“Hey, we didn’t do anything,” he tried to communicate to the one that had brought him in. “At least let my dog go. He did nothing.”
One of the others ran up and made an ugly face, intended to intimidate Vanx. This garnered a few laughs from those watching in the growing crowd. Vanx made an even scarier face, and the Zwarvy backed away, to even more laughs. The taunter got a little too close, and Poops got his teeth in the Zwarvy’s pants, causing him to trip. Poops started to pull him closer, but Vanx sharply commanded the dog to stop.
Are you trying to get us killed? Vanx asked with his mind.
“Grrrrr-rough,” was the response his familiar made, and then Poops snapped at the Zwarvy he’d just released, making sure he kept his distance.
A rock came flying in then and hit Poops on the head. This angered Vanx to the point that he started trying to get free of the ropes, even if he had to pull his hand off to do it. Looking up, he saw that the stone tree trunk narrowed as it went up, and it ended about twenty feet above him.
Vanx used his bound hands as a climber might use a leather strap, and went right up the column. His wrists and biceps were cut, and cut again, then grated as he negotiated the lower part of the climb, but it was narrow enough toward the top that he was able to climb the last ten feet in two lurching, upward heaves.
The Zwarvy didn’t do much but yell and make noise. A few were still throwing rocks. The rest kept their distance, but didn’t appear to be all that afraid.
Flipping over the truncated top of the carved tree, Vanx came back down, landing badly on the loose rocks, rolling his ankles and hitting his head. He managed to get Poops untied, though, and was trying to urge the dog to bite through his wrist bindings, so he could cast a spell. Instead, Poops attacked the first Zwarvy that approached, leaving Vanx to duck and dodge a new barrage of flying stones, all while he tried to use his fingers to undo the knots at his wrists.
Poops yelped then, and returned to Vanx’s side. They used the pole, by keeping it between them and the Zwarvy, until Poops got his tooth in the knot, and finally freed Vanx’s hands.
Vanx turned, and the Zwarvy all backed away. The spell he cast, a harsh ball of wizard fire, hit the floor before them and exploded, but it froze mid-expansion, then disappeared altogether.
“No!” a firm voice came to Vanx’s ears, not from near his knees, but from a point about the same height as his own mouth.
He turned to find a filthy, middle-aged human man, wearing tattered wizard robes and thirty years’ worth of hair and beard, looking back at him.
The power radiating from this one reached Vanx and actually sent a shiver of fear through him.
“They won’t harm my dog until they’ve killed me first.” Vanx was ready to start bashing heads. He wouldn’t let them mistreat his familiar. “I swear it.”
“Your life could be ended with a single snap of my fingers, boy. I’m the greatest wizard who ever lived! Now, call off that dog before it hurts any more of them.” A glint of integrity showed in the unkempt wizard’s eyes, so Vanx used his mind to get Poops to take up a position beside him and leave the Zwarvy alone.
“How do you know Zwarvy?” the wizard asked.
Vanx realized his mind had just been scoured the moment after it happened, and he involuntarily sat beside his dog. Maybe this truly was the greatest wizard alive. He’d already stolen all of Vanx’s secrets. Vanx looked at the floor, for he was unable to do anything else, no matter how hard he tried. It was as if this strange bastard had taken away his ability to control any part of himself.
He couldn’t even turn to see why Poops’s blood was dripping on his boot.
Chapter Six
Some roads lead to heaven.
Some roads lead to hell.
Some lead straight to nowhere,
which is just as well.
After a few long moments, the wizard allowed Vanx to have control of himself once more.
“Who are you?” Vanx asked. He wasn’t afraid. He was usually never too concerned. He was a bard, after all, and knowing that this wizard had just read his mind meant that the hairy bastard knew Vanx meant no harm here.
The idea that this was the one who had been studying the books up in the tower room, struck Vanx. It wasn’t the Zwarvy.
“But if it were that easy,” the wizard responded, eyeing Vanx curiously. “Even they don’t see you as a threat.” He nodded his tangled mop of hair toward the Zwarvy. “You were eating the food from the king’s brother’s satchel.”
