice not trying to show off the brilliance of their blooms.
There were benches to sit and a statue standing in a fountain. A woman blindfolded held a pitcher tilted to pour water from it back into the pool at her feet. Dorgred didn't feel magic at work, but wondered how they maintained the flow of water without it.
Hurrying to catch up to Evic as he dawdled to take in the sights in the garden, the bigger man noted the boy walk up a few steps and enter the building. Feeling a bit suspicious, Dorgred paused on the small porch trying to figure out who might live there. The house wasn't too large, but the wood work enhancing the look of the building must have been made by very skilled craftsmen.
"Come on," Evic beckoned from the first room through the doorway. "This is the last shot, but she's someone I know well enough. I am pretty sure that you won't be disappointed."
Frowning at the strange boy, the wizard entered closing the door behind him. It was actually warm enough that he had heard and seen a few insects during the day of walking around the city. No bug would have come out of their burrows north of the wall, though much of Southwall could be said to be the same.
Leading him to a room that might have served as a study, Dorgred stopped in the doorway to see an attractive woman perhaps his age drinking tea from a cup while holding a saucer in her other hand. The woman looked over her shoulder at the pair entering her chamber. Before the lady was a painting that looked remarkably like her, though Dorgred thought that the frame and paint showed some age. It was like it had been painted decades ago.
"Hello, Wizard Dorgred," the woman said with a voice pleasant to his ears.
Swallowing hard as she turned, the wizard noted her slender figure in a rich green, satin dress. Her auburn hair stood out glimmering with the light of a fire in the fireplace to the right. Placing her cup and saucer on the small table next to a stuffed chair colored burgundy to match another across from it, the woman then straightened her dress with her hands brushing at her waist though his eyes saw no wrinkles in the exquisite dress to worry over at all.
"You know my name?" the wizard asked slightly surprised before his suspicions arose. He had been in the vari
ous fortune tellers throughout the past few days. If Evic wanted, the boy might have been able to find this beautiful woman long enough to tell her about him. Some scams involved someone getting to know the mark first to make the executor of the ploy look infallible. Wanting to set his jaw firmly, the woman's grace and beauty unnerved him making it hard to think.
"I saw this moment awhile ago, nearly a year past in fact; though I would assume that you will doubt my claim. That also was seen," she stated with a smile that showed no teeth. It was a look that the woman held naturally and only served to make her look more beautiful.
"Evic must have sent word then," the wizard replied but the statement lacked the gruffness that he had held towards most of the frauds that he had met this day.
"No, I sent Evic to meet you near the market. You wouldn't have believed me right away, so he took you to the... competition, I suppose that you could call them. Many try to see the future. Some try to manipulate those who wish to know the future and tell them what they want to hear."
"And what do you do?" Dorgred asked still reserving judgment. The woman's blue eyes seemed to see right through him and the wizard wasn't sure how to feel about that.
She stepped towards him slowly gazing at the man's bearded face. A flick of pale flesh at her hem revealed that she was barefoot. It was her home, he supposed, and warm enough to be able to enjoy the temperature. A plush carpet that closely matched the chairs, except that there were thin, gold lines separating the burgundy fibers in a twisting design that circled the center less than a foot from the outer edge, was beneath her feet. It would make being barefoot enjoyable, especially in a stone castle, but this was a home made of wood. Natural wood flooring stained dark brown absorbed the light, but revealed the colors of the rug and furniture surprisingly well.
"That is a rather vague question," the woman stated. "What I do and what I am are often very different things in my life.
"I use what I am to make money to buy things that I like. My money can supply helpers to keep up my home and complete other work that I do not have the time to do; though I suppose if I am honest it is often work that I don't want to do as well.
"For the reason that you are here, that is what I am. You seek to find someone from the lost arts who helped guide the world when it was in trouble, yet you can't believe that any of them wouldn't find a way to stop the disaster we call the Cataclysm.
"How can people who called themselves 'Visionaries' possibly not do more to stop the Dark One from killing so many and altering this world? It is a question most people ask in Southwall in particular, but then someone will say that they must not have seen it coming."
The woman shrugged and gestured towards the chair on the left before retreating to the one on the right where her cup sat within reach from the chair. Crossing her legs knee over knee, the dress slid up a bit revealing her lower legs and feet. Toe nails painted green matched her dress making the wizard wonder if she bothered to change colors everyday to match her dress.
Holding out her cup, Evic was already at her side with a teapot to pour more of the liquid for the woman.
A glass was presented to him and placed on the table beside the wizard's chair after he sat across from her.
"Prapple juice, since you don't like most tea," she said with that knowing smile of hers. Like most women, she seemed to know what a man wanted. That didn't make her a seer, since most women could make a man believe that he wanted what she gave him.
"I am Narissa. My last name isn't important, but it also isn't from a lineage that you would know. While you aren't a man that would judge me for it, I am just saying that it doesn't matter in most ways."
"Narissa," he greeted her with a nod as his right hand covered his glass. Not quite thirsty, the wizard felt the cool glass and wondered if some wizardry had cooled the liquid. While Mariport wasn't hot, the air would make it warmer than this pretty quickly. It was freshly delivered just as the wizard arrived. Even Evic wouldn't have been able to coordinate the time this accurately.
