by Robert Beers
Granny Bullton met Adam outside Millward's door; her arms were loaded with towels and linens. “Oh! Hello. How is that dear old gentleman doing? Is he going to get better? I've brought some things for him.”
Adam held up a hand. “He's resting right now. I gave him a potion that will help him sleep, so the towels and things should probably wait till later.”
The old woman nodded. “I'll put these aside till they're needed. Is there anything I can do for you, young man?”
He smiled at her. “I hear you've got the best brown ale this side of the Palace.”
* * * *
The stacks smelled of musty parchment, old leathers and dust, and the Librarian breathed deeply of the old familiar scents. Passages of remembered books flitted through his memory like old friends. In many ways, they were his friends. No book or parchment had ever broken its word to him, nor attempted to use him for its own gain. They never complained if he dedicated his evenings toward one and not the other, and when he felt the need for their companionship, they were always there.
His hunt through the ancient prophecies had been fruitless, so now he'd turned to the Library's collection of legends and fables.
“Here's the others, master.” Felsten staggered into the reading alcove, his head and torso hidden behind the pile of books and folios he held in his arms. His lame leg scraped on the tiles of the floor as he worked his way to the old man.
The librarian turned and hurried to help his apprentice before the stack of precious writings tumbled out of his arms.
“Felsten, Felsten.” He admonished him gently. “You should have taken another trip, at least.”
“I kin handle it ... master.” Felsten panted.
The Librarian noted wryly the amount of quiver in Felsten's arms. He guided the boy over to a long side table where several rolled and tied parchments lay. He swept them to one side and helped Felsten settle his burden onto the table.
“Ah ... there we are.” The Librarian ran his hands over the mixed bag of writings. Long buried memories bubbled to the surface as he caught sight of old familiar titles. Labad and the City of Gold. Bardoc creates the Circle Sea. The Witches of Angbar. And so many others.
Felsten picked up a particularly dusty folio with a tooled leather binding. The edges of the binding were tattered with age and long use. The title worked in gold leaf, showed faintly through the dust, Visions of Darkness. “Whut are you hopin’ to find, master?”
The Librarian did not turn around. He knew if he saw what he was looking for, he'd know it. “I'm not quite sure. I know it's either a folio, a scroll or a collection of parchments tied together. Gave me frightful dreams. Of course, I was much younger then. Nearly as young as you.”
Felsten looked at the folio. “Wuz it called Visions of Darkness?”
His master spun around with the agility of a man half his age. “You found it! Felsten, you're a wonder! Here, let's have a look.”
He snatched the volume from Felsten's hands and opened it on the table. The oversized pages crackled as he lifted the cover sheet with care.
“Yes, yes, this is the one. No doubt about it. Not a scroll, as I first thought. Oh, you should go through this folio sometime, Felsten. Such nightmares it gave me as a young man. Good days those were, good days.”
Felsten vowed silently to himself to avoid taking the folio as bedtime reading material at all costs.
The librarian mumbled the words as he read. “...Jeffan walked through the crypt ... tardiness led him to ignore ... The Krell waited in the shadows...”
He turned the page and then another. “No, not this one. Hmmm ... Let's see...Beyond the veil ... Susallia pushed through the gossamer webbing ... the fear following at her heels.”
He turned pages again. Dust, smelling of great age, billowed into the air of the room. A sunbeam turned some of the motes into dancing fairies.
“I believe we're getting closer, Felsten. I do believe we are ... Listen to this one. It reads less like a narrative than the others.”
“Thin grew the separation between the worlds. The Elven Sorcerer probed the dimensional fabric with his mind. He tasted it with his spirit, and grew drunk upon its terror.
“I have the power to control the phantoms of nightmare.” He thought to himself. “Through their unworldly strength, I will add to my own. Even Bardoc himself will bow to me.”