“King?” Vanx shook his head. “The Zwarvy are not ruled by a king.”
“These Zwarvy are.” The wizard scratched his head, most of his hand disappearing into the nest-like mop of hair, as he did. “He is temperamental and is going to have you stoned and then feast on your flesh, just as you feasted on his brother’s supplies.”
“Just like that?” Vanx asked. “You can’t stop him? Clearly you are influential—you are the only human down here.”
“Human?” the wizard cocked his head, as if sizing up Vanx deep within the recesses of his mind. “I was a human seven thousand years ago. That sickness has long since passed.”
“Sickness?” Vanx was curious, but didn’t really care. He wanted to get Poops out of there. The dog was hurt and bleeding.
“You should understand it. You are a descendent of the Phenzythian, but you’ve human and witch blood in you. That wasn’t supposed to have happened.”
Now Vanx was curious. Who in creation was the Phenzythian, and how could this supposedly seven-thousand-year-old, filth-covered man know anything about his kind? Vanx was keen enough to know the unclean bastard would look no more than a forty-year-old human if he were shaved and well dressed. As he was, he almost blended with the Zwarvy.
“What are you doing here?” Vanx asked through gritted teeth. His arms were bleeding, and there was a piece of skin a finger’s length dangling from the wrist he wore the Heart Tree cutting bracelet on.
“Waiting on a friend,” the man said. The confidence with which he answered wasn’t expected.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Two hundred twenty-five thousand eight hundred fifty-seven days,” he answered as he tentatively approached and ran a hand over Vanx’s injured inner arms. To Vanx’s surprise, the wizard watched like a child seeing magic for the first time, while his wounds healed in the span of a few heartbeats.
Vanx knew some healing spells, but nothing so seemingly easy to cast, or as potent.
“Are you sure something hasn’t happened to them?”
“To whom?” The wizard asked, as he knelt and healed Poops’s head wounds.
“To whoever you are waiting for,” Vanx answered. He wasn’t sure where this talk was going, but the Zwarvy had stopped throwing rocks. Beyond that, it was the most interesting conversation he’d had in his life. He was mad it wasn’t taking place under less stressful circumstances, and he had that thought on purpose.
“I see,” said the wizard. “Who I am waiting for is none of your concern, but I will see if I can stay the devouring of your flesh so we can discuss this, Pyra, and that old island lair. Did you see that place? I did that. I summoned the wealth of the earth right from its very core.”
Vanx’s mind was reeling, for he had seen a cavern on Dragon Isle that looked as if someone had done just what the old mage had said. Vanx had just assumed Pyra or one of her ancestors had done the deed. “I need to get back to that part of the world. Can you use the tower?”
“Oh, the tower?” The wizard shrugged. “I can use the tower, and so can you, but not until that foul blue phlegm has dissipated.”
“What is your name? Mine is…” Vanx didn’t bother finishing, remembering that his mind had already been scoured.
“You can call me Master Wizard,” the unkempt man said.
“Master Wizard, can you please speak to the king of these Zwarvy?” Vanx asked as he knelt to reassure Poops. “There is so much I would ask you about this Phenzythian,
and the Octron towers. There is so much I can share with them, about their own kind, who live on the other side of the world.”
“Very well,” the hairy wizard nodded. He spoke to the Zwarvy still watching. Most of them had gone on with their business, but a few still lingered. Six of them with spears held a steady circle around the prisoners.
The wizard left, and was gone only a short while before returning with a grim look on his face.
“The king will come soon and oversee your stoning personally.” The wizard shrugged. “I got him to agree to spare the dog into my care, but if you are his familiar, he will be worse alive than he will be dead along with you.” The wizard looked at his feet. “There is little I can do, other than answer the questions you seek answers for before you die. I can also give you a potion, so that you don’t have to feel the stones. It is quite barbaric watching things scream while their bones are broken and—”
“Enough,” Vanx snapped. “Thank you for your concern over my familiar, and the graphic description of my demise, but I’d rather you just tell me how to use the tower, give me back my sword, and let me and my pup on our way. I’ll not kill a single one who lets us leave.”
