Land of Salvania

  Flint pulled a rune from the linen bag and placed it on the table across from the painted woman. Her elaborately decorated wagon was cloudy with incense. Outside, someone was playing a melancholy tune on on a violin. A dog barked, and children squealed. She leaned forward, tiny bells sewn into her red silk head cloth jingled. One of her hands hovered over the tile carved from a troll's lower tusk, her many rings glinting in the candelight. The rune Ansuz was carved into the tile. She ran a painted fingernail over the design, a vertical line with two parallel lines angling off the right side. It reminded Flint of a squashed version of the Elvenari letter 'F'. "This is important." Her nail tapped the ivory. Her entire hand was covered in elaborate henna designs. "Ansuz is the 4th rune by the Northmen's reckoning, an auspicious number relating to the four directions of the wind." A raven watching from a nearby stand said, "Northman. Nor...

  Ulrich sat in the Seeing Lady's wagon as she lit an oil lamp. The wagon was more like a small house, in truth. It was just big enough for two curtained rooms. The main room was her public space, it seemed, with silken hangings, a folding table, lamps, and too many pillows. When he glimpsed through a gap in the linen curtain, he could see her sleeping cot and two fluffy cats: one asleep and one staring at him without blinking. "Please to be comfortable," the Seeing Lady said, pointing to a three-legged stool topped by a white pillow with a swan embroidered in red. It was also covered in cat hair. The Seeing Lady wore an elaborate, silk and linen dress and head scarf favored by ladies in eastern Salvania. Her fingernails were painted bright red to match her lips. Her eyelids were painted green. She fell into that indeterminate age somewhere between too young and too old. It seemed like eastern ladies went to a lot of trouble painting themselves each day. They sho...

  "The tracks end right here," Cedric said to his nephew. Saul was the only one of the brood that showed any aptitude for the "family business." Saul knelt with his uncle, watching the older tracker's eyes and hands move over the ground as if he was invoking some arcane spell of magick. Cedric's voice was dreamy. "It's like she was walking at a normal pace, then took a leap off her right foot." He pointed to the last track, deeper than the others in the soft soil. They both turned, facing the direction of travel, looking for a reason someone would jump. Saul said, "She might have jumped up to that limb." He pointed to a forked tree with a low limb on the right side. They both looked up the tree. It was empty, swaying a little in the spring breeze. Cedric stood and walked around the tree in a circle that spiraled out. There were no other tracks from their quarry. "If she climbed that tree, she didn't come down." Th...

Duke Halbert, the queen’s father, had become a shuffling, muttering shadow that wandered the castle halls at all hours, disturbing the dogs and interrupting late-night trysts. He was pleasant enough when approached for conversation, but his words were disjointed and likely to have no relationship to the topic. When Elric, the queen’s chef, found Halbert outside the pantry at midnight, he asked, “Milord, are you hungry? You barely touched your supper.” “Old Bob used to bring us a string of trout on festival days. I went fishing with him one time, and he sprinkled some kind of dust on the water. He called it Fairy Cinders. Said he got it from an old lady in the woods.” Elric just stared. Not sure what to say and regretting he had started this conversation at all. “Here’s the strange part: when he sprinkled it on the water, fish would jump out, and we just needed to catch them.” Halbert made a grabbing motion and smiled. “It was great fun. Old Bob said the dust made the fish think...

Elzalore tossed and moaned in his sleep. He was young again, maybe 14. He was a starving boy during the siege, trapped behind the duke's walls for months while the enemy outside stopped any chance of relief.  He had been roaming the streets at night, mad with hunger. He had become a senseless animal, driven only by the need to survive. He was a scrawny, dirty, growling thing. He prowled the empty shopping district, just one of many places he checked each night. He looked under baskets and found human skulls gleaming white in the torchlight. He looked under stacks of bloody rugs and found bones. Finally, he reached a distant part of the market. Somehow, he knew this was off limits. Dangerous. He stopped, tense and coiled like a cat deciding to leap. Maybe there was food back there. Had he ever looked? No. Or had he? He wasn’t sure. He heard a small noise behind a stall. Was someone there ahead of him? Was someone taking his food? That was enough. He rushed forward, h...

Osran stood back in the crowd, trying to be inconspicuous. He watched the traveling seer, named Ivakius, perform an elaborate ceremony with a smoking bundle of sage. He wore ceremonial face paint, and he had stripped down to a thin tunic in the summer swelter. "Now, my friends, this place has been purified," Ivakius said, his voice deep and serious. "I will begin to reach into the realm of spirits, and we shall see what we may." As the seer closed his eyes and mumbled, Osran reached out with his astral thoughts, seeing the situation with the Deep Magic. He almost giggled. There was no more magic about Ivakius than a house cat. No, he was being unfair. Osran had seen some house cats with a glint of magic, and this charlatan had none at all. "I can feel a spirit that wants to speak to someone in the crowd. Has anyone lost their father?" Osran smiled as half the crowd raised their hands. Of course. Ask enough vague questions and you can steer the cr...

Elzalore had finally reached his limit. He had remained calm while the inbred gate guard with missing front teeth had looked him up and down. He had remained calm when the dolt asked him about his business at the castle. Then the guard stepped in it. Deep. "You will need to swear an oath on yer gods, if ya have any, that you are not some kind of deviant. Like a queer or a Dwarven-lover." The Deep Magic came so quickly, and so focused, that Elzalore was startled to feel it pouring out of his hands without effort. Indeed, he had never felt so in tune with the power of the universe. "AHHHH!" The guard cried out and stumbled back, the bones of his face twisting into a hideous mask. A lady at a nearby market stall screamed and ran away with a toddler in tow, his dirty feet barely touching the ground. Dogs all over the surrounding village began howling. A flight of crows called out and erupted from the trees. "Stop right there," another guard bellowed...

The wizard Osran of Sangrey City followed the bright new star with the long tail west each night. He slept during the day in a Bubble of Seclusion, which inexplicably did not work on pixies. Indeed, the pixies seemed to be drawn to the simple magic like hummingbirds to a honeysuckle. Each evening, he awoke and collapsed the bubble, now simmering with pixies glinting in and out of existence all over the surface. Usually, within a few minutes, they would scatter in rainbow light to their usual forest haunts. But not today. Today he crossed the White River, slept, and awoke before sunset as usual. But the pixies over here positively clung to him, flashing like jewels as they came and went through the ethereal realm, clinging to his clothes and hair. At first, it annoyed him, but he got used to it. It actually worked in his favor. As he walked through a town the next evening, the cloud of pixies drew a crowd. So he stepped up on the town fountain and went through his usual busking...

Everyone called her Aunt Matilda. Each day, she cooked a cauldron of pottage with peas, carrots, onions, mushrooms, a few nuts, and black kernels of Elvenari rice.  Very rarely, a sliver of meat might appear. Nobody asked where the meat came from. It was hot, and it filled empty bellies. That was all anyone needed to know. She carried it one wooden bowl at a time up the stone stairs running up to the outer wall. She would deliver her food, a kind word, and a pat on the arm to each of the weary soldiers manning the wall. The soldiers would smile and, staring across the once-manicured market grounds toward the forest, eat their pottage in silence. Sometimes, an arrow would come out of the forest and fall short. The soldiers would jeer and call to the invisible enemy to improve their aim. Sometimes the arrows would go long, and the soldiers would call out to the people in the courtyard behind them to watch out. One day, an arrow landed next to Elzalore, splintering on the cobbled lane...