Hoab wandered back to the little stone hovel in the East End that he and Iztha had liberated from the horrible family that had been defiling the dwelling with their foul presence.
Or possibly with their Fowl Presents… they looked like goose-lovers to me. Never trust a goose-lover. Drown them at birth, is what I says… Hoab’s mind rambled on in its own random directions as he abled through the city.
He and Iztha had chosen the home because it was an anonymous door at the end of an otherwise blind alley. Approaching the door, he saw the dead pigeon he had left on the outer edge of the stone threshold was just where he had left it when he had left the comfortably dark little home to go out earlier in the day.
It had been a productive day, as Hoab counted such things. He had started several brawls in various pubs. With a minor exertion of his Talent, Hoab had been able to make many men think they were being pushed, hit, attacked by those who stood closest to them in the confines of the several taprooms he had visited. Otherwise jovial, well meaning fellows taking a tankard at midday had been convinced, with almost no effort on his part, absolutely convinced beyond all doubt that they were under assault by those other happy men drinking and dining near them.
The chaos had been glorious. And in that morass of flailing fists and improvised cudgels and knives, Hoab had lifted purses, and fine articles of clothing. He had even come by a very nice pair of boots that he was now wearing as he shouldered his way into his and Iztha’s home.
And they even FIT me! Oh, I haven’t had a pair of boots fitting my feet since… His mind stuttered at the attempted recollection. …boots that fit me… and nice clothing for Iztha… we wore robes… there was blood on the robes… and I lost my boots in Hamuria… they were Velspean silk… and fine, handmade boots… our robes had blue… the robes were blue with gold stuff on them… gold piping… and Iztha wore hers… she wore the Blue Robes… she was … so beautiful…
His eyes slowly widened as he stood in the dark of the wrecked kitchen, his breathing had sped up as he stood in the dark room. Terms like “wild-eyed” and “bug-eyed” had been slung at Hoab when he was young. But those days, the days when people could say things like that to him without any fear of reprisals, were long gone.
Before the war.
Before his training.
Before he met Iztha.
Before Iztha had loved him.
Before… something he refused to remember now. Something horrible. Something that he didn’t want to think about.
…where’s Iztha…?
He started to move quickly through the home, dodging past broken furniture, and a place where several bodies had been piled. He glanced at them as he passed. None of them were Iztha, so they didn’t matter.
Coming into the back room, he could see Iztha’s long lanky body stretched out of the rickety bed in the corner by the dark maw of the unlit fireplace. He approached slowly, not wanting to disturb her rest, but stared at her chest to watch for breathing. He had found her one day, some time back, not breathing and had panicked. Now he always approached her with the joy of seeing her tinged with a rime of fear that she may have once again… stopped.
He almost stepped in the remains of the whistlepig he had sacrificed to make her coherent. Most of the thing was spread on the floor near the door he had just passed through, but there were unfortunate spots and puddles still left over from his last ritual to bring her mind back from where it had been since they had fled another continent, and the war that had been raging between their own kingdom and its neighbor.
He winced as the memories of facing Hamuria’s mages on the field of battle came back to him in painful detail.
He winced as the memories of facing Hamuria’s mages on the field of battle came back to him in painful detail. Hoab’s rebellious mind threw image after image into view of his thoughts as he flailed his arms about his head, trying to banish the tormenting memories as one might flail at a spider web one had walked through in the dark.
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And then, at last, there it was.
The memory he dreaded as he feared few other things in the world. The images flashing between conjured lightning and oceans of fire washing across the battlefield as a young man walked toward Hoab and Iztha’s Circle of Mages in his mind’s exaggerated version of that monstrous mage’s silhouette.
The Hamurian army had a mage of such insane power that they would often send the young man out with little more than an outrider escort to utterly devastate the mages serving in the Army of Velspe. He remembered the sound that signaled fully half of the soldiers in the platoon who had been sent to protect his Circle turning to flee before the onslaught.
He saw, in the blurry mists of memories as the very light of the late day Sun had been turned against his Circle. He saw, once again Iztha, his love, gesture and threw up a barrier of force to hold back the wave of destructive power that slowly, misleadingly, rolled toward where he and Iztha held a spell of protection up against the Fury of the Hamurian Golden Tower.
A mage, despite his reported youth, Hoab’s own people had called “il Kazkamortale.” They called him “the Death that Walks” in the old tongue. They even sang songs about him.
The languid wave of fire crested above the protective dome Iztha had raised, and Hoab had joined with her to hold, and then…
And then…
And then…
And then Hoab blinked. He was sitting in a pool of the blood and viscera he had used to bring Iztha’s mind back to him for an hour the night before. His face was covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
“Oooooh, I hope I was doing something fun! Who doesn't like to have fun?” Voice cracking, he practically screeched into the evening air. “Iztha, my love! We have dinner for weeks! I’ve been shopping!”
From the sack in his lap, he pulled a loaf of dark, herbed bread, and a wheel of some white cheese with the wax rind still attached. There was the solid clunking sound of a bottle being set aside, “This is for later… when we can get your attention back for an hour or two.”
And then, he held aloft in the spirit of a great triumph, a preserved ham. “I know you think it’s too salty, my love! But, this is what the merchant had… aside from too many half digested dumplings scattered across his floor. The way some shop-keeps just leave their innards lying about these days. It’s a shame, dearest! An absolute shame!”
With that, he levered himself off the floor with the grace of a large, leggy spider, and let himself fall onto the creaking and partially broken bed beside the target of his affections.
It was then he saw the small bag resting upon her stomach.
“Have you been shopping too, loveliest of wives?”
Reaching over her comatose figure, Hoab grabbed up the little cloth bag. A note was attached.
“Master Hoab;
I do hope this message finds you well and in good spirits. As I suggested I might do in our previous conversations, I have included a small gift for you. This medallion, in your capable hands, will further Our aims. Please see the specific directions I have included, and use this object while visiting tonight’s meeting of a group of concerned Men at the Fulghum Warehouse just off the southern end of Bell Street, near the docks. These men are looking for someone to give them a message worth following, and We believe that could be you, if you use this artifact correctly. A man of your specific educational achievements should have no trouble in these efforts. Payment has already been placed into the kitchen larder of your lovely home. Another sprog, lost and unwanted… What did you call them? A “Whistlepig” I believe? I hope you are able to spend a delightful hour with Iztha before you are required to be at the meeting.
Good Evening to you and the Lovely Iztha;
Sincerely, The Concerned Citizens of Ghlow”
Hoab read, and then reread the letter several times, before pulling the heavy object from the bag. As it touched the skin of his palm, his Talent reacted without his calling upon it. He could feel the power and the malevolence moving through this disk of silver. Looking closely at the thing, he could see the image wrought on the piece in small blue and translucent stones was that of an animal of some kind, circling the rounded surface of the pendant, then twisting back around again, and then once again upon itself.
The power running rampant through the cursed thing wanted his blood. It wanted it badly.
Looking down at the emaciated face of his wife where she lay motionless, he smiled. He thought his smile would break his face if he kept it up too long, but he absolutely could not help himself. “My darling, I will be taking a postprandial perambulation this evening, I do hope you will excuse me for a few hours.”
His laughter could be heard blocks away. Most of those who heard it thought it was the screaming of some back alley mutt, being brought down by something bigger than it.