The Wyvern's Spur

17 The Spur

Cat leaned over Drone’s journal with her elbows holding the binding open and her head propped up in her hands. Despite the shattered window and broken door, the tower room was a comfortable temperature, as long as she kept her fur-lined cape draped around her shoulders. Isolated from the rest of the family’s living quarters, the room was also marvelously quiet, but the mage could not concentrate. The old wizard’s crabbed handwriting blurred before her eyes, and her gaze wandered about the room, unable to focus on anything.

Idly she pulled out the amulet of protection from her skirt pocket. She could feel five lumps of varying sizes and shapes wrapped in the silk. Her curiosity prodded at her to peek at just one of the lumps, but with a sudden burst of will, she shoved the amulet back in her pocket. Ignoring Mistress Ruskettle’s advice would be like asking Tymora to send me more bad luck, and I’ve had more than my share of that, Cat thought.

She stared into space and let her mind wander from the duty at hand to the events of the past year. Nothing had gone right for her since the previous summer. She’d awakened on Midsummer Day in a Zhentil Keep alley with no memory of how she’d gotten there, or indeed any memory at all beyond her name and place of birth. The rest of her history had vanished, leaving an irritating void in her head and an uneasy feeling in her heart.

With nowhere to go, she wandered the streets after dark and ran afoul of one of the Keeper press gangs. After the briefest of struggles, she became their prisoner. She foolishly bragged of her magical power, hoping to coerce or frighten the recruiting thugs into letting her go. Instead she’d found herself drafted into an army unit headed for Yulash.

An ugly little spider of a Zhentarim wizard tested her powers. He gave her a slender book, containing only such spells as slave mages could be trusted with. From the tiny size of the book, and the bloodstains on its cover, it was obvious that her masters did not expect her to survive, much less excel at combat.

After five days of forced marching, her unit engaged in its first battle, against a unit of Hillsfar’s Red Plumes. The battle was a mutual slaughter—only officers on the sidelines survived. Cat’s magic power was quickly spent as the enemy overran her position. Powerless and exhausted, she lay down in hopes of passing for one of the dead and escaping after dark. That was when Flattery had rescued her.

Maybe rescued wasn’t the right word, Cat thought. Collected would be more accurate, she decided.

As soon as the army officers had quit for the evening, retiring to their tents and dinners, Flattery’s zombies stumbled onto the battlefield and began collecting bodies for Flattery’s experiments—and as food for some of his more disgusting undead minions. A particularly mindless zombie, unable to distinguish between the dead and the unconscious—for Cat had fallen asleep—collected her and brought her to its master in his fortress.

Cat remembered how impressed she’d been at her first sight of Flattery as he stood on a parapet overlooking the rolling fields far below. She thought his hawklike features and wolfish smile quite handsome. His capability and power were equally alluring.

But Flattery guarded his power and secrets jealously. He had no apprentices, no familiars, no companions, but surrounded himself with undead servants. He isolated himself from the outside world and everyday life, using his minions to gather everything he needed to work and live. The wizard had erratic fits of temper, which might explain why he chose to work with blindly obedient slaves. On the other hand, working with such slaves might have contributed to his quirkiness.

The wizard could have made Cat a zombie, or fed her to the ghouls, or resold her to the Zhentarim. But he didn’t. Instead he took her under his wing—kept her in pleasant surroundings, taught her some new magic, and worked on a spell to help her regain her memory. Cat was not averse to being sheltered and trained, but most especially she wanted her memory back.

A gnawing desire to fill the void in her head grew in her daily. Regaining her forgotten history was worth everything to her—enduring Flattery’s mad temper, living among the undead servants, reconciling herself to the confinement of Flattery’s fortress. After all, she told herself, slavery to the Zhentarim could be much worse.

Finally, one evening many months later, Flattery finished the spell creating the dark jewel that held her missing past. He presented it to Cat with a proposal of marriage. Cat had looked at the gem, yearning to hold it. Afraid of Flattery’s reaction should she refuse him, she agreed. She’d flattered herself into believing he’d come to prefer her company to the undead, that he found her beautiful, that he wanted to take care of her. After all, she told herself, he was handsome and clever and very powerful—she could do worse.

