The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

Probably out of frustration, Mag’s course became increasingly erratic, crossing back and forth through the town on a dizzying path with no pattern that I could discern. At last, just past midday, she stopped in the middle of the street and balled her hands into fists.

“Let us get ourselves a meal and something to drink.”

“That would be a welcome relief,” I said. By now my shirt was clinging to me with sweat.

“Mm-hm,” said Mag with a nod.

Something in her manner was strange, and I grew alert at once. She seemed distracted.

“Mag?” I said in a low voice. “What is it?”

“Mayhap nothing,” she said. “I might say more when we find a place out of the sun.”

Though I was intensely curious, I followed her without further questions. She stepped into the first tavern she found and paid for a light meal of bread and cheese and ale. Leading me to a corner table, she sat facing the door with her back against the wall. I sat beside her, facing out into the rest of the room.

“Well?” I said.

“I thought I saw someone following us,” she told me. “They were being careful not to be seen, but stealth did not seem to be their strong suit. There! Look at me and pretend we are talking.”

We turned our heads towards each other. “We are talking,” I pointed out.

“Yes, good,” said Mag. “Just like that, as though we are really having a conversation.”

I laughed at the joke, but also to help the ruse. The laugh gave me an excuse to turn my head back towards the rest of the room, and I saw the person Mag must have been talking about. He was a young man with bulging eyes and short black hair, his light brown cloak thrown back over his shoulders in the heat. As soon as he had entered the room, he had gone straight to the proprietor, and was speaking with him now. Their words were inaudible from where we sat.

“The boy?” I said, turning back to Mag.

“Yes,” she said. “I kept seeing him on whichever street we were on, no matter how wildly I turned our path.”

“So that is why you took such a strange route through the streets,” I said. “I was wondering about that.”

“He is leaving,” said Mag, glancing out of the corner of her eye.

“We should go after him.”

“Do you think so?” said Mag with a smirk. “Be careful, though. Capturing him will be useless, and of course we cannot kill him. He looks young. I think he will be easily frightened. Let us spring an attack that fails. He might lead us straight back to his masters.”

“Unless he is the weremage in disguise,” I said.

Mag sighed and shook her head. “Albern, you know I love you, like one loves a helpless pet, but you can be intolerably foolish. We know the weremage can take a bird’s form. If she knew we were here, and if she were following us, she would watch us from the sky.”

She stood and made for the tavern’s front door without waiting for my answer. I lifted one finger and opened my mouth to call out a retort, but could think of nothing. Lowering my hand, I stood to follow her, grumbling many ominous things about pets and helpless and what I would show her about intolerable foolishness. I was careful Mag heard none of my words, of course.

We left the tavern and headed down the street, back the way we had come. As we did, a figure detached itself from a nearby wall and followed us, trying to stick to the sparse shadows cast by buildings. Mag had been right about one thing: the boy was about as stealthy as a troll with an arrow in each eye and a spear in its backside.

“Now,” whispered Mag, and ducked suddenly down an alley.

I dashed after her. We ran to the end of the alley and split up on the other side, each of us hiding behind a corner and waiting for the boy to follow. We heard his hurried footsteps drawing nearer. Mag gripped her spear and nodded to me from across the alley mouth.

The boy cried out in terror as we leaped upon him. Mag brought the butt of her spear around and struck him in the ribs with it. It was a light tap, but he squealed like a shot squirrel. I had already drawn back my fist to swing at him, but when he doubled over, my fist sailed over his head and into Mag’s jaw. She stumbled back, apparently stunned for a moment, and then attacked again. But she seemed to overestimate the swing of her spear this time, and the butt crashed into my shoulder instead of the boy’s face. I fell against the building beside me, grunting in pain.

The boy, who had all the wit of a bit of over-cured leather, stared at us in confusion. I growled at Mag through gritted teeth.

“Stop just standing there, or he will get away.”

As though the idea had never occurred to him before, the boy screamed and ran back through the alley the way he had come. Mag seized my shoulder and pulled me after her.

“You swung a bit harder than you needed to,” Mag remarked.

“My deepest apologies. I am only a helpless pet, and cannot always control my own strength.”

Mag snorted and redoubled her pace, for the boy had vanished around the side of the buildings up ahead. Mag and I followed him just as he had been following us, but with one important difference: we knew what we were doing. We hung back at each corner, only peeking around to make sure we saw which way the boy had gone.

It seemed to me, however, that we hardly needed to take such precautions. The boy did not glance back even once, and he did not seem to complicate his route at all,