A Meddle of Wizards

by Alexandra Rushe

  “There.” Tiny raised his arm and pointed. “My hidey hole be thataway.”

  He plodded down the beach with Mauric in his arms, leaving giant-sized toe prints in the damp sand.

  “Okay, children, this is the end of the line,” Raine said. “Climb out.”

  The children whooped and spilled out of the cart, running after the giant. Tiny paused long enough to scoop up his pursuers and toss them on his shoulders, then set off again.

  Raine got out of the cart. The wind off the water was bitter, and she shivered as a gust of frigid air sent the folds of her poncho flapping around her legs. She and Gertie trailed after the giant, pausing when the footprints abruptly ended.

  Gertie looked around. “I don’t see hide nor hair of ’em. Drat that giant. Where did he go?”

  Tiny stuck his head out of a clump of bushes growing along the cliff. “Here I be, Gertie.” He grinned. “Well? Be you hungry, or not?”

  His head vanished and the undergrowth rustled back into place, concealing the entrance. Gertie parted the prickly branches, revealing a narrow, winding ravine that disappeared into the bluff. “Clever giant. You’d never find it if you didn’t already know it was there.” She laid a paw on Raine’s shoulder. “After you, pet.”

  Raine eased her way cautiously into the wash. The walls were wet and patchy with moss, and the path was a minefield of broken stones that bruised the bottoms of her feet. The light was dim and the gorge smelled strongly of damp and wet dirt. The fissure continued a short distance, then emptied into a rocky bowl with a sandy floor. Raine stepped out of the passageway with Gertie at her heels. The space was not wide, no more than a hundred and fifty feet across. A dark line marred the lower portion of the depression, indicating a recent flood. At the center of the basin, a circle of flat rocks contained the ashes of an old camp fire. A large number of empty casks and wooden crates were stacked in a heap against one wall. Judging from the detritus, others had been here before them.

  Raine looked up the rocky shaft at the circle of light above. They were standing at the bottom of a well. If the river flooded, water would pour into the gorge. They’d be drowned like rats.

  A child squealed, drawing Raine from her swirling thoughts. “Ew, look at ‘im. ’E’s ugly.”

  Mauric had cast off his cloak, and was sitting up. He made a frightening sight, with his swollen, battered face. Crusty patches of skin hung in strips from the vicious bite marks on his forehead and cheeks, and his puffy lips were covered in scabs.

  “Scoot,” Gertie said, shooing the ogling children away. Kneeling beside Mauric, she grabbed his hands. “Don’t scratch, boy. You’ll get an infection.”

  Mauric stared at the troll in groggy incomprehension. “Itches,” he said, and flopped back into the sand and closed his eyes.

  “Would you look at that. He’s asleep. Again.” Shaking her head, Gertie covered him with the cloak. “It worries me, and no lie.” She looked around. “Might as well eat, I suppose, if there’s anything left. If those empty crates are any indication, we’re not the first to camp here.”

  “I told you there be vittles and Tiny don’t lie, ’specially about food,” Tiny said with a huff of indignation. Striding to a large boulder, he shoved the rock aside, revealing a hollow filled with stores. “See?” He waved a meaty hand. “Plenty o’ food, jes like Tiny said.”

  “You’ve been a big help, Tiny,” Raine said. “We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  Tiny blushed. “Thankee, Rainey.”

  “For Kron’s sake, stop simpering,” Gertie said. “You two make me want to gack.”

  She stomped over to inspect the contents of Tiny’s hidey hole. Inside the depression were a dozen or so good-sized hams, several sacks of apples, a crate of paper-wrapped cheeses, three or four casks of ale, and a tin of dates and nuts.

  The children swarmed around the troll, begging for food.

  “Get back, you pesky cubs.” Gertie swatted them away and tossed Raine a wax-covered wheel. “Give the rats a bite of cheese to gnaw on.”

  Taking a knife from Gertie’s medicine bag, Raine divided the pale yellow cheese among the children. Humming to himself, Tiny stomped the empty containers to bits and stacked them on the ash pit. Soon, with a little magic from Gertie, a fire crackled on the sandy floor of the well. There were no cooking pots in Gertie’s remaining pack or among the giant’s stores, so they toasted apples, cheese, and bits of ham on sticks over the fire. Gertie unearthed two cups. Gertie and Raine shared one and the children shared the other.

