The Azure Wizard (3 page)

The first impression the storyteller got from Lumberwall was that of numerous villages built together into one community of about twelve score structures. The people behaved and acted like the people from North Ridge, very personable and energetic, but the town had much more to offer commercially than a village could ever hope for. Ethan entered the town after exchanging some standard pleasantries with a couple of town guards, distinguishable by the dark brown tabards they wore. The guards manned the open gate to the timber stockade built around the community, and he instantly could see a well-run and maintained smithy overflowing with workers in their sooty leather aprons and customers with their dull or dented tools and weapons. Across the muddy dirt lane from the smithy was a ferrier’s shop. The clanging of hammers and the nickering of horses spilled its way out into the busy lane. Just ahead Ethan could see a store of traveling supplies and beyond that was a two-storied tavern. Near the tavern was a three-storied inn with a large stable attached. Business and commerce was everywhere.

The dirt lane Ethan strode upon ran from the north gate of the town, that Ethan had entered through, all the way through town before leaving out of the south gate where it meandered down the foothills into Greenwell. Numerous people rode horses, sat upon wagons, or simply walked about on the muddy street, and the scent of horses and manure overpowered the more repulsive odor of the nearby tannery located somewhere on a close by side street. Everyone had smiling faces exchanged greetings and partings and went about their daily work and errands content with their lot in life. In the center of Lumberwall Ethan could see the large timber and stone keep of Baron Ruauld, the hereditary ruler of the Barony of Vhar whose line had reigned since the dawning of the First Age.

As he passed citizens of Lumberwall going about their responsibilities Ethan wondered to himself how many were storytellers, and he wondered how many of these people had been into the Barony of Greenwell or perhaps even the Barony of Wendlith. His thoughts were interrupted by his rumbling stomach and the pangs of hunger. Ethan had been through only two villages during his twenty-five day trek to get to Lumberwall, and though their rural inhabitants were more than willing to offer Ethan food and shelter during his journey, the long stints following deer trails and footpaths to the south out of the highlands quickly expended the oats and dried venison he had brought with him.

For nearly two weeks he had been forced to live off the land, consuming raw mushrooms and what few berries he came across. More than the hunger, though, Ethan was plagued by thirst. He hadn’t brought a water skin, and he kind of just assumed that he could make due by finding pools of pure mountain water or springs like the heroes in the tales he knew. But Ethan soon came to realize that he wasn’t as outdoor-proficient as the heroes, and water was harder to find than he had ever imagined.

He swallowed in an attempt to wet his dry puffy throat, but to no avail, and he began a sore hike to the tavern just up ahead. En route Ethan sighed as he came to the realization that he hadn’t brought any silver coins, much less any gold ones. This was going to take some finesse.

When he reached the tavern he saw that it was actually connected to the inn and stables by a short, stout, oaken bridge that arched over the side street between them. Hanging from the side of the bridge was a weathered, dark, wooden sign that faced the main avenue through town, and painted upon it in bright peeling yellow paint was The House of Chronicles. Ethan let out an anxious breath and strode to the open door of the tavern. He could hear the music from outside and he could smell the aroma of pipe smoke, but upon entering the song became clearer, sung in a hauntingly-beautiful voice thickly accented.

A merry old sod

Told a tale one day

To a lad who ever dreamed.

A sweeping yarn

Of a terrible price

Paid for price of greed.

Long ago

In the Ancient Age

Was a girl and an evil Lord.

The Lord took what he liked

With nary a shrug

He wanted it all and more.

Then one day

He saw the girl

The girl of another man.

With long rosy locks

Bright blue eyes

He nabbed her before she ran.

He forced the girl

To do his will

And she dwelt long in sorrow.

Then one day

She had enough

It would end on the morrow.

Next time the Lord came

To have his fill

She knew she wouldn’t fail.

She pulled a knife

And she jabbed it forth

And he lost what made him male.

The girl then took flight

And she fled the keep

Reuniting with her true love.

It was then that they

Escaped the town

By the Ancestors above.

The Lord suffered the price

Of cruelty and greed

But he became a darker Lord.

What came then

We all know

But that old tale makes us bored.

The audience roared in laughter and applause, smacking tables and backs at the minstrel, a tall, athletic woman in a burgundy linen dress. She possessed dark-bronzed skin that contrasted her long, pale-blond, flowing hair, and she smoothly took a bow to the crowd with a smile. Ethan clapped enthusiastically as he strode toward the bar, a long dark wood counter lined with various-sized and colored bottles and stools, some of them occupied by socializing patrons. Behind the counter was a stocky, thick man with shaggy, blond hair shot through with white. As he served the customers his long beard and moustache of equal coloring swayed to and fro and his intense brown eyes continually scanned his common room for signs of trouble. They settled on Ethan as he came forward.

When Ethan reached the bar he leaned forward, and he placed his palms flat on the sticky counter top. The bartender met him there with a wooden mug in his left hand. His other hand remained beneath the counter and out of view. When the bartender urged the mug in Ethan’s direction the storyteller waved it off stating, “I'll take no mead, Sir.”

“Not mead, lad, water. I can see plain as day that you’ve been traveling and are dry of even your own spittle to drink,” returned the man with a grin beneath his bush of a moustache.

Ethan thanked him with a nod and took the mug a bit too eagerly splashing some of its contents onto the counter. “Sorry,” Ethan whispered sheepishly as he wiped the spilt water with the side of his hand.

“No harm done, lad. The counter’s needed a wash anyhow.”

Ethan gave a slight nod and gulped down the cool pure water slowly, letting it moisten his throat and clean the grime out of his mouth. The bartender watched intently the entire time until Ethan finished the last drop and set the empty mug on the counter with a contented sigh. “Thank you, Sir. That was needed.”