"The light of the moon brings to the surface the eccentric and the unique. It aides the traveler in its seeking. The Sorcerer knew this, the blood of innocents fed his fell knowledge, and in his folly he brought the destroye,r and through his folly destruction came in its wake.”
The librarian nodded his head in discovery. “This is the one, Felsten. Legends, I called these. Fables. Stories to scare young boys. Little did I know they were prophetic. Listen to this...”
"The Sorcerer made war with the Human King, creating fell beasts to swell his host. Children torn from their mothers’ living wombs for sacrifice brought the darkness closer until the beasts’ blood became death itself, and the King fell on the field of valor."
The librarian pointed at the page. “Yes ... this is it, Felsten. Part of it anyway. This part right here, about the fear.”
“In the time of the promise.” Whatever that means. “The Sorcerer split the veil in his folly and his pride. He sent forth fear as his embassy to cause the promise to fail, but brought forth the Destroyer instead.”
Felsten looked at the page. “The writer talks about this Destroyer two times. See, here ... and here.”
“Very good, Felsten. I'll make a librarian and a scholar out of you, yet.”
The apprentice beamed under the praise as he looked at the page. “I wonder who this Sorcerer fellow is. Says here he's an Elf.”
He looked at the Librarian. “Elves is real?”
* * * *
The Alpha Wolf sniffed the air as he stood in the shadow of the young Dragon. “The pack is nervous. They do not like being out of the forest.”
Drinaugh looked across the expanse of grass prairie that stretched before them. The solitary mountain the humans called Cloudhook soared into the sky in the distance to the Southeast. The afternoon sun glinted off the glaciers lining its peak
To the North of the mountain, dark patches on the prairie coalesced into clumps of trees as he focused on them with the telescopic part of his vision.
“There are trees out there. Small forests, you could call them. We can travel from forest to forest. The pack can still sleep within the trees.”
The Alpha Wolf looked at the Dragon. “My muzzle is not as gray as it looks, sky lord. I smell the trees. The pack will survive.”
* * * *
Thaylli woke to her third morning in the wild, shivering. Dew covered the outside of her woolen cloak. The sound of it dripping from the leaves above her was what woke her. She was just as glad to be awake. Her dreams had not been pleasant.
“Adam, where are you?” She rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “Oh, that's right. You're off heading for the big city, if you're not there already.”
Adam didn't answer. She didn't expect him to, but she'd decided to talk to him anyway, especially when she felt lonely. She'd been feeling lonely since that first night when she fell asleep using her pack as a pillow.
Breakfast was cold. Her attempt at cooking the day before had turned out to be disastrous. The bacon burned to a cinder, and the tisane came out weak enough that it may as well have been water alone.
She re-stuffed her pack and fit her arms through the straps with a feeling of stubborn determination. She was going to find Adam, even if it meant being miserable every stupid step of the way.
The terrain from where she'd camped rose steadily up a short rise, and then down again into another glen. She was in the downs to the northeast of Cloudhook. She remembered her Father talking about them. If she followed a slightly southern route, she should wind up in pine forest with a gentle downslope, and eventually come to Labad's highway. Maybe there she coul
d catch a ride to Grisham with one of the merchant caravans.
The path she chose curved around one of the low, lopsided hills that made up the downs. Its surface was thick with yellow-flowered Cassia and Acacia bushes that took advantage of the spaces between the sparse tan oaks.
In spite of her homesickness and feeling that somehow Adam was to blame for her present troubles, she found herself enjoying the hike. The yellow flowers were fragrant, and butterflies competed with hummingbirds for the best nectar, giving her an entertaining diversion for the walk.
She was so engrossed in one of the competitions she didn't see the little man until she walked full into him.
“Hey now!” He pushed her back firmly, but gently, off of his toes.
She looked down at him. He was a full head shorter than her, but almost twice as broad. His hair was reddish-brown, and hung down his back in long braids. His beard and mustache blended together into a mass that covered his belly, and a pair of stout legs extended from beneath a colorful kilt held up with a broad leather belt.
