The Dragon's Test (Book 3) (26 page)

Erik stood with Alferug’s help and followed the dwarf back through the dangerous pits to the forest. He barely noticed when the last of the winged wolves fell to the ground, and may not have noticed it at all had the other dwarves not let out a chorus of victory shouts and cheers.

“Nasty beasts,”
Faengoril noted when Erik finally was back in the safety of the trees.

Erik looked back to the field and doubled over, sick to his stomach.
Faengoril slapped him on the back and then motioned for the others to move back. Alferug stayed with Erik while the boy regrouped.

“I have never in my life even heard of those,” Erik said. “How is it that I can live so close to something so awful and yet have no idea it is nearby?”

Alferug spat on the black sand. “Humans have a way of not talking about things that displease or scare them,” he said. “Sometimes they ignore evil for long enough that they forget about its very existence.”

Erik shook his head and went down to his knees. “I need a few minutes,” he said.

Alferug knelt down and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Are you…” his words trailed off and Alferug looked down to Erik’s stomach. “Lean back,” he said.

Erik gave the dwarf a curious look, but Alferug was not patient enough to repeat his request. He roughly pushed Erik down to lie on his back and awkwardly pulled his legs out to set him straight. His hands went down for the bottom of Erik’s chainmail shirt and lifted it up.

“You have been bitten,” he said grimly.

Erik lifted his head, trying to look
past his clothes and armor to where Alferug was looking. “No, it bit the wolf,” Erik said. “That is just a scratch.”

“Stonebubbles,” Alferug said. “I know a bite when I see one. He may have only hit you with one fang, but he got you. Probably bit through the wolf and got you as well.”

Erik tried to sit, but he found the strength in his arms was waning. Alferug’s face became blurry, as if covered with a thick sheet of water. The boy opened his mouth to speak, but barely more than a whisper of air came out.

“
Faengoril!” Alferug shouted. The stocky dwarf bounded through the brush quicker than a rabbit, axe drawn and ready. Alferug shook his head and gestured with a nod of his chin to Erik’s stomach.

“By the Ancients,”
Faengoril muttered. “I don’t have anything for him,” he said.

“Me neither,” Alferug admitted. “Pick him up and let’s get him
strapped to a cavedog.” Faengoril reached down and plucked the boy up with one hand, slinging him over his shoulder and ran back to the main group.

“Klefil, I need your cavedog, now!”
Faengoril yelled.

“Yes sir,” the dwarf warrior shouted as he hopped off the cavedog.

Faengoril put Erik on the lizard and lashed him to it so that he would neither fall nor have any dragging limbs as the beast moved.

“Will he live?” someone else asked.
Faengoril shrugged.

“We have no remedy for him,” he said.

“There is someone who might help us,” Alferug put in as he jumped atop his cavedog.

Faengoril
spun around. “He is not fond of dwarves,” he said.

“What other choice do we have?” Alferug asked.

Faengoril looked to Erik and saw the blood draining from the boy’s pale face as the area around the puncture in his stomach started to turn purple and blue. He shook his head. “There is no other choice,” Faengoril agreed.

Alferug gave the signal and charged out. Klefil jumped onto a cavedog behind another dwarf and all tore off after Alferug. The cavedogs slithered and skittered through the woods farther to the south, but careful to stay away from the funnel spiders.

Erik’s body bounced and shook as the lizard he was lashed to darted under a fallen oak and then leapt up onto an outcropping of boulders that allowed it to cross a brook without getting wet. The dwarves traveled at a grueling pace for the space of two hours before they finally came to a green knoll in the middle of a small clearing. Marigolds and poppy flowers caught the last light of dusk as the dwarves dismounted and walked through the knee-high grass up to a wooden hut at the top of the hill.

“Hatatuk,” Alferug called out. “Hatatuk, are you home?”

The door opened and a two foot tall gnome with a long, hooked nose and wispy gray whiskers dangling from his angular chin emerged. He rubbed a bony hand over his liver-spotted bald head and stared up at Alferug through a pair of thick spectacles.

