The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) (8 page)

“So do I!” Billigan laughed and gestured toward a wagon in
the center of the tent. Its sides had been removed and reassembled as benches,
and its bed served as a table on which several loaves of bread and a large,
half-eaten wheel of yellow-green cheese were waiting for them. “Help yourself,”
Billigan finished, turning to the boy and working the ties of his tunic.

As Angus approached the table, the faint smell of honey
mixed with maple smoke greeted him. A smoldering brazier was on the
cobblestones on the other side of the wagon-table, and strips of meat were
draped on a spit over the coals.

“If you want one,” Billigan called as he went to join his
crew at the wash barrel, “now’s the time to get it. There won’t be any left
once they get their hands on it.”

Angus shook his head. “I’m not all that hungry,” he said. “A
bit of bread and cheese will do for me.”

“And beer to wash it down,” Billigan added, gesturing to
another barrel near the wagon.

Angus broke off a bit of bread and cheese, and half-filled
one of the mugs. The beer was a dark, heavy brew and had a bit of a tart flavor
and smoky aftertaste. But it helped him swallow the not-quite-stale bread and
clingy, rough-textured cheese. He was nearly finished by the time Billigan sat
down opposite Angus and cut off a piece of meat. He began gnawing on it, his
left cheek puffing out as he jostled it around over what few teeth he had left.

“How’d you lose them?” Angus asked. “The teeth?”

Billigan shrugged and waited until he swallowed before he
answered. “I had just started out,” he said. “It was a new crew, and most of us
were inexperienced. I was holding on to the chisel at the wrong angle. The
supervisor didn’t notice, and neither did the mallet man. When the mallet hit
the chisel, it shot up off the granite and knocked most of them out. The rest
just rotted away.”

“It must have been painful,” Angus said, trying to sound
sympathetic but not really caring.

Billigan nodded vigorously. “It still hurts once in a
while,” he said. “The teeth broke off and left the roots behind. Sometimes they
ache.”

Angus finished the last of his beer, stood up, and removed
his backpack. “Would you mind if I bring a lantern over?”

“What for?” Billigan asked around the half-mauled chunk of
cheese flopping around in his mouth.

“I have a map,” Angus said. “I’d like to know where The
Tween is on it.”

Billigan swallowed, shrugged, and ripped off another
mouthful of bread.

Angus went to the water barrel and rinsed the crumbs from
his fingers and splashed water on his face. There were towels draped over the
lip of the barrel, and he rubbed one over his face. It was too damp to dry his
face effectively; it only pushed around the wetness into more convenient
places. Then he moved to the nearest lantern, glanced at the simple knots in
the leather strap securing it to the pole, and quickly untied them. He adjusted
the wick to make a brighter light and moved back to the table. He opened the
flap of his backpack and took out his map. As he began to unroll it, Billigan
swallowed, licked the grease on his fingers, and reached for it. “No,” Angus
said, waving him off. “I’d rather not get it greasy. He set one corner under
the lamp and took the dagger from his belt to hold down the opposite corner.
Then he peeled it open and pointed to a spot on the road.

“Here is about where we are,” he said. “Based on how long
I’ve traveled from Apple Vale.”

Billigan nodded. “Apple Vale is the last town south of
Wyrmwood until Hellsbreath.”

“Good,” Angus said. “Where’s The Tween?”

Billigan studied the map without touching it. After a few
seconds, he gestured at the mountains north and west of Wyrmwood. “Them’s the
mountain dwarves place,” he said. “Stout folk, them dwarves. I got a good crew,
but if I had half as many dwarves, they’d have turned that stone to dust by
now.” He traced the road heading west of Wyrmwood and added, “That’s the trade
route King Tyr uses when he trades with them. It’s a safe enough route for
caravans, but I wouldn’t risk going there alone.”

“Why not?”

“There’s things there that eat people, and other things that
eat them.”

“Such as?”

Billigan shrugged. “Nobody knows but the ones who got
eaten.”

“Go on,” Angus said.

“The Tween runs along this way,” he said, making a sweeping
gesture that began south of the east-west road through Wyrmwood and looped
around until it passed by where they were and nearly reached Hellsbreath. He
hovered close to Hellsbreath for a moment and then made a gesture that started
west before curving a short distance north into the mountains. When he
finished, he nodded and said, “That’s The Tween, too.”

