Кейт Новак - The Wyvern's Spur

Olive laughed. “But you were great,” she insisted. She sliced a piece off the bottom of his cape, folded it up, and pressed it against a gash in his neck. “Press on that,” she ordered.

Giogi obeyed, but he had to disagree with the halfling’s assessment. “I nearly got Mother Lleddew killed.”

“She’ll be fine. Werebears heal fast, and they’re harder to kill than people. Did you know she was a werebear?” Olive asked.

“No, of course not. How can a werebear be a priestess?”

“It’s traditional for lycanthropes to worship the moon,” Olive said with a shrug. “Even priests need hobbies.”

Alerted by the sound of a galloping horse, Olive looked across the fields again. “I think that’s Cat,” she said, pointing to a just barely mounted rider.

Giogi opened his eyes. “It is. She’s riding Poppy.” The nobleman reached over and pulled back on the horses’ reins, stopping the carriage.

Cat came charging up to them. She pulled back too hard on Poppy’s reins and set the mare rearing on her hind legs. The mage toppled from her saddle and into the muddy field. Giogi leaped from the carriage and rushed to the woman’s side.

“Obviously he doesn’t hurt as bad as he thought he did,” Olive muttered. She climbed down from the driver’s seat and scrambled up the carriage door to check on their passenger. Mother Lleddew remained in her bear form. A good sign, Olive knew, since lycanthropes turned human when they died. The bear brushed its nose with a paw. She’s just sleeping off the pain, Olive decided.

“I’m fine,” Cat moaned as Giogi bent over her. “I just forgot,” she said as he helped her to her feet, “that I don’t know how to ride.”

Giogi grinned until he caught sight of the bruise on her temple. “What happened? Who hit you?” he demanded angrily.

“Your fool Cousin Julia, trying to rescue her fool brother, Steele. I should have let him fall to the base of the tower, but, as you keep saying, we Wyvernspurs have to stick together. Giogi, don’t fuss. It was a very soft stick. Here. This is for you,” Cat concluded, holding up the spur for Giogi to see.

“You found it!” Giogi shouted. “You clever, clever woman.” He picked the mage up by the waist and twirled her around. When he set her back down, he kissed her on the cheek.

“Would you please take it away,” Cat asked. “You never told me it was this ugly.”

Giogi laughed and took the spur from the mage. “It is, isn’t it?” he agreed, holding it up to his face. “Where was it?”

“You’d better ask Mistress Ruskettle,” Cat suggested.

Giogi turned around and faced Olive with confusion, holding the spur out for her to see.

Olive looked at the artifact with a bit of confusion of her own. She’d presumed, as Cat had, that the spur would be a metal prod to strap around one’s ankle to spur wyverns into the air or something. It took her several moments to recognize the hunk of mummified flesh as one of the pieces of dried meat she’d tied into the bundle she’d given Cat.

The halfling had some explaining to do, she realized. Olive needed time to figure out what to explain first. She looked up into the clear blue sky. “How about you tuck that away, and as soon as we’re safe indoors, I’ll explain about the spur,” she promised. “Flattery could always fly over in the shape of a bird or something.”

Giogi looked up nervously. The sky was empty. The lone cloud that had shaded Spring Hill had vanished. He didn’t see any birds. Still, he was inclined to take Olive’s suggestion. “I’ll tie Poppy to the back of the carriage, so you can ride with us,” he said to Cat.

“Can’t you explain on the way?” Cat asked Olive with pseudo-innocence.

“No,” Olive said. “I think I’d better stay in back with Mother Lleddew. She’s not well.”

“Mother Lleddew? What’s wrong with her?” Cat asked anxiously. She peered into the carriage window and pulled back quickly. “Giogi,” she whispered, “there’s a bear in there.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Olive said. “She’ll sleep it off. If you would be so kind as to open the door for me, we can be off.”

Once they were all loaded back on the carriage, Giogi and Cat on the driver’s seat, Olive inside with Mother Lleddew, and Poppy clopping along behind, Olive began racking her brain for exactly what she would tell Giogi and Cat. At the same time, she kept an ear on the conversation between the nobleman and the mage.

“I thought it was some sort of metal spur, such as for a horse,” Cat said. “It’s been sliced off a real wyvern’s foot, though, hasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Giogi said. “It was a gift from a female wyvern to Paton Wyvernspur for rescuing her children. She sliced it off her dead mate.”

Yuck! Olive thought inside the carriage.

“Yick!” Cat exclaimed. “How gruesome.”

“Well, yes. Speaking of gruesome, are you sure you’re all right? That’s a nasty bump you’ve got there,” Giogi said.

“You should talk,” the mage laughed. “You’re three colors that humans don’t generally come in,” she said, poking at a large bruise on his cheek. “You’re bleeding, too. What happened?”

“We ran into a few undead,” Giogi said with a shrug. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. The potions you gave us helped a lot, though.”

Olive mentally amended: An army of undead that we beat only with help from a werebear and a goddess’s powerful minion. And the potions helped only as long as the right type of undead attacked us.

“So, how was your afternoon?” Giogi asked the mage.

Cat related the events at Redstone in detail.

Giogi looked astonished by her story. “Is that all?” he asked with mock ennui.

“Is that all?” Cat echoed. “No. One more thing.”

“What?”

“I missed you,” the mage admitted.

“Really?” Giogi asked, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

Olive shifted uneasily inside the carriage. Despite the mage having loyally handed the spur over to Giogi, Olive could not trust her. She hadn’t leveled with Giogi about being Flattery’s wife, but she continued to flirt with him. The halfling had firsthand experience at betraying people. She couldn’t help thinking that Cat still had some sort of scheme in mind that required Giogi’s cooperation.

From the Journal of Giogioni Wyvernspur :

While it seems like an age ago, it was only the day before yesterday when our family heirloom was stolen, and it was only yesterday that my Uncle Drone died—foully murdered, as I now suspect, by the evil wizard Flattery The spur has been returned by the remarkable Harper bard, Olive Ruskettle, who has suffered the loss of her partner, Jade More, at Flattery’s hand.

Mistress Ruskettle is still uncertain of the details, but she believes Jade removed the spur from our family crypt at the request of my Uncle Drone, convinced as he was that I was destined to use the spur. Jade, Mistress Ruskettle has explained, was a Wyvernspur from the same lost line as the mage Cat, which my Uncle Drone must somehow have known, or he would not have sent Jade in to face the guardian. One other attribute made Jade perfect for the task—apparently she could not be detected magically, which would have kept the spur’s location a secret as long as she held on to it.

Mistress Ruskettle claims Cat also possesses this remarkable undetectability, which is why she hid the spur on Cat early this morning, disguised as a magical amulet. Jade gave the spur to Mistress Ruskettle moments before being killed, but it took the bard a day to discover that she was carrying the most sought-after item in Immersea. She has apologized for not trusting me with its location sooner, but she feared that once I knew it was safe I would abandon my quest to learn its power and neglect my responsibility to use it. I cannot deny that she might have been right.