The Tasters Guild Read Online Free

Nightshade regime. No such ballad existed about Peps D. Roux, and any composer would be hard-pressed to find much adventure in Peps’s personal history. (The song would be brief and celebrate such things as his taste in formal wear and his prized golden tooth.)
    Peps crept forward uneasily atop the thatched roof. It was quite a view—the ramparts of the Templar palace, the carefully executed stones of the walled city, gleaming cobbles of the many twisting streets below. But Peps refused to be distracted from his errand, instead preferring to inch forward on all fours as the memory of the departing Dumbcane bolstered his courage. Coming finally to the source of the congestion, the trestleman peered over the edge nervously.
    A cart, of sorts, met his eye.
    This was not unusual in the daily life upon the bridge in and of itself. But this small, canvas-topped cart was drawing an enormous amount of attention. A line—if it could indeed be calledthat, possessing neither order nor visible rules—snaked its way across the Knox, twisting and turning and finally boiling over onto a small square where Crossbones and Thrashweed streets collided at the city gates.
    He looked about the crowd gathered below him, a wisp of steam penetrating the chill air. The colorful horde was gathered in every available space, the expectant faces muffled by a patchwork of cloaks and hoods. The people had come in droves, despite the unseasonable cold, and had amassed upon the cobblestones—swaying from lampposts, even dangling off of the small balconies that perched along the plaza.
    Amid the pushing and shoving, small snippets of conversation floated up to Peps. “… Made his warts shrivel right up—every last one of ’em dropped off during that thunderstorm last week! And, where they landed, toadstools grew! I tell you, though—he’s now developed a taste for yeasted bread, and makes himself loaf after loaf from sunup till sundown! We’re
buried
in loaves, so many he bakes—why, I haven’t seen the cat in weeks!”
    “My cousin Herrick came to see her, troubled by indigestion, and a day later his appetite returned—and with it a strange new ability to call the birds down from the trees and have them entertain him with sweet music all the day long! Only, he was quite soon burdened by their unbearable weight, a whole forest’s worth of birds upon his shoulders day and night—and now it is his great wish that she make them go, and perhaps attend to his ailing back.”
    The tremendous crowd beneath Peps continued in such medical discourse, complaining of their various ailments that they hoped to have addressed, exchanging one story for the next.
    The trestleman began to wonder at how he was to get himself down. He regarded the sky, in which black clouds clotted out much of the daylight. High above the clusters of sloping rooftops, a single soaring bird—a vulture. It circled lazily, lower and lower.
    There was a figure at the front of the crowd, the object of everyone’s attention. It was a familiar one to the trestleman, and he squinted in disbelief. A wormholed plank of wood stretched between a pair of barrels, and behind it was seated his young friend Ivy Manx. She wore, besides her leather workshop apron, a look of earnest determination and a slight frown upon her brow. Her golden hair was tied back with a piece of string, and above her—Peps could just make it out—dangled a small plaque that was even more thrilling to the citizens of Caux than the new Templar sign. The notice was written in the carefree script of a young girl.
    What Ails You?
Consult the Child of the
Prophecy
Miracle Healer on Duty
    ∼Donations Appreciated∼

Chapter Five
The Child of the Prophecy
    T he Prophecy to which Ivy’s plaque referred was a great and ancient one, passed down from generation to generation by a few wise scholars, and until recently had been all but forgotten. Even the parchment upon which it was written was lost—presumed burned in