Ch. 467 - Needle in a Haystack

It was easy enough to find out where the thing that Simon sought was, but that didn’t make it a compass he could check as needed. Well, not without cost, anyway. Using the wand without the greater word for a few seconds probably only cost him part of a day, but days added up, and right now, all of his were precious.

So he moved deliberately, fixing each measurement to a distant point on the horizon and walking toward it. That strategy meant that each day he risked overshooting his goal, but with some basic triangulation, it also meant that he had a good idea how close he was getting by how much the bearing changed from day to day, and after four days in the mountains, he finally started getting close.

The patchy trees and the rocky terrain prevented him from seeing how close exactly, but eventually, when he stumbled across fresh hoofprints on a lonely mountain trail, he was sure he’d found it. Simon slowed then, studying the aura of the plants, and letting the colors intensify as he tried to connect the thread of those prints to the animal that had made them.

He failed, but a few hours later, when he tried again, he succeeded, and for an instant, the image of an overloaded mule filled his mind. The animal didn’t look like the horse he’d misplaced, though Simon had known that from the tracks. The fact that it didn’t seem like a military outfit, though, was important too. If anything, he would have guessed that it was a woodsman or a prospector.

“I wonder if it’s named Daisy,” Simon asked himself with a smirk before continuing on.

As he got closer, he whistled an old marching song he’d picked up during one of his lives in Crowvar, so that he wouldn’t accidentally surprise whoever he was getting closer to. That came with the very minor risk that they might ambush him, of course, but unless they were wielding magic on a hair trigger, he wasn’t too concerned. With his second sight, he could see other people a lot sooner than they could see him.

That was true this time, too. As Simon closed in toward sunset, he actually saw the mule first, tethered to a tree right beside the road. It took him a few seconds more to notice the man hiding just off to one side behind a boulder. He had a dark aura that was rippled through with fear and suspicion, so he was hard to see.

Still, even after Simon saw him, he pretended not to. Instead, he paused near the donkey and asked aloud. “Strange, where’s your owner gone?”

That brought the man out of hiding in a hurry, forcing Simon to act surprised. He wasn’t surprised, though, not by the man’s grubby appearance or the knife he held in his hand. He looked every inch the prospector that Simon had guessed earlier.

“I’ll be thanken ya to be steppin’ away from my animal,” the man said in thickly accented Charian as he put away his knife. “She’s liable to kick a stranger, and I won’t be held responsible for such a blunder.”

Simon did as bidden, and after a quick introduction, the man introduced himself as Garekson. He seemed eager to be rid of Simon as quickly as possible. Still, Simon refused to take the hint and made pleasant conversation. Today, he took on the role of a merchant who’d lost his way, but only because he thought that greed was the best way to get to know Garekson better.

That worked, and after a short conversation, when the man was no longer convinced Simon was going to steal from him, he invited Simon to share his fire that night. “I don’t have much to do with outlanders, but sleeping is always safer with two than with one,” he explained.

Simon couldn’t help but feel that it had more to do with the way he’d let his coin pouch jingle than any nighttime risks, but he said nothing and let the other man steer the conversation while they walked to a good spot to make camp.

It was only when they were settled for the night, and sharing a skin of beer that Simon had next to the fire, that Simon started to get more aggressive. This man had something that he needed, but he had very little idea of what it was, and while he was slimy, he was hardly evil enough to kill.

Using his wand would have been suspicious. So, instead, he tried to use his sight to find the thing that had brought him here, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. Finally, instead of using magic, he used his brain and started telling stories.

Campfires were the perfect place for ghost stories, so he told Garekson about the Blackheart and about the Tithe Pool Jinn. He seemed to enjoy both stories and shared one about the mountain witches, which sounded more like history than fiction, while he fidgeted with some dice. After that, though, he finally hit paydirt.

“You think that’s strange, I.. Well, let me find it,” the prospector said, before getting up and rifling through his a bag on his pack mule. “Mostly I come back with nuggets, or occasionally gems, but this one time, well…” He grunted, then he returned and showed off a book.

“I found this the spring before last, on the remains of a horse's skeleton by the banks of the Deljekin after the spring flood,” he said, passing Simon the book. “I think it's a witch’s spell book, but I still ain’t never met a man that can read what it says, but if you’re so well traveled, why don’t you go ahead and give it a shot.”

Simon ignored the way the man talked to him. That was second nature for Charian’s when they spoke to outsiders. Instead, he was too busy trying not to have a heart attack. This book, whatever it was, had been floating around for over a year. It might have been sold or found its way back to the libraries of Zurari.

The chapter on is the author's publication; this copy was taken without permission, while reading there supports their work.

I came that close to losing them forever when I died, Simon thought as he studied the thin leather book.

He was angry at himself more than anything for being less than thorough, but what was done was done. He could just toss this into the fire now and be done with it. Still, he didn’t. Instead, he opened it as its current owner bid, and flipped through the pages.

What Simon found wasn’t particularly impressive. The thing was water-damaged but legible, and mostly contained notes and sketched maps that seemed similar to the scout’s book that he’d burned.

