Delver Magic: Book 05 - Chain of Bargains (7 page)

"The wizard's name is
Enin," Sy offered, "but he's not in Burbon now. Hasn't been here for
quite some time."

"This is still his home. We
know he watches over this place."

"Maybe, but if you're really
looking for his protection, wouldn't it make sense to go where he is? He spends
most of his time in Connel. They're building it up. There's room for you
there... more room than here anyway. You ever think of going to there?"

"Connel's a city."

"Won't argue that."

"I'm a farmer."

"You're not doing any farming
now."

"I haven't figured out what
I'm doing yet, but it won't be in no city, especially a city that was once
taken over by goblins."

There was no logic to that last
response. Burbon sat within sight of Dark
Spruce Forest,
and goblins roamed that region in great numbers. The man knew that. Living in a
tent outside Burbon's wall put him at far greater risk for a goblin encounter
than living in Connel. His latest experience with two goblin thieves should
have reinforced that truth.

Unfortunately, logic didn't always
win the day. Sy saw nothing further to be gained by arguing the point.

"Head on back to your tent.
We'll make sure your food supplies are restored, but do me a favor, don't go
running into the dark after goblins again."

"No guarantees... but
thanks."

The farmer walked solemnly back to
the crowd of people at Burbon's wall, and as Sy watched him leave, he made a
not so surprising announcement to the sergeant who remained on his horse.

"We have to get these people
inside."

Sergeant Klusac didn't wish to
argue with his commander, but he had to point out certain truths.

"Where can we put them? This
is the third time the camp has grown this large outside the wall. The ones
we've already let in are blocking half the streets. And don't tell me we can
block the other half. No one will be able to move. We can't keep the town
secure that way."

"I know," Sy sighed,
"but we can't leave them out here, either."

"Some times you have to let
people make their own choices. You've lived by that principle. You've told all
these people what they faced. You told them there was room in Connel."

"They won't go," Sy then
considered one last option, a plan he had kicked around in his mind the past
few days. "What about the rooftops? Why can't we let them camp on top of
the inns and merchant shops? Not the ones with the pitched roofs obviously, but
there are enough with relatively level rooftops."

The sergeant shrugged. He knew his
captain was grasping at straws, but it was at least a temporary solution.

"Might work, but it's not the
safest plan."

"Safer than having them outside
the wall."

That was true, but it didn't
address the real issue, and the sergeant saw it as his duty to speak the
complete truth.

"Captain, I don't want to
talk out of turn, but we've brought them in twice now and each time the empty
space around the wall just fills up again with new refugees. Okay, so we drop a
bunch of ladders from the roofs and we let these people set up camp up high.
Then what? All this open space will fill up in a few days. We're right back
where we started and now we have tents on top of stores and inns. No one's
going to be happy about that."

"Everyone will understand.
It's not permanent. Maybe we get an answer in a few days. Ryson is out checking
on the valleys. Maybe we just need time."

The sergeant shook his head.

"Captain, did you ever really
consider what's different now?"

"Different how?"

"Different with Burbon."

"Things have changed a lot
with the magic."

"Not what I'm talking about.
We survived the magic, but now things are different. I know you understand why
Burbon held together and towns like Pinesway just fell apart. Yeah, we owe a
lot to you and the wizard, as well as the delver. We're still a town and other
places like Pinesway are nothing but abandoned buildings. Having Enin helped,
but he's in Connel now. Ryson is a big advantage, but I think we could survive
without him if we had to. He sure takes his chances to go exploring. I don't
deny it for him. He's a delver. He's got to do what he's got to do. But we
still survived."

"What are you trying to say,
sergeant?"

"I'm saying what you already
know. We survived because there was order here. It wasn't just the wizard or
having the delver. It was having everyone understand what was necessary,
keeping things within a structure...
order
.
Problem is, we don't have it any more. You can let those people in and put them
up on rooftops, but it's only going to make us weaker."

Sy didn't argue. He couldn't. The
sergeant was speaking the truth.

"Well, I'm not going to make
any decisions right now," Sy announced. "Why don't you go and get
some sleep?"

"Sleep? What's that?"

Sy chuckled, but then spoke with a
more serious tone.

"You're not going to be any
use to me if you fall off that horse. I could make it an order."

"With all due respect, I'll
sleep when you do."

"How about we both try?
Nothing else is going to happen tonight. The goblins made their raid. They're
done."

"Yeah," the sergeant
agreed, and he nudged his horse forward.

Sy pulled himself up into the
saddle. Before he set off after Klusac, he took a long look at Burbon's wall
and the refugees that camped along side it. He couldn't leave them there, but
was putting them up in tents on rooftops really the answer? No, that was
absurd, the solution of a desperate captain made in the dead of evening. He had
to acknowledge the truth, a truth that was just spelled out to him.

Burbon was spiraling out of
control and despite his desire to help the refugees, he couldn't let that
continue. It would be disaster for all of them.

Holli chose a mid-sized town to
continue their search for information, large enough to get lost in a crowd, but
not so big it would be difficult to explore. The town was named Huntston, and
its borders remained within the southern valley where they began their
investigation. It offered storage and loading facilities for regional farms.
That would offer a link between the farmers and the town, enough of a
connection for the elf to follow up on questions that had arisen from their
exploration of the neighboring fields. There was also something about that
particular town that bothered Holli, something in the magic that surrounded it.

In reaching out to the magical
energy, Holli followed its flow. She let her connection to the magic passively
ride the currents to seek out any extraordinary spells. Her perception of the
energy was no where near as strong as Enin's, but she had an innate ability to
hone in on certain vibrations. As she monitored the magic, she sensed the
energy bending inward into the city and then rebounding away, as if something
was attracting it at first, but not absorbing it for any specific use.

