“Cole realized, however, that the wizard must be a lost Wyvernspur. The family honor was at stake, so he thought, and he swore he would set things right, vanquish this wizard, and return what had been stolen to the elves. Two of the elves agreed to guide him back to their homeland and lead him to the wizard’s fortress.
“Your mother had many horrible premonitions. Just for him to be traveling in the fall and winter was dangerous enough. That he was planning to attack a powerful wizard drove her to distraction. When she could not talk him out of it, she begged me to accompany him.
“There were nine of us, including your father and the elves. We made good time to Shadow Gap and beat the snows. The people of Daggerdale were most inhospitable, so we pressed on quickly through that land as well. At length, we reached the Border Forest and the elven settlement.
“Our elven guides, and indeed all of us, wished we had never seen the remains of the elvish city. Flattery had turned all the enslaved elves into zombies and left them in the city to guard it as an outpost of his desert kingdom.
“The Wyvernspur family resemblance was our greatest asset. Mistaking Cole for their new master, the undead let us pass through the city unharmed. Thus we approached Flattery’s fortress unheralded.
“The fortress was only half the size of Immersea, but its walls were twice as high as Suzail’s. Only Flattery lived within, waited upon by undead. Cole deceived the zombies at the gate as easily as the ones in the elvish city, so we were able to enter Flattery’s stronghold and destroy many of his servants before he was even aware of our presence.
“We cornered the wizard alone, and Cole demanded to know Flattery’s father’s name. Flattery laughed and declared his father would remain nameless unless Cole agreed to single combat. Cole accepted, engaging the power of the spur to change his shape and taking to the air. The sun had not yet risen, but we could watch the battle in the early dawn light.”
When the priestess paused for a moment, Olive took the opportunity to interrupt with a question. “Excuse me, Mother Lleddew. Was that the exact phrase Flattery used—his father would remain nameless?”
Mother Lleddew nodded. “Yes. An odd choice of words, isn’t it?” she asked.
Quick on the uptake, Giogi asked, “Mistress Ruskettle, are you thinking of the Nameless Bard you mentioned in your tale about Alias?”
Olive nodded, but waved her hand to defer any more of Giogi’s questions. “Let Mother Lleddew continue her story. Sorry for the interruption, Mother Lleddew,” she said.
The priestess nodded and launched into a description of the battle between Flattery and Giogi’s father. “Flattery first cast a lightning bolt at Cole, but the shot went wide. Then Flattery cast a wall of fire in the air, but Cole easily evaded it. The mage attempted a third spell as Cole swooped down upon him, but it had no effect that any of us could discern. You see, in addition to transforming Cole into a wyvern, the spur made him immune to magic cast against him.
“Cole snatched the wizard from the ground and flew high, stinging and biting Flattery until the wizard ceased his struggling. It looked as if Cole had won, but then …”
Mother Lleddew closed her eyes as if she could shut out the sight of what she had already seen. “As Cole flew back toward us, a black cloud drifted toward him, moving against the wind. By the time we noticed its strange movements and shape, it was too late for Cole.
“The cloud was a pack of wraiths, fifteen or twenty in number. They may have been acting on their own, but I believe Flattery summoned them, and in doing so broke the rules of single combat. Whichever is the truth, the wraiths fell upon Cole as a single body. Your father shrieked from their icy, life-draining touch and dropped the wizard.
“I invoked Selûne to turn the undead away from your father. The wraiths fled, though possibly it was the swift sunrise that sent them away and not I.
“Cole was very weak when he landed, but he began to search for Flattery’s body at once. None of us had seen the wizard land.
“Then Cole was challenged from above by a sky-blue dragon. Since his magic could not directly harm Cole, Flattery had taken a shape that could. Cole took to the sky again.
“With all the wounds the wizard had taken in the first combat, and from the awkward way Flattery fought, we did not think he would win. But the wraiths had drained more of Cole’s energy than we’d realized. Still, the battle seemed evenly matched, until another set of Flattery’s minions interfered.
“Ju-ju zombies, more powerful than most, fired upon Cole with crossbows. Our party’s mage cast a fireball at the undead, obliterating them before they could get off a second round.
“It was hard to see the blue dragon against the sky. He dove on Cole, and they fell earthward, tearing one another apart. At the last moment, they parted. Flattery soared off, badly wounded, but Cole crashed to the ground.”
Mother Lleddew brushed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Giogi tried to swallow the lump in his throat. The priestess finished her tale.
“Flattery did not return to his city, nor did we find his body. We were sure, though, that if he was not dead, he was so grievously wounded that he had fled for his life.
“Cole was dead. I would have carried his body home myself, on my own back, but he did not change back to human form at death, as a lycanthrope would. We did not know how to change him back and had no way to transport a wyvern’s corpse. We had to send for Drone. We waited ten days and nights for him to arrive.”
“What did Uncle Drone do?” Giogi asked.
“It was so simple, I was a fool not to have thought of it,” Mother Lleddew said, shaking her head, “but it was also ghastly.”
“What?” Giogi repeated.
“He sliced off the wyvern’s right spur. It transformed back into the mummified spur, and Cole returned to his human form.”
Giogi felt a little nauseated. Poor Uncle Drone—having to do such a gruesome thing. Of course, only Uncle Drone could have thought of that.
“I’m not sure that I want to know, but I suppose I ought to,” the nobleman said with a glance at Olive. “How did my father make the spur work?”
“I’m not sure. He kept it in his boot, and whenever he needed to change, he would concentrate on it.”
“Pardon me, sir,” Thomas interrupted, “but you don’t have the spur in your boot, do you?”
“Why, yes,” Giogi said, patting his right calf, “it’s right here beside the finder’s stone. Why do you ask?”
“I might recommend that you avoid thinking about wyverns until you step outside. Perhaps, just to be on the safe side, you might want to leave the spur on the table for the duration of the discussion. A transformation in the house might be a trifle uncomfortable.”
Giogi slid the spur from his boot and laid it beside his plate. “Good thinking, Thomas,” he said. “I’d be the proverbial wyvern in an alchemist shop, eh?”
“Precisely, sir.”
Giogi covered the spur with his napkin. The very idea of transforming into something else, even out-of-doors, where there was plenty of room, frightened him. It would be awful, he thought, having wings instead of arms and a horrible stinging tail, loaded with poison, and scales all over one’s body. How could Cole have done it?
“Pardon me, Mother Lleddew,” Olive asked. “But you said you traveled with Giogi’s great-grandmother. She didn’t happen to use the spur as well?”
“Yes, she did. That’s the beginning of the tale. Lady Eswip’s father was Lord Gould the Third. He’d used the spur himself, but he had no son and Lady Eswip proved to be the guardian’s favorite. She married her Cousin Bender Wyvernspur, who inherited the family title from his Uncle Gould. They had two sons, Grever and Fortney, and a daughter, Dorath. The guardian didn’t care for the boys. She chose Dorath as her favorite.”