"Eroc?"
"You know my recommendations,” said Janyle's gruff governor.
"Is closing off Rift Dale an option?” Merainor put to Maldoch.
"If it'll make you sleep easier at night, do it,” guided the wizard.
"I'll want your ships stationed permanently in Murant Basin from now on,” Eroc stipulated to Hennario. “We're vulnerable up there along the beaches below Southrock Splinter."
The port ruler gave his fellow gerent a promissory nod.
Maldoch prodded the Troll's knee with the toe of his boot. “J'tard, have you anything to add?” The taciturn Sulander shook his floppy eared head. “Then this meeting is adjourned until such time Garrich recovers his health,” the wizard declared. He started scaling the rope ladder out.
"Have you a pressing engagement someplace else?” Merainor directed up at the ascending mage.
"I have a long distance call to place,” returned the climbing wizard.
* * * *
"Keep your voice down!"
Maldoch's body-less, bluish head glared resentfully at Parndolc.
"I wish you'd drop me a simple line sometimes,” wished the snappish technical wizard. “A letter is quieter and less flashy than having your head pop out of thin air all the time."
"Where's the fun in sending a note, Parny?"
"Hush, will you. My head is thumping louder than an Ogre beating on a rattorn."
Rotating his unattached, ghostly head a full 360 degrees, Maldoch's perplexity at finding his unshaven brother camped out in a tree-pit snow shelter grew. The refuge lived up to its name. Parndolc had dug a five-foot deep circular hole around the straight trunk of a bushy pine, sawing branches off the tree to arrange over the top as overhead cover and using the leftovers to insulate the slushy bottom of the pit. It was midmorning, about an hour ahead of Elf time, and the snowbound forest was a contrast of nippy whiteness and branchy gloom.
"Brother, that doesn't look anything like the inside of a castle. Whereabouts in Northwood are you?"
"Someplace east of Habrell Fork."
Maldoch's face darkened a deeper, angrier shade of blue. “You were supposed to be at Dalcorne High two months ago! What's taking you so long?"
"Might be the planned stopovers for liquid refreshment. Climbing up and over Westknoll was thirsty work."
"You wouldn't also be drowning your sorrows?"
"I am toasting a dearly departed drinking companion ... repeatedly,” Parndolc owned up. “Not that you'd know anything about losing a friend, since you haven't any."
"Staying drunk won't help keep those left to you."
"I'm actually about to restart yesterday's binge. Sleep rudely crimps my boozing style."
"Which entails getting sozzled in a hole in the ground."
"Drunks favor drinking alone."
"I knew it was a mistake dispatching you to the land of mead and whisky. I take it you've officially had word of the king's funeral. I've been incommunicado and not heard a thing."
Lifting a nearly spent bottle of brandy from beneath the blanket wrapped about his portly frame and unhappily frowning at its emptied state, Parndolc growled. “When I procured this from the lads at the Fork's stockade, fresh news hadn't filtered down from on high for some weeks."
"And when was that?"
"A day or so ago,” he recalled with boozy haziness. “But the general consensus remained unchanged, in that Old Dalcorne was on his last legs."
"Odd, there's no confirmation...” mused the baffled wizard. But pigeon post was unreliable in wintertime, due to mail birds getting swallowed up in snowstorms or dined on by ravenous daylight-hunting hawk owls. “I guess no news is good news."
"No news is always a bad sign,” contradicted Parndolc.
"Giving you the perfect excuse to get drunk."
"As if I need one."
"You daft old lush,” remonstrated Maldoch. “Drag your sorry behind up to the Dwarf capital quick-smart."
"What's the rush? My hurrying won't make my pal any livelier. Besides, I'm on sabbatical."
"That's the forte of holidaying clergy."
"I dress like a monk. Might as well act like one."
"Then stop boozing. They don't drink."
"You've obviously never guzzled sacramental wine with them behind the altar. The clergy are also celibate. I'll quit the bottle if you abstain from bedding anything in a skirt."
"No need to go that far, Parny."
"Get off my back then."
"March up to Dalcorne High and I'll lay off."
"I would, except you're aware I have an issue dealing with, you know..."
