A Cheerful Smoke for the Dead
By Ron Leighton
Copyright © 2011 by Ron Leighton
Smashwords Edition
The cover art original image Ladybirds Pagan Incense by Estruda (at
deviantart.com) was used with permission.
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~*~
In the damp, dark cottage three doors from Gergenon’s lone brothel, Nathaiu struggled
with the black-haired woman under him, desperate to get what he wanted. Her frantic exhales
were visible in the faint light of the hearth, like the fear in her gray eyes. Did she not understand
his need? As he gained control of her flailing limbs, and she settled a little, as if out of a fatalistic
acceptance, he gripped her harder and pressed closer. He saw one eye fix on him and she
trembled as she turned her face away, to escape in some small way, it seemed.
****
A week and a day before, a bone-chilling March wind blew across Artago plain, lifting a
swirl of dry snow. Nathaiu wandered along Gergenon’s main street. Counting stones and
jumping over a stinking drain, he made his way to the early market by the temple of Orotar, the
Sun God. He narrowed his blue eyes against the sunbeams slanting over the former border-fort’s
jagged old walls, which ran parallel to the street. In the shadow of the temple tower, his dazzled
eyes found relief, and the market. Looking for a cheap chicken – one his aged Aunt Enselyta
could cook with a little thyme, basil, and salt, if he could get it – he made his way through the
murmuring throng.
Nathaiu’s stomach growled as he stopped in front of a chicken-seller and looked at the
man’s baskets of half-starved birds.
Its thin cockscomb slumped lazily to the side and its pale red wattle wiggling, one
chicken tilted its head and gawked at him with one eye.
“Three coppers?” Nathaiu said, glaring at the thick-bellied chicken-seller and shaking his
head. “For these things?! It’s robbery! Why don’t you just sit by the graveyard and poke widows
for their offering-coins? Give up the chicken-selling?”
“Raise up your own chickens, if you don’t like it,” the chicken-seller said with a twisted
sneer on his lips.
Disgusted, but mostly dispirited, Nathaiu walked away.
Passing out of the temple tower’s shadow, he shaded his eyes from the bright sun again.
Ignoring one chicken-seller and the next, he came to the salt-seller’s decrepit booth. Only,
instead of the salt-seller, he found an old man in a fur hat peddling incense.
Nathaiu crossed his arms over his thin chest. Now where’s that salt-seller got to? he
wondered with irritation, his eyes stuck on the stranger.
The man certainly looked curious. A foreigner, Nathaiu guessed. An outlander to all the
seven countries. He had seen a fur cap like that only one other time – on a bear-tamer with a
stump for a hand. He had decided then not to think much of a one-handed bear-tamer with a
strange accent and hat.
Still, this man, this incense-peddler, wore the long, thin gray scarf of the blessed priests
of Orotar. That counted for something. Not even the most foolish vagabond would risk arrest
mere footsteps from the temple if he had not been granted the right to the distinction.
Nathaiu waved away the sweet-smelling smoke that curled under his nose and scrubbed
at his unkempt, dirty-blonde hair. He watched as the incense-peddler harangued a huddle of
pilgrims. Through the haze, Nathaiu made out the man’s empty black eyes, so different from the
smile hiding under the man’s drooping mustache. A bit unnerved, Nathaiu turned to go.
But the sudden mention of an incense to send the dead on in peace to Orotar stopped him
cold. He turned back and found the man staring at him through the crowd.
The peddler held up a tray of little brown cakes. “Do departed dear ones linger in
sadness?” he asked.
Nathaiu’s heart shook. He nodded his head. The peddler waved an invitation to move
closer. “Uh…My mother and father, they died of a fever one after the other during Winterfest
‘fore last.”
Solemnity on his face, the man leaned towards Nathaiu and spoke through his flapping
mustache. “And they linger now despite most anxious prayers?”
Nathaiu swallowed hard and nodded.
Tears formed in his eyes and against his wishes trickled slowly down his cheek. He
brushed them away with the back of a hand. Not a day had passed since his parents died that he
had not thought of them, not a day that he had not sensed their troubled spirits. For this reason,
he lit a lamp and said a prayer to Orotar every morning just after sunrise, and then one before he
climbed into his sagging, creaking cot at night.