“What do you want, eh?” Hatatuk inquired.

“We need a healer,” Alferug replied.

“
Can’t help you,” Hatatuk snipped. “Go north to Buktah.”

“You don’t understand,” Alferug said as he stuck his hand out and stopped the gnome from closing the door to the hut.

The gnome snapped his fingers and out from hidden holes in the ground popped a small army of young gnomes, most holding spears leveled at the dwarves, some holding short crossbows. “You must truly be desperate to come here,” Hatatuk said. “Everyone knows I have no love for the dwarves.” His beady, blue eyes looked Alferug up and down and then he glanced out to the others. “I suggest you leave, you are trying my patience.”

“It isn’t for a dwarf,”
Faengoril bellowed as he stepped forward. A pair of gnomes pressed the tips of their spears into his chest just enough to force the dwarf to stop walking. He glowered at them for a moment and swept the spears away abruptly. “It’s for him,” he insisted as he stepped to the side and revealed Erik lying upon a cavedog’s back.

“Can’t help you,” Hatatuk
repeated.

“He is the Champion of Truth,” Alferug said.

Hatatuk stopped and turned back around slowly. “That is the Keeper of Secrets,” Hatatuk said. “I can see for myself that it is Master Lepkin.”

“Still you won’t help?”
Faengoril growled. “Why?”

Hatatuk reached up and pulled his spectacles down to clean them with an old brown cloth he pulled from his green trouser pocket. “Where was he when the Wyrms of Khaltoun first arrived in the Middle Kingdom?” he asked. “Where were any of you?” He slipped his spectacles back over his nose and wrinkled his forehead. “We were the first to see them, in the islands in the west. We tried to warn you, but none came to our aid. You let us die by the hundreds. When we escaped and sought refuge, no one would take us in. We had to come here.” Hatatuk gestured around the field with a sweep of his arm. “We had to come out and live deep in the forest past the funnel spiders and next to the old giants who roamed these parts at that time.”

Alferug looked to the ground. “Neither I, nor my father lived during that time,” he said.

“True, a gnome’s life is much longer than that of a dwarf, to say nothing of a human’s lifespan, but I was there, and I remember the way your grandfathers treated us. Now you come to me as though I should
owe you anything. I suggest you leave.”

“To punish us for the wrongs our ancestors did to your people only perpetuates the bad blood between our people.
”

“You perpetuate it yourself,” Hatatuk said. “I have not seen you come to us before with offers to help us find a new home, and certainly no one has come forward to help us reclaim our homelands.”

“What is done is done,” Alferug said firmly. He pointed to Erik. “This may be Lepkin’s body, but inside is the spirit of a boy who is the Champion of Truth,” he said. “He has been stuck by a funnel spider’s fang, and we do not have the time to go to Buktah.”

“If you fail to help him, you will not only condemn the dwarves and humans to death, but yourselves as well. How does that sit with your sense of justice?”
Faengoril asked.

Hatatuk stepped forward and extended his hand out over Erik, letting it hover ov
er the wound in his stomach. “Jaleal, Mecarrel, go inside and fetch me the tincture of glory-root, the jar of ground bitter-finger leaves, and the salve of lurevan root.”

Two gnomes nodded and disappeared down the holes they had popped up from.

“Thank you,” Alferug said. He started to step forward but Hatatuk reached out and stopped him.

“I’ll treat him, but none of you are going inside. Have your warriors go back into the trees, you may stay here with me while I work.”

Faengoril looked at Alferug and shook his head disapprovingly, but Alferug held up a hand and pointed to the trees. “Please do as our host requests,” Alferug said. He could tell by Faengoril’s reddening face that the dwarf was anything but happy about the situation, but to his credit he kept his mouth closed and moved the others back.

Hatatuk began removing the rope from around Erik. “Command your foul beast to go with them,” the gnome said.

Alferug helped lay Erik’s body on the grass and then mentally commanded the cavedog to join the others. Just as the beast disappeared through a bush of brambles and briars, the other gnomes emerged from the hut’s doorway holding several colored jars and bottles.