"Death,” supplied Maldoch, finding his brother's inability to say the word, let alone confront the grim subject of mortality, babyish and irritating. Parndolc's necrophobia stemmed from membership of the exclusive fraternity that outlived all others except the gods. Locked away in seclusion pursuing his avenues of experimentation while Maldoch traipsed the continent exposed to the Fellow Races foibles and frailties, it was no wonder the hermit-inventor refused to face life's absolute certainty.
"Maybe I'll just mosey on up to Oriz,” contemplated Parndolc. “Catnapping for a blissful century or two might improve my outlook on life."
"At least sleeping you'll stay sober."
"In that case, scratch the idea. I'll just stretch out my private wake for Dal Senior to a year or more."
"You don't have that luxury. The thaw starts shortly and the Goblins will surely be on the move with the meltwater. We both need to be maneuvering against them to put a spoke in Omelchor's spring plans."
"What's the point of it all, Mal? We work our fingers to the bone ... me inventing, you conjuring. And still evil runs riot. Terrath sprouted from the ashes of a ravaged, desecrated world. We should've expected weeds to regrow.” When the spellcaster's concerned face looked to lodge an objection, Parndolc held up a mittened palm. “Don't tell me it's the booze speaking, or its effects wearing off. You feel the futility of our efforts too. The five races are born with one foot in the grave. Why prolong their burial?” He swigged the last of his firewater, the liquid warming his innards and aggravating his depression.
"Drinking yourself into oblivion is not the answer."
Burping, the uncaring inventor tossed the drained bottle away. “No harm giving it a bash."
"Drunkenness makes you morose. I can't talk to you when you're this way."
"Then stop moving your lips and making sounds."
Appealing to Parndolc's soberer side, submerged beneath a sea of glumness, the spellcaster asked, “Don't you want to hear how the roundup of the champions is progressing?'
"Not especially."
Undaunted, Maldoch filled his indifferent brother in. “One Troll and Elf accounted for. My stopover at Underland on the way up should take care of the Gnome component."
Roused from his apathetic hangover, Parndolc expressed mild interest. “You didn't mention Garrich. I bet the boy's breaking hearts all over Gwilhaire."
Maldoch's image squirmed ... no mean feat for a disembodied head. Parndolc picked up on that nuance like a kingfisher diving on a minnow. “Mal, you're hiding something."
"It's nothing."
"Bugger it, I'll decide that."
The spellcaster gave up holding out with a sigh of defeat. “Garrich is feeling under the weather."
Parndolc was flabbergasted. “Brother, you've ever been the master of understatement. How bad is he really?"
"Our boy couldn't come much closer to death without actually dying,” related the mage. “In saying that, he is on the mend."
"Sounds like a tale in the telling."
"One that can wait until I'm in Dwarf country with the kids."
"I haven't been blind drunk the whole time,” Parndolc proclaimed in his defense. “In between swigs I was able to catch up on my reading. Loitering in a hole all day is a great motivator to read anything."
"Such as the Dissension Scroll?"
"Not counting
the label on this brandy bottle, it's the only other reading material I have on me."
"Any revelations?"
Rubbing his stubbled chin, Parndolc grimaced from the effort of pushing past his hangover to think. “Dunno. For some reason line one of verse four caught my eye. ‘Ware leaf that walks'."
An ironic laugh escaped Maldoch's bearded mouth at hearing the belated warning to beware the Drakenweed.
"What are you laughing about?"
"I'll let in you in on the joke when I see you, Parny. What other lines jumped out at you?"
"The last one in the fourth verse."
"You're obsessing over that one passage,” said the magical wizard. “Tribal signs on blackest southern night'?” he guessed.
"You can recall that, yet keep forgetting to lift the toilet seat when you pee,” criticized Parndolc.
"I remember the important stuff. What about that line? It is pretty hazy."
"Not if you break it down into its context. The trick is not to overanalyze the message. If you approach it at face value, without trying to read too much into it, the line's meaning becomes as clear as day."
Maldoch differed. “Not from where I'm floating."