“I ask with humility, Shining One,” he would whisper, hands clasped tight as he knelt in
front of the small household shrine tucked beside the hearth.
Let not the clinging earth and its devils have them
Let your light lead them away from darkness
Let your love bring them out of sadness
I beg you…
His mind tinged with doubt, Nathaiu blinked away his thought and asked the stranger,
“Who are you?”
The incense-peddler gave a weary look and waved his hand. “I am called Thuveoro,
Smokemaster.” He shrugged and smiled. “I come with Shining One’s work in mind. How shall I
call you?”
Nathaiu couldn’t place the man’s unusual accent. The Smokemaster might come from the
east, the north or the south, but Nathaiu couldn’t say which.
One of the pilgrim women followed the conversation, her meek, freckled face turning
silently from the peddler back to Nathaiu.
Nathaiu answered with some reluctance. “Call me Nathaiu.”
“Friend of gods?” Thuveoro said, lifting his thick brows. “It is good name, good name.
Your father and mother loved you dearly.”
Nathaiu scrubbed his thin, rough hands together against the cold and shrugged. “Nearly
as much as I loved them, I guess.”
“Hmm, well… Do you know what delay happy departure of loved ones for Great
Father?”
Nathaiu’s mind wandered and he found himself in the presence of his memories. He
swallowed hard again. “No,” he answered. Blinking to focus his eyes, he added, a hint of
desperation in his voice, “But I seek to know.”
Thuveoro’s coal-black eyes did not move, though a slight grin peeked again from under
his gray mustache. “Is sad secret,” the man said, “but I gladly tell.”
I must seem a weepy, superstitious old woman, Nathaiu thought, casting a quick glance at
some of the pilgrims. But he didn’t care. The pilgrim woman looked at him with wide eyes, and
then blinked. He felt no shame for his tears and curiosity, or at least not much.
He looked back at Thuveoro.
“Winds carry away scent of Orotar’s path,” Thuveoro said. “Yet, by faithful devotion, I
discern incense that please Father. It find his door. Is cheerful smoke for dead, I would say, and it
lead where soul know rest better for delay.”
Nathaiu’s expression became hopeful. A small smile crossed his lips and hinted in his
bloodshot eyes.
Thuveoro handed Nathaiu a little pouch of the incense. With a slight flourish of his hand,
the incense-peddler said, “I ask mere four coppers.”
The smile faded from Nathaiu’s face. His shoulders dropped even as he lifted his chin.
“I’ve only two, and I’ve yet to buy my supper.” Greedy peddler. Just like the rest.
Thuveoro took Nathaiu’s hand, placed the pouch in it and closed the young man’s fist
over it with his own hand. “Have it, have it. I will ask more of next soul, if he can afford.”
“No, no…” Nathaiu began, trying to tug his hand away to give the pouch back.
But Thuveoro clamped his hands tighter around Nathaiu’s fingers. “I insist,” he said, then
let go.
Nathaiu, his expression first angry, then relieved, lowered his head a little. Nodding and
looking up with one eye before looking away again, he said, “It is greatly appreciated.” He
backed away and shouldered his way through the crowd.
“Use only at evening prayers, mind you,” Thuveoro said over the heads of the crowd.
Nathaiu waved and nodded, then went on.
Rushing along the street, he bumped into a man emerging from a doorway and the pouch
fell to the pavement. Two of the brown cakes spilled out and Nathaiu stooped and fumbled to
collect them. Rising again, he cinched the cords of the pouch and hurried on.
Reaching his house, he opened the squawking door and entered, striding past his
wobbling aunt with her questions.
“I’ve got to get to the stone-shaper’s,” he said, tossing the bag of incense next to the little
shrine.
Without saying more, he left the house to go to the stone-shaper’s shop, where he
worked.
As he departed, his aunt said, “I’ve heated some porridge, won’t you have some before
you go? And you didn’t bring a chicken…you want sparrows and grass again?”
He indicated a sack he carried. “Got some of the leftover black bread, Auntie.”
“What about the chicken?”
“I’ll get one, I promise,” Nathaiu said, as he hurried out into the sharp morning light.
Heading out onto the main street again, he followed it to another, away from the old walls
and the temple, and then on to the edge of town where the stone shaper’s shop occupied the yard
of an old estate.