She pointed to him. “You're a dwarf!” She said it almost accusingly.
He looked up at her with bright blue eyes. “Aye.” He said. “That I be. A Dwarf, and proud of it. What be you, besides a toe-trodder?”
Thaylli blinked at the Dwarf's calm, matter of fact disposition. “Uh ... I be, I mean, I'm Thaylli ... a human. Who are you, besides a dwarf, I mean?”
“Coraghessan.” He thumped his chest with a fist, and stepped to her side, as he looked her up and down. “Your pack. It's all wrong.”
Thaylli craned her neck to look at her pack. “What's wrong with it?”
Coraghessan shook his head and blew between his teeth. His breath smelled of bay leaves. “Too much to tell you here. Follow me.”
He turned on his heel and started back in the direction he came from. Thaylli stood there a moment and watched the dwarf until he vanished around the curve of the hill, then she took hold of one of the straps on her pack, and hurried after him.
“Hold up! I'm coming.” The pack banged against her back, seeming to count out the phrase, “the Dwarf is right. The Dwarf is Right. The Dwarf...”
She pushed her imagination away and concentrated in keeping up with Coraghessan. For someone with such short legs, he could walk very fast, and he never looked back to see if she was behind him. Thaylli thought it somehow rude.
The dwarf blazed a trail that had Thaylli pushing through Acacia and thick stands of thornless muskberry vine.
When she pushed aside the last Acacia branch she found herself looking at a trio of dwarfs, including the one who'd introduced himself as Coraghessan.
The one sitting to the left of Coraghessan thumped his chest. “Basho.”
The one on Coraghessan's right thumped his chest. “Graaff.”
The three Dwarves looked at Thaylli as if expecting something from her. She did the only thing she could think of. “Thaylli,” she said, thumping her chest.
The dwarves on either side of Coraghessan nodded in approval and said something in a language she didn't understand.
“W ... wh ... what did they say?” She looked to the dwarf who led her to the campsite.
Instead of answering her question, Coraghessan turned to each of the others in turn, and asked them something in the same language. They nodded and answered him with a single, “Jhi.”
Thaylli looked at the three Dwarves. “Does that mean ... yes?”
Coraghessan scratched after a roving itch in his beard. “It can. In this case it means they don't object to their words being known to a young human female foolhardy enough to travel the wild without knowing how to survive there.”
She felt the flush rising up her throat and into her face. Knowing the dwarves could see her overt show of embarrassment added chagrin to her shame.
She swallowed the retort that welled up and forced herself to settle down with a slow count backward from five.
The dwarves continued to look at her stoically, waiting for her response. She swallowed again. “Very well. I suppose I deserved that, but there always has to be a first time for everything, doesn't there? Well, this is my first time, and I think it's for a good reason. I also think you wouldn't have had me follow you here, Coraghessan, unless you were going to help me somehow.”
She took her pack off and sat down on it, returning the dwarves stare.
Coraghessan looked at each of his fellow dwarves and asked them something in that language again. They nodded, and this time when they looked at her, they smiled.
He nodded as well and stood up. “They agree with me that there is more to you than Garloc meat. You will stay with us and learn the ways of the wild. Enough to make your journey safer, at least. That is all we have time for, now.”
The dwarf's brusque manner got to Thaylli. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Of course there's more to me than Garloc meat! And just what gives you the right to tell me what I'm going to do? I don't have to stay here, you know.”
The dwarves shocked her by laughing instead of becoming angry with her. They roared out their response, slapping each other on the backs, and wiping the tears that streamed down their cheeks.
Thaylli sat there, dumbfounded, her mouth hanging open. After a bit, the dwarves laughter proved contagious, and she found herself smiling at first, and then joining in with them wholeheartedly.
Coraghessan's howls reduced to chuckles, and he wiped the last of the tears from his eyes with both hands.
