This amiable response seemed to catch the somewhat agitated Nikorian by surprise, and it appeared to Hilfen that, if it had not been for a similarly armored comrade who gave a slight tug to the man’s arm (as if to say, You’ve said too much already), the soldier might have invited himself over to Hilfen’s side of the bar and unburdened his soul by a full retelling of the adventure.
He then noticed the soldier’s comrades stand up and begin heading towards the door.
Hilfen counted to about thirty, and then told his comrades, “Tomorrow there’s trees to fell and stories to tell, but as for right now I’m tired as hell.” This brought out a half-hearted chuckle from most of the strapping, stout men who seemed to have lost some of their good humor.
“Tomorrow then, Hilfen,” they exclaimed, raising their beer mugs in honorable salute.
Hilfen walked outside. He had no need to grab his ax, as he had secured its location on his person. Two wooden staffs adorned each leg, strapped tightly, and neither betrayed their appearance nor discomforted him in the slightest. The ax head was strapped to his chest, providing a convenient shield to his heart, lungs, and upper stomach, and was also readily accessible to serve as a weapon if at any moment he had the fancy to lift his arm underneath his shirt and extricate it. With a one-foot handle that extended down to a steel cup protecting his groin area, it could still be wielded effectively, even if it lacked the power it had when the steel pieces (painted to look like wood) were assembled to form a single handle.
He reached down to his chin, pulled back a thin material, and then pulled it all the way over his head. In an instant, a long-haired, bearded man of dirty, tanned complexion and blondish hair was transformed into a pale-white, clean-shaven man with shortly trimmed, raven-black hair. He stepped aside briefly into an alley, removed his baggy flannel shirt, turned it inside out with practiced, effortless speed, and then flung it over his head. A similar act was done with his pants and shoes. Lastly, he pulled out the steel shaft from his right leg, pulling the top, and twisted it several times.
From the alley emerged a fine gentleman, with a top hat, a smart-looking suit, a handsome cravat, and an enviable cane. Looking the part of a wealthy businessman out for an evening stroll after a pleasurable evening at some elite club, he plodded along the street merrily, not a thought in his mind, other than that of not letting the soldier with whom he had just spoken not disappear from sight.
After several blocks of walking, he saw the soldier and his pals disappear into a small tavern that he already knew had lodging on the second floor. He had reconnoitered this area many times, as he had the entire city. Slipping calmly from the sidewalk into the bushes hugging the side of the establishment, he then pulled a black hood over his face that covered everything except his eyes, which gleamed from within the narrow slits in the hood.
Throwing a light grappling hook onto the roof of the building with the ease of a seasoned card shark dealing an ace, he then ascended the rope with the finesse of a cat burglar. Once on top of the roof, he slithered his way towards the point just above the window of the room where the soldiers were staying. Then, he flipped a lever on his boots, causing a pair of vicious spikes to emerge. He edged to the side of the roof and dived forward, his spiked boots catching him. He then contracted his abs and moved his head towards the window.
From his pocket, he extracted a tube-like device with a large opening on one end and with a small hole on the other. He placed the large end against the window and the small end into his ear. He listened.
“Why are you talking about that with those bumbling forest folk?! Pitkins said never to talk about it!”
“You’re right,” the voice said calmly. “It just seems silly sometimes because at least several dozen people heard the bird talk to Pitkins, and several hundred must have seen us get on top of the birds and fly away.
“If we keep our mouths shut, it will still produce nothing but loud laughs amongst drunken country bumpkins and be dismissed as a silly legend.”
“Perhaps. But why does it matter?”
“Pitkins didn’t want to say, but I believe it’s because he fears that if it becomes known that these birds were tamed, people would soon be hunting them down to use them for their own ends. He said one of the birds saved him from a prison he was being held in and that these birds had all been the slaves of some dreadful wizard, and that he wouldn’t see these birds hunted down to be enslaved by anyone ever again.”
“They would be a fearful weapon, you know. Can you picture it? Aerial cavalry units!”
“Yes, I can picture it. That’s the problem. If we do it, someone else will, and I can guarantee you that if we hunt down these birds, we won’t get all of them; someone else will get to the others, and then they’ll be itching to use them in a war.”
“It just seems . . . such a waste.”
“Pitkins decided it. He’s no longer our general, but he gave the order while still our general, and Sworin’s never changed the order. It’s really not our place to question the matter, now is it?”
“You’re right, comrade. I’m just looking forward to getting out of this forsaken country. I have immeasurable respect for Pitkins, but this was never our war. We’ve left our country less able to defend herself against attack.”
“Maybe you’re right, but it’s not our problem. When you’re made a general, then you can worry about grand strategy.”
“All right; mum’s the word.”
“That’s more like it.”
Silence.
“But, that was somethin’, wasn’t it?!” the soldier insisted, chuckling.
