With a Single Spell

CHAPTER 18

They spent all the following day exploring the castle more thoroughly. Tobas needed the entire morning ta maneuver his prize tapestry step by step out through the wizard-lord’s apartment, down the two flights of stairs, and back across the Great Hall to the gate, while Peren gathered a good-sized pile of booty from throughout the castle. In the afternoon it was Tobas’ turn to explore, while Peren settled down in the Great Hall to pick through his booty and decide what was worth carrying away and what could be left. By the time the sun set again the wizard had gone through every nook and cranny, while the albino had put together in one pile his final selections, roughly thirty pounds of gold, silver, and jewelry in various forms.

“You know,” Peren remarked to Tobas as they ate dinner at a table they had righted in one of the lower rooms, “we’ll both be rich when we get home. Even if that tapestry isn’t good for anything but melting down, that rod it’s on must have ten pounds of gold on it, maybe more. Figure ten percent for the smith’s fee, and that’s ninety pieces of gold. They say a man can live on one copper a day if he’s not picky; ninety of gold are nine thousand of copper. Say four hundred and fifty a year, that’s twenty years you can live just on that.”

Tobas nodded. “And with it all in that tapestry I don’t need to worry about sneak thieves picking my pocket or burgling my room at the inn, the way you do!”

Peren laughed. “Ah, but I have far more than ten pounds here!”

“Counting the jewels and silver, maybe, and they’re probably half fake, too.”

Peren laughed again. “What if they are? Pounds of gold, and silver, and handfuls of gems! If nine out of ten are just cut glass, I’ll still be able to call myself a rich man! How could this one wizard have had so much wealth! It astounds me, it truly does. And Tobas, I think half the castle had already been looted, too. I didn’t find anything worth taking anywhere but the two main apartments. The butler’s vault had been broken open and all the plate cleared out; the armory had all of three swords left, two of them bent and the other one broken. The towers were empty — at least, the five I climbed. I didn’t care to see what was left in the fallen one.”

Tobas nodded. “I think the castle servants probably carried off everything in sight when they fled after the crash, but most of them wouldn’t have had the nerve to go into the private apartments. The wizard died; we saw that. As far as the servants were concerned, he had probably just vanished into thin air, they didn’t know about the secret passage. They probably didn’t dare steal from his suite, lest he reappear suddenly. What puzzles me is what happened to the lady; her jewels were still there, at least some of them, and I would have thought that she and her maids would have taken them all. There’s no sign that she, too, died, and it would have been quite an odd coincidence if she had, don’t you think?”

Peren shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t home.”

“Maybe.” They ate in silence for a moment.

“Tobas,” Peren said at last, “are you sure you want to go back to Ethshar?”

Surprised, Tobas replied, “Well, I thought so; why?”

“I don’t think I do. I grew up there and I’ve seen all of it I care to. It’s true that I have my own money now, but my hair’s still white and my eyes still red, and the children in the street will probably still call me a ghost or a demon, even if I’m wearing velvet instead of homespun. This sword I carry didn’t make any difference; I don’t think the gold will, either.”

“Well, what of it?” Tobas demanded. “The gods played a nasty trick on you when you were born that way, but what can you do about it? Where else would you go?” He was not comfortable with the subject; he had never paid much attention to Peren’s coloration, nor thought about how he might deal with those who did think it important.

“I don’t know, not for certain,” Peren replied. “I think I want to go on across the mountains and see what’s on the other side, in Aigoa or whatever land lies to the east.”

Tobas remembered the rows of mountains, marching off into the distance, that they had seen from the peak above the castle. He shuddered at the thought of trying to cross them all, let alone drag the massive tapestry over them. “It’ll just be more miserable little kingdoms like Dwomor,” he said, hoping to discourage Peren. “The Small Kingdoms extend as far as the Great Eastern Desert, don’t they? And that goes right to the edge of the World. There’s nothing out there worth seeing. If you don’t want to come back to Ethshar, if you think the Small Kingdoms are better, you can stay in Dwomor.”

Peren shook his head. “I don’t think so. We didn’t kill their dragon. I don’t think they’d appreciate having us come back rich while the dragon’s still out there somewhere.”

Tobas had no answer for that at first, but finally managed, “Well, not everyone can kill their stupid dragon. We’ve been gone more than a sixnight now; probably one of the other teams found it and killed it.”

Peren shook his head. “You saw that dragon, Tobas, and you saw the hunters; do you really think anyone’s killed it?”

“Uh... maybe the witches?” he suggested hopefully.

“Maybe the witches,” Peren conceded. “I don’t know much about witchcraft.”

“Neither do I,” Tobas admitted.

“You just know fire-magic, isn’t that right?”

Tobas smiled. “That’s right,” he agreed.

Peren smiled back, then turned serious again. “No, Tobas, I don’t want to come back to Dwomor. Would you want to stay there? It’s a pretty dreary little kingdom, even without the dragon rampaging about.”

“What about Ekeroa, then?”

“It’s better,” Peren admitted, “but I really don’t want to go back. We might run into the dragon, for one thing, and we’d have to go by way of Dwomor. I simply don’t want to see that ramshackle castle again. I want to go on to the east, over the mountains.”

Tobas could avoid it no longer. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t. It’s too far, too lonely, and too hard a journey. I’m a lazy person, Peren; that’s how I got into this mess in the first place; I was too lazy to work when I thought I had an inheritance coming. I got this far to keep from starving. But now that I have this tapestry, I don’t need to go any further and I’m not going to. We don’t have enough food to get over the mountains, hell, I’m not sure we have enough to get back! What will you eat?”

“I’ll hunt; I have a sling, a sword, and two good knives.”

Startled, Tobas asked, “You do? Can you use a sling?”

Peren nodded.

“Oh,” Tobas said. “Well, maybe you can do that, then, and catch what you need, but I can’t hunt. And I don’t want to depend on you for food like that. I’m going back. I’m going back to Ethshar, where I’ll sell this tapestry to a wizard, trade it for spells, or melt down its metal, and then I’m going to take the money and settle down quietly somewhere and make a home for myself. That’s all I want, a home; I don’t want any adventures. I’m going back.”

“I’m going on,” Peren said quietly.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded.

Tobas nodded acceptance. “All right. We’ll go in the morning, then, you to the east and I to the west.”

That settled, the conversation died away, and they retired early, Tobas sleeping in the wizard’s bed, Peren sleeping on a blanket in the Great Hall.