Dellromoz shifted uncomfortably in his wooden bindings as he took in his surroundings. He was sitting on a carpet, in a little hut that wrapped around the base of a fir tree. The roof and walls were partially the result of overhanging branches and partially the result of a sort of tent made from natural fibers and hung up to obscure the rest of the camp from his sight. There were a couple of pillows in a pile nearby, but he couldn’t do anything with them the way his arms were held against his sides.
He’d been unceremoniously dumped in here by whoever Falco had summoned from his camp; he hadn’t caught the others’ names. He briefly considered using his transformation to incinerate the green wood around him and make a run for it, but then he’d just end up naked and lost in a forest fire. That seemed like a worse proposition than waiting to see what these people wanted, so he tried to find the least-uncomfortable way to sit.
He supposed this was probably their territory, and he and Erasmus had entered it without permission, but he didn’t know what choice he’d had in the matter. Whether that meant he and his friend were in grave danger, or if they could expect to be treated as guests, he had no idea. Bramblejack clans tended to live in seclusion in densely forested areas, only occasionally trading for things they couldn’t gather or produce themselves. They were also nomadic, moving with the seasons along secret routes known only to themselves, changing course on the basis of wildlife migrations, the availability of edible berries, events on their celestial calendar, bandit sightings, and what wildflowers were in bloom. A member of a clan could always find their way back to camp, but it was generally accepted as impossible for outsiders to know where to find them. They cared little for the rulers and laws of the Ostrogothi, or the Agathocletians, keeping to themselves and following their own customs.
It was with some trepidation he watched as the curtain over the door was pulled aside and Falco entered, along with another bramblejack, who could have been his mother or grandmother.
“So this is the interloper?” she asked, squinting at him from under a bushy eyebrow. Falco nodded. “He’s so pale and scrawny, I can see why you were worried. However, I can assure you he isn’t a vampire.” Falco glowered.
“Relax, child, it’s just a little joke. I’ll handle it from here,” she told him. Falco nodded and stepped outside. “But bring us some tea!” she shouted at the curtain. Dell thought he heard Falco grumbling as he walked away.
“Do you have a name?” she asked as she turned back toward Dell.
“Yes.”
She scowled at him when he didn’t volunteer any further information. “Well, out with it, boy!”
He scowled right back. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not interested in exchanging pleasantries with common bandits.”
She snorted at his rebuke as Falco returned with a tray containing a pot of hot water, three cups, and an elaborately carved wooden box.
“I am called Frasera,” the elderly bramblejack began, removing a mortar and pestle from the box, as well as some pouches of herbs. “I am Matriarch of the Clan of the Autumn Star.” She lit a stick of incense and began selecting herbs and adding them to the mortar. “You are not here so we can empty your pockets of valuables,” she glanced at him, “not that you seem to have any.”
She ground the contents of the mortar with the confidence born of many years of practice. “It is generally our custom to let outsiders pass us by without troubling them, or even bothering to inform them of our presence.
“However, there are times when custom must give way for prudence. A necromancer approaching near to our camp is one such time.” She spooned a bit of the mixture into each of the cups and poured hot water over it. The smell of an unfamiliar herbal tea brewing mixed with the incense in a way that made Dell feel tired, and a bit dizzy.
“I’m not a necromancer, I’m a surgeon, and my name is Dellromoz,” he said as he shook his head.
“You’re not deceiving anyone, we saw your servant, and his disguise isn’t even very clever. You should really have dressed him in drab clothes so people wouldn’t notice him so quickly.” She put a teacup in front of each of them and nodded at Falco. His eyes shone as he waved a hand, and Dellromoz’s bindings fell away from him. The gnome rubbed at his upper arms where the wood had constricted tightly.
“Erasmus isn’t my servant,” he said as he picked up the teacup. The steam rising off of it had a pleasant smell, and he breathed deeply. The world seemed to slow down as he put the cup to his lips and sipped. “He’s my friend. He dresses himself too, the look is part of his whole... personality, I guess. I don’t have anything to do with his fashion choices.”
He felt vaguely like he was floating as he looked up and watched the two bramblejacks sip their tea. Falco drained the entire cup in one go and set it back down in front of him. The irritable look seemed to slowly melt off his face as he sighed contentedly. The smoke from the incense swirled around him in strange ways, and Dell struggled to focus on it. His mind felt foggy, but he steeled his will and squinted.
Smoke, and steam, and Falco’s breath mixed together and seemed to sprout into trunks, and stems, and vines covered in buds that slowly, silently, burst open into leaves and blossoms. It was like a ghostly garden, moving through the seasons before his eyes. Dellromoz frowned and shook his head, but he finished his tea after Frasera swallowed the last of hers.
The air was thick, and his mind seemed to swim through it. Frasera looked up at him.
“Were you friends when he was alive?” she asked.
“No,” Dell swayed slightly. “I think he died before I was born.” The smoke was strange around her as well.
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“Did you summon him somehow?”
“I can barely summon a barkeep when I want a drink,” Dell groused. “I don’t know how to summon spirits or mistwalkers or things like that.” They disappeared if he tried to look directly at them, but there seemed to be other bramblejacks in the smoke around Frasera. They seemed to keep watch around her, and would occasionally bend down and whisper in her ear, but he couldn’t hear what they said.
“How did you two come to be traveling together, then?” she asked.
