The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) by Robert P. Hansen Read Free Book Online

the land,” Ulrich barked,
his voice sharp, as if he were stating an uneasy fact. “The dead must stay
dead.”
    Angus did not respond. There was no need to; Ulrich
obviously had a firmly set opinion, and anything he said would be pointless.
    Ulrich shifted his quiver and sat down across from Angus.
“Tell me, Angus,” Ulrich asked, each word sharply accented. “What business have
you in Woodwort?” he demanded.
    “Woodwort?” Angus asked.
    “Here,” Ulrich snapped. “This village.”
    “Only rest and recuperation,” Angus answered. “I will be
leaving in a few days.”
    “For Hellsbreath?”
    Angus nodded.
    “Business?”
    Angus smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile—at least he hoped
it wasn’t—nor an unfriendly one; rather, he was acknowledging the boundary they
were forming between them. “Perhaps,” he said. “What is it to you?”
    Ulrich returned the smile easily, shrugged, and said, “Idle
curiosity.”
    “Well then,” Angus said. “If that is all it is, you’ll be
disappointed. I have no idea what I’ll be doing there.”
    “You should visit Ungred,” Ulrich said. “He will make you a
proper pair of boots.”
    “My boots are fine,” Angus objected.
    Ulrich shrugged. “His shop is on The Rim.”
    “Well,” Angus said. “I’ll look in on him if I can find the
time.”
    Ulrich nodded, rose from his chair.
    “Ulrich,” Angus said. “You have something of mine. I would
like it back.”
    Ulrich nodded again, and before Angus could complain, he
turned crisply and walked out of the common room, as if he were a cat that had
just made up its mind to leave.
    The 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