Chapter 2 Part 1

THE ROAD TO TASK AND TRIAL


By midday they had traveled farther than Sam had ever been before in his memory. They passed through a small village near sunset and once again he had to don his disguise. Tyson took advantage of the opportunity to test Sam's ability to 'see' with his other senses. One game involved binding the boy's eyes with a cloth rag and forcing him to describe his surroundings and perform menial tasks by touch sound and smell only. Sam had fun with that game.

Although Ultrecht wanted to get a room at the small but hospitable looking inn, Armegon reminded him of their financial status and recommended that they take their sleep on the road. There was little reason to argue, for the ground was uncharacteristically dry and the weather was unseasonably warm. Around the time of the setting of the second sun, Tyson and Sam began gathering firewood while at the same time playing a spirited game of hide and seek.

"I think Tyson has entered his second childhood," Ultrecht observed casually.

"You can play too, if you want," Armegon countered coolly.

Ultrecht laughed. "I am over ninety years old," he protested mockingly.

"Liar!" Armegon accused. "You are several hundred if you are a day. Just because your body regenerates at a perpetual thirty-five years old doesn't make you any younger."

Ultrecht bent over and leaned on a piece of firewood as if it were a cane. "Oh, my arthritis," he moaned.

Armegon laughed for a moment then paused. "I was about to say that immortality has its advantages, but something just occurred to me. Suppose the enchantment that froze our ages was nullified by our displacement."

Ultrecht sat on a small box next to the fire. "That is a good point. I suppose that if any part of the enchantment failed we would simply resume aging normally."

"Did any of those notes Tyson took say anything about it?"

"Not that I noticed," Ultrecht replied. "I would really like to get a copy of that book."

"Well once you get your magic working again, why don't you just waltz into Quickdraw's library and take it," Armegon asked with a snicker.

"I don't think Blackpuss would like that very much. Let's not give him reason to get really pissed. It could make life quite inconvenient."

"I haven't heard that kind of arrogance for over a year," Tyson said as he joined the discussion. He dropped an armload of wood as did Sam who followed in tow.

"We were just passing the time with 'what ifs'", Armegon explained. "Did you two have fun?" he addressed Sam.

"Yes sir," the boy replied politely. "Mister Tyson and I played a game of tag in the dark."
Armegon glanced up. The thick foliage of the forest canopy blocked all but the most stubborn moonbeams. "Who won?"

"Sam did of course," Tyson replied. "His night vision is fantastic." Sam beamed at the praise.

That night supper was very delicious in Sam's opinion. Food on the trail always seemed to taste better. He ate the beans, which he normally avoided, greedily. The broth and the bread were both warm as well and he soon found his eyelids fluttering.

When Sam fell asleep, Armegon gathered the boy's bowl and began the chore of cleaning up. Ultrecht announced that he was going to take a short nap and for Armegon to wake him for watch whenever he was ready to go to sleep.

Tyson volunteered to take a watch, but Armegon gracefully declined and suggested that Tyson get a good night's sleep. Tyson was not fooled by the suggestion. Armegon still did not trust him enough to sleep around with no one to watch him. And yet at the cabin there had been no problem with everyone sleeping. Tyson was just a bit curious about what kind of magical wards Armegon had cast about his cabin to keep it safe.

The next two days were bathed in bright sunshine filtering through the trees until the punctual afternoon clouds brought the gloom of evening early. The trail was heading slightly west, and the mountains were beginning to get closer. As a result the evening twilight came earlier and lasted longer as the suns disappeared behind the mountains each day.

Near the end of the third day, they pulled into a mining outpost. Most of the population were gnomes and dwarves. Consequently the buildings had low roofs and doors. Sam had grown to a height of about a five feet, and Armegon had to tailor his clothes to keep them fitted. So even at such a young age, the rapidly growing child had to stoop to enter the building.

The miners, used to periodic visitors, paid them little mind and the travelers found lodgings quite easily. Ultrecht expressed his anxiousness to bed down indoors quite loudly, so there was very little socializing done that night. The next morning Armegon insisted that they continue. This was met grimly by Ultrecht as the man complained that one night in a bed was hardly enough to make up for sleep lost on the trail due to the hard ground.

Sam had remained quiet that morning in his cloak and hood. But once they were out of the village a bit he removed his disguise and began to fidget noticeably. Armegon, concerned, inquired as to what was wrong. The reply caught him off guard.
"I feel strange," Sam said in a voice that cracked from an unusual baritone to his normal tenor.

Ultrecht smiled. "It will pass," he said.

In fact Sam's voice changed completely by the end of the day. Tyson who up until now had only heard of Sam's maturity rate was awed. The boy began talking to anyone who would listen about anything he could think of just to hear his new voice. Armegon had explained what was happening to him over lunch, and Sam was excited about the approach of adolescence.

As they approached the next village near noon on the next day, Armegon suggested that Sam not disguise himself. They were far enough from the ranch that he would not be known and the boy needed to get used to how people reacted to his appearance.

In fact the reaction of the population was very subdued. Only a few people even spared a second glance to the feline features of the boy, and of those few only one young woman actually showed any distress at all. She made a slight show of fear and then ran off towards the residential area of the village. Sam noted her reaction, but did not seem upset about it. In fact he was intrigued by her reaction. Almost mischievously, Armegon thought.

