by Logan Jacobs
The rest of us stood by and waited while Willobee and Marvincus engaged in a passionate no holds barred verbal sparring match that lasted for almost half an hour. In many ways beyond just their appearances the two gnomes seemed to be a lot more alike than they were different. I wondered if that was part of the reason they hated each other’s guts so much. Finally, we were rewarded for our patience with a bulging bag of coins that Willobee triumphantly held up to show off to us and then immediately pocketed, never mind that he hadn’t been involved in the retrieval of the nerisbane in any way, shape, or form except for having necessitated the task in the first place by getting himself turned into a toad.
With that, we parted company with Marvincus with mutual relief on all sides and headed for the stables to retrieve our five horses from the grooms. We had four destriers named Generosity, Virility, Fury, and Slayer, and a little dappled courser named Chivalry. In the past, Lizzy had ridden one destrier while I rode the other three, Florenia rode the courser, and Willobee rode on Ilandere’s back. Since we didn’t have a spare horse, and Elodette wasn’t too keen on carrying riders although she had consented to do it before a few times, and I didn’t want to make the situation awkward by requesting it of her, I just transferred all the weapons from one of my bodies to another and reassimilated the weaponless body for the time being. I didn’t see any reason why I needed all four while we rode, and if an unexpected reason came up, then I could just send my fourth self out right away.
Then, we loaded the horses up with our packs and set out on the road again.
“Thought you were going to wait to tackle Thorvinius till you made an army of selves,” Lizzy said. “Don’t get me wrong, I know four of you can do a lot of damage and all, but still, don’t he got thousands of those monster slaves fighting for him?”
“Yes,” I said. “But this is only one of his two main bases, and I think it’s the lesser one. I think the largest one is the one to the west closer to where my temple was, and I will return there eventually to destroy the seat of his power, but this secondary base would be a good first step and it would weaken him significantly if I took it out. Besides, we can just go there and scout things out. If it doesn’t seem like there’s any plausible way to attack it with our current numbers, then we won’t. We’ll just store away the information for the future and wait until I gather more selves.”
“Well, I believe you can do things that seem impossible to other people, because I’ve seen it for myself so many times before,” Ilandere said sweetly. “But… how could there be a plausible way, when there are only nine of us including all four of you, and there are thousands of them, and Willobee and Florenia and I can’t even fight? I wish I could fight like Elodette and Lizzy can so that I could be of more help to you, Vander.”
“Don’t wish that,” I said. “I don’t want you getting in any more danger than I can help, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. But as for your question, well, I wouldn’t have a chance against a thousand or more Thorvinians in a pitched battle. But maybe there’s a way for me to use a fire or a toxin or something against them while they’re inside that fortress, if I could seal them in there somehow. Or maybe there’s a way for me make their cave system collapse. At least the entrances, so that they’d be trapped inside. I don’t know if any of those tactics are plausible yet since I haven’t even seen Nadirizi for myself, but my point is, there might be a way to even the odds.”
“Are you sure you’re not just letting your emotions get the better of your reasoning powers, human?” Elodette asked. I knew the warrior centaur would never back down from a battle if I brought her into one, but she also had a dislike for masculine bravado and dumb decisions.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m not committing to a battle here, I just… want to check things out, okay?”
“Of course,” Florenia said. “You know that I will gladly follow wherever you lead, Qaar’endoth, even if you lead us to martyrdom.”
She had a tendency to talk about martyrdom a lot whenever we discussed any of my riskier plans as a group which I didn’t think was very reassuring to the rest of my companions. When I looked around at them now, I saw that even though Florenia was serenely content and Lizzy looked pretty cheerful too, Ilandere looked nervous, Elodette looked grim, and Willobee looked glum.
