Note: Here is a link to the first chapter, although this chapter can definitely be read without the first, since it introduces a different character, Isaac.
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“You in?” the dealer asked him.
Isaac surveyed his hand with a slight frown, then nodded and pushed a stack of coins slowly to the center of the table. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager, now. He put his cards facedown next to his empty water glass and leaned back, taking in his surroundings. Kantzon was a shabby border town with almost as many taverns as houses, and this one was nothing special. He’d been in and out of several all night, trying to win a little money from the caravan toughs before they left for the south. It was late. Crowded, empty, dismal, or respectable -- all the places were beginning to blur together in his mind.
Crowns was a complex game, but once he got the hang of it Isaac had started winning a decent amount of money very quickly. He enjoyed thinking ahead and trying to predict his opponent’s reactions, and he was good at it. It wasn’t the only game played at these taverns, but it was the one with the highest stakes. A good round of crowns could last for hours. This one had begun just a few minutes ago, but the table was already half-covered in multicolored tokens and scattered cards. Isaac yawned and tried to focus his mind on strategy. He wondered if he’d be able to stay awake for another round.
The man sitting next to him obviously had the same thought, because he took only a momentary glance what he was dealt before calling for a drink break. Everyone except Isaac got up and headed for the bar, leaving their money in glittering piles on the table. Their group had been situated against the back wall of the tavern; anyone who tried to steal something would be knifed long before they reached the door. Most of the men here were merchants or caravan guards. There were a few ex-soldiers from the Eluvian Empire down south, as well; their dark hair and tanned skin set them apart from the generally light-skinned hillfolk. Isaac came from the high mountains -- his white-blond hair and blue eyes were rarely seen, even here. One of the Eluvari watched him suspiciously.
Isaac sighed and stood up. He usually made a point of not drinking while he played cards, but damn, it had been a long day, and he’d been unusually lucky with the draw tonight. It wouldn’t do any harm to treat himself just this once.
As soon as he approached, the bartender motioned him closer. Isaac leaned forward, confused by the man’s apparent eagerness to talk to him. He hadn’t even ordered yet.
“I’ve got a letter for you.” the bartender said with the air of someone sharing a juicy secret.
“So?” Isaac grunted. No wonder he was being so friendly, he thought. He expects a reward for his trouble. The bartender waved a thin envelope around in the air excitedly.
“It’s from Vyr. Written up all fancy and signed by the Lord Sazahl himself. You in the habit of getting personal notes from clan kings, boy?” Kantzon may have been two hundred miles from the capital, but most of its permanent inhabitants still thought of themselves as mountain people, and paid allegiance to one clan or another. Isaac must have looked surprised, because the bartender chuckled and added, “Didn’t think so.”
Isaac took the letter and went back to his seat in a daze, leaving a silver coin on the bar. Why would his father want to contact him now, after so many years without so much as a word? His last memory of his father was seeing his furious glare before getting the door slammed in his face. For a second he considered tossing the note into the fire unread, but his curiosity overcame that impulse. It was addressed simply to his first name, followed by the location and name of the inn he’d been staying at. He opened it and stared blankly at a nearly empty sheet of paper. There were six words, written in a long flowing hand that he recognized as his sister Katya’s.
Come home. There is a cure.
The last word echoed in his mind as he dropped the note in shock. Cure. A cure for his condition was the answer to his prayers and the object of his fervent hopes. When he had first left home at eighteen he left an offering to the ancestors every day, pleading with them to give him the powers that he deserved and make everything all right again. As the months went on and he was no closer to gaining magic than he had ever been, the offerings were placed less frequently, and soon they dwindled to nothing. He had come to accept that he was no better than anyone else in this town, and resigned himself to life as a commoner.
Then six little words turned his world upside down, severing the tentative connections he’d begun to make and setting his dreams on fire again. Nothing mattered any more. There was a cure. Soon he’d be living his life the way he was meant to be. His lip curled upward. Isaac wondered why the motion felt unnatural; then he realized with a jolt that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled.
