The Wyvern's Spur

22 Coming Home

From the journal of Giogioni Wyvernspur:

The front door opened and slammed shut. Olive put down her pen. Thomas usually went in and out through the kitchen, and he never slammed doors. Cat and Dorath would still be up on Temple Hill at this time of the day. The parlor door opened.

“Heigh-ho, anyone about?”

“Giogi!” Olive cried, running to the young man who stood in the doorway. For a moment, she’d forgotten he was a human, well over six feet tall. She drew back before she embarrassed herself by hugging one of his legs. She held out her hand.

“Congratulations on your victory,” she said, shaking his hand and smiling from ear to ear.

“Oh. Thanks. Where is everyone?”

“Thomas is shopping. Cat is out with Dorath. They’ll be back in a while.” Olive looked down at the nobleman’s muddy, torn clothes and his scarred neck and his bruised and haggard face, covered with three days’ worth of stubble. He looked like an adventurer. “You have just enough time to clean up.”

“Good. I must be rather distressing to look at. I wouldn’t want to worry anyone.”

Olive laughed. “Too late for that. What took you so long?”

Giogi’s expression grew as distressed as his appearance. He shuddered as if from some fear. “I need a drink. Would you care to join me, Mistress Ruskettle?”

“But of course. You sit down. I’ll pour.”

Olive crossed to the tea table and unstoppered the brandy bottle. Thomas does such a good job keeping it full, she thought. She poured two tumblers full and carried them to the fireside, where Giogi slouched in an armchair, heedless of the grime he left on its arms. The nobleman took a hefty slug of the liquor. Olive sat on the ottoman at his feet.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Would you mind?” Giogi asked. “It’s not the sort of thing I could tell anyone else, but you’re so, well, worldly. I think it would upset my relatives, and I’m not sure Cat will understand how I feel.”

“I’m always ready to listen to a friend,” Olive assured him.

Giogi smiled gratefully. “It’s two things, really. The first isn’t that bad, but I used it as an excuse, trying not to think about the other. The wyvern shape takes a lot of … fuel, I guess you could say. I was really hungry after I used it the first time. I was starving after—after the battle with Flattery. I was miles from the road, though, and nuts and berries weren’t going to be enough, and it was cold out there. So I stayed a wyvern for the night and ate like a wyvern.” Giogi shuddered.

“Uncooked meals can upset one’s equilibrium,” Olive said, thinking of sweetened oats.

Giogi laughed. “You have such a way with words. I guess that’s why you’re a bard.”

“Among other things,” Olive said. “Go on with your story,” she encouraged.

“Well, I ate this wild pig, which was completely awful, all hairy and bony. Then I fell asleep. It was too cold to sleep out-of-doors as a human, so I stayed a wyvern.

“The next day, I kind of got lost. I thought I was north of the road to Dhedluk when I was really south. So I flew around as a wyvern for a long time before I found the road. Then I was hungry again. You know, Sudacar told me that my father was allowed to hunt in the king’s woods unaccompanied. Now I realize he didn’t go in with a bow and arrow. I ate this cow. I tried to get a deer first, but it dove into the woods where I couldn’t follow. So I had to eat the cow. I shall have to go back and reimburse whoever it belonged to.

“Anyway, the guardian said I couldn’t go all wyverny and forget I was human. I tried, though. I didn’t want to be human, I think. I—you see—Mistress Ruskettle, have you ever killed anyone before?”

“Oh, that’s it,” Olive said with an understanding nod. “Well, yes. Not as many as you might think, but more than I really know for sure. The first two were a matter of life or death, but I was really too scared to know I was doing it.”

“Yes!” Giogi said. “I was scared. Then it was over. But it doesn’t change things. I killed a man. A man who was sort of a relative. I knew he was going to kill me, as he’d killed my father and all those elves and tried to kill my Uncle Drone, and who knows who else. I didn’t think I’d ever kill anyone, and I guess I wanted to blame it on being a wyvern. I had to bite him as a wyvern to kill him. It’s easy to kill things when you’re a wyvern. Otherwise, you go hungry. I stayed a wyvern for a while so I wouldn’t have to think about whether I’d have killed Flattery as a human being.”

“What made you come back, then?” Olive asked.

“Well, the guardian was right. I’m not a wyvern. I kept thinking about things that made me human again. I had to think about killing Flattery as a human being. I think I had to kill him. I don’t think I wanted to, but I made a decision anyway. It was more important protecting my family.”

Giogi had another gulp of brandy. Then he asked, “Mistress Ruskettle, who was Flattery? What did he mean when he said Finder Wyvernspur made him? Is Finder really evil?”

Olive sighed. She’d seen this coming. “Nameless, that is, Finder Wyvernspur, is one of your ancestors. A grandson of Paton Wyvernspur, as near as I can tell. I went through the family histories while you were … out. There is a name crossed out in the list of Paton’s grandchildren, so I think that must have been his name. He magically created Flattery as a copy of himself. I’m still wondering if he named Flattery, or if Flattery named himself, or if someone else named him. Finder was kind of arrogant. He wanted his songs and his name to live forever, absolutely untouched by time, unchanged by the flow of generations. An interesting idea, but not very workable.

“Anyway, in making Flattery, Nameless—Finder—was responsible for the deaths of two people. I don’t know if the Harpers ever actually learned that Flattery had lived, or even if Finder knew, but they sentenced Finder to exile and suppressed his songs and made him forget his name. He didn’t age in exile, but his experiences, when he was released, changed him. I’m sure he’d be appalled by what Flattery had become.”

