‘You know, Corinne, it’s the shocked tone that most fills me with confidence-
Vrrrrrrrr. The hoof came down hard, loosening their grip on the moss and almost throwing them back down to the ground. They fixed their hold and then quickly began to scale the Rhinoholm. Climbing came naturally to the forest gnome, so she scurried up the hind leg. When she reached the hip, she turned around and grabbed hold of Corinne’s hand, hoisting her up.
On top of the beast they were no longer hampered by the vibrations they’d felt on the ground. In fact, the ‘ground’ up on the rhino’s back was quite stable.
‘Do you think we should speak to any villagers?’ Sawwse asked.
‘To find out how this happened?’
‘Well, sure. I was actually thinking that we could deliver a kind of ‘we’re here to save you’ speech. But yes, let’s ask them what happened too.’
They ran through the village, but didn’t bump into anyone.
‘Perhaps they are too scared to leave their houses,’ Corinne said, listening for any movement nearby.
‘Come on.’ Sawwse grabbed Corinne’s robe again. ‘I have an idea.’
She led Corinne to the very edge of the village, above the rhino’s head. Here sat five teenagers, feet dangling over the edge of a ridge on the neck. They spun around to face the two newcomers.
‘This just keeps getting better and better,’ said a gangly boy with large teeth. He elbowed one of the others. ‘Now we’ve got a mage and a gnome visiting.’
‘Where are the rest of the villagers?’ Corinne asked, suddenly serious.
‘Hiding in the chapel probably,’ another teenager replied, nonchalantly.
‘Aren’t you scared?’ Sawwse probed.
The youths turned to each other and laughed.
‘Scared? This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to us,’ said the gangly boy.
‘We’re bored. Life is just… okay,’ said another.
‘Nothing ever happens here.’
Sawwse sympathised with them. Hadn’t she left the Blue Forest for precisely this reason? She was about to say as much when Corinne intervened.
‘It’s funny. We can use words like staid pejoratively. Why is my life not more interesting? When will something happen to me? Be warned: our oral storytellers forgo happiness in their tales, relying on excitement in its place. But excitement will not keep you warm at night when you are old. Do not yearn to live in interesting times when things are fine. You may just end up regretting it.’
Finishing her speech, and ignoring the five completely blank faces, Corinne jumped down onto the rhino’s head, moving past the teenagers and looking out at the landscape. The other settlement on the ground was much closer now.
‘Now then Sawwse, what is your idea?’ she called back.
The little gnome thought back to her lesson from the previous day. Con Duco had said that it was important not to use imbuement, because it could be dangerous. ‘But Con Duco’s not sitting on top of a stampeding Rhinoholm,’ she thought. Sawwse reflected that, if anything, her new teacher ought to be pleased with her initiative.
Sawwse shrugged and then skip-hopped over to Corinne, whispering something in her ear. The mage nodded and consulted her spellbook. She rifled through the pages until she found the correct charm. Corinne took a few moments to familiarise herself with the spell and then pocketed her book. She traced circles around her own eyes with her index fingers: a faint blue glow shimmered around her. Then, holding her hands together, she began to incant.
Meanwhile, Sawwse rummaged in her pockets and pulled out a sponge. She slid down the rhino’s head and stopped at its left eye. The Rhinoholm paid no notice of the tiny gnome, who was but an insect to the beast. Taking the sponge, Sawwse wiped the corner of the rhino’s eye and then scampered back up to Corinne. She took the sponge to her face and began rubbing the white rhino secretion all over it. Another rummage in her pocket and she retrieved a piece of charcoal. Sawwse rubbed this around her eyes and over her lips. After all, if she was going to assume the role of Efthalia, the legendary Elvish clown-monk, surely she should look the part.
The gnome took several deep breaths before filling her lungs and pausing. She played out an Elven melody in her head, and ever so gently began to sing.
The teenagers watched, transfixed by this strange opera being played out in front of them.
Corinne placed her palm flat on Sawwse’s chest. Tilting her head down, she concentrated. The beautiful Elven lyrics pouring from the gnome’s mouth got increasingly louder. Its soporific effects transcended language.
