Riddle in Stone (The Riddle in Stone Series - Book One) (4 page)

When Edmund awoke, he was beyond stiff. His body felt like bread that had been left out on the kitchen counter for a month. He fully expected his limbs to snap off if he moved too quickly. Even his hair seemed to hurt. But his spirits were high, the word “adventurer” echoing in the recesses of his mind.

Sitting up with a moan, he stretched as much as his complaining body would allow. Then he noticed the black and white mongrel lying against his right leg.

He didn’t know what to think about that. For whatever reason, animals had always liked him. When he was a child, birds used to land on his head and chirp away like he was in a faerie tale. More than once, squirrels scampered up his leg, trying to get into his coat pockets. Even fish schooled around him whenever he swam in the river just outside of Rood.

However, to him, animals were stupid, unsanitary creatures—dogs in particular. Every time they scratched, Edmund imagined fleas or ticks or some other kind of blood-sucking vermin jumping on him and burrowing deep underneath his skin. Dogs also stank.

Then again, it’d be nice having a traveling companion. I could name at least twenty great heroes of old who had dogs. Sandon had a dog. So did Ivan the Wanderer.

Yes, but they were all trained purebreds that were groomed regularly.

He pushed the mutt off his bedroll.

She looked at him, annoyed.

“Now, none of that,” Edmund said. “If you are going to be tag-tag-tagging along, we best set some rules, and the first one is that you sleep on the ground. I don’t expect that I’ll be able to launder my things nearly as much as I should like, so I don’t want your stench on them.”

The dog arched her back and yawned, her long pink tongue rolling out of her mouth. She sniffed Edmund’s pack.

“Yes, yes. I’m famished, too.” Reaching for his pack, he stifled another groan.

Scowling, he massaged his spine. With tentative movements, he looked under his bedroll, but discovered nothing that could have caused his discomfort. He stood, making various gasps and whimpers at each stage of the excruciating ordeal. Pinpricks of pain needled his feet. Pulling off his socks, he found his toes incased in puffy blisters.

“Damn.”

Could be worse.

Could be better.

The dog pawed Edmund’s pack.

“Hold on,” he said, gingerly lowering himself to the ground. “You don’t eat until I do. That, that, that’s rule number two.”

Wincing, he punctured the blisters with the tip of his short sword. Filmy pus oozed out from his incisions. Cutting his torn and formerly white shirt into thin strips, he wrapped his battered toes. The fabric felt smooth and oddly comforting. When he was finished, he wiggled his feet and smiled at the unimpressed dog.

“Well, there you go. That will do nicely, don’t you think?”

See, I’m not a complete failure. I can manage living in the wild!

She examined the pack.

Feeling delighted by overcoming such a potentially disabling obstacle on his own, Edmund pulled on his socks and slid a foot into one of his boots. It got stuck halfway down.

Edmund withdrew his foot and examined the boot. It was the correct one. He examined his feet. They were both swollen.

“Damn it, Ed,” he said aloud, shaking his head in disgust. “You should’ve known.”

Rubbing his bloated feet, he considered how long it would take the swelling to diminish naturally. It was early morning; the sun was still climbing over the green hills to the east. However, he wanted to put some distance between him and Rood. He was still within a full day’s walk from the surrounding farms and the last thing that he wanted was to run into somebody he knew, especially if he were going to be hobbling along like a cripple.

Lifting a paw, the dog set it on the pack, her sad brown eyes drifting over her shoulder to Edmund. He ignored her.

You’re only strong enough to cast your healing spell once a day. Best save it in case you really need it.

Without the spell, I’ll be sitting here until noon. I might as well use it now.

Suit yourself. But you better hope that you don’t miscast it or else you’ll be lying here unconscious until nightfall.

I’ll have to take that chance.

Edmund looked around, making sure nobody could possibly overhear him. Putting a hand on each foot, he concentrated on the phrase he used to recite whenever he skinned his knees as a child.

“
Smerte av reise
.”

The tenderness faded, the puffiness receded, and the flaps of loose skin that hung over his pierced blisters drew closer together.