“Good. Very good. There is rock in your limbs, almost like a dwarf female, you are. You will do well. That is, if you wish to learn.”
She felt the sincerity in his words. They would let her walk, if she chose to. She nodded her acceptance.
The Dwarf reached out and clapped her firmly on her upper arm. “Good. We begin now.”
Thaylli's indoctrination into the ways of survival began with the Dwarves going through her pack. They repacked it for her while telling her the why and the wherefore of what went where. A number of the items she'd thought utterly necessary, they dismissed altogether. A very few of the items she thought a little useful, they proclaimed mandatory in travel. She felt humbled and not a little frightened at what might have happened to her when they were done with the lesson.
She was made to unpack and repack her bag until the Dwarves were sure she had committed it to memory
They then led her into a shallow wash that ran through a depression in the downs a few yards behind the campsite. There they showed her how to identify medicinal plants and berries, as well as the green tops of tubers she could eat raw for a crisp refreshing meal during a march, roasted with game or in a stew with the other trail vegetables they pointed out to her.
The Dwarves led her out of the wash and then had her venture back into it to gather samples of what she'd been shown. She had to make the trip four times until she got them all right.
When dusk arrived, Thaylli sank gratefully onto the pallet she built under their guidance gratefully. She was so tired she could feel her skin trembling, and she felt as if she were floating. She could hear the voices of the dwarves chanting something about Labad and war. One of them was playing something on a pipe in a minor key, the chant followed the timing of the pipe's melody, and she fell asleep without tasting the stew they'd prepared for her.
* * * *
McCabe smiled. Hypatia's “some place more private” was one of the lesser-used bedrooms in the Ortian Embassy. The curvy bitch had quite a sense of adventure. It was a shame he couldn't drag his assignment out a little longer; the end was always much sweeter when the game was savored slowly.
“Do you like it?” She swung herself around one of the bedposts on the foot of the oversized four-poster.
He began undoing the frogs on his black silk blouse. “Yes. Yes, I do. And I'm not just including the bed in that.”
Hypatia laughed and swung around the bedpost one more time.
McCabe pulled off his blouse as she swung herself back
onto the floor. She met him halfway to the bed, and ran her right hand upwards into his hair, drawing his face towards hers.
He responded by crushing her to his chest and grinding his mouth against her lips. She fumbled with the ties at his waist, jerking at the cords.
She gasped as his hands explored further. “Take me.” She breathed in his ear. “Take me now.”
He did. Hypatia responded by digging her nails into his back, drawing blood. McCabe nearly lost his sense of purpose with the pleasure her nails gave him.
He could feel her building up for another one. The slow down after the first had been too brief. Now was the time.
He held her to him, and flipped her over so he was on top. His hands moved up to her cheek, and she pressed it into his palm. Her breathing quickened, and she smiled up at him.
He moved his hands to her throat and tightened his grip.
Her eyes widened, and she tried to scream, but the fingers on her throat tightened, crushing her larynx. McCabe leaned forward, putting all his weight into the girl's throat, and then he kissed her as she died. Now for some fun.
Later, when he was through, he left her body there on the bed, and the door open. In a few days, the sweet odor of decaying flesh would attract someone's attention, and they would find Bilardi's calling card sewn onto the flesh of her belly, as per the Duke's orders. McCabe, at his worst, never had the brazenness to do that before.
His smile became laughter as he left the Embassy through the back door, the one Hypatia had told him about.
* * * *
“It's three coppers, an’ not a groat more.” The peasant woman was heavy set; graying and her breath stank of onions, the same onions Adam was trying to buy for his stew, but three coppers a pound was akin to theft from what he'd seen as he toured the marketplace.
He told her so. “That's twice as high as what the other farmers are charging.”
She spat the saliva buildup from her chew. The juices from the weed made her eyes red-veined. “That's ‘cause mine are twice as good, an’ everbuddy knows so. Three coppers. I don't bargain.”