Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (22 page)

Chapter 47

In my delirium, I smelled what I thought was the backside of horse, and I could feel its motion underneath me. 

I looked out at
an unlikely sight.  Before my stunned and bleary eyes were, of all the maddeningly bizarre, improbable things, frosty mountaintops.  They were covered with snow just above us, but here they were just sheer cliffs and vast, plunging mountainside.  When I looked down, I saw the muscular rump of a troll, which made no sense.  I was covered in the smelly hides of deers and mountain goats, swaddled like a babe.  I blacked out again, then once more came to.  I felt an unyielding agony as I stared dumbly at mountain tops again, fading in and out of my weakened vision as they grew smaller and smaller behind me.  I stared back toward two troll-like forms, which was, again, absurd.  They seemed to be carrying a child and a woman.  We were beyond a row of snowy peaks.  The woman was screaming at the boy to stop laughing, that this was not at all great fun, that it was, in fact, no fun at all. 

The one carrying me was running so fast that I began writhing in pain, spitting blood.

It was all a terrible dream, a fevered dreamscape that came in flashes, each one more absurd than the next, and I hoped beyond hope that I would wake up from it soon.

Chapter 48

My
head swam for a moment in a bath of firelight.  With one eye, which opened slowly, I found myself in a small, comfortable bed of hay.  I was in a rounded room with low, stone walls.  They were rough-hewn from bedrock, or perhaps basalt, and deftly bricked about halfway up by the hands of a skilled mason.  There was a solitary window-slit to my left, while a fire burned near my feet in a thin brick inglenook.  I could smell the hickory burning, blending with the smell of a blooming meadow.

Beyond the door, random bits of friendly-sounding conversation were floating.  It sounded like children.

I sat up on the edge of the bed, instantly aware my head had been lovingly bandaged.  I tested my legs.  I was dizzy, but able to stand okay.  When I looked out of the window-slit, the meadow grasses I had smelled were waving in a gentle breeze. 

For a moment,
I wondered if I was dead.  I say that not to exaggerate the appeal of the place, but as a fact.  This was very much like what my mother had sometimes described as the Heavenly Abode and sometimes as the Heavenly Halls.

There was another arrow slit.  This one was wider, on the opposite side of th
e room.  Walking across to it, I wrapped himself in a blanket.  I breathed a pleasant intake of salty air and recognized that I was close to the ocean.  The land fell from the little building in grassy tiers, fading off northerly toward even greener fields, forests, and more of the comfortable-looking farmhouses.

The
n the wind picked up, pouring cold air across the room, and I went to warm myself by the small fire. I had no idea where I was. It looked like my father’s description of The Watershed, what some folks call Arway, land of the Halfling,

I
coughed, and the cough made a round of laughter from outside the door splash into a deep silence, which I somehow took as playful.  The quiet hung for moments.  And somehow the quiet struck me as humorous, and I began laughing and coughing, a noise that must have sounded like troll grunts.

Those outside the door shuffled wildly.  Grunting, one had retreated a distance
, it seemed.  He was speaking in an accent of Dellish I had not ever heard, “Ya!  What, indeed, is he doing in there?”

Someone began laughing, a
friendly cackle that could have come from a saint.  Then several other joined in the chuckling.  Now some footsteps came in what sounded like chain mail.  The steps were quick but halting. 

“What n
ews, my lads?”

The voice was a captain, by his rough tenor, and I could tell it was the nature of the voice to command everything around him.  But the accent made me laugh, which in turn sent me into a cacophony of hoarse barking and painful guffaws.

“Ya, ya!  The big fellow is awakened, Captain.  And in a rather good humor, I should think!”

Then
I heard the shuffle of people getting out of the way.  Another silence was followed by a flurry of quick rustles.

“
Friends, you harbor a living dragonslayer,” the voice said.

Dhal
…

“Little doubt,” one said, opening the door.

She stomped in quickly, smiling but hard-faced, blocking my view of the people outside my door.  Immediately, she was insisting I sit back down.  She wore a good dress, sown with skilled hands from green leather and cotton.  I tried to kiss her, but she returned it with a mere peck, and in a flash of near-motherly activity, she pushed me down and began washing my head wounds. 

