Authors: Robert P. Hansen
17
It was late afternoon when Giorge finally roused himself
enough to look around. They were riding at a fast walk, and the man behind him
was much larger than himself. That wasn’t saying much, though; most men were a
lot larger than he was. He stretched his back, and then shook his arms and
wiggled his fingers. He would have done the same with his legs, but there
wasn’t enough room to maneuver in the saddle.
“So,” Lieutenant Jarhad’s voice boomed over his head, “you
are awake.”
Giorge yawned and said, “Somewhat.”
“Good,” Lieutenant Jarhad replied. “Then you can tell me
what happened.”
Giorge
almost
said that he had taken The Tiger’s Eye,
but he didn’t. “All right,” he said. “But I need something to drink, first.”
Lieutenant Jarhad handed him a waterskin.
After Giorge had rinsed his mouth and swallowed a few gulps,
he handed the waterskin back to the Lieutenant and shook his head. “You know
how we left in a hurry,” he began. “Embril was so anxious about catching up
with Darby that we galloped through the night. It isn’t easy to talk when
you’re galloping, so I didn’t know any more than you did about what was going
on. But I knew it was important or she wouldn’t have acted that way.”
Giorge paused to let Lieutenant Jarhad say something, but
when he didn’t, he continued. “When we reached the temple ruins, Darby was
already inside them. We went in after him. There’s a secret passage in one of
the rooms, and it leads down into the bowels of the place. That was where
Embril wanted me to take her because that’s where the nexus is.”
“What’s a nexus?” Lieutenant Jarhad asked. “Embril mentioned
it, but she wasn’t making any sense.”
“Neither did Angus when he found it,” Giorge said. “It
terrified him. He tried to explain it to us, but I think you have to be a
wizard to understand it. It’s sort of like the hub of a wagon wheel, I suppose.
The spokes shoot out from it in all directions. The magic does the same thing
at a nexus.” He paused for a moment. He couldn’t let Lieutenant Jarhad know that
he had actually
seen
the nexus, or he would become suspicious of him—
more
suspicious of him. “That’s not really what’s happening, of course, but that was
what I thought about when Angus described it to me.”
“Go on,” Lieutenant Jarhad prompted as Giorge let the
silence grow.
“Well, to get to the nexus, we had to go under the temple.
Deep
under the temple. There’s a stairwell that goes down deeper than any I’ve ever
seen, and at the bottom of it is another secret passage. I wouldn’t go down
there if I were you, though; you have to be a wizard to find the way inside,
and there’s a pretty nasty trap protecting it. The stairs collapse and the
floor slides out from under you, and if you fall down—” He shuddered,
remembering the way Darby’s wide, dead eyes had looked up at him “—you’ll be
skewered. We were lucky Angus was with us when we got there the first time. If
he hadn’t been…” He shook his head.
The Tiger’s Eye would still be where it
should be.
“I remembered where the secret door was, but I couldn’t see
it. Neither could Embril.
That
frightened me. Then she got that far-off
look wizards get when they look at magic, and said, ‘He’s been here.’ That was
it. ‘He’s been here.’” Giorge shook his head as if the story should have ended
there. “We could hear the stairs collapsing above us, and the floor started to
retract into the wall. It’s a really ingenious, complicated trap. Lots of
moving parts that all have to function properly for it to work. Whoever
designed it—” He paused and smiled to himself. “Well, let’s just say the
dwarves couldn’t have done it better.”
“Obviously you survived,” Lieutenant Jarhad dryly said.
“Oh, yes,” Giorge agreed, nodding happily. “Embril made sure
of that. She waved her hands the way wizards do when they weave spells
together—” he paused and half-turned. “Did you know that all spells are just
knots tied together using magic string that we can’t see?”
Lieutenant Jarhad glared down at him, and Giorge faced ahead
of them again. It wasn’t a very interesting view, though; lots of pine trees
and men riding horses on an old, overgrown road.
“Well, that’s what they are, and she started tying knots. I
couldn’t see them, of course, but if you watch their hands and imagine that
they are playing with strings, you can sort-of follow the movements well enough
to see what kind of knots they are making. At least, with the simple spells.
Some of those complicated ones look like they’re weaving a blanket without a
loom. This one wasn’t as complicated as that, but it wasn’t simple enough for
me to follow, either. Kind of like when you tat lace. It can be simple,
complicated, or anywhere in between.”
“Giorge,” Lieutenant Jarhad grumbled.
