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

next morning, Nargeth brought the map up to his room. He thanked her and, after she left, unrolled the scroll to see what damage Ulrich had done to it. But it wasn’t damaged; Ulrich had added a considerable amount of information to it. Woodwort was now marked, as were a dozen other villages on the road between it and Hellsbreath. He had scrawled BLIGHT over Blackhaven Tower. A short distance southwest of Woodwort, he wrote FRIEND, and underneath the mountain dwarves he had crossed off IMPASSABLE and replaced it with TAKE WINE. Finally, some distance northwest of Hellsbreath, a considerable distance from the road and villages, Ulrich had written ELHOUIT ACHNUT. Angus didn’t recognize the language, but it didn’t matter; it was a long way from his destination.

  Angus memorized the changes and rolled the map up to put it beside his backpack. Then he took out one of the scrolls. It was a spell he knew well, and it didn’t take him long to prime himself for the sequence of knots and reorient the threads of magic within himself to be receptive to those around him. But the second spell was completely new, and he wasn’t at all sure what it would do. He studied it for nearly an hour before setting it aside as hopeless. He was tired, and his head was beginning to ache from the effort of trying to imagine how the various knots fit together and how the threads of magical energy would interact with one another. In the end, all he knew for sure was that it was a powerful, complex spell involving both earth and flame, and all spells involving the sphere of flame would burn things. The question was always about how it burned them. Since it was mixed with earth magic, it would probably use lava, but it wasn’t at all clear to him.

  He turned to the next scroll….

  10

  Angus stayed at Nargeth’s inn for six days, spending almost all of the time studying his new scrolls and organizing them into three categories: those he understood well, those he thought he understood well enough to risk casting, and those he didn’t understand beyond a superficial level. He put the last ones on the bottom of his pack so he wouldn’t accidentally grab one of them in the heat of battle. When he finally left, he set the map on top of the scrolls with the pot of healing balm pressing down on top of it.

  The road to the south started out as two narrow ruts cut between thick groves of maple trees, and by the third day it was a carved path through the forest. Then it turned southeast, gradually leaving the densely forested foothills and entering long, sloping, wooded hills. Most of the trees were still maples, but there were also clumps of pine and oak. Beneath them, in the undergrowth, were a myriad of flowers—pink, blue, yellow, white, large, small—and thousands of tiny white butterflies, blue moths, and honeybees. He thought about tracking down a beehive, but decided against it; there was no sense wasting time only to end up stung to death. Still, his magic….

  At the end of the first week, the nauseating stench of stagnant, standing water drowned out the sweetness of the flowers, and mosquitoes replaced the butterflies. Fortunately, the road only skirted the edge of the swamp for two days, and the villages were close enough together for him to find lodging and food at the end of each day’s walk. Then the road forked, with one prong continuing to skirt the southern border of the swamp, and the other heading due south. He took the south road, and by the end of the next day, he had escaped the stench altogether. The villages were further apart, but there were well-established campsites along the way. For four days, the road lay between gradually steepening, rocky foothills heavy with brittle brown grasses, berry bushes, and thorn-encrusted shrubs on one side and rolling, grassy hills on the other. It was easy going; the road was well-traveled, and there were wooden bridges over the rivers and streams that could not be easily forded.

  By the end of the second uneventful week, Angus was tired of hills.

  Low, rolling hills lined with tall brownish-green grass in need of rain. Flowers reeking of powerful, sickly-sweet odors that overwhelmed his sense of smell. Honeybees, butterflies, and moths fluttering all about like massive tiny armies patrolling their kingdoms.

  High hills dappled with a patchwork of trees—maple, pine, oak—and a rich variegated undergrowth of tangled clumps of the same tall grass, more brown than green. Long peals of shrill birdsong grated on his nerves and gave him a steady throbbing at the base of his neck.

  Steep foothills riddled with berry-bearing thorny thickets, maple groves, and snakes. Lots of snakes. Thin little brown ones that lay in wait on the thickets’ branches, occasionally striking out at a passing songbird enticed by the berries. Gray-black ones large enough to swallow his hand huddled on the ground. And the bright yellow ones that screamed poison.

