Nicholas Raven and the Wizards' Web (The Complete Epic Fantasy)

by Thomas J. Prestopnik

  “Of course. Do you want somebody to escort you home?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. But if you would go out to the front hallway and grab my cloak without anyone in the dining room seeing you, that would be lovely,” Katherine added with an appreciative smile. “I’ll wait here and leave through the kitchen. I don’t want to make a fuss and spoil everyone’s evening.”

  Lana understood and retrieved Katherine’s cloak. Moments later she bid her goodnight as Katherine stepped into the shadowy backyard and closed the door behind her. A faint glow of moonlight filtered softly through the thin layer of clouds, bony tree branches and fragrant pine boughs.

  Katherine veered left and hurried across the brittle grass to the nearby street. When she briefly caught sight of the door to the ice cellar, she couldn’t help but recall when Nicholas had escaped from Constable Brindle amid the excitement and chaos of the Harvest Festival, wondering where his path had led him. Was he still in Arrondale, she wondered? Or even in Laparia? Wherever life had taken him, she hoped that Nicholas was safe and happy.

  As she neared the clump of maple and pine trees on the edge of the property, Katherine smiled in the darkness as a shadowy figure emerged from within them and walked over to her. She immediately recognized the lean silhouette vaguely illuminated in the moonlight and moved toward it.

  “Right on time,” she whispered, taking Lewis’ hand in hers. He had become an unexpected and pleasant breath of fresh air in her life, and someone dear to her heart. “Are you ready?”

  “I’ve been waiting six days for you to explain this mystery of yours,” he replied. “Where are we going?”

  “Not far. Just a few blocks away. But we’ll keep to the trees and the shadows,” she added with an air of intrigue. “I’ll explain everything along the way.”

  “Lead on,” Lewis replied, affectionately squeezing her hand.

  Katherine smiled at him as they crossed the road and hurried north up the nearest street, heading for Dooley Kramer’s house. She was glad to have company this night, excited by the pursuit yet fearful of what she might find. Her emotions settled down and she began to whisper to Lewis about all she had been doing over the last several nights. As he listened in stunned amazement, Katherine noted the look of disbelief in his eyes. The gravity of what she had been doing and what she was about to do suddenly hit her. She now realized just how fortunate she was to have Lewis at her side and in her life. Katherine held his hand tightly as they entered a thin stretch of woods, their steps in sync as they drew nearer to their destination.

  CHAPTER 80

  Beside Murky Waters

  Katherine and Lewis hid in the shadows alongside Dooley’s house. A single light burned inside. A line of dry, straggly hedges leaned toward them in the frosty night, the spindly branches catching traces of moonlight from the west. Their eyes were fixed upon the horse and cart near the front of the property facing the leaf strewn road. Shortly after they had stealthily made their way to Dooley’s home, they peeked into the cart, disappointed to discover that it hadn’t yet been loaded with supplies. A pile of old blankets and some firewood scraps were the only items within.

  “On previous nights when Dooley and Farnsworth made their journey, the cart was already filled with wood and sacks of food and other supplies,” Katherine whispered as she and Lewis kept watch. “Everything had been covered with blankets. I was daring enough to take a look one night while they were still inside.”

  Lewis was about to comment but held back when the light in Dooley’s house went out and the front door opened. He pointed as Dooley’s dark figure emerged and trudged toward the horse cart, a lit candle in his hand. Soon the two copper oil lamps affixed near the front of the cart were illuminated, casting an eerie glow. Dooley blew out the candle and tossed it in back with the wood and blankets.

  “Let’s get this over with, Barley,” he muttered, affectionately slapping the horse. His words sounded lazy and tired as if he had recently indulged in a few mugs of ale. “We’ll do the work as usual while he lives it up.” Dooley spat on the ground and climbed up on the seat with a bit of a struggle.

