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The next day dawned bright and clear as a heavy frost settled over the ground. Dusk woke to see the sunlight streaming through the frosted panes in the window. The room had grown cold in the night, but the wool blanket kept him warm as he snuggled into the soft mattress. Lex had complained that the beds were lumpy and hard, but to Dusk they were like sleeping on a cloud. Years of nights spent on hard wooden floors made spending the night in a cheap tavern seem like the lap of luxury. He settled in, listening to the sounds of the tavern beginning to swell as the kitchen came to life to feed the patrons that had come in early for breakfast. It wasn’t long before Lex began to stir from the noise as well.
After the quick breakfast that came with their rooms, Lex paid for another night and asked for information about supplies and a healer. With the coin purse hidden beneath his baggy clothes, Lex led the way out into the street, going around the edge of the tavern and to the north towards the healer's cottage. It was supposed to be just beyond the edge of town and almost tucked into the forest itself, no more than a few minutes walk. As they traveled along the still frosted road, Dusk began to wonder how he would explain his miraculous recovery to Lex. Maybe he could blame it on the crystal after all. So many strange things had happened since they’d escaped Brand and his thugs, but some things were harder to reason. Although they had no explanation for the fire, it was easy to pretend it didn’t happen. It was just a memory to be forgotten. But the sudden healing of life-endangering wounds that erased a decade of scars from his arm and caused white scales to begin to form was a bit harder to ignore.
Just as Dusk was about to speak and call Lex back to him, the cottage came into view. It was a low circular stone building with a conical wood-shingled roof covered in thick moss. A stone wall no higher than two feet swept out like embracing arms from the house itself, encircling a small garden that was still very much alive even as the cold of winter drew near. In the garden an old woman was toddling around, cutting herbs and heaping them into a basket carried under one arm. She was hunched and moved slowly, but her movements were deliberate and practiced. Her gray hair was short and naturally curly, giving her a somewhat wild look. Over her shoulders draped a gray knitted shawl with small dangling tassels at the edges of it. As the pair of them approached she turned to look and then went back to picking.
“Are you the healer?” Lex asked, leaning against the small metal gate that kept them out of the garden. “My friend is injured and could use some help.”
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Only your eyes can tell you what you see,” she replied without looking up. “But then again, trusting your eyes only is a fool's mistake.”
“I suppose?” Lex shrugged his shoulders and tried again. “The tavern owner said I could find a healer at the stone cottage by the forest. Am I in the right place?”
“How many stone cottages at the edge of the forest have you passed by today? Have you bothered every old woman at those cottages with the same foolish questions?”
“Look, can you help heal my friend?”
“I suppose I could, whether or not I wish to is still to be determined.”
“What is this?” Lex said, turning back to Dusk who was smiling. “Why is she being so difficult?”
“She may be old, but her ears work just fine.” She tucked her knife into the basket and strode over the fence. “You cannot ask a sensical question.”
Lex opened his mouth to retort, but she held up a deeply wrinkled hand.
“Maybe your friend can do better.”
“May I come inside to speak to you?” Dusk asked calmly. She reminded him a bit of Juniper. There was a spark in her, more vibrant than most half her age.
“Aha! There it is. Simple. To the point. I like it.” She pulled the metal gate inward, causing it to squeak on its hinges. “Please follow me.”
Dusk stepped through quietly, but she slammed the gate shut before Lex could come through.
“What’s the meaning of th—”
“Are you injured as well? Besides your inability to form simple sentences?”
“No, I’m in per—”
“Then you can wait outside,” she said simply, turning away from him.
Lex started to lift a leg over the low stone wall to follow after, but Dusk caught his eye and shook his head. Heaving an exasperated sigh, Lex turned around and walked to the nearest tree where he slid down the trunk to sit on the ground with his arms and legs crossed. Dusk turned back and followed the old woman inside the cottage that he saw was warmly lit with a glowing fire as he stepped over the threshold.
“Please take a seat so I can have a look at that arm you have bandaged up,” she gestured to one of the chairs at a low, thick wooden table that looked like it had seen many years of use.
She turned back to the shelves on the wall, pulling a few items off them and gathering them into a bowl. Not knowing what to say, Dusk did as he was instructed and began to unwrap his arm, revealing the shining white scales. In a moment she came to the table and put down her supplies. From within a pocket at the hem of her cream-colored apron she produced a pair of spectacles and placed them on her nose. With a gentle touch she pulled up Dusk’s arm and studied it, running her soft lined hands over his skin.
“Tell me what happened,” she asked gently, paying careful attention to the scales.
