by Daniel Ford
“No you shouldn’t,” Idgen Marte said abruptly and decisively.
Allystaire turned back toward her, his brow wrinkled curiously.
Idgen Marte frowned and said, “Just trust me. I learned what we needed to know. Her mind is at peace and will stay that way unless you stir it up. So leave it be.”
“How?”
“The Mother gave you your Gifts. She gave me mine. Leave it be.”
Allystaire nodded and raised a hand apologetically. “Right you are.” Then he looked in the direction Torvul had headed and asked, “What do you think of this dwarf?”
“Just what I said. I like him.”
“Then we had best go help him with his wagon and ponies.”
It wasn’t difficult to follow Torvul’s path through the village, as the farm folk parted in his wake and seemed to stay away from where he had been, as though wary of illnesses that might travel with him, and his boots had made thick prints in the mud. They led to a barn, where Allystaire found the iron-wheeled dwarf wagon. He had seen dwarf wagons before, and the short, stout ponies that pulled them, and this would’ve been right at home among any of them. It was solidly made, with runes delicately carved in bands around all its sloping sides. It seemed spacious enough for a family of dwarfs to live in, and a small iron chimney stuck out from the back, from which a thin trail of smoke puffed.
Torvul popped his head out of the door that sat directly behind the driver’s board, which Allystaire would’ve had to crawl through in order to enter. He had changed his clothes from the near rags he’d worn on the gallows; he now wore a thick, hooded leather jerkin that hung to his knees. Pockets bulged on its front, a series of pouches and purses affixed by small clips to rings that were sunk into the leather. Most of the pouches seemed cushioned, and, Allystaire surmised, held small bottles, while the gleam of metal tools stuck out of the tops of others. The arrangement offered the dwarf’s hands and arms a wide range of motion.
Torvul hopped down, rather nimbly, Allystaire thought, for his age, and produced the same purse he’d shown them earlier. He dipped a hand into one of his pouches and drew forth a slim silvery tool. He inserted a thin hook at its end into the miniscule lock, twisted, and drew the lock free; it dangled from the end of the tool, which vanished back into the pouch. He opened the link purse, held it up to his nose, and inhaled deeply, then nodded and closed it in his hand. Only then did he notice, or at least acknowledge, Allystaire and Idgen Marte. He held up the leather bag of links. “This ought to do. With a bit of interest.”
“Best count it,” Idgen Marte suggested, resting her hands on her hips.
“I just did,” Torvul said brightly. “They paid mostly in weight or bits, but I’m giving them back silver. Twelve links. And I suppose I’ve a bottle of ikthamaunavit I can spare.”
“What do you mean you just counted? And what is ik…iktha…what is that bottle?”
Torvul laughed huskily. “Ikthamaunavit. Dwarfish spirits. The finest stuff. Put hair on your toes, as they say.” The dwarf paused for a moment and tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Honestly I think in humans it takes the hair right off if you rub it on your skin. Excellent exfoliant and astringent, though—cleans a wound and makes the poor wounded bastard too drunk to care all at once.”
After recovering from a brief, stunned silence, Allystaire said, “The links, what do you mean when you said you just counted them?”
“I smelled ’em.”
“You smelled them?”
“Yes,” the dwarf said, nodding seriously as he approached them and held the purse out. “Go on and count if you’ve a mind, but I know how much silver I sniffed.”
“You can actually…”
Torvul rolled his eyes. “You are slow, lad. Did your Goddess’s Gifts not bring you any wit? Eh? You could use some. Yes, to your question. I can smell ores and worked metals. Not all that uncommon for my folk.”
“Please do tell us what silver smells like,” Idgen Marte asked, smirking, while Allystaire stared uncomprehendingly.
“Earthy,” the dwarf said, making his empty hand a fist. “A bit nutty. Like a good dark ale, the kind with acorns in, or maybe berries, if it’s particularly pure.”
“What about gold?”