  Lewis glanced at Katherine and noted the growing panic in her eyes, realizing that she had expected Dooley to first load the cart before leaving. Now they had lost their chance to climb into the back, conceal themselves and follow Dooley to his destination. Before Katherine could speak, Lewis brushed his fingers along the ground for a small rock. When he found one about the size of a plum, he tossed it over the single story house in a high, graceful arc, sending it plummeting noisily through brittle tree branches on the other side and landing with a thud in a pile of dried leaves. Dooley craned his head to the left as he clutched the reins.

  “Who’s there?” he called out, his unsteady voice flushed with fear and suspicion. “Zachary, is that you?” Upon receiving no reply, he sighed and climbed down off the cart. He removed one of the oil lamps and wandered toward the opposite side of the house, wondering if he was hearing things. “What now?” he muttered, spitting again in the road. “I want to get this over with and…”

  As Dooley’s voice faded away, Lewis signaled for Katherine to follow him. They dashed along the hedges and hurried to the cart, careful to avoid stepping on any twigs or dried leaves. Though the darkness concealed them for the most part, both felt vulnerable as if they were out strolling beneath the morning sun. When they reached the cart, Lewis helped Katherine climb onto the back and then scrambled up himself, grabbing a blanket for each of them. They lay down upon the dirty floorboards littered with pieces of leftover firewood and covered themselves with the damp, dirty blankets just as Dooley reappeared around the corner of the house. He walked back to the cart, reattached the oil lamp and climbed upon his seat with a tired grunt.

  “Now we’ll go, Barley,” he muttered, grabbing the reins and giving them a gentle snap.

  Slowly the horse moved forward and Dooley guided it onto the road and to his right. The steady clip clopping of Barley’s hooves along with the grinding of the wagon wheels allowed Katherine and Lewis to shift their positions and get comfortable without being detected. A short time later, Dooley had driven a few blocks through the village and soon arrived on River Road. There he turned east and rolled out of Kanesbury, passing between Maynard Kurtz’s farm to his left and Adelaide Cooper’s small house on his right just moments before he crossed over the village borderline. It was a couple of miles to the Spirit Caves and to the wooden bridge just beyond. There Dooley would pick up the man Farnsworth had hired to eliminate their problems in the swamp. He shuddered, contemplating what was about to happen, taking little comfort that it would not be directly by his hand. He breathed the chilly air, his body feeling as cold inside as it was without. How he wished the night was already over, dreading the anxious hours ahead.

  Katherine and Lewis traveled along River Road for several minutes, hidden beneath their blankets, breathing slowly and steadily, not daring to move. The cold rising up from the floorboards, the constant jarring of the cart as it rattled over the bumpy dirt road, and the stale, hideous odor of the blankets made for a long, dreary and uncomfortable ride. Katherine, lying on her left side, wondered how Lewis was enduring the trip. He, though, was happy to be tagging along, imagining with dread what might have happened to Katherine had she undertaken this risky adventure on her own.

  When the cart hit a particularly deep rut about a quarter mile from the Spirit Caves, Katherine had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting furiously at the driver. Finally, when she could tolerate the stench of the blanket no longer, she risked taking a peek out from underneath to inhale the cool, sweet air and revive her spirits.

  She held her breath and slowly lifted the edge of the blanket near her head and peered through the opening. It was nearly pitch-black outside and she wondered if Dooley would even notice her if she removed the covering entirely. Feeling courageous, she raised the blanket a little higher and detected the faint glow of the two oil lamps through thin spaces between th
e front and side wooden planks of the cart. She looked up at the cloudy sky. The first quarter Bear Moon had dipped farther in the west and was completely obscured as the clouds had thickened in the last half hour. When she craned her neck farther, she noted the outline of the back of Dooley’s head and shoulders as he dutifully drove the cart, apparently oblivious to all around him except the road ahead. Katherine suddenly felt a warm breeze upon her face and looked straight ahead, noting Lewis’ smiling face looking back at her from beneath his raised blanket.

  “Are you all right?” he silently said, mouthing each word.

