David Grace - The Accidental Magician

Now so turned around that he had no conception of where he was going or where he had been, Grantin hesitated a moment and then, for no good reason, turned right and tramped on down the road. The noontime sun penetrated the clefts between the trees. Here the air was warmer and less damp than in the forest main.

Except for a renewed throbbing in the index finger of his left hand, Grantin's position seemed to have improved immeasurably since the beginning of his wild ride. He even happened past a jelly-apple tree and treated himself to six or seven of the immature fruits. True, occasionally the landscape wavered as if a silken curtain had been laid down in front of his eyes, but Grantin did his best to ignore those incidents.

By almost imperceptible degrees the trail grew wider – and subtly assumed a more well-traveled appearance. By and by the trail entered a sweeping left-hand curve at the end of which the bordering forest fell away. The road debouched into a wide meadow dotted at the far end with a series of crude low huts. Beyond the huts swirled the river whose presence Grantin had sensed for several hours.

Increasingly conscious of the burning thirst in his throat and the yawning pit where his stomach once lay, Grantin increased his pace almost to a trot. For some reason the huts looked strange to him. The construction was crude, barely more than bundles of twigs cemented with mounds of dry mud and covered with leaves from the salad trees. The settlement seemed deserted, and a nagging fear began to play on Grantin's mind. Perhaps this was not such a good idea after all.

He slowed his pace, then stopped to scrutinize the town. Here and there he saw a few dogs but no inhabitants. One of the dogs, obviously a descendant of the original basset hounds brought down in the Lillith, waddled forward and entered a hut some hundred yards away. It was then that Grantin realized what was odd about the village. The structures were small, tiny by human standards. From a distance he had been unable to perceive their true size. Now he noticed that with the exception of one building at the far end of the lane, the biggest of the hovels was barely three feet tall. Each of them was in perfect proportion for its inhabitants, however. Here was something Grantin had heard about but never personally seen, a community of Fane's mutated, intelligent dogs.

Cautiously Grantin resumed his trek. As he neared the first hut a howling sounded behind him. At once four of the husky creatures bounded from nearby structures and arrayed themselves so as to bar Grantin's passage. At their highest point the dogs reached barely eighteen inches from the ground, but nevertheless Grantin came to a swift halt

Grantin contrived to put as friendly a face on his appearance as possible.

"Good afternoon, friend dogs," he began. "It's a fine village you have here. What do you call it?"

One of the animals crept forward, his nose a few inches in front of the rest, and loosed a series of yips and low growls.

"I'm sorry, my friends, but you have me at a distinct disadvantage. I'm just a poor wanderer. If the truth be known I'm a bit lost. Tell me, though, do you understand human speech-perhaps one bark for yes and two for no?"

Only a stony silence greeted Grantin's remarks. No tails wagged, and on two muzzles skin pulled back to reveal gleaming ivory teeth.

"Surely, now, you wouldn't begrudge a hungry man a bite of food and shelter for the evening? Perhaps you have some chores I could perform in return? There must be quite a few tasks which even those fine paws of yours are unable to handle. Heavy work?" Grantin suggested, caricaturing a man lifting a weighty object. "Perhaps something that requires a bit of height?" Grantin stood on tiptoe and raised his arms above his head, pantomiming someone stretching and straining to place an object at a great elevation.

One of the dogs mumbled a few yips and whines to his fellows, and shortly the dogs' teeth were concealed. Apparently a bit of Grantin's message had penetrated, but still the tails did not wag nor did the bassets step aside. On the other hand they made no move to chase Grantin away.

Resigned to the situation, Grantin lay down in a clump of moss at the edge of the road to see what would happen next. The vegetation was springy and soft and exuded a fresh scent of minty herbs. The air was clean and warm. Folding his hands beneath his head, Grantin lay back and for a moment closed his eyes. After what seemed only an instant a squawking voice startled him from his reverie.

"You there, fellow. What's your name and what're you doing here?"

Grantin jumped to his feet and whirled around, blinking his eyes, looking for his interrogator.

"I said, what's your name and what're you doing here?" In the middle of the road Grantin spied a shriveled old woman, curled steel-gray hair protruded from her skull like handfuls of metal springs. Her face was all bulges and hollows, bulbous nose, sunken cheeks, protruding cheekbones and chin, sallow neck, sunken eyes, and beetling brow. Though slightly more than five feet in height, the body under her soiled calico jumper seemed firm and well fleshed. All in all, an imposing, peculiar sight.

"Good afternoon, madam. My name is Grantin, and as I was telling your friends the dogs, though I fear they don't understand me, I'm a poor traveler who has lost his way. Spying this quaint little village, I had hoped for hospitality."

"Traveler, huh? And where might it be that you're traveling from?"

"Oh, over that way," Grantin said, waving his hand in a random direction. "When I entered the forest I became disoriented and I've quite lost my bearings. I come from a little town called Alicon where I live with my uncle. Unfortunately he and I had a minor disagreement, and I decided to see a bit of the world and, perhaps, return later when he was in a better humor."

"A likely story if I ever heard one. Where are you planning on going to?"

"No place special. Here and there. Hither and yon. Wherever an honest man might find work, excitement, new sights, knowledge. If the truth be known, my uncle thinks himself something of a wizard. I had it in my mind that I might take training with some master sorcerer and so upon my return I might show my uncle that he is not as great a wizard as he seems to think. I don't suppose there are any sorcerers in this vicinity to whom I might turn for instruction?"

The old woman fixed Grantin with a hard, calculating stare, then, apparently having come to some decision, she shrugged her shoulders and commenced a hoot-, yip-, and bark-filled conversation with Grantin's welcoming committee.

At the conclusion of her remarks, the lead basset emitted two peremptory woofs, then he and his fellows stood aside, opening the trail to the center of the village. Cautiously Grantin stepped forward. The old woman walked by his side and, unbidden, began to speak.

"You'll have to excuse my friends the dogs, this be wild country, as you might well know. Strangers often carry bad luck with them like clouds bringing rain. My name is Sara, and in our tongue the dogs call this place Catlet. Why? Don't ask me, for I don't know. That's just the name they gave it-strange, queer creatures that they are."

"Do you live here, then?" Grantin asked.

"Yes, indeed I do. It's as good a place as an old woman like me can find in her final years. That little house down the end is mine, the only one in town big enough for a real person. Oh, the dogs aren't bad. I help them out with the things that they need a human to do: lifting, carrying, work too fine for their paws, and heavy jobs. There's always a human, someone like me, in any dog village. They couldn't survive without us. It's not too bad a life. They catch food for me and bring in firewood. They give me everything I need, and protection, too. They're fierce fighters, oh, yes, they are. You wouldn't know it just to see them there wagging their tails, but you don't want to get them down on you. Those teeth are sharp, those jaws strong, and their claws can take the bark right off a tree or the flesh off your bones. But, as I said, this is a wild place. The Gogols hold their councils not fifty leagues to the west."