EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (402 page)

She held out a folded sheet of parchment. Imprinted in its wax seal was the shape of a dragon’s head—the seal of the Great Oracle.

Eydis eyed the parchment as she might a snake. Something told her she wouldn’t like what was inside it. “What is this?” she asked.

“It’s an introduction to a cobbler in Shoretown called Fenric,” said Parthenia. “You’ll find his village a three-days’ ride from here, along the coast.” The server also produced a jingling coin pouch. “When you present Fenric with the letter, give him this as well.”

Eydis accepted the heavy coin pouch reluctantly. “What is so special about this Fenric the cobbler, that the oracle sends me to the coast to find him?”

Parthenia lifted slender shoulders. “He is no one. A means to an end.”

Eydis must have looked unconvinced because the other woman relented. “Fenric is a friend to us here at the temple, a devout follower of the oracle. He makes a pilgrimage to Silverwood Grove faithfully at the change of every season, hoping for a miraculous cure for his health. He will not hesitate to aid you, as this letter instructs, and will set you on your way.”

“And where does my way take me?” Eydis questioned, growing more apprehensive by the moment.

Server Parthenia pressed the parchment into her reluctant hands. “To another catalyst of chaos.”

Chapter III

E
YDIS
WAS
GLAD
WHEN
S
HORETOWN
finally appeared on the horizon. She had been on the road for three days, ever since Server Parthenia sent her so hastily from the temple at Silverwood Grove. The food Lytia had packed for her was running low, and the horse she had been given showed signs it couldn’t be pushed much further. Impatient to fulfill her assignment, Eydis had ridden the animal hard, rarely stopping for rests.

So, following the twisting road leading into the coastal town, she breathed a sigh of relief. The bracing sea air carried a strong scent of salt and fish, and together with the sight of many fishing boats bobbing in the bay, hinted at the chief occupation of the people of Shoretown. But there were shops, inns, and stables too, beyond all the boats and warehouses.

On the town’s outskirts, Eydis passed plain cottages with thatched roofs, where shabby laundry hung on the lines crisscrossing the narrow yards. Old men sat out on the doorsteps, smoking their pipes and watching rowdy children chase one another and play in the dirt. The cobbled streets grew wider and became more heavily trafficked going further. Eydis passed a casker’s shop, a glazier, and then a forge, where the blacksmith was beating away at his anvil. Drays rolled down the streets, and the clip-clop of the donkey’s hooves mingled with the noise of the smithy’s hammer and the shouting of old women selling fish on the street corners.

After dropping her horse off at a stable and paying the stable’s boy to look after him, Eydis made enquiries about the whereabouts of the man she sought.

“Fenric the cobbler?” asked the balding tavern keeper whose work she interrupted. He set aside the broom he had been sweeping his porch with and dusted his hands on his apron. “It’s been a long time since Fen has plied that trade—not since he came back from the last war. His brother-in-law runs the family business now, but Fen boards over the shop when his work doesn’t take him out of town.”

“What work is that?” Eydis asked, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the sun.

“Why, he’s the pride of the town,” said the tavern keeper eagerly. “The only proper executioner within a hundred miles. He hangs, flogs, beheads. Whatever justice is called for, Fen is your man to carry it out.”

If Eydis had wondered why the oracle sent her all this way to find a cobbler, she found this new information stranger still. What use had she for a hangman?

But she dutifully obtained directions to this Fenric’s home and continued on. The cobbler’s shop was down a muddy lane not far from the fish market and the wharf. The scent of old fish was strong here, and Eydis wondered if the noxious smell was the reason trade didn’t seem to be booming at the dingy little cobbler shop. Mounting the front stoop, she knocked at the door and saw a flurry of movement behind the leaded window to one side. Then the door cracked open to reveal a small face peering out at her. The blond boy couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old.

“Hello,” Eydis greeted him. “I’m looking for Fenric. Is he around?”

“Maybe,” the boy said, looking her up and down with open curiosity. “Who are you?”

“I’m Eydis. I bear a message for your father from the oracle of Silverwood Grove.”

“Fenric ain’t my da. He’s my uncle,” admitted the boy. “And you can’t see him ‘cause he’s sick.”