  Katherine nodded and smiled back. Lewis extended his left arm, entwining it lovingly around hers until their fingers interlocked. They smiled at one another again, for a few moments unaware of the rickety cart traversing the bumpy road as it passed by the Spirit Caves and continued to the wooden bridge farther up the road. The young couple, caught for a moment in the soft, timeless contentment of a waking dream, moved their lips closer to one another as a cool breeze shot across the top of the cart. Suddenly they were pulled back into the harsh present when the dull, steady rumbling of horse hoofs turned into a clattering echo upon the wooden planks of the bridge. Katherine realized they had approached the western edge of the swamp, wondering how much longer their journey would take. But when Dooley reined in his horse as they crossed the bridge, Katherine and Lewis both assumed they had reached their destination. They simultaneously flipped the blankets back over their heads to await what would happen next.

  Dooley, in the meantime, brought the cart to a halt after it passed over the bridge which spanned an eastern portion of the Pine River, its icy waters mirroring the deathly gloom of the sky. He guided Barley to the right side of the road near a handful of spindly trees growing along the western tip of the swamp. Here the swamp was narrow and more open to view, but as it stretched farther eastward, it gradually grew wider, bordered by the Pine River to its south and River Road to the north. The woods around the water’s edge grew thicker and wilder as one headed east, hiding the vast majority of the swamp from the view of passersby.

  Dooley looked about, the glow of the oil lamps shrouding the area with a pall of melancholy and hopelessness. He felt sick to his stomach, thinking too much about what he was preparing to do, about what Farnsworth had ordered him to do. His squeamishness turned into cold fright when he saw something shift in the shadows just ahead, swiftly moving toward the horse and cart. He sat up straight, now wishing he had brought along a knife with him for protection, chiding himself for being unprepared. But he had been so nervous and out of sorts these last few days, especially tonight, that he left home without thinking things through.

  “Dooley Kramer?” A man’s tired and scratchy voice called out from the shadows near a tiny point of glowing light.

  “Yes…” Dooley whispered before clearing his throat. “Yes,” he repeated, this time much louder.

  “Good,” the man said, stepping into the glow of the oil lamps and briefly studying his driver. “Take me where you need me to be. The sooner this is done, the better.”

  Dooley nodded, his heart racing and his hands sweating despite the cold air seeping through his thin gloves. “Climb on board, Mister…?”

  The tall man, just under forty years old and smoking a pipe, locked eyes with Dooley. His whiskered, wind-burned face beneath a tattered hat made him look older. When he climbed up onto the cart, Dooley winced and held his breath for a moment before he could adjust to the smell of smoke emanating from the stranger’s clothing. The man took another draw on his pipe as he leaned against the wooden backrest just as Dooley was about to snap the reins.

  “Not so fast,” the man said, exhaling a stream of smoke scented with cloves. “First I want to knew how long until we get to where we’re going. Then there’s a little matter of my fee that your employer promised.”

  Dooley squirmed in his seat, bristling at the comment that Zachary Farnsworth was his employer. “It’s not far. Less than a mile up the road. And as to your fee,” he added, trying to keep his voice steady as if he were in control of the situation, “I’ll pay you half now and half after you finish.” He reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a small leather pouch filled with coins and handed it to the man. “Is that acceptable?”

  The man untied the leather strings and poured some silver and copper half pieces into his hand and quickly counted them. “Fine,” he sharply muttered, carefully placing the coins back into the pouch and shoving it in his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  “At once,” Dooley said, his shoulders slumped as he looked askance at the man. “Do you have a name?”

  Dell Hawks offered a thin smile. “Yes, but you don’t need to know it. I prefer to keep anonymous when I can in my line of work.”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “Can we get moving?” Dell said in an almost friendly tone. “I want to get this over with and get paid so I can move on to other jobs. And you, I’m sure, want to return home to a good night’s sleep. So the sooner we leave…”

  “Say no more,” Dooley said, snapping the reins and guiding the horse back onto the road, all the while wondering how he had ended up in such a bleak situation as his surroundings passed by like ghostly visions.