Seeing that his comrade was now daydreaming more than anything else, he indulged him: “Yes, I won’t argue you with you there. I regret not getting to see the wizard’s face, but he sure had one formidable hideout. Where was it—just a dozen or so miles north of the Sodorfian-Dachwaldian border, almost straight above the town of Seisphen? That was a savage wilderness, I’ll say. From the backs of those majestic pholungs, I found myself happier by the minute to be safely above the ground. The enormous bears and large packs of wolves I could see from the sky suggest man has not yet brought that area under his dominion.”
“Nope.”
“And that explosion!”
This seemed to elicit slightly more enthusiasm from his comrade who until now had seemed rather tired of the whole conversation. “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen! It was as if the gods themselves waged war in that valley. The devastation must be something to behold. All I could see was that terrible cloud of destruction issuing from the explosion and then from the collapse of the cliff!”
“I wonder what it looks like now . . . .”
“Forget it.”
Silence.
As Irkels reassumed his position on the roof, he found himself in a state of shock—a group of pholungs, tamed, possessed with speech . . . . Bewitched was the word the soldier had used earlier.
These pholungs had been under the exclusive dominion of some wizard who had for some reason seen fit to give them speech. Could this be Tristan? Every Metinvurian spy was well-acquainted with the story of the King Veros who had centuries ago sent out one of the most legendary spies ever to exist—Koksun—to seek out and find the grand wizard Tristan for the purpose of either turning him into the king’s faithful servant or killing him, only to receive a letter from this Tristan thanking him for the present of the spy, whom he had turned into his pet cat.
It was well known amongst the Metinvurian spies that Tristan had resided in the general area just alluded to by these Nikorians, but after the ignominious fate of Koksun, no king had ever dared risk sending his spies against this unspeakable fiend, for fear that they would be killed or, worse still, that they would be made slaves of Tristan’s.
Nonetheless, it had become a promise that all Metinvurian kings since King Veros had made—that if the opportunity ever presented itself, they would flay alive the vile Tristan,
who had so badly humiliated King Veros and the entire Metinvurian spy and assassin organization: Varco.
It was an element of the earliest training any Varco initiate received, it was continually inculcated into the recruit throughout the process of his training, and it formed part of the ceremonial oath a student made upon being formally inducted into the shadowy organization.
It now appeared that Irkels had found himself so unlucky as to have the mission of finding and taming a pholung intersect with the fateful mission all Varco agents were—at least in theory—actively engaged upon: killing Tristan. Except, the mission of finding and taming pholung was a real mission, not a theoretical one, and thus, the thought that it could take the unenviable task of confronting Tristan from the realm of the theoretical to the actual brought what was perhaps the first shudder Irkels had experienced in decades.
He had no choice now but to go and investigate the area, for it was now the only real clue he had as to where to find the pholungs. Everything he had received before tonight in the way of intelligence had simply been drunken stories about seeing the pholungs land at the City of Sodorf the day of the battle and, occasionally, a wild claim that one of the pholungs had talked.
But tonight, he had met his first eyewitnesses, and Irkels’ fine-tuned instincts told him they were telling the truth.
The fact the canyon had allegedly been destroyed meant Tristan was possibly dead, but Irkels’ instincts told him he was alive and well. Koksun had carried out missions so difficult and daring they were legendary amongst the Varco and were studied as paradigms of flawless execution of the core Varco principles of preparation, practice, and execution. So, if this fearsome assassin had been turned into Tristan’s kitty cat, he shuddered to think of the lowly chances of survival he would have.
Nonetheless, duty was duty.
Chapter 28
Chip felt an incredible mixture of trepidation and excitement as he soared off into the heavens, having nobly kept his part of the bargain with Koksun by leaving him in the kind and loving care of Donive, who—Chip had long ago observed with confidence when he surveilled her and Pitkins—had a benevolent heart and would faithfully take care of Koksun.
His mind now turned to the great difficulty he feared he would have finding Master and that, upon finding him, he would likely accomplish this only to be killed for disobeying his orders to stay put in northwestern Dachwald. To his immeasurable relief, he found that before these angsts reached an unbearable crescendo, they were fought off by the memory of his intolerable boredom he had been suffering before setting out on this noble quest, and the thought of returning to such doldrums almost immediately recovered for him his previous state of mind, which was to prefer dying on this mission rather than spend another minute with his indolent, unjustifiably celebratory comrades.
His wings beat through the air with a vengeance now, his mind inalterably focused. Soaring high above the savage lands through which he had so painstakingly guided Blackie, he was making rather quick work of what had been such an arduous task while guiding Koksun.
When he finally reached the valley over which Tristan’s majestic cliff had once towered, he was awestruck. He had expected unimaginable devastation, but his mind was not fully prepared for what he encountered. He knew he was getting close when he noticed an occasional uprooted tree lying flat on the ground below. He knew he was getting much closer when upright trees became the exception to the rule. And he knew his journey was nearing its end when he approached the base of what was now a large sloping pile of rock, some of which was pulverized to dust and some of which contained large boulders strewn about like the toys with which a group of rambunctious young boys have just played some violent game.