She opened my shirt and
sat facing some bloody, cut-up rips in my chest and arms, studying them as much as she cleaned them.

“Very good,” she said.  “You’re healing well.”

I tried to ask about Cullfor, but as her hand wisped across my lips, I silenced myself.

“He’s outside…
playing
.”

Chapter 49

When Dhal finally allowed it, four halflings entered my little room. 

I will confess
, though to very few, that the sight lifted my spirits almost as much as seeing Dhal.  They came popping in, practically skipping as they came.  And while it is perhaps an obvious observation to note that they were, well…
small,
to see an Arwegian, or Watershed Folk, up close, is truly a delightful thing.  It is hard to say precisely why.  Perhaps it was as simple as their earthy smiles.  Already they seemed hospitable beyond what any reasonable body could expect, and all this welcome and comfort had come without them saying so much as one syllable.  None of them were bearded, not
truly
bearded, for they grew what they called a chinbeard, a tuft of hair about the length of man’s hand, which curled from the chin.  Naked, ruddy cheeks and frizzy locks added to their boyish air.

“King Fie!” the first of them said.  “It is an honor, liege.”

King Fie?...
Perhaps I was truly dead after all.

“King! 
Pah!”  I said, laughing not only at the little man calling me a king, but at myself, for using one of Uncle Jickie old expletives.  “What’s this nonsense, mister…”

“
Alwi, sire!  My name is Alwi Albright!”

“Well then
, Mister Alwi… uh, what—oh yes, what do you mean with this king business, sir?”

The captain stepped forward.  “Forgive us, Lord Fie.  “I’m called Eber.  Eber
Eagleton.  And trust that we understand your, um… shall we say…
nebulous
memory of your coronation.”

“Yes, well.  Then won’t you be so kind, Mister Eber.”

“Allow me to be a bit impolitic, liege, but it’s
Captain
Eber, sire.  And our own liege, King Alberik, has arranged a rather grand open fire feast to tell you the tale himself!”

“
The king?…   A feast you say?”

“Indeed, liege!
  And indeed again.”

“Then help me up, good captain
.”

They led me out of the homely little abode into the crisp, moving air of a lovely spring afternoon.  It was amusing to see that I was nearly as tall as the little home in which I had recuperated.  That is to say, I was as tall as the visible parts.  The builders had dug what would become the floor from the ground itself,.  And the roof, instead of thatch, was merely and extension of the hillside, such that it was made out of the turf itself.

It was really quite brilliant, I mused.  Then I turned, less it should appear that I was gawking.  These Watershed Folk seemed friendly, as approachable as a pleasant dream, but they were also quite taken with manners.  I did not wish to offend them.  I turned my stare down a winding river trail, watching as some hundred or so members of a parade, or maybe a welcoming warband, came skipping up toward us.  I did not see anyone that resembled a lord, much less a king, this fellow they called Alberik.

However, th
e little fellow didn’t have to be here, I realized.  As they spilled around the little home, his well-equipped chefs and fiddlers were holding his banner aloft.  And soon they were marking out little plots and places for chairs and tents. 

The entire affair seemed
rather serious, all in all.  The little men nodded grimly to each other, working right away.  Some were digging smoking pits, while others were driving tent pegs or unrolling large tens of painted canvas.  A few nodded to me in acknowledgement, but it seemed more like recognition, which was no doubt a result of their affable air.  In either case, they were very industrious, which is why, perhaps, others politely acted oblivious of me. 

Beyond the
workers, Cullfor was playing some manner of halfling football.  They were nearly into the river at one point, and the two great herds of boys were making a rowdy time of it, dashing, ebbing, jostling, kicking and bobbing  and roaring this way and that  along the riverside with that unmistakable oblong ball of porcine leather.

My father and I used to play “Arwegian Rules” football, too.  That is to say, we’d play until someone was down with a snapped bone, or some dulling injury to the head. 
The freckled old man was never gruff or mean, but vex him on the old Muttondon Slide and he’d punch the ground, or any nearby tree, and he’d walk away in angry whispers.

“I’ve never understood the fun in that particular sport,” Dhal said, wrapping herself around my arm, watching him play.