"Then start thinking like a weatherman,” Parndolc challenged him. “What would be the ‘blackest southern night'? Here's a little tip. I worked out that ‘night’ should've been written as ‘day'."
"You've based that assumption on what?"
"The answer,” Parndolc said rather cryptically. “It makes sense once you figure it out."
Saving himself the hassle of prodding Parndolc for his conclusion, Maldoch had a go at unraveling the riddle himself. “A black day would have to be ... an eclipse,” he deduced after a moment's consideration. “So obvious it's invisible."
"Hey, no fair,” huffed Parndolc. “That took me a full week of hard thinking to decipher."
"Because you were drunk doing it. What does the front part, ‘tribal signs', point to?"
Parndolc stamped some warmth into his cold feet, the shudders travelling up his unsteady legs to rattle his dehydrated brain. “Haven't a clue yet. The tribe reference might be linked to the Goblins, or the Trolls for that matter."
"I won't be losing any sleep over the vague prediction for a sunless day,” said Maldoch.
"There's no corresponding line in the Codretic Text?” persisted Parndolc.
The spellcaster considered the query. ‘No, but there is a piece in the Shamanist Ode that fits the bill: ‘Beastless swords flash upon a sunless night.’ The start of that pertinent line is just as nonsensical as yours.” Flakes of snow began falling distressingly through Maldoch's ethereal head. “We'll worry about it another time,” he resolved. “The race war we can no longer avert is about to be run and it's one footrace we dare not afford to lose. If we don't get cracking, Omelchor and Ahnorr will reach the finish post before we even come off the starting block. I aim to avoid that dire eventuality at all cost. Hasten up to Dalcorne High and tell Junior to warm the teapot for my arrival."
"That might take a while. I intend doing the rounds of the local taverns en route. Lucky for me Northwood boasts just as many alehouses as trees."
"Forget the pub crawl and sober up. We have vital work to accomplish. If we fail and let the Goblins overrun Carallord, igniting the wildfire of war nationwide, Terrath falls back into darkness. So stay on your toes."
"I can barely feel my tootsies,” griped the inventive wizard, even as the blue glow lighting the dim innards of the pit faded along with Maldoch's shaggy face. Tucking his mitts under his armpits, shivering as the warming effects of the brandy chilled, Parndolc scowled up at the tree-framed sky through a gap in the cut boughs roofing his rude shelter. “Maker, I'm getting frostbite. This trip would've been far more pleasant in the summertime."
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Thirty Two
Garrich was bored. Lounging on the lush, grassy bank of an alder-shaded stream, his bare feet dangling in the balmy water, the Goblin flicked the yellow crabapple he was munching on away into the slothful current. The half-eaten core plopped into the shallow, muddy-bottomed ribbon and bobbed downstream, harried by investigative koi basking in between triangular leafed water lilies and spindlier aquatic buttercups. Unimpressed by the playfulness of the distinctive redheaded, white-bodied fish endemic to these waterways, Garrich exhaled a sigh of utter discontentment.
Gwilhaire Wood was perfect. Too perfect.
The weather was boringly clement, the temperature unendingly mild. On those rare days when rainfall broke the monotony of perpetual sunshine, it was a sensual drizzle misting out of skies smattered with clouds. Even the rain seemed muted and controlled, unwilling to rise above anything but a gentle patter.
Maldoch had departed to take ship from Illebard four weeks earlier, stranding Garrich in the Elf capital on the grounds that the Goblin had not regained sufficient strength to accompany himself and J'tard on the hazardous search north for a Gnome champion to add to their quest.
"A trip to the coast will do me good,” Garrich had argued. “A dose of sea air will speed up my recovery faster than lazing about this depressing place. You said so yourself."
"Boy, you grew up in a forest. I thought you liked trees."
"I do, but Elf trees aren't normal. They're too big, too straight, too idyllic."