“All right,” Angus said. It was a large area covering
several mountains. “These mountains are The Tween, the disputed lands?”

“I wouldn’t call them mountains. Them dwarves lay claim to
all the mountains. Them’s the volcanoes. Neither man nor dwarf can tame them.
Excepting Hellsbreath, of course, and this road.”

“Volcanoes,” Angus began. “They’re the reason for the
smoke?”

Billigan nodded. “They spew it out all the time. That and
fire and ash and rock.”

Angus frowned. Why would Voltari send him into a volcanic
region? It could easily kill him with very little warning.

“According to legend, it wasn’t always volcanic,” Billigan
continued. “But that was before the Dwarf Wars. King Urm—he founded King Tyr’s
line—had built up his kingdom by subduing the plains folk. They weren’t human,
by the way, so nobody complained much. Some say there are still a few of them
wandering around, but I don’t believe ’em. They say you can see it in their
eyes when you look at them. Anyway, King Urm pacified them and secured the
plains for his own people.” He picked up a piece of bread. “Those grasslands
are worth their weight in gold; we wouldn’t have this bread without them. Their
seeds are ground up into flour, and this bread is made from it.” To emphasize
his point, he tore off a small bite and began chewing it, a bit of slobber
dripping from the gap in his mouth.

“The Dwarf Wars,” Angus muttered. “They were about a
thousand years ago, weren’t they?”

Billigan nodded and drank from his flagon. “King Urm’s son
started them,” he said after he swallowed. “King Vir, they called him. He was
an ambitious, despised king. He wasn’t happy with the riches of the plains; he
wanted the riches of the mountains, too. He tried to take them from the
dwarves, and they met in battle here,” he said, pointing at the volcanic
region, “in The Tween. But it wasn’t The Tween then; it was normal mountains.
The dwarves were living there. They fought fiercely until winter, and then the
armies retreated from each other. The next spring, King Vir sent his army back,
but the dwarves weren’t there anymore. He waited of course, but they never came
out of their holes to fight. Nobody knows why.”

“No one?” Angus asked, frowning. “The dwarves do, don’t
they?”

Billigan grinned. “Sure they do, but they ain’t talking.” He
laughed and drank more beer.

“Maybe the wrong people are asking them,” Angus mused.

“Now who would want to talk to one of them dwarves?” one of
the workmen offered. “All they ever do is dig holes and make metal.”

“Yeah,” one of his fellows agreed. “But it’s ten times
better than the metal we make.”

“Now that just ain’t true,” the first one said. “Hellsbreath’s
forges are almost as good as theirs, aren’t they?”

“Oh, sure,” the second worker said. “But we can’t
work
the metal the way they do, and everybody knows it.”

The first one glared and half-stood before Billigan
intervened.

“Now boys,” he said. “We have a guest. There’ll be no
rough-housing tonight. Besides, the dwarves
are
better at metalwork than
we are—and masonry for that matter—and there’s no shame in admittin’ it. After
all, they aren’t worth squat as farmers.”

There were a few chuckles, but the tension did seem to ease
up a bit.

“What did King Vir do?” Angus asked.

“Oh, he assumed the dwarves had fled from his army and took
control of the land. He built strongholds, villages, temples—all the things you
would do if you were expanding your kingdom and wanted to fortify its new
boundaries. And it worked well until the first volcano destroyed half the
settlements. They say you could hear the eruption all the way to Virag—that’s
Tyrag, now.”

“Ah,” Angus said, half-smiling. “That’s why the dwarves left,
then.”

Billigan’s brow creased into a curious rippling of wave-like
wrinkles. “What is?” he asked.

“Mountain dwarves live deep underground in tunnel complexes
carved from the mountain’s heart,” Angus said. “They had to have heard the
rumblings and felt the rising temperatures long before they reached the
surface. They may even have breached a few magma pockets, for all we know. I’m
sure they knew what the increased volcanic activity foretold, and they left for
more stable mountains.”

Billigan’s wrinkles flattened out somewhat and he nodded.
“You may be right,” he admitted. “It was less than ten years after the Dwarf
Wars that the first volcano spat out its innards, and not long after that, the
other volcanoes were erupting. They’ve been at it ever since.”

“There’s another possibility,” Angus mused. “The dwarves
could have caused the eruptions.”

