The Azure Wizard (7 page)

She nodded approvingly at Ethan’s wisdom and passion, but then she looked worriedly back into his yellow stare. “What do you intend to do here then?”

Ethan could not help but smile at the mockery and taunts that were sure to follow his answer.

“I will become a Forester of the Three Baronies.”

The mockeries and jests did not come, however. Instead Scarlet smiled warmly at Ethan and replied, “And, Ethan, I am sure you will be a boon to that old and prestigious order. But first you must learn some of the skills of combat and wilderness survival.”

“And where do you suppose I do that, milady?” answered Ethan as he scrapped his finger along the bottom of his empty soup bowl.

“You leave with me on the morrow. I am heading south on horseback anyways. Being as you wish to join the Foresters, Greenwell City is your destination, correct?”

Ethan could only nod to Scarlet, though inside he was screaming and dancing about his fortunes.

Ethan and Scarlet journeyed ever south along the Three Baronies Road over the following days. Mounted as they were on the back of Scarlet’s steed, a muscular black stallion, they made very good time as well, traveling near to forty miles a day. Beyond the town of Pineburg settlements in the northern verges of the Barony of Greenwell were not terribly far apart along the road, about a two full day’s ride between each one of them, and they often continued to increase in size. One of them was even twice the size of Lumberwall. They passed through the communities of Oakenhold and Stagmeet respectively during the one-hundred and sixty miles they had covered thus far.

The thing that Ethan had found initially hard to deal with was that Scarlet insisted that they sleep outside of the towns, even though they often met them at nightfall. She maintained that that was the way of the Foresters, sleeping in the wilds, and thus it was something that Ethan would come to accept. The first couple nights had been particularly rough on the storyteller as Scarlet had also insisted that he find his own food and water, which he grudgingly did, for that was also the way of the Foresters of the Three Baronies. It seemed that everything that had happened during the travels thus far had been solely testing and conditioning Ethan to the lifestyle of the Foresters.

Earlier in the morning, just before sunrise no less, Scarlet and Ethan had packed up their supplies at their little campsite outside the mossy thick stone walls of the town of Stagmeet, an average-sized town for Greenwell but still far bigger than Lumberwall. The town, resting quietly along the Three Baronies Road, catered to trappers, hunters, loggers, wood-workers, and herbalists. Ethan had wanted to enter the town and do some sight-seeing because its rustic woodland charm had enchanted him slightly, but it was already night when they had arrived, and so Scarlet had instead ridden them around the town’s walls through the thick woods of the Forests of Greenwell. Upon reaching the roadside beyond the town’s southern walls she had ordered him to set up camp. That is what had happened with both of the settlements that they had passed after leaving Pineburg; they avoided entering to camp in the wilds just within sight of the settlements’ walls. It was torture for Ethan, a young curious man in a new and exciting land he had only heard tales about.

Still Ethan couldn’t help but smile when he laid down every night on the forest floor with his satchel as a pillow. He always had a full belly due to his supper that he had foraged for in the forest, always plant life such as blueberries, mushrooms, and sweet roots. He didn’t have a weapon for killing fauna for supper, and Ethan wondered if he would be able to kill a wild animal if he did have an appropriate armament. He was sure he would kill an animal if it was attacking him or if he was starving, but now there was no reason when the edible flora of the forest was so plentiful. Scarlet, though, had no such inhibitions. In fact she only killed wildlife and didn’t eat a single plant. They seemed to be opposites.

Ethan also smiled because of the environment in which he now found himself. He had made it. He was in the interior of the Barony of Greenwell surrounded on all sides in deep green forests of old ancient oaks, birches, and evergreens. The solemn misty pine woods he had known his whole life on the flanks of the Vhar Mountains were enchanting in their own way to Ethan, but these old-growth deciduous woods that shrouded the entirety of Greenwell practically radiated a primeval essence that bespoke a long, rich history and forgotten enchantments. Here, in this land, Ethan could almost believe that Wizardcraft and Wizards had once existed, and that these forests were where they were born and where they were last to die away.

