The Wanderer's Tale (50 page)

But to his surprise, Yulfric apparently did not disbelieve a word of his account. He simply sat there in his armchair, reading the wheel as casually as if reading a novel, and nodding now and then. In fact, he seemed at times almost bored by it all, and would occasionally glance about himself distractedly.

The only bit which appeared to galvanize his interest was mention of the mine-shaft deep in the forest. Clearly Yulfric knew of it, and was interested by the boy’s description of its contents. When Gapp got as far as his encounter with the animated pool of slime, Yulfric nodded sagely and handed him back the wheel.

‘
. . . The Nycra . . .
’ explained the giant, staring into space. ‘
. . . A living eczema . . . a coagulation of liquefied, dead tissues . . . an evil discharge of hell-spawned mucoid waste from the dark places of the Evil one herself . . .
’

‘Yes, I suppose it was, really,’ Gapp continued hesitantly, rather taken aback. He was not too sure which impressed him most, the giant or the wheel. He handed the device back to Yulfric, only to have it pushed towards him again.

‘
. . . A Nightmare of Nausea . . .
’ he went on, really getting into his stride now, ‘
. . . A Feast of Foulness . . . A Veritable Vesicle of Venomous Vitriol . . . indeed, a glistening, dripping puddle of pus . . .
’

Yulfric sat back and smiled in satisfaction – only the second time Gapp had seen him do so – and allowed his guest to continue. The handle of the wheel felt rather hot now, Gapp noticed, as he handed it back and went on with his story.

He now told of how he had escaped the mines, how he ran through the forest, his fever, his blindness, his hunger, right up until he had met up with the Gyger himself.

The wheel spun to a stop. Yulfric said nothing. Gapp shifted awkwardly in his seat, and lowered his eyes. It was a worthy tale, to be sure, and one that he could see had entertained his host. But if the boy had expected any commendation, he was to be disappointed; Yulfric looked pensive, but clearly was not so easily impressed.

The Gyger scratched the crisp, wiry hairs of his left armpit, and again proffered the wheel. He came straight to the point.

‘
. . . So. You are now alone, hopelessly lost, and don’t know what to do, yes? And you want me to help, yes? . . .
’

Two nods from Gapp. This giant certainly did not mince his words.

‘
. . . The question is, do you want to try to find your friends, carry on with your business alone, or go back home?
’

Gapp stared blankly ahead of him. His head, he now noticed, was feeling blocked and numb, and his insides starting to feel the return of fever. But he did not let any of this show. All he could see now were those final words of the Gyger, those scribbly little Vijneh characters appearing in the white blur of the meditation wheel. They filled his vision like a testament written across the sky.

What the hell
was
he supposed to do now?

Until now he had not concentrated on anything other than staying alive. In truth, he had not wanted to. But the giant was not going to let him off: he wanted a decision now.

Continue the quest on his own? Ha bloody ha! Maybe Yulfric could manage that, but Gapp? And find his friends? For Jug’s sake, they were
dead
, surely . . . And even if not, how could he hope to meet up with them? He had never been privy to details of the route they were going to take. All he had known was that they were headed for Myst-Hakel – a town in the Rainflats – and from his very limited knowledge of the lands they had been travelling through, he realized that, here in Fron-Wudu, he must be somewhere north of the Rainflats. But north-east? North-west? Due north? Even if he could somehow contrive to make his way to that little town from here, would they still be there?

No, they were dead, Gapp had decided. Even if they were not, they must have gone on without him.
The quest had gone on without him.
The decision was now made: he would go home.

Relief coursed through him, and an almost overwhelming sweetness of euphoria buzzed in his head. He was
free
of it! At last, he could go home. Gapp’s renewed fever quickly subsided, and he felt happier now than at any other time during this whole sorry misadventure.

But, what to do next? Despite this sudden freedom, he still had to get home somehow. Had to regain his strength, had to find the best route, had to stock up on rations. This would take planning, and time.

Clearly he could not stay with the Gyger for too long. Yulfric might allow him to tarry long enough to fully recover his health, and might even send him on his way with a pack of rations, but even then he might expect some sort of payment, that was clear.

