Wandering Lark (15 page)

Well then, I shall follow Father’s trail and see where that leads.

For surely, his father was on Alaric’s trail. Fenelon closed his eyes and touched Gareth’s essence with mage senses. He had clearly left this place. Fenelon opened his eyes, keeping the thin stream of his father’s passing firmly attuned to his mage senses and started out of the hut. Gareth had gone walking for a ways. His path followed the moors for a distance, passed through another grove then crested a hill. And there it stopped at a standing stone.

“Never saw this before,” Fenelon muttered under his breath. He walked around the stone, studying the marks that cut its surface. Then carefully, he placed a hand on its surface.

The bone-deep thrum of ancient magic filled the stone. Fenelon drove mage senses into it and quickly learned that it ran deep into the earth. He tried to follow it, but as soon as he entered it with his awareness, there was a hard blockade. Fenelon pushed against it to no avail. The magic here would not let him pass. Yet even obstructed as he was, Fenelon knew one thing for certain. This was a gateway.

But to where?

His father had been here, but Gareth had not gone this way. Fenelon could feel a gate spell outside the stone that bore Gareth’s essence in the making.

All right, then. He would follow his father’s path. But the stone’s resistance was such a temptation.

And a waste of my time, of which I suspect I have precious little, knowing Wendon.

Best Fenelon get on and find Gareth, if that was possible.

He honed in on the essence and the gate spell and sifted it for what he could. Then calling his own spell, he opened a gate to follow.

Gareth had made it to the
Great River with little effort. From there, he opened his next gate into the northeast of Ross-Mhor and the village of Blue Oak. Now he stood on the edge of a platform looking down at the ground well below. It amazed him still that trees grew to be such giants in this land, whole villages could be built in their branches and trunks.

“I do wish you wouldn’t do that, Gareth. I keep thinking I’m going to be ill.”

With a grin, Gareth put his back to the rail and turned to face the speaker. A small wiry man with a pointed, trim red-brown beard and chocolate brown eyes, who stood hardly taller than Gareth’s chest, was sitting on a table cross-legged and flipping wooden tiles over.  Each time, he managed to match the symbols—which Gareth noticed was every time—he would push those tiles into a pile over on one side where a rather stuffed pouch of coins rested. He had just won those from a group of surly men who had been considering inappropriate uses for the little man’s head when Gareth arrived. They withdrew their threats and themselves when the mageborn revealed his heritage, but Gareth heard them muttering under their breath, cursing his magical ancestry as well as the Dvergar’s craftiness.
Hobbler, will you ever learn?
Gareth thought as he closed his eyes and brushed the tiles with mage senses.  Their magic sang to Gareth. He even recognized the caster who had created them.

“Stone Folk don’t do well with heights,” Hobbler added.

“But they do quite well at winning games of Turn Tiles,” Gareth said as he walked over to the table and took a chair.

“Can I help it if I am lucky?”

“I think luck has little to do with it, Hobbler,” Gareth said and picked up two tiles. They did not match. He picked up two more and tried over and over, and still, he could find none that matched. Gareth chuckled and the Dvergar looked a little disturbed. “These are fascinating.”

“Come on, Gareth, you’re not going to spoil it for me, are you?” Hobbler asked.

“Depends,” Gareth said.

“On what?” Hobbler asked.

“On whether you will agree to take me to Baldoran’s Pass.”

Hobbler worked his face into a comical grin so that he looked more like a bogie imp than a Dvergar. “What makes you think I know how to get to Baldoran’s Pass,” he said.

“You told me you had been there once before.”

“When?”

“When I saved your hide from that angry elemental,” Gareth said.

“Aye, well, that was over two hundred years ago, Gareth. Can’t expect me to remember the way after all this time.”

“Can’t I?” Gareth said and picked up two more tiles with the same results as before. “That smith wasn’t too happy to lose his day’s earnings any more than those farmers were.” He moved another tile.

Hobbler sighed. “Ah, Gareth, you wouldn’t.”

“Will you take me to Baldoran’s Pass?”

“When do we leave?” Hobbler asked with a frown.

“First thing tomorrow,” Gareth said.

“Certainly,” Hobbler said. He hopped off the table and gathered his tiles into a sack. “Just let me go home and fetch a few things for the...”

“I’ll go with you and help you carry your things,” Gareth said and rose. “That way, I can be sure you will be here in the morning.”

“Well, I will be here, Gareth,” Hobbler said.

“Of course you will,” Gareth said. “Because I plan to keep you here at my side all night.”

Hobbler sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, Gareth,” he said.

“I suspect the smith would drive a harder one,” Gareth said with a smile.

“You have a point there,” Hobbler agreed. “Well, come on then.”

He started for the stairs that led from this level of the tree-tavern to the next. Gareth climbed out of his chair, set his ale aside and followed.

Hobbler led the way along a series of platforms until he reached the heart of the great tree city. There, he slipped into one of the tunnels that had been worked through the wood of the giant tree and lacquered to keep the sap from running and the tree still alive. At length, he stopped before a door, and producing a key, he unlocked and opened it.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Hobbler said.

“After you,” Gareth insisted.

Hobbler opened his mouth as though to protest, then shook his head and stepped inside. Grinning, Gareth ducked under the low lintel and entered the shadows whispering
“Loisg.”
Pale light formed around his hand and revealed the windowless chamber carved into the heart of the tree. The furnishings were spare, and it almost reminded Gareth of a cave.
How appropriate for a Dvergar,
he mused, to select living quarters so far from the surface that resembled his subterranean place of birth.