“We also brought this for the pain,” Jaleal said as he handed a pink bottle to Hatatuk.

“And this for the fever,” Mecarrel added as he held out a green bottle.

Alferug could see that Hatatuk was not well pleased, but he took the extra medicines anyway and began administering to Erik. “Give me the tincture,” he said as he knelt over Erik and pulled the clothing away. Jaleal handed him a dark brown bottle and Hatatuk popped the cork and generously poured the pungent liquid directly into the wound. Bubble
s and foam rose out of the hole and Erik convulsed and babbled nonsensically.

Jaleal stepped forward and
poured some of the caramel liquid from the pink bottle into Erik’s mouth. He followed that with a chaser from the green bottle. Hatatuk took the bottle from him and set it on the ground.

“That is more than enough to fix an ox,” he grumbled.

Jaleal backed away and let Hatatuk work. The gnome leaned over and sniffed the wound. The putrid, fizzing hole seethed with a sickly gray liquid. Hatatuk pressed his bony fingers into Erik’s abdomen and applied just enough pressure to force more of the liquid out, then he reached his hand back to Jaleal and took a thick cloth from him and sopped up the goop from Erik’s skin.

“Pour more of the tincture in after this next purge,” Hatatuk instructed. His beady little blue eyes never looked away from the hole in Erik’s stomach as he massaged Erik’s abdomen and worked more of the bubbling liquid out.
Then he pressed in deep and copious amounts of the liquid flowed out, followed by a spurt of curdled purple blood clots. Hatatuk pinched around the wound with his right hand as he wiped the area clean with his left.

Jaleal deftly moved in over Ha
tatuk’s hand and poured the liquid into the gaping hole. White bubbles foamed up as before and Erik writhed, moaning and groaning.

“Come hold his legs, dwarf,” Hatatuk said.

Alferug jumped to and seized Erik’s legs, pinning them solidly to the ground so the gnomes could finish their work.

“Give me the salve of lurevan,” Hatatuk said. Jaleal handed him the jar and Hatatuk drew a generous amount out with his index and middle fingers. The salve was thick, like yogurt, and he drizzled it from his fingers to the wound below, carefully aiming so that it dropped in as far as possible. When the last bits had fallen from his finger he snapped his fingers and muttered something to the grass behind him. A blade of grass stretched wide, shifting into a large, soft leaf instead of a thin, grainy blade. Hatatuk plucked the leaf from the ground and wiped his fingers on the underside of it. Then he folded the leaf into a bowl shape. “Pour the ground bitter-finger root inside.”

Jaleal unscrewed the top and poured half of the contents into the leaf.

Hatatuk folded the sides of the leaf over the top and started to squish and crush the poultice just until a slight amount of moisture from the leaf
broke through its skin. He then held the poultice out over the grass and two blades stretched up to wrap themselves around the bundle and tie it together. Then he stuck the poultice directly over the hole and pressed it in so that roughly a third of it was in the wound.

“This will draw the rest of the poison back and clean the blood,” Jaleal explained.

“He’ll make it, then?” Alferug asked.

Jaleal nodded. “Most likely he should be fine by the morning.”

Hatatuk rose to his feet. “Just remember that this doesn’t engender any love between me and your kind,” he said. “I did it only because the Champion of Truth is the only being capable of stopping what is coming.”

“You could join us,” Alferug said.

Hatatuk shook his head and folded his bony arms. “My part is done,” he said. “As you left me and my kind to our fate, so shall I leave you to yours.”

“You just said you understand how serious this is, why not come with us and help us fight?”

“No,” Hatatuk said.

Alferug stood and watched the gnomes disappear into the hut as the last rays of daylight faded and the shadow of night swept in. Alferug turned to face the woods and motioned for
Faengoril to come and help. The stout dwarf rushed back up the hill, a cavedog on his heels and the rope in his hands. The two of them picked Erik up and laid him on the lizard’s back, being careful not to disturb the poultice as they lashed him in place.