Another illusion shattered by the swinging sledgehammer of reality. As a younger boy, Garrich naively idealized the Elves and their fabled homeland. They were an ancient people wreathed in obscurity and lore, that air of mysticism a credible substitute for meaty facts. Getting dumped in Gwilhaire Wood fast spoiled that perception. The timberland was a picture postcard and tediously unexciting for it. Nothing untoward ever happened. Just once Garrich wanted to hear the thud of a rotted branch crashing earthwards to the forest floor, or the drama of a gale howling unrepressed through groaning boughs. All he heard back was the insufferably delightful twittering of blissful songbirds. Its people were disappointingly humanlike, cursed with petty jealousies despite the surface unity melding their close-knit community. He vaguely remembered Maldoch saying something of that ilk not long after they met.
Pestering the wizard for all his worth until he finally relented, Garrich eventually got in his own way and undertook the short journey south to the port to farewell his fellow questers. Terwain was all for the sojourn. “Lumber the Illebardians with this troublesome Losther and get him out of our hair,” he selfishly counseled Merainor.
Entrusting their Goblin sidekick to the care of a Lothberen minder endorsed by the Elf Queen herself for the duration of their absence, the madcap magician and his Troll travel mate then promptly shipped out with the seafarer Hennario. Garrich snorted. His newfound playfellow, none other than the Elven quota for the quest, acted more like a fed up jailer than an escort-cum-guide.
A disharmonious chord twanged in the soporific afternoon air. Calling over his shoulder, Garrich lamented, “Ayron, must you continue worrying that poor wildcat?"
The Elf doggedly plucking the strings of his lute stared up in disgust at the Goblin's insult. “Philistine. What does a Losther know about music?"
His shoulders shrugging, Garrich rejoined, “Nothing really. But I'm guessing you can't even carry a tune across that stream.” The answering mangle of notes confirmed his barb had struck home. Contrary to popular misconception, not all Elves were musically inclined.
Giving up practice for the day, the rangy musician from Janyle ambled over to stand beside his music critic. Ayron was quintessentially Elven: lithe-limbed, golden-haired, and blue-eyed. His blonde locks draped about his slim shoulders in graceful curls, accentuated by the balancing woodland greens of his seamless Foresters’ dress of matching jerkin and breeches. In many respects Elf males were more fastidious in their personal grooming than their poised womenfolk. The forsaken lute hoisted over one shoulder was not the only accessory Ayron carried. Strapped across his back by its taut bowstring rested a lethal Elven longbow, par
tnered by a holster of unwaged arrows slung from a wide waist belt of bark treated to the suppleness of leather. Ayron was a musician with teeth!
Noticing now the flash of red and white scales beneath the sluggishly flowing water, Garrich casually suggested, “Perhaps a spot of fishing will lessen the tedium."
Ayron scowled his disapproval. “Whatever has a fish done to deserve being hooked in the mouth and pulled ashore to expire from asphyxiation? Talk about barbaric."
The Goblin chuckled. “That's rich coming from an archer."
"I only shoot at targets,” the Elf defended himself.
"Which are invariably trees, living things sacred to you lot."
That angle never occurred to the bullheaded Forester, and he refused to concede the point. “I still haven't murdered a single creature,” he proudly espoused.
Seeing his vegetarian watchdog squirm only encouraged Garrich. “Plants are alive, yet you uproot and kill them in order to eat.'
"This conversation's too deep for me. We should return,” Ayron tersely decided. Presenting the Goblin with his back, he briskly made for the forest margin.
Scrambling to pull his boots on, Garrich collected his sword and hurried up the sloping bank after him. Ayron's best efforts to have him trade in his standout black leather attire for homelier Elven wear to downplay his glaring Western heritage had so far fallen on deaf ears, as did his call for Garrich to surrender his weapon and so walk about Illebard unprotected. Everywhere he went the Goblin encountered prejudice and hostility, Prilthar being the solitary exception. The good doctor was compassionate, kindly, and unfortunately back in Lothberen. He had given Garrich his clean bill of health, prescribing further rest once his patient reached the coast. Despite Illebard being a far more liberal place than Gwilhaire's northern settlements, a visiting Goblin and Lothberen—even those granted the ruling Elf's official hospitality—generated mistrust. Shudonn's showy broadsword gave Garrich the reassuring confidence to stand tall as himself ... no small effort for a short Westie dumped in the land of lanky Southies.
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