by Logan Jacobs
Then I left the building and returned to the small building we had seen earlier that appeared to serve as the commander’s headquarters or something of that sort.
It had a desk with a chair, writing materials, a shelf of books, a trunk, a cot, and a fireplace. The first thing I noticed was that there were still embers glowing in the fireplace, and it was littered with black shreds of paper. I went over to investigate and realized that some shreds of paper had faint markings that suggested they had been maps, before someone burned them, probably upon realizing that Lizzy and I were going to overrun the camp. Others had markings that looked like some kind of text, but it was in a language I couldn’t read. There wasn’t enough left of the papers for me to figure out any useful information.
But then, I realized there was something else buried among the ashes. A mirror of about five or six inches in diameter, framed in obsidian. There was a faint crack along one edge of the glass, but other than that it seemed to have been unharmed by the flames from which it was still warm. I picked it up and stared into it.
What was reflected back from the surface of the glass was not my face.
Instead, it was a strange scene, so lifelike that it looked like I was viewing it through a window, except that it was in miniature. I could see snowy mountain cliffs of a dark reddish color striated with seams of white and black, beneath a stormy looking sky. A fortress was carved into the cliffs. I could see windows and doors that stacked on top of each other for what looked like hundreds of feet. I could also see people moving around in front of the fortress in what looked like some kind of military formations. I squinted closer and realized with a start that they weren’t human, at least not exactly. They were on average far bigger and stronger than humans, and their anatomy was supplemented with predatory animal features.
As I peered closer and closer, in an attempt to figure out what the Thorvinians in the mirror were doing and where this fortress of theirs was, the mirror exploded.
Chapter Five
As shards of glass flew in every direction, including toward my face and body, I reflexively dodged by reassimilating back into my other body that had just finished fucking Lizzy.
I sent out my second self again right next to us as we got dressed.
Lizzy blinked. “What were you up to?”
“Investigating,” I said, and described to her the scene that I had seen in the strange mirror with the Thorvinian fortress carved into the snowy red cliffs. “Do you have any idea where that might be? It must be one of his two main bases. I don’t know whether it’s the one in the west or the one in the east. But if I could find out where it was…”
She grinned wolfishly. “We could do today all over again, on a bigger scale. That sounds like a great fucking time. But I dunno about any red cliffs with snow on ‘em. My crews never really roamed anyplace far off with no people around like that probably was, cause there wouldn’t be no one to rob out there.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, we’ll have to ask around. We’d better get back to the inn now.”
“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll morph back then, if you ain’t too tired to keep up that is.”
Honestly I would have preferred to just stroll back at her human pace, but when she put it that way, I wasn’t about to say so. I just nodded curtly and refrained from sighing as my sexy companion was instantly replaced by a massive carnivore with questionable breath and zero sense of personal space.
I each took one bushel of nerisbane before we left. Marvincus had only demanded one, but it didn’t really take me any extra effort to bring two since there were two of me anyway, and I figured it didn’t hurt to earn a little extra goodwill from the hostile gnome.
When Lizzy and I got back, the city gates of Bjurna were already closed for the night, so we found a spot in the woods nearby to bed down. Lizzy stayed in her wolf form, and I used her as a gigantic shaggy heated bed and blanket while I also stayed awake to keep watch over us, although that probably wasn’t even necessary, since there were very few creatures in the woods that would be dumb enough to mess with wolf-Lizzy.
In the morning when we re-entered Bjurna and reunited with the rest of our companions and my other selves at The Cartwheeling Djinn, where we remained the guests of honor, over a delicious breakfast, I filled them in on all the details of Lizzy’s and my nerisbane expedition and the probable Thorvinian outpost we had unexpectedly stumbled across.
When I got to the part about the mirror that had been thrown into the fire in the commander’s headquarters, I had really been hoping that one of my friends, maybe Florenia with her extensive education including on the subjects of geography and geology, might have some idea where the Thorvinian fortress was.
