Accidental Archaeologist

by Kathryn Wells

  'But it's not open anymore,' Thordric pointed out.

  'Yes, but it was when she was here. Actually, it closed down quite recently, a few days ago I believe. I know it says due to lack of business on the door, but there's a rumour going around that the guests there all disappeared.'

  'And that's why it closed?' he asked, wondering if they had somehow stumbled upon the cave that Tome had told him about.

  'Well, no one is certain, of course, but if it's true it would make the hotel look rather suspicious.'

  'Who were the guests? What were they doing here?'

  She stopped at the top of the stairs, frowning at him. 'You ask an awful lot of questions,' she said, but her voice was warm. 'I'm afraid I don't know who they were. You should ask around the town, I'm sure someone will know.'

  They came to a door painted vibrant pink and, as she opened it a loud clatter came from inside.

  'What was that?' he asked, though she appeared not to have heard.

  A moment later he found out. Like all of the other rooms, this one was piled high with books and, for some reason, a large collection of cooking pots. There was a small bed in the middle, but he could only get to it by clearing a path first.

  'I'll call you down this evening for supper,' Morweena said, still somehow oblivious to the mess. 'Until then you should sleep.'

  With that she turned and shuffled out of the room, knocking a few books askew, and closed the door.

  Summoning a flame like the ones that lit the halls of the Council, he put his bag down on a clear square of floor he had seen and sat on the bed. So far, his trip to Neathin Valley had gone anything but how he had planned.

  He thought of using the long distance communicator to speak to Lizzie or Vey, but he wasn't sure what to tell them. Instead he laid back and fell asleep.

  'Boy? Boy, supper's ready.'

  Thordric snapped his eyes open, but as he saw the clutter in the room it was all he could do not to close them again. Sighing, he got up and went down to the kitchen, summoning more flames to stop him from stumbling down the stairs.

  'There you are,' Morweena said, carrying a large soup bowl to the table. With disgust, he noticed that the milk and cake crumbs that she'd spilled on the table earlier were still there.

  Without thinking, he used his magic to push it all into a floating, liquid ball and poured it down the sink.

  'Was that still there?' Morweena asked. 'I must have forgotten to clean it. The soup's ready by the way, so help yourself.'

  Thordric rolled his eyes and sat down, hoping that she hadn't accidentally left any vegetable peel in it.

  'By the way, boy, what is your name? Neither Tome or Lizzie ever got around to telling me.'

  'It's Thordric,' he said, lifting a spoonful of soup up to his eye level, cautiously analyzing it before finally deciding it was safe.

  Morweena laughed. 'What a curious name for a curious fellow,' she said.

  Thordric felt affronted. 'How is it that you know Tome?' he asked, changing the subject.

  'Oh, we go back a long way, do Tome and I. Very dependable man, you know. He was the one who decorated the outside of this house, not long after my dear brother left to marry Lizzie and live in Jard Town.' She sipped at her soup, managing to drip it all on her sleeve. 'Oh, bother that!'

  Thordric cleaned it for her the same way he had got rid of the milk.

  'Thank you, Thordric. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, Tome. You must have been thrilled when he found you wandering alone so far away from Valley Edge. To think he brought you all the way back here, too. He never fails to amaze me,' she said, spilling her soup again.

  Thordric spilt his too, though it was because he had snorted so violently that he had made himself sneeze. So that was the story Tome had made up for her.

  He supposed that revealing how he had kidnapped Thordric first would have resulted in lots of questions. Morweena clearly had no idea who Tome really was.

  The next morning Thordric woke early. It had been hard getting to sleep in his cramped room, for the heat seemed to build up so much that he had to open a window, despite the heavy rain they'd had during the night.

  Eyeing up the books and cooking pots, he sighed and resolved that he should start cleaning this room first, else the next night would be the same. He supposed she had an attic room, so perhaps he could store everything in there.

