Chapter 6 Goat Breath and Blueberries
When Rolan came to, he was pleasantly warm.
The world was soft and fuzzy all around him, and he wondered if he might be dead.
Maybe this was the afterlife, the goddess’s realm of truth people said existed in the sky, where you took naps in clouds all day and twinkled like a star at night.
If so, he thought he didn’t mind so much. It was very cozy.
Then something rough and wet slapped his face, and Rolan’s eyes popped open. With a gasp, he sat up, pushing away the fuzzy lump that was sitting on his chest, licking his nose.
“Goat!” Rolan gasped. “Help! A goat is murdering me!”
The goat baaed in his face, blasting him with hot, smelly breath, before clambering down. It flicked its tail reproachfully at Rolan and skipped away, its hooves clicking on the wood plank floor.
Rolan looked around. He was in a small room with piled sheepskins and hides and a flickering oil lamp hanging on a peg.
A flash of lightning through the narrow window made Rolan shudder.
He peered out to see rain lashing the glass.
Thunder groaned through the wooden walls, shivering in his rib cage.
It was night, and the sky had a temper to rival his pa’s.
Beneath Rolan was a rickety cot made soft by an abundance of more sheepskins. They were cozy, all right, but he was beginning to notice the smell, which was not pleasant. They stank of barnyard and mud and sheepy sweat. If the afterlife smelled like that, he hoped there wasn’t one.
The goat now stood in the corner, chewing something. Rolan realized it was his boot and growled, looking around for something to throw at the animal. He hurled his other boot and missed. With a bleat of gratitude, the goat dropped his snack and started feasting on its mate.
“Could you stop that?” Rolan begged. “I only got the one pair.”
With a grimace, Rolan felt his forehead and found it tightly bandaged. The day’s events came back to him in a rush—the Cryptic in his cell, Hoff dragging him to prison.
The Arcanist.
Rolan saw no sign of the man now, but then, he didn’t see how Luc could possibly fit into such a small room at all. This couldn’t be the man’s house. Maybe it was the goat’s.
Through the window the world was terribly dark. Rolan realized with dismay he must be outside the city. Even the worst storms couldn’t darken Crisanth. The lamps were made to withstand rain and wind, and even if one went out, there were a dozen others close enough to fill the gap with light.
But out here…
Rolan couldn’t tear his eyes away from the window. There could be hundreds of Cryptics out there, right now, just inches away through that thin glass pane, and he’d never know it.
He swallowed.
“Mr. Arcanist?” he called, his voice a strained whisper. “Luc?”
Rolan felt at his forehead again. The man must have patched him up, so that probably meant he wasn’t going to turn Rolan into Cryptic bait. Not yet, anyway.
It seemed Rolan’s plan to give Luc the slip had been a miserable flop. Which was a shame, because Rolan would have looked spectacular if he’d pulled it off—leaping from the horse, yelling something extremely clever and heroic, just before vanishing into the city like smoke on the wind.
Instead he’d gone and fainted like an idiot, and that had ruined that plan.
Why had he passed out? He dimly remembered falling off the horse and Luc catching him. After that, nothing.
Well. He could still run. Not tonight, not in the dark. But tomorrow. Early, at first light. He’d steal some food and start for the road. Somehow, he would sneak into Crisanth and find his father, and by this time tomorrow they’d be laughing about it over supper.
Forcing himself to his feet, Rolan tiptoed to the door. The goat watched him with its left eye while methodically chomping the sole of Rolan’s boot. Its right eye peered off in the other direction.
“Better watch out,” Rolan growled. “I happen to love goat stew. Maybe I’ll bring you back to the city with me and make a supper of you.”
The goat looked offensively unbothered by the threat.
Slowly, bracing himself for Cryptics or Arcanists or whatever other monsters might wait, Rolan pushed open the door. He poked his head around it and found…
No one.
The room on the other side was large, with fieldstone walls, a high, beamed ceiling, and a crackling fireplace.
He saw no sign of Luc and, after a moment, worked up enough courage to start exploring.
His bare feet soaked up the warmth from the hide rugs spread around.