After the hasty wedding ceremony with the only attendant being a wobbly priest of Mystra, goddess of magic, Flattery had become irrationally angered by her request to have the gem. He demanded she prove her worth before he restored her memory to her. Then he assigned her the task of sneaking through the Immersea catacombs to fetch the wyvern’s spur from the Wyvernspur family crypt.

Eager to get her hands on something the wizard truly desired, something she could barter for her memory, Cat didn’t think twice about entering the secret door to the catacombs. It felt good to be away from the undead and free of Flattery’s nerve-racking presence. She even enjoyed encountering some of the monsters that lived in the catacombs. They were awful, but at least they were alive; you could talk to them and bribe or trick your way around them.

Finding the spur missing came as a crushing blow to all her hopes. Finding her escape blocked hardly seemed to matter. Trapped inside those horrible tunnels, without even the comfort of having succeeded at stealing the spur, she wandered as aimlessly as any monster. As she wandered, Cat began to reevaluate her last few months. She decided she could have done better.

Then she’d stumbled across Drone’s nephew, Giogi. Giogi’s offer of protection had been pretty amusing. Even if the nobleman found the spur, he didn’t stand a chance against Flattery. She knew that Giogi’s Uncle Drone could be a powerful ally, though. Flattery had taken the trouble to warn her how shrewd Drone was and how cleverly he’d warded the crypt against magical entry and scrying. After talking to Giogi, Cat fell upon a plan: In exchange for information on Flattery and his plot to steal the family’s heirloom, Cat had hoped to get Drone’s help stealing the crystal that held her lost memory.

To Cat, Drone’s death had been nearly as big a blow as finding the spur missing from the crypt. Giogi’s chances at finding the spur did not look very good to her, but he was her only hope. If Flattery found the spur first, she would have nothing to barter for the memory crystal—until the wizard found some other, possibly even more dangerous or distasteful, way for her to prove her “worth.”

Then someone had tried to smother her in her sleep. In the moonlight it had looked like Flattery. Frefford and Steele Wyvernspur both resembled Flattery, but neither of them had any reason to kill her, and she doubted that either of them could walk through walls.

Flattery could have been playing some sick game or testing her loyalty. Or he might have decided to make himself a widower, in some mad fit of anger or jealousy, and then changed his mind.

On top of last night’s shock had come Olive Ruskettle’s accusations about Flattery killing that Jade person. Giogi seemed to trust Olive completely. At Thomas’s mention of the halfling’s name, the nobleman had raced down the stairs with positive excitement. No one challenged the halfling’s claim to be a bard, even though Cat was pretty sure halflings were not accepted at barding college, but then Cat hadn’t known that Harpers accepted halflings into their organization, either.

Then, when confronted with the accusation that he’d been responsible for Drone’s death, Flattery not only did not deny it, but joked about it. That had been the final blow. Cat realized she was an absolute fool to trust him.

Finding the spur was no longer enough. She had to find the power to ensure herself against Flattery’s power and deceptions. Olive Ruskettle’s amulet of protection had been her first lucky break. The halfling convincing Giogi to bring her to Drone’s lab had been her second.

Even if Drone’s journal did not reveal information on the spur’s whereabouts, Cat could loot from it enough magic to guarantee her survival.

And, if Giogi reaches Mother Lleddew in time to learn whatever she knows but which Flattery does not want Giogi to learn, then manages to bring that information back to me, Cat told herself hopefully, I may even have some power over Flattery.

The mage could not deceive herself about Giogi’s chances, though. They were very, very small. He’s so aimless and ridiculously romantic, she thought. One knock on the head, and he thinks he’s been kissing a goddess, for heaven’s sake. Even with a potion of superheroism in him, he’s not likely to be much of a challenge against Flattery’s hordes of undead. Still, I’m obeying Flattery’s suggestion to use him to get what I want. Now, if I could only concentrate on the task I’ve set for myself.