“I was burned very badly. I watched my skin turn black and blister before I passed out. My companion said it was very bad before he wrapped it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Almost three days ago.”
She chuckled to herself. “Are you trying to badger me like your friend did? You know I do have other important things to do besides entertain bored and handsome young men.”
“There’s something else,” Dusk said quietly. “But I don’t understand it. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it did at first.”
“Show me.”
Dusk reached down and pulled the folds of his shirt away, revealing the crystal embedded into his chest. The old woman’s eyes grew large, but she remained calm, reaching out to press a gentle finger to it’s glass-like surface. She ran a finger under it’s edge and then tried to lift it, but it didn’t move. Wrapping her whole hand around it she pulled, but it didn’t budge.
“It doesn’t come off. I don’t know why it’s stuck. It must have burned itself to my skin, but then I healed so quickly... I don’t know what it means. And this,” he gestured to the scales on his hand, “what is this all about?” Words began to spill forth from him in a torrent. “We were being pursued by bandits, they had taken us captive, but we managed to get away. They were going to catch us and I suddenly heard this deep voice inside my head. The same one I hear every time I touch this thing. Then there was fire shooting up my arm and a lot of pain before I blacked out. Lex told me I somehow killed all of them with a wheel of fire and severed the bridge.”
The old woman suddenly yanked her hand away, a look of fear on her face.
“I found this strange crystal in some cave in the mines. There was this giant glowing mound of crystal shaped like a dragon and it—”
Dusk stopped, watching the deeply lined fear melt away as she broke into a wide smile and began to laugh. Dusk sat confused across from her.
“This–this is too much!” she continued, trying to stifle her giggling. After a few moments she wiped tears from her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief she pulled from her pocket.
“I thought your friend was bad, but this,” she gestured to Dusk, “this is stage worthy! Are you two part of a traveling circus?”
“No...”
“Well you should be! You almost had me convinced that something mystical was going on, but the line about the dragon gave you away. If you’re going to go around playing make believe, you might want to be a little less on the nose.” She continued to giggle for a moment, tapping Dusk’s hand. “This makeup is very well done and very convincing. And that,” she gestured at the gem, “I hope you can get that unglued from your skin without too much damage. You should take this act to Ronja, you’d make a fortune there in the theater!”
“But I’m telling you the truth...”
“Oh please! I wasn’t born yesterday,” she scoffed. “Next time you see your dragon, make sure you tell him hello for me!”
Dusk silently picked up the cloth and wrapped it back around his arm as she continued to giggle, her face pressed into her hands. Without a word he turned away from her and left the cottage, slamming the door behind him. He’d hoped for some real help, some explanation as to what was going on. He thought maybe she’d be like Juniper. Instead he was met only with ridicule and laughter. He decided he would never mention the gem to anyone else.
Dusk was quiet and sullen for the rest of the afternoon. When Lex asked what she’d done, he said she’d given him some sort of poultice, but had assured him everything would be fine. Lex seemed to accept the answer and they made their way back into town.
At a small shop a few buildings down from the tavern they purchased warmer traveling clothes from a balding man who wore a beard so thick they couldn’t see his mouth as he spoke. As Lex chose supplies for the journey ahead, Dusk purchased fresh cotton wraps for his arm and a pair of black gloves to go along with them. He was grateful that he’d thought to take the coin purse from Brand. In some strange way, having been captured was funding their progress towards freedom, making it much easier than it would have been without it.
A few more small stops were made for food and a few odds and ends to make the journey easier. The shopkeepers were well accustomed to travelers and had many wares to ease the burden of the common passersby.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that they found themselves back at the tavern with a drink in hand, sitting near the roaring fire. The place was less busy than the day before, but slowly people began to trickle in for their nightly rounds. The pair had kept mostly to themselves, keeping to a table against the back wall and the interactions brief with the townsfolk. Even between them the conversation had been dry as Dusk was still lost in his own thoughts about what had transpired with the healer. They had hardly even looked up from their drinks when suddenly a man burst through the front door of the tavern as if he were running for his life.
“King Cecil is dead!” he cried. “Poisoned by the ambassador to Inahan!”
The entire room went silent. Lex had a look of shock on his face, but Dusk didn’t react. The death of the king was about as important to him as what color socks he liked to wear. I just didn’t matter to him. No king had ever helped him anyway.
“Who brought this information?” Hank asked, still holding two full mugs in his hands.
“A pigeon just arrived with a message from Ronja. I’ve already sent it on to the tower at Windshear Pass.”