First he eagerly inspected the small kitchen nook, where jars of herbs and pickled vegetables were neatly stacked, along with slabs of salted meat he hoped weren’t Cryptic in origin.
He eyed a lump of bread, not nearly as golden or tempting as Finkfloss’s, and opted to instead grab a handful of blueberries.
They burst sweetly on his tongue, tasting of summer dew.
Grimly, he grabbed a silver butter knife and slipped it into his pocket. You never knew when a little knife might be useful. Especially when you woke up in a stranger’s house, in the dark, in a thunderstorm, far from home.
The rest of the room held little of interest. A large four-poster bed had to be Luc’s, covered in blankets of fur and coarse wool.
In front of the stone fireplace sat a massive oak armchair, its rigid form padded with more furs.
The fire was bright but burning low. It looked like no one had put a fresh log on for some time.
Shivering, Rolan stepped closer to it, aware of the dark outside and the growling thunder.
The goat trailed after, as if he’d savored the taste of Rolan’s boots and was now sizing up the rest of him.
After a while, Rolan went back for more blueberries.
“Where’s your owner?” Rolan asked the goat around a juicy mouthful. “Did he wander off into the storm and die? That would be just my luck.”
The house was small, though its roof was high and peaked.
A loft with ladder access seemed to be used as storage.
The closet Rolan had awoken in was the only other room, with a small back door beside it.
A huge oak door served as the house’s main entrance.
Beside it, a piece of paper had been nailed to the wall.
Words sprawled across it, which Rolan ignored.
Then his eyes fell on a chest set to one side of the room. It seemed ordinary enough, a plain ash wood box with iron hinges. But the fat lock on the front was intriguing. Anything worth locking up had to be worth investigating.
Checking once more to be sure he was alone, Rolan knelt beside the chest and studied the lock. It wasn’t very sophisticated, and he silently thanked Anaya for yet another of her lessons as he used the butter knife to pry it open.
The lid swung up with a creak, and Rolan gasped.
Teeth. Claws. Scales. Feathers. Bones.
Scores of animal bits jumbled together inside the chest, like the world’s most grisly treasure.
Rolan grimaced, wondering if these were the pieces left over after the Arcanist finished one of his nasty meals.
Maybe he did eat Cryptics. These certainly were not parts from animals Rolan had ever seen.
The teeth were too large and sharp to be bears’ or wolves’, the scales too shiny to belong to fish.
They had to be Cryptic parts. Souvenirs of the most disgusting order.
“He is a monster,” murmured Rolan, his heart beating faster.
He was just about to close the chest when one of the fangs inside shifted, disturbed by the movement of the lid. And when it did, it shimmered.
Rolan froze, staring.
The fang glowed faintly blue for a moment before fading again.
He might have imagined the whole thing.
To be sure, Rolan swallowed his revulsion and reached into the chest, nudging the fang with his finger. And at once, it flared with blue, misty light.
With a yelp, Rolan withdrew his hands, letting the lid clack shut. He stared at it a moment longer, then slowly eased it open again.
Just to be extra sure he wasn’t losing his mind.
Sure enough, the fang was still glowing.
“Well, this is weird,” Rolan said to the goat. It peered over his shoulder, probably wondering if the stuff in the chest was edible.
Drawing a deep breath, trying not to think about how icky this was, Rolan swiped his hands through the gruesome collection of Cryptic parts.
He was rewarded with a sudden, vibrant glow, and blue mist rose in the chest and spilled over the sides, oozing across the floor.
Rolan leaned in, eyes wide, staring at each item.
Every tooth and claw, scale and feather, was shimmering with more blue mist, the way some mushrooms seemed to smoke if you kicked them open.
The light was mesmerizing, swirling and thick, viscous enough that when Rolan drew his hand through it, he could feel something oily slide over his skin.
Crash!
The big oak door slammed open at the same moment a massive crack of thunder broke, and Rolan nearly died of fright then and there. He jerked his hand from the box and spun around, all excuses dying on his lips at the sight of the Arcanist in the doorway.
“What,” the Arcanist growled, “have you done?”