The Tiger's Eye (Book 1 of the Angus the Mage Series)

night. Hobart explained what Angus’s responsibilities were and showed him how to tend to his horse for the evening. Once Gretchen and Leslie were hobbled, they gathered around the fire and waited for Ortis to finish with a simple vegetable soup.

  “This will be better than the last one,” he said as he handed a bowlful to Angus. “We’re far enough away from the main road that I’ve been finding some very pleasant roots, leaves, and berries. I even have a melon for dessert.”

  “Thank you, Ortis,” Angus said, his hunger not caring about the taste as he took his first bite. “After what they fed me in the dungeons, this will taste wonderful, I’m sure.” It was a palatable stew, almost tasty, and he nodded to Ortis before taking a second bite.

  After they finished eating, Giorge set to work on the dishes and Hobart said. “Listen, Angus, I know you’re still angry with Giorge.”

  “I’ll set it aside soon enough,” Angus said.

  Hobart nodded, but continued. “You haven’t been in The Tween before, have you?”

  “Aside from the main road?” Angus replied. “No.”

  “Well, there are stories about it. It’s important that you hear a few of them.”

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “They’re mainly rumors,” Hobart hedged. “We aren’t sure if we should believe them or not.”

  “Rumors generally have a grain of truth in them. Some have more.”

  Hobart nodded. “The people telling them are suspect,” he said. “Most of them claimed to have gone into The Tween and came back out again.”

  “So?”

  “Most of them are lying,” Ortis said. “If not all of them. The Tween generally doesn’t let people leave.”

  “You make it sound like it’s alive,” Angus said.

  Hobart considered for a long moment before nodding in agreement. “I suppose,” he said, “it is, in a way. It’s a feeling, a presence. I’ve felt it before.”

  “You’ve been in The Tween?” Angus asked.

  Hobart nodded. “All of us have,” he said. “Except you. It was a different part of it, further north, but….”

  “It was the caravan,” Ortis said. “We went with it west out of Wyrmwood. As we crossed through The Tween, something watched us. But we couldn’t see it; all we could do was feel it there, watching us like a giant, invisible, unblinking eye.”

  “It was a large caravan,” Hobart added. “There were a lot of guards for it. We were all on edge, and that sharpens the senses. It was unnerving. It’s like being chased by a shadow at the edge of your eye, but every time you turn, it disappears.”

  Angus nodded. “I think I know what you mean,” he said. “A sense of danger that never manifests,” like when Voltari wasn’t there but I knew he was watching me.

  Hobart nodded, “It’s a real danger. There is something in The Tween that isn’t strong enough to attack caravans, but it doesn’t have any qualms about attacking smaller parties, like our own.”

  “So,” Angus asked, “what do these rumormongers have to say about it?”

  “That’s just it,” Hobart said. “They never have anything to say. It’s all vague notions about this or a sense of that, but never any specifics. That’s what’s so unnerving about it. It would be easier to deal with The Tween if we knew it was a dragon or dwarves, or something else equally tangible. But it’s never more than that sense of something dreadful watching you, waiting for an opportunity to strike.”

  Angus frowned; he was feeling an irrational sense of foreboding that he hadn’t had before Hobart started talking. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “We’re heading into The Tween now,” Hobart said. “If you feel anything like that, let us know at once. We must be vigilant, and a false alarm is far better than an absent one when there is a real danger.”

  Angus nodded. “I think I understand.”

  “Good,” Ortis said. “You and I can take first watch—unless you need the rest?” he asked.

  “First watch will be fine,” Angus said. “But I will need time to prepare myself tomorrow. I cast a spell in the dungeon that I haven’t yet replaced. That is,” he added turning a half-hearted glare at Giorge, “if Giorge lets me do it.”

  Giorge shrugged. “I won’t bother you.”

  “Good,” Angus said. “It is one of Teffles’ spells, and I am unfamiliar with it. It will need my full attention.”

  “No more need be said,” Hobart declared. “We will respect your privacy, won’t we Giorge.”

  “Absolutely!” Giorge said. “It will give me time to practice throwing my new net.”