  “I hope they don’t catch a cold, drinking after one another,” Raine said, with a worried frown. “And I’m pretty sure children shouldn’t drink ale.”

  “Nonsense.” Gertie wiped her lips with the back of her paw. “Ale won’t hurt them. I drink it, don’t I?”

  “Yes, but you’re a troll.”

  “Bright as the evening star, aren’t you?”

  Tiny sat with his back to the opening of the ravine, blocking the wind off the river.

  Gertie gave Tiny a baleful look. “What about you? Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “I ate yesterday.”

  Gertie made a noise. “Humph. I take it we’re burning your leavings?”

  Tiny nodded without a trace of embarrassment. “Told you. I be peckish.”

  “Peckish?” Raine said, recalling the pile of empty crates. “You ate all of that by yourself?”

  Tiny shrugged. “Weren’t much. Thirty or so hams, a couple of them bags o’ apples, and a bunch o’ them little cheeses.”

  “Plus three casks of ale to wash it down,” Gertie added.

  “Four,” Tiny said. “They be naught but half tuns. Hardly a good swallow.”

  Raine stared at the giant in astonishment. “Do you eat like that all the time?”

  “Nah, I won’t eat again fer a month. O’ course, I don’t be one to turn down a wee nibble betwixt meals.” Tiny chuckled. “Mam says I has a hollow leg.”

  Once their stomachs were full, the children began to nod by the fire. Presently, Rosy, Polla, and the red-headed boy wandered over to the giant. Crawling in Tiny’s lap, they went to sleep.

  Tiny cleared his throat. “While I be pinching—er—gathering the food, I grabbed a few blankets. Fer hankies, don’t you know. Cursed with a runny nose, I be. They be in with the rest of the stuff.”

  Darkness had fallen and the flames from the camp fire sent strange shapes capering on the rocky walls of their shelter. Raine fetched the blankets from the storage space in the cliff. There were three of them, made of wool, and they smelled of apples.

  She gave one of the blankets to Tiny to cover the sleeping children in his lap. Hazla and Fenola curled up next to the fire, and Raine covered them with another of the blankets. Chaz was sitting in Gertie’s lap, watching sparks rise from the campfire and shoot toward the stars at the top of the well.

  “Go to bed.” Gertie handed the boy to Raine. “I’ll keep an eye on Mauric.”

  Raine bedded down by the fire with Chaz and tucked the blanket around them. She snuggled against the child and stared into the dying flames. She was exhausted, but she found it hard to go to sleep. The front of her body faced the fire and was warm, while her backside was decidedly cold. She squirmed and tried to get comfortable. Her body ached in a dozen different places, a good sort of ache that came from exertion, not illness.

  Her mind drifted to Hara. She had a sister. Someone who shared the same blood, the same parents. Parents—now there was a kicker. Raine had always wondered about her biological parents—who they were and where they lived—what sort of people they were and why they’d given her up. It was her last thought as she drifted into dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 18

  Finn’s Gift

  Mauric came to, disoriented and ravenous, with rain trickling down his neck. Opening his eyes, he beheld a patch o
f soggy sky high above him, a circle of gray framed by rock. He’d fallen down a well, though he knew not how. He stretched. Tro, he felt like he’d been chewed up and spit out, but nothing seemed broken.

  Wisps of memory returned, and he remembered being on a horse. Not Goblin, someone else’s mount—a Shad’s. Images of the skirmish with Glonoff’s men flitted through his head. He’d been having a fine time, until the giant had appeared with a warning about eaters.

  Vile little buggers, eaters. He’d fled on the borrowed horse, but not fast enough. A black cloud had enveloped him before he could escape, a suffocating cloud with teeth. The pain had been bad, but the paralyzing creep of the toxin through his veins that followed had been far worse. He’d been helpless as a newborn babe, of no use to himself or—

  Gertie. Where was she?

  Mauric bolted upright, his heart thumping against his ribs. His frantic gaze searched and found the troll, and the cold knot of terror in his belly eased. Gertie lay on the ground, one paw tucked beneath her gnarly head. Raindrops beaded her reddish fur and glistened on her tusks.