But the duke’s daughter’s only comment on the matter was, “Hmm. What a fascinating phenomenon. It sounds as though the scrying device had some sort of self-destructing mechanism that must have activated when it registered your presence. I wonder if the flow of visual data was bidirectional and if the possessor of a linked device has now been alerted to the course of events at the outpost and to your identity, Qaar’endoth.”
“Uh,” I said. “Hope not, but not much we can do about it now if there was.”
Willobee croaked obnoxiously loudly, at a volume that I didn’t even think toads were supposed to be able to attain.
“I’m not really sure what you mean,” I said. “Don’t worry, we’ll go find Marvincus and get you fixed up right after breakfast.”
“It must be awful for you to be forced to be so ugly,” Ilandere said with genuine concern and no malicious intent whatsoever. “I’m sorry you’ve had to endure this. But I knew Vander and Lizzy would come through with the nerisbane, so everything will be okay soon.”
Willobee croaked in a disgruntled manner.
“I think maybe he’s trying to tell us something,” Elodette said. “Something particular, I mean.”
Willobee croaked emphatically and hopped clumsily up and down. It seemed to me that he wasn’t very comfortable with the mechanics of his toad body, but then again he wasn’t exactly graceful as a gnome either, and if he was telling the truth about his age, then he had had over two centuries to grow accustomed to his squat three-foot-tall body.
“Oh, do you want more honey mead?” Ilandere guessed as she poured some into a saucer for him and pushed it across the table to him. None of the rest of us were drinking, since it was still the early morning, but we had ordered a mug for Willobee since we were familiar enough with his habits to know that he would want one.
Willobee croaked in a tone of frustration and annoyance which I thought meant that for once he wasn’t interested in drinking. Then a moment later he waddled forward and plopped his fat little lavender body into the honey mead and closed his bulbous eyes.
“Musta got up on the wrong side of the bed,” Lizzy remarked.
“Oh, I put him on a pillow last night with a handkerchief for a blanket,” the centaur princess replied. “I didn’t want him to get lost in the bed or suffocated under the blankets.”
Lizzy chortled, Florenia giggled, and even Elodette was smirking. The lavender toad silently imbibed as much alcohol as possible while keeping his eyes closed and ignoring us all.
When we had eaten as much free, delicious food as could fit in our stomachs, except Florenia and Ilandere, who were the only light eaters among us, we picked up our two bushels of nerisbane and headed out to the courtyard to Marvincus’ hideously gaudy wagon to see if we could find the magician masquerading as a god.
As soon as we knocked on the wooden part of the wagon, the dusky star-studded canvas swished aside and his magenta-bearded, chubby little gnomish face so reminiscent of Willobee’s usual one popped out. Marvincus’ huge turquoise eyes widened even farther with surprise when he recognized me and my companions.
Then he quickly recovered his composure and inquired airily, “Back so soon? Perhaps you decided it was not really worthwhile to risk your necks for that treacherous little blob? A w
ise decision in my opinion, a very wise one indeed. But without the nerisbane, I’m afraid there is no amount of threats or entreaties in the world that could move me, Marvincus the Magnificent, to--”
“Ah shut up,” Lizzy growled as she rammed him in the pudgy stomach with a bushel of nerisbane.
The little gnome was literally bowled over, not with surprise but by the force of impact. He got tangled up in the canvas covering of his wagon. Once he had picked himself up and indignantly brushed himself off, he peered down into the basket that Lizzy continued to hold out impatiently and looked absolutely flabbergasted. He plucked out a leafy nerisbane stem, held it up two inches from his eyes, sniffed it, rubbed a leaf between his fingers, and even licked it experimentally.
“Satisfied that it’s the genuine article?” I asked sarcastically.
“…Yes,” Marvincus admitted reluctantly after a moment’s hesitation. He blinked his turquoise eyes rapidly. I could see the conflicting emotions crossing his face. He hadn’t really wanted us to triumph, possibly he hadn’t wanted us to return alive from Kanminar at all, but at the same time, he was a little overwhelmed by the unexpected windfall of the precious ingredient, and his greed and eagerness for it seemed to be getting the better of his continued animosity against Willobee and, by extension, the rest of us.
