through the night.
“He’s a naive fool,” Trevin commented quietly.
“It’s a matter of viewpoints,” Vanx replied.
“What do you mean?”
“We are here looking at the fire, and he is getting his wick wetted,” Vanx shrugged, letting his own high- browed grin punctuate the statement. “How could he be a fool?”
Trevin chuckled at the truth of it, but glanced at Gallarael. Vanx watched the mirth drain from his face. The girl’s arm was still swollen and the fang marks on her wrist looked like puckering sores. Otherwise, she looked like she was sleeping soundly.
“Either we will get her out of here and get her well, or we won’t,” Vanx said. He meant to be encouraging but the words didn’t come close to conveying his sentiment. Trevin must have caught the gist of the comment because he nodded silently.
Vanx retrieved the pack Matty had examined earlier and explored its contents in the firelight. Some of the pouches of herbs and powders contained substances that Vanx recognized. These were components used in the casting of spells. Some of them were the kind of ingredients needed to cast spells of the most potent nature. The scrolls confirmed that the bag belonged to a human wizard. The writings were incantations, directions, and recipes all written in Kingscript.
Kingscript was the written language of choice for the Parydon nobility because the wording and flow were too elaborate for the average citizen to grasp. Had it been a Zythian wizard’s pack, there would have been no scrolls. Vanx knew a few spells, of the most basic sort, but nothing substantial enough to even consider himself a dabbler.
His curiosity was now piqued to the point of restlessness, so he made a decision.
“When Matty and Darbon return, I am going to scout our surroundings.”
Trevin, seemingly lost in his brooding, only nodded and moved over to Gallarael’s side.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A battle they did fight
across the land and in the sky.
Against dragons and dark demons
By the thousands they did die.
It was full dark, with very little of the moon’s light filtering through the trees, but Vanx saw just fine. The odd, grisly scene he found was startling but not unexpected. There were three dead horses and five dead kingdom men, all of them starting into the process of being reclaimed by the earth. Most of the bodies had been looted of belt and pack. Only a broken bow and an almost empty quiver of arrows lay about. Not even a dagger remained, and some of the clothing and boots were missing as well.
The bodies were too far gone to tell what had killed them, but Vanx found a few sets of huge, deeply pressed footprints and had to assume an ogre had been around, either during the skirmish, or just after. The only thing that was discernible was that one of the horses fled the scene, possibly with a rider, and someone on foot had started away from the massacre and then vanished in his tracks. His first thought was that the disappearing tracks belonged to the wizardly owner of the pack they’d found earlier. Then another idea occurred to him. An ogre could have plucked a running man right off his feet and hurled him, or if the ogre were hungry enough, worse.
As Vanx surveyed the forest around the area he found only two stray arrows. He managed to startle off some hissing thing that had come to feed on the rot. He hadn’t even noticed the creature and had to spend a moment letting his thudding heart settle back in his chest before he continued. The beast’s presence completely surprised Vanx and he took that as a sign of warning. Other carrion feeders, both large and small, would come around before the night was over. Some were possibly lurking in the darkness this very moment. Wood trolls were sometimes drawn to a decaying carcass. A whole pack of trolls might come to this feast.
There was only one of them. For a few heartbeats both were still, taking the other in. The Kobalt finally barked out a grunt and pointed in the direction the disappearing foot tracks led.
Vanx saw that this creature wasn’t the one with the bandolier sash. This Kobalt did have a dagger in its clawed hand, though. Before Vanx could take in any more details, the wolf bounded away, carrying its rider into the darkness.
Not sure what else to do, Vanx cautiously explored the forest in the direction the Kobalt had indicated. The tracks didn’t pick back up immediately, but after a short way he found an area of shrub and thicket that had been broken and trampled, as if a body had fallen from the trees and landed there. His assessment of an angry ogre hurling the fleeing man came back to him and he wondered if Zytha herself wasn’t guiding his perceptions this night.
From the trampled undergrowth a set of foot tracks led haphazardly through the forest. This person was either bewildered from injury or no experienced forester, for the trail Vanx followed led right through a thick patch of itch-ivy. Vanx circumvented the growth and found where the trail continued. Broken branches, kicked leaves, rubbed bark, and a well-munched apple core marked the way. Oddly, the trail eventually led right back to the stream bed. Vanx estimated that he was about a mile upstream from the campsite where his companions were resting.
He decided that the pack they’d found had been on this man’s back when he ventured into the camp. He also figured that if he looked close enough he would be able to see where the man left the camp the second time.
He was walking along the stream’s edge on the whitewashed rocks when he noticed a faint lavender glow emanating out of the trees. More curious than alarmed, he eased closer to the inexplicable phenomenon. As he drew nearer he picked up the faint smell of charred meat, and a clean ozone scent prickled at the hairs on the back of his neck. It was magic. He knew the sensation well. Master Bylizar, a scholar of the archaic arts back on the Isle of Zyth, had constantly reeked of the smell. It was potent here. Vanx was more careful as he crept in, but it turned out that the caution wasn’t necessary.
A glowing lavender dome rose out of the forest floor in an open space barely big enough to contain it. It was head high and appeared to be perfectly spherical, but only half of the globe rose above the earth. The thin-looking skin of the magical force was translucent. Lying still at the center of the protective field was a man.
He looked frail and thin in his wizard’s robe, and the boots he wore seemed to be far too large for his feet. There was an explosive splay of grey hair and beard poking out of the robe’s collar and neck, and the robe was hiked up at the legs and sleeves, revealing spindly limbs swollen and covered with a rash. Lying alongside the humming magical globe was the body of an ogre. Only this ogre had been charred to little more than ash.
Vanx decided right then not to touch the magical barrier that protected the wizard. Apparently the ogre had made that mistake and paid a heavy price for it. The beast had been charred to an ashy husk so quickly that not even a trace of grease or body fluids remained. When a body is burned so badly that it doesn’t even attract carrion or give off a scent, it could only have been burned by wizard’s fire or other magical means. Vanx found the tracks of another ogre, but these led away from the lavender dome in a widely-spaced pattern that Vanx envisioned as an ogre’s terrified run. It probably bolted away after seeing its companion’s life so violently taken away. Vanx didn’t sense any immediate threat in the area so he decided to attempt to communicate with the wizard.
“Ho there,” he said in a loud whisper. “Are you alive?”
Obviously the man was alive. His chest was rising and falling as if he were in a deep sleep, but still he didn’t stir.