In truth, I understood little of why it was fun, either.  I knew only that it was. I’d heard tell, in sheepish and hushed tones, that kings played in the privacy of their courtyards.  I suspected this was true, but in truth have no idea.  But I know I’d seen priests and monks let loose of their of their austere, clerical focus, and do that most magical of things, which was to just…
play
.  I’d seen dwarves and men settle old scores with a round of it.  Twice in the same burg, I’d seen blood feuds settled and divorces finalized upon the outcome. 

I grabbed Dhal’s head and kissed the top of it.  I wondered if a stern dislike of football was inherent to women everywhere, for my mother said th
at some ancient devil had invented the sport to busy the demons in hell so that would not coup.  At other, less flustered times, she merely called it a game for villains and rodents.

I looked away, vaguely envious.  That, and I saw little Cullie sneaking a sip of beer, which a child should never do
—not before supper.

A
white-garbed old chef dropped to his clean little knees in front of one of the pigs that was to be roasted that evening.  He looked it over, nodding.  For a brief moment, he almost sobbed.  Then he began spanking the carcass repeatedly with a small mop full of honey.

Again, I
looked away, hungry now.

A couple of soldiers were standing in front of
little pub across the field with the sign of a sparrow over the door.  They carted armloads of apples, talking low.  They wore helms but no chain mail.  Their dagger-sized swords were in their scabbards.  Both of them nodded across the courtyard to a thick young halfling.  The fellow was not just chubby, he had the bobbed hair of a poet.  When they had nodded again, they pointed to me.  The fellow began walking toward me with a look on his face that suggested he did not like what he was going to have to tell me.

“King Fie, may I presume?” the man asked, so softly and with such a high and feminine voice that I had to pinch Dhal to stop her from giggling.

Dhal, of course, pinched me back.

“Right you are, good sir.  And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“
Reino, sire.  Reino Rainiest, Harold to the Right Jolly King Alberik.”

“Yes, we’ve gathered that much
,” Dhal interjected.

Reino chuckled, fortunately.

“A pleasure, Harold Reino,” I said.

“Likewise, sire.  Though it is with a great deal of
displeasure
that I must confess, last year’s potato crop was rather thin.  There will not be enough to fry up for this evening’s feast, I’m afraid.”

“Good!”  I thundered.  “I despise potatoes!”

“Ya, then!  Most good!”

“Most good indeed!”

I kissed Dhal again and paused.  For some reason, I suddenly wanted to ask her what had brought her into the heart Yrkland to live among the dwarves.  At the same time, I didn’t want to ask.  I suppose the silly truth was that I wanted her to read my thoughts and simply tell me her tale. 

“
When I first came to live in the borderlands, my dwarven uncle had gotten into some sort of tangle with a bear,” I said.  “I killed it, and I supposed I saved his life.  I suppose that it is why he adopted me as a nephew.  But these little men, these Watershed Folk, they welcomed me without killing so much as a rabbit.”

Dhal
seemed to be thinking of some properly non-insulting way to express the thing in her head.

“
You killed a dragon for them, handsome.”

By now, I was thoroughly taken off my ruse.  In fact I could not remember why I had even brought up that business with my uncle. 

“Well, I was in a party that killed a dragon.  Though I would confess I had somewhat more selfish motives in place when I went after her.  Do you suppose they truly think I was aiding them somehow?”

“W
ell, I know they do.  But they know your motivations as well.”

“And now they
will feast with us and call me a king?  I’m afraid you have me at a scale of disadvantage I find difficult to express.”

She nodded
, too softly, the way you would with a child.  She looked off for a moment, seeming to form her next sentence in her head before she spoke it.

“They call you a king because you are a king.”

“By what right?”

“The Halfling-King wanted to tell you the story, handsome.  Let me tell you another
story instead.”

“About
what?”

“A beautiful woman
, as radiant as she was cunning.”

“I met one like that once.  She was
so damn radiant they used her to read by.  From the dwarven village of Beergarden, if I remember correctly.”

She grunted, then quipped something under her breath.

“I can’t recall her name,” I added.

Then I
received a punch to my healing head.