She couldn’t, though. The silly fop’s face kept appearing in her mind’s eye, wearing her earring and hair-beads and that priceless headband. She kept hearing his voice offering her his protection and telling her it was going to be all right and begging her not to die.

He cared about her. For all Cat knew, he was the only person in the Realms who ever had.

She also kept hearing him describe his dreams—the death cry of prey, the taste of warm blood, and the crunch of bone. For no good reason she could think of, the words excited her. In her own dreams, she was always fruitlessly searching dull desertscapes for something. She never knew what the something was. The dreams left her unhappy and anxious. Flattery denied having any dreams. He claimed they were for the guilty. How could such a weak fool as Giogi have such interesting dreams?

Cat looked down again at Drone’s journal, but her elbows were in the way. “Damn!” she muttered. The swig of invisibility potion she’d swallowed had worn off already, which meant she’d been staring into space far too long.

Outside the tower she heard the rattle of a carriage. She ran over to a window and looked down. Giogi and Ruskettle were driving away. They’d finished lunch already, servants had loaded the carriage with packages for Drone’s memorial service, and the halfling and noble were leaving for Selûne’s temple.

I’ve been staring into space far, far too long, Cat thought with a frown.

She flipped through Drone’s journal. It was merely a day-to-day diary. There were no spells written within, no formulas for magic potions scribbled in the margins, no treasure maps stuck between its pages. Page after page accounted family squabbles, purchases, meals, and rumors from court. The last entry was dated the twentieth of Ches, yesterday, just before Drone was killed. The full entry read:

Nothing, Cat thought with a sigh. An ordinary day in an ordinary castle. Arrivals, departures, births, deaths, the love affairs of servants, the muddling of a meal. A boring life.

A peaceful life, some other part of Cat’s mind argued.

The mage slammed the journal closed. She surveyed the lab impatiently. Where are his spell books? she wondered. Were they destroyed with their master? Which of the undead that Flattery commands can cast a spell of disintegration?

Cat took up Gaylyn’s catalog. What sort of wizard lets his possessions be cataloged in a pink book with pressed flowers on the cover? she thought disdainfully.

Yet, as she stared at the flowers beneath the crystal plate fastened to the catalog binding and thought of Gaylyn, she knew she was envious of the life the Wyvernspurs lived. They got to be happy—she would have to settle for surviving and, with Tymora’s luck, regaining her memory.

Cat spent half an hour sorting through the stacks of paper, gathering the most powerful spell scrolls and potions she could find. Dust billowed as she moved piles of documents, but her stack of magic grew steadily.

Then she came upon a stack that was missing a scroll—a scroll that held a disintegrate spell. She double-checked the pink book, but everything else was in place. “How odd,” she murmured.

“Don’t move,” a man whispered harshly in Cat’s ear. The point of a dagger pressing lightly against her jugular vein compelled the mage to obey. The dagger’s owner stood behind her. “One word, one move,” he said, “and you’ll be dragon bait, understand? Now hand over the spur.”

Cat remained speechless and motionless.

Her attacker shook her by the shoulder. “Did you hear me, witch? I said hand it over.”

“You also said don’t move and don’t speak,” Cat pointed out with a mocking tone, “so I’m just a trifle confused.”

“You’ll be a trifle dead if you keep acting smart, you little ass,” the man said. With his dagger still pressed into her flesh, he moved around her so that they stood face to face.

Cat shuddered when first confronted with the man’s face-Flattery’s face. After a moment, she saw it wasn’t Flattery, though. The man was too young, too nervous, and he had a birthmark by his lips. He was Steele, the kobold-torturer.

“Now, give me the spur and don’t try anything. My uncle was a wizard, so I know all your foolish conjurer tricks.”

“I don’t have the spur,” Cat objected.