Lying down, Edmund wondered if he was about to faint. When the tingling greyness in his head dissipated, he inhaled deeply and rubbed his eyes.

“I suppose,” he said wearily to the dog. “I suppose that my mother was right. I, I should’ve practiced my spells more when I was younger.” He got up and walked in a circle, testing his feet. “I would be better at casting if I had.”

She always said you were going to be a talented magic user.

She was just trying to be supportive. Unlike father.

He was supportive in his way. You just never appreciated him.

Edmund sighed. “But I never saw the purpose, you know?” he went on. “I never thought such things were important back then. Then again, nothing really seems important when you’re young and you have all the time in the world.”

He pulled on a fresh shirt, a thick wool tunic more suited for a cold winter evening than a hot autumn afternoon.

You should have brought more lightweight clothes. You’re going to sweat like a pig in that.

A little sweating will do me some good.

“All right then,” he said, handing his companion one of the dirt- and blood-covered pieces of dried beef he had salvaged from the road the evening before. “Here you go. Enjoy.”

The dog looked at it, then at Edmund.

“Come, come. This is all you’ll get until nightfall. We won’t be stopping until then. And, if we make good time, we can have something warm, maybe by a nice, cheery fire. Sound good?”

Reluctantly, the dog took the sullied beef and held it in her mouth like she were smoking a pipe.

“All right.” Edmund shouldered his pack and bit into one of the large red apples that he had taken from his pantry. “Off we go. Onward to destiny and all that!”

Onward to the Star of Iliandor and my first glorious adventure!

They began walking eastward along the overgrown road.

“I suppose you’ll need a name,” Edmund said after they had gone a couple miles. He was hoping that talking would get his mind off his labored breathing and stiffening legs. Plus, he wanted something to do. Examining the trees as they passed and mentally reciting each page from Iliandor’s diary—mulling over every word for hidden meanings—only occupied his mind for so long.

“Do you have a name?”

The dog didn’t answer.

“Well, you, you, you seem fit enough. You must have a home. Aren’t you going to miss it?”

Aren’t you?

The dog looked at him as if she were happy to be anywhere.

“Very well. Back to a name. You’ll need one, won’t you?”

Edmund pondered this, his mind pleased to have something new to conquer.

There were many dogs in the histories he had read, especially of the northern race to which he belonged. But they were all large, wolfish animals of great strength and heroism. Some were even said to have magic powers. And all of them always saved their owners in some absurdly spectacular way, usually at the expense of their own lives.

Perhaps that is why having a canine companion appealed to him on some level. It felt right somehow. Plus, he didn’t like the idea of sleeping out in the wild by himself, waking up with the business end of a sword inches away from his nose. Her quick ears could definitely come in handy.

He studied the black and white mutt as she trotted along beside him. She stared up at him, her tongue hanging to one side of her mouth. She blinked.

“I’m not very good at this,” Edmund admitted. “I don’t know the f-first thing about animals, actually. It’s not my area of study.”

She didn’t reply.

“Or people for that matter. Especially people. Sometimes I think they are stupider than you are. No offense, I mean.”

No offense seemed to be taken.

They followed the road around a hill crowned with oaks, many of their red and orange leaves gliding to the ground in the warm autumn breeze.

“One of the seamstresses in town, back in Rood, Hilde, had a dog once. It was a big drooling beast. You know the kind? It had all these folds in its face and these yellowish teeth jut-jut-jutting out from its lower jaw. Hideous creature. Its name was Wellington, if I recall correctly.”

They looked at each other.

“You don’t look like a Wellington, if you ask me.”

The dog’s furry head bobbed up and down, apparently agreeing.

They both fell silent for another mile.

“You’ll need something that will serve you well, you know,” Edmund said eventually. “Something that will enhance you. Something that’ll strike fear into people’s hearts or give you authority. Not like . . . ‘Edmund.’”

There was no disagreement from the dog. She just continued nodding, like a disinterested cleric listening to a confession he had heard many times before.

“See those ruins?” Edmund pointed to the top of a steep, craggy hill that was gradually growing larger in front of them.

The dog examined the distant hill.