“Erri, who’s at the door?” came a voice from behind the child. The door was thrust all the way open, and a middle-aged woman with the same straw-colored hair as the child appeared. Eydis immediately identified her as the boy’s mother.

“I’m Alda,” the woman said shortly, “and I’m sorry to say if it’s my brother you’re looking for, you can’t see him.”

“But I’ve come a long way to bring him a message and a purse,” Eydis protested.

“Then your errand is in vain. Fenric will complete his last job day after tomorrow and then he’s retiring from the business, due to his health. So you’ll have to find someone else to cut off your head.”

Eydis started. “Cut off my what?”

“Aren’t you looking for a headsman or a strangler?”

“No, I’m certainly not. I’ve been sent on a mission by the oracle of Silverwood Grove.”

“The oracle, you say?” The older woman’s demeanor changed quickly. Apologizing for the misunderstanding, she invited Eydis inside and sent the boy running to fetch his uncle.

“I’m sorry to drag a man from his sick bed,” said Eydis, glancing around her uncertainly as she entered the shop. The interior was dim and cluttered. Sheets of leather hung from the ceiling, and the walls were covered with shelves housing many pairs of shoes and boots. There was a workbench covered with tools and leather scraps, evidence of the family trade.

“My brother isn’t confined to his bed just yet,” said Alda, waving her to a seat before the darkened fireplace. “Fenric still gets about town and is to all appearances as big and strong as an ox.”

Eydis wanted to ask why he was being forced into retirement then, but before she could open her mouth, the boy returned with his uncle.

Fenric was blond and bearded, perhaps in his mid-thirties, and so tall he had to bow his head to avoid hitting the doorframe as he entered the room. His shoulders were wide and his arms as thickly muscled as might be expected from one who made his living hefting an axe. He didn’t look like an ailing man. Not until Eydis noticed the dark circles beneath his eyes and the slight looseness of skin indicating recent weight loss.

“If you’re looking for my grave clothes, I’m not ready to be fitted for my death shroud just yet,” he said, his smile a surprising contrast to his intimidating size. It didn’t look like the smile of a man who killed people for a living.

Eydis blushed, realizing he had caught her searching for signs of his illness.

After brief introductions, Fenric’s sister made herself scarce, dragging her reluctant son out of the room with her. Eydis got the impression whatever Fenric’s business was with Silverwood Grove, Alda didn’t wish to know anything about it. Then again, considering her brother’s somewhat grisly profession, hers was probably a natural reaction.

Fenric offered Eydis a drink and waved her to a seat as he pulled up a stool next to the empty fireplace. Accepting the letter she proffered, he split the wax seal with his thumbnail and perused the missive. Even as he read, he paused to cough into a folded handkerchief. Eydis couldn’t help noticing the kerchief was spotted with old bloodstains.

“Do you know what this message is about?” he asked at length, folding the letter and tucking it away.

“A little,” Eydis admitted. “If it alludes to someone with the lifetouch and a gift for magical masking, that is me.”

“It is a great deal more than an introduction to you,” he replied. “It’s the answer to a dying man’s wish. A wish to bring a little light into the world to atone for all the lives he’s taken. A wish not to burden his family with a lengthy departure from this existence. And this,” he touched the coin pouch on his knee, “is an opportunity to leave my sister and her boy provided for, in the same bargain.”

“The oracle has given you all that?” she asked.

“I cannot speak to the oracle,” he shrugged. “It is Server Parthenia’s signature I see. She knows of my struggles, and her offer is a timely one. The task for which she hires me resolves many of my problems in a single stroke.”

Confused, Eydis asked, “So what happens now?”

“Now,” he said, “you and I have someplace to be and should hurry to get there.”

Evidently he meant it, because he wasted little time in gathering a small bundle of belongings, grabbing his travel-stained cloak from a peg on the wall, and finding his family to bid them farewell. As casually as if he was going for a simple walk about town, he kissed his sister’s cheek and ruffled his nephew’s hair on his way out the door. But Eydis noticed how carefully he concealed his bundle of belongings beneath his cloak, and she saw him furtively drop his coin pouch on the shop counter. Clearly he didn’t wish the money to be discovered until after he had gone. She noticed too how soberly he fingered the chain and pendant at his throat as she walked alongside him down the muddy alley toward the wharf.