A few men grabbed the scruffy looking pigeon trainer by the shoulders and pulled him into the bar as conversations broke out across the room. Dusk looked at Lex who was still staring down at his drink wide eyed.
“I... I can’t believe this,” Lex murmured. “This is bad. Especially for you. For all of us really.”
“Why?”
“You’re headed to Greencoast Port. That’s in Inahan. If the king was truly murdered by the ambassador, the borders will be closed down immediately. That news will arrive there long before we do.”
“There’s got to be another way.”
“Sneaking into Inahan isn’t a problem, anyone could hike over the wilder regions of the Dorsum Mountains and cross over, but it’s much more dangerous. The kingdom holds power along the roads, but beyond them the world grows strange and wild with frightful tales to accompany it. But that’s not the half of it.” Lex paused for a moment, sighing deeply as he stared at his drink. “If King Cecil is truly dead, he will be replaced by his eldest son, Prince Arius. It’s a well known fact that the prince has longed for a war with anybody for some time and this is the perfect excuse. There will be soldiers on the march within the day if they haven’t been outfitted and sent already.”
“We’ll keep off the roads then. We can go through the mountains in a different way.”
“That could add months to our journey. If we can find a horse to buy tomorrow, and we should have just enough, we may be able to make it through Windshear Pass before it’s closed down. It’s our fastest route out of Ditania.”
“What about you? You might never be able to come back to your family if we make it though. You actually have roots here and a life if you wanted it.”
Lex was quiet for just a moment. “Rotten roots that I don’t wish to return to. I’ll go to Inahan with you. At first I didn’t know how far I was willing to go, but I will see this through and then find my way from there. We leave first thing in the morning as soon as we find a horse.”
Dusk nodded silently and turned back to his drink. He could feel the tension rolling off Lex like heat off red hot iron. He knew Lex was right, if a war had been declared with Inahan, it made getting there a lot more complicated. They were still more than a week’s journey from the mountains on foot. A horse would increase their speed exponentially, but it would still be hard if a message had already been sent by pigeon. Dusk wondered how soon the fighting would break out and what it would look like. He’d heard the guards at the mine talking amongst each other, telling long forgotten war stories of the past. The stories were always heroic and honorable, but though Dusk knew little about the outside world, he couldn’t see much honor in killing other people to please a monarch.
The ale had lost its appeal and soon the pair of them retired to their rooms for the night leaving their drinks half finished. They took a moment to repack their things, divvying up the supplies they had purchased throughout the day. Dusk insisted he was able to share the load and would hear nothing about his ‘injured’ arm. Before they laid down in their beds for the night everything was packed and neatly situated at the foot of their beds, ready to be taken at the first sign of light. With the candles snuffed and darkness all around, Dusk settled into the comfy mattress, savoring it for the last time. He could hear Lex shifting about restlessly in his own bed, but he felt less disturbed. A war and a dead king didn’t weigh much on his consciousness. They weren’t his concern and he was convinced, beyond some extra walking, that they wouldn’t have any bearing on his life whatsoever. With a calm heart he drifted into sleep easily and comfortably.
***
Some time in the night, a sound roused him from his sleep. He kept his eyes closed as he listened, the blanket pulled over his face to block out the cold of the night that seeped through the walls. At first he thought it was maybe a dog yelping in the town, but it sounded strange. The longer he listened the less the sound made sense until eventually he threw the blanket back and opened his eyes. There was a bright light coming from outside the window.
Sighing to himself, he untucked his feet and threw them over the edge of the bed, hissing as they touched the stone cold wooden floor below. Determined to not let his bed grow cold, he took a few quick steps to the window and pulled the curtains aside. Beyond the thick panes of glass he could see two buildings engulfed in fire not far away. Here and there people ran through the streets, trying to get away from the blaze. One of them, a woman who looked to be maybe ten years older than him, was running as if she were being chased. Her hair was a tangled mess around her and she was barefoot with nothing but her nightgown to cover her. She looked back over her shoulder as she ran and tripped, falling into the mud and skidding to a halt. A dark shape darted around the corner of another building and was upon her in an instant.
Before Dusk even had a chance to react he watched an abnormally large dog wrap it’s massive jaws around the back of her neck. She screamed in pain only for a moment, but a sudden jerk of the animal’s head cut her off and she fell to the mud limp and unmoving. The creature threw its head back and let out a long ghostly howl into the firelit night. To Dusk’s surprise he heard many more join its call in a haunting chorus. In the distance he saw a single hooded figure walking slowly down the street towards the tavern.