Sample Chapter

Merl shifted from foot to foot. He didn’t like the wizard, nor did he like the wizard’s run-down mud hut. It stank of fatty smoke and wasn’t what he’d expected. Merl had always imagined wizards living in mighty towers, twenty or thirty feet in diameter and hundreds tall. A great big orb would revolve at its summit and scour the land for any sign of evil. He could even accept a slightly smaller version with, perhaps, a burning pyre at the top. But not this shabby little hut with sunrays leaking through the roof and a big, scorched hole in the wall behind the wizard.

“There are no words above my hut,” the wizard insisted. He spoke through gritted teeth, and his naturally pale face was rather flushed. “Anyway, how does he know what words are?”

“He’s ‘telligent, tha’s how he knows. Very ‘telligent.” Merl’s dad was an oddly shaped man. He wasn’t fat, per say, he was a normal shape apart from his stomach, which looked exactly the same as Walinda Alepuller’s belly, and she was with child. Merl wasn’t daft, in fact, as his dad had just told the wizard, he was highly ‘telligent. Not only did he know words, although that was an exaggeration—he knew a few letters—he could also count to twentyteen. Which meant he could put two and two together. His dad was pregnant, and he was going to have a brother or a sister.

“I highly doubt he’s intelligent,” the wizard said, piously. “Look at him. He looks as dumb as a dune dog.”

Dune dogs were renown for being dumb. They lived on the edge of The Kingdom. Everybody called the land Merl lived in The Kingdom because it was right in the middle of Thrashdown, Pulverdon and Morlock. All three were warlike marauders who invaded constantly. As a result, The Kingdom was either reigned by one, two, or sometimes all three of those countries and hadn’t bothered getting a name, and certainly never had a King. Merl’s town, Morgan Mount, was currently half in Thrashdown and half in Morlock. The border was between Sedge Lumphammer’s blacksmith and Wendy Doughmaker’s bakery. It was a tense and inconvenient standoff, especially if you needed stuff.

Dune Dogs were incredibly dumb. The reason will have to wait.

“Why haven’t you got a tower?” Merl blurted. The wizard didn’t look like a wizard either. He didn’t have a long white beard, or a rune encrusted cloak, or a staff, or anything wizardy. “Where’s your staff?” His name was wrong too, for a wizard anyhow. Wizards were called long names that sent you to sleep halfway through their saying. This wizard was called Frank. You couldn’t even nod off before it was over. “You haven’t got a wizard’s name either, have you?”

Frank was staring intently at Merl’s dad but switched his attention to Merl once the lad’s barrage of questions finished punching him on his clean-shaven chin. He ran his hands through his copper colored hair, letting it flick back over his intense hazel eyes. “What words do you know?”

That stumped Merl because he knew loads of words, just couldn’t read any of them. “All sorts.” It was the best answer he could come up with, but as he said it, he understood what the wizard meant. “Do you mean how many words can I read? Only, if that’s what you mean, that’s what you should say.”

There was one thing you could say about the wizard’s mud hut; it was warm, provided warm meant sweltering. Merl’s dad had bright red cheeks, and his gray hair was stuck to his face making it look like he had a weird cap on. Of course, his great big cloak didn’t help matters, that was more suited to the exposed slopes surrounding their croft. The wizard threw another log on the central fire. Merl’s dad moved one step back toward the hut’s sole entrance.

The wizard’s stare doubled in intensity. “You know full well that’s what I mean. How many words can you read?”

That was an easy question for Merl to answer. “None, but I know a few letters. I can read three above your hut. They’re hovering a little over your twig roof.”

“There are no words hovering above my hut,” Frank snapped.

“There is. It’s got two luhs and a vuh. I can’t read the two letters either side of the vuh, and I think there’s a number after the last luh, and I think it’s one.”

The wizard frowned. “There’s no—”

“Don’t tell me there’s no words. I can see them. They’re bright green.”

Merl’s father looked like he was about to burst. “So, will you teach him? He’s too ‘telligent to be a shepherd and, by the Goddess Andula, he feels the chills too much to be on them slopes much past the leaf-droppin’. Look at him, there ain’t an ounce of fat on him.”

“This isn’t my home,” Frank said, rounding on Merl. “That’s why it’s level one. There’s no point in raising a tower to level one hundred if you’re not going to be inhabiting it for long.”