“That’s Endris Haflen, or at least it was. It used to be an important city in these parts. Huge markets. People used to come from miles around to trade there. But then it was destroyed by the Undead King. It was his la-la-last major victory before Iliandor and his personal guard turned the tide. I bet that you didn’t know that. Had Iliandor failed to check the goblin army’s progress here, Rood would have been next. Not exactly a pleasant picture, though I don’t know why. It was ages ago. Still, it’s thought-provoking, don’t you think?” The unnamed dog sniffed at an orange leaf that had landed in the road in front of her. Nearby, a blue jay screeched in the bright autumn sky.

Edmund gestured to the branches dangling over their heads. “D-do, do, do you know that the Undead King hung people from these very limbs? He used to torture anybody he captured, women, children . . . it didn’t matter to him. He pulled out their intestines while they were still alive. Horrible. Just horrible.”

Edmund shuddered.

“In fact, this road was lined with thousands of bodies. Most of them were hanging from these big hooks that were im-im-imbed-imbedded under the victims’ jaw. They were then strung up and left to die slowly in the hot summer sun. You can still find the hooks from time to time, rusting in the grass. Big grizzly things with barbed ends. Farmers use them to pick up bales of hay.”

Gaping up at the trees, the dog moved closer to Edmund.

“At any rate,” Edmund said, feeling compelled to go on, “back to what I was saying. That’s a horrible name for a town, Endris Haflen. It means, r-rough-roughly, roughly translated, ‘Hill of Protection.’ But people often called it Endris Hedland. Which means ‘Hill of Shit.’”

The dog looked at him, evidently checking to see if she had heard correctly.

“Actually, that’s not quite an accurate interpretation. You see, ‘Hedland’ is a term for lands directly downriver from large cities, where all the refuse from the sewers go; hence the association with excrement. Which gets us back to what I was saying previously about the utility of names. You see, you need something good. Or else your future will be substantially limited. Heaven knows you don’t want to deal with a bad name for the rest of your life.”

There was another long silence.

“How about . . . Trudy or, or maybe Glenda?”

The dog stopped and squatted in the road, a yellow puddle growing on the ground beneath her.

“That bad, eh? Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I can’t imagine ‘Glenda’ charging up the Stone Heights to do battle, you know? And I don’t foresee many ballads being written for a dog named Trudy.”

More nodding.

Dry leaves crunched under their feet as they wound their way toward the hill, following the grass-covered road. Over head, nearly bare branches swayed in the warm breeze.

“It’s just that there aren’t many female heroines in the old tales,” Edmund said eventually. “So finding something appropriate is a bit, a bit challenging. You know?”

The ruins of Endris Haflen loomed closer in front of them. The collapsed walls and towers of the fortress were now in view. Edmund and the dog began passing the hulking wreckage of siege engines and other rusted equipment of war. A flock of country sparrows nesting in the remains of an attack tower took to the air as they walked by.

“What about Arta? Atheana? Anfala? Aubrey?”

None of these sparked a reply.

“Bashna? Betty?”

Betty got a wag of the head.

“Chelsea?”

Edmund continued as he climbed the steep hill to Endris Haflen, his hands pushing on his knees with every tedious step. When he approached the summit, he was on the T’s.

“Taperall?” he said, sucking in air, forcing his legs to continue onward. “Thorax?”

At Thorax, the dog barked.

“Really?” He wheezed. “Thorax? You sure?”

She raised her shaggy eyebrows.

“Well.” He attempted to catch his breath. “It’s not . . . it’s not exactly a feminine name. Actually, it’s not really a name at all. Not a proper one, that is. I just threw . . . I just threw it out there, you know? Without thinking. But I’m certainly not going to argue with you. Thorax it is. Although, I must say, you don’t strike me as a . . . as a Thorax.”

Edmund hung his backpack on a broken hitching post outside of what used to be a general store.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said when his heart stopped hammering his ribs. “Tell you what. Let’s, let’s take a break here for a few minutes. We can eat a decent lunch and rest our legs in the shade a bit. It’s going to be a warm one today.”

Edmund filled his skins with the rainwater gathered in an old trough. He drank heartily. Thorax followed suit.