Snood’s beautiful assistant came loping easily over the loose sand until she reached him. Her usually cool demeanor was altered with flushed excitement. In a self-important fashion, he began to explain, but of course Laura ignored him and began speaking directly to their leader with the same strange phrases and speech patterns. The professor, feeling out of the loop, stepped over to the leather bag lying on the ground like a dead groundhog. Curious he bent to open it.
“Don’t !” Laura barked. It was too late.
“Numbles,” the professor muttered in disgust.
With a calm voice that belied the feverish excitement in her eyes she said, “By opening the bag, you’ve accepted their trade.”
“Deer organs for my bezoars?” He couldn’t help the childish rise in his voice.
“At least they’re fresh; they want the bezoars, and they want them bad. Consider yourself lucky. They could have killed you for them.”
“What could these savages possibly want them for?’
“They use them in their sacred rituals, in casting spells, and for their healing ceremonies. Their leader says he saw these in a vision and has come to take them.”
“But…But…” For once the professor was at a loss for words.
“And I’m going with them!” Laura’s words washed over him like a pail of cold water.
“You can’t! What will I do without you?
It was too late for protesting. she had already swing up behind the bronze-skinned stranger. Her body leaned in toward his as she clasped her arms around his rippling abs.
“You can’t just ride off with that energumen! You don’t know what he’ll do with you!”
Snood’s one-time assistant only laughed wildly as the small group thundered off towards the end of the valley. He looked down. His bezoars were gone.
Sighing in resignation, he clasped the end of the leather bag and slung it over his shoulder.
“At least we’ll have a decent breakfast,” he said, forlornly walking toward the cook tent.
No comments:
Post a Comment