The bartender shrugged and took the mug and began to turn, meaning to refill it, when Ethan caught him by the sleeve. “I was wondering, Sir, if there are any rooms available for the night?” he inquired.

“Aye, I’ve got a couple of rooms empty. Three silvers a night they are,” replied the bartender raising a bushy eyebrow.

Ethan nervously scratched the short growth of his red beard and responded, “I have no coins, sir, but I am a storyteller. Would it be possible for me to enlighten the crowd with a tale, and if they take to it in a good way, get a plate of food and one of those rooms for the night?”

The bartender sighed with an exasperated chuckle mingled with it, and he explained, “Lad, did you by chance see the name of my place? This is The House of Chronicles. We have plenty of minstrels, storytellers, and troubadours performing nightly. As the owner of this establishment, if I was to give all of them a room and meals for their performances I would never be able to serve any other guests. We are in the Barony of Vhar, you know. Storytellers and the like are a silver a score. The best I can do is pouring you some more water.”

The man meant to turn again, but Ethan held fast to his sleeve. The barkeep turned slowly back to Ethan, his brows furrowed and he had an ominous air about him. But Ethan met his gaze with that penetrating amber gaze of his own. The stare down was ended by the barkeep whose face broke into a happy grin and he said, “The name’s Eikjard. Who are you, lad?”

“Ethan Skalderholt.”

“Well, Ethan Skalderholt,” began Eikjard as he pointed past Ethan to the stage where the minstrel had been performing, “the stage is yours. I hope that I’m impressed as well as everyone else.”

Moments later Ethan found himself onstage. He had asked that the environment of the common room be changed for his tale, and thus it was with curtains pulled across the windows to keep out the afternoon sun. The tavern was then illuminated softly by candle sconces upon the walls. Ethan sat alone on the stage on one of the rickety stools from the bar counter and a single candle burned on the floor of the stage right beside him. The audience expected a tale of tales, and thus the entirety of the common room gathered around the stage as close as they could, all leaning forward and sipping their wines and meads.

Ethan cleared his throat and began his story.

Better than a score of years ago a young man from a village called Broken Stone high and deep in the Barony of Vhar, beyond Whitethorn Mountain and on the verge of the Ice Wilds, lived his life like many of the village’s other inhabitants. He dwelt in the home of his parents and siblings and their children, and he worked the land cutting stone and raising the hardy white goats that dwell that far north. This man knew of the lands of the south such as Greenwell and Wendlith, but Broken Stone held everything he could ever want or need. He had loved ones and pride.

A peculiar thing about this man was that even though the work he did improved the lives of him and his family he desired a different calling. He longed to be a storyteller, though in villages like Broken Stone a storyteller wasn’t respected as much as those that pulled their weight. Though the Barony of Vhar was the land of storytellers, they were primarily entrenched in the barony’s southern portions on the south flanks of the Vhar Mountains.

The village of Broken Stone isn’t commonly known of anymore because it fell into ruin. That young man was there when it happened.

It started as a regular day. People went about their daily tasks required to keep the village alive and running. The man tended his family’s goats on the high slopes to the west of the village. In the distance he saw the approach of a string of dark shapes moving southward out of the white haze of the Ice Wilds. There was only one thing that the approaching shapes could have been and the thought of it brought a torrent of terror and anxiety into the core of his being, Berserkers of the Ice Wilds.

The man sprinted as fast as he ever had in his life down the rocky snow-covered slopes. He dodged between the odd columns of rock that were shaped by the constant frigid wind on the verge of the Ice Wilds. These strange pillars of rock served as a replacement for trees this far north. The man prayed aloud to the Ancestors in the Ancestor Lands that he would reach Broken Stone in time to warn its inhabitants. But he smelt the smoke before he ever got to the village.

Unfortunately, upon his arrival the Berserkers were not yet done. Standing slightly taller than the civilized inhabitants of the Barony of Vhar the Berserkers had long thick alabaster-hued hair and ruddy sunburned skin. They dressed in thick layers of white and grey furs taken from slain Ice Cats, the most hated enemies of the Berserkers out in the Ice Wilds, and they were known to wield crude chopping and piercing armaments made from thick yellowed bone. Berserkers raided the northern parts of the Barony of Vhar to replenish supplies and food to take back with them into the frigid wilds. Ice Cats were notoriously hard to slay, but they were the only other known life form in the Ice Wilds aside from the barbaric humans that also roamed that land. Hence the Berserkers usually survived by rationing the meat of a slain Ice Cat family among an entire tribe for weeks at a time. But when it became too long since the last kill the Berserkers were forced to march southward into the Vhar Mountains to capture the other half of their diets, humans.

When the young man finally reached his village he was greeted by fire, death, screams, and blood. At least half of the inhabitants of Broken Stone already were dead, and the remainder, all women and children, were being brutally beaten, captured and tied in leather rope, or raped. Their screams shredded the crystal-clear blue cloudless sky. As the man charged forward with a wild screech of fury and sorrow the nearest bunch of Berserkers whirled around, bone weapons in hand and fresh blood soaking their sodden white facial manes.

They met him halfway and the first swung a cruelly-shaped axe blade shaped from a human scapula, meaning to bury it in the ribcage of the man, but the frenzied young man dodged the blow and landed a powerful punch into the Berserker’s eye socket. He was rewarded with an audible crack as the raider crumpled unconscious. He picked up the bone blade of his fallen opponent, but doing so acquired him a heavy blow to the top of the skull with a thick bulbous-ended club crafted from a thick femur. His vision dimmed into a grey foggy tunnel and his hearing disappeared for a moment, and when he finally recovered it was too late to evade or parry a solid blow from the same club into his ribs that shattered a couple instantly.