“Like the smoothest spirit you’d ever hope t’taste. Like smoke clingin’ to a woman’s hair, like—”
“Please,” Allystaire said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Please. You shall have all the time we spend riding in pursuit of Rede to discuss the aroma of metal. Let us get on with it.”
Torvul looked at Allystaire, then back to Idgen Marte. “I take it you let him pretend to run things.”
She shrugged. “Behind him is safer than in front of him. It’s worked so far.”
With a sigh, Allystaire turned and walked off, letting out a piercing whistle that was answered by a distant whinny.
As Allystaire retreated, Torvul muttered just loud enough for Idgen Marte to hear, “He what he says he is?” His brows knitted and his deepset eyes focused on the retreating man’s broad back.
“Aye. And more. He’s the Arm of the Mother. You’ll see.”
“What about you?”
“She called me Her Shadow.”
“Eh? And what’s that mean?”
Idgen Marte smiled broadly and began following in Allystaire’s tracks. “You won’t see,” she said with a chuckle and slight shake of her head.
CHAPTER 27
A Potion for the Road
The villagers were appeased, at least temporarily, by Torvul’s silver, so he and the paladin and Idgen Marte took their leave of Grenthorpe o’the Hills, with the former whistling brightly atop his wagon-seat and the latter in varying states. Idgen Marte seemed to have warmed to the dwarf; Allystaire had not, and rode ahead, palpably seething, so much so that Ardent whinnied and stomped and pulled against the reins.
“Is he always so cheerful?” Torvul asked, as he tended to his own reins with a light hand and a whip that tended to flick above the flanks of his ponies, rather than on them.
“Dwarf,” Idgen Marte counseled, shaking her head from atop her courser as she maintained pace with the wagon, “you don’t know the half of it.”
“I don’t recall the holy knights from any human stories and tales being full to the brim with rage all the time,” he countered.
“He has his reasons.”
“Maybe he should have a dwarfish brew or two.”
Idgen Marte sighed and lifted her head to fix the dwarf with her brown eyes; he kept one eye on her and one on his team. “You do realize what he told you earlier, right? This man, Rede, was one of those blind priests of Urdaran. Through Allystaire, our Goddess gave him back his sight. She granted him as great a miracle of healing as in any tale you or I could name, and I can name them all. And now this Rede is taking the Mother’s name for a pack of thugs, and strong-arming villages with it. How would that make you feel?”
“I’d mostly be curious about the profit to be made in healing like that, to be honest. Grenthorpe’s the wrong place for that. You’ll want a city for—”
“This isn’t about links. If you don’t understand that, you won’t understand him. Us.”
The dwarf clucked his tongue and raised a shaggy eyebrow speculatively. “Us, is it? More than mere comrades in arms?”
At that, Idgen Marte laughed, loud enough and harshly enough to draw Allystaire’s attention; he turned Ardent around, the enormous destrier moving nimbly on the narrow, grass-grown track. He called back “What?” but Idgen Marte waved away his concern, and he turned his mount back to the front.
“You ask stupid questions, unless you really still think we’re playing some kind of game.”
“You might be. Could be a decent play, have this Rede fellow move on ahead of you, stir up trouble, you fix it, deliver people what they want and collect their adoration. And the
ir donations, of course. Relieved folk are generous folk. If that’s what’s on, I want a sniff.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Well then I suppose I’ll figure out how he managed that trick of his. I’ve seen a fair lot of magic in my day. There’s alchemy of course, and magic in the ring of the hammer, and magic in the chant of the loresinger, and magic to be sung from the stone. That’s Dwarfish magic. Or it was. But then there’s thaumaturgy and conjury, sorcery and witchery, and then there’s the magic gods are known to grant. None of what I’ve seen can make a dwarf tell the truth when he’s not got a mind to. Oh, a good sorcerer who knows how to muck about in the mind, he can make a body say whatever he wants it to, can just move the mouth like a puppet if he’s deft enough. Yet I had a mind to lie and both times my thoughts just ran into a wall, and there I was telling him where I kept my weight.” The dwarf chewed on the inside of his cheek a moment, hollowing a space above his jaw, then harrumphed. “That’s a trick I mean to know about.”