The teenagers were the first to drop. They didn’t realise it was happening, only that the dreamlike scene in front of them blurred with their actual dreams as they gently drifted off to sleep. The rest of the villagers, hidden in their houses and seeking solace in the chapel, were the next to fall into slumber. Even the Rhinoholm began to make weary, grunting noises.
Magically amplified, Sawwse’s Elven opera reached even further, into the nearing settlement below. The stonemason slumped over his gargoyle, a teacher and pupils dropped their parchment and quills, a shopkeeper dozed off on a pile of flour sacks, and the large crowd that had gathered to watch in wonder as the behemoth approached, now sank together into a pile of pleasant dreams.
Finally, the Rhinoholm could no longer lift its feet. It groaned, thunderously. It had felt good to stretch its legs after centuries of sleep, but it felt much better to close its eyes. Gradually it folded itself back down to the ground and lowered its head, fast asleep for several hundred more years.
Sawwse and Corinne smiled at one another.
‘That was beautiful, Sawwse,’ the mage said. ‘Thank you very much.’
They shook hands, not knowing what else to do, and this formality made the gnome giggle.
Exhausted, they sank down beside the sleeping teenagers and took their time recovering. Sawwse was radiant after her performance. This was, technically, her first solo concert, so she didn’t even mind that almost all of her audience had fallen asleep.
Elra had taken cover behind some sturdy-looking clouds. After a few hours, Sawwse and Corinne slid down the front of the rhino’s head. As they touched the ground, a tiny moustachioed man with an enormous hat arrived on a donkey. He was out of breath, and so was the donkey. It harrumphed, and bucked the man onto the earth beside the gnome and the mage.
Corinne offered him her hand.
‘Ah, perhaps you are the chief of this village?’
‘Correct,’ he answered curtly. The chief dusted himself off, picked up his elaborate headgear, and began to climb the Rhinoholm.
‘Now now, the general procedure indicates that we should settle up first,’ said Corinne, pulling the chief back down by the end of his robes.
The chief harrumphed, and his donkey mimicked the sound.
‘This is not where my village is.’
Sawwse looked atop the hill.
‘I think it is. It looks good here. You’ve got a lake view. That’ll do a lot for property prices,’ she said, grinning widely. ‘And you now have the added bonus of being closer to the nearby town - which we stopped from being crushed, by the way, thank you very much.’ Sawwse finished with a deep bow.
‘I don’t care about the town. My village was established in-’
‘Would you rather it was underwater?’ the gnome asked.
‘I’d rather it was where I left it.’
The mage cleared her throat. She held up a contract, signed both by the chief and by Convener.
‘Feel free to read the conditions you agreed to again, but we have satisfied our requirements, and require you to do the same.’
This time the chief and his donkey harrumphed in unison. They looked up at the rhino, now slumbering as peacefully as a block of granite, and back to the adventurers.
‘Fine,’ he grumbled, and went fishing in one of the panniers strapped to the side of the donkey.
--
After they had received their payment, Sawwse and Corinne ambled back to the city, beating the nightfall by minutes.
Returning to the guild, they sought out Convener who was, unusually, sat alone by the empty hearth. He seemed to be gazing into it intently, but it was hard to tell. The top of the mask was furrowed, resembling a frown. It relaxed as two new bodies entered the space.
‘Welcome back, friends,’ Convener said quietly, taking the contract Corinne handed to him. ‘You stopped the Rhinoholm. Well done.’
He turned away from the hearth to face them, and Sawwse quickly recounted their day’s work.
‘I must admit, Elven opera tends to put me to sleep as well,’ he said. The mask shifted ever so slightly into a smile.
‘It was a well-executed plan from Sawwse.’ Corinne gestured to the gnome. ‘Here is the settlement.’ She placed a coin purse on the small wooden stool next to Convener.
He carefully placed his hand inside and retrieved forty aur.
‘This is for the guild. The rest is to be divided evenly.’