  'Of course I have an attic,' she said over breakfast. 'But I'm afraid you won't have any luck putting anything up there. That's full too.'

  'But what am I supposed to do with everything?' he asked, noting a slight growl to his voice. Luckily, she hadn't noticed.

  'Well, I…' she thought for a moment.

  'Perhaps you could donate it to someone else?' he suggested.

  'Donate? No, no, Thordric, I need it,' she said, laughing as if his suggestion had been a joke.

  'All of it?'

  'Of course. It's all terribly important.' She pulled at her frizzy hair, letting it ping back and then grasping it again, apparently lost in thought.

  Thordric gave up and went back to his room.

  He looked around it critically. There was no way he would be able to clean and decorate with everything lying around like that. He had to do something.

  If he couldn't put it somewhere else or get rid of it, perhaps he could shrink it. That way he would probably be able to fit everything into one box and, if he did it right, all Morweena would have to do to be able to read it at normal size was to pick it up. As soon as she was done, it would shrink again ready to be stored away.

  Grinning to himself, he picked up one of the books. It was heavy and covered in dust, but he could just make out the title. The Beginner's Guide to Cooking Pot Collecting.

  He snorted, making the dust fly into the air. At least it explained why she had so many pots dangling about. Sighing, he went through all the piles of books, gathering the dust and storing it within another floating ball. When he finished, he concentrated on making all the books smaller and smaller. It was harder than he thought it would be, for not only did he have to think about the pages getting smaller, but the words too.

  To his amusement, he found that if he forgot to shrink the words in proportion to the rest of the book, they started to spill off the pages and onto the floor. Of course, when that happened he had to spend time making sure that they went back onto the page in the right order, or else it became a jumble of nonsense.

  He had just finished fixing one when there was a knock on the door. Opening it, he found Morweena standing there with a tray of tea.

  'My, what a clever idea,' she exclaimed, walking in and staring at the coin sized books on the floor. Then she noticed the ball of dust that was still floating in the air. 'You know, I once heard a rumour that if you collect enough dust and push it all together, you can make some kind of precious stone.'

  She looked at him, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

  He sighed again and tried putting pressure on the ball of dust. It resisted, sliding out of any gaps that it could find, but eventually he managed to squash it down until it formed one solid clump. Releasing his magic, he let it fall into his palm. Morweena had been right; it had formed a pale green stone.

  'I wonder what it's called,' he said, staring at it. Depending on the way he held it, it sparkled with a pearl-like sheen.

  'It's called Crystos Mentos, I think,' Morweena said, also admiring it. 'It grows here, in the caves where the springs are. Many people believe it's what gives the water its power.'

  'But I just made it from dust,' Thordric said.

  Morweena looked a little guilty. 'That's not normal dust,' she said. 'When I used to work at the springs, I took most of these books there to read. I often left them there accidentally, so when I brought them back when I retired, they were covered in cave dust.'

  She picked up a book that he hadn't shrunk yet. 'Here, you might find this interesting.'

  Thordric took it. It was a book about all the underground springs in Neathi
n Valley. He found that one of the pages was folded over and, as he read, he found that all the springs were linked to each other by caves just as the ones in the Wanderers hideout were. The only difference was that the caves where the wanderers lived were deeper underground than the ones containing the other springs.

  'Well, I guess I'll let you get on,' Morweena said. 'You keep hold of that crystal, it might help you grow a bit.'

  Thordric fought hard to bite back a reply, instead contenting himself to drink the tea she had given him; but accidentally scalded himself instead.

  Chapter Eleven: Fixing the Apple Cart

  Despite what Morweena had said about Thordric cleaning and decorating a room each day, as soon as he was done shrinking the books in his room, she waved him off out the door so that he could go and explore the town.

  He didn't complain; now was his chance to search around town for any half-wizards that might need his help and, the sooner he was able to do that, the sooner he could go home. It wasn't that he disliked Neathin Valley, for he was sure that had he gone there under normal circumstances, he would have found its strangely decorated houses and winding streets charming, but it was hard to appreciate it all when first he had been treated as a kind of criminal and now as a housekeeper and decorator.