He didn’t know exactly what he expected to achieve by carefully surveying the damage, but perhaps the curious nature of his recent companion had been more contagious than he realized, and he felt an insatiable desire to explore this devastated region. He sailed near enough to the ground to carefully inspect every nook and cranny—for what he knew not—of the desolation, but not so near as to put himself at risk of a fatal surprise by the lightning-bolt strike of some hidden viper coiled underneath a hidden space between the rocks
Hours passed by in this close analysis, although he rarely saw anything other than rocks and powder, although the occasional fragment of a sword or the tiny portion of what once must have been some prodigious book of deep wisdom occasionally broke the monotony.
He was simultaneously occupying his mind with the thought of just what to do if he found nothing here that was useful to him. He remembered that Blackie had told him Master had gone underground towards the Seleganian border far east of here, near a border town called Ringsetter, just inside Selegania, but whereas for those accustomed to seeing the world as a series of carefully drawn lines on a map this might have seemed to offer a clear explanation, Chip had little use for national boundaries when traversing the sky above and instead relied upon the much more detailed guide of topography.
Just as he was about to resign himself to the odious task of flying east and beginning surveillance of every town he came across until he heard one of the denizens thereof state the word “Ringsetter,” a shadow caught his eye. It was far above, above the point where the large, lazily sloping pile of rocks and dust hugged what was left of the cliff wall. Above this stretched several hundred feet of cliff wall that, while not completely vertical, was solid stone and of a precipitous angle.
Chip flew over the large mound towards this spot for closer inspection. What he saw astonished him. There was a narrow opening visible of what appeared to be a tunnel large enough for a man to stand comfortably inside of. A large rock covered most of its circumference, but entering it would be easy enough for his tiny frame.
He nearly did so without thinking over the matter further, but then he asked himself why. Was he sure that no terrible danger awaited him inside the merciless darkness of that tunnel? And was he sure that tunnel would lead him anywhere useful? He considered the possibility that the explosion had merely denuded some erstwhile hidden cave of its massive rocky clothing and that upon entering this tunnel he would, perhaps without even realizing it, promptly take multiple turns through forks in the tunnel that his eyes would no better distinguish than if the tunnel had been made of a single passageway, leaving him hopelessly lost.
But then something like the belief in destiny gripped his mind, and Chip plunged into the cave.
Chapter 29
When Janie woke up at 5 a.m., she was alarmed not to see Richie lying in bed with her. Whereas she had recently adopted the custom of gently coaxing him from his sleep with a gentle scalp massage and reassuring kisses, she now found herself utterly alone.
Feeling a sense of dread, she rushed out of the bedroom and first peeked into Eddie’s room—all was well on that front, as he lay sleeping the enviable sleep of innocence, or so she thought—and then she headed towards the living room.
To her shock, there she saw Richie, knee deep in a book on business strategies that she herself had once begun but given up on after a dozen pages due to the tediousness of it.
“Hon’—everything okay?”
Richie looked up from his studies with a look she imagined many a professor or high-level executive has when approached by either a student or employee.
“Sweetie—I’m going to propose something to you that I think you’ll like, but I have to warn you first that you’re going to think I have completely lost my mind. But since the insane never know they are insane, I thought I should first immunize you insofar as possible to the shock by letting you know I’m aware of the lunatic impression this is going to create.”
Not feeling necessarily comforted by this remark from her husband—who only months ago spoke in rough, grammatically infantile sentences—she was at least distracted from her trepidation by her curiosity, which now was stronger than the former.
Interpreting her silence and dumbfounded
stare as an invitation to continue, Richie said, “From the time I asked you to start teaching me, it was with the mindset that I am but a slave inside of a prison yard. I thought that perhaps via the knowledge contained in books I would elevate myself above that miserable station in life that my prowess as a boxer failed to do. However, I have lately come to the disturbing realization that this prison is in part my own construction and that without first dismantling it I will be unlikely to ever escape.
“You have long wanted to work as a librarian. But in my naïve chauvinism, I have insisted that you stay at home long after that was necessary by any practical consideration. If I continue to work full-time in that miserable occupation while needlessly keeping you here at home, I am ignoring the key that unlocks several of the doors to my formidable prison. Do you still desire to work as a librarian?”
Janie nodded, more dumbfounded than before. “Yes,” she whispered, suspecting there was more Richie had to say.
“Good. As of today, effective immediately, I quit my job at the lumberyard.”
“What?!” Janie couldn’t help but scream, although without being sure why.
“It’s a business calculation essentially, my dear. Based on the savings we currently have—and all the numbers are right here, my love—” (he said, pointing to several sheets of paper covered with what seemed like calculations worthy of a doctoral dissertation at the local business college)—“which while admittedly are not much, even if it took you three weeks to obtain part-time employment at the library, something I highly doubt, our savings would still last easily until a week or two beyond that. Now that I have relieved our household of the onerous expense of liquor, even a part-time librarian position should cover our most basic expenses.
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