“The emblem of the First Couple?” she asked, recognizing the symbol on the pendant from her days growing up in the seclusionary.

“A gift from my late wife,” he said with a sad smile. “She was more devout than I.”

It was a short distance to the quay. The docks were in disrepair and slick with saltwater and fish guts, so Eydis followed Fenric’s admonishment to watch her step. There were dozens of boats bobbing on the tide and as many fishermen wrestling with ropes and toiling to haul in the evening’s catch. But Fenric seemed to be looking for someone or something specific, and directly approached an old man with a cap pulled low over his forehead and a pipe jutting out the corner of his mouth.

“By my eyes, it’s the executioner!” exclaimed the old man when they stood before him. “If you’re hunting for heads to cut off, Fen, all we’ve got ‘round here be of the fishy variety.”

“That’s all right, Kerr, I’m here on personal business,” Fenric told him. “My friend is looking to buy a boat.”

“I am?” asked Eydis, startled.

Neither man paid her any mind. “What’ll you take for that old fish pail you call a dory?” Fenric asked, gesturing toward a small battered rowboat tied up at the dock.

The old man squinted up at the two of them, a mercenary gleam in his eyes. “What do you have to give for it?”

Fenric looked to Eydis who offered hesitantly, “I could trade my horse?” In truth, she didn’t know if she could. No one back at the Grove had exactly said whether the animal was a gift or a loan. Either way, it was too late to take back the offer now.

Fenric and the old fisherman launched into a haggling match that eventually saw Eydis short one horse but richer by a dory and a pocketful of change.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked Fenric as he helped her into the bobbing craft. “The oracle didn’t say anything to me about sailing off across the ocean.” She had the niggling feeling she ought to have cracked the seal on Fenric’s letter and read it while she’d had the chance. But it was too late now, and he wasn’t offering to share the details with her.

“Relax,” he said, tossing her an oar. “You haven’t far to go. See that little dot on the horizon?”

Against the setting sun, Eydis vaguely made out the shape of the distant isle.

“Row out to that island and wait there,” he told her. “Someone will join you shortly.”

“Someone. You mean not you?”

He hesitated. “I have a task to fulfill, and it’s one I must carry out alone.” He plunked down a bundle in the flat bottom of the boat—the same bunch of belongings he had collected back at the cobbler’s shop. “You’ll have need of these provisions later,” he said. “There’s food and dry clothes inside. Oh, and one last thing I need you to do.”

“What’s that?” At this point Eydis felt nothing could surprise her.

He reached into his cloak and pulled out a wrinkled poster, of the kind sometimes seen nailed to signposts and hung in shop windows. It was a notice offering a hefty reward for the capture of some criminal. Eydis gaped at the rough sketch. “Who is this man?” she asked. “You’ll think me mad but I’ve seen him before, in a vision I had while in the sacred pool at Silverwood Grove.”

Fenric seemed unsurprised. “Can you make me look like him?”

“What? Why would you want that?”

“It’s your gift, isn’t it?” he asked. “Server Parthenia wrote that you have the power to change faces.”

“It isn’t exact,” she protested, still unable to tear her eyes from the familiar features of the man in the sketch. “I can give one person a passing resemblance to another but it wouldn’t fool anyone who knew them both.”

“It will have to do,” Fenric said. “It’s out best chance.”

“A chance at what? What have you to gain by impersonating a criminal?”

His expression became impatient. “Never mind. Will you do it or not?”

Eydis cast a glance around. She had a feeling practicing her unique talent in public would draw the kind of attention neither of them wanted to deal with right now. Luckily, everyone on the quay seemed occupied with their own business. “Very well, come closer.”

He knelt on the pier, and she braced herself on the gently rocking seat of the boat to reach out to him and lay her fingertips on his face. Something odd happened the moment she touched him. Colors faded to gray, and a disturbing image flashed before her eyes. She saw him collapsed on the floor of a dark room, blood running across the floor stones from a wound in his belly. His hands clutched the hilt of a dagger imbedded in his flesh.

She blinked hard and the vision disappeared. Color and sound returned to her. What had that been about? She’d never experienced anything like it before.