The Accidental Archmage - Book Five Edmund Batara (classic children's novels .TXT) 📖

of this humble village. We are on our way there now. Please accept what hospitality we can offer and our gratitude for the assistance you have rendered. Keshini mentioned you are mighty warriors and mages, destroying several packs of the lizards all by yourself! Even earning the enmity of the Great Lizard himself.”

Kobu laughed. “We seem to be prone into such stumbles, Agastya, earning the ire of deity, man, or creature alike.”

“Ah, that is a path I would not wish to travel. The attention of deities and powerful beings is never a good thing. It leads to… complications.”

“That’s what we are in now,” said Kobu. “A tawagoto no arashi, in my language. A shitstorm.”

“You do look like somebody not of the northern kingdoms. May I ask where you come from?”

“The lands of Wa, far to the south. An exile, forced to find my fate elsewhere.”

“Ah, Fate. Likewise, a fickle entity. Generous now, and then stingy as a miser the next,” answered Agastya softly.

“But I am not familiar with your people,” remarked Kobu, with Tyler listening closely, “and that from a mercenary who has been in many lands.”

Agastya stopped and looked at Kobu. Then he grinned.

“A mercenary you may appear to be, but I sense something of greatness in your past. Or maybe your future. These old eyes don’t see as well as they did. Now to your question. We are not Greek nor of Skaney, as you have noticed. It’s a long tale, full of war and misery. The short version of it was our ancestors were pushed back to the edges of the Barrens, where the new arrivals didn’t want to follow. But that was in the past. We now trade with their descendants and even enjoy some form of accommodation with their rulers. We are, after all, a small tribe, living in a land nobody wanted,” explained the old man patiently.

“Trade with the Greeks? Or the Pelasgians?” asked Kobu.

“Both, I believe. But only directly with the Pelasgians. Hellas is too far away. There’s a border fortress-town which both peoples have designated as our common trade center. So far, it has benefited both greatly,” replied Agastya.

Tyler had to admire the way the exile guided the discussion, picking up threads from a previous discussion as the basis for a new topic. He sensed Kobu wanted to ask more questions about the strange people, but they had already reached the first gate. Warriors were already moving aside the large spiked wooden barricades.

“A necessary precaution,” apologized the old man. “We have more to fear from the beasts of the Barrens than from marauders.”

“Raiders come here? asked the surprised Kobu.

“Only once in the past 300 years. All our warriors needed to do was wait behind the walls until the beasts of the Barrens noticed the disturbance,” laughed Agastya.

“And the beasts? Do they attack you?”

“Not in recent memory. They stay about 100 paces from the first gate. It’s a strange thing, but is what it is,” replied the village elder.

At the words, the three companions at the rear looked at each other.

***

Tyler was concerned. What he saw and experienced upon entering the settlement was out of place. There were too many mysteries surrounding the village for him not to be uneasy. His sense told him something was definitely off, and it didn’t have anything to do with the party’s conclusion that the settlement was not what it appeared to be. Fortunately, his disquiet didn’t give rise to goosebumps or raising the hair on the back of his neck.

The party was housed in a dwelling near the center of the community and the mage saw a lot along the way. Unlike the ones they saw near the palisade, the houses in the village itself were larger and better built. Some even had two levels. The houses of Maljen couldn’t compare in terms of sturdiness. Stone usually made up the first floor of every building, except for a few entirely made of wood, but the mage believed they’d been constructed for a purpose other than habitation. Almost all of the structures were constructed on the basis of a square. Two squares could be connected to form a larger building resulting in a rectangular foundation, but the mage could still see the basis for the larger structure. Roofs were flat and Tyler assumed they were of wood. He doubted if stone could be supported by the framing he had observed in their quarters.

The streets were clean and paved with stone. The pavement even had drainage ditches running alongside the road. Ornamental gardens and vegetable patches abounded. In orderly enclosures at the back of houses away from the village center, Tyler observed herds of goats and sheep. Cows seemed to be scarce as he only saw two on the way to their housing quarters. All in all, it looked like a prosperous, clean, and well-fed village. There were trees all around the settlement, and the mage admired how the layout of the village fit the forest. He could see a few tree stumps, but the end result gave the impression of a settlement around which the forest grew, not the other way around. To Tyler, the technological level displayed by the village was way beyond what he had seen in the large kingdoms. But the advanced knowledge was evidently harnessed in a different direction. Otherwise, he surmised, he would have seen warriors in more advanced armor and weapons.

Food arrived shortly after they were shown the roomy house. The private privy and bath area shocked Habrok and Tyndur. Apparently, such house additions were only enjoyed by royalty and the very wealthy in Skaney and Hellas. Kobu mentioned that such a privilege was also limited in Kemet, though he volunteered that in his homeland, such conveniences were quite common.

The meal was delicious—goat stew, mutton, and fresh bread. The mage did ask X to verify the provenance of the meat, check for poison, and test for dark energies. All came back negative. He could be turning paranoid, but he was greatly concerned that even