“Watch.” The wizard chuckled and spoke a single word, flicking his hand in a deliberate manner. Vanx wondered if the overly hairy man hadn’t gone a little mad.
Vanx went as stiff as stone. He couldn’t even blink, and by the feel of Poops’s panic rising up through him, he knew the dog was similarly petrified.
The master wizard snapped his fingers again, and chuckled at Vanx as he was instantly able to move.
“Humbling, isn’t it?” The wizard grinned. “I’ve had a lot of time to practice my craft, and you were smart enough to pique my curiosity, so we will see if I can barter with the king for your life instead.”
With that, he slowly disappeared right before Vanx’s eyes.
Chapter Seven
Lovers are like butterflies.
Some stay a while,
some flutter by.
“You are to stand before the luminites, and if they approve of your integrity, you will be spared into my custody,” the master wizard said, sometime later. “It is only because of the memories of the wisperian tree, I found in your head, that the king has considered this chance.”
Vanx and Poops were untied and put in a room-sized cage. Vanx tried to cast a spell, but found the magic dissipated into the air around them. The walls of the cage were nothing but a mesh made from the same magic-absorbing material from which the smelly little fur-turds had fashioned the stick nooses.
Even though they were captive, there were several armed Zwarvy surrounding the cage.
“What is a luminite?” Vanx asked through the mesh.
“They are wispy little fae that can sense the nature of a being, and if they determine you to have integrity and honor, then, as a favor to me, the king will spare you. You will have to leave the protection of their company, though, immediately.”
“Are you going to tell me how to use the tower?”
“We can go back there, if we are careful, and see if we can get rid of that mind-numbing plasma.” The wizard scratched his head savagely for a moment or two, then looked at Vanx. “But if it doesn’t work, you and your pooch are on your own.”
“So, do you think these luminites will prove me honorable, and the king will allow me to live?”
The master wizard grinned a clearly forced smile and raised his eyebrows twice. “I guess we will see soon enough. Eat and drink. If you survive, you’ll need it.”
A silver tray appeared on the floor on their side of the mesh. A bowl, full of beefy broth, was beside the platter of meat, cheese, fruit, and bread, and a pitcher of what Vanx hoped was water.
The meal turned out to be delicious, and both he and Poops ate their fill again, the dog focusing on the broth, while Vanx ate everything else dry, and then washed it down with the clean, cool water.
The dog sat by him, as if he expected a back rubbing. The harder Vanx scratched his familiar’s fur, the more the dog puffed out his proud chest.
Vanx gave the dog affirmation of his greatness in kind whispers as he moved his scratching attention to Poops’s ears. He couldn’t imagine a world without his familiar, and it was hard remembering anything from before he first met the pup on Dragon Isle.
“It’s time,” the master wizard said, as he opened a door for them.
There were eight Zwarvy per side, and they had weapons ranging from loaded horn bows, to neck nooses and spears, at the ready. The king was squat at best, the top of his shaggy head coming up to Vanx’s belt. He had a headdress on, though, made from bright, blue and green finger-long feathers, and beads. Unlike any other part of any Zwarvy he’d seen here, the king’s cheeks were shaved, giving his beard a goatish look. His brow hairs were pulled up and away from his face, and pinned at his temples, making his expression sinister, and intimidating, but Vanx saw fear in the king.
Just stay with me, Poops, and don’t start barking and growling at them, Vanx said with his mind.
Good advice, the master wizard added in their heads. I’ve seen your mind from the inside, Vanx of Malic, son of Captain Marin Saint Elm. I think you and Sir Poopsalot will be just fine.
The wizard gave them a look that showed none of the Zwarvy had a clue that they were communicating like they were.
It is what we must do after you are judged that has me concerned. There are things out there, between the tower and here, that are keen to get a taste of red meat.
Then get my sword, a bow, and as many arrows as we both can carry, Vanx suggested. He was going to add more, but uncertainty filled him.
The king said something sharply to his escort and the wizard suddenly stepped between them. Four spear tips touched the wizard’s skin, and a few bows were trained on them.