“Hey, look here, guys,” I said. “When we went out to Kanminar, we weren’t expecting to stumble across that outpost. It’s almost like we were meant to find it, and meant to find that mirror, and then it was more good fortune on top of that that Willobee recognized Nadirizi and knows the way there. So I think it would be a waste and a real shame to ignore all those coincidences. I just… feel it in my bones that now is the right time to confront Thorvinius. But if we get there, and it doesn’t feel right, I’m not going to push you all into something that could get you killed. I’ve been patient so far, and I can keep being patient for as long as it takes for my revenge to be assured.”
Elodette rolled her gray eyes, but the rest of my companions looked slightly reassured.
“We trust your judgment, Vander,” Ilandere said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that. And I’m always going to respect input from the rest of you, too. This isn’t just my quest anymore.”
Eventually, we stopped for a midday meal in a peaceful flowery meadow, and while the rest of munched on the bread, cheese, and dried meat that we had packed away from The Cartwheeling Djinn, Ilandere wandered off a little ways and found a bush where she gathered some berries for us. This time, we made sure to ask Lizzy first whether the berries passed her sniff test before we started eating them.
“Willobee, what was it really like to be a toad?” Ilandere asked curiously.
The gnome thought about it for a while and finally replied, “… Itchy.”
“… Itchy?” Ilandere repeated in confusion.
“Yeah… I don’t really want to talk about it,” sighed Willobee, who usually loved nothing better than talking about himself. That was how we knew he must have been a bit traumatized by the whole ordeal.
Soon after that we packed away the foodstuffs and continued on our way. It was a crisp, clear day, with a sun that was bright but not too harsh, and everyone was in a fairly good mood after our series of recent triumphs with the Thorvinian outpost and with Marvincus. The hours passed pleasantly but uneventfully for once until it was nearly nightfall, and we reached the first settlement along our route since Bjurna.
It was a small idyllic village around the size of Ferndale with only about forty or so residences and didn’t have a gate of any kind. As we rode down the main dirt path in search of the village inn, a man wearing a billowing blue cape ran up to us, stared at us with wild eyes, and screeched, “They’re coming! They’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?” I asked as I wondered whether he could be referring to Thorvinians. I didn’t know whether their raids had reached this region of the kingdom. I didn’t think he was attacking any strongholds or settlements besides temples, but it was possible that this village did have a local god and temple. Although I supposed that if Thorvinius had been here before me, the ground would have been strewn with charred wood and bones and there wouldn’t be a single hut left standing.
“The fey folk,” the man muttered as he stared off somewhere in the distance past my shoulder. I noticed Ilandere glance that way nervously, and so did one of my selves just in case, but there was nothing there but quiet trees. “With their cold eyes and their long, long fingers.”
“Er, okay,” I said. “Well, what do they want with this village?”
“They want our souls, they feed on human souls,” the man replied dully. He was no longer frantic as he had been when he first approached us. Before I could ask him any more questions, he wandered away listlessly scratching his head.
Chapter Six
“Don’t mind him none, strangers,” called out a plump, friendly looking red-haired woman with an apron tied over
her gown. She was standing in front of the open door of her hut shaking out a broom. “He’s just had a bad pinch is all, he’ll be fine by morning.”
“So there are no… fey folk coming?” I asked.
“Fairlands, no!” she exclaimed with a giggle. “My, you are gullible, aren’t you? You’re a bit old to believe in tales of monsters.”
“Hmm,” I muttered to Lizzy. “Guess the Thorvinians definitely haven’t been around here yet then.”
“But you all look like very fine young men all the same,” the red-haired woman called out. “About the same age as my lads haven’t reached yet. And my, but you ladies are all so beautiful, as beautiful as my daughters could possibly wish to be. I hope you have a wonderful day!”
She let out a high-pitched giggle, retreated into her hut, and shut the door behind her.
“What a strange lady,” Lizzy said.
“But she seemed nice,” Ilandere pointed out hopefully.
“I don’t know, she seemed sorta off to me,” Lizzy said. “It’s like we’ve wandered into a village of the mad or something. I don’t think I like it none.”