Finally he made a grab for the basket, and Lizzy snatched it away while smugly clicking her tongue, “Tch tch tch tch. First thing’s first, Sparkles.”
The she-wolf looked over expectantly at Ilandere, who shyly held out her two hands to the gnome which cradled an extremely intoxicated lavender toad.
Marvincus sighed melodramatically, but then he muttered, more to himself than to us, “A gnome of my word…” and pointed his finger at Willobee.
Ilandere let out a startled yelp as a full-sized gnome tumbled from her grasp and rolled onto the ground a few feet below.
Willobee picked himself up groggily and cast Marvincus the most vicious glare that I had ever seen any living being direct toward another.
Short and stout, with rosy cheeks, a knobby nose, tufted lavender brows and hairy ears, a long silken beard, and luminous jade green eyes, clad in his customary suit of velvet clothes topped off with an ostrich plume cap, every inch of him looked exactly as wonderfully absurd as I remembered.
Ilandere apparently felt the same way. The centaur princess promptly burst into tears of happiness and scooped up the gnome and clutched him to her pink silk-clad bosom in a soggy embrace. When she released him, she exclaimed, “I missed you so much! I mean, I know you were right here with us the whole time, but… it wasn’t quite the same, you know. Without you being able to talk and all. And with you being all… slimy and warty like that. I’m so sorry you had to endure such a horrible experience, I can’t imagine how awful it would be to be a toad.”
“Yeah, I dunno if it was just cause of your natural complexion or cause of all the honey mead baths, but you kinda looked sick all the time so it can’t have been fun,” Lizzy agreed.
“What a tremendous blow to your already nonexistent dignity,” Elodette added with her usual charm.
Willobee blinked at the sympathetic women surrounding him. Then he looked back over at Marvincus, who cradled the bushel of Nerisbane with a decidedly gloating expression on his face.
“Well, actually,” Willobee announced haughtily, “occupying a form so utterly unlike my own gloriously handsome one, the form of another species altogether, was a… transcendent experience. It enabled me to commune with my environment through a completely altered set of senses and has permanently deepened my perception of the universe. The toad may appear to be a lowly creature to the… uninitiated, but in reality, its constitution is, ah, uniquely… earthy and resonant. It was the perfect vessel for me to expand my consciousness through.”
“Oh yeah?” Lizzy asked innocently. “If you liked it so much, maybe we shouldn’ta bothered tryin’ to help you. Want Sparkles here to change you back? So you can keep being more spiritual and all?”
“My transfigurative experience has already been completed to my perfect satisfaction,” Willobee replied hastily. “A moment sooner and I would not have gleaned the full depth of enhanced insight that the opportunity afforded. A moment later and occupying the form of a toad may have grown… somewhat tedious.”
“Yeah, right,” Lizzy scoffed. “Well, what’s the next move then, Vander? Now we got our gnome back the way we like him and all?”
Before I could answer, Willobee puffed out his decidedly unmuscular chest and announced, “Now, we set our path for the Cliffs of Nadirizi.”
“…The cliffs of what?” Lizzy asked.
“Nadirizi,” Willobee said proudly. “I tried to tell you all before, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“We were listening, but you weren’t coherent,” Florenia corrected him.
“Yeah, you just kept fucking croaking at us like that would do any good,” Lizzy said.
“The Cliffs of Nadirizi,” I repeated. “You mean that’s where the Thorvinian fortress that I saw in the mirror is? That’s the place with the reddish marbled cliffs, where it’s snowy?”
“None other like it in all of Ambria,” Willobee confirmed. “I knew immediately as soon as you described the place. Nadirizi is an ancient city in the cliffs. Thorvinius may be occupying it now, but he and his followers didn’t build it. All the rooms and tunnels were chiseled into the stone by hand a thousand years ago, by people hiding from the wrath of other gods long gone by now.”