Idgen Marte gave a faint harrumph of her own and shook her head. “You’re going to be disappointed.”
“Hardly the first time, girl. Now…” Torvul gently tugged back on his reins. At his faintest tug the ponies drew to a stop, and he whistled sharply so that Allystaire turned to look back. The dwarf’s forefinger and thumb fished the small bottle of yellowish liquid out of a pouch affixed to his jerkin and held it out to Idgen Marte. “Time for you to have your first taste of Dwarfish craft, eh?”
Allystaire trotted Ardent back to the wagon, the destrier restively pawing at the ground, pent-up energy showing in his bunched muscles. “Will this work better than what you sold the villagers, dwarf?”
“You wound me, Sir Allystaire,” the Torvul replied, clutching dramatically at his chest. “Years of craftsmanship and study, decades of careful toil weighed against one failure? Is that fair, now? Is it?”
Allystaire sighed. “Fine. Give it over.”
The dwarf leaned across his team to hand the potion over, but Idgen Marte reached out and snatched it first. “If it’s going to sicken one of us, best it be me. That way you can heal me, eh?” She pressed her thumb deliberately and carefully through the plug of wax that corked the top of the bottle and carefully tipped some out on her forefinger.
“Eyes and ears and even nose if you like, girl,” Torvul was saying. “A hawk and a hunting pard and a hound at scent all at once, you’ll be.”
Idgen Marte quickly swiped her damp forefinger across her eyes. She blinked a few times, settling the liquid in, then said, “Well it doesn’t sicken me. Yet.” She blinked again, then suddenly drew a sharp breath and raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Oh Cold. Oh gods it…” She walked her horse to the side and turned her gaze toward the gently rising trail that led further into the foothills, and gasped again sharply. “Oh Mother…oh Goddess, the things…it works. It works so well it’s painful.” She tipped more onto her finger and swiped it into her ears.
Meanwhile Torvul was chortling delightedly and rubbing the palms of his hands together, his elbows working like a scullion’s. “What’d I tell you? Finest in this part of the world, I say! In this or any part!”
Allystaire walked Ardent closer to Idgen Marte and held out his hand; she carefully handed over the bottle, and he, with rather less precision, splashed some into his hand and rubbed it into his nostrils and then his eyes.
Suddenly the world changed. Everything stank, or not stank exactly, but the distinct odors of everything around him assaulted his nose immediately and vividly, each competing for his attention. The intense smell of horse was almost overpowering, and his eyes briefly watered. Then he knew his own sweat and the grime of his unwashed body after weeks in the saddle, then the tang of his armor and his arms, the sweat-soaked leather of his saddle. And then other scents—the ponies, Idgen Marte’s horse, the many exotic, indefinable smells that emanated from Torvul and his wagon, spicy, sweet, bitter, too many to name.
Then, just as the world of scents exploded, so too did the visible world. At first his vision was simply filled, entirely, by the rise of Ardent’s neck, and he lifted his head back, shying away from the sudden closeness of his mount. He swung his eyes to the horizon and could make out broken blades of grass dozens, scores of yards away, could see bent stalks moving in an almost imperceptible breeze.
“You can control it now,” Torvul was saying. “Just think of looking far away, or of looking close. Think and it’ll happen.” The dwarf’s deep, sonorous voice was soothing, guiding.
Allystaire tried to focus on a small, moving dot dozens of yards away. It turned out to be a dragonfly hovering just above the grass, its wings buzzing around its coruscating blue carapace. Despite his rage and the nature of their ride, he found himself smiling, if faintly. “You have made a wonder, Torvul,” he said carefully, swinging his eyes back to the road and the hills beyond, looking for signs of movement, for signs of a camp. With this, an army would never be caught unawares, he mused.
