Back So Soon?

Soo-say stared at my forehead for a while before speaking. The Oracles did that. I had stopped wondering why.

“Soo-gan ask for help. We think they might have been attacked by puppy-men again. We sending you and Jaloot to help… follow west river up to Mistwhisper Refuge.” He held out a crystal, turning it once in his hand first. Jaloot’s favorite, he said, which struck me as a great deal to hand a stranger. “Do what Soo-gan says… hit the puppy-men on the nose if they being mean, they don’t like that.”

Sound tactical advice.

He went back to staring at my forehead as I left.

Sound tactical advice.

The river wound west through the middle of the basin, and Jaloot came along without much comment. He was nothing like the others. Lafoo talked without pausing to breathe and Zepik could not walk in a straight line, but Jaloot simply moved, and watched, and once or twice put a webbed hand on my arm and pointed at something I had walked past.

Then Mistwhisper Refuge came up out of the mist, and I knew the place.

I had stood at that weather shrine days earlier with a sack of stolen crystals and a wolvar bouncing at my elbow, and I had broken the crystals open and watched their lightning throw one of these people into the air with his scales smoking, and I had grinned about it. Now I was walking in the front way to help them.

Mistcaller Soo-gan came down to meet us.

“We think we seen you before. You visit Mistwhisper village sometime already?”

There was no accusation in it. He was asking.

“Soo-say said you good. Soo-say smart, so we trust you too.” He offered an awkwardly large smile.

The Frenzyheart would never have trusted a man who had fought them the week before. They would have counted it settled with a spear. These people had watched me wreck their shrine, and their answer was that Soo-say vouched for me, so that was the end of the matter.

Soo-gan took Soo-say’s word for it and put Vikstone straight to work, because the Spearborn had taken something from the Mistwhisper that the tribe wanted back, and recovering it meant going after The Lost Mistwhisper Treasure.