Giorge fought the urge to smile. Instead, he shrugged and
continued. “Well, she cast a spell and whatever Darby had done was undone and
she opened the secret door that led to the passage that led to the tunnel
system under the temple ruins where the nexus was located.”
“
Was
located?” Lieutenant Jarhad interrupted.
Giorge frowned. He had let that slip, hadn’t he? It didn’t
matter, of course, since he was going to tell him about that, anyway—but in his
own time. He nodded. “I’m getting to that,” he said. “It was clear that Darby
had already been there—his spell told us that—but we didn’t know how far ahead
of us he was. You see, the nexus isn’t easy to reach when you know where to
look for it, and it’s a lot more difficult when you don’t know where to look.
And
,”
he emphasized it to highlight its importance, “Embril wasn’t seeing any
disruption in the nexus. She was certain he hadn’t found it yet. Of course, she
was wrong about that.” So far, what Giorge had said was mostly true, and that
made it easy to tell the story. But the rest—the lies—had to be just as believable
as the half-truths.
“You know,” he said, “Embril can run pretty fast when she
sets her mind to it. You should have seen her scampering through those
corridors with that pretty blue robe of hers fluttering out behind her.” He
smiled at the memory, and then continued. “But she wasn’t fast enough. Darby
had already taken The Tiger’s Eye. We just didn’t know it yet.”
“The Tiger’s Eye?” Lieutenant Jarhad repeated. “Embril
mentioned that before you left. What is it? What does it have to do with the
nexus?”
“Oh,” Giorge said without thinking, “It’s a ruby about the
size of my head.” He barely paused as he added, “It’s a sort of focal point—at
least, that’s what Angus said it was when he described it to me. The magic
comes up through the ground and hits it, and then The Tiger’s Eye spreads it
out all over the place. Without the focal point, the magic sort of spills out
all over and goes wherever it wants to go.”
Giorge didn’t give the Lieutenant time to respond. “We found
out it was gone when we got close to where it was supposed to be,” he said.
“The closer we got, the more apparent the disruption in the nexus became to
Embril. I couldn’t see it, of course, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have
understood it. That’s when we started looking for Darby. We
thought
he was
still in the tunnels, since he hadn’t left the temple ruins and we hadn’t seen
him on our way down to the tunnels. But after doing a pretty thorough search,
we realized he wasn’t down there anymore. Somehow, he had gotten out without us
seeing him.” He shook his head. “It was probably a spell. Angus can disappear
entirely—” he glanced behind him “Did you know that? He played a trick on me
once. That’s how I know about The Tween Effect. He made himself disappear and
dropped the mushroom dust into the fire. The smoke—”
Giorge suddenly stopped talking, ducked under Lieutenant
Jarhad’s arm, and leaned out so he could look behind them. The orange glow was
still there, and it seemed brighter than before. There was more smoke, too. He
could even smell it in the air, and they were miles away from it. What if the
fire reached the dried mushrooms they were burning to create The Tween Effect?
What if…
Giorge slid back into position in the saddle and said, his
tone firm, fearful, “We need to ride faster. If those fires reach the
mushrooms,” he shook his head. “It will be like the difference between the
faint scent of smoke we are smelling now and sticking our heads in a chimney
flue. The Tween Effect is that faint scent of smoke, what we’ll feel when those
mushrooms start to burn is the chimney flue.”
“We are riding as quickly as we dare,” Lieutenant Jarhad
replied. “If we ride faster, the horses will tire more quickly and we will
cover less ground.”
Giorge frowned. He knew that was true, but it didn’t change
the fact that it would be even more disastrous if they got caught in a cloud of
mushroom smoke. He shuddered, remembering how intense the paranoia had been,
how certain he was that they were being watched, how much more intense every
sound had been…. What would it do to Lieutenant Jarhad? He was already
suspicious….
“Darby got past you,” Lieutenant Jarhad said. “Then what?”
“Yes,” Giorge said, trying to put the memory back away, even
though it didn’t want to go. “Like I said, Darby might have used a spell. It
could have been the one that Angus used, or it could have been that Concealment
spell Embril cast on us. Or it could have been something else. I don’t know.
I’m not a wizard.” It was important to keep repeating that he wasn’t a wizard,
since it would make it easy to ward off some of the more difficult questions
Lieutenant Jarhad might want to ask.