‘Problem,’ he admitted to himself sheepishly.

Yulfric, guessing from his tone what he was thinking, agreed; he sat back and began chewing the dirt under his thumbnail, thoughtfully studying the little human.

After a while, he spoke:

‘
. . . Well, this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened to me; a human wanderer stumbling through the forest, scaring the game away and drawing off my hounds. Hungry, sick, needing guidance. And only Yulfric there to guide him . . . So . . . these things happen . . .
’

Gapp flushed and nodded. But he did not meet the giant’s gaze.

‘
. . . You do not have forests where you come from, then? . . .
’

Gapp did look up at that, thinking he was being got at.

‘
. . . It’s just that the last human I took in was an Aescal, too . . .
’

Gapp pointed to the wheel questioningly.

‘
. . . The Lightbearer missionary, yes. He hadn’t got a clue what he was doing . . .
’

‘I don’t know,’ Gapp said. ‘I really don’t. Just a coincidence, I suppose. Wyda-Aescaland
is
the nearest civili – no,
settled
country to here. Maybe we just have more travellers . . . or more idiots, perhaps.’ He trailed off, feeling more pathetic than ever next to this knurled ironwood figure before him. ‘We do have forests, I suppose, but hardly anyone ever goes into them any more,’ he added, in a hopeless attempt to justify his people’s feebleness.

Yulfric rubbed the end of his nose, plucked some nasal hairs out, then scratched his eyebrows for so long they let loose a snowfall of flaky skin and white mites onto his tabard. He appeared to be trying to remember something.

After a while, he stood up and beckoned Gapp to follow him.

‘
. . . Come. He left something behind. I show you . . .
’

They went into another room, the ‘guest room’, as the wheel translated it, which went some way to explaining why he had so few guests. There was a crudely built bed filled with loose straw (actually it looked more like a byre) and next to it a stool with only two legs. The third leg had been eaten away by some pernicious fungus, and the stool was now supported upon a pile of books. Grimy and damp, they had obviously seen better days.

‘
. . . Behold, the library . . .
’

Yulfric was having difficulty disguising the pride in his voice. And there was no doubting that, this far north, six books all together in one room probably did constitute a library. But looking at this sad heap of weathered old tomes, with their surrounding cloud of spores, only made Gapp wonder if Yulfric had again missed the point.

The Gyger went over to his prized collection of literary masterpieces and pulled them out one by one. Gapp joined him, and together they studied their near-illegible covers. Two of them were so damaged the titles could not be read, and one of these could not even be opened, so pulped together were its pages. The third book was written in a tongue neither boy nor Gyger could understand, but the fourth and fifth were written in Aescalandian. Of these one (currently being used to nest a family of fieldmice) was entitled
Morio and the Gleemen from Friy
, the other
The Bumper Book of Nahovian War Atrocities
.

The sixth volume (perhaps the least decrepit and certainly the smallest, being only a pocketbook) was written in a script Gapp recognized as deriving from the territory of Qaladmir. The cover bore symbols that looked distinctly alchemical, and it was this one that Yulfric took hold of. He thumbed through the pages nostalgically, the book tiny in his massive hands, then turned to the inside cover and showed it to Gapp.

To his surprise, there was a hand-written message there; some of this, again, was in the unintelligible tongue of Qaladmir, but right at the end, added almost as an afterthought, the young Aescal recognized words in his own language:

‘To Yulfric,’ he read out loud. ‘So long, and thanks for all the venison: Finwald.’

Gapp’s jaw dropped so low it almost hit his chest.

Finwald?

Yulfric regarded the boy inquiringly. He had never seen such an expression on a human before.

Finwald?
Gapp thought incredulously, and bade Yulfric start spinning the wheel.

‘The missionary?’ he demanded, pointing to the signature. Yulfric nodded.

What’s Finwald doing in all this?
Gapp puzzled.
It can’t possibly be the same . . . but how many Finwalds can there be in Wyda-Aescaland? And possessing a book on alchemy, to boot?

