Don Bassingthwaite - The Binding Stone

The shifter grunted. “Anyone can stand up straight, Veta, and there are more crests than the ones that great houses use.”

“They’re gentlemen for true, Geth!” Veta simpered. She turned to go back into the common room.

“Gentlemen or not,” said Geth, “I hope they’re peaceful. We don’t need more trouble.” He could hear a growing buzz from inside the common room. Word of the displacer beasts’ deaths was beginning to circulate. People would be eager for the story. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the door.

A cheer so loud it would have shaken leaves from a tree greeted him. The inn’s patrons stood, roaring their approval. Sandar raised his arms high. “The hero of Bull Hollow!” he called. Geth turned, nodding with embarrassment as he acknowledged their praise.

At a table toward the back of the room, standing along with everyone else, were the two men who could only be Veta’s gentlemen travelers. Geth had to admit that they did cut much more impressive figures than most visitors to Bull Hollow. The younger of the two was cheering along with the Hollowers, the pattern of a dragonmark flashing on his forearm.

The other man, blond and about the same age as Geth himself, was staring at him with stinging fury on his face. Geth met his gaze with a curious glance.

It took a moment for him to recognize the face behind the chin-patch beard and the burning rage. After seven years of peace in Bull Hollow, he had let his guard down. He’d forgotten what it was like to be pursued. He’d forgotten that he was being hunted.

“Geth!” the bearded man bellowed. His rapier cleared its scabbard in a single smooth motion. Sandar’s patrons froze, their cheers silenced by surprise. “Geth, you bastard traitor!”

For a moment, Geth froze, too. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck rose sharply. His lips pulled back from his teeth.

Then the hero of Bull Hollow dropped his tankard and spun around, leaping for the inn door and the common beyond. There was a crash behind him and thundering footsteps. Shouts of alarm. Singe’s shouts of anger. A voice he didn’t know commanding Singe to stand down. Sandar’s voice demanding that he put away his sword.

Geth ran as fast as he could, racing across the common. Singe’s rapier was only as effective as his reach. But it wasn’t the blond man’s only weapon. Geth kept his eyes on the trees ahead.

Too late. Behind him, he heard Singe call out a simmering, sizzling word of power.

A dozen paces ahead, flame blossomed in the night, swirling into a sphere of seething orange fire that was almost as tall as the shifter. Geth skidded to a stop, his feet digging up strips of sod, then tried to dart around the sphere. The sphere rolled over on itself, moving to block him. He feinted left, then darted right. The fiery sphere moved with him, then rolled closer. Geth was forced to leap back or be burned.

“Geth!” Singe called.

The shifter whirled and dropped into a crouch, his sharp teeth bared and his pointed ears back like a cornered animal. His hand darted to his belt, groping for his axe. Singe was trotting across the common, his right hand holding his rapier, his left crooked in the arcane gesture that controlled the flaming sphere. He stopped a cautious distance away.

The two men faced each other in silence in the flickering, smoky light.

“Singe! Singe! Lieutenant Bayard!” The younger man who had been with Singe in the inn came dashing from the direction of the inn, his jacket hanging open, his sword already drawn. Behind him, the folk of Bull Hollow were gathering. Their voices were animated and alarmed. Some were jogging across the common, clubs and daggers in their hands. The young man’s face was pale. “Have you lost your mind?” he gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Toller,” Singe said tightly, “I spent four years trying to track this bastard down. I only came back to the Blademarks because I thought I’d never find him.”

The wizard was cut off by the arrival of a number of the men of the Hollow, Sandar in their lead. The white-haired innkeeper carried a surprisingly large mace in one hand. “Good master,” he said to Singe, “I’d ask you to lower your weapon and … uhhh …” He glanced at the fire burning behind Geth. “Dismiss whatever magic you command.”

Singe didn’t take his eyes off Geth. “They don’t know, do they?” he asked.

If it was possible, Geth’s lips peeled back even further. Singe took a step closer, his left hand gesturing. The sphere of fire began to roll forward …

The deep bellow that echoed across the common-across the entire valley-seemed to shake the very air itself. It sounded like the cry of some enormous wounded animal, caught in unimaginable pain. Around Singe, the people of Bull Hollow gasped. Toller yelped in fear. Geth’s own gut clenched in sudden alarm.

Singe’s hand trembled. He looked up into the night. “What was that-?”

In the second that the wizard’s gaze was turned away, Geth’s muscular frame uncoiled. His arm swung back and then snapped forward, sending his axe spinning through the air. Singe choked and flung himself down and backward.

It was a terrible throw, awkward and haphazardly aimed. Geth could see recognition of that flicker in Singe’s eyes even as he dropped. The axe missed him by a good five feet, embedding its blade deep in the ground of the common. Geth didn’t wait to see his reaction. He turned and darted around the resting ball of fire, putting it between him and Singe and hurling himself toward the woods once more.

“No!” howled Singe. There was another gasp from the folk of Bull Hollow. Geth glanced back over his shoulder in time to see the wizard charging after him, not around the fiery sphere, but through it.

He emerged from the flame without even a scorch mark on him. A ring on his finger shone with a sudden, hungry light.

But the trees of the forest were ahead. Geth flung himself into them as a second bellow rolled through the night.

“Adolan,” asked Dandra, “where is Bull Hollow?”

We don’t have time for this , Tetkashtai hissed.

We need directions , Dandra replied.

Once again, a frown flickered across Adolan’s face, as if he was somehow aware of the silent communication. The druid crossed the cabin from the door to the open cupboard, reached in and took out the bread and cheese Dandra had glimpsed. “Just down the path,” he answered. “It’s very close.”

“No, I mean where is it in relation to other places. Like Yrlag in the Shadow Marches, for instance.”

“Yrlag?” Adolan turned and looked at her. His eyes narrowed. “Yrlag is a week and half’s travel to the southwest. We’re in the west of the Eldeen Reaches.”

You came too far! I told you we had missed Yrlag!

Shut up, Tetkashtai! Dandra gave Adolan an embarrassed smile. “I’m lost,” she said. “I was traveling from Yrlag to-” she searched her memory hastily for the name of a town or city in the Eldeen Reaches. “-Erlaskar.”

Adolan’s eyes didn’t shift. “Through the Twilight Domain and the Gloaming?”

“Well, not through them, obviously,” Dandra lied.

She had no idea what either place was, but the man’s voice made them sound dangerous. Inside her mind Tetkashtai was tensed like over-wound clockwork, but she forced herself to remain calm as Adolan took a knife from the cupboard as well. He cut big pieces of bread and cheese, setting them on a grill by the fire to toast, then turned back to put plates out on a rough table. He worked without saying anything, though Dandra had the sense that he was only looking for the right moment.

Finally she broke the silence before he could. “Do you have a map of the Eldeen Reaches, Adolan?”