Convener turned back to the empty hearth, while Corinne took up the coin purse and gestured for Sawwse to follow her to another table within the inn. She tipped the contents of the purse onto the table and counted up sixty aur each. Sawwse’s eyes widened. It was more than enough to pay what she owed Con Duco. The gnome was pleased about this, but distracted by Convener’s preoccupied air.
‘What do you imagine he’s thinking about?’ whispered Sawwse.
The trainee mage considered the question carefully.
‘Perhaps Alla’fyr? Perhaps the idol?’ she suggested. ‘It is hard to tell what’s going on behind that mask. But perhaps it’s best we don’t know. Now, I believe we’ve earnt some dinner.’
The smells that came wafting in from the kitchen were hardly appetising: burnt garlic, charcoal and liquorice. When the food itself appeared, it did nothing to overturn their low expectations. The anatomy of small fish was made perfectly clear to the gnome, as she found tiny chunks of flesh between a thousand bones. The fish sat atop a pile of limp, soggy vegetables. Two misshapen potatoes rounded off the disappointing dinner.
‘Excuse me,’ Corinne said, standing. ‘I must see someone about this.’
Sawwse chuckled. Once she’d eaten as much of the food as she dared, the gnome pushed her plate to one side and retrieved the Gnomeopedia. She heaved the tome out of her bag and it fell onto the table with a big thunk.
The compendium of knowledge was written in a friendly tone, but organised in a typically Gnomish way, chaotically. Sawwse flicked past pages on Frimbledops and Frimpledeeps, the terrain of (Northern) Brastos, to the sounds of the Sao bird, until she found what she was looking for: Magic. It was one of the longer entries in the Gnomeopedia. The Gnehsehgs who had put together the book described their experience of magic, the many uses they had encountered, and how dangerous it could be. Sawwse found one section particularly interesting:
The Twelve have, apparently, been chosen to bring balance to magic across the world, but this changes depending on whom you ask. Having encountered several instances of magic used for nefarious purposes, even in such peaceful times as these, I now somewhat question the function of The Twelve. According to some people we have spoken with, it has been a hundred or so years since any of The Twelve have been seen. Worrying, if these are our protectors, no? (See further notes in the separate section on The Twelve).
She searched the book but could find no further section on The Twelve. ‘I suppose that was a prank as well,’ Sawwse thought, flicking back to the ‘Magic’ section. At the end of the passage, she noticed another note scratched in familiar handwriting, signed by ‘RS’. This further deepened her dislike for whoever RS was.
This note discussed the alluring appeal of magic for Gnomish purposes: “Rather than shying away from the darker spells, we should be utilising them. Imagine the pranks we could play.”
Sawwse tutted.
‘I’d like to see you try and get them past Corinne’s regulations,’ she muttered aloud.
Reading about the dangers of magic had put Alla’fyr back in her mind. ‘Even if she hasn’t fallen from The Twelve, shouldn’t The Twelve put a stop to an evil mage as quickly as possible?’ she pondered. ‘Oh well, perhaps they have already done so.’
Sawwse shut the Gnomeopedia and cheerily left the room. She spent the rest of the evening bugging her guild mates for details about their own quests, and retelling the afternoon’s adventures with the Rhinoholm. Meanwhile, Convener continued to sit, staring into the unlit hearth, far away.
--
The retrieved idol pulsated with a magnetic energy. The Dorienne Council members’ eyes were transfixed, and their mouths remained firmly shut. When Eugenie had ordered the Council to research the Ancient Device, most councillors believed it to be an initial grief-stricken request that would soon be overruled, once their leader’s rationality returned. The counter-order never came, and the councillors were deeply troubled by the appearance of the mercenary, Alla’fyr. Due to the might of the Dorienne army, the state had never needed to solicit external help, particularly not from unsavoury rogues, so it came as a shock when Eugenie insisted upon commissioning Alla’fyr to search for the magical relic. The Council implored Eugenie not to continue with the search. Some council members wanted Eugenie to focus on domestic issues and others were worried about protecting Dorienne’s borders, however, the majority did not want Eugenie to succeed because they were terrified of her potentially mishandling such a powerful magical device. The Council were now in a state of shock that Alla’fyr had brought back the idol, having assumed that she would take Eugenie’s money and flee. They sat and waited for Eugenie to arrive, accompanied, as she always was now, by Alla’fyr.
