Installment 4: "Embers and smoke..."

Logs popped and crackled in the small fire, sending red embers up on the smoke. Oz watched them rise and wink out, benighted dancers hovering toward their kindred, the stars, but never reaching the uppermost branches of the trees. He drew a puff on his cheroot and blew a smoke ring that mingled and lost itself in the campfire’s black smoke.

“Embers and smoke…” he muttered to himself. “Grasses of the field, a vapor that is blown away…”

Dyb, leaning back against his saddle, mumbled something.

“Eh?” Oz looked up from his contemplation.

“Harrowhell,” Dyb repeated.

“Easy for you to say.”

“That’s what I name it. My horse. Harrowhell.”

“Ah. Could be prescient, as we may be riding to hell and back before this campaign is over. What do you make of that sorcel-con today? Do you think it was planted to bar our way?”

Dyb downed the last of his coffee and then filled his pipe, reflecting. When he had it lit he said, “Can’t really place it. That sort of construct seems like kabbalistic magic, but the glyphs appeared native American, as did the carving. I can’t think of any reason for its being there other than to attack us.”

“Then somebody knows we’re coming,” Oz said, taking a final draw on his cheroot then flicking the butt into the fire.

“If Torfuck’s toying with future potentialities, then he must know every step we’re going to take,” Dyb suggested.

Oz grimaced, his weathered, whiskered face a chiaroscuro of firelight and shadow. He spit. “It may not be predestination, but it may as well be. If he’s writing the ending to the story, what the hell can we do?”

“He doesn’t know everything,” Dyb replied. “Otherwise, why would he send the sorcel-con? If he knew we were going to defeat it, why bother?”

“On the morrow we’ll pay a visit to the Homestead,” Oz said, pulling out a paperback to stay awake with during his turn of the watch: The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with the ending Dickens did write in another reality where he survived long enough to do so. “El Dur may have some idea on how we can re-author Torfuck’s demented vision for the future.”

Dyb emptied his pipe, stretched out, and pulled his Navajo blanket over himself. Closing his eyes, he said, “Talisman Illinois, here we come.”