by Nick McNeil
The Dubious Tale
of the
Winter Wizard
Nick McNeil
© 2019 Nick McNeil. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
You’re so vain, you probably thought this book was about you.
“The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else.”
–Arnold Schwarzenegger
Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XIV
XXV
XXVI
About the Author
I
Shields collided with flesh as the crack of bone and wood echoed through the field. Bertly held steady as he absorbed the shock of a Rotter crashing into his wooden shield. The enemy fell as the impact of the blow sent a sharp pain through Bertly’s shoulder. There was an opening to the right, and Bertly gripped the hilt of his sword. With the point of the sword, he stabbed and connected with the rib cage of the Rotter and the impact sprayed a mist of blood through the air. With his vision impaired, Bertly ripped the sword free, releasing a second gush of blood from the Rotter. The Rotter fell to the ground and dematerialized into dust. The wind washed away the powdered corpse.
It was the first time since the Eternal Cave that Bertly could feel the air move.
***
“Sir, don’t you think readers will find this a bit confusing?” A young man sat at a wooden table, quill in hand. His face was freshly shaven, and his red eyes cast a blood-red glow upon the parchment atop the table. “Why not start at the beginning?”
Another young man, with a few more years to his life, stood across the room, casually tossing crumpled pieces of parchment into a large recessed fireplace. The space was confined, with not much walking room between the two beds that had been laid out side by side. The man had long brown hair and was a head taller than the average fellow. He chuckled.
“Don’t you see, Roderick? This is why I am the master and you are the apprentice!” The man’s voice was appealing and exuded a depth of knowledge. Every sentence he uttered was spoken as though it were his manifesto. “Every great writer knows you begin at chapter seven!”
Roderick squinted, with his head tilted to the right. “Well, sir, what about chapters one through seven?”
“Blasphemy!” The man stuck his nose into the air and threw the rest of his papers into the fire. He squared his body with Roderick’s, pointing the tip of his finger between his apprentice’s eyes. “You throw those chapters out! They are rubbish. Useless words, nothing but a waste of ink.” The man paraded over to the table and seated himself in a chair across from Roderick. The man placed the soles of his boots against the edge of the table, carefully pushing back, allowing himself to recline. “And where would you suppose I start, Roderick?” The man said Roderick’s name as though he were trying to grab his attention across a crowded room.
“Why not the beginning, sir?” Roderick’s voice cracked.
Roderick’s master snickered, revealing the top layer of his ivory-colored teeth. “You make such a broad statement, my apprentice. And where exactly is the beginning?” The man took his boots off the table, allowing his chair to slam onto the floor. He shot out of his seat and wandered the room slowly. “Do we start just before the Blight, before the truth?” The man stopped pacing the room and looked back to Roderick. “Or do we kick off from where it all started, when Bertly was ten years of age? After all, this is the story of the greatest champion of all time.”
“Second-greatest champion, sir.” Roderick looked the man in the eyes and gave him a wink. His master strode to the table.
“That is subjective, Roderick!” the master said, hunched over, pounding his fists on the table.
“Well…don’t most champions have significant achievements? Or are at least top of their class, or the top of the Mastery program, or soul-bonding, or, well—” Roderick hesitated. “The best at…um…anything?”
The man’s fists lost their form. He bent back into an upright position.
“Bertly is the greatest champion of all time, Roderick, and that fact is as plain as the nose on your face. Now, can we please focus on the task at hand?”
“Yes, of course, sir. I am ready when you are.” Roderick plopped his writing hand on the table, holding his quill tight.
The man sat back in the chair across from Roderick and once again placed his feet on the table, crossing his legs. “Now, let’s start from the beginning.”
***
Stonebank was a small village that boasted sunny, luminous weather year-round. The skies never shed a drop of rain. Despite the favorable climate of the village, the air often smelled as though a thunderstorm had passed by in the night. A dense fog rolled in each morning, its mist so thick a lamp could not project light from ten feet away. The fog kept the crops watered and the air crisp, allowing wildflowers to bloom. Before the crow of the roosters each morning, the fog departed.
Bertly’s home in southern Noskar—which contained no more than fifty rooftops—lay nestled in a crevice of the Noskar Mountains. His cottage—like many of the cottages in the village—had a wooden door with stone walls stretching ten feet in each direction. Each home bore a tall chimney that rose high over a pointed roof.
Bertly’s house lay at the entrance of the village. His father occupied the position of the village warden, and as a reward for having earned that position, the family had been granted the foremost cottage in Stonebank. Bertly’s family had protected the inhabitants of Stonebank for ten generations. One day that duty would fall to Bertly.