The aberration raised her
concerns, almost to the same level as discovering goblins occupying outlying
farms. Magic remained relatively new to the land and she was uncertain of the
advent of magic casters in regions so far from her home. Bending magic was not
necessarily the sign of advanced sorcery, but the flow was sizable. It was an
additional mystery heaped upon a growing puzzle.

The added uncertainty did little
to enhance her sense of security. She even considered choosing a different
town, but there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. As an elf guard, it
was her duty to avoid unnecessary risk, but she knew they would eventually have
to examine the irregularity. If they intended to determine the full extent of
the odd occurrences in the Great Valleys,
anomalies in magic needed to be considered just as much as the occupation of
farms by goblins.

Huntston rested quite a distance
from the Aranka River,
but another major tributary forked into two slightly smaller rivers just to the
north. The Twin Rivers, as they were called, cut across Huntston's eastern and
western borders, sandwiching the town between their banks. In order to enter
Huntston, travelers were forced to cross a bridge over one of the two rivers,
unless they came straight up from the southern Twin
River Forest.

The terrain through the woods,
however, was rough, and roads remained absent within the trees. Farmers
carrying crops, merchants with wares, and buyers in search of commodities could
not navigate carts through the forest, and were forced to cross one of the
rivers.

At the time Holli and Ryson
decided to investigate Huntston, the bridges were guarded by several sentries.
The elf monitored the crossings from a safe distance throughout the day. She
noted that each traveler was stopped for lengthy questioning before being
allowed to enter the town.

Hoping to avoid such questions,
Ryson and Holli waited for dark. No wall surrounded Huntston, it was just the
sentries at the bridges that offered a deterrent to free entry. The elf and
delver moved to the south, leapt into the trees and used close hanging branches
over the water to cross the western river. They had to leap a fair distance,
but it was child's play for two such agile figures.

Once they passed over to solid
ground between the two rivers, they quietly climbed through the trees and made
their way to the town's southern border. There was one large clearing between
the forest and the edge of Huntston, and both Ryson and Holli could see it was
watched by guards on rooftops.

The townspeople had not
constructed watch towers, which Holli found difficult to believe. She had never
before entered Twin River
Forest, but she knew it would be a
large refuge for dark creatures of all types. The town would be a ripe target,
especially with its warehouses and food storage facilities within sight of
those that knew how to spot them.

While the elf guard considered the
deficiencies of the town's defenses, Ryson reviewed the grounds ahead of them.
He considered several paths to reach their goal without being detected, and he
revealed them to his companion.

"They've got two blind
spots," he declared as he pointed. "There and there. We just have to
keep low and break around that silo and none of the guards will spot us. It's a
pretty easy path. If you want to stay totally concealed, there's a drainage
ditch that runs from the edge of town to the eastern river. The banks are tall
enough to conceal us all the way to those buildings over there. Another way
would be to cause a distraction to the east and we could walk right up that
trail to our left. You could also cast a shadow spell over us. With that and
the darkness, I don't think they'd see us if we walked right up to them."

"No spells for the moment,"
Holli replied, and then she revealed the anomaly she sensed in the magic around
the town.

"Any idea of what's causing
that?" Ryson wondered aloud.

"Magic is a current that will
bend to those that know how to use it. While the flow is quite strong, someone
could simply be monitoring the magic in a more active manner as opposed to
passively riding the flows, pulling in all they could muster but not absorbing
it for any use. There also could be an item of enchantment that is redirecting
the magic for a similar purpose."

"And any spell you cast might
get someone's attention?"

"It is a possibility. I can
not say for sure until I understand the source of the disturbance."

"So better safe than
sorry."

"That is my position."

"Okay, no shadow spells. It's
still not going to be difficult to get across the clearing. I'd pass on the
distraction as well, no sense raising any alarms. I would also think the ditch
is a bad idea. We'll get into town, but we'll be covered in mud. Might be hard
to avoid attention that way. The blind spot over there is my first
choice..." Ryson paused and listened deeply, and then sniffed the night
air.

"A sizable pack of goblins is
coming up from the forest," he warned, "but they're across the river,
southwest of our position. They're using the road. Fairly close."

Holli could not yet sense them, as
the strong current of magic flowing in from all directions disrupted her
abilities.

"A raid?" she asked.

Ryson shook his head.

"No way." He was
convinced of that fact, and revealed why. "They sound... drunk."

Holli's expression revealed
disbelief.

"You're going to hear them in
a moment." Ryson explained. "They're not even trying to keep
quiet."

Within a few short moments, the
elf did hear the clamor. She could not believe it, but it sounded as if the
they might actually be trying to sing. Singing goblins was not something she
ever thought she would hear, and once she heard it, she decidedly didn't wish
to hear it again. It sounded more like the anguish of metal grinding against
rock to an unsteady beat.

"How many do you think there
are?" she asked.

Ryson shrugged at first, but then
offered his best estimate.

"Two dozen, maybe even
three."

He paused and sniffed the air
again.

"Wait... there's more...
behind us. They're not using the road... they're between the rivers."

Holli went silent and removed the
bow from over her shoulder. She readied an arrow just in case they were
spotted. She motioned Ryson to remain still and under the cover of thick tree
limbs. Eventually, she heard the rustling of branches and brush at ground level
on both sides of their position. Remaining silent, she pinpointed the location
of four more goblins moving through the trees.

The goblins did not spot either
the elf or the delver. They were actually quite oblivious to their
surroundings. They showed little care to what might be in the forest and even
less concern over the town they approached. They ventured out into the clearing
with total disregard to the guards on the rooftops, and they stumbled onward
through the field without trying to hide their advance.