“Don’t lie to me. I was at the inner stair door. That halfling freak locked it, but her people aren’t the only ones who can pick locks or listen at doors. I was listening. I heard Giogi call you a little ass, and he was right. Only an ass would risk her neck to save that idiot. The divination said the spur was in the little ass’s pocket. Now, reach into your pocket very slowly and pull it out and hand it to me.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Master Steele. I haven’t got the spur. Maybe the divination referred to the little burro that Master Giogi had yesterday. A burro is a small ass, you know. It’s missing, though, like the spur, I’m afraid.”

“Asses don’t have pockets!” Steele shouted angrily. “Now give me everything you’ve got in yours.”

“I have to put these scrolls and this book down to use my hands,” Cat said.

In a fury, Steele knocked the book and the scrolls out of Cat’s arms.

“Now, that pocket first,” the nobleman ordered, pointing to the right-hand side pocket of her dress’s skirt.

One at a time Cat pulled out three potion vials she’d removed from Drone’s shelves. Steele knocked each one to the ground, where all three smashed to pieces. Cat bit her upper lip angrily but remained silent.

“I want to see you turn the pocket out to prove it’s empty,” Steele said.

“There’s something else in there,” Cat replied.

“Give it to me.”

“Very well.” Cat drew out the last item and held it out for Steele’s inspection.

“What is it?” Steele growled.

“Something inflexible, Master Steele,” she said, inscribing a circle in the air with the small iron nail she held. At the word “inflexible” the tip of the iron bar sparked and the nail vanished.

Steel tensed to lunge, but he was transfixed by the mage’s spell. He stood as still as a statue with his one hand reaching for the magically expired nail, the other still holding the knife. Cat pulled away carefully from the Wyvernspur’s blade. Steel remained immobile. Hastily the mage gathered up the scrolls she’d dropped and stuffed them into a sack. She wiped the broken potion vial glass and liquid as thoroughly as she could from the cover of Gaylyn’s catalog and left the book on Drone’s desk.

Snatching up her fur muff, Cat backed toward the outer stair’s door. “Apparently that’s one trick you didn’t learn from your uncle, hmmm, Master Steele? Mages call it ‘hold person,’ spell component, a small piece of straight iron.”

Cat laughed and was turning toward the door when something heavy cracked across her temple. The blow felt as if a fireball had exploded in her skull and left a fire raging there.

Cat collapsed to her knees as a woman’s voice said, “We know the trick ‘hold mage,’ though. Spell component, a stout stick.”

Cat felt a pinprick at her throat.

“This pin’s coated with poison. If it breaks your skin, you’ll be dead,” the woman’s voice warned. “Now, release Steele,” she demanded.

Despite the agonizing pain in her head, the mage managed to recall the magic word. “Willow,” she whispered.

Steele sprang back to life, half falling forward, jabbing at the empty air with his knife. He caught himself and straightened up. “Good work, Julia,” he said. “You managed to tear yourself from your peasant lover, I see,” he added with a sneer. “You’ve hobbled up here just in time.”

Julia, Steele’s sister, Cat remembered. She must be as crazy as he is, the mage thought. Julia drew her poison pin away from Cat’s throat, but Cat remained kneeling on the floor. The fire in her skull made any movement too excruciating, and the light in the room was too bright to open her eyes.

“Aunt Dorath’s been looking for you everywhere,” Julia said anxiously. “She’ll check up here any minute now. You are going to catch Nine Hells if she finds you here. You know she’s put the room off-limits.”

“Nothing will be off-limits to me in a moment,” Steele said. He pointed at Cat. “Check her pockets. She’s Giogi’s little ass. She has the spur.”

“What are you talking about?” Julia asked.

“Just do as I say,” Steele ordered.

Using the large staff she’d used to club the mage, Julia lowered herself clumsily to one knee. Keeping her poison pin pointed at Cat, Julia ran her hands through the folds of the mage’s gown until she came on an item. Julia drew out a silk scarf wrapped around a lumpy bundle—the amulet of protection against scrying and detection.