“If you guys want, we could just camp out or something instead of trying to stay at an inn,” I said. “If you don’t feel comfortable here. But I don’t know, none of these people actually threatened us.”
“No, no, no, that seems quite unnecessary,” Willobee said. He pointed to a building farther down the path that was larger than the others we had passed so far in the village. “I bet that’s the inn. And it is my hope that these people, regardless of whether they are mad or not--”
“Serve honey mead?” Elodette sighed.
“Like gambling?” Lizzy asked.
“Both, if the prayers of my heart are answered,” the gnome replied. “I have had a very trying last day and a half, and all I wish for to lift my spirits is a decent establishment with civilized ways.”
By that, I knew he meant that he was hoping for an establishment full of friendly gambling-addicted drunkards. Swindling people out of their hard-earned money was my little lavender-bearded buddy’s favorite hobby. I wondered if that habit of his had anything to do with why Marvincus bore him a grudge. While traveling that day several of us had tried questioning him on the subject, but Willobee had proven stubbornly resistant to confessing and creatively sidestepped our inquiries every time until we gave up.
But whatever it was that Willobee had done to piss off the other gnome over a century ago, I didn’t have the heart to deny his request.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll go check out the inn, and if it seems too shady, we can just leave.”
“Unless the fey folk get us,” Lizzy scoffed.
“I’d rather you didn’t joke about that,” Ilandere squeaked.
Lizzy probably usually would have made some kind of rude remark about the centaur princess’ natural timidity, but she got distracted as she sniffed the air with her pretty little freckled nose. “Hmm,” she said with a slight frown. “I don’t know that smell.”
“Good smell or bad?” I asked.
The she-wolf shrugged. Her pointed ears pressed back against her wild mane of tawny hair a bit. “I dunno, neither,” she said.
One of me stayed outside to bring the horses to the stables. I also opened the door and went in first.
The scene that met our eyes did look like a house of confinement for the mad. The air was dim and smoky and had a distinctive semi-sweet smell I didn’t recognize that, as Lizzy had said, was neither exactly pleasant nor unpleasant. And all the inn customers, instead of sitting around tables, were lounging on pillows or just lying on the ground or standing upright swaying or pacing. None of them were eating food or drinking mead. The only things I could see them consuming were what looked like some kind of dark tea, which didn’t look like alcohol, and long pipes that they were smoking. And they all looked dreamy or frantic or ecstatic, with faraway stares in their eyes like that of the man who had first come up to warn us about the approach of the cold-eyed, long fingered fey folk.
Now, I realized that they had probably been entirely in his mind.
A woman near us rolled on the ground, either laughing or crying but it was hard to tell which. Elodette distastefully stepped back so that the woman wouldn’t bump into her hooves.
For obvious reasons, our group including two centaurs, a part-wolf, a lavender-bearded gnome, and four apparent quadruplets-- none of us half bad-looking if I did say so myself, especially if Willobee was to be believed that he was in fact an exceptionally handsome example of his kind-- tended to attract a lot of stares wherever we went. Sometimes strangers admired us and sometimes they feared or mistrusted us, but either way, they couldn’t fail to notice us.
These people, however, either gazed straight through us as if we were invisible to them, or cocked their heads, ogled us a little, and seemed to accept us as a fairly mundane vision compared to the rest of their presumable hallucinations.
“Hmm,” Willobee said finally as the rest of us gaped. “What do you suppose is in those teacups and those pipes?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it is, the substance is driving these people mad,” Elodette hissed.
“Yes, it is,” the gnome replied thoughtfully. “We should try a bit.”
“What?” Ilandere gasped.
“Well, aren’t you curious what these people are seeing?” Willobee asked.
“No,” Elodette said. “It clearly isn’t real, so why would I wish to be deceived by my own senses?”
“But maybe it is real,” Willobee argued, “and we simply cannot see it because we have not ingested this… perception enhancement aid of theirs.”