They rode southward in the midmorning sunlight that slanted through the trees to their left dappling the two riders and the road in swaying patches of warm light. Birds called and sang at the roadside and the chattering of nearby squirrels, angered at the passing of the people, periodically surprised their stallion. Deeper far off noises and calls echoed forlornly in hollow obtuse tones as they finally made their way to the ears of whoever traversed the road. The summer heat, Ethan was sure, would be quite oppressive were they not shrouded by the swaying leafy canopy of green foliage about thirty feet overhead. In fact, the climate on the forest floor where the Three Baronies Road meandered its way through the trees was actually quite cool.

Ethan rode on the saddle behind Scarlet, his hands resting on his own thighs, as Scarlet started up a song. That was something that she often did during their ride.

Ancestors’ graces have blessed this ground

With a kiss of the oldest kind

One of enchantments naught to be found

And beauty for all to find.

Like a chapel these trees surround us

Green and shade, they be our mates

Let us all commune with the natural world

To find the secrets of all things’ fates.

Ethan smiled when she finished her song, its words still fading into the deep woods around them. Many of Scarlet’s songs seemed to be about nature and wilderness, and the reverence and respect that they demanded from those who sojourned in them. Those songs inspired Ethan. They filled him with a palpable energy and excitement at the prospect of joining the ranks of the Foresters of the Three Baronies and actually living the words of the minstrel’s songs. When a few peaceful quiet moments had passed he asked the troubadour, “Why did you leave your homeland to go traveling around the Three Baronies as a minstrel, Scarlet?”

From his position in the saddle behind her he could not see her smirk. She chose to ignore his inquiry and ask one of her own, a common practice for her whenever Ethan asked her anything about her background. “Do you feel that you are ready to join the Foresters of the Three Baronies, storyteller?”

Ethan sighed and shook his head at his companion’s blatant withholding of her personal information. “I don’t believe I am ready, no. But we do have a very long stretch of road ahead of us still before we reach Greenwell City. Do we not?”

“We have no less than five-hundred and thirty miles by road to be exact.”

“That would take us nearly two weeks!”

“Yes, well,” Scarlet began in a conspiratorial tone, “we could always take a shortcut, Ethan. It would be excellent training for you as well, much better training than just camping along the roadside and hunting game, or hunting plants in your case I suppose.”

“Well, where is this shortcut?”

Scarlet’s slowly looked to her left out into the deep woods, a slight woodland gust lifting long strands of her pale blond hair that had strayed at some point during their ride from her long braid. Ethan followed her gaze into the mysterious and potentially-ominous landscape that those many old trees concealed, and he promptly swallowed a lump of anxiety that found its way into his throat. “Through the forest?” he asked in shaky hushed tones.

“Aye, we go through the forest. We would first continue on down the road to where the next settlement lays, a boring, noisy town called Breckyn’s Call, and after camping in its vicinity we would turn south into the Forests of Greenwell where we would face only a three-hundred and seventy-five mile ride. My steed can travel in the wilds as easily as on a road so we won’t lose any time that way. The shortcut will thus take us about nine days, but you will almost certainly get more hands-on training on enduring the hardships of the Foresters.”

“Great,” Ethan stated as he rolled his eyes, “I can’t wait.”

“After Breckyn’s Call, then, we will encounter only one more settlement before Greenwell City. A little more than halfway there we will come across a small, sylvan village called Deephollow. There we will stay the night and maybe make a handful of silvers.”

“Well, you’re the boss, Scarlet,” Ethan declared with a shrug and a relaxed smile.

“Hey, this isn’t for my benefit. This is to make sure you stand a chance of joining those Foresters. Let’s have a little more enthusiasm, my dear storyteller,” she chuckled as she reached back and patted Ethan’s thigh. That simple touch sent warmth and energy through Ethan, and he had the urge to kiss the minstrel. Each day he grew more and more enchanted with her presence, with her accent, with her lifestyle and her figure.

“Scarlet,” he whispered close to her ear.

