by Nikolas Rex
He scooped the cup back into the snow, and pulled some out. He then tilted it back and ate a cold mouthful.
“A nice refreshing treat on this hot Refoveo day! Now, for a hundred quins each I will let you have your own cupful, but eat it quickly for the magic wears away quickly and the snow will melt back to water if you are not fast enough,” The man pointed at the already melting snow the observer had dropped onto the town square clay tile.
It was quickly turning into a small puddle.
A number of the richer folk began pulling at their coin purses, eager to be one of the few to taste the cold of snow in such heat.
Ranasa turned to his friend, “A hundred quins! Where in Lyrridia could we even hope to get such wealth?”
Puck shrugged in equal dismay, “At least he demanded no coin for the demonstration.”
“I mean I understand these artifact seekers must live off of something but…”
Puck was only half hearing what Ranasa was saying because someone at the edge of the crowd was drawing his attention.
It was a man Puck had seen a few times before within the last fortnight. Why was he always around? Something about the figure seemed odd. His attire was that of a traveler, which was not too out of place with so many outsiders traveling through, but it was as if the man was just trying too hard to seem like an outsider, as if he was desperate to blend in by sticking out. The man kept looking over at Ranasa and him, and then glancing away, pretending to be interested a cart of silks on display. Puck was not convinced.
He tried to dismiss the feeling, he was just tired from last night, proud, but tired. He had finished another piece to a suit of armor he was working on in the forge, using his Knowing, or The Sense, as his father called it. A rare gift, passed down from his father, who received it from his father and so forth down from many generations passed. Puck’s dad said it was a part of their legacy before the War of Power, maybe even from the Beginning. But those were legends, and Puck didn’t think too much about it. He only knew that he had the Knowing now, and he liked using it very much. He wish he could use it openly, he thought that it was such a thing that everyone should see and admire, like the Relic Hunters and their magical trinkets, heralding for all to see.
But he listened to his father well when he told him to keep their power a secret.
“Puck?” Ranasa said again, nudging his friend.
“Beg your pardon,” he replied, pulling his attention away from the stranger and back to Ranasa.
“I asked if you were hungry,”
“Yes,” Puck said
“Well, my mother is sure to have middag on the table by now, see the sun,”
The sun was indeed about halfway across the clear blue sky.
“Of course,” Puck nodded, “But I promised my father I would sup with him today.”
“It is no bother of mine,” Ranasa replied, “Meet back here afterwards though? Mayhap another Relic Hunter will pass through come eve,”
“Mayhap,” Puck replied, “It is well,” he agreed, “Meet back here in towns square after we have finished eating,”
He paused, glancing over at the man by the cart.
He was gone.
Puck felt a bit troubled.
“Ranasa—?” Puck said as his friend turned to go.
“What is it?”
“Did you—” Puck began, but shook his head, he was getting himself worked up for nothing.
“Go and eat, you are hungry,” Ranasa said.
“Yes,” Puck nodded, his stomach grumbled in agreement.
They clasped forearms briefly and grinned.
“See you later,”
Puck nodded.
Ranasa turned and raced quickly through the towns square back home, he was hungry also.
But Puck thought he would not yet return home. He would find and trail the stranger, just to see what would come of it.
Probably nothing.
But his gut told him otherwise.
***
It did not take him long to find the man again. He was at the other side of the market, not really looking over more wares on display.
Puck began to shadow him, first from a distance, then slowly, ever so slowly, easing his way closer and closer.
Puck wanted a good look at him, a real good look, to memorize his countenance. His father taught him, you can understand much of a person just by looking at their face, especially by what you see in their eyes. He watched as the stranger purchased a leg of meat and cheese from Sranka’s food stand. He watched the man eat slowly, then toss his leftovers to a nearby balkar pen. He watched as the man wandered through the market, further and further to the edges of town.
Puck didn’t know what he was hoping to see, some sort of obvious sign that the man was, was what, a spy, a thief, an evil man of some sort? Something. Puck trailed him and hoped for something. But the man seemed mostly normal, aside from the occasional glances, but pretty ordinary.
Puck thought the man saw him a few times, but the boy was quick enough to duck behind a stack of barrels, or blend in with a crowd of buyers and sellers nearby just at the last moment. He decided perhaps he was getting too close for comfort and fell back a ways.
Finally Puck saw the man pause at an alleyway, looking furtively left and right to make sure no one was following him, though I am indeed following you, Puck thought with a grin.
And then the man turned swiftly and disappeared into the passage between the two buildings.
Puck rushed forward towards the alley, he did not want to give up the chase just yet, he was sort of enjoying himself. He was getting a rush from the thrill of evading being caught.
He sprinted quickly down the road, dodging between crates and barrels. He didn’t even realize how few people were nearby, in fact, there was no one nearby.
As he neared the entrance to the alley he slowed down a bit to quiet his footsteps, but not enough.
He rounded the corner quickly and stumbled right into the man he had been following. He fell backwards, hard on his behind.
The man was on him in a moment, pinning him to the ground.
