Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I (19 page)

Baus sank to
his haunches; his heart beat with frustration. The temperature had
plummeted significantly, leaving the air dry and a frosty patina
settling on the ground. Ruefully Baus put his attention on Nuzbek
and his cursed umbrella-based conveyance. How convenient it would
be to command that vehicle! But he had no magic by which to
command. The pyramid remained cached somewhere on Nuzbek’s
person—in the murk where he traded jests with Dighcan.

Baus fidgeted.
Perhaps a clue lay along the northern wall. The idea was
evocative.

With a
careless grunt, he scrambled to his feet and loped gingerly out in
the frost-dusted terrain.

The plaintive
call of a coyote drifted over the wall. Its effect was like a sharp
lamentation on the lonely silence. Looking up into the
star-jewelled sky, he saw the northern rampart rising intolerably
high; the beobar loomed as a satin curtain; the foliage was
monstrously frost-dusted in higher, swarthier ranks. No rope or
ladder was long enough to access those twining boughs tucked in
knots and clusters below the highest plumes. Aside from a few
vagrant breezes, all was still.

Baus strained
eyes upon the turf, the place where Nuzbek had buried the jars.
Four equally-sized vessels were interred underfoot, each with its
own eccentric and desperate occupant.

Baus caught
himself wondering: why were they so dangerous? The creatures held
allure—but did they house magic? If so, an idea flashed in his mind
. . . would it hurt so much to unearth one of the inhabitants and
check if he/she sheltered enchanted items? The risk was large, but
the rewards were great.

Baus bit
fretfully at his nail. Perhaps five minutes had elapsed since his
last stunning. He must not waste time. The possibility of one of
the unearthed things leaping at his throat in a bout of madness . .
. it was not negligible . . . but then again, speculations of this
sort were only presumptions.

Dropping to
his knees, he began to claw furiously at the turf. One inch . . .
two inches. His nails suddenly scratched at hard metal.

He spread away
the sand. A tantalum-coloured lid gleamed in the moonlight. The
metal was cold, hardly graspable, but it was inviting. Some effort
would be required to dislodge the cylinder from the ground, but
another thought: better to let the glass rest in the earth in the
event he had to cover it up quickly.

Baus cranked
the lid around. It erupted in a grating creak—an action which made
him wince and required the use of his full force.

The lid
snapped ajar. Tock! A strange pressurized pop like water gurgling
from a snail’s shell. Out came a hissing gloop of musty airs, like
a preserve of ancient pickles.

Baus inched
his way back, amazed. Bubbles formed on the liquid’s surface,
popping and breaking like sea spume. A green cap surfaced, plumed
with white feathers. A small clothed head poked its way up and Baus
heard a dolorous sigh. A set of hazel eyes blinked, twinkled like
soft, glowing jewels. The mouth opened, showing a fine set of
polished teeth. The figure rasped:

“Who are you?
Why is it so dark?” The silky-beige locks were plastered wetly
against the pale, raw-boned cheeks.

Baus scrambled
back in shock. The figure had uttered words. Logically, this meant
he or ‘it’ was still alive.

Baus finally
found his voice: “Is it nightfall, or am I dreaming? You are in
Heagram prison. A leprechaun? —a sprite? I am Baus of
Heagram—alive, but how can you still be alive after so much
internment?”

The figure
arched his way forth with a fractured croak. He shook his head with
contempt. “What do you mean, who am I, villain? Who in the devil
are you? I am Trimestrius the Third . . . Third Descendant of the
House of Witherwell of Desenion. Can you not see the pedigree
embroidered on my vest?” He thrust out his chest, which displayed a
faded, triple-ruffed, stylish green doublet on which he looked down
in amazement to find himself plunged in a foul liquid that was half
buried in sand.

His brows
knitted in confusion. “What? I am soaked in brine and encircled in
glass! Very unsatisfactory!—my own voice seems strange to my ears!
As if I haven’t talked in an age. Hellfire and damnation! Has it
been that long since I harboured voice or memory?”

Green eyes
flashed upon Baus with suspicion; the midget pinched his face into
a dark mask, curling lips back in bewilderment. The realization of
his own smallness had plunged him into a catalepsy. He flung out
his rapier, gleaming sullenly in the moonlight.

“Heagram, you
say, eh knave?” Flourishing his weapon, he stabbed out at Baus with
reckless force. “Where in the name of Hellspot is that? No
dissembling either, you uncouth rogue, or I tickle you with my
bodkin, which is magical and as you see is plainly what I call
Lolispar.”