“Yes, Ethan?” she replied as she half-turned in the saddle so she could look at her companion with one eye. Ethan met her there with a firm passionate kiss.

The instant their lips touched Ethan was sure he was going to get throttled by this hardened adventurer, but he was shocked and overjoyed when she closed her vivid crimson eyes and returned the kiss with even more passion and fervor. Lost in the moment, she scooted back in the saddle so that she sat hard in between his legs, and Ethan answered by reaching around her and unbuckling her belt with one hand. Meanwhile his other hand wandered under her black loose linen shirt and cupped one of her breasts. A slight shudder escaped her lips and then a quiet moan when Ethan slid his other hand down the front of her loosened gray trousers.

As quickly as it started it up Scarlet ended it. She pulled her mouth back from Ethan’s, her exotic eyes opening and shrouding him in a measured crimson stare of seething anger, anger for Ethan or the moment, he did not know. She slid forward in the saddle breaking all contact of their lower torsos, and she swiftly yanked Ethan’s hand from her loins as he hurriedly pulled the other from under her shirt.

The horse continued to walk down the forested dirt road as Scarlet buckled her belt in silence, the only sound the thuds of the steed’s hooves and the labored breathing of its two riders. “Alright?” Ethan wondered aloud to himself, dragging out the word in confusion.

“You took advantage of the moment, Ethan. You acted rashly and without a thought.”

“So?” he replied.

“If you are a Forester, acting like that will get you killed. You must always think situations and encounters through and gauge the risks versus the-”

“Why in the Soul Wastes is everything always a test with you, Scarlet?” he shouted, interrupting her.

He continued when she didn’t immediately answer, “You never answer any of my questions, and you’re always remarking on what I need to do and how I need to do it! Why in the Ancestors don’t you ever act on your impulses? It would probably do you some good! It might get that chip off your shoulder! I don’t know what your life was before this and I don’t know what happened that was so horrible, but maybe if you came out with it to somebody you would end up feeling a little better!”

Scarlet didn’t answer, and with a huff Ethan leaned back in the saddle and gazed out into the trees. They rode on in silence.

Not a word passed between the two for the entirety of the day and at nightfall they circumvented the high noble walls of the town that Scarlet had previously identified as Breckyn’s Call and they set up camp. In the morning just after sunrise they turned from the Three Baronies Road and rode southward, entering the shadows of the unfathomable majesty of the Forests of Greenwell, and Ethan wondered if they would ever be coming back out.

Five days later the storyteller and the minstrel rode into the village of Deephollow. The village was a very small settlement, composed of only about a score of buildings, arranged in a circle around a stone well peppered in moss. They were all residences of the inhabitants of the village, but also a small inn, two-stories tall with a thatched roof, sat in the center of the village near the well. Trees had not been cleared with the construction of the village, but instead the settlement had been built around their trunks. To a casual eye it seemed as if Deephollow had been grown from the Forests of Greenwell along with the trees, appearing as some sort of overgrown toadstool ring of the deep woods.

As Scarlet and Ethan rode into the village through a plush high stand of ferns on the north side of the village they noticed the majority of the settlement’s inhabitants tending orchards and gardens on the outskirts of the village while others toiled with their chores in the village interior. Shade and cool woodland air enveloped the landscape around Deephollow despite another hot summer afternoon. A busy road ran through Deephollow, the East Road, and the village’s residents were used to visitors and travelers. The East Road ran from the port-town of Runette on the Barony of Greenwell’s eastern shore, crossed the Three Baronies Road at the city of Wellgreet north of Greenwell City, before finally coming to an end at an important mining city called Stone’s Shore where rare rocks and much of the land’s gold and other ores were unearthed from the foothills of the Greenwellian Highlands that laid in the western portion of the wooded barony. Most of the Three Baronies’ silver ore was known to come from the scattered mining outposts dotted throughout the Vhar Mountains. Thus the people of Deephollow sent the companions a fair share of peculiar stares when they rode in from the deep vast woods north of the village and not upon the East Road.