The Azure Wizard Read Online Free Page B

of the rickety stools from the bar counter and a single candle burned on the floor of the stage right beside him. The audience expected a tale of tales, and thus the entirety of the common room gathered around the stage as close as they could, all leaning forward and sipping their wines and meads.
    Ethan cleared his throat and began his story.
     
    Better than a score of years ago a young man from a village called Broken Stone high and deep in the Barony of Vhar, beyond Whitethorn Mountain and on the verge of the Ice Wilds, lived his life like many of the village’s other inhabitants. He dwelt in the home of his parents and siblings and their children, and he worked the land cutting stone and raising the hardy white goats that dwell that far north. This man knew of the lands of the south such as Greenwell and Wendlith, but Broken Stone held everything he could ever want or need. He had loved ones and pride.
    A peculiar thing about this man was that even though the work he did improved the lives of him and his family he desired a different calling. He longed to be a storyteller, though in villages like Broken Stone a storyteller wasn’t respected as much as those that pulled their weight. Though the Barony of Vhar was the land of storytellers, they were primarily entrenched in the barony’s southern portions on the south flanks of the Vhar Mountains.
    The village of Broken Stone isn’t commonly known of anymore because it fell into ruin. That young man was there when it happened.
    It started as a regular day. People went about their daily tasks required to keep the village alive and running. The man tended his family’s goats on the high slopes to the west of the village. In the distance he saw the approach of a string of dark shapes moving southward out of the white haze of the Ice Wilds. There was only one thing that the approaching shapes could have been and the thought of it brought a torrent of terror and anxiety into the core of his being, Berserkers of the Ice Wilds.
    The man sprinted as fast as he ever had in his life down the rocky snow-covered slopes. He dodged between the odd columns of rock that were shaped by the constant frigid wind on the verge of the Ice Wilds. These strange pillars of rock served as a replacement for trees this far north. The man prayed aloud to the Ancestors in the Ancestor Lands that he would reach Broken Stone in time to warn its inhabitants. But he smelt the smoke before he ever got to the village.
    Unfortunately, upon his arrival the Berserkers were not yet done. Standing slightly taller than the civilized inhabitants of the Barony of Vhar the Berserkers had long thick alabaster-hued hair and ruddy sunburned skin. They dressed in thick layers of white and grey furs taken from slain Ice Cats, the most hated enemies of the Berserkers out in the Ice Wilds, and they were known to wield crude chopping and piercing armaments made from thick yellowed bone. Berserkers raided the northern parts of the Barony of Vhar to replenish supplies and food to take back with them into the frigid wilds. Ice Cats were notoriously hard to slay, but they were the only other known life form in the Ice Wilds aside from the barbaric humans that also roamed that land. Hence the Berserkers usually survived by rationing the meat of a slain Ice Cat family among an entire tribe for weeks at a time. But when it became too long since the last kill the Berserkers were forced to march southward into the Vhar Mountains to capture the other half of their diets, humans.
    When the young man finally reached his village he was greeted by fire, death, screams, and blood. At least half of the inhabitants of Broken Stone already were dead, and the remainder, all women and children, were being brutally beaten, captured and tied in leather rope, or raped. Their screams shredded the crystal-clear blue cloudless sky. As the man charged forward with a wild screech of fury and sorrow the nearest bunch of Berserkers whirled around,