Of late, Eugenie had taken to wearing her military uniform. The plated metal and blood red cloak fastened to it created an imposing look, especially alongside Alla’fyr’s crimson robes. She stormed into the room, Alla’fyr gliding behind her.
‘Distinguished members of the Council. You complained that this would be a fool’s errand. A slight I decided to overlook. Yet, here we are, with one of the three idols.’
She stood with her hands splayed on the round table and met each of her councillors in the eye, one by one. Alla’fyr stood to her right, slightly behind but still in a place of prominence.
A short councillor with a goatee gave a careful cough before speaking.
‘Your High-. Ma’am, we were all saying how impressive it was that Alla’fyr was able to find this idol.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the table.
‘The only small thing, and it is a small thing, is that we’re not sure,’ another polite cough, ‘we’re not sure how much we trust Alla’fyr.’
‘She’s been here shorter than an elf’s stay in a mine,’ one of the councillors shouted, unable to contain himself. A low rumble of agreement resonated around the chamber.
‘We’re just worried about where this might lead,’ a councillor wearing a blue silk scarf added.
Eugenie said nothing, but kept her eyes on the idol.
‘How do we know that this idol even has anything to do with the Device? She could have brought back any shiny-looking trophy to us.’
The rightful ruler of the Dorienne kingdom looked up from the idol and half-turned towards the robed mage. Nodding a signal of some sort, Alla’fyr stepped forward and took her hands out from within her robes.
Another murmur broke out amongst the councillors, unsure of what might happen next.
Alla’fyr held her left palm out, facing up. With her right hand she made a circular motion above the left. She moved her hand faster and faster before stopping dead. Lifting both hands together, she drew a complex pattern in the air with her index fingers, finally straining as she forced a huge burst of fire onto the table.
The idol burned brightly and began to skitter around the table, re
flecting crimson flames around the room. The table ignited and caused the councillors to jump from their seats, some falling backwards to get out of the way. Eugenie and Alla’fyr stayed where they were, staring into the fire, the flames licking at Eugenie’s plated armour.
Once the fire had died down, the councillors saw the idol glowing bright white. Returning to the table, they could see the trace of something burned into the wood.
‘It’s a map,’ Eugenie spoke, plainly, ‘though an incomplete one.’ The idol had indeed branded the table with a faint outline of a map. ‘There are two more idols, and when all three maps are joined together, the path to the Ancient Device will be complete.’
The councillors looked at each other in disbelief, while Alla’fyr tried hard to stop her smirk from showing.
‘Of course, you will all divert your efforts to searching for the other idols. Now that our search is yielding results, it is more important than ever to forge ahead,’ Eugenie spoke determinedly. After a pause, she turned from the table and began to leave the room.
‘My Queen, please wait-’, the silken-scarfed councillor stood as she spoke.
‘What did I tell you about titles?’
Eugenie turned around slowly, furious.
‘There has been no coronation, no ceremony in which I magically become the queen. There is a king in Doriana and he will serve again.’
The council member felt deeply uncomfortable. She had served King Poht for many years, and developed a close working relationship with him that bordered on friendship. As such, she had seen Eugenie grow from a babe to an incredibly talented and fierce young woman. It was upsetting to see her so drastically altered by grief. Complete disregard of reason was not something the Council were used to, and it had caught them unawares.
‘Eugenie, please wait. We haven’t yet debriefed you on the affairs of state.’
‘The Ancient Device and the idols are our only affairs of state.’
‘But we are receiving worrying reports from both Magnarra and Ishgari, on our western borders. It seems the alliances your father worked so hard to negotiate are beginning to falter. These allies somehow know you are preoccupied. They’re testing us to see how much they can get away with. I recommend we divert some of our troops to these borders in order to make a strong statement.’
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