“We couldn’t be that far behind him, though. Embril said the
disruption in the nexus had just begun. It was expanding rapidly, thought, and
she wanted to get The Tiger’s Eye back quickly. Anyway, Darby had somehow circled
around behind us and was making his escape. We went after him, of course, but
it was too late. We had wasted too much time trying to find him in that dungeon
instead of going directly to the nexus to see if it was still there. By the
time we made it back outside, he had already taken the horses and was riding
across the valley. He took both of them, by the way, and there was no chance of
us catching up to him on foot.”
“Why didn’t Embril fly?” Lieutenant Jarhad asked. “She can
easily cover more ground than a horse—even one that is ensorcelled with that
Swiftness spell.”
Giorge nodded. “She tried. But she said the disruption in
the nexus made the magic act funny. The spell didn’t work right. She almost injured
herself when she jumped off the rubble and flopped to the ground.” He shook his
head. “That’s what happens when a nexus is broken. The magic doesn’t work
right.”
He paused to see if Lieutenant Jarhad wanted to say
something, but when he didn’t, Giorge continued. “It took half a day to catch
up to where he had left our horse, and by that time, he was long gone. We
couldn’t follow after him because he had cast that spell Embril had used to
prevent us from making a trail as we passed over the plateau. Soft something,
wasn’t it?” He asked. He knew the answer, but pretending he didn’t might help
to distract Lieutenant Jarhad from looking too closely at what he was saying.
“Soft Passage,” Lieutenant Jarhad said. “It shouldn’t have
lasted that long. Embril’s spell didn’t.”
Giorge shrugged. “Maybe he cast it differently? Maybe he
cast it again? I don’t know; I’m not a wizard. Whatever it was, he didn’t leave
a trail when he left that valley, and we couldn’t see him. He was gone.”
“Then how did Embril know to go north?” Lieutenant Jarhad
demanded.
Giorge shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he made it sound like
a weak answer, like he was reluctant to admit it. “I think it had something to
do with her becoming a horse. They sense things differently than we do. Maybe
the spell doesn’t work on them the way it does on us.”
Lieutenant Jarhad was silent for a few seconds, and then
asked, “What caused the volcano to erupt?”
“You heard what she said when we left,” Giorge reminded him.
“All she wanted from me was to take her to where Angus said he had found the
nexus, and I didn’t ask her anything else about it. I assumed she knew what she
was talking about.” He shrugged. “Apparently she did. She said that volcanoes
would erupt if the nexus was taken, and that’s what’s happening. It’s not just
one
volcano that is erupting, it’s a bunch of them. So far, only the nearest
one is obvious to us—but the dwarves know better.” He paused and muttered,
“Another reason to ride faster.”
Lieutenant Jarhad stiffened a bit behind him, but there was
no change in the horse’s gait.
“It’s why I’m here,” Giorge added. “To warn you to hurry.
She told me to take our horse—which was still under that Swiftness spell of
hers—and catch up with you. She wanted to make sure you got off this plateau as
soon as you could. Then she went galloping off to the north with that red tail
of hers flopping up and down like a Banner flag.”
“But—” Lieutenant Jarhad began.
“Look, Lieutenant,” Giorge cut him off and turned around to
face him. “I’ve told you what I can, all right? Embril didn’t tell me any more
than she told you when we left. I really don’t have the answers you want to
hear.”
And the answers I do have, I don’t want to tell you.
They rode in silence for nearly an hour, and then Giorge
suddenly felt dizzy and slumped forward. He moaned and lifted his hands to his
temples. He closed his eyes and clamped his teeth down on the bile threatened
to erupt from him. He slid to the side, and Lieutenant Jarhad wrapped his arm
around him to keep him from falling. Then he stopped breathing….
18
“You may not take the beast,” Hardnose Ironbutt told Embril.
His beard reached nearly to his knees and had hints of gray—rare for a
dwarf—that bespoke his advanced years, but his bold black eyes were as sharp as
the edge of the axe strapped to his belt. She was certain it was not
ornamental, despite his plump, barrel-shaped body.
“I must,” she said. “I will need my beast when I leave your
roads.” It was strange to call her horse a beast, but there were few words in
dwarf for the animals that dwelt above ground.
“You do not take my meaning,” Hardnose grumbled. “The beast
will not fit in the road. It narrows.”
Embril frowned. In dwarf, tunnels were roads, and when they
narrowed, the height of the tunnel lowered. “How narrow?” she asked.
Hardnose looked up at her and said, “You’ll bang your head.”