Through clenched teeth Cat growled, “My amulet.”

Slipping her pin into the bodice of her gown, Julia stood and unwrapped the material. “Eeeew,” she said, sniffing at the contents of the scarf with disgust. From the five pieces of dried, cured meat she selected the largest chunk. It was the size and shape of a baby zucchini, and uglier than a three-month-old sausage. “Steele! It is!” she cried excitedly. “It’s the spur!”

Steele strode forward, but Julia stepped back, pulling out her poison pin and holding it out warningly.

“You can’t fool me, Sister, dear. I know you don’t have poison on that pin. You’re too tender-hearted.”

“I do have the sleeping sap you gave me, though, which works just as well for my purposes. I helped you, Steele. Remember what you promised,” she demanded.

“Yes, yes. All right. Now give me the spur.”

“On your honor as a Wyvernspur, swear it.”

Steele huffed. “On my honor as a Wyvernspur, you have my permission to marry any jackass you please. It could be a Calimshan merchant for all I care. Now hand the spur over.”

Cat opened her eyes against the stinging light just in time to watch the spur tossed across the room. It looked like a piece of brown, dried meat someone had kept in a knapsack for a few years too long. Steele snatched it from the air. His laughter sounded like Flattery’s.

Frefford burst into the room. “What is going on here?” he hissed. “Aunt Dorath said she heard glass breaking.”

Gaylyn came in behind her husband. “Julia, you shouldn’t have climbed all the way up here with your ankle. It could get worse …” Gaylyn’s chiding died on her lips and she blanched when she spotted Cat kneeling on the floor.

Frefford looked down at what had upset his wife. “Mistress Cat, are you all right?” he asked, dropping to his knees beside the mage. “What happened?”

“Hit on the head,” Cat muttered. Her head throbbed too much to say more, but she rose shakily to her feet with the Wyvernspur lord’s assistance.

Gaylyn, aghast, stared at the pin in Julia’s hand. “Julia, what have you done?” she gasped.

“Steele’s found the spur,” Julia said, pointing at her brother as if his discovery would explain everything.

“And now its power will be all mine,” Steele declared.

“Steele, it doesn’t work that way,” Gaylyn insisted, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. “Uncle Drone explained it to me the night before he died. Only one of the guardian’s favorites can use the spur safely. Put it down, please.”

Cat focused on the spur. It was ugly for an artifact, but its power was already obvious. Blue sparks were shooting from its surface between the fingers of Steele’s fist.

“Oh, no,” Steele said. “I’m not buying that silly story, Gaylyn, dear. The guardian is a family myth only someone as foolish as Giogi could possibly believe in. I am not letting that idiot get his hands on the spur. I don’t care if Drone wanted to give it to him. I found it. It’s mine.”

Steele held the spur with both hands and raised it above his head. “I can feel its power already,” he said. The blue sparks were now bolts of blue light, which flickered down Steele’s arm.

Aunt Dorath huffed into the room and pushed past Frefford and his wife. Like a mother who’d found her little child playing with a dagger, Aunt Dorath fixed Steele with a hard glare. “Steele Wyvernspur, you put that thing down this instant,” she commanded angrily.

Steele just laughed. His arms began to glow blue, and the light bolts spread down his torso.

“It’s happening. The power is mine. I can do anything.” Steele jumped up to the shattered window’s sill.

“Steele, no!” Julia screamed.

“Watch this, Sister, dear,” he said gleefully. He pushed open the broken window’s casement and spread his arms wide.

“Fluff-fluff,” Cat whispered just as the Wyvernspur leaped from the tower.

Aunt Dorath and Frefford dashed to the window. “He’s just floating down!” Frefford gasped.

“What?” Julia cried. “Then it works? The spur works?”

Cat bolted for the door and dashed down the outer staircase. Behind her she could hear Aunt Dorath shout, “Frefford, get down after Steele! Get that cursed thing away from him!”

