The tooler peered sidelong at Willard as if noting his lack of immortal features, then returned his attention to Brolli. "What we seen just now on this road was magic," he said, in an accusatory frontier drawl. "You bring us a witch to hang, Your Holiness?" Willard couldn't miss the tone of irony in the title.

"It was no magic," said Willard. "Just an ordinary resin charge, like those your brother toolers used to blast the Hanging Road."

The tooler squinted down the road to where a spitfire's spray still smoked and smoldered on the rock. "Might be," he said, returning his scrutiny to Brolli. "But a resin charge big enough to toss a horse will leave a soot patch twenty times that size. The charge I seen left nothing."

Brolli moved beneath the blanket. The hole through which he peered had been trained upon the tooler. Now it shifted upward to gaze at the massive gallows with its complex of cables and pulleys, and the massive wheel blocks supporting man-sized counter-weights.

The tooler sprang back, pointing at Brolli's long-fingered foot, which now poked beneath the hem of the blanket. Brolli had inadvertently raised the blanket when he lifted his head to view the gallows. He jerked the blanket back over his foot too late.

The tooler aimed the spitfire squarely at Brolli. "What in the Black Moon is you?!"

"He is a Kwendi," Willard said, turning Molly toward the tooler. He did not wish to kill the unfortunate man, but he couldn't let him harm Brolli. If the truth might calm his hex-maddened zeal, it was worth a try. The man was too far from the outpost for the information to do any harm. "He is under my protection, Master Tooler, and under the express protection of the Queen. Indeed, she has licensed his magic in cases of self-protection."

Willard held his breath, gripping the haft of his sword and readying to prompt Molly to lunge.

But the tooler relaxed. His face smoothed in wonder, and he took a step backward, as if better to imagine the figure under the blanket. "A Kwendi," he breathed. "Well, send me to the Black Moon itself! It's on account of you, Master Kwendi, that these Ibergs is swarming across the water. Every one of these witches want the secret to your magic. They're mad to get their hands on it, and it's on account of you my gallows is in business. I owes you my gratitude."

"This gallows is yours?" Brolli said, peering up through the hole again at the complex of cables and pulleys. "To me, it is all confused ropes and trees. I do not understand it."

The tooler returned his spitfire to his shoulder, and grinned proudly up at his contraption. "Pity I don't have a witch today to show you how she works." Then his face lit with inspiration. "But we don't need no witch! I can show you myself!" He set his spitfire aside and grabbed his cowering apprentice, who all this time had seemed near fainting, and dragged him to the control board at the cabin. "You watch, Master Kwendi," he called, stringing a ready noose around his own neck. "You'll see how she does it!"

The apprentice gaped, petrified.

"Show him how we hang 'em," said his master, giving him a kick in the shins. "I said show him, you lazy runt!"

The kicks grew fiercer until the apprentice jerked a lever and a massive counterweight plummeted from above. The tooler launched skyward. All enthusiasm had vanished from his face, however. He gripped the noose under his chin, eyes bulging and his legs flailing as he swung over the river like a boy on a rope swing.

"Master!" the apprentice cried. The boy yanked a brake that jerked the ascent to a halt. The tooler swung back over the road, face red with panic. The boy pulled a lever that dropped another weight and shot another noose upward, before he found the release that dumped his master abruptly to the ground.

The tooler lay stunned and gasping like a beached fish beside the cabin.

Sir Willard turned Molly and led Brolli away.

"Ah...thank you, Master Tooler," Brolli said, beneath his blanket. "I think I understand now, how it work. Very nice."

Brolli rode up beside Willard, hugging the cliff wall and bouncing in his saddle like an ill-stowed sack of firewood. He twisted around to peer through the hole in his blanket at the tooler, who sat dazed and choking.

When the tooler was out of earshot, he chuckled grimly. "That was most strange. It was your hex, yes?"

Willard nodded, brows pinched in worry. "I've never seen it so active."

"It is a good sign, though, yes? It still does not strike you. Maybe it will not."

"We can hope."

"Or maybe that is all it does today?"

"Oh, no. It'll strike again. Once it's awake, it's awake till dawn. Near as I can tell, it strikes when I'm in danger. In battle, say, or hunted, like we are now, and the hunter is near. Or when I'm with women - don't ask me why," he said, to head off a chuckling response from the ambassador. "I don't understand it at all, but I've noticed it's so."

"Women are danger, then!" Brolli rocked with pleasure. "And women is why you are exiled from court, yes?"

Willard peered suspiciously at Brolli. "A particular woman, yes."

"The Lady Anna, I think?"

"How in the Black Moon do you know that, Ambassador? You've been among us for, what, a month?"

"A month in your court was long enough for me to learn of the Sir Willard Ballads. 'Sir Willard and the Queen's Maid,' was my favorite. There I learn of Anna." Brolli hummed as if seeking a note.

"Do not sing it," said Willard.

"It is very catchy - "

"Have I told you how I detest those ballads?" He barely kept a snarl from his voice.

Brolli sighed. "I will not sing it."

"You save me much pain. Let's talk about something more pleasant, shall we? Like our present situation. If my hex strikes me in Gallows Ferry, there are many who could be in serious danger. Especially you, Ambassador. If I am lost, you must race through the outpost and find Father Kogan on the road. Tell him what has happened and have him block the road after you pass, as we'd planned."

"Race? I can barely sit a horse when you lead me."

"Run on foot, then, if you have to. The next danger is your identity, Ambassador. That blanket must not slip again. If it does, be ready for a lynch-mob of Arkendians that will make our treatment of Ibergs look hospitable."

The ambassador grunted. "Worse than my reception in your queen's court?"

The knight gave an incredulous look. "We're on the frontier, Ambassador. They hang

Ibergs for sport. And Ibergs are human. No telling what they'd do with you."

#

The apprentice crept to the tooler's side. "Master?"

The tooler coughed and rubbed his neck as the boy helped him sit. When the man had recovered enough to breathe normally, he stared after the Phyros-rider, lost in wonder. "That was powerful strange," he muttered. "Don't hardly know what I just done...."

The man found himself perspiring, his hands trembling.

The cabin door squeaked as his brother and nephew emerged and moved reverently to the tooler's side. "You was witched," his nephew said, eyes wide and earnest. "You was taken by a god." The boy reached down and held up the tooler's sweating, trembling hands, as if in confirmation. The boy's father nodded sagely.

"Taken by a god, master!" the apprentice yelped. "You're lucky she let you go."

The tooler snatched his hands away and boxed his apprentice's ear. "Superstitious fools! Ain't no such thing. A tooler looks for a better explanation than that. A real explanation." He blinked and tried to still the trembling in his hands. "It was the Phyros made me nervous is all," he muttered. "People do things when they're nervous."

*************************************

Thanks for reading!

-- If you liked this chapter, please tell a friend!

-- And let me know with a comment or vote.

-- Even if you didn't enjoy it, please let me know. That's how I improve! :)

* For JACK OF SOULS news, sign up for my newsletter at stephenmerlino.com. *