Much misery was quelled in the hours before dawn, and Wagner drifted in and out of slumber with frequency enough to note the ongoing fastidiousness of the medical team. Balgor slept even less, for—as revealed in the tale of his origin—he wasn’t one to be bedridden for long, no matter the severity of his injuries. He’d ultimately risen during the night in order to calm the fevered ravings of a woman on a neighbouring cot, and after steering her back to rest he’d remained up and about, wandering the floor, assisting when he could, but more often just standing before the entry in wait of whatever breeze veered errant through the structure. Wagner, feeling increasingly selfish in his own idle of choppy sleep and loll, eventually stepped out of bed in kind, and carefully negotiated the disarrange to join his friend in his pre-dawn pensiveness.

“We nearly made it away, Voknor,” Balgor said softly after noticing his friend beside him. “Behold the east, how its warming hues come to brush away the night. Had we succeeded, we might at this very moment be watching sweet Cinjal lifting her first veil over a horizon of sylvan wood, or shimmering in ripple upon the icy mountain brooklet whence would come our first quaff of the day. Instead, we are blind to the best of her dawning. We bide in her half-light. We wait until she ascends high enough to clear the parapets that keep us in cold captivity. So divorced are we from the light of the world.”

“Wow. You’re quite the poet. That’s something I’d have never figured when we first met.”

“I have been here too long,” sighed the Ergosian. “We all have. I do not know how I could so easily have forsaken my life on the outside, resigning my livelihood to the travesty that these fiends would have us call ‘existence.’ Truly, Voknor, we must do something to turn this around.”

“You know me,” said Wagner, “I’m always up for a good caper.”

As casual as his response was, in his heart Wagner sensed that Balgor’s words were more than empty rhetoric. Somewhere along the way a seed had sprouted, and hope was growing within this Ergosian at beanstalk speed.

“Have you got any ideas on just how to do it?” he added.

Balgor cleared his throat. “Nothing as yet. But are we not clever men?”

“Sez you. Right now I’m just one big pile of hurt and dashed hopes.”

Suddenly a voice came low from behind.

“If the guards see you on your feet they will not hesitate to put you back into the healthy population.”

Neither man needed to turn to know that Papa Olask had joined them.

“All the less trouble for you then,” said Balgor. He smiled and reverently patted Olask on the arm. “By my word, Papa, I am fine. You know well that I have launched into the fray with more extensive injury than this.”

“Yes, son, but I am not speaking of your young, caddish days of juggling one too many maiden’s hearts and incurring the wrath of all. These were croviks who gashed and tore at you.”

Balgor chuckled. “Aye, Papa. And believe me, the croviks were far easier with me than any jilted hopeful ever was.”

Olask blotted his eyes and forehead with a damp rag, probably in substitute for the morning’s bath that he knew he wouldn’t find time to have. “And what of you,” he said, “um…Voknor was it? You were impaled! I inspected the wound myself. It surely cannot be agreeable to be on your feet so soon.”

“I’m dealing with it,” said Wagner. “Don’t get me wrong—it smarts pretty good. But I’m not going to be outdone by this guy. If he can suck up the pain, so can I.”

Olask broke into an old man’s grin. “What delightful vernacular you have! Your dialect is most uncommon. You are an out-realmer, no? Although we did not find opportunity to better acquaint ourselves on your initial visit, I have since heard that you hail from the south.”

Wagner nodded awkwardly.

“Very much to the south,” added Balgor.

“Do you know, Voknor—I still have not been able to solve the riddle of that day’s occurrence. Do you remember? The phenomenon with the seized patient and that strange refulgence? And your sudden salubrity as well! Long did I dwell upon it, and ever so often thereafter. Even now I cannot proffer any plausible explanation.”

“You sound just like another doctor I know,” said Wagner.

“Oh? Am I given to understand, then, that you have witnessed some similar causal sequence on a prior occasion? The same such phenomenon? And in a medical facility?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. You could say that I’ve seen a number of evolving peculiarities in my time. And for some odd reason I’m pretty much habitually and inextricably in the cross hairs of each one. I’m not sure I could tell you why.”

“Indeed?” Olask was well beyond enthrallment, so much that he failed to hear one of his orderlies summoning him for advice with a patient. Balgor nudged his attention and he turned to go his way, but not before latching onto Wagner’s arm.

“Delay your next escape,” he said, tongue in cheek, “until after we have had opportunity to discuss these ‘evolving peculiarities’ that you have mentioned. Will you vow to this?”

“Word of honour, Papa. No escapes for at least another few days.”

In Olask’s off-scurry, Balgor stood a half-pace behind his friend, eyeing him on the sly. So many new things about Wagner had come to light of late, so many layers peeled away to expose even more strata within, that even Wagner’s taradiddle about having ridden upon the firmament and entered the realm on a contraption of waxen feathers suddenly seemed less an absurd fabrication than it did a feat that Wagner could actually pull off.

“So,” he spoke, “what you told me before was not exaggeration. The convulsing man, your bruises, the flaring of light, the revivescence—all witnessed and accepted as fact by the most sensible and rational man I have ever known.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” said Wagner.

$18.95
Paperback, 6x9
ISBN: 978-159858-292-5
496 pages

An Uncommon Fantasy Adventure with a Literary Flair!