Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (50 page)

Chapter 100

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The small tower, in which he had told Bunn to hide, was open to the sky.  It was short, too, maybe twenty-six feet tall, but it reached into the threatening clouds. 

Cullfor breathed. He thought about it another moment before going in. 

Struggling not to pass out, he muscled the door open, only to find it empty.

“What the thundering hell?”

Inside the tower’s door, he turned, hearing a noise like a lion again, three bloodied Arwegians encircled Blackthistle—a dwarf to pilot the nightmare vessels that soared through a mind.  His face was crimson, bloody from his bald, pale head to his chin.  A few streaks of flesh showed where sweat poured.  His sword was busted.  Bloody.  Enormous.

Blackthistle spun, whirling the massive blade.

The halflings fell, clanking.  One was holding his belly.  Their swords were shattered.  Another’s head was flayed open.  One hacked into the shoulder of another by mistake, or by the verve of Blackthistle will, and it could not get the blade out before Blackthistle crushed his sternum with the pummel of his sword.

Cullfor stood alone, his back to the door.

Blackthistle smiled at him through tendrils of gore, leaning on his sword, breathing.

Silence.

The dwarf began walking up to him.

Cullfor leapt, swordless.

His forehead crashed into the Blackthistle’s mouth with a splintering, bony sound.  Teeth flickered from his mouth.  As he pushed bloody thumbs into Blackthistle’s eyes, they fell, tumbling together.  His sword slid across the stony ground.  He spun as they met with the floor, then got to his knee.  Before Blackthistle righted himself, Cullfor punched him between the eyes, but shattered his own fist.  He turned, trying to get to his sword, but  Blackthistle grabbed him.  Growling, Cullfor kicked back like a horse.  He split Blackthistle’s ear, then ran in leaps toward the sword. 

But Blackthistle leapt after him, a quarter-step off his heels, and he grabbed Cullfor’s arm with a small, polished riverstone of a hand, spinning him. 

He pressed Cullfor’s head against the rough wall of the castle.

He pulled his sword over with her feet.

“Listen to me,” Blackthistle hissed.  “Only a fool could not sense I took Bhier’s magic when I killed him.  You’ve seen us wage a perfect wizard’s war, attacking in the fog, and only a fool could not see that all is lost.”

Cullfor grunted, then dropped.  He spun.  He kicked Blackthistle in the knee, crimping him.  But the blood-soaked Blackthistle caught himself. 

“And I know you are no fool, Cullfor,” he hissed.   

Cullfor growled and mustered the strength to push Blackthistle away at arm’s length.  The two wizards wrestled, using only the strength afforded a normal human being.

“How would you know that I am no fool, Blackthistle?”

“I know… because I have watched you for some time, lad.  And I would never sire a damn fool.”

Cullfor’s eyes widened.

“Father?”

“Yes, boy.”

“Fie said my father was an elf.  I mean, my ears….”

“You are a dwelf.  That much is certain.  But Halvgar was not your father, nor was Siri your mother.  The child they had was taken on the night of its birth by Halvgar’s elvish enemy, Bloodroot, and sold as a slave.  I was a wild dwarf in those days.  I had no need for a child.  So I switched them.”

Cullfor let go of his father.  He looked at the ground.

“But I can assure you, after we went after the dragon to get you back, I learned I had nothing in common with the dwarf I was when I made that decision.”

“And I assure you,
father
, you have nothing in common with your own son.”

“You could rein with me boy.  You can… you still have a choice.  You can be a prince.  Or you can die!”

Cullfor spat blood into his father’s eye, just as Blackthistle swung the enormous sword backward and downward. 

Cullfor fell to a squat, instantly kicking sideways.  Still the blade grazed his back and sent him sprawling.  In brutal pain, he leapt, just before a second fearsome strike that would have spilled his entrails. 

Blackthistle fell on him, throwing that stone hand into his face.  His eyebrow was cracked.  When they rose, Cullfor knew he had been defeated.  He lifted deadening eyes to his father, not pleading, only to show that he did not regret his choice. 

But there was a dragonblade sticking through Blackthistle’s heart. 

Blackthistle looked down at it, slowly.  Then he rocked under failing knees, fainting.  He dropped his sword and twitched, groaning. 

Then he laughed, his blood spilling, then fading into a thin black cord, which writhed like a snake that had been chopped in half.  Then Cullfor felt his knees hit the ground.  He clasped his hands in front of his chest.  His life withdrew into his heartbeat and his world became a subdued thump as he looked up at Delthal Blackthistle’s killer.

His father’s killer.

It was Bunn. 

.
 

Chapter 101

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There was a brisk crack followed by a rolling boom.

Cullfor opened an eye, trying to see where he was, but audacious pain jarred his head, the sheer animal hurt making him roar.

Then he heard a loud ringing noise.

Just as suddenly, the pain and noise subsided.  Cullfor opened his eyes again.  Blood had filled his mouth and nose.  Tears only muddied his vision.  He could move a little.  His mouth, his eyelids.  He tried his foot then roared in agony.  For a moment he was motionless.  But being still was little help.  His feet trembled on their own.  Misery radiated beyond his body.  Suffering does not begin to describe the monster thirst of the dying.   Wiping and sneezing and spitting into his own eye were enough to see that Bunn stood outside the pale broken walls of the tower, smiling.  

A few bodies lay beside her.

With great effort, he controlled his convulsions and twisted the feet under him to stand. 

He grabbed her and put his arm around her.

Far Below, Dhal was being raised above the heads of a thousand dwarves, and she and Delway’s King Jorigaer were kissing in some prolonged ceremony he could only assume was a wedding.

“Folly,” Bunn growled airlessly. 

“Folly,” Cullfor said again, and spit blood laughing.  Then he quoted his old teacher, saying,
“But f
olly is wonder and beauty and awe; and to see all the world in a smile, this is folly.
”

And he spun her, and kissed her.

She shook her head, smiling.  And she kissed him back.

And together, hand in hand, they limped an unhurried retreat in to the dark forest, still kissing.

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Much, much later, nestled in a rock-peppered crook of two mountains, near a place called Goback, high in the mountains, the old domed oak cottage that his uncle once called home seems little more than a snow–laden boulder.  

Inside, however, the cabin is voluminous and striking.  Arched oak beams support an impossible thatching of pine sheaves, as if it was taken from the tree by a razor.  Stone and wood are reconciled in the mantel with rugged elegance.  It is reminiscent of Cullfor himself, who seems larger and more well-muscled than we saw him on his journey.  Sturdy.  It is odd to see him in his leather and canvas robes.  He is at his core a peaceful man, but that twinkle in his eyes has a warrior’s glint.

Bunn is, as well, more gorgeous than we would have imagined from the telling.  If anything, she seems younger.  The eyes are, quite literally, spectacular.  They twinkle with a powdery blue glint that gravity cannot quite grip—as if the blueness of them radiates. 

She covers her freshly-bathed, nude body with a blanket of smoothed wool and turns to her husband.  And outside in the mountainside air, he winks, and chuckles, and very soon her blanket falls to the ground around her.

And the two wizards roll to the ground, naked, kissing and grinning, knowing they can never reveal who they are… and not giving half a damn either way.

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