Nathaiu went in an old building with open rafters, grabbed an uncut stone, as well as a
blunt hammer and chisel and went to his leather-covered tree stump. Sitting on it, he began to
chip flakes of stone from the block. Clearing his throat, he looked around at the others at their
work spots.
He did his best at his task without allowing distractions to get the better of him. But more
than once his sharp-tongued boss Vurbetto, a sinewy Kalkaman with long brown hair twisted
into a knot, complained about the stones Nathaiu had piled to the side. Cruel by nature, the man
called them misshapen and used them to instruct the others in proper stone-shaping.
Grabbing a stone, Vurbetto barked, “Even the smallest hiccup in the Emperor’s road
could cause the downfall of us all.” He glared at Nathaiu and threw the stone back on the pile.
“Fix it!” Then he went off, strutting among the work stalls. “I could get me a clutch of slaves.
You all know that, don’t you? That would suit me. Get rid of you lot.”
Nathaiu hated the strident sound of the Kalkaman’s voice.
And he smelled of onions, too.
****
That night Nathaiu waited for his aunt to go to sleep in her chamber – lest she badger him
about the incense – then went to his evening prayers. Kneeling before the shrine, he lit a lamp
with another and fingered one small cake from the pouch. Laying it in a clay vessel, he touched
the lamp’s flickering wick to it and waited for it to catch. His eyes blurred as an ember glowed
orange and bubbled and then settled into a slow burn. A faint wisp of smoke rose in a swirl and
vanished. Then an unbroken strand of smoke insinuated its way to Nathaiu’s gaping nostrils as it
twisted its way towards the rafters. He breathed in and closed his eyes.
“Do you smell the smoke, mama? Papa?” he asked, clasping his hands together.
A strange feeling came over him as he waited and wondered.
Suddenly, he felt a little nauseous. He tightened his supplicant hands and wished the
feeling away. But as he knelt, a shiver started in his legs and rose through his body. Before it
dissipated, a sharp pain knifed through him. He doubled over and his hands came unclasped.
Convulsing, he fell to the floor, his fingers curling into trembling fists. In a daze, his
stomach wrenched and he felt a pain akin to rotting teeth. His mouth felt swollen and the pain
increased. In a moment, he blacked out.
****
The next day, taking his meal during the ninth hour from sunrise under a bare alder tree,
Nathaiu chewed a chunk of black bread spread with oil and ground dried peppers. He dreamed of
the warm days ahead as he gazed at the pale, late-winter sky. A late snow, thin and dry, had
dusted the streets and chilled the air.
A fellow stone-shaper snored in the still-brown grass nearby.
Stopping his jaw mid-chew, Nathaiu gawked at a red-haired woman carrying a basket a
few yards away. Pale and tired-looking, the mottled shadows of a tree rippling across her face,
she met his gaze with half-closed eyes. She blinked as if she recognized him.
A flash of blood and muffled cries flitted across Nathaiu’s mind and he nearly choked on
the chunk of bread in his mouth.
Looking strangely at him, the woman passed out of sight behind the wall of the estate,
going into town.
Ill at ease, Nathaiu threw the last of his bread to some crows nearby, shook his
companion awake and returned to his task.
****
As the sun hinted over the houses the following morning, Aunt Enselyta talked and talked
at Nathaiu until he awoke. He looked at her with one eye from his old cot, irritated.
“Why are talking to me when you know I am asleep?”
“You comes back ‘ere without a chicken, again,” she said, “then ya spend half the night
carousing like a Kuetran goat… What am I to do with ya?”
Nathaiu cast a look at her he saw she didn’t like.
“I guess I’m the one with wind in my ears, then?” she asked.
Nathaiu rose up, pawing at his tangled nest of hair. “I been here all night, Auntie.”
“Have you?” she asked, her frail fists planted on her hips. “Then I guess it was yer twin
that stumbled in here half to cock-crow such a mess.”
“Half to cock-crow?” Nathaiu said in disbelief.
Auntie Enselyta waved her hands and turned away. Taking a large ladle in hand, she
stirred a pot hanging over coals in the hearth.
Sighing, Nathaiu sat up and wiped his hand across his lips, tasting blood. He looked at
the smear of blood on his fingers and wondered for a moment whether she was right. He felt in
his purse and found the two coppers. Still there for the second day. At least I didn’t spend the
chicken money.