The crowns game was not going well. Distracted by the note, he’d stopped paying attention to what was happening and started losing money. On an impulse, he drew back his chair from the table and stood up, directing a wide grin at the other players. “I’m out,” he said happily, scooping up the rest of his coins and tucking them into a side pocket of his coat. “Thanks for the game, guys. Have a good time.” He slapped the dealer on the back heartily and laughed. The men at the table stared at him as if he had lost his mind. The sullen silent youth who’d sat down to play with them had disappeared, and in his place stood a completely different person.
“It’s not as if his luck was that good,” he heard one man say before the tavern door slammed shut behind him, sending a cascade of piled snow from the roof tumbling down on his head. By the time he reached the Oak Branch Inn, where he’d been staying for a week now, his head and shoulders were covered with frozen flakes. Inside the inn, Bradley, the owner of the place, was getting ready to put out the lamps for the night.
“You’re a bit late for dinner, Isaac.” he said dryly.
“I’m leaving.”
“Now?” Bradley raised an eyebrow quizzically. “It’s been snowing for hours and it’s past midnight. What’s so important that you can’t wait until morning?”
Isaac briefly considered telling him the whole story. Bradley had been pleasant enough to him during his stay, more pleasant than some here, those who took one look at his hair and eyes and thought he was going to either blast them to pieces or steal everything they owned. Border traders needed to stay in Vyr’s good graces to use their roads, but his people had a less than stellar reputation, especially among southerners. In the end, he decided to keep it to himself. “I need a good horse. Can you sell me one?” The watery remains of melting snowflakes dripped down his nose and soaked his collar.
Bradley chuckled quietly as he extinguished the second-to-last lamp. “I see you want to keep the tale under wraps. Nothing wrong with that. Handsome lad like you, probably got ya self in trouble with some girl’s father, gonna skip to the next town afore he finds ya. Hmm? Am I close?”
“Something like that.” Isaac said with a smirk.
The aging innkeeper glanced out the front window and sighed in an over exaggerated manner. “You really got to go tonight? The storm’s died down a bit, but riding in this wind ain’t gonna be fun.”
After five years without magic, Isaac couldn’t bear to be another day without it. He wondered for the first time that evening if he was being naïve. After all, he wasn’t positive that this “cure” would even work, not to mention any side effects it might have. It embarrassed him slightly that he hadn’t even thought that anything could go wrong.
But Katya’s words had been about as definite as they come. A sudden image sprouted in his mind of himself in ten years, still wasting his time in backwards border slums with the misfits and drifters, all because he was too afraid to make a simple journey. The mental picture disgusted him, and he made his decision in an instant.
“Tonight, Bradley. Now how about that horse?”
“I’ll see what I can do. You came on a bad night for me, boy. Seems a lot of other folk had the same idea you did; I think I’m just about clear out of decent horses.” The two walked together to the makeshift barn next door where Bradley kept his animals for sale. Huffing and puffing with exertion, the innkeeper managed to drag the heavy wooden doors open one at a time. Isaac held them open for him while Bradley wedged a loose brick into the hinge. He wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead and motioned Isaac in.
The barn was unlit and smelled strongly of dung, but it was spacious enough; a long, low-roofed wooden building with a dirt floor covered in scattered straw. The soft moo of a skovu reached Isaac’s ears from one of the farther distant cages. In no time at all, Bradley had finished checking the rest. He returned shaking his head sadly. “Afraid they’re all sold off. I ought to have a couple more by the end of the week, but I doubt you’ll want to wait that long.” Bradley crossed his arms and shrugged. “There’s a couple of mountain cows in the back I could sell to you for cheap,” he said, using the local term for the furry, six-legged beast of burden. Isaac sighed and reached into his pocket for some coins. Skovu were more reliable than horses, especially when the ground was icy and slick, but they smelled awful.
In less than an hour he was walking out of Kantzon with his bag, leading behind him on a rope a young friendly male skovu he’d decided to call Patu, or “ears”. The creature was covered from head to hoof in mottled dark gray and brown fur that made it difficult to see at night, and its long floppy ears protected its eyes from falling snow.
“You’re actually kind of cute, if I hold my nose,” he told it. Patu snorted and flipped his stringy tail from side to side. Up above them, the clouds had finally begun to clear, exposing a streak of brilliant stars that sat like a glittering crown over the nearby peaks.