“But now the Harpers have forgiven Finder and released him?” Giogi asked, hopeful.

“Well, he’s been released. The Harpers are debating what they’re going to do about it. I think he’s redeemed himself, and not just because I love the man’s music.”

“Why was Flattery so intent on killing him?”

“Flattery was an experiment gone very wrong. He was too much like Finder. They say, if a mage makes an exact copy of a person, the copy or the person go mad and try to destroy one another. Flattery might have felt he was the one who had the right to exist, since he wasn’t the one the Harpers put on trial. Or he might have been afraid that his ‘father’ was going to find him and punish him for not doing what he’d been made to do.”

“Why didn’t Flattery want to sing his songs?”

“I don’t know. My theory is that Flattery was cursed from the moment someone died to create him, but maybe Finder just forgot to put into him what’s in you.”

“What’s in me?”

“Yes. Whatever it is that doesn’t let you forget you’re a human. A pretty nice human, as humans go,” the halfling said, smiling.

“Is that why Flattery was afraid to go into the crypt after the spur?”

“Probably. He wasn’t really sure if he was human. That’s why he got so angry when you said he wasn’t. If he wasn’t human, he couldn’t really be a Wyvernspur. So he married Cat and sent her in. If he was a Wyvernspur, she’d live and he’d have the spur. If he wasn’t a Wyvernspur, she’d die and he’d have to think of some other way to get hold of it.”

“But, I thought you said Jade and Cat were already Wyvernspurs.”

It was getting harder to answer Giogi’s questions without giving away the secret that Alias, Jade, and Cat were all made by Finder, too. Olive told as much of the truth as she believed. “Well, as far as I know, they are. Flattery didn’t, though. Jade would have liked being adopted. She liked being my family. She would have liked being in yours, too.”

“Why did Uncle Drone want me to have the spur so badly?” Giogi wondered.

“Oh, I imagine for the same reason he wanted your father to have it. It’s a Wyvernspur tradition, and the king expects the services of a wyvern. If every Wyvernspur walked away from destiny like your Aunt Dorath did, you’d be merchants or farmers or something within a few generations.”

“If only Uncle Drone had just taken it from the crypt himself, or told me to. So much trouble might have been avoided,” Giogi said.

“Apparently, after arguing with your uncle about giving it to you, your aunt threatened to skin him alive if he so much as touched it. So he promised not to touch it. Everything he did was to get the job done without telling a lie. You know, life in your family might be a little less complicated if the men in your family could just tell your Aunt Dorath what they really think.”

Giogi laughed. “It not as easy as it sounds. The best any of us have ever managed is to think really hard.”

“Hmmph. You better go scrub up. If Mother Lleddew gets her facts straight, she’ll send Dorath and Cat right over here.”

Giogi swallowed the rest of his drink and stood. “I won’t be long. Please, if Thomas gets back while I’m upstairs, could you tell him I’d like lots of things for dinner. Cooked things.”

Olive grinned and nodded.

When Giogi had left the room, the halfling drew out her knife and very carefully sliced out the pages in Giogi’s journal that she’d written on. “He can tell his own story to posterity,” she muttered. She folded the papers and slid them into her pocket, then took another sip of her brandy.

A quarter of an hour later, a clean, shaven, and freshly dressed Giogi returned to the parlor. He had a scarf around his throat to hide the scars, and his arm was stiff from some wound, but he looked much more cheerful.

He and Olive were on their second brandy when they heard the front door open and close. Olive opened the parlor door. Cat stood in the hallway alone.

“Where’s Mistress Dorath?” the halfling asked.

“Out in the carriage,” Cat replied. “She’s very tired. I told her I’d just check in to see if there was any news. Is there?”

“Wait a minute. I’ll check,” Olive said, turning to face the parlor. “Giogi? Is there any news?”

“Well, I hear that the bishop of Chauntea and the patron of Oghma still aren’t speaking to one another. The runaway Princess Alusair Nacacia is still missing. Local gossip has it that that fool, Giogioni Wyvernspur, is home.”

“Giogi!” Cat cried, pushing past Olive and throwing herself into the noble’s arms. “You’re all right? Where have you been? Mother Lleddew told us you’d won the battle with Flattery, but when you didn’t come home right away, we were all worried sick about you.”

“I stayed a wyvern for a while.”

“Was it fun? Will you take me flying again? We could go adventuring this summer and fly every where—if your uncle will let me go for a bit. Maybe I can get him to teach me to turn into something that can fly, too. Oh, I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Giogi said. He bent over Cat and kissed her.

Olive slipped out of the parlor and through the front door. She waved for Dorath to come inside.

The driver hopped from his seat, opened the carriage door, and helped the old woman down. Olive rushed to her.

“He’s back. He’s just fine. Just ran into a little trouble finding the road.”

“How like Giogi. That boy has no sense of direction. Is Cat with him now?”

“Yes.”

Dorath stared at the house as if she could see through stone, then she said, “Then I’ll just head back up to Redstone and tell everyone there the good news.”

“Don’t you want to come in and say hello?” Olive asked.

Dorath shook her head. “I think I’ll just leave them alone together for a while. You know, Mistress Ruskettle, I think Cat is just the girl Giogi needs to take his mind off this wyvern nonsense.”

Olive fought hard to control her expression. Wyvernspur men had to learn to say what they really thought to Dorath, but, fortunately, Olive didn’t. “You know, Mistress Dorath,” she said. “I think you’re right. She’s just the one.”