Chapter 14

There was no point in hurrying to the next town, since it was a four-day trip and we would have to wait around for three days until the next market day. We strolled back to the vendor where Elger had found the lodestone. I was anxious to see it; I was very curious about this thing called "magnetism."

I said hello to the merchant and asked to see the lodestone ring. He handed it to me, and I felt a tremendous jolt run up and down my body as soon as it touched my skin. I dropped the ring and fainted! The merchant and my wives reacted in astonishment as I collapsed. I regained consciousness by the time I hit the ground, so there was not a whole lot of carrying on over me. I sat up and shook my head. Elger and the merchant helped me to my feet, and I shook my head to clear it. "I beg your pardon, Sir. I don't know what came over me, but I suspect that I need to find a place to lie down. Please excuse me."

I leaned on Elger and managed to walk back to our cart. Once there, I lay down and slept for about five hours. Shit, I still didn't know what magnetism was or looked like, but I did know that I wanted nothing to do with it! I had a lot of questions for my mentors the next time I talked to them. I was happy when I remembered that the full moon was due in five more days.

We fooled around for the rest of the day and left for the next town the next morning. We had plenty of time to get there, so we did not push the horses. We arrived at the town the day before the usual market day. I double checked the scales, the weights, and the packages of mother-of-pearl. I had 43 pounds of the stuff, and I hoped to turn all of that into amber at this market.

I had never been to this town before, so I didn't know what to expect, exactly. We waited until mid-morning to enter the market place and went directly to the section dealing in luxuries. My wives had finally learned my feelings about random shopping before we had taken care of necessary business, so there was no delay, this time, in finding the people with the amber for sale.

We walked down the line and I was shocked to see how many of the merchants had pink to very dark red auras. A little bit of red did not bother me, but I was reluctant to deal with anybody showing a lot of red in his aura. "Just my luck!" I thought as I came to the vendor with the most high quality amber for sale. He had the most red in his aura of any vendor I had seen so far. From the looks of things, I had no choice but to deal with this unsavory person.

I told him that I was looking for a large quantity of amber and had mother-of-pearl to trade. I showed him a sample of my trading material, and I was surprised to see the red intensify in his aura. Obviously, he wanted my mother-of-pearl and was not inclined to be overly honest with how he got it. We negotiated a trade very favorable to me, and I had a feeling that he expected to recover his amber shortly after the trade was complete.

It took about three hours to complete the exchange. He wanted the entire 47 pounds of mother-of-pearl, and he surrendered 66 pounds of amber to get it. Once the bargain had been struck, we went back to the cart to pick up the mother-of-pearl. When there, I warned my wives to expect treachery at any time, though I didn't expect a problem until after the trade had been made. We hauled the mother-of-pearl to the vendor and picked up our 66 pounds of amber in four packages.

We had almost gotten all the way back to our cart when we passed an alley entrance. Six men jumped at us, swinging clubs and ordering us to drop the amber. We were expecting this, so we waited until the men almost reached us before we morphed. Six men, with or without clubs, were no match for four enraged werewolves. Every one of them lost an important segment from his throat before he could turn and run away.

We morphed back into human form and dragged the thieves into the depths of the alley. We stowed the amber anywhere convenient and left the town without further delay. We kept up a steady pace as long as the horses could hold out, and we were able to put a considerable distance between us and that accursed town. My only regret was that we were not able to meet out justice to that foul vendor.

I finally was able to contact my mentors. "What is this magnetism stuff that is so dangerous? I was knocked unconscious when I touched a ring that had a setting made of something called a lodestone. Why did that happen?"

The dream faded out and I woke up. I thought about the dream for a while, and then dropped off to sleep until I woke up in time for breakfast.

It took over a week to get back to my old village. Aklag and Ully already knew of the plans the mentors had for them to travel with us, so they had started work on their cart. The villagers didn't want them to leave, but were resigned to it. Everybody was working on the new cart, and it was nearly finished. All they needed now were some horses, and they could only come from the plains dwellers in the south.

We decided that Orda and I would journey south to find some horses. We figured that we could travel more quickly if we went as werewolves and only changed into human form when we were ready to buy the horses. If we were lucky, we could find Black Horse and get the horses we needed from him. We would take a few pieces of amber with us to pay for the horses, since amber was universally desired. Carrying the amber would be simple: we would hold the amber in our hands and morph into wolves. When we changed back, the amber would reappear in our hands.

It was still about six weeks before the babies were due, so we could be back with the horses by then. Holly and Trudy could easily get along without Orda and me until then. We had little to do to get ready, other than selecting the small pieces of amber we would use for trade, so Orda and I were soon on our way.

We ate up the miles as we ran at a comfortable speed toward where we thought we could find Black Horse. Our enhanced stamina let us travel at a fast speed and we had no wear and tear on our foot pads because of our invulnerability. We only paused to hunt, eat, and sleep, none of which took us very long. In only four days, we saw our first signs of the horse people.