The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 2 7

“Ordrune!" exploded Egil, lunging up and forward in his bed, his face distorted in fury and flaming with wrath.

"Waugh!" shrieked Alos, pitching over backwards and crashing to the floor, scrambling across the boards on hands and knees to be away from Egil's mad rage. Arin gasped in shock, frozen for the moment, but Aiko, her swords in hand, stepped between the wroth man and the startled Dylvana. Then Egil cried out in agony and clutched his head and face, the violent outburst hammering his savaged forehead and eye and cheek with intense pain, and he fell back prostrate on the bed, air seething in and out between clenched teeth as he gritted, "He is the one. He is the one."

Arin rose and moved past Aiko and her glittering swords and stepped to the wounded man's side. Against a far wall, Alos whimpered, his one-eyed gaze wide, and switching back and forth between the bed and his ale mug still rolling in small circles on the floorboards, the untasted brew seeping down into the cracks between.

Now Arin poured water into a cup and stirred a white powder in. "Here, Egil. Drink."

Mutely, Egil took the cup and drank the contents down.

Seeing that Egil seemed rational again, Alos crawled back across the floor and retrieved his mug and tipped it up for the remaining few drops to fall on his waiting tongue. Then shakily he stood and uprighted his chair at the table once more, and from the pitcher he poured another mugful and gulped a great swallow down.

Arin took the empty cup from Egil, and asked, "What dost thou know about Mage Ordrune, Egil? What is it that lies between the Wizard and thee? Does it bear on our mission?"

His one good eye filled with anguish, Egil looked up at her and shook his head, then covered his face with his hands.

With a sigh, Arin set the cup amid the powders and herbs and simples on the small bedside table. She turned once again to the wounded man. "There is a tale here for the telling, Egil, yet I will not press thee for it anow. Even so, it may have a bearing upon what it is we are to do. There will come a time in the morrows ahead when I will ask thee to speak of whatever it is that lies between thee and that Mage."

"Mages," growled Alos. "They're all bad." He gulped down another great swallow of ale and turned his blind white eye toward Arin. " 'Tis a good thing you left them all behind, my Lady. A good thing."

As Arin resumed her seat, Aiko sheathed her blades and knelt once again upon her tatami.

The Dylvana turned to Alos. "Though there are some who will agree with thee, Alos, not all Mages are sinister. Certainly those we left behind at Black Mountain are no better or worse than thee or me."

"Hah!" barked Alos.

Aiko growled at the old man.

He shot a swift glance at the warrior and blurted, "No offense, my Lady. No offense at all. Ah, what I meant was, it's a good thing you left them behind to come here… to Morkfjord… a good thing, yes, a good thing." He snatched up the pitcher and poured himself the last of the ale, then looked with dismay into the empty vessel. Sighing, he sucked a slurp from his mug, then turned to Arin and smiled his ocherous, missing-toothed smile, foam coating the scraggly hair on his upper lip. "Did anything interesting happen after you left them? Egil and I really want to know… indeed." He fingered the froth from his stringy mustache and licked the digit clean. "What say we get us another pitcher of ale and then you can tell us, aye?"

Arin now looked at Egil, the man once again in control of his emotions. She raised an eyebrow; he nodded; she gestured for Alos to go after the brew.