Baus forced
himself a reply of friendly wonder: “Heagram is on the northern
shores of Bindar—past Tavilnook and Brimhaven.”

The figure did
not seem to recognize the names. Idly, he frowned, pulling at his
ear. “Are they far from Aurenham?”

Baus frowned.
“Where is that?”

The newcomer
glared at him. “Where is Voduspur, my valet, and why am I not at
Desenion in my chamber?”

Baus shook his
head in perplexity. “These names mean nothing to me.”

“Do they not?”
The little green-garbed dwarf’s astonishment was considerable. “You
don’t know Desenion—or Aurenham?. . . The emerald keep of the
Magistrar? The three ancient turrets? Ridiculous!” The dwarf leaped
out of his jar, stumbling toward Baus with awkward speed—an action
conceivably remarkable for one who had been entombed for a great
length. His drenched doublet was plastered to his skin, the hose no
less tight; the figure underneath was sleek, and a well-shaped man
of youthful bearing and impassioned temperament. The offensive
liquid that dripped from his garments reeked of musselwort and
vinegar, and not surprisingly, the frame he bore seemed to rock
with a strange paroxysm threatening to twist him from inside
out.

Baus hastened
back. The incident smacked of weirdness. He could only conjecture
what Nuzbek’s spell had done to the poor creature.

“I remember!”
shrilled the homunculus. “Oh, for the love of Galaspar!” His
swollen face was ashen; he seemed stricken with a grief and loss
beyond parallel. “My place of ancestry! Beloved Desenion!” He threw
his hands over his eyes and emitted a plangent cry that flew into
the night, distressing Baus to the extreme.

“It was on
Saelsmir moor! In the light of the afternoon haze—on an ill fate
set against me—in the form of the
Huarbane
.”

Baus expressed
perplexity but the little man persisted. “The crafty, murderous
Huarbane—sent by Aurimag! A Lolarpian horror, hatched from a
chicken egg of evil —a creature of myth; it would strike terror
into anyone’s heart, let alone the bravest knight!”

Baus expressed
sympathy at the irregularity.

Trimestrius
bridled at the condolence. “Picture it! Standing chest high,
guarding four wood-block stumps of legs—a thing of ears, fangs and
talons, a poison mat of dirty brown, furred and horrible to
behold—and these, the best of its qualities!”

A quivering
palsy had come over the little man. “Just to peer at the thing was
an exercise of revulsion! It came to smite me and take my castle!
Aurimag bred it himself!”

“Who is
Aurimag?”

“Dissolute
Aurimag, yes! The neomancer from the dark cave, the Cave of
Passions and Puissances—Aurimag who called himself, ‘Gayire’—’The
Golden One’—that, in the old Lengish tongue. What a joke that was.
A blasphemy! ’Tis a sick sacrilege that the villain still lives! I
had only to mount my wegmor and be taken away by the beast, but I
chose to stay and fight—fight for my demesne! Weapon at hand, I
slashed out, but the Huarbane bit into my wegmor’s neck and blood
corded in three directions. My brave steed fell while I was afoot
only with my rapier and wits to guard against the fiend and the
malevolence.”

“Disturbing
luck.”

“Silence! The
monster rushed at me on all fours—with hot breath upon my visage,
its thorny bulk a mass of twisted muscle. I retreated, but it
pounced, bringing talons from upon high. I ducked—and while the
thing poised like death’s nightmare, gleaming silver, I raked
Lolispar across its guts in a moment of cold triumph. I spilled
liver and organs and putrid things best not described across the
glade. Ensorcelled from Loespring pool with Telulric magic it was
by Faeta, the long dead Arch-Neon and wood nymph of the Nderian
hills. I was about to deal the creature its demise when a mouldy
net was strewn over my head; I was hemmed in from all sides, by
cutthroats who beat me with cudgels and called me foppish names in
crude, thuggish voices. They taunted my manliness. Lolispar slipped
from my grasp; I could no more cut the strands that held me than
cry for help. I would have carved that troupe of craven lilybellies
from limb to limb but—” Here he paused to take in some air, and
with grave disgust gathered his wits. “There were four of these
vile foes in the brigand band and they seized my gladius and
threatened my fair body—all an unspeakable nightmare. How I would
dress them with agonies worse than Montgrainz, the Demon Crow if I
could enact it all over again!”