  The next several minutes dragged by like a tiresome dream. Dooley felt as if he were moving but making no progress, condemned to an eternal journey as payment for the horrible things he had done and for the evil that he was about to unleash. He spotted the turnoff just ahead on the right near a large rock half buried in dirt. He slowed the horse to a trot and pulled off onto a thin strip of brittle grass and weeds bordering the tree line, continuing until they found a narrow path disappearing into the thickening trees. Dooley followed it for a short distance before it veered right deeper into the woods and closer to the swamp. There were no soothing calls of frogs or crickets tonight as the cold air and deathly darkness encroached upon them.

  Dooley nervously tugged at his collar, feeling as if he were suffocating. He glanced at his mysterious passenger, barely discerning the man’s outline in the sickly light. As his hands quivered and his body grew colder, he wondered how the stranger would complete his task, yet didn’t truly want to know the ghastly details. He resigned himself to years of sleepless nights, questioning if he should ever have thrown in his lot with Zachary Farnsworth. He wished he had never stolen the key to the Spirit Box from the talons of the wizard’s eagle twenty years ago.

  At last they reached the end of the path near the water’s edge. The pungent swamp smells Dooley recalled from previous excursions had lessened with the onset of colder nights. But the place still gave him the chills with its misshapen trees and snakelike vines standing guard while a murderer for hire sat next to him. He shuddered, wondering if he could go through with this as he brought the cart to a standstill.

  “Here we are,” Dooley said, swallowing hard. “Now what?”

  “Now you tell me where they are,” Dell Hawks replied. “Then I’ll do the job I was hired for.”

  “Okay then.” Dooley’s heart pounded as he deeply inhaled the crisp night air to calm his frayed nerves, but his chest ached and his throat felt constricted. Dell Hawks noticed his unease and chuckled.

  “Relax. I’m doing this, Dooley, not you. Calm down and tell me where the two individuals are. In the meantime, you can wait here while I take care of business. Afterward, you can drive me back to the main road.”

  Dooley nodded, staring uncomfortably at his feet. “All right. They’re… They’re over…” He pointed through the gloom to the island across the water where a faint yellow light burned behind the nailed shutters in the tiny house on stilts. “One of them, the older woman, is locked up in that house. I’ll give you the key to open the padlock on her door. The other one is in a small shack to the right. He’s asleep, so you won’t have any trouble with him.”

  “Asleep?” Dell asked skeptically. “How do you know that?”

  Dooley’s faint laughter f
luttered nervously in the darkness. He removed his hat and anxiously combed a hand through his tangled blond locks. “Trust me. He’s fast asleep and isn’t going to wake up any time soon.”

  “Odd,” he replied. “But if you say so. Now tell me how to get over there.”

  “There are two boats hidden nearby. Follow me.” Dooley climbed down off the cart as if in a trance. His legs felt like they might buckle and his footsteps were those of a drunken man, though the ale he had consumed a while ago had since worn off.

  Dell Hawks joined him on the ground, standing beside Dooley as he removed one of the oil lamps from the cart. Dooley’s shaky hands caused the pale circle of light to waver back and forth among the legion of tree trunks and decaying undergrowth.

  “Want me to hold the lamp?” Dell offered good-naturedly.

  “I’ll do it. You can take it with you when you cross the swamp. I’ll still have the other one.”

  “All right,” Dell replied as Dooley held the lamp at arm’s length in front of him. “So, where are the boats?” he added with a hint of growing impatience.

  “This way,” Dooley said with an air of finality, signaling for him to follow. “We hid them deep in the woods, though I don’t know why since nobody else knows about this place that I’m aware of.”

  “That’s good,” Dell casually replied as he trailed close behind. He slowly removed a freshly sharpened dagger from a leather sheath attached to his side. “That makes this a perfect spot for committing unsavory deeds.” He gripped the dagger tightly in his right hand, inching closer to Dooley as he prepared to pounce swiftly and silently upon him, ending his life with a swift stroke from behind. Now that Dell knew all the necessary particulars about his assignment, Dooley Kramer was of no use to him and would be the first to go. “Your employer wisely chose this location.”