  Half suspicious that something else would happen, he tentatively stepped off of Morweena's doorstep and into the street, which, for being just a side street, was curiously busy. Instead of wearing his Council robes, he had decided to wear the velvet cloak that Lizzie had given him. Although it still identified him as a wizard, it would only look as if he was still in training and so nobody would bother with him. As much as he was proud to be part of the Wizard Council now that Vey had reformed it, he knew that if the people of the Valley Edge knew who he was, he would be submitted to an endless stream of questions. Did he know High Wizard Vey personally? What really happened to Kalljard? How high up was he within the Council?

  That was one of the most common questions that all his fellow wizards had faced when they travelled. Everywhere, the people wanted to know what class of wizard they were, for supposedly, the higher up in the Council they were, the more powerful their magic.

  In fact, the class system had been another of Kalljard's inventions, a way of getting wizards who didn't always agree with him to behave by putting to them the chance of promotion if they worked hard and did what he said. There were three levels, Low Level, Mid-Level and High Level. Vey had been trying to eradicate it, for such a scale could never truly reflect a wizard's magical ability. However, many of the older members had fought against him, telling him it provided a cause to keep learning and improving.

  There had been a lot of anger when Thordric had joined, not only a half-wizard, but the youngest person to join the Council in history. Official training was hardly ever completed by a wizard under twenty five, but Thordric, despite his efforts to grow facial hair, had clearly only been a boy of eighteen when Vey had introduced him three years ago. Not only this, but Vey had given him the title of High Level Wizard in order to teach him personally. No one had spoken to Thordric for weeks after that.

  Sighing, he touched the stone around his neck that Morweena had let him keep. He wasn't sure exactly what had made him want to wear it, but it gave off a soothing aura and, for the first time since he had arrived in Neathin Valley, he realised that he was happy. He also noticed that the bruises on his knees from Tome's kneeling powder had vanished as soon as he had put it on.

  He set off down the street, turning out of it and into what he hoped was a main street. There were crowds of people there too and, Thordric found, they were just as unusual as the houses looming behind them. He had thought that Morweena was just eccentric, but apparently that was normal here.

  A woman with yellow hair, done up in a high bun shaped like a banana and carrying a banana shaped bag passed by him, as did a man wearing enormous pink sparkly shoes, so long that it looked as though his feet were at least three times normal size. Another man and, to Thordric's horror, a woman too, had grown extremely long beards and had plaited them together.

  Only one person was dressed normally, at least to Thordric's mind; a young girl clothed in a plain grey skirt and top with a leather apron over it. She was trying, rather desperately, to move a cart full of apples, but one of the wheels appeared to be stuck.

  'Excuse me, miss,' Thordric said, braving the crowd to get to her. 'Would you like some help?'

  'No. Go away,' she said, not even looking at him.

  'But you look like you need it. At least let me take a look,' he said, ignoring her rudeness.

  'I told you,' she said, turning around this time. Then she stopped. 'What funny clothes,' she remarked, staring at his robes.

  Thordric laughed. After all the strange fashions he'd just seen he thought he looked quite normal. 'I'm a wizard,' he said. 'I can fix your cart for you. It won't take long.'

  'A wizard? But there aren't any wizards around here, they all live in Jard Town and that's miles away.'

  'I'm here on holiday,' he lied.

  She looked at him suspiciously. 'Go on then, fix my cart if you can. At least it'd be better than having my brother try to fix it with his crummy tricks—'

  She stopped suddenly as if she had said too much, but Thordric had heard her. 'What do you mean by that?' he asked. 'Does he have some kind of powers?'

  'He only thinks he does. It's nothing; all he ever does is break things. Now, fix my cart and go away.'