Puck struggled against the man’s weight and at the same time took a long look at his face. The stranger smelled of many hot sweaty days on the road. Sour ale hung heavily on his breath. The stranger appeared to be in his thirty-fifth to fortieth cycle of life, shaved head with a scar jutting from his forehead leading up far into his hairline. His eyebrows were black, thin and curved, a small knotted goatee of the same color grew from the tip of his chin. Small silver hoops pierced his ears in numerous places. His skin was dark in appearance, or so it seemed at first, but then Puck realized the man was painted all over, like a lady of the evening would paint herself to disguise her imperfections. He was large and muscular. His eyes were light brown, fierce and deadly. What did he need to hide?
The man pressed his knees against Puck’s arms, holding him down, and with his free hand (the other still holding the knife to Puck’s throat) he forced one of Puck’s eye’s open wide. Puck fought away from the man but the man seemed to nod, satisfied he had glimpsed enough and pulled away from the boy slightly.
There were three more men, like the one pinning Puck down, standing nearby. They were dressed in the same brown and faded white skins and traveling gear of journeymen.
One of them was holding Ranasa.
What is going on, who are these people? Puck thought as he tried squirming out of the man’s grip.
“Do not fight, hold knife!” The man spoke the common tongue with difficulty. Puck could feel the blade against the flesh of his neck and he stopped struggling.
One of the men, the taller off the four, stepped forward to get a closer look at Puck.
He grunted a few quick words to the man holding Puck.
The man holding Puck nodded and hoisted Puck to his feet, turning as he did so.
“Watch friend now, he die.”
A look of pure terror overcame Ranasa as he overheard the man.
<
br /> “No, no, no, no, no!” Puck said quickly, struggling.
“Puck, do not let them kill me, please, Puck, PUCK!”
The man holding Ranasa drew a knife. Ranasa screamed and began to thrash wildly. The man next to them clamped a hand over Ranasa, muffling his screams.
Puck could not believe what was happening. He beat his head fiercely against his captor, but he might as well have been hitting his head against a stone wall for all the good that came of it. The knife rose. Puck’s eyes widened in apprehension, Ranasa’s seemed as large as middag plates, tears streamed down his face. The men were grinning, giddy at the spectacle, eager to see the young man’s blood flow.
Where is the town guard? Puck thoughts fired quickly across the surface of his mind, has not a single person heard us here? The commotion? Our muffled cries? PLEASE! He cried to the Great Ones, not Ranasa, not my friend, someone help us, SOMEONE! PLEASE!
The blade fell.
There was a swift rushing sound and suddenly the head of the man wielding the knife was thrust backward violently, a small hand axe protruded from his face. There was a flash and splatter of red as the man fell, Ranasa tumbled backward as well, though unharmed.
The men cried in anger and turned. Puck felt his captor’s grip loosen.
“Father!” Puck cried with joy.
Puck’s father, Marad, stood at the entrance to the alleyway, almost completely blocking the passage with his broad shoulders and muscular biceps. A small breeze ruffled his mid-length hair and full beard and moustache. He was dressed in his smithing apron and thick breeches. The braided leather belt his wife hand wove for him was around his middle, a number of axes like the one already thrown hung from it. He held his largest sledge hammer in his right arm, ready to swing at any moment. A necklace of small shiny chain links hung around his neck.
“How dare you! Unhand my son and his friend this instant and I will spare the rest of you. Otherwise I will send you to the abyss with your fallen comrade here.”
There was a moment of brief silence.
“GRAAAAH!”
Puck’s captor grabbed Puck by the hair and wrenched his head backward, exposing his throat.
A life for a life, Puck had to die to make up for the loss of their friend, the man thought, he must do it quickly and then continue on to the boy’s father.
Any other boy would have been killed.
But Puck was a Shifter, specifically of the metallurgic school, and he let the power come forth, enveloping his all.
With the releasing of his magic Puck instantly sensed all the metal around him in the near vicinity. He still had much to learn about his power, and he knew that his father’s ability was on a level much greater than his, but he had it, and that is what mattered. He could feel metal, not as his hands felt, but inside it, past the surface. He could sense its structure, come to know it, and then he could change it according to his will. He recognized several things in his mind’s eye: belt buckles and a bag of coins at someone’s waste, and his father’s hammer and axes, and more, but at the moment he concentrated only on one thing, the knife which was beginning to move against his throat. He wished he could take the blade with his hand because that was how far he had come in his training with his father. He had only learned how to mold metal with the Sense by channeling the magic into the metal with his hands. He had not yet learned the lessons of shaping metal with other parts of the body, or, much more difficult, without touching the metal at all. But if he did not try at the moment, he would die.
He.
Had.
To.
Act.
NOW!
He felt the blade with his throat instead, sensed its structure, and commanded it to superheat in an instant and melt. Within that same second he pushed away the liquefied metal so as not to burn himself. His grey eyes shone and there was a flash of light as the magic worked its wonderful way at the knife.
Puck’s captor grunted in stupefied surprise.
“To the ground son!”
He did so, practically kissing the earth at his fall.
The stranger lifted the now worthless hilt of his knife up in defense. It did nothing to stop the powerful might of Marad’s great hammer, the tool-now-weapon drove deep into his skull, the dead man’s body flew crazily, like a limp wooden doll, crumpling to a heap off to the side.
