Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [57]
Eventually, Father allowed me my freedom again, and I rushed to the streets to find King. I wanted to hear all of his stories, everything about why the witch had changed him into a dog and about all his adventures since then.
King could have been anywhere, so that's where I looked. After searching the docks, the circus grounds, the markets, and even the Ministry of Art-where the guards told me Carrague was away to supper-I found myself on Wicker Street, not far from the Barley Bowl. I smelled barley soup and knew Carrague must be inside. Surely he could tell me what had become of King.
There was the ambassador, all right. He leaned back against the wall, snoring softly. A long pipe rested near an empty soup bowl. One hand dangled at his side, idly stroking the silver fur of an aging, mixed-breed terrier.
THE COMMON SPELL
Kate Novak-Grubb
"This is a waste of time. I don't need to learn this," insisted Marl, the cooper's son.
Kith Lias glared at the boy, but she kept her temper in check. Marl was hardly the first to denigrate the skills she was trying to teach. He wouldn't be the last, either. Marl was a big boy, the kind whose lead the other boys would follow. While none of the other students said a word, some of them eyed Marl with admiration that he'd had the courage to voice what many of them were thinking. The rest of the students watched Kith curiously, waiting to see how the teacher would handle this challenge to her authority.
"Even a cooper may need to read and write sometimes, Marl," Kith answered, pushing a strand of her long, dark hair back behind her ear. "You may need to write down the orders for your suppliers and customers so you can remember them better."
The other students nodded at Kith's example, but Marl snorted derisively. "I'm not going to be a cooper," the boy declared. "Soon as I get enough money to buy a sword, I'm joining a caravan as a guard. I'm going to be an adventurer."
"A swordling without the common spell," Kith muttered sadly.
"What's a swordling?" asked Lisaka, the tavernkeep's daughter.
"What's the common spell?" Marl demanded.
"A swordling is an adventurer's word," Kith explained, "for a novice sell-sword. A mageling is a young mage who hasn't proven herself. The common spell is… well, actually it's a story I heard from Alias the Sell-Sword."
The children in the classroom leaned forward as one. Like all students throughout the Realms, they knew that their teacher could be distracted from the lesson if they encouraged her to reminisce. They were also eager to hear a story about Alias the Sell-Sword. Alias was a famous adventurer-she rescued the halfling bard Olive Ruskettle from the dragon Mistinarperadnacles and slew the mad god Moander-twice. Only last year she drove the thieves guild from Westgate. A story about Alias would be wonderful.
"Tell us, please," Lisaka asked.
"Yeah, tell the story," Marl demanded.
Kith shrugged. "I heard Alias tell this story in the village of Serpentsford in Featherdale. The people there were suspicious of all female strangers who passed through the town, even a hero like Alias, for the village was plagued by a penanggalan."
"What's that?" asked Jewel Weaver, the youngest student in the class.
"It's a female vampire," Marl said with a superior air.
"Not exactly," Kith retorted. "A penanggalan is undead, and it does drink the blood of the living, but there the sim-ilarity ends. A penanggalan appears as an ordinary woman in the daylight, and the sun's rays do not destroy it. But at night its head twists away from its body, trailing a black 'tail', which is all that remains of its stomach and guts. The body lies motionless while the head flies off and hunts for its victims. It prefers the blood of women and girls."
Jewel squealed, and several other students shivered. Even Marl looked a little pale.
"The people