“Them dwarves?” Billigan scoffed. “Ha!”

Angus frowned and met his gaze. “Some dwarves have magic.”

“Well,” Billigan said. “I wouldn’t know about that. All I
know is that King Vir had to admit defeat. He wasn’t at all happy about it; he
lost a lot of treasure when that mountain blew. His lineage tried again and
again to tame the region, but it wasn’t until King Lar, Tyr’s grandfather, that
they managed to do it.”

“Oh? How did he do it?” Angus asked.

Billigan shrugged. “Magic.”

Angus tilted his head. “Magic tamed the volcanoes?” he
asked.
Flame magic, no doubt, and Voltari taught me quite a few spells from
that sphere. Almost all of his spells involved flame magic in some way or
another. But
volcanoes?
They have far too much violent energy for my—or
anyone else’s—spells to control!

Billigan nodded. “You’ll see it for yourself when you get to
Hellsbreath,” he continued. “King Lar is the one who rebuilt this road. It goes
through Hellsbreath pass and into the western lands. A great deal of trade
passes along it, and that’s why we have to keep it clean. If this were the time
for caravans, they would have sent wizards out to move this stone instead of
us, but this time of year we get to cut the rockfalls up into cobblestones.
That’s how the road has grown so much since Lar’s day.”

“Do a lot of rocks fall?” Angus asked.

Billigan nodded. “Not many this big, of course,” he said.
“They’re usually about a third this size, maybe less.”

“Is all of The Tween volcanic?” Angus asked. “Or just the
part near Hellsbreath?”

“Just Hellsbreath,” Billigan said, “It comes north to about
here, and south and west through the mountains. But most of the activity is
around Hellsbreath.”

“What about the rest of The Tween? You indicated it goes
almost as far north as the east-west road.”

“It isn’t volcanic now,” Billigan said. “But in Vir’s day,
it was. Nobody’s been willing to risk living there since then, what with the
dwarves, the things that eat people, the things that eat the things that eat
people, and the threat of volcanoes erupting all around them.”

“
Elhouit Achnut
,” Angus muttered, looking at the
mysterious phrase Ulrich had written in the middle of the northern portion of
The Tween and wondering what the words meant.

“Eh?” Billigan asked.

“Just thinking aloud,” Angus said. “It isn’t important.”

“Well,” Billigan said. “That’s what The Tween is, too. Not
important. Almost no one ever goes there, and those that do almost never come
back—and you can’t trust what the ones who do come back say about it.”

“All right,” Angus said. “What else do I need to know about
it?”

Billigan sighed and said, “It’s late, Angus.”

Angus glanced around and noticed for the first time that
almost all of the workers were asleep. Some were snoring softly, and he,
Billigan, and the young boy were the only ones still awake. “You’re right,” he
said, nodding. “I’ve kept you long enough.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay with us tomorrow,”
Billigan offered.

Angus shook his head. “No,” he said. “I need to get to
Hellsbreath before the caravans arrive.”

“Of course,” Billigan said, clearly disappointed. “Some
rest, then. You can grab a blanket and find an empty spot.”

Angus nodded and watched as Billigan went to a pile of
blankets, picked one up, shook it, moved a little away from the cluster of
workmen, and lay down. Angus rolled up his map, returned it to his backpack,
and hung the lantern back up. He dimmed its light to little more than a weak
candle’s brightness, picked up a blanket, and found a shadowy corner. He lay
down, his head against his backpack, and draped the blanket over him. He closed
his eyes.

The workmen were snoring. One had quiet little snorts.
Another had heavy, long-winded wheezing. A third had rhythmic grunts. They were
quite distracting; he couldn’t sleep.

After a few minutes, he sighed and sat up.

Still the body.

He closed his eyes and concentrated.

Still the mind.

He ran through the silent mantra until he was relaxed and
his attention was sharpened to a fine point, eliminating one sound after
another from his conscious awareness. When he finished, he lay back and rested.
He wasn’t sleeping, exactly, but he wasn’t actively engaged with the world,
either. It was a sort of middle ground between the two, one in which he could
remain mentally alert while not thinking of anything in particular, and
physically at rest without being completely inactive. Eventually, he would need
full sleep and the dreams that would come with it, but the meditative exercise
could forestall that need for several days.