Death's Collector: A Sword and Sorcery Novel (The Death-Cursed Wizard Book 1) by Bill McCurry

Author:Bill McCurry [McCurry, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Infinite Monkeys Publishing
Published: 2019-02-16T22:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Living trees don’t like getting burned up. They prefer to grow. However, dead wood wants to rot. Sorcerers find it difficult to make dead wood grow because the wood is done with all that. Your body wants to be healthy instead of sick, so healing is straightforward. Bugs want to nest and find food, not fly off to sting somebody, so it can be a lot of work to make them sting.

If I’m going to use magic, I try to make things do what they already want to do. It’s a lot less work.

Trees aren’t the only things that don’t like getting burned up. In fact, hardly anything likes getting burned up, so a sorcerer who can only burn things has a lot of work ahead of him. In just the same way, nothing wants to be suddenly made not to exist. I can’t think of a single thing that wants that. Since Vintan was a Breaker and all he could do was make things not exist, he would probably be using up a lot more energy than me to get things done. So, that was in our favor.

The general idea works with people too. People will tell you they want to change, but they’re lying. If they wanted to change, they would already have started changing, and they wouldn’t be talking about all this changing bullshit. The world can make them change when it takes someone away from them or smashes their illusions into bits smaller than a gnat’s dick. But people who want to change on their own are too busy doing it to waste time talking about it.

That’s why I didn’t want to talk to Ella about this love of murder coming from inside me. The world, through Gorlana, had shown me that about myself, so maybe it would also make me change. I didn’t want to ruin my chances by acting like one of those people who talks about changing but just stays the same way forever.

Ella pushed us south from the keep for an hour, through some thick stands of short, spreading trees. An hour of bouncing on a horse felt like several hours to me, and at last, the trees thinned and she halted.

“Bib, how long?”

Ella had become reliant on Limnad’s sense of Vintan’s location. Whenever she wanted to know how far we were trailing the Denzmen, she asked me to ask Limnad for a report. I would ask Limnad, who would tell me, and then I would report back to Ella. Usually, I found this a little amusing. Not today.

“Krak burn you both until you shit coal! Talk to each other like civilized creatures. I have to put myself back together over here.”

No one said anything while I poked at my wound and winced.

Ella hauled in a big breath. Then, just so she wouldn’t be forced to speak to Limnad, Ella initiated a rapid-fire interrogation with me in the middle.

Ella said, “Bib, would you please—”

“Limnad!” I yelled.

“Three hours!”

“Three hours!” I shouted.

“Thank you!” Ella yelled.

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