***
“Why exactly are you talking in the third person, sir? Don’t you think it’d be an easier tale if you said ‘I’ instead of ‘Bertly’ the whole time?” Roderick stopped writing. His eyes were focused on the papers before him, scanning them as if they could provide an answer to his query. He tilted his head upwards in a slow motion while Bertly leaned across the table with his arms stretched forward. Bertly’s face was close enough that Roderick felt the wind of his breath. Roderick gazed into Bertly’s lustrous red eyes, which themselves were filled with pointed annoyance.
“Two things, Roderick! First, this is not a tale. This is a documentation of nonfactitious historical events. And second, no authentic hero writes his own tale.” Bertly sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, just before his eyes. He shook his head and let his body fall back into his chair. “Sometimes I forget you are an apprentice, Roderick. You are lucky I have taken a liking to you.”
Roderick dabbed the tip of the quill on his tongue and waved it in the air. “But, sir, if no authentic hero writes his own story, wouldn’t that make you a nonauthentic hero?” Roderick proceeded to sway his quill,
staring at the point.
“It is unauthentic, Roderick. And no, it does not make me nonauthentic because you are writing it.” Bertly inflated his chest, spread his fingers out, and placed his hand over his heart. “I am an authentic champion. I would never write my own tale.”
“I thought this wasn’t a tale?” Roderick lifted his eyebrows and displayed a half grin.
Bertly grunted. “Roderick! You are the scribe. The scribe does not chime in. The scribe records what they are being told.”
“I thought I was the writer.” Roderick’s small grin turned into a wide smile.
“Will you allow me to continue, or are we to quarrel all night over the roles we play in recording the memoirs of the second-greatest champion of all time?”
Bertly took a breath as though he were preparing to dive underwater before he addressed his next grievance. “And when did we stop addressing me formally?”
Roderick pushed his chair in, pressing his upper body against the table. He clenched his quill in his white-knuckled fist and placed his writing hand on the table. “Sorry, sir, ready when you are.”
“Thank you.” Bertly placed his left foot against the table and nudged back, elevating the front legs of his chair off the ground. He rocked backwards in his chair like a disinterested schoolchild. The back legs of the chair teetered in a strained attempt to balance the weight upon them. “Now, where were we?”
***
Bertly peered out from the front door of his cottage, breathing in the air. He hoped this would not be the last time he caught a whiff of moon poppies, which dotted the landscape of his front yard and the many yards nearby.
Bertly was not eager to leave his village. Even so, he looked forward to the greater adventure that awaited him beyond Noskar, and his anticipation helped dull the ache of leaving home. The door opened behind Bertly. He loved the crackling noise the wooden door made every time his father pulled on the handle. Or perhaps he’d always hated the sound and had only now come to enjoy it because he was aware that, before long, he would hear it no more. Bertly would miss his father much more than the stone walls of their cottage, or the predawn fog, which rolled like smoke through the village.
“You ready, lad? The buggy should be here any minute.” Bertly’s father nudged past him—the man’s wide frame barely fit through the door—and Bertly couldn’t help but notice the bags beneath his father’s eyes and the sad look within them. His father had always worn his beard long and he often took wonderful care of it, but this morning the beard was unkempt with wild stark-white hairs poking out here and there. Bertly had never seen his father in such a condition, and looking upon the man caused a lump to form in his throat. He had difficulty swallowing it down before uttering a response.
“Aye, Dadai.” Bertly continued to look upon his village, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the village would have memories of him. He was saddened to think that a place that had impacted him so might forget him the instant he was gone. Every moon poppy or drizzle bird he saw on his adventure would remind him of home.
Bertly’s father stepped forward and lowered himself to one knee. Bertly took in a lungful of his village’s clean air and turned to face his father, whose green eyes were misted and had taken on a glossy appearance. Bertly’s father placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. His hand was so large with his fingers splayed that this reassuring touch covered half of Bertly’s back.
“Now, son, what did I tell you about speaking in that accent? You’ll give away your origins if you go around like that. Best to have them guessing. Maybe they’ll think you’re a nobleman.” His father smiled.
Bertly lowered his eyebrows and clenched his jaw. He took a modest step back, slipping from his father’s grasp. Bertly squared his shoulders and positioned himself mere inches from his father and cleared his throat.
“Mind your place, peasant! I’ll have my hounds on you quicker than you can say ‘save me, Cordelia.’ Are you not acquainted with who I am?” Bertly had changed his dialect on a whim so that he sounded nothing like the Stonebank resident he was.
His father’s cheeks fell to rest, his eyes closed, and his eyebrows took the shape of a bird on the horizon. Bertly and his father peered intensely into each other’s eyes, their breathing in sync. On their fifth breath, the men burst into laughter. Bertly snorted, trying to hold in his chortling, while his father wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye.