“And you been fighting with yer fists, I reckon,” Aunt Enselyta said, turning her attention
to him again. She chuckled. “Or yer lip.”
Nathaiu ignored her, recalling snippets of an unsettling dream as he dabbed away the
blood and wiped it on his wool breeches. Rising, he went to the wash basin and dipped his hands
in the stale water. Lowering his face over the basin, he washed himself in a few, quick motions.
“You’ve not been to the bathhouse in three days, am I guessing right?” Aunt Enselyta
asked.
“I reckon you’re guessing right,” Nathaiu said, irritated.
He went straight to the shrine and knelt in front of it. A little household god idol in his
hand, he turned to his aunt. Troubled, and wishing to change the subject, he asked, “You still
pray for mama and papa, don’t you?”
Clasping her hands together over her belly, Aunt Enselyta’s face turned soft. “You know
I do.”
“Does your heart speak well of their journey,” Nathaiu asked.
Aunt Enselyta hesitated a bit, but said, “I pray and I trust, Nathaiu, that is the way. You
know.”
Nathaiu sighed and turned to his shrine, placing the idol back there. He lit his lamp and
put the incense in its tray. ‘Only at your evening prayers,’ the incense-peddler had said. Setting
the incense aside, he recited his usual prayer.
****
That night, when his aunt had gone to sleep, Nathaiu said his prayers again and burned
some of the incense.
Again, the discomfort and pain came and again he blacked out. When he woke, in a
strange sorts, he found himself wandering out the door and down the street. The wind blew hard,
tossing a storm of snowflakes around him as he headed aimlessly past the brothel.
There, he stopped and looked at the warm lamplight peaking through the cracks in a
shutter. His mouth throbbed in pain and he felt his teeth prick against his lips, letting loose a
slight bead of blood. Dabbing it away, he stumbled down the street until he came to another
house with lamplight flooding out from a second floor window. Between the cracks of a shutter,
a woman with black hair looked down at him. Not knowing his own mind, it seemed to him, he
held out his hand as if to beg. The woman did nothing, but then gestured for him to come to the
door.
Standing on her step, he listened as she made her way inside.
When she opened her door a few inches, he smiled and asked, “Have you a little bread?”
She paused, but then opened the door. “Hurry up and get in, you’ll let out all the warm.”
Nathaiu hunched under the low lintel and stepped over the high threshold – a guard
against an occasional flood on the street. His eyes widened in the dark interior.
The woman went quickly to unwrap a cloth and retrieve some bread. “Why’d you want to
come out so late? You’d a found more help – ”
Before the words left her lips, Nathaiu grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth.
His face contorted into a cruel mask as he wrestled to keep a hold of her.
Thrusting her roughly onto a low couch thick with blankets, he pressed himself on top of
her.
“St – Stop it, get off –” the woman said, slapping at Nathaiu.
But he grabbed her arms and twisted them over her head so that she cried out. In the
commotion, her dress tore open and one of her breasts jiggled in the dim light. Her chest heaved.
“Quiet!” he said through clenched teeth.
Getting a hold of her he pressed his weight on her and found mastery at last.
Seeing himself reflected in the woman’s eyes – a wiry, disheveled man possessed of a
strange thirst – Nathaiu nearly recoiled. His eyes blurred and he felt an urge to bolt out the door.
But as she wriggled, he regained his focus and pressed his mouth near her neck. Baring
two bone-white fangs, he plunged them into her taut, vibrant flesh.
A breath left her and she relaxed.
Moaning and tightening his grip, his sucking mouth gulped the warm blood pulsating
from her wounds. He rearranged himself again to keep her still and slurped still more life from
her.
When at last his gut stretched full of blood, he pulled his fanged mouth from her neck
with a sickly wet sound and lifted himself up. He saw that her eyes were without vigor; two
glassy orbs retaining their moistness and color, but wanting for life. After he departed, he knew,
at least some of her vigor would return. Yet, she seemed dead. Covering the bare breast, he laid
his head on her chest and listened. Her heart pounded. This consoled a distant part of himself.
Feeling the warmth of her blood as it glided through his innards, he knew he had
completed the task given him. He had extracted a veritable bucket of precious blood from his
victim. He had taken the measure of essence required by the incense-peddler – the measure
demanded each night when Nathaiu attended the man’s odd ritual. In disgust, he spit away the
blood that lingered on his lips.
