“Tower, wizards usually live in towers,” I commented. The other two looked glummer.
“I don’t think I’ll be going through with this job,” the witch said. “There were details that we weren’t told so I don’t see that we are responsible for completing this.”
“I agree,” said the thief.
“I’m going to finish the job,” I said. The other two looked at me like I was crazy but I held my ground. It wasn’t like I had a choice anyway; the job had to be done.
“How’re you going to finish the job without the two of us?” the witch asked.
“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten there yet. I’ll figure something out.”
“Maybe you don’t understand Doyle, he’s strong and he’s dangerous. He will kill you. Are you suicidal?” asked the witch.
“No but I have a job to do, death is one of the occupational hazards,” I admitted, “but it hasn’t happened yet and until it does I’ll keep doing the job.”
“You sure now how to make a quitter feel guilty,” the thief complained. The thief and the witch looked at one another and finally shrugged.
“I guess we’ll see this job through,” said the witch. “Until my life is actually in danger and then you’re on your own. You have a good name for keeping people you are protecting alive so I’ll trust you,” the witch said, standing up.
“Then I will stay too,” said the girl, also heading for the door. Once I was on my own I had time to reflect that they were staking their lives on only what they had heard about me. We had been traveling together for a single day, they weren’t betting their lives on what they knew, they were betting them on rumor. I tried to think of all of the rumors my agent had intentionally passed around about me and I was filled with guilt. If that was the sort of person they thought that I was then I would disappoint them.
The next couple of days of travel, this time to the west, gave me a chance to get to know my companions a little better. They were both good at what they did. The thief gave me a demonstration of her skill almost immediately when I found that some things were gone from my locked saddlebags. I confronted her about it and she just laughed and gave them back to me. The witch was trickier, like I said before, he didn’t feel magical but he would do things sometimes that would suggest a gift. Every time he did anything the air around him seemed to change. I’d never met anyone like that before. It did make me feel better to have people like them at my back though; it made me feel less like I had the whole burden of their lives on my shoulders, though of course they were still my responsibility.
Headwall’s Wood, when we finally reached it, wasn’t much to look at. It was a forest with a couple of old beat up houses around it and a tower standing in its center. We left our horses with an old man who didn’t look like he would steal them and headed towards the tower. We asked around about it but no one would tell us anything, or even look us in the eye when we mentioned it. That boded more ill then had they told us horror stories.
The forest was like a maze, we would think that we were heading in the right direction only to get totally turned around again. I considered tying a string to a tree and seeing if that helped but it seemed too late now. That would have been more practical had I thought about it as soon as we had entered the forest. I began to suspect that our repeated sidetracks were the first magical problem we would be forced to face when facing Doyle and that wasn’t much comfort. If he was strong enough to cast such a large maze spell then he could also probably attack us from this distance.
To be continued...
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