His eyelids felt heavy. “We broke out of the gaol together, back in Stanhope. Erasmus pretended to be a sack full of bones and they locked him up with all his possessions in a stockroom and kept searching for him!” He laughed, they really did look like fools when you knew what the trick was!
“Why were you in the gaol?”
Dellromoz frowned. He hadn’t thought about that in a while now, and it had been a nice respite. These folk didn’t seem so bad though, not really! He told them a short version of how he was trying to avoid the Goswin outfit and had given the watch the wrong papers. He laughed at himself when he got to that part, everything seemed a bit funny if you looked at it the right way.
“That’s quite an amusing story, Dellromoz. Could you tell me why you were hiding from the Goswins?” Frasera asked.
Dell smiled and opened his mouth to tell her, then stopped. His brows knit together in confusion.Why am I telling them all this? he thought to himself. Something wasn’t right, but putting his thoughts together was like wading through a bog; every step a struggle. He held up the empty teacup and squinted at it.
“You drugged me,” he said, turning slowly towards the two.
“Something like that, child,” Frasera admitted, “it’s a little herbal medicine, and a little bit of magic. We didn’t want you casting any spells, and we’ve found it loosens tongues as well.”
Dell tried to stand, but his balance had completely deserted him, and he sprawled on his back. He snickered at himself in spite of everything.
“I can’t cast spells in the first place,” he mumbled, staring up at the fir boughs that comprised the roof of the little hut. “I’m not a necromancer.”
“We know that now, Dellromoz,” she told him. “Now, why were you running from the Goswins?”
He felt something that maybe wasn’t him tug at his will, and a part of himself wanted to tell them, but he stamped it down. That matter had caused him enough trouble lately, and he didn’t want to have someone else find out about it and make even more trouble.
“Does it have something to do with a fire?” Falco asked him.
Dell’s eyes widened in shock, and he stared at Falco from his place on the floor. “How did you know that?” he demanded.
“I know you’ve seen how the smoke reveals our secrets,” Falco replied, “have you seen how it reveals yours?”
Dellromoz struggled into a sitting position as the hut seemed to move around him. He rubbed the back of his wrist across his eyes and looked around himself, at the way the smoke from the incense rose up around him, flickering and dancing like a campfire. He held out a hand and the smoke seemed to sweep down his forearm and rise off his hand, forming familiar-looking ribbons as it streamed up from his fingertips.
After a moment he looked back at Frasera. “Do you know what it is?” he asked. “Because I have no idea. I don’t know where it came from, or why it happened to me.”
“I’m afraid you’re the first such I’ve seen,” she told him, an apologetic look on her face. “It’s something to do with fire, though you’re not simply a pyromancer. They touch a force outside themselves, bending it to their will, whereas fire seems to flow from you, as if it’s a part of you.”
“I didn’t start the fire on purpose,” he said quietly, “they’d beaten me and locked me in the cellar. I didn’t even know I could change, it had never happened before, but they were going to kill me when they got back. I was terrified, and in pain, and alone. Then I changed. The ropes burned away, everything near me burned. I crawled out of the cellar and ran, and everyone was too distracted with the fire to stop me.”
Frasera reached out and patted him on the knee.
“Am I cursed?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
They both shrugged. “Neither of us really knows much about that sort of magic,” Frasera said, “We’re clan elders, we concern ourselves with the sort of workings that protect and serve our clan.”
Falco looked thoughtful as he tapped a finger on his chin. “There’s a spellbreaker at Gaizarik’s Mount,” he offered.
Dell was watching as the smoke danced cheerfully around him. “I don’t know where that is,” he told them.
Frasera pointed and Falco rummaged through some things along the wall of the hut. He came back and spread a map on the carpet between them.
“We’re here,” he pointed. “Gairarik’s Mount...,” using his finger, he traced the course of the river down the center of the valley for a ways, then over a trail through some foothills into a narrower valley beside it. “... is here,” he said.
Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs from his thoughts, Dell stared at the map. There was something important here, and he struggled to remember what it was. It didn’t help that his eyes didn’t want to stay in focus, but after a few moments he spotted it.
“That’s getting pretty close to Stainagaz,” he said.
“It is,” Frasera agreed, “but if I was looking to have a curse broken, or for information on unknown magical effects, that’s the best place outside of a university. Besides, what are a few ghosts and a vampire or two to you? You don’t seem to mind traveling with the undead.”
“Erasmus is special, I can’t vouch for vampires I don’t know,” Dellromoz answered. “Though if they weren’t dangerous, I doubt the place would have the reputation it does.”
“Sometimes the undead conceal their true natures until the time is right, and then they turn on those they’ve deceived and devour them. They may not even wish to do it, but are enslaved by a hunger the living do not know. Are you really sure you can trust this Erasmus?” Dell raised his gaze to meet hers, and saw that the figures in the smoke around her were watching him as well.
“I was at his mercy in that cell back in Stanhope, and he gave me my freedom. He could have left me to my fate anytime these last weeks, or attacked me while my back was turned, or while I was asleep. I trust him far more than I do you.”
“Very well, we will-” Frasera’s words were cut short by the sound of raised voices outside, and people running. A boy burst into the hut, out of breath and sweating.
“It’s Hyacinth, she’s hurt!” he blurted. “The foraging party ran into a bear!”