Cat felt dizzy and sick, but she was not going to let an insane kobold-torturer get away with her prize. Because of her spell, Steele was falling with the resistance of a feather, so it would take him at least a minute to reach the ground.

The mage raced from the manor house and rushed to the corner tower. She stood at the base of the tower as Steele drifted toward her. He was still cackling about the power of the spur and flapping his arms, oblivious to the fact that he was really falling.

When his feet touched the earth and he was finally released from her feather fall spell, he wheeled to face her, his eyes wide with crazed rage. “Die!” he shrieked, swiping in her direction with his hand cramped like an animal claw, although he was not close enough to actually reach her.

Cat sprinkled sand over an imaginary baby in her arms and whispered, “Lullaby, Steele.”

The Wyvernspur slid fast asleep, into the slush and mud. Cat pounced on him and tore the spur from his hands.

All this time, she thought, I was expecting some shiny piece of metal, something that can be attached to a boot and used as a prod. What does the spur turn out to be? A disgusting piece of shriveled, mummified—ugh—someone actually slashed it off a wyvern’s foot.

A shadow fell across her and the snoozing Steele.

Frefford stood over her, offering a hand to help her up.

“I’m taking this to Giogi,” Cat muttered, backing away from Frefford on her knees.

“Well, now, it would be foolish for me to argue with such a battle-hardened and powerful spell-caster, wouldn’t it?” Frefford said, grinning as he looked her up and down.

Cat was suddenly aware of how comical she must appear, with her gown scorched by fire and covered with mud and a lump the size of an egg on the side of her head. Despite herself, she laughed. She held her hand out and let Frefford pull her to her feet.

“I have a horse saddled and waiting in the stable,” the nobleman said. “Bronder,” he hailed a passing servant, “have Sash bring out Poppy, and be quick about it.”

The servant scurried off to the stable.

Cat studied Frefford with amazement. “You really aren’t interested in possessing the spur, are you?” she asked.

Frefford shrugged. “You heard Gaylyn. Giogi’s the only one who can use it. Aunt Dorath doesn’t want him to, but that’s really for Giogi to decide, isn’t it?”

Cat felt dizzy for a moment and touched the lump on her forehead. Far above them, Dorath shouted down, “Frefford? Did you get it?”

“How’s your head?” Frefford asked, ignoring his aunt.

“If it were a horse, I’d have to put it to sleep,” Cat groused. “I didn’t know I had the spur,” she explained. “Someone else gave it to me. I thought it was something else …” Her voice trailed off.

“Are you sure you’re up to riding?” Frefford asked.

“Yes,” Cat insisted. “Why are you being so nice and understanding about this?” she asked.

Frefford grinned. “You could turn out to be a relative someday. We Wyvernspurs stick together, don’t you know.”

“How did you know—” Cat bit back her words. He didn’t know she was a Wyvernspur. He was thinking of her in terms of Giogi. She could feel the blood rushing to her face.

“You’re sure you feel up to riding? You look a little flushed,” Frefford teased.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “This is serious. There’s a wizard, Flattery. He killed your Uncle Drone. He’ll kill Giogi to get the spur from him. He doesn’t even want Giogi visiting the Temple of Selûne to find out anything about it.”

“Once Giogi has the spur, I don’t think anyone will be able to take it from him,” Frefford said calmly. “It will be a simple matter for him to bring this Flattery to justice. As for the Temple of Selûne—Giogi’s already there by now. You could join him. Mother Lleddew serves a lovely tea in the open air.”

Frefford pointed northwest over the fields. “The temple’s on Spring Hill—that big hill there. There’s a shortcut to the west side of town if you follow the footpath down the north slope of this hill instead of the road into town,” Frefford explained. “The road to the temple comes before the road to the graveyard.”

A stableboy, leading a chestnut mare with a black snip, approached Frefford. His Lordship helped the mage into the sidesaddle and handed her the reins. “It’s a nice day for a ride, but you’d better hurry before Aunt Dorath gets down here,” he said and smacked the horse into a trot.