“Well, then, humans are clearly not intended to perceive it,” Elodette replied, “and centaurs and gnomes probably aren’t either. I would rather not see it and stay sane than become mad.”
“I don’t see why, since being sane seems to make you so grumpy all the time,” Willobee retorted huffily.
“Oh, that’s not because she’s sane, it’s because she’s sexually repressed,” Florenia stated matter-of-factly.
“How dare y--” the powerful centaur began angrily.
Luckily, the conversation was interrupted just then in the form of a little monkey wearing a purple cap and vest that scampered up to our group carrying a pipe and a cup of tea and chittered politely as he held them out to us.
Willobee reached eagerly for the pipe.
“No,” I said sharply.
Willobee blinked at me and wheedled, “But Master… ”
“I can’t afford to have you drifting off into some kind of dream state like these people,” I told him. “I rely on your wits so much that I need you to keep them about you.”
Willobee still looked longingly at the monkey’s offerings, but his cheeks flushed pink at the praise. “Very well, Master,” he sighed. “I suppose if all our fates truly rest upon my shoulders, then--”
At that point, the proprietress came up to us. Her long blonde hair was coiled up in an elaborate bun held in place with two golden sticks, and she was clad in a skimpy silk gown of the same purple color as the monkey’s accessories. Her eyes were blue, her skin was creamy, and she seemed a lot more lucid than her customers.
“Welcome to my den of wonders,” she said. “I am Madame Genevieve. How may I enhance your existences?”
“Er,” I said. “We’re really just looking for a place to stay the night, if you have a few beds available. And some food and drink would be nice, if you have something that won’t, you know, mess with our minds. Something that’s not… enhanced.”
Madame Genevieve nodded her graceful head. “To be sure, I can provide all that, but I can provide so much more. That may be what your bodies require for the maintenance of mere health, but tell me, what is it that your heart’s desire?”
The woman just seemed to me like a better-looking version of the aggressive Bjurnan merchants who had been willing to say whatever it took to trick passersby into making a purcha
se, and I had no intention of answering her question, but then all my companions started earnestly chiming in.
“I yearn to become intimately acquainted with all the splendors and oddities of the world and sample all the delicacies and intoxicants that it has to offer,” Willobee answered solemnly.
“I just want to share my life with the god that I love,” Ilandere said, “and maybe, someday, to have a house of my own… with a feather bed and an apple orchard… and children that I could raise in peace and happiness.”
“All I desire is to serve Qaar’endoth to the utmost of my abilities,” Florenia purred, “and to be rewarded with the divine ecstasy of our carnal relations.”
“Hmm, I guess I like sex too, and also power, and owning a bunch of pretty things, and getting to tear some bastards’ guts out on a regular basis is a lotta fun too,” Lizzy said.
Only Elodette declined to answer aloud, although she had a thoughtful look in her usual cold, sharp eyes that indicated she was definitely pondering the question.
“And you, my lord?” Madame Genevieve asked me. I had a strange feeling that she wasn’t just addressing the question to a random one of my selves, which many people tended to do when they talked to me for the first time. It was almost like she intuited that the three of me were one and didn’t even find it peculiar for my consciousness to be shared between multiple bodies.
I didn’t even have a chance to respond before Lizzy answered for me, “He wants to kill his mortal enemy, a god called Thorvinius. And we’re gonna help him to do it.”
“Oh, I see,” Madame Genevieve replied nonchalantly. “Well, to kill a god is no simple undertaking. I myself do not have the power to help you, but I know of one who can.”
“You got strong warriors for hire around here?” Lizzy asked.
“No,” Madame Genevieve said. “We have an oracle named Peryenia who will be able to give you the advice that you need.”
“Here?” I asked doubtfully. I was no longer sure what to call the place exactly. I guess it functioned sort of as an inn, if she was willing to give us beds for the night, but there were clearly other things for sale there too.