“Issurrak da illuminites?” the wizard asked with open palms.
“Nahn, imahn fareth mera brathend suppah!” The king raised his hands and the Zwarvy cheered. “Das fareth on emmen.”
Vanx didn’t need a translator. Vanx ate the king’s brother’s supper and now they were going to eat him. There would be no trial by illuminites, or whatever the wizard had schemed up.
The king’s guards moved their spears so that there were two spears each pointed at Vanx and Poops. The bows were left trained on the wizard.
Vanx started to tell the old coot to cast a spell, but the master wizard’s eyes were closed and he was grinning. A murmur swept across the frenzied Zwarvy, bringing the cheering down to a whisper, and the king met Vanx’s eyes.
A hundred or more zig-zagging sparkles came sweeping over the heads of the Zwarvy standing behind their king then, like a flock of tiny humming birds. The luminites, it turned out, were wisp wights, just like the ones that were born from the wisperion nut tree in the Zwarvy caverns under Dragon Isle. Vanx wasn’t sure this was a relief, but there was no longer a spear tip pressing against his side.
Already, one of them was buzzing around Vanx. Poops yipped at it, as if he remembered its particular scent. Vanx, too, felt the familiarity, and somehow knew it had traveled here through the earth itself, from under Dragon Isle.
When one of the Zwarvy tried to jab the dog, his face was filled with a handful of chirping wisp wights.
A moment later, everything changed. The king’s angry-looking head was swarmed with flashing, tiny, glittering lights. Then, after they broke away, he bowed to Vanx Malic, as did the rest of the populace of the cavern, save for the old, dirty wizard.
Vanx chuckled. “It seems the king and all of his subjects are at my service.”
The look on the wizard’s face was one of pure, curious awe. Vanx grinned at him. “This happens all the time,” Vanx joked. “Can you bathe before we leave for the tower?”
“Ughhh,” the wizard grumbled. “Like this, I can move about better. It is easy to detect the unnatural out here. As I am now, I am as natural as a man can be.”
“Whatever,” Vanx
snorted. “You are as smelly as a man can be, that is certain.”
“That is only because you smell with the nose of your dog,” the master wizard snapped, but he nodded that he would groom himself.
Then, as if Vanx had put him in charge, the wizard dismissed the king and began ordering the Zwarvy around them to gather equipment and supplies for a trek to the tower.
They did so, too, leaving Vanx and Poops unrestrained to stand there and be adored. Many of the Zwarvy hurried away, only to return with gifts of food and trinkets. The one that had mishandled Poops earlier hand-delivered a fat, meaty bone, and was seemingly forgiven by the dog. Vanx wouldn’t forgive him, though, and his look showed he wanted nothing at all from that particular Zwarvy.
It was the canteen of fiery drink one of the king’s own servants brought that did the most good. The sweet liquor came with a pair of what might have been Zwarven beauties, but to Vanx they were just ugly, squat, over-hairy, little mutated dwarves, so he politely sent them away, but kept the drink.
Vanx grew tired of waiting on the master wizard. He sat down by a platter and started picking food from it. Not so far away Poops was being brushed and doted over by a different pair of Zwarven women.
Chapter Eight
There is nothing you can say,
and nothing you can do,
to change what has already happened,
or make a lie the truth.
“We are ready, yes?” said the wizard. He had bathed and donned newer tattered robes. His head and face hadn’t been shaved, but the rest of him looked to have been. “We have six of the zwar to carry our things, and we have to travel fast.”
“Are we just going to run down the road, then?” Vanx asked, eyeing the six Zwarvy that were loaded with provisions and gear. One had nothing but bottles and bags of liquid strapped to him. Vanx eyed the master wizard then, and grinned. He hoped some of it was liquor.
“We are going to skirt the edge of the road, against the rising peaks,” the master wizard said. Now that he was shaved, save for his head, he looked younger than he had earlier. “If we move as a group, I can make us almost completely invisible to anything from above, but it is the things we can’t see that might cause us a problem.”
The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Page 3