Ultrecht again wanted to stop for the day and spend the night, but Armegon again insisted they be moving on. So they spent the evening camped in a glade near a small pond by the road where they were joined by a company of entertainers.

Two human men an elven woman and an old dwarf maid traded their skills for a share of Armegon's cooking. One man, a teller of stories spun a tale of a fabled nomad of the northern woods. Sam enjoyed the story greatly and asked many questions about the story of The Forester. The orator would say only that it was a local story from long ago and that it was said that when a crime was committed and the village elder could not resolve guilt or innocence, the suspect would be sent into the forest alone for three days. If he was innocent The Forester would spare him, but the guilty would be punished according to the severity of his crime.

Tyson scoffed, and the man smiled. "Of course it is just an old story," he said with a wink to Sam, "but many of the villages near Mt. Callisar," and with that he pointed to the far off peaks shimmering in the soft moonlight to the north, "still believe in The Forester. And I have found local legends are always good openers for other tales of lands far away."

"Oh, could I hear a story about a far away place?" Sam asked excitedly.

"Of course, young one," the elven woman said as she sat next to the youth and drew a strangely shaped harp from beneath the cloak she was wearing. The elf sat and began running her slender fingers across the strings and a hypnotic rhythm ensued. Her voice rang out like a melody of the sounds of nature as she sung the tragic story of a farmer and his family driven from their home by the Count Cadaver of Freon some many years ago.

Tears came to her eyes as she mused the pain and tragedy of the starving family and their trek through the Great Deep, the huge unsettled wilderness between the eastern cities and the Orkon mountains. Tears appeared in the eyes of others as the elven maiden's voice communicated the horror of dying children and the farmer's wife's defilement and death at the hands of wild creatures and bandits.

Then the song changed as the ballad brought a hero into the story. She sung of a huge coyodiak with burning yellow eyes that came to the rescue of the alienated family as they were besieged by a pack of hungry wolves. Her song reached a crescendo as the huge beast chased off the creatures and a songbird guided them to a nearby village where the farmer, and his only surviving daughter found freedom at long last.

Sam sniffled and wiped his eyes dry. The elf reached down and patted him on the cheek when her hand encountered fur instead of skin she showed genuine surprise, but no fear. "There, there," she said to him. "Life is full of tragedy, but each story can teach a lesson. I would certainly like to hear your story." With that last statement she glanced questioningly at Armegon who had been introduced as the boy's guardian.

"Perhaps later," Armegon assured her. "Right now Sam needs to get some sleep."

Sam put up a fight and began to get belligerent until the motherly dwarf gave him a cup of warm milk to drink and he promptly nodded off into sleep.

Alarmed Armegon snatched the cup and began inspecting it for drugs.

"That is unnecessary," the other man reassured him. "It was an empathic domination, not a drug. Argenta, here, has some empathic ability. She helps us to read our audiences. It’s sort of a compensation to her muteness. She can communicate by sign language, but she can’t speak. She simply amplified the warm milk's affect on your nephew."

Armegon showed visible relief, but he still inspected the cup. Ultrecht on the other hand had drawn forth a wand and was in the process of putting it away when the leader of the band addressed him as well. "You seem to be a mechanic," he said.

Ultrecht flinched somewhat at the title of a user of magic items without understanding of the magic itself. "Not entirely," he said trying not so sound too knowledgeable. "I have some understandings of magic."

"Oh?," the man said intrigued. "So do I. In fact it’s what I do. I am a prestidigitator."

"A what?" Tyson asked.

"I specialize in pocket dimensions and desolidifications," The leader bragged.

"He means he pulls rabbits from hats and gets out of locked boxes," explained the story teller.

"That is how I entertain with it," the pseudo magician corrected his companion. But I can do other things.

"Such as?" the storyteller challenged.

"Well, I can walk through walls, for one thing."

"Like I said, 'get out of locked boxes,'" the storyteller laughed.

"Now see here!" the magician countered angrily.

"As you can see," the elven maid laughingly interrupted the argument, "my friends also do a comedy routine."

Armegon looked back at the arguers to find them both grinning broadly.

"Hey, that’s pretty good. I don't suppose you know, 'Who's on First?'" Ultrecht asked hopefully.

"What?"

"Never mind," Armegon cut in. “We want to thank you for your services. You’ve made what otherwise looked to be a dull evening very entertaining."

"We thank you for you hospitality," the leader replied.

"Actually you could do me one favor," the elf said. She nodded at the sleeping boy. "He is not human, elf, or dwarf, though in the night he appears to be one. What is he and how did he come into your presence?"

Armegon frowned slightly. "His mother was my sister," he told her. "She was cursed by a demoness who’d come to seduce her husband. Sam's deformity was the result. The birth killed his mother and his father succumbed to the demoness leaving the child without a guardian so I took him in.”

"Why do you want to know," Ultrecht asked.

"Because that story will make a fine song or tale," she explained. "Of course I will make a hero of him to finish the tale." She smiled. "So do not make a liar of me," she pleaded mockingly. "Make certain he becomes a hero."

"We’ll try," Tyson assured her quickly cutting Armegon off. "But right now we need to bed down so that we can move on at sunrise."

"Yes," the storyteller agreed. "We too wish to depart at sunrise. We wish you a good journey." With that the band of entertainers returned to their own wagon and settled down for the night.