The quivering
figure gave a rueful exhalation; painful recollection debilitated
him. “I realize that the beast was only a ruse posed by Aurimag to
ensnare me as I was hauled into that mouldy net and back to the
Brauvn forest. I was tormented by those grinning, leering faces—a
drama which I shall never forget!”

Baus addressed
Trimestrius with solemn concern: “A sorry predicament. Now, as to
this business about the creature . . . alas, I digress . . . and
yet you are alive, friend, which brings me to profess to
puzzlement—how came you to be immured in this jar?”

Trimestrius’s
eyes flashed with bitter, insensate hate. “It was Aurimag—he
performed his most depraved deed on my person to date. A mage, as I
have adumbrated—but he was a mad mage—full of reptilian conceit and
the most diseased of schemes. In exchange for auguries and
divinations, I traded with him spices, wines, enchanted perfumes,
even narcotics, incenses, essences and unguents acquired on my
travels to the southern realms of Karsh and Sloe. I had come to
gather some knowledge of the wretch, though I dreaded visiting his
lair couched gloomily alongside the Lim river. Others were set
against him—Sangdorn, head of the Mismerion Circle, now deceased,
and his sympathizers: Ulisa the Utilitarian, Woisper the Wilful,
Salmeister the Saturnine, Barbirius the Bellicose, Nojoar the
Nourisher—to name a few. Aurimag was especially enraged when those
of the Circle denied him entry into the Synod of ‘Eleven’. Old
Cascnus, the Theosopher, had died, leaving a small space for
another amongst the neomancers. Aurimag believed he was the next in
line to walk amongst their ranks.

“Yes! It is
all coming back to me.” Trimestrius’s voice trailed off. A sad,
empty hollowness played on his features; his expression mirrored
memories of confusion and despair.

Baus
considered the dwarf’s animated monologue a threat to his fragile
situation and made a sudden gesture of offense.

Trimestrius
skidded lugubriously away. Baus could not snatch him as he stabbed
idly at the soft turf with his blade. “Alas—those days are all a
blur in my mind—but as for the open position at Mismerion, I
remember there were contenders present, and that Aurimag expected
to win the round with ease with his newly acquired thaumaturgics.
After his audition to the Circle at Mismerion—it was on the
11
^th
of May—I was sent on a pressing errand, to pass a
certain scroll to him. I was merely a peacekeeper, nothing more. I
delivered the scroll, a deed which the Circle had invested upon me,
abiding a trust which I was owing to them. Upon reading the
parchment, Aurimag became stiff with resentment and so utterly
dismayed that he seemed ready to commit murder upon me. It was
evident he believed I was in cahoots with the Eleven—can you
believe it? What could I have had to do with them?—fortunately I
escaped the cave, for I knew the woods in all directions. All the
mossy dells, the tanglewoods, brooks and brakes, spanglewoods and
rills, all in the district of Desenion. When Aurimag’s reason was
compromised, he was pitched into a mood of rancour that aroused
vengeance on any creature, living or dead. Too late he sent his
spectral minions out to shadow me!—insectoid cynersyks,
cautervosps, creatures with green and vermilion chitin, and their
cousins—great blue bottleflies with pods and protrusions on their
bodies that can scoop up a quarry like a mantis. They were huge and
they passed my precarious hiding place tucked in the hollow of a
maboar stump.”

Baus glanced
furtively toward the barracks. He gave his head a fretful shake.
“This is growing interesting, but with each disclosure,
Trimestrius, your tale grows ever more implausible. Who is Aurimag?
How does any of this relate to your erstwhile entombment?”

“Ah! That is
the question.” A sad cluck came from the midget’s mouth. He threw a
backward glance to the site of his once prison and his eyes
glowered with hate. “This glass cage—how the smiting memory of it
brings me tears and to my tale’s end! Somewhere, between the time
of Aurimag’s audition at the Hall and my confrontation with the
Huarbane, some manner of treachery had been played on him.
Something to do with his powers, something so dire to his spiritual
essence and his dearest ambitions that he thought me his worst
enemy. To this day I know not what brought the rogue to this
conclusion, other than that perhaps I was the messenger of this
untoward news. Only then do I remember, that in my three-day
confinement in his forest cave by the Lim, racked by torture
instruments—and interned in agonizing silence and ignorance, I felt
a great rush of water, a sudden roaring in my ears—many queer
sensations as nauseating as sulphur, as spell-ridden paste was
splashed over my body.”