Still, there has to be something here, he told himself.

“Well?” Garekson asked.

“Well, if it's a spellbook, why would it have these maps in it?” Simon asked, playing dumb.

“Give me that!” the prospector growled, yanking the thing back. “I ask myself that all the time. Why do you think I ain’t sold the damn thing already? Who knows what treasure it might lead to?”

Simon nodded, pretending that it made some kind of sense. Then he asked, “Well, if you can’t read it, then why don’t I buy it from you? I know some collectors back in Brin would could—”

“Not for sale,” Garekson barked.

In that moment, Simon could have killed him. He could have thrown away his sight and whispered the word of fire and set the book and the man alight both. For a moment, he visualized it. Then, he took a deep breath and said, “Well, if you won’t sell it, then how about a wager? My coins against your books.”

“My book is worth more than however many coins are in that purse.” The man sounded sure, but Simon could see a gleam in Garekson’s eye.

“I suppose that depends on whether the coins are copper, silver, or gold, now doesn’t it?” Simon said with a smile. He was tempted to go on, but decided to let his cash do the talking for him and poured the sack into his hand, letting the coins glitter in the campfire. More than half of them were gold. He hadn’t really planned it that way, but he was glad he had such wealth to flaunt now, because he could see he’d hooked the other man.

“Well, that is a fair sum, I suppose,” Garekson answered grudgingly. “But I only play straight. One game of your choosing only. No redos or crying when I’ve cleaned you out. You got it?”

Simon nodded at the terms and set his coin purse down between them. He’d have been happy to simply pay the man, but if he wanted to be greedy and get double or nothing, Simon would oblige. They discussed the various games that they could play with the man’s five dice. That was his only real chance to understand how they were weighted or gimmicked.

He suggested several different games like Revels or Long Haul, where the sequence of the numbers mattered more than the score, and the other man turned them down, claiming not to know them. Instead, he insisted on games like Triumph and Motherlode, where it was the high score that mattered.

Eventually, Simon relented and agreed. “Motherlode it is, then,” he said before drinking a bit from his own flask. He even offered the gray-auraed man a taste, but he rejected it. Simon wasn’t surprised by that; the man had suspicious eyes.

However suspicious he might be, though, he had a poor poker face and looked practically gleeful at Simon’s choice. He explained the rules to Simon, as if Simon didn’t already know them. Then he made a big show of offering Simon two sets of dice to choose from before handing him one.

The man wasn’t much to look at, but he was good with his hands, because Simon really wasn’t sure if he’d been given the handful he chose, or the other set.

He plays this little game a lot, I expect, Simon reflected as they sat there in the firelight.

“Normally, I have a rule against taking a man’s money in the middle of nowhere,” Garekson confided in him, as he shook his handful and looked off into the night, pretending not to care. “But you were the one who wanted to play. Don’t you forget that.”

Simon would have preferred to beat Garekson with math, using a more elegant game, but that was not to be. Still, he felt too bad about blessing his own dice, so instead he made the gesture of Farzehl when Garekson looked the other way while boasting about his skill with the dice, cursing him for a few hours. It was a simple flourish that made a symbol which glowed darkly in a way that only his second sight could see before vanishing.

After that, they took turns making bets, throwing dice, and adding up scores. In Charia, the traditional score was apparently 80, which was slightly different than the version in Brin, where they rolled to 75, but Simon didn’t much care about that minor deviation and made no quibble. He was much too interested in watching his opponent's increasing frustration as he lost badly.

Simon didn’t play well. He was fairly sure the dice he’d been given were weighted to roll low. Still, even low numbers were better than bad bets, and for round after round, Garekson couldn’t make them connect. If he called for fours, he’d roll twos, and if he declared he’d roll better than half, he’d get an abysmally low score.

With every roll, he got a little angrier. The only time that night that he rolled high was the time he bet as low as he could go. Then the dice blessed him with a decent roll. It was an interesting loophole, and for a moment, Simon wondered if the miner would try it, but by then, he was much too angry and cursing after each roll.

Simon lost every roll, but won every bet, by counting on his rigged dice to keep things low. Toward the end of the game, Garekson demanded that he and Simon switch dice, insisting, “It’s only fair, you’re about to win anyway.”

Simon obliged with a shrug, and from that moment dominated. The dice were indeed weighted, and two rounds of high rolls later, it was done, and Simon was the winner. He thanked the man for the game as he took back his coin purse and the thin leather journal, and then declared it was time for him to be on his way.

“How about a rematch?” Garekson offered. “I’ll spot you ten points and bet you my mule against—”

His curse was still active, and Simon knew for a fact that he could have taken the man's mule, but chose to interrupt him instead. “You need that mule and your tools for your livelihood. This is just a triviality. Accept it and move on.”

The miner’s aura flashed murderously as Simon stood. He didn’t dare turn his back on a man with such killing intent, so he endured a moment of verbal abuse as the man accused Simon of giving him “a witch’s hex,” and waited for it to calm. Then he walked off into the night.