  “Tro,” Mauric muttered, weak with relief.

  His leather vest was ripped and torn, but the sturdy garment had protected his back and shoulders, somewhat. Otherwise, his body showed no signs of the eater attack, save for a few faint spots that were swiftly fading.

  His heartbeat slowed and he looked around. They’d made camp in a rocky shaft. The remains of a campfire spit and sputtered in the wet. He spied a thatch of dark hair sticking out from a blanket, and a second worry dissolved.

  Raine was unharmed, and so were Tiny and the children.

  Children? What children? The gurgle of laughter drew his attention to the far side of the pit. Two little girls and a redheaded boy were having a fine time splashing in a puddle of rain, and two older girls were asleep by the fire.

  “Hello.”

  Mauric turned his head. A small boy with dark, curly hair regarded him. “Hello yourself.”

  “I’m Chaz.” The boy’s dark eyes were grave. “You were hurt, but now you’re all better.”

  “Aye, but I’m hungry. Is little boy tasty, I wonder?”

  Seizing one of the tyke’s chubby arms, Mauric pretended to chew on it. Chaz squirmed and shrieked with delight. The happy sound sent a pang of homesickness through Mauric. He’d often romped with his younger sisters in just such a fashion when they’d been mitings, but those days were long gone. At sixteen and seventeen, Tyra and Luanna were far too dignified to rough house with their big brother. During his last visit to Sea Watch, Luanna had been consumed with the details of her upcoming presentation at court.

  Deprived of her sister and dearest companion, Tyra became surly and had taken to the hills, where she spent long days roaming with her dog. After a week of listening to his mother and sister prate of nothing but dress patterns and slippers, Mauric had joined her. He’d found Tyra sitting alone on a cliff.

  “Mother and Luanna are with the dance master,” he said, seating himself on the ground beside her. “Luanna assures me the entirety of her future depends upon her learning the latest steps. Don’t you wish to learn them, too?”

  “I hate dancing, and I hate Master Arpell. He drools over Mother like she’s a sweetmeat. Luanna, too.”

  “Does he drool over you?”

  “He tried, but I told him I’d set Steinn on him if he did it again.” Tyra roughed her dog’s wiry hair. “I don’t like that man. He has skinny eyes.”

  “I’m beginning to dislike him, too.”

  Mauric’s mother, Asta Lindar, was a beautiful woman in her prime. Finlars were long lived—Mauric’s maternal grandmother, Salla, had lived to be three-hundred and forty-six without sprouting a single gray hair on her head. She would have lived much longer, if she hadn’t died in a skirmish with the Torgs, curse the godless mongrels.

  Mauric knew his mother’s life hadn’t been easy. Widowed and left to manage her son’s property until he came of age, as well as having the care of two young daughters, Asta had surely been lonely at times. Sea Watch, Mauric’s holding, was beautiful but remote, an isolated outpost on a finger of land overlooking the Strait of Gorza, and the first defense against the Torgs. The Eagle, some of the local folk called it, because of its view of the Torgal coast.

  “I’ll speak to Master Arpell,” Mauric said, taking a seat on a rock beside his sister. “Come back to the castle. It’s not wise for a young lass to be alone on The Crags. What if the Torgs attacked?”

  “I’d ring the bell and run.” Tyra’s blue eyes were stormy. “And then I’d get my hunting bow and shoot them.” She tucked her legs against her chest and propped her chin on her knees. “I’d like to shoot Luanna, too. All she thinks of is clothes and boys. Then I’d stick an arrow in Master Arpell’s bum, for good measure. That should make him dance.” Mauric had managed to dissuade his sister from her bloodthirsty plans, and then he’d dismissed the dancing master from his post. Luanna had been livid.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” she’d stormed at Mauric, her eyes swimming with angry tears. “I’m going to look like a . . . a bumpkin at court, and it’s your fault.”

  “You’re a lovely girl, Lulu. That’s what the young men will notice, not your dancing.”

  “The other girls will be watching me. They’ll make horrid fun of me.”

  “Who cares what they think?”

  “I do. You don’t know anything. Oh, I wish you’d go away and not come back.”

