something too big for the hole was trying to dig its way in.
Gustin drew a deep breath and concentrated as he had never concentrated before. Then he opened his mouth and let his voice sail out and away from him, using the very same spell that had so startled the adventurers in the tavern. “Here I am! Here I am!” His words should be sounding from the very top of the hill fort’s crumbling tower if his spell worked.
He held his breath, keeping perfectly still. Faintly, distantly, he heard the scrape of a heavy body moving away.
“We found a way but we could not use that,” Wervyn had said. Not a lock, not a barred door, Gustin decided. But a creature hunting in the tunnels under the fort? Is that what had driven the adventurers above ground and to this second, futile attempt, using him to rob the safe room?
He dashed across the room, running his hands across the dank and soiled walls. Solid stone scraped his palms. He ran a circuit of the room, banging heavily against walls, kicking at the foundations, looking in the waning light of his spell for any sign of a door.
When he found it, he practically tumbled through it. Rotted wood painted to look like stone gave way before his frantic blows. He kicked a hole large enough to crawl through and found himself at the base of a bare stone stair twisting up toward the fort’s main gate.
With as light a step as possible, Gustin speeded up the stairs to arrive, panting, at the top. By the slant of the shadows covering the courtyard, he had been below ground for barely an hour, perhaps even less. But he was acutely aware of the unnatural stillness of the woods beyond the ruins. Not a bird chirped, not an insect buzzed.
Above his head, he heard a cry, almost startling him from his crouched hiding place at the top of the stairs. Then he realized it was his own voice, still echoing among the stones: “Here I am! Here I am!”
“Where are you, boy? Why are you hiding?” A great shadow passed overheard as something huge and beastly clattered along the guards’ walkway that ran across the top of the fort’s wall. The voice was Nerhaltan’s but the shadow cast by the dropping sun upon the weed-choked courtyard was too large to be that of the slender man.
Gustin crept under the broken arch of the main gate. He slid around the gate’s main pillar, hugging as tightly to the wall as he could, hoping whatever prowled above him would not glance down.
The woods were very close, he told himself firmly. He only had to sprint a short distance with no cover at all before he could lose himself in the friendly shadows under the trees. Whatever hunted at the top of the wall surely could not leap down and catch him before he reached the trees. All these arguments made perfect sense in his head but he could not persuade his trembling body to leave the relative safety of the wall.
Then he remembered Nerhaltan pushing him down the hole with uneasy glances toward all sides.
Gustin stared in the direction of the hole where he first entered the hill fort. He could easily see the loose dirt piled outside the wall. Equally easily, he could make out the distinct shape of a man’s boot leaning against the wall. It looked very much like Nerhaltan’s leg. As for the rest of the dandy, there was no sign. Just the one leg leaning against the blood-splattered wall.
Fighting back the bile rising in his throat, Gustin prepared to run as he had never run before. Directly above him, he heard the beast cry out in Nerhaltan’s voice, “There you are, clever boy!”
Another shout sounded across the meadow: “Gustin!”
Emerging from the trees, his uncle ran toward him, shouldering the heavy crossbow that he kept over the mantle for winter’s wolves and other raiders of the chicken coop.
Behind his uncle strode the widow, her hands alight with flame. “Get down!” she yelled, even as his uncle dropped to one knee and fired an iron bolt over Gustin’s head.
Gustin flattened himself in the weeds at the base of the wall. He heard the beast above cry out in pain, no longer disguising its voice, but screaming with a ferocious roar of frustrated bloodlust.
The widow spat out the words of a spell and long ropes of flame streamed from her outstretched fingers. The beast howled louder. The stench of scorched flesh and fur rolled over the gagging Gustin as he crawled as hastily as possible away from the wall.
His uncle reloaded the crossbow and shot again. The second bolt also struck home. The beast coughed and called out weirdly in the voice of the dandy: “Ah, the blood, the blood.”
A heavy body crashed down from the guards’ walk at the top of the wall. Gustin rolled over and stared down the length of his body. Framed between his boot toes was a hideous blend of a stag’s legs with a lion’s body and a giant badger’s head. A tufted tail lashed from side to side as the wounded creature struggled to its hooves. It kicked out at Gustin but a blaze of fire from the advancing widow drove it briefly away from the boy.
Gustin scrambled to his feet. The badger head swayed back and forth, the open mouth blowing out a carrion breath that made him gag. Bony ridges lined the inside of its black lips, clearly visible, far too close to his nose.
Raising his own hands, Gustin repeated the spell being shouted by the widow. It was louder and longer than the one that she had taught him to light a candle. Smoke rather than fire blossomed at his fingertips. Cursing his fumble of the spell, he flung the smoke at the beast’s eyes. Baffled and choking on the thick black smoke streaming from Gustin’s hands, it wheeled around, racing away from Gustin to the safety of the trees.
A third bolt from his uncle’s crossbow pierced the creature’s throat. It tumbled over its hooves, crumbling into the grass.
With three strides, Gustin’s uncle reached him and swept him up in a hard one-armed embrace. Then he dropped Gustin with a thump. “I told you to stay away from magic,” he growled. “I told you to stay away from those men.”
“Ah,” said the widow, crushing Gustin in her own mint-scented embrace. “Leave the boy alone. How was he to know there was a leucrotta in these ruins?”
Gustin wiggled his way out of the widow’s hug. “Where are they?” he said, looking around for the tall fighter and his dwarf companion.
“Run off!” snorted his uncle. “We saw them on the road.”
“He’s been searching for you all morning,” the widow whispered in Gustin’s ear.
“But why?”
“Because you are family,” grunted his uncle, shouldering his crossbow and stepping around the dead beast in the meadow.
“That’s worth something,” the widow said, pointing at the leucrotta’s body.
His uncle shrugged. “Send them out from the village to fetch it. It’s magic and I’ll have none of it.”
“It wasn’t magic that killed her,” the widow said. “And it won’t be magic that kills this boy.”
His uncle shook his head and stomped off. The widow sighed. “There goes a stubborn man. It wasn’t magic, that’s what I keep telling him.”
“Who? Who died?” But even as he asked, he knew the answers. It was as close to his heart as her book about Waterdeep.
“Your mother was always twice the wizard that I was,” said the widow. “And restless with it. That farm was far too small to hold her. But it stole the laughter from him when she took to wandering. She was all the family he had.”
“He has me.” Gustin knew even as he said it that the day was coming when he would follow his mother’s footsteps out of the village. The adventurers might have tricked him, even run off and left him, but it didn’t make their tales any less appealing. He would go to Waterdeep and see the City of Splendors for himself.
“Make me a promise,” said the widow as they walked through the woods. “The next time you leave, tell us both good-bye. Don’t make her mistake and go running off without a word.”
“I promise,” Gustin said, and with a whisper of magic, he made his words echo from all the treetops.
TO CHAOS AND BACK AGAIN