“I should never have questioned you, lad. You’ll be fine. You’re more intelligent and sharper than I ever could be. You certainly take after your mother.” Bertly’s father sighed. “If only she were here to send you off.” He stood back and crossed his arms across his broad chest. “Now, do you remember what I’ve taught you?”
Bertly raised his fists and positioned them beneath his chin. “When in doubt, fight it out.”
“That’s right, son. If your mouth can’t win the fight, let your fists do the talking.” Bertly’s father gave him a gentle nudge with a fist that nearly dwarfed Bertly’s head. Bertly stumbled backward two steps, moving his arms away from his sides. Once he regained his balance, he stood idly before his father with his hands resting at his sides. He looked to the left of his father, in an attempt to avoid eye contact for fear that the lump would return to his throat, or that his father’s eyes would appear watery once again.
“What if I don’t make it into the Academy and all the training and studying we have been doing has been for nothing?” After receiving no reply, Bertly looked up and studied his father’s face. He was nervous to hear the response, but it was a question to which he needed an answer. His father stared back at him and ran his fingers through his beard, smoothing a few wayward hairs.
“You are the first person in all of Noskar to be born with red eyes in over three thousand years. The Academy was created for folk like you.” His father’s voice gained depth and increased in volume as he finished his statement.
“Except for Polly. She was born a day before me and her eyes are redder.” Bertly stared at his feet as he lightly kicked at the dirt.
His father’s brow creased, and he shook his head. “Don’t you worry about Polly. Her father is a fraud. She will never get into the Academy.” Bertly’s father closed his eyes and took a lungful of air, letting it out slowly. “Son, listen to me. You can’t always be comparing yourself to others. You two are far from the same, trust me on that.”
Bertly looked to his right as the sound of hoofbeats arose. Emerging from over the hill nearest his property came two horses pulling a wooden carriage. A woman dressed in brightly colored garments rode on top of the carriage. Bertly’s father clapped him on the back. The force sent Bertly stumbling slightly forward.
“It looks like your ride is here, son.”
Bertly stepped back and turned to face his father, who had already begun pulling Bertly into a rib-crushing embrace.
Bertly’s father grinned. He placed a hand on each of Bertly’s shoulders and knelt slightly to look his son in the eyes. “Okay there, lad, I will see you in two nights. Now go. The other students are waiting for you.” He gave Bertly a gentle shove toward the carriage.
Bertly ran off, kicking up dust with his feet. The driver already had the carriage door open for him. He climbed into the carriage and chose the seat nearest the door. The driver closed the door before Bertly could settle in, nearly trapping Bertly’s foot between it and the buggy. But Bertly paid the incident little mind. He was too excited and distracted to chastise the carriage driver, nor would he do so even if he were in a fouler mood. Today was the last day he would ever be an ordinary human again.
Bertly spent the remainder of the morning in the carriage, which was heading due east for Klovose. The carriage was quiet for a good portion of the ride, even though Bertly was accompanied by other passengers. But before long, the silence grew to be too much for them.
“I thought humans couldn’t learn magic.” Across from Bertly—and to the right of the girl ne
xt to him—sat two stocky dwarves, identical, with ruby-red eyes, and each only half the height of the average human. One sported a short braided beard, while the other wore his braid long enough that one could grab it with both hands. Bertly wasn’t sure which dwarf had spoken. Or maybe it had been both at once.
He stared out the window as soon as the words reached his ears; he was in no mood for chatter. Without turning his head, he snapped, “I thought you had to be under eleven to test into the Academy.”
The dwarf twins turned to each other, their eyes bigger than the moon, before turning their attention back to Bertly. “We’re only ten,” they shrieked. Every time they spoke, it seemed they shouted instead.
“But the…” Bertly stopped looking out the window and rubbed his cheeks with his fingers.
“Oh, the beards!” The boys smiled while rubbing their furry faces. “All dwarven men grow beards before their first birthday.” The shouting was growing on Bertly; they sounded rather cheerful.
Bertly smiled. “No kidding.” He paused for a moment. “To answer your question, humans can learn magic. Polly and I just happen to be the first ones to do it in a while.”
“Three thousand years is more than a while,” an elven girl with long blond hair interjected. She also had vibrant red eyes, and she sat to the right of Bertly. Her voice was so soft that he could hardly hear her over the crunching of the carriage wheels as they rolled across the rocky road.
“Cordelia was just waiting for the best. Isn’t that right, Bertly?” Polly, the girl next to Bertly, smiled. She sat primly with her hands in her lap, immaculate posture, and her chin up. Her blond hair was rather wavy and flowed over her shoulders, and her red, doe-like eyes lay framed between two delicate ears. Her voice was elegant and frail, drawing the attention of all who could hear her speak.
“Yep.” Bertly sighed; he would rather sit in complete silence than converse with Polly.
The carriage came to a stop and its occupants sat silently for a moment.