“It’s not much to look at, I know,” Hobbler said. “But I call it home.”

Hobbler crossed over to a trunk as he spoke. Gareth watched as the Dvergar touched several places in the carved design in a specific order. There was a click, and the lid opened. Hobbler reached into those depths and pulled out several scrolls, a sack and some clothes. He pressed all of these into a leather satchel.

“All right,” he said as he turned back and grinned. “I’m ready.”

“Just like that?” Gareth said.

“We Stone Folk like to travel light,” Hobbler said. “But you should know that, considering how often you’ve traveled with my kinfolk through The Ranges.”

Gareth nodded. “Then let us get back to the inn,” he said.

“What’s your hurry?” Hobbler said.

“Dark has already fallen,” Gareth said. “I want to be up before sunrise.”

Hobbler shrugged. “Very well.” He gestured for Gareth to lead the way.

“You first, Hobbler,” Gareth said. “You led me into this warren. Now you have to lead me out.

Hobbler rolled his eyes. “Men...you’re a mage and you still get lost in a tree.”

He headed for the door with Gareth close behind.

The return trip took a little
longer, but then they were climbing stairs back to the Rambling Boughs Inn where Gareth had engaged a room for the night. By the time they arrived, the tavern was putting customers out the door. Keeping a firm grasp on Hobbler’s shoulder—it would be so easy to lose the Dvergar in the departing crowd, and knowing Hobbler, he would grab such an opportunity without thinking twice—Gareth wormed his way through the mass of bodies, waved to the landlord and headed for the stairs to his room.

The residents of Ross-Mhor had long ago figured out how to grow sturdy branches and build natural wood walls that did no damage to the living tree. They treated the trees like relations, naming them, revering them—and sometimes, Gareth thought they might secretly worship them. Blue Oak was said to be nearly two thousand years old, a survivor of the Great Cataclysm. One of the oldest trees in this region. There had been a village here since before the coming of the Haxons. It was a massive city in the boughs now.

The stairs were open to the air, but they had rails and were covered with natural looking branches woven in such a way as to repel the rain. The rooms were on various levels, taking advantage of the tree’s multitude of branches. Gareth had one of the highest private rooms, one set apart a little and affording a grand view of the world over the tops of huge trees. Of course there were dwellings well above him. He had only to peer over the rail and up to see them.  But for the moment, with the last rays of the sun disappearing over the horizon, all he wanted to do was get to his bed. He would have to plant wards around to make sure Hobbler stayed put first.

Hobbler said little as they climbed the last set of stairs that would lead to the door to Gareth’s room. He seemed more keenly interested in watching a pair of young women—both slightly disheveled and giggling giddily—who were descending from above.

Gareth paused as they passed. From above? His room was above. He looked up and noticed that his door was not quite as shut as it had been when he left.

“Something is wrong here,” Gareth said, putting a hand on Hobbler’s shoulder in a protective gesture.

“Wrong?” Hobbler said. “They didn’t look the least bit wrong to me. I like them young and tall and...well...beardless...”

“Thought that was a myth,” Gareth said. “I’ve never met a female Dvergar with a beard.”

“That’s because they all shave—everything,” Hobbler said. “But the stubble.” He shuddered. “Stiff as boar’s bristles. Give me the soft flesh of a long legged woman any day.”

Gareth gestured for silence and slowly advanced up the stairs. He sent mage senses searching ahead of him and felt a familiar flash of an aura that he could have found in his sleep. Growling in his chest, he hurried up the last of the stairs and shoved the door open.

Fenelon lounged on the bed, his shirt open to the waist.

“What in the name of Cernunnos!” Gareth growled.

“Ah, I thought this was your room, Father,” Fenelon said and sat up, grinning like a jackanapes, and Gareth was ever so tempted to cast a fist of air to strike that smile away.

“Someone you know?” Hobbler asked, peering around Gareth.

“My son,” Gareth said. “Whom I last saw chained to the wall in the tower at Dun Gealach.”

“Yes, well,” Fenelon said and pushed back his hair where it insisted on falling in his face. “As far as Turlough and anyone else are concerned, I am still in the tower. Who’s the Dvergar?”

Gareth took a deep breath to quell the last of his ire. “This is Hobbler. Hobbler, my son Fenelon Greenfyn. Now that the introductions have been made, kindly get off my bed. I’m going to need it.”

Fenelon’s eyebrows shot up. He glanced from Gareth to Hobbler and back. “Really, Father, did mother know you had a taste for Dvergar?”

Gareth slammed the door hard, and Fenelon flinched a little. Hobbler jumped like a scalded toad. Gareth applied a gentle enough grasp to the Dvergar’s arm to propel him away from the door. “There should be a trundle large enough to accommodate you, Hobbler.”

“And where will I sleep?” Fenelon asked.

“On the floor, if you vex me,” Gareth said. “Now how did you find me, and how did you escape the tower?”

Fenelon crawled almost timidly off the bed. He claimed the only chair in the room. “Getting out was a mere matter of finding someone to replace me.”

“Who did you shape shift into?” Gareth asked.

“Wendon graciously loaned me his form,” Fenelon said with a smile.