‘Slim build, indoor complexion, long black hair, black eyes?’ Gapp described, ‘And wearing a medallion shaped like this . . . ?’ (He outlined the shape of the Torch of Cuna with his hands.)

Yulfric nodded enthusiastically.

‘
. . . Made of silver . . .
’

‘Silver, indeed,’ Gapp confirmed. That was it, then. It had to be Finwald. Gapp had not mentioned any of the names of his companions upon the quest, nor even the name of the town they started from; he saw no necessity in giving such specific details.

‘
. . . You know him, then . . .
’ Yulfric responded with a shrug. To him there was little coincidence in his two visitors happening to know each other, since they did, after all, come from the same country.

But it was not the coincidence that astounded Gapp, for coincidences are bound to happen once in a while. What he could not get his head around was why Finwald had ever been here in the first place.

‘Yes, I know him,’ Gapp replied thoughtfully, ‘or rather, I
did
know him. Finwald is – was – the mage-priest I told you about earlier, the one whose idea it was to journey to Vaagenfjord Maw in the first place. It was he who experienced the vision of Drauglir’s re-awakening.’
And he who got me into all this trouble in the first place.

‘
. . . Interesting. He must be a man driven by great need, to be sure. When first I happened upon him, he was much as you are now – starving, frightened, exhausted, feverish; blundering about the forest with no idea of what he was doing. I took him in, as I have with you, and let him stay till he was fit enough to go on his way. After a week, he was ready, and he departed, vowing never to return to the North again in his life. Ha! I don’t think he expected the wilds to be quite so wild!

‘
And yet, two years later, here is a friend of his who tells me he has set forth intending to travel through the Great Forest once again! Even in the company of warriors, this new mission of his must be exigent indeed if it means he is to journey where once he nearly perished. Do you yourself believe that the Rawgr is truly arisen once more?
’

Gapp did not reply at once. He chewed his lower lip and stared absently at the damp patches on the floor by Yulfric’s feet. Then he said, ‘Two years ago, you say? Did Finwald tell you exactly what he was doing out in the forest all by himself?’

‘
. . . Yes, he told me he was a missionary sent by the elders of his land to teach the pagans of Wrythe. He said that their heathen souls were to be saved, and he was the one chosen to carry out this task . . . armed only with his faith, his silver amulet . . . and a dead snake in a bag, as far as I remember . . .
’

He paused at this last thought, laid his hand on the door jamb, grimaced, wiped his hand quickly on his tabard, and continued. ‘
. . . He seemed very committed, a man of singular purpose . . .
’

But Gapp shook his head in befuddlement. ‘No,’ he murmured, ‘that doesn’t sound like the Finwald
I
know. Oh, he’s certainly committed to his faith, I’ll give him that. But he’s never, in all the years I’ve known him, struck me as the
missionary
type. Not at all. More into studying than preaching.’

He thought hard about it. There was something not right at all about this whole business. There had never been any mention of such a mission to the North lands that
he
had been aware of, and in a town the size of Nordwas, such a thing was unlikely to pass by unnoticed.
What was Finwald up to then? Why had he never mentioned any of this to his quest-mates?
It all seemed very peculiar.

And Wrythe . . . Wasn’t that one of the places the company was supposed to be heading for? If he remembered rightly, it was the only settlement in the Far North that lay anywhere near Melhus Island.

Wrythe? Why there, of all places? What was so special, so secret, about it? There had to be a connection, that was clear. But according to the Gyger, that encounter had been two years ago, and Finwald had only had his divine revelation this recent spring . . .

. . . Or so he had told everyone. What did he know that he had kept to himself for two years, possibly longer, to the exclusion of even his fellow questers?

The question hung in Gapp’s mind for a long time. It nagged him, it harried him and it drove him to distraction. Then something Yulfric had just said came back to him.

‘
. . . dead snake in a bag
? Did I read that right?’

Yulfric shrugged. ‘
. . . That’s what it looked like to me . . . I never found out because he never let me see it . . . A long, thin bag of oiled hessian, strapped to his back . . . bound tightly around something long, thin and wavy . . . but stiff as a board . . . Like I said, it looked as if he was carrying a dead snake . . . never let it out of his sight . . .
’