Cat bounced out of the castle’s front gate feeling nauseated. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a horse. Before she’d been kidnapped in Zhentil Keep, she guessed. Has riding unsettled me this much before? she wondered.

Once outside the castle walls, Cat followed the path that Frefford had recommended. From the hillside, she could look out across most of the Wyvernspur lands. A dark gray cloud loomed over Spring Hill. Huge birds of death circled beneath the cloud.

Vultures in for the kill, Cat thought, her queasy stomach turning to ice.

Fearing she might already be too late, Cat urged her horse into a canter, but the sensation of being unbalanced as the beast sped down the hill was too unpleasant. She slowed the horse to a walk. Her heart was pounding hard, but she still didn’t know what she was going to do.

Ruskettle lied about the amulet of protection. Flattery could be watching me this very moment. I could take him the spur, but if Ruskettle did tell the truth about seeing a dark crystal being stolen from Flattery’s pocket, he has nothing to offer me—except my miserable life.

If I take the spur to Giogi, though, can he really use it to defeat Flattery? Or, if not, can he at least weaken Flattery enough to give me an opportunity to search for the memory crystal in case Flattery does still have it?

An eerie keening wafted across the fields. Cat looked up at Spring Hill. A brilliant white light flickered at the top. A moment later, a shimmering fog rolled down from the hilltop. Cat kept her eyes on the hilltop, still letting her horse plod along. When she saw the bolt of white light shoot from the hilltop, though, her fear for Giogi outweighed her fear of falling off the horse. She kicked it into a trot, and then into a gallop.

Olive held the brake just enough to keep the carriage from passing out of the shimmering fog, taking advantage of the protection it offered them. Undead lay on either side of the road, unmoving. The fog stopped at the bottom of the hill.

The carriage squelched through the field road. Olive spotted a large brown bear clawing at something out in the tall grass, but she had no desire to investigate any closer. She presumed it was one of Mother Lleddew’s chums taking care of an undead creature that had managed to escape the fog.

Olive looked over at Giogi with concern. He was leaning back with his eyes closed. He was pale and bruised and bleeding. “You don’t look so good,” she said. She tied the reins up, letting the horses set their own pace down the road, and turned to check the nobleman’s wounds.

“I don’t think I was cut out to be an adventurer,” Giogi muttered. “It hurts too much.”

Olive laughed. “But you were great,” she insisted. She sliced a piece off the bottom of his cape, folded it up, and pressed it against a gash in his neck. “Press on that,” she ordered.

Giogi obeyed, but he had to disagree with the halfling’s assessment. “I nearly got Mother Lleddew killed.”

“She’ll be fine. Werebears heal fast, and they’re harder to kill than people. Did you know she was a werebear?” Olive asked.

“No, of course not. How can a werebear be a priestess?”

“It’s traditional for lycanthropes to worship the moon,” Olive said with a shrug. “Even priests need hobbies.”

Alerted by the sound of a galloping horse, Olive looked across the fields again. “I think that’s Cat,” she said, pointing to a just barely mounted rider.

Giogi opened his eyes. “It is. She’s riding Poppy.” The nobleman reached over and pulled back on the horses’ reins, stopping the carriage.

Cat came charging up to them. She pulled back too hard on Poppy’s reins and set the mare rearing on her hind legs. The mage toppled from her saddle and into the muddy field. Giogi leaped from the carriage and rushed to the woman’s side.

“Obviously he doesn’t hurt as bad as he thought he did,” Olive muttered. She climbed down from the driver’s seat and scrambled up the carriage door to check on their passenger. Mother Lleddew remained in her bear form. A good sign, Olive knew, since lycanthropes turned human when they died. The bear brushed its nose with a paw. She’s just sleeping off the pain, Olive decided.

“I’m fine,” Cat moaned as Giogi bent over her. “I just forgot,” she said as he helped her to her feet, “that I don’t know how to ride.”

Giogi grinned until he caught sight of the bruise on her temple. “What happened? Who hit you?” he demanded angrily.