  Long, arduous climbs up the hill left him breathless, and the quick, easy glide down the other side left his knees quivering. Then up the next hill….

  Little village after little village after little village after little village.

  There were brief moments between villages when he encountered fellow travelers, but most of them had followed the same dull pattern: greet each other, ask about the road ahead, and continue on. When riders came up behind him, he had to step off the road to allow them to pass. He was always wary during these encounters, but they had all proven to be benign interludes. Occasionally, he shared a meal and pleasant conversation with his fellow travelers, and once he had camped for the night with an eccentric old dwarf who had been driven nearly mad from claustrophobia before he’d finally fled topside and found peace.

  He fished in the evenings when the river was near enough to his camp, but mostly all he did was walk. Then, early in the evening of the fifteenth day from Woodwort, the well-traveled ruts turned into mortared cobblestones fitted neatly together. The cobblestones were alternating two-foot square slabs hewn from gray-green and reddish-brown granite. He had been told to expect them, and he knew what they meant: Wyrmwood, a major crossroads where the east-west road from Tyrag intersected the north-south road going through Hellsbreath.

  Wyrmwood was a thriving town with hundreds living there, and even though he couldn’t remember having been there before, he navigated through the streets as if he had been. The town was constructed in a pattern of concentric rings. Beyond the outer wall were the farmers and cropland. The outer wall was a low, three-foot high stone barrier constructed of granite blocks held together with mortar. It was fairly new, judging by the rough granite surface and slightly weather-stained mortar. Just inside the wall was a ring of one-floor, thatch-roofed hovels and single-room shanties. Figures moved furtively among the mud streets like small packs of dogs prowling in the shadows, yipping and laughing as they nipped at each other. Ruffians? Workers heading home? He brought his robe a little closer about him and dropped his consciousness to a slightly deeper level, bringing the magical energy into the periphery of his awareness. No. Miners. Coal mines to the west.

  A second wall like the first, but five feet high, discolored, and smoothed by weathering, separated the miners’ dwellings from the rest of the town. Unlike the first wall, it had a guard waiting at the gate, and a line of people waiting to enter. The guard barely glanced at most of them before gesturing them inside, but once in a while he would study a face closely and ask questions before finally letting them enter. He refused passage only once, and the man protested—until the guard barked a sharp command and three other guards hurried into the gap in the wall made by the gate. The man gave up and, hurling curses back at the guards, pushed his way through the line behind him. Angus frowned as the man grew nearer; the people were stepping aside to give him plenty of room to pass, but he adjusted his own path and kept bumping into them.

  Angus stood his ground, drew his dagger, and let the rest of the gathering step aside. The man followed the throng, made a staggered lunge toward Angus, saw the dagger, and stopped. He stood still for a long moment, perfectly poised with his weight on one foot. “I suggest,” Angus hissed, “you find another mark.” The man pivoted easily away from him and promptly bumped into the next small group, his fingers sifting through folds of their clothes, deftly searching for coin purses and other valuable items.
Angus watched him until he was far enough away before returning his dagger to his sheath. He looked back to the gate and took several steps forward, catching up with the rest of the line.

  Someone finally shouted, “Thief!” and Angus sighed. Not my business, he thought as others joined the cry of “Thief! Thief!” Those around Angus turned, and some of them reached for their pockets. Two hands fell on nothing, and they took up the shout of “Thief” and ran after him. Angus stepped forward into the vacuum they left behind.

  The victims of the thief continued shouting.

  The guards pretended not to notice.

  Angus stepped forward, a pace at a time.

  He was behind only three people when the first victim barged past him, panting heavily and demanding that the guard catch the thief.

  The guard shook his head. “Not my job,” he said. “My post is here. You’ll have to take it up with the magistrate.”

  “The magistrate!” the man bellowed. “He doesn’t care about what happens out here!”

  Four more victims joined him, and the guard looked them over. “Sure he does,” he said. “I’m sure if you take it up with him, he’ll do his best to catch