Though conflicted, he did feel a sense of relief, like he had finished an unpleasant and
unavoidable task.
He rose from her bed, adjusted his cloak and tucked its thinning fur trim about his
shoulders. He watched as her breathing slowly became ordinary again and a hint of color
returned to her cheek. Still, she did not move. He knew he must go before she did.
Making for the door with the low lintel and high threshold, he pulled the groaning door
open. Bracing himself against the chill air, he stepped out onto the snow-dusted stones of the
street. Shifting his eyes nervously about, he happily found the night did not heed his presence.
Fixing the door closed again, he turned and left.
Though his heart, as well as his chilled bones, longed for bed and the comfort his soul
might find in sleep, another draw compelled him forward, down the street. Passing the estate
wall near the old town-gate, he turned and went up the narrow lane whose very pavement he had
come to detest.
Arriving at a small gate in an arch at the former bread-maker’s shop, he pulled the bell
cord and waited. In a moment, it opened, and Thuveoro’s ugly housemaid stood there, beckoning
with one hand. Tightening his cloak, Nathaiu ducked as if he might hit his head and passed
inside. He felt the old woman’s eyes follow him.
Entering the shop at the side of the courtyard, once the home of a bread maker, Nathaiu
saw the others. Most of them he recognized, but not the bald man. Red-faced, Nathaiu took a seat
near the blazing hearth. Squeezing between the new attendee and the hunch-backed woman with
a lazy eye, he settled in and waited.
Each of them caressed distended bellies.
Nathaiu’s eyes landed on an old sword hanging above the hearth, as they had each time
he came to the old bread-maker’s house.
A noise like a wind flowed through the room and over the quiet visitors. Then from a
doorway, he emerged.
The incense-peddler.
Nathaiu’s heart caught in his throat, as it always did at this moment. Thuveoro… His
hand came to rest on his own belly.
Thuveoro stepped into the ring of blood-suckers and his gaze lingered each of them in
turn. Without preliminaries, he held his hand out to the side. Right away, the house woman held
up the handle of a bucket to him. Thuveoro took it and placed it in front of the hunched-backed
woman.
She cringed and seemed ready to cry.
“Let me have blood, woman,” he said.
He waved the palm of his hand before her upturned face and she began to shake and
convulse. He waited and everyone watched, captivated, as she wretched one long stream of
frothy blood out of her stomach and into the bucket.
Heaving still, the last of the blood dripped from her trembling lip. Wiping her mouth and
glaring wide-eyed at Thuveoro, she stood and hurried out the door.
The unpleasant scene repeated itself as one after another of the attendees gave up the
bubble of gore stored in their guts.
Nathaiu came last and he remained for a moment as Thuveoro and the old woman carried
the buckets out of the fore chamber and into the one behind the oven. Then he left.
Only after he had ambled down the street some ways, did Nathaiu hear his mother’s voice
resounding in his ear.
“You’ve left your shoe!” she said. “It’s your only pair, Nathaiu, and your feet’ll freeze.”
He stopped and blinked, listening for the voice. “Mama?”
Only the wind came to his ear.
“Mama?”
“We cannot find our way with this smoke,” the voice said. “We know the way…”
“Mama?”
“Get your shoe!” she said.
The cold that settles deep in stones shot up through his leg. Wiggling his toes, he shivered
and blinked in astonishment at his unclad foot. Disconcerted, he turned and went back to the old
bakery, hopping the last few steps. Ringing the bell by the gate, he waited, rubbing his naked
foot on his other shoe. He listened for a moment, surprised the old woman had not answered
quickly, as she usually did. He pressed the gate in a bit and leaned in.
“Hello, friends?” he called.
Nothing.
He entered, crossed the small courtyard and came to the old bread-maker’s shop. He
leaned in its open door and his eyes roamed around the interior. He called again, but no one
answered.
“Where is that old woman?” he said out loud.
Entering the room where he had regurgitated the blood, he looked around. His eyes fell
on his shoe and he hobbled over to get it. As he turned to leave, he heard what sounded like
hissing and stopped, catching his breath. He heard it again, yet now in the hiss he made out the
shapes of speech and, one by one, the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. He felt the flesh of
his face tense with fright. He swallowed hard and, despite his fear, crept toward the opening
behind the oven, shoe in hand.