Ranasa was scooting backwards away from the figure with an axe through his face. One of the dark painted men dove for Ranasa thinking that perhaps if he could recapture the boy he would have a bargaining chip for a way out.
Marad swung his hammer again, driving it deep into the man’s unprotected back. There was a sickening crunch of bones. The man’s arms and legs shot upward crookedly, (the signals running through his body could not quite correlate the correct movement of his joints in their proper form), in a single last reaction of life, and then fell back to the ground to forever be still.
The last man clutched something in his right hand underneath his brown cloak, he withdrew it slowly, defensively. A strange two bladed gauntlet-punching weapon was clasped tightly and firmly to his arm.
“You grey eyed whelpling,” his use of the common tongue was better, “you will pay for these deaths.”
He dove for the blacksmith.
Marad raised his hand at the gauntlet and flicked his arm in a horizontal motion. The gauntlet-weapon flashed orange, then white, and transformed, twisting and molding impossibly. The wielder of the weapon flew with the motion, changing direction in mid-air, to go flying hard into the stone wall of the building making up the alley.
The man groaned on the impact, slumping to the ground for a moment before struggling to stand.
Marad turned to the now fallen man. The blacksmith’s eyes flared and glowed a bright silvery light. All the metal on the dead bodies on the ground, belt buckles, coins, daggers and swords, all flared orange, and then white with heat. In an instant the metal liquefied and was under Marad’s control. He raised his hands and the now liquid metal rose, like small water fountains, into the air, hovering impossibly there. He then redirected the metal at the last enemy. The enchanted blacksmith encased the man’s arms and feet in metal, snapping them together, before letting the metal immediately harden.
The man fell to the ground, bound in the magically formed shackles.
Marad jumped onto the man, putting his right knee on his sternum and holding him down by the neck with his forearm.
Puck sat on the ground, dumbfounded. He never knew his father capable of such quick, impressive, violence. He also had never seen his father wield the Sense in any place other than the forge. He knew his father did not need to touch metal with his hands to understand it and change it, but he did not know his father could do what he had just seen him do. Ranasa sat nearby, just as mesmerized, and also somewhat terrified, the tear trails stained his otherwise dirty face.
The man struggled against his manacles and Marad. He was surprised at the magic, but still defiant.
“Who sent you!?” The blacksmith said through gritted teeth. He was intentionally choking the man, but also letting up enough if it looked like the man was going to speak.
The man spit in defiance and grinned.
“Even after the impudence of you and your friends, I will yet spare your life if you will but answer me this, WHO—SENT—YOU!?”
Marad’s eyes began to shine with a silver light again and the metal touching the man’s skin began to glow hot. The man let out a cry of pain.
“Who—SENT—YOU!?” Marad said again.
The man switched between moaning in pain and grinning.
Marad wiped a portion of dark paint from the man’s face with his hand, revealing white skin beneath.
“You are far from your homeland, pale-one!” Marad said.
Puck wondered what an Alborcan was doing so far South, in Independent Dominion.
“There are more to come,” His voice was scratchy and hoarse, “And if they fail,” he coughed, “Well, that one ha
s told us—”
He indicated Ranasa. Marad continued to choke him.
“—where your wife and daughter are,” he gasped, coughed, and laughed all at once.
Marad pushed down harder. The man struggled to breathe.
“Spirits of your ancestors be damned!” The blacksmith cried.
“I think,” the man’s voice was just a hoarse whisper, “They will make good prisoners,” he croaked, “surely they will warm the beds of many of my kin at night, and they will grow to enjoy it.”
“And may your spirit be damned with them!” Marad said, his voice filled with a righteous vehemence.
The blacksmith grabbed the man with both hands, throttling him. The man struggled under the weight of the large blacksmith, but could not wriggle free.
Finally the man’s eyes closed and he fell limp.
Marad let go and stood up.
“Is he—?” Puck began.
“No,” his father replied, “He still draws breath. I will ask him more questions later, but not here, not now.”
A silence fell over the alley.
No one moved.
Then, Ranasa began to cry uncontrollably.
Marad then stood, and walked over to help his son up.
“Are you hurt?”
Puck shook his head and took his father’s arm to stand up.
He then walked over to Ranasa, who was still crying.
The boy put his arms up defensively as the large blacksmith knelt down and put an arm on each of his shoulders.
“Your assailants are dead. You are safe. There is no cause for your weeping!” The blacksmith commanded gently but sternly, shaking the boy slightly.
“I am sorry, I am so sorry,” He muttered in-between sobs, “Spare my life, I beg forgiveness, please do not hurt me!”
“Quiet boy, be calm, I have no thoughts to hurt you,” Marad replied in his same tone.
Ranasa quieted to a whimper.
“Now, speak truth Ranasa, and be well, what did you tell these people, and what did you learn from them in your telling?”
“I—” Ranasa was hesitant to speak.
He wiped the tears from his face.
“They surprised me on the path through the grove from my house to the town. They told me they would kill my mother unless I told them where to find the silver eyes.