“Well I’ll be skewered sideways,” Merl’s dad exclaimed. “When he said he’d seen floatin’ words, I thought he was making stuff up again. I told him to stop I did, Mr. Frank, err, Your High Wizardness.”

An ounce of confidence suddenly flowed through Merl’s veins. He chose to use it and question the wizard. “Is Frank your name then? Only, if you’re lying about your hut, how do I know that’s your name?”

Merl’s dad might have had a big gut, but he wasn’t slow. “Don’t be rude. He’s shared his name with you, an’ wizards don’ often do that.” He cuffed Merl around the back of the head before the boy had a chance to flinch.

Merl stumbled toward the flames. Frank tried to scramble back as Merl stamped on the fire sending a plume of ash and embers exploding up. A single, flaming, branch catapulted upward and wedged into the hut’s twig roof, setting the dry wood ablaze. As it caught, Merl’s dad staggered backward and tripped on the draping cloth covering the doorway, tearing it from its rail and taking a big chunk out of the wall. Frank jumped up, bolting through the door in a frantic effort to escape the burning roof before it collapsed in on them and promptly crashed into Merl’s dad who was staring in horror at the blazing hut.

Merl walked out of the smoky conflagration and pointed at the green words. “You’ve lost your one,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Frank glared at him. “Why? Why did you come?” he snarled.

Merl’s dad scrambled away, as the flames reached up into the forest’s canopy. “That doesn’t look too good. Come on, Merl, let’s get out of here.”

“Can’t you do anything?” Merl asked Frank, as the trees were consumed by the raging inferno. “Like put it out?”

The wizard had scrunched his eyes up and was all flushed with anger. He didn’t appear too willing to help, more looked like he wanted to turn Merl into a dune cat. Dune cats lived in the sand dunes edging the Sea of the Stranded Fool. Dune dogs hated dune cats.

“What did you want, anyway?” Frank snapped.

Merl glanced around at his father, who was busy reversing as quietly as possible, but fell backward into a stream and sat in its water with a resigned look on his face. “How did things go tits up so quickly?”

Merl tried to find some more of his earlier confidence, but hot, glowing embers swirled around him, fanned by a light breeze that fell from Three Face Mountain. Smoke choked them, and the wizard had steam coming out of his ears. Pretty sure all his confidence had vanished never to return again, Merl hunted out some courage and found the tiniest of morsels. “I was wondering if you would teach me words, only I see them everywhere.”

Frank closed his eyes and shook his head as if he was trying to rinse away the memories of his last few minutes. Then he froze, and just stared at Merl. “What do you mean, everywhere?”

“Does it mean something different in wizard-speak?” Merl scratched his head.

“What?”

“Everywhere. Only, when I say it, I mean all over the place. There’s three letters above my dad’s head. One’s a nuh, but I don’t know what the rest are. The same three are above Billy Muckspreader’s bonce and most of the village’s, if I’m honest. If I stare at something for too long, some gold scrawl pop’s up, like a signpost, and if I close my eyes, a great big block of words appears, but I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

“A great, big, block of text?”

“Yes.”

“What color?”

“Same as the sky.”

Frank looked. “Smoky black? Fiery red?”

Merl inclined his head and slapped his hands on his hips. “Are you messin’ with me, because you’re not the only wizard about. Thar’s one in the middle of Crowdog Woods, in the big, black ruins.”

Frank jumped up and spun around, vanishing into the flames that were once his level one mud hut. He soon reappeared with a staff in his hand, seemingly immune to the fire. “Where do you live?”

***

Merl’s dad’s farm sat in a vale on the lower slopes of Three Face Mountain. It wasn’t quite so hot there. Much of the mountain’s peak still had snow on it, and the forest below that was peppered with it. Merl’s vale had completely thawed and had the feel of spring. By the time Merl and Frank arrived there, the afternoon had started waning to evening.

“Do you think it’ll ever go out?” Merl stared at the blazing slopes of No Face Mountain. The fire had turned a fair bit of it to cinder.

“Reckon it’ll blow itself out,” Frank said, with uncharacteristic optimism.

Everything Frank had said during their trip home had led Merl to the conclusion that Frank was a mug-half-empty type of person. Admittedly, he had just had his hut incinerated, but it wasn’t a very nice hut, and there was no way its roof wouldn’t leak in the rain. Merl hoped it would rain soon and put the forest fire out. His dad was bound to tell the village he’d started it. He always gave away secrets when he got drunk, and he never managed to get out of Morgan’s Mount sober.

