by Peter David
The northerner looked in confusion at Thomas. “Aren’t yuh going t’go in?”
“No,” said Thomas. “I don’t have to. I see what I’m looking for.”
“The ring?”
“Not the ring.” He was rummaging around in his purse and came up with a handful of coins. He sifted through them, and James couldn’t imagine what he was looking for.
“Then how are yuh going t’find it?”
Thomas selected one silver piece and held it up. It glittered nicely in the light, much more so than any of the others had. Thomas nodded approvingly and then flipped the coin across the floor. It bounced a few times before landing at the far side of the room, which wasn’t all that large and therefore not all that far. “Now,” said Thomas, “we wait.”
“Wait for what?” The northerner was looking increasingly impatient and was clearly getting angrier. “How long are we supposed t’wait?”
“As long as it takes although it shouldn’t be too long . . . if you stop talking, that is. The more you talk, the longer it’s probably going to require.” Thomas looked at him blandly. “Do you have some other pressing engagement?”
It didn’t seem possible that the northerner could scowl even more fiercely than he already had, but as it turned out, that was the case. Nevertheless, his beard bristling as if in response to his indignation, the northerner lapsed into silence.
Nothing happened for long minutes. The coin simply sat there. Others in the inn, curious due to the lack of fighting or, at the very least, the severe mauling that had failed to ensue, crept up the steps to get a better look. The stairs creaked under their treads, and James would do his best to shush them, although it wasn’t as if he had much clearer an idea of what was transpiring than anyone else.
And then, just when it seemed as if the northerner’s admittedly limited patience was at its end, Thomas’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed. “There,” he said, so softly that it could scarcely be heard.
There was a loose plank in the floorboard at the far corner. Thomas had been eagle-eyed enough to spot it even when no one else had. Now the board moved ever so slightly, and a small pinkish nose emerged from beneath. Because the light was dim, and the men at the door remained unmoving at Thomas’s behest, the owner of the nose grew confident, thinking itself unobserved. Seconds later, it had emerged from the plank. It was a small, gray-furred rodent, larger than a mouse but smaller than a rat, with its eyes set up higher on its head than a typical rat’s would be. It skittered across the floor straight toward the coin and picked it up in its tiny claws. It gnawed on the coin for a moment and then, even though it clearly wasn’t any manner of food, turned and scuttled off with it back toward the plank