"Now you will want me to give you information to prove myself to you. Being a Visionary, which is such a long name for a seer, is very hard to qualify in this day and age. Most believe them all dead because of the Cataclysm."
Her smile faded towards sadness and Narissa informed the man before her, "Most people don't realize that many of the Visionaries committed suicide before the tragedy happened. They had always been there to guide the world, but there was nothing that they could do to save this world from the Dark One's revenge. It was too well planned with magic that couldn't be countered. With failure seen well before the disaster, many couldn't take it and killed themselves out of despair."
Dorgred frowned. History had never spoken of such a thing. If Narissa was telling the truth, it would explain why there were no seers of any quality left; except the wizard had to consider the possibility that she still had the sight needed.
"Some must have survived then," he questioned as much as stated the assumption.
"Well, of course, some did. Some even worked to mitigate the damage saving people who would have a strong bearing on their future. The deaths of those who couldn't abide the inevitable tragedy had likely been prophesied as well, but that didn't change it.
"That's the problem with many who wish to know the future. Do they choose to see it as fate and follow the path, or do they try to defy the prophecy to rewrite what is told to them. If it's fate, or destiny optionally, then how do you change it or should you?"
Dorgred waved off the woman's tangent about destiny and fate. "I'm not looking to have my future read and have my destiny told to me."
"Aren't you?" she asked with that knowing smile that continued to unnerve the wizard. "You went to others professing to know the future, but saw through them because they only wished to tell you your part in the world. I'm not saying that you stand at the pinnacle of the age capable of changing everything like the emperor of the north can or that handsome owl I keep seeing in my dreams; but you do have a part, everyone does."
Narissa's ability to toy with him without trying made the fire wizard want to squirm in his chair nearly every moment, but her beauty and charm could hold him captive in spite of himself. It was unnerving.
"So now what?" he finally asked.
Raising an eyebrow, Narissa countered, "Don't you know already? The one you are tied to will return and take me to speak to the Dark One."
Her face clouded slightly in confusion and she added, "I do admit that the cloud around the emperor manages to confuse me at times. I see an ancient man and a boy, but not just one boy but two and a girl."
She shook her head. "I was trained to read the meaning of my dreams, but some things I need to see to truly understand."
Grunting at the confusion, the wizard stated, "Well, that part I can decipher for you, seer. The Dark One discarded his old body, but apparently wasn't satisfied with just using one. He created a sister and brother from two that could hold part of his essence, but kept most for himself in the boy's body he chose."
Looking uncertain if the wizard was toying with her in turn and making Dorgred enjoy having a leg up on her for once, Narissa replied, "Matters of magic are often hard to read properly. Even the Cataclysm had different meanings for different Visionaries. It is interesting to read the books of prophecies to see how what should be one future path can be viewed so differently."
With a shake of her head that sent her auburn tresses moving from her shoulders, Narissa reset herself and said, "Anyway, you can take your time and enjoy your drink before calling your maker here. I think that is what they call him, but again it is magic involved making things a little cloudy. Your kind are going to make things happen, but cloud the future because of your nature, I suppose."
"My kind? My nature?" Dorgred started to protest, not because he didn't feel that she was correct; but because he didn't want to admit it.
That smile reappeared and Narissa nodded, "You are one who has been given a second chance b
y defying death. Reading someone who has played such a trick isn't as easy. If the Dark One has changed bodies, he might be a similar problem; but my dreams lead me to him none the less."
Dorgred took a drink from his glass and wished it was something stronger. His left hand felt for the pouch holding both his coins and the imbued stone. He didn't relish sending this woman to the Dark One and feared what it meant for her to go.
Sighing, the wizard decided that it wasn't his problem to decide; but she was so beautiful.
Chapter 25- Spies and Seers
Returning home through the gateway, Palose was surprised by what he found waiting for him. Wendle in particular looked unsure of himself and Stasia was noticeably missing from the living area. Talia appeared calm until the mage noticed that the dark haired, young woman had a dusting of flour on her and several plates of baked goods sitting covered on the table or cooling off without a covering. She tended to cook when she was nervous and the amount made was usually directly linked to how anxious she was.
"What's wrong? Where's Stasia?" the dark mage asked quickly trying to verify the feeling of the room. Without Dorgred in Ensolus, there was no one else to worry about outside of his vision.
Wendle rubbed his head uneasily before answering, "She's downstairs with a... new guest."
Frowning at the delicate use of the wizard's words, Palose demanded, "Just tell me what kind of guest you would be keeping in my basement. We don't keep secrets from each other that might compromise this house, Wendle."
With a big sigh, the wizard answered, "Stasia and I were keeping an eye on the portal you showed me, the one that Sebastian must have created when he ambushed us here."
"And?"
"And a different wizard appeared after opening it. At least I am assuming that he opened the portal by himself anyway. I wonder if Bas has taught more wizards to create the gates already," Wendle mused getting off of the topic.
"He has. Now what about this guest?" he could feel Sylvaine's hand squeezing his anxiously. Being a house of reborn men and women brought back by him, they always feared being found out by the warlocks of Ensolus. Only Palose had been left alone after being raised by the dead in the history of resurrection men; so if it was made known what he could do, they couldn't be certain what the rest of Ensolus' warlocks would do.
Battle Mage Visions (A Tale of Alus Book 12) Page 36