Her frown deepened. She barely topped the low part of the
horse’s shoulder. There was no way that it would be able to squeeze through the
road. But how could she leave the beast—
horse
—with them? They didn’t
know how to tend to its needs, and there wasn’t anything in their tunnels that
it could eat. They would have to take it out of their mountain and let it go.
The volcano…
She had tarried too long with the dwarves already. It had
taken several hours for the newcomers to be accommodated, and she was one of
the last ones to plead her case to the elders. Fortunately, Griselda and her
father had vouched for her, and the elders had agreed to let her use their
roads. But they were not inclined to do it quickly. They had even suggested
that she stay with them until the mountain calmed down—which could take
years
.
Fortunately, they were not keen on that idea, themselves, and did not protest
overmuch when she declined them. But they were adamant about sending an armed
escort to help her through the tunnels to where their cousins lived. It had
taken a long time to convince them that she didn’t need an escort and that she
would travel far more quickly without them. They were skeptical, but once she
showed them the effects of the Swiftness spell, that skepticism would go away.
But she had planned to cast it on the horse, not herself, and now…
She turned to the horse and removed the supplies she thought
she would need and then handed the reins to one of the dwarves standing nearby.
He did not like it. Neither did the horse. “If I am able to return,” she
promised the horse, “I will come back for you.” Then she turned to the elders
and asked, “You will care for the beast, won’t you?”
They looked at each other, and then Hardnose said, “For a
time.”
She nodded. It was more than she expected. Dwarves were not
fond of beasts, especially ones that were almost twice their height. “I will
need a map,” she said, “and solitude so I can cast the spell.” She wasn’t sure
she remembered the sequence of knots for Swiftness, but she had to try. At
least the magic inside the mountain hadn’t been as heavily influenced by the
disruption in the nexus as the magic outside the mountain had been. She
should
be able to use it effectively—for now.
Hardnose stood up and gestured for her to follow him into a
small antechamber. “Here, you will find solitude,” he said. “We will prepare a
map. Be sure to follow it precisely. There are many roads that have been
abandoned and lead nowhere.”
“Thank you, Hardnose,” she said.
He bowed slightly and walked out of the room.
She closed her eyes and steadied herself with the mantra
before bringing the magic into focus. In the time that she had been waiting,
ripples had begun to form in the strands of flame.
The nexus is still
expanding
, she thought as she reached for the strands she needed. They were
mostly air and flame, and she was very careful in choosing from among them. She
concentrated on the knots, and as soon as she wrapped the last one around
herself and tied it off, she felt a surge of energy run through her, almost as
if she were floating on the ground instead of standing on it. Is that how the
horses had felt when she had cast the spell on them? Spry and unencumbered?
She stepped out of the antechamber and back into the main
hall. She waited impatiently for the elders to address the needs of the family
unit standing before them, and then Hardnose waved her up to them. She ran—not
because she needed to, not because she wanted to show them how fast she could
be, but because she
felt
like running.
Hardnose narrowed his eyes at her and unrolled a map on the
arm of his chair. “You are here,” he said, pointing at a small room. “Follow
this path,” he said, tracing along several intersecting tunnels. “When you
reach here,” he tapped another small room, “ask for directions.”
“This letter,” one of the other elders said, holding out a
small scroll, “will ensure that they help you to the next city. That one is near
to your people. They will take you to them.”
“I am in your debt,” Embril said as she accepted the letter.
Hardnose rolled up the map and handed it to her. “Dig long
and dig deep,” he said to her.
She smiled. It was the kind of farewell that a dwarf only gave
to someone they liked or cared about. “May your axe never be dull,” she
replied, bowing. Then she oriented herself to the map, found the exit she
needed, and ran around the dwarves and into the tunnel. She almost tripped over
her robe twice before she could come to a stop and arrange it around her so
that it wouldn’t slip under her feet. Then she ran as fast as she could,
knowing that it would be days before the spell would unravel and she would grow
tired. She needed to get as far as she could before that happened.
At first the way was lighted by some sort of creature
growing on the tunnel walls, but it darkened quickly and she had to stop. She
brought the magic into focus and reached for the tamest-looking strand of
flame. It was a bit warmer than it should have been, but what choice did she
have? She cast the Lamplight. It was a bit too large, a bit too bright, and a
bit too warm, but nowhere near what it had been like when she had cast it in
the Angst temple. But when she lifted it up to her shoulder, she heard a faint
crackling, like when grease dropped down from a spit and sizzled in a fire, she
pulled it down quickly and attached it to her hip, instead. Then she reached up
to touch her singed hair—and almost screamed.
She started to run.