Free The Elements of Sorcery by Christopher Kellen Page A

"Lucky not to lose it."
    As I regarded the old wound, something began to prickle at the edges of my awareness. "Looks painful," I agreed, narrowing my eyes as I looked him over. There was something bothering me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the feeling. "Can you tell me what the hounds looked like? What this 'Reaper' looked like?"
    He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Hound was ugly. Big, ugly thing. Might've been a Valisian war hound once, but not anymore. Teeth as long as my pointer." He held up a stubby finger for reference.
    "And the Reaper?" I prodded. Fel dogs were fel dogs. It was their master that interested me the most.
    "Tall," Palis said, holding one hand above his head, his arm at full extension. "Thin. Looked like a tree, maybe, with long things that clutched the ground when it walked. Like roots."
    "Did it have legs?"
    He thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "Don't think so."
    A frown of concentration crossed my face. He was either a very plain-spoken man with not much to say, or he was concealing something. It was hard to tell, given that the only expression on his face was one of fear.
    Worse than that, the description he gave of the Reaper not only matched the vague one that Alina had given me, but it also matched not a single one of the stories and legends I'd heard, read or researched in my lifetime – and that was a large number. Nothing in my experience aligned with a tree-like monster that came accompanied by fel dogs into a village and stole away citizens. I couldn't think of a single tale that related a beast like that, but something was nagging at the back of my mind, like an annoying gnat that you just can't catch.
    "Papa? What's going on?" a voice came from behind the burly blacksmith. He turned, and I shot a glance over his shoulder as he did. In an inner doorway that perhaps led into some kind of bedchamber stood a boy, in his mid-to-late teens, with the same burly physique exhibited by Palis the smith.
    "Nothing, Murt," the large man said. "Go get the forge stoked for the day."
    "Yes, sir," the boy mumbled, but he stared at me for a moment with very large eyes. That strange prickling sensation at the back of my neck returned, and I rubbed one hand along it to neutralize the feeling. Then the boy turned away, disappearing into another doorway beyond.
    "Anything else, Master Arbiter?" the smith grunted. "There's work to be done."
    Casting one last look after the boy, I shook my head. "No. That's all."
    Without another word, I turned and left the smith's home, heading back out into the cold winter morning. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that I would uncover something so quickly that would lead me to the answer, but there had been no choice but to try.
    If Palis had been the one with the best look at this 'Reaper', then I was going to accomplish nothing by frantically interviewing every citizen of this tiny backwater. It would be better simply to wait until nightfall, and get a glimpse of the creature myself.
    I just had to hope that I wouldn't get killed in the process.

VI
     
    A few moments later, I re-entered Alina's home. From within I could hear a sound of scraping, and when I came through the doorway into the main room, she was leaning over what appeared to be the leg of a chair with an odd-looking knife. A pile of wooden pieces sat at her feet as she worked. Shavings floated to the ground with each stroke.
    "You're a furnisher," I said. My voice rang hollow in my ears.
    "It was my husband's trade, before he died," she answered, and hers was just as hollow. "I learned from watching him."
    "Did he…?" I wanted to ask the question, but the words died on my lips.
    She seemed to know what I was asking, and shook her head before I could get any farther. "No. Ramun died more than a year ago, before the Reaper began to come."
    A jab of pain lanced through my neck, as though someone had driven a needle into it. I yelped in surprise and swatted at what I thought was an insect,