“Long gone by now?” Ilandere repeated. “But aren’t gods immortal?”
“Gods don’t age and die the way humans do,” Willobee replied, “but was Hakmut immortal? Was Pyralis?”
“Fuck no,” Lizzy laughed. “But hey, how do you know about this Naz-ricky place anyhow? I never heard of it.”
“That’s a long story, but I would be happy to tell it to you,” Willobee said. “It is where I sired several of my children--”
“Ugh, no, stop,” Lizzy interrupted immediately. “I don’t wanna know no more.”
“The important thing is, do you know how to get from here to there?” I asked Willobee. “And how far is it?”
“Oh, probably about a week’s travel or so to the east,” the gnome replied. “Of course I know how. My sense of direction is impeccable, and I never forget a place once I’ve been there.”
“But this isn’t the same route that you took, is it?” I asked. “Because I didn’t think you’d ever been to the desert or to Bjurna before, or any of the other places we’ve gone together.”
“No, no, those places were all new, but I trust in the winds to bring me tidings of Nadirizi,” Willobee stated. I didn’t know whether that was supposed to be some kind of poetic metaphor or if the gnome really meant that he could read the winds somehow. With him, it was always hard to tell.
“Hmph!” Marvincus interjected from his wagon. He continued to stand there clutching his basket of nerisbane and eavesdropping on our conversation with a distasteful expression on his face. “Well I, for my part, shall hope that someday soon the winds bear me tidings of your undignified demise and or more permanent transfiguration into something suitably grotesque.”
It occurred to me that, given his local popularity and professional success, there was a way the other gnome could potentially be useful to us. The innkeeper at The Cartwheeling Djinn had been so desperate to convince me and my companions to stay on as regular performers that he had been only too eager to provide us with luxurious accommodations and gourmet feasts free of charge, but not everyone we met on the rest of our journey was going to react the same way to our current penniless state. “Hey,” I said as I held up the second basket full of nerisbane. “What would you be willing to pay us for another bushel of nerisbane?”
Marvincus attempted to look as casual and uninterested as possible, but his turquoise eyes glowed from within for an instant the same way that Willobee’s did when he got especially excited about something. “Oh, you have a
nother bushel?” he asked. “Well, that seems like a bit of a superfluous quantity for my purposes, really, and my wagon is already quite crowded with so many vastly more vital resources…”
“I understand completely,” I said at the same time as Lizzy snorted,
“You mean ‘so many vastly more vital resources’ like that unicorn mask thing you got in there? What’re you gonna possibly do with that, put it over girl gnomes’ heads when you fuck ‘em and pretend you’re riding a unicorn instead of a lumpy little thing that looks like you?”
“Hey hey hey, no need to be mean,” I said. That remark was a bit vicious even for Lizzy, but I knew that her pronounced animosity toward Marvincus was because of her protectiveness of Willobee, and that as much as she had been happy to laugh at his predicament while he was a toad, she had still been genuinely worried for him underneath. “If Marvincus doesn’t want the extra nerisbane, that’s no problem. Guess we’ll just discard it. Or, I know. We can find another magician to sell it to on our way out of town. There are so many performers all over the streets, I’m sure we’ll find someone else who’s interested.”
Marvincus gulped and said hastily, “Well, it isn’t really worth very much, but ah, since you went to the trouble of getting it for me, I suppose I could be charitable and give you a little something for it. So you won’t have to go to the trouble of finding another buyer. There are so many unscrupulous people in Bjurna ready to cheat you out of your property, it’s much better to deal with someone you already know.”
“Yeah, someone that you already know wants to kill you or turn you into a toad,” Lizzy agreed sarcastically. “That sounds like a much better bet.”
“I suppose that, taking into account the hardship and risk that you went to to pluck these scrawny weeds, I would be willing to give you five hundred,” Marvincus said as he ignored the she-wolf.
“Five hundred!” sputtered Willobee. Every single syllable dripped with the kind of outrage that you might expect from someone accusing another person of murdering children and eating them for dinner.