  Angus nodded. He was anxious to find out what that first simple spell would do….

  11

  The next morning, Angus sat hunched over Teffles’ spell book and brought the magic within him into focus. It was the first step for priming a spell, and he had done it so many times that the patterns within him were a familiar echo imprinted on his mind and the realignment of them was routine. But this time was different. The threads of magic within him were vaguely distorted, as if they had been disrupted and shifted aside a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t that they were misplaced, exactly—he tested the patterns for the spells he had already primed, and they reacted normally—just…different. It was almost as if they had been tweaked out of place and put back again, but the one who did it was just a little bit off. It was like searching a person’s room and putting everything back again; no matter how close the objects were to their original position, they were always just a little bit off.

  Was it the healer? Had she cause the disruption when she mended his bones? He didn’t know; he only knew that something wasn’t quite the same. He continued to study the arrangement of the strands for a few more minutes, but he couldn’t find any answers in them. Finally, he turned away from the magic within him and reached out for the magic around him.

  It was a lively location—he had checked it the night before—and he drew upon it as needed to facilitate the priming of the new spell, the one that would let him fly. Even though it was a complex spell, he risked using Teffles’ shorthand to make it simpler to prime. But he wasn’t comfortable with it; the spell was dominated by sky magic and he was trained in and attuned to flame magic. It wasn’t that he couldn’t prime for sky magic spells or cast them—all magic worked the same basic way—but it felt unnatural to him, sort of like wearing someone else’s boots. It took time to find the right threads within him and tweak them into the proper position to be receptive to the spell, and when he was done, he was surprised to find that there were enough threads remaining for him to prime another simpler, weaker spell. He chose the first spell in Teffles’ book, the one that had the single knot. He was curious about what it would do….

  By the time Angus finished, the others were ready to leave. Ortis was lounging near the subdued fire. Hobart was tending to the horses and redistributing the gear. Giorge was casually throwing a net across their campsite, trying to capture a reluctant bush. The net, a web of tightly braided strands with the outer edge lined with small weights, was large enough to entrap a man. He gripped the middle of the strands, twirled the weights around his head, and let it go. As it shot forward the weights spread outward in clumps and the net unwound only partway, the rest remained uselessly tangled together. When it landed near the bush, the weights bounced and rolled, tangling the net even further. He reeled it in by the rope attaching the net to his wrist, and began untangling it. When he saw Angus walking toward them, he grinned, thought about it for a moment, and lowered its intensity to a friendly, guarded smile.

  “I’ll get it figured out eventually,” he said. “It’s the weights. I don’t know how to release the net so they spread out in a uniform fashion.”

  “You should have seen him when he started,” Hobart said as he guided Leslie toward them. “I thought he was skipping stones the way they bounced along the ground. At least now the net isn’t getting as tangled up as when he started. Some of it is even spreading out.”

&nb
sp; “Give me time,” Giorge said, “and I’ll be catching deer with Ortis.”

  “He may be right,” Ortis suggested. “Deer don’t stand still, like bushes. One might run into the net by accident.”

  Giorge grinned and said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Hobart chuckled and asked Angus, “Are you ready to go?”

  Angus nodded.

  “Good,” Ortis said as one of him dowsed the fire with water and the other two scooped dirt onto it.

  “Your horse is saddled,” Hobart said. “We should be able to make it around this mountain today if the road holds.”

  “If it doesn’t?” Angus asked.

  Hobart shrugged. “We’ll consider out options. It will depend a great deal on how steep the mountain is. We might have to backtrack and take a different route.”

  “If there is one,” Ortis said. “There are places in these mountains that are impassible.

  “We could go down into the valley and work our way around,” Hobart suggested.

  “Let’s find out if we need to, first,” Giorge said. “There’s no sense in taking an unnecessary detour.”

  12

  The old road continued along the valley floor until midmorning, and then it sloped up toward the mountain. By midday, the gradual slope had changed to a sharp but manageable incline as it followed along a ledge. The ledge, though apparently natural, had been widened considerably, and the rough-hewn rock face was pitted with erosion. It settled into a fairly level path not long afterward, and