  Thordric looked at the wheel that was stuck. It had split slightly and gotten stuck between the cobblestones. Pulling it free with his magic, he fused it back into one piece. He pushed it, testing it out. It worked perfectly.

  'You really are a wizard,' the girl said.

  'Of course,' he replied. 'If I push the cart for you, will you tell me more about your brother?'

  'I suppose so. I'm going to the docks with it, do you know where that is?'

  'Roughly,' he said, and gently pushed against the cart with his magic. It rolled forwards at a good pace and they both walked behind it, following it up the road.

  Most people didn't see how it was moving, but those that did hastily moved as far away from them as they could get. Thordric found that he enjoyed it.

  'So, what do you want to know about him?' the girl asked, taking an apple from the cart and biting into it.

  'Well, what kind of things has he done? That have gone wrong, I mean.'

  She snorted, making her plaits flap around her ears. 'Almost everything. Mother and father say that ever since he was little he thought he had magic powers. I remember he tried to make Mum's expensive teapot fly once, but it crashed into the wall instead. He tried to fix it, but all it did was break into smaller pieces.'

  Thordric frowned. It sounded awfully like untrained magic to him. 'Where is your brother now?' he asked her, wheeling the cart around a sharp corner. Several more people scattered.

  'I don't know exactly. All I remember is that he was talking about some discovery out in the Valley Flats a few miles outside of town.' She finished the apple she was eating and instantly reached for another one. Thordric wondered how she was going to have any left to sell by the time they got to the docks.

  'What kind of discovery?'

  She shrugged. 'I don't know, it was weeks ago. There was supposed to be a team going to investigate it and he wanted to be part of it.'

  Thordric stopped. That was similar to what Hamlet had been telling him onboard The Jardine. What if the dig site he was at was the place this girl's brother was talking about? Perhaps he should go there after all.

  They reached the docks a while later and, because she looked so small and plain next to all the colour of the town, he added a few things to the cart and expanded it slightly, cloning a few of the apples to fill the extra room.

  'What's your name,' he asked when he was done.

  'Lily,' she said, marvelling at the great silk banners he had put on it and the neat silver paint on the wheels
. 'Are all wizards like you?'

  Thordric smiled. 'No. Most of them are far more sensible than me, or so I'm told. Plus the older ones get all grouchy and have long beards which catch all the crumbs they drop when they're eating.'

  She giggled, but then turned serious. 'There's more, you know,' she said.

  'More what?'

  'More people like my brother. Mr Henders, from the hat stall over there,' she said, pointing to a stall a few spaces down. 'I've heard that he can do things too. Or tries to. And then there's the drunken man.'

  'The drunken man?' Thordric asked. It was unusual to hear of anyone being drunk, for as far as he knew alcohol was banned throughout the country, for it didn't work well with any magic products. Nearly every household had some sort of magic product from the Council, even here in Neathin Valley he had noticed it, though it mostly seemed to be tea. In fact, there was a stall right next to them selling Thordric's favourite blend of blueberry and chocolate and a few others, each with a different healing property.

  'I've never seen him,' Lily continued, taking another apple from her cart and hiding behind one of the banners while she ate it. 'But father says he wanders around during the night, drinking from the same bottle that never needs refilling. No-one knows where he got it from anyway. Not even Shifty Tome sells it.'

  'Tome?' Thordric raised his eyebrow.

  'Shifty Tome. He's another one, though I think he's different. Only us kids call him that, everyone else thinks he's perfectly respectable, but I've seen him stealing from people's carts and selling the goods to travellers as the Ships of Kal come in.'

  So that was what Tome had really been doing when he'd seen Thordric. He hadn't been shopping at all, he had been stealing, just like his friend had stolen that carriage. He wondered if Yim and the others knew about what Time had really been up to. He wanted to think not, but then Yim's potion had had such a strange effect on him that it couldn't have been entirely proper either.

  'What makes you think that this Shifty Tome is different?' he asked. Yet again she had taken another apple, so he cloned a few more to fill the space that she'd made.