  “Luanna, that is unkind.” Mauric’s mother turned to him with an expression of reproof. “Still, I must admit I’m annoyed with you, Ric. You’ve no notion how hard it is to get a dancing master to accept a post so far from court. I only hope you haven’t ruined Luanna’s chances for a good match.”

  “Mother,” Luanna had wailed.

  Bursting into tears, she’d barricaded herself in her room.

  Two days later, a fox had turned up in the castle yard with a message. Glogathgorag was headed into Shad Amar on a secret mission. Should she not return, the missive said, he was to notify his uncle, the Rowan, of her probable demise. Weighing his choices, Mauric decided he’d rather face the mad god and the Dark Wizard than his mother’s and sister’s continued displeasure. Saddling his horse, he’d bade them farewell, and gone in pursuit of Gertie.

  Tro, but they’d had an adventure. Remembering Hara’s lush curves, Mauric grinned. Hara . . . sweet, merciful gods, what a beauty.

  And a vicious shrew. Hara and Raine were nothing alike. As if sensing his thoughts, Raine threw her blanket aside and sat up. The change in the lass was nothing short of remarkable. Certainly, she was still too thin, but roses bloomed in cheeks that once were pale, and her lifeless locks were now a riot of shining curls.

  “You’re awake.” Raine wiped the rain from her eyes and stared at Mauric. “Wow. Wow. Look at you.” Picking up a small rock, she threw it at the troll. “Gertie, wake up. You gotta see this.”

  Gertie snorted and rolled to all fours. “Whazza matter?” She spied Mauric and sat back with a grunt. “You awake, boy? About damn time you were feeling better.”

  “Better?” Raine echoed. “He’s not better, he’s perfect.”

  Mauric gave her a broad grin. “Told you I’m irresistible. I knew you’d fall in love with me, sooner or later.”

  A young girl sleeping by the fire stirred and sat up. Rubbing her eyes, she poked the girl beside her. “Hey, Fee. The ugly man’s awake.”

  “So?”

  The first girl thumped her friend. “So, he ain’t ugly no more.”

  “Aye, you looks dandy, warrior, and thas’ a fact.” The giant sat with his back against the rock wall, his huge legs splayed in front of him. “I be right tickled them eaters didn’t spoil your purty looks permanent-like.”

  “Handsome,” Mauric said with a scowl. “A warrior is handsome, not pretty.”
r />   “Let me take a look. That was a lot of bites, even for a Lindar.” Gertie stomped over to examine him. Cupping Mauric’s chin in her huge paw, she scrutinized him closely. “Humph. Other than a few spots, you seem to have made a full recovery. You’ve the gift, boy, and no doubt.”

  “What gift?” Raine demanded.

  “The gift of healing,” Gertie said. “Finlars possess remarkable recuperative powers, and Mauric’s line is directly descended from Finn, the first Rowan.”

  “Which makes me exceptionally hard to kill.” Mauric tossed the heavy cloak to Raine. “Here, you look cold and I no longer need it.” He looked down at his shredded vest with a rueful sigh. “Though ’twould seem I need a new vest.”

  “You can get one in Gambollia,” Gertie said. “If you can’t find it in the Great Market, you don’t need it.”

  An earsplitting noise made them jump. The children, the little darlings—all six of them—he must remember to ask where they got them—had grown bored with playing in the puddles and had begun to chase one another around with sticks.

  Gertie shook the rain from her fur, scattering droplets. “We need shelter. Much more of this, and we’ll mildew. Mauric, fetch some bamboo.”

  “Sure thing, Gert.”

  “I’ll come with, if that be a’right.” The giant lumbered to his feet, exposing the gorge behind him. “I needs to stretch my legs a bit.”

  “I’ll be glad of your company,” Mauric said. “You saved me from those eaters.”

  “It weren’t nothing.”

  “To the contrary, I owe you my life.” Mauric held out his hand. “Friends?”

  The giant blinked and extended his forefinger, and Mauric shook it.

  “Friends.” Pulling a limp handkerchief from his pocket, Tiny honked into it. “But I don’t be crying. No such thing. The rain makes m’ nose run. That be all.”

  Leaving the children with Gertie and Raine, Mauric and Tiny wandered along the riverbank, gathering bamboo. The giant made quick work of the task, pulling the tough stalks up by the roots for Mauric to trim.