“Your fool Cousin Julia, trying to rescue her fool brother, Steele. I should have let him fall to the base of the tower, but, as you keep saying, we Wyvernspurs have to stick together. Giogi, don’t fuss. It was a very soft stick. Here. This is for you,” Cat concluded, holding up the spur for Giogi to see.

“You found it!” Giogi shouted. “You clever, clever woman.” He picked the mage up by the waist and twirled her around. When he set her back down, he kissed her on the cheek.

“Would you please take it away,” Cat asked. “You never told me it was this ugly.”

Giogi laughed and took the spur from the mage. “It is, isn’t it?” he agreed, holding it up to his face. “Where was it?”

“You’d better ask Mistress Ruskettle,” Cat suggested.

Giogi turned around and faced Olive with confusion, holding the spur out for her to see.

Olive looked at the artifact with a bit of confusion of her own. She’d presumed, as Cat had, that the spur would be a metal prod to strap around one’s ankle to spur wyverns into the air or something. It took her several moments to recognize the hunk of mummified flesh as one of the pieces of dried meat she’d tied into the bundle she’d given Cat.

The halfling had some explaining to do, she realized. Olive needed time to figure out what to explain first. She looked up into the clear blue sky. “How about you tuck that away, and as soon as we’re safe indoors, I’ll explain about the spur,” she promised. “Flattery could always fly over in the shape of a bird or something.”

Giogi looked up nervously. The sky was empty. The lone cloud that had shaded Spring Hill had vanished. He didn’t see any birds. Still, he was inclined to take Olive’s suggestion. “I’ll tie Poppy to the back of the carriage, so you can ride with us,” he said to Cat.

“Can’t you explain on the way?” Cat asked Olive with pseudo-innocence.

“No,” Olive said. “I think I’d better stay in back with Mother Lleddew. She’s not well.”

“Mother Lleddew? What’s wrong with her?” Cat asked anxiously. She peered into the carriage window and pulled back quickly. “Giogi,” she whispered, “there’s a bear in there.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Olive said. “She’ll sleep it off. If you would be so kind as to open the door for me, we can be off.”

Once they were all loaded back on the carriage, Giogi and Cat on the driver’s seat, Olive inside with Mother Lleddew, and Poppy clopping along behind, Olive began racking her brain for exactly what she would tell Giogi and Cat. At the same time, she kept an ear on the conversation between the nobleman and the mage.

“I thought it was some sort of metal spur, such as for a horse,” Cat said. “It’s been sliced off a real wyvern’s foot, though, hasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Giogi said. “It was a gift from a female wyvern to Paton Wyvernspur for rescuing her children. She sliced it off her dead mate.”

Yuck! Olive thought inside the carriage.

“Yick!” Cat exclaimed. “How gruesome.”

“Well, yes. Speaking of gruesome, are you sure you’re all right? That’s a nasty bump you’ve got there,” Giogi said.

“You should talk,” the mage laughed. “You’re three colors that humans don’t generally come in,” she said, poking at a large bruise on his cheek. “You’re bleeding, too. What happened?”

“We ran into a few undead,” Giogi said with a shrug. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. The potions you gave us helped a lot, though.”

Olive mentally amended: An army of undead that we beat only with help from a werebear and a goddess’s powerful minion. And the potions helped only as long as the right type of undead attacked us.

“So, how was your afternoon?” Giogi asked the mage.

Cat related the events at Redstone in detail.

Giogi looked astonished by her story. “Is that all?” he asked with mock ennui.

“Is that all?” Cat echoed. “No. One more thing.”

“What?”

“I missed you,” the mage admitted.

“Really?” Giogi asked, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

Olive shifted uneasily inside the carriage. Despite the mage having loyally handed the spur over to Giogi, Olive could not trust her. She hadn’t leveled with Giogi about being Flattery’s wife, but she continued to flirt with him. The halfling had firsthand experience at betraying people. She couldn’t help thinking that Cat still had some sort of scheme in mind that required Giogi’s cooperation.