Portals
Page 26
The dark warrior remained still for a moment as it gazed at the space where but a moment before Holk had lain. With a deft motion it sheathed its sword then turned toward the room’s entrance.
There it found five Ti-Ocks; four bore the Ti-Ock’s favored weapon; the fifth was Mirror-Toter. Mirror-Toter gave the warrior a grin and bowed.
“It is done, Master.”
Black warrior no more, a small human boy-child strode toward the assembled Ti-Ocks. “Indeed, Kazzra.”
The Ti-Ocks stepped back and bowed reverently as the boy-child passed between them.
Epilog
“When did you finish?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
At a table in the Blue Heron, a tavern within the village of Kran, two friends enjoyed a mug of ale at day’s end.
One, with black hair and bearing the build of a blacksmith, glanced at his friend. “Heard your patron was, uh, crazy?”
Phillip, a well-digger, mason, and the village’s jack-of-all-trades, nodded. “You could say that. Sat atop a box the entire time we dug the hole. He’d draw his sword every time one of us so much as got close to him.”
“Hole? Thought he hired your team to dig a well.”
Draining the last of his ale, Phillip nodded. “That’s what we thought, too.”
“But it wasn’t?” Gazing at his own empty mug, Murg the Blacksmith signaled the barmaid for another round.
Shaking his head and chuckling, Phillip replied, “Nope. When we got down to where water began seeping in faster than we could remove it, he had us come out. You’ll never guess what he did then.”
“What?”
“Tossed that box into the hole and had us cover it with dirt.”
“No.”
Phillip nodded. “True, I say. Once the box had a few feet covering it, he had us roll a dozen boulders, each taking five men to move, into the hole and fill it up the rest of the way with dirt. Once we had the hole all but filled in, we laid down another layer of rock.”
Murg shook his head. “Ever find out what was in the box?”
“No, but the way he was protecting it would seem to indicate it held something of value.”
“Maybe the body of his wife was in it.”
“I doubt that. We were digging that hole for quite a while. Had someone been in it…” he tapped his nose, “we would have known.” Seeing the look of avarice his friend assumed, he added, “It wasn’t gold, neither. Not heavy enough.”
“How do you know if you never got close to it?”
“Saw the way he lifted it. Whatever was in there, it was none too heavy.”
“Strange.”
Phillip nodded. “Tell me about it.”
“What happened to him?”
“Once the last layer of stone was in place, he tossed us a bag filled with coins, gold coins the likes of which I’ve never seen, and then walked into the forest.”
Producing one of the coins, he handed it to his friend. One side bore the image of a sword, the other a curve-headed axe.
Murg took the coin, turned it to view both images, then tapped it on the tabletop. “Is it real?”
“Cranic claimed it was; had that checked first thing.”
After a brief period of inspecting the coin, he handed it back to his friend. “So what’s your next project?”
Tales grew of the man and the buried object. Several attempts were made to discover what was down there. But the manner in which the box had been buried stymied every would-be treasure hunter. The boulders were too massive and being at the water table made them impossible to move. Of the man, none ever discovered who he had been or where he had gone.
The End
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