“Don’t I know it! Harder than old stone to make and keep current. Worth its weight in gold link, it is. Which, ah, if you’d see your way fit to, ahm,” the dwarf cleared his throat, “offering a consideration. It is rather dear to make…”
Suddenly the distant sight Allystaire had was gone, his vision snapping back to its normal range and his eyes aching and burning. Gone, too, was the newly opened world of scent, his nostrils instead filled with an acrid, overpowering stench that nearly pulled him from the saddle in a fit of retching.
Idgen Marte, too, was suddenly clutching at her eyes and gagging at the bile rising in her throat, and she slipped out of the saddle and collapsed onto her knees on the road. Allystaire did the same, while Torvul stood in shocked silence for a minute, then muttered a string of low, guttural syllables that Allystaire couldn’t have caught even if he hadn’t been torn between burning eyes and rising gorge.
Still muttering unintelligibly, Torvul quickly flicked open the door of his wagon and reached back into it, pulling out a large corked skin, popping it, and tugging a clean folded cloth from a pouch on his belt. He quick-stepped off the wagon, pouring clear liquid onto the rag as he did, then carrying it to Idgen Marte, who, a bit weakly, tried to slap away his hands.
“Nothing but water. Just water!” shouted the red-faced dwarf, and she took the rag and began to swipe at her eyes and nose, broadly at first, then more carefully. He produced another rag, wetted it, and brought it to Allystaire, who took it in one fist, but then suddenly looked up, his eyes inflamed and watering, and seized the dwarf’s forearm with his other hand.
“Are you a poisoner or merely a fool?” he shouted, swiping at his eyes with the rag and using the dwarf to lever himself back to his feet so that he loomed over the would-be alchemist, fuming as he daubed his eyes.
Torvul didn’t protest as Allystaire yelled, nor did he answer. He simply offered the water flask and shuffled away. “I meant no harm,” he finally said, rather limply. “Potion must’ve gone off.”
“Just like the ones back in Grenthorpe. When was the last time any of your potions worked, dwarf?” Idgen Marte had pushed herself to her feet and, like Allystaire, her eyes were red-rimmed and she staggered a little, as though off balance.
“They’ve never failed me before,” he insisted, practically spitting, turning away from the pair of them and aiming a kick at the dirt. “Shouldn’t do any lasting harm,” he added.
Once Allystaire and Idgen Marte’s eyes were relatively clear, though still watering, they exchanged a brief glance and went back to blinking. “If your potions don’t work, dwarf,” Idgen Marte said, “what use are you?”
“They’ll work,” he said, reaching for indignant and finding only sullen. “When it matters. They’ll work,” he insisted. “They always have. Could be that bit was too old, had gone off. Been a bit since I’ve seen any of my folk to get the right essences.”
“Excuses, dwarf,”
Allystaire said, swiping at his nose with the wet rag. “In the village you said you had to make do with different ingredients and, what was it, adjust for elevation? How long has it been since you have seen your folk to get these essences?”
Torvul thought on the question a moment, shrugged, said, “Two of your years, give or take.”
“That potion was two years old? Freezing Cold, how long d’you expect them to last?” Idgen Marte’s face was more shocked than angry, and she wrung the rag onto the road with one hand.
“As long as they damned well need to!”
“From where I am standing, that was not long enough,” Allystaire snapped.
“Look, boy, potions are not all I bring t’yer fight,” Torvul said, his tone assuaging, beseeching even. “I know these roads like I know my own backside. They’re rough, a bit lumpy, but I know just the spot to scratch, eh?” He pressed on despite Idgen Marte’s sudden chortle and Allystaire’s puzzled, darkened face. “What I mean is, the likely hiding spots, I know ‘em. The kind of men that work these roads. And I’ve been in a scrap, and the wagon’s got a surprise or two. Just give me the chance,” he almost pleaded.
For a moment, Allystaire almost felt pity for the old dwarf. Age and the ruin it had wrought on his face, his shoulders, his scarred and stained hands made it nearly pathetic for him to be standing in a roadway, begging to be allowed to follow like a dog. He’s an old fool, Allystaire thought. And so you called yourself on another road a few weeks’ hard ride from here, on the trail of desperate men.