Gaspar The Thief by David A. Lindsay

Author:David A. Lindsay [Lindsay, David A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Balmerino Publishing
Published: 2014-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

Gaspar And The Spires Of Chai’kanduma

“You told him what?”

Gaspar was irked. He had just learned the details of the dupe worked upon the innkeeper at the Dragon’s Maw and did not approve of the part played by Marna. “You’re as bad, Hubris,” he added, addressing the spellbroker. “You ought never to have consented to it. Why, it isn’t even credible! Marna’s husband indeed!”

The spellbroker shrugged. “Don’t let it rankle. Now, if we had taken the bridal chamber — well, that would be different. But we didn’t, so let’s leave it.”

“I’m surprised,” said Marna stonily, “that Hubris does not take umbrage. The suggestion that I could not find him desirable is ill taken and boorish. Moreover, it displays a lack of tact concerning my own sensitivities.”

“Let it pass, Marna,” said Hubris jauntily. He was mindful of the rift that had opened again between the pair and was anxious not to widen it further. More than anyone, he knew how quickly such bickering could descend into open strife. “No offence is taken for my part. If I am at all discomfited, ‘tis only on account of the fine supper I missed. Venison pie, roast haunch of pig and a dozen quail’s eggs! Methinks the innkeeper must have been sorely beset by his wife on that score.”

“Aye,” agreed Marna, grinning at the picture painted by the spellbroker’s words. “And will be the more so when he is compelled to clear his slate with the apothecary, locksmith and mason!”

They ate the rest of their breakfast in silence. Gaspar bit his tongue and forbore from pressing his objections further, busying himself instead with tending the horses.

Having ridden through the night, they had emerged from Finbar Vale at dawn. The sun, rising in the east, had spread its warming fingers across the wooded slopes and ridges of the valley behind them, and coaxed splashes of purple from the high plateau that now stretched before them. A light breeze stirred the heathers and dry grasses of the moorland so that the landscape seemed to shimmer like the sun-dappled surface of some strangely levitated sea, awash with the flotsam of a far-distant shore. Beyond the plateau — which stretched, by Hubris’s reckoning, for five leagues or more — the High Road descended into Lyjia Vale. There, above the village of Trefydan, perched upon a high scarp overlooking the valley, the spellbroker knew of a wayside inn called The Tale’s Head Inn. His suggestion that they press ahead with the intent of reaching it by nightfall had been acceded to without demur.

Drune, meantime, was none too pleased at his confinement within the slate-lined sea-chest. At first, he had howled and squealed and hurled all manner of unspeakables against his captors. But after a time, observing perhaps that his threats and tantrums were doing him no good, he had fallen into a sulky silence, punctuated thereafter only by the ohs and ouchs occasioned by the inevitable jolting of the chest. Eventually, he had dozed, only to be awoken by the rude bumping of the chest as it was unloaded to allow the horses to graze.

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