“I doubt Dad will remember to get the food,” Merl told Frank as the farm came into view. “I’ll be able to rustle up some lamb stew though. To be honest, I don’t think he needed to go into town at all.”

Frank stopped and scratched his head. “Why’d he go, then?”

“He likes Walinda Alepuller. Their bellies match. I reckon they’re going to have their babies at the same time. He’ll probably get drunk and forget why he went there. It’s okay, I can look after you.”

Frank lent him a skeptical look. “Bit clumsy to look after anyone, aren’t you?”

“Bit stupid to put a fire pit in the middle of a hut,” Merl countered.

“Lamb stew, you say?”

“Got carrots and sprouts too.”

“Then we’ll be fine,” Frank said.

Merl’s dad’s croft had green letters sitting over its black slate roof. It didn’t have a one at the end, but some other number was there. The croft was a grand affair in Merl’s eyes. It had three rooms: two bedrooms and a main room that had a fireplace and a stove. In the middle of winter, Merl’s dad used both to keep the place warm. They ambled up the path in silence until Merl became too uncomfortable with it.

“You haven’t got much stuff, have you?”

“You burnt everything. I only salvaged my staff by the skin of my teeth.”

Merl grabbed some firewood, and before long they were settled in front of the fire while the stew simmered on the stove.

“Why do you want to read?” Frank asked.

“Why do you scratch an itch?”

Frank wasn’t a whole lot older than him, Merl decided, and just because he was a wizard didn’t mean Frank was better than him. Whenever Frank said something, it was like he was talking down to Merl, and Merl didn’t like that.

“Do you always answer a question with another?” Frank asked.

Merl had let Frank have his dad’s chair, so he was looking up at the wizard. He didn’t mind sitting on the floor, but it did mean Frank towered over him. It was no wonder Merl felt small. “I want to read so I can understand the words in my head. There’s loads of them, and they flash red every now and then. It’s really hard to fall asleep when your eyes look like red-and-blue lightning.”

Frank curled an eyebrow up.

“Flash red?”

“Every so often. It’s like it’s saying, ‘Don’t ignore me!’ but I might just as well because it’s all gobbledygook.”

“I wonder what it says. Could you write it down?”

“Doubtful,” Merl told him emphatically.

“Why not?”

“I haven’t got any paper, and there’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“I can’t write. If you teach me to read, that’ll be a start. I can read it out, and you can write it down. Really, how long does it take, a morning? We could do it now.”

“It takes much longer than a morning.” Frank scratched his narrow face. Merl decided it looked like an axehead. He wondered if Frank could split logs with his nose. Frank jumped up and then knelt by the fire. He teased a thick, partly burnt, twig out. “Let’s try this.”

He chose a plank and started to draw letters on it. Every now and then, he stopped and relit the branch, blew it out, and carried on.

“There,” he said. “Now, look at the words in your head, and point out the first letter to me.”

Merl didn’t have to go far along the row before he stopped. “That one.”

“D,” Frank announced. “Next one.”

“There!” Merl said, excited that the next letter was right at the front.

“D. A,” Frank mumbled.

Merl then pointed out the third, fourth, and fifth letter, before stirring the broth and selecting the last letter. “Then there’s a space,” he told Frank, proud of his efforts. “What does it say?”

“Danger,” Frank replied. “It says danger.”

“I wonder what’s dangerous.” Merl served up two bowls of steaming stew. “I have half a jug of wine. Do you want it?”

“I don’t drink much. It gives me a headache.”

Merl blew on his stew. “You’re really not much of a wizard, are you?”

His dad had told him wizards spent over half their lives in the tavern. Merl was surprised he didn’t know of any. They’d only found out about Frank when Iron Jaw Jack had asked them if they’d seen a wizard in No Face Woods. Using the no smoke without fire rule, they’d immediately set off to find the wizard—if immediately meant the next day after a few ales with Jack.

“What makes you… Oh, the drinking… The older wizards tend to be the drunks. They say it’s to scrub their minds clean of the terrible things they’ve seen, but from what I’ve experienced, being a wizard is mostly waiting about for something to happen.”

“Like what?”

Merl jumped and his heart skipped a beat when someone—or something—banged on his front door.

“That,” Frank said. “Something like that.”