He peered around the worn edge of bricks with one eye. It widened as he considered the
scene before him.
In the lamp-lit chamber behind the oven, Thuveoro, a bucket on the floor before him,
conversed with a cloaked figure rocking side to side in the dark. Nathaiu squinted, trying to
discern the shape from the shadow until he realized the shape and the shadow were the same.
Thuveoro caressed his mustache and considered the shade.
“Many souls hang in the air,” the shade said.
Its voice had an echo in it that stabbed Nathaiu’s mind in primitive places even the
hissing did not.
“They are accosted now by my servants. I hear the prayers of men, the wishful begging! I
can taste men’s sorrow and they know I am their only hope. They all come to me as I wait to
comfort and accept them!”
Nathaiu became anxious as his mind unraveled the news. His mother’s voice whispered
in his head. We know the way.
Thuveoro nodded. “Well, Master Valkon, I come now with some life for offer you, will
you take?”
The shade hissed and shuddered. “This peculiar sap you bring, a gift to me?”
“It is.”
Nathaiu marveled at this strange conversation. He had never seen this part of the ritual.
This Smokemaster is the consort of some strange god.
Thuveoro lifted the wooden bucket brimming with blood and inched closer to Valkon. As
he did, the shadow took form and emerged from the surrounding darkness. Thuveoro drew back
slowly and watched.
Valkon’s shadow swelled and from it the form of a shambling old man grew. He looked
like an ordinary old man – long in the tooth and the chin hair – but for one thing. In the place of
eyes the old man had mere expanses of wrinkled flesh.
A blind god…
The old man lifted the bucket to his mouth and guzzled from it in greedy, inhuman gulps.
Trembling, Nathaiu retreated with soft steps and found the sword hanging over the
hearth. He looked at its old blade and lifted it down without a sound.
Returning to his spot by the oven, Nathaiu saw the shadow descend through a hole at its
feet. Then, with slithering hands, it replaced the bricks in the floor above it as it disappeared. The
last bit of shadow seemed to dribble through the cracks like water.
Thuveoro took one of the buckets and turned to leave.
“So it is a business of blood?” Nathaiu said, still trembling. Slowly, he lifted the sword.
Thuveoro stopped in his tracks. “Have you eavesdrop on god?” he smirked.
“This dark shade? What sort of god is he?”
“Like wolf, he take on color of place where he make his way, this is all.”
Nathaiu tightened his jaw to quiet its quivering. He recalled again the words of his
mother. Gritting his teeth, he said, “You did not wager on the dead telling your tale, did you?”
“The dead? Their airy mouths have nothing but wind. Only fools listen them.”
Not liking Thuveoro’s answer, Nathaiu strode forward and whipped the sword at the
man. It struck his head hard, cracking his skull.
Thuveoro dropped the bucket and stumbled. He laughed uncomfortably, even as he
wavered weakly and wiped the blood from the ugly wound on his head.
Still as a tree, Nathaiu stared, blinking at the man in disbelief. The blow had caved in a
portion of the Smokemaster’s skull, exposing the ugly gray matter beneath. And yet the man not
only remained in this world, he remained awake. Any normal man would have fallen and not
have risen again after such a blow.
“You do not know I am footman of Death,” Thuveoro said, standing. He tucked the piece
of hairy skull that had come loose back in its spot and patted it in place.
He then inched his fingers towards a pouch at his waist.
At that, Nathaiu’s eyes widened, thinking the Smokemaster intended to bend him by
some magic. Desperately, he swung the dull blade with all his strength. It met Thuveoro’s neck
and severed the Smokemaster’s head from his shoulders. The man’s fingers curled up and the
body toppled over. The head rolled off into a dark corner.
But before Nathaiu could react sensibly, the body of Thuveoro rose to its knees, and then
to its feet. Nathaiu dropped the sword to the floor with a dull clang. He watched, pale-faced and
stricken, as it stumbled over to where its head lay, picked the gory thing up, tucked it under its
arm and trotted out of the door.
When hesitation left him, Nathaiu ran to the opening and gaped out into the night.
The headless corpse had absconded.
Auntie won’t believe a word of it…
###
Look for the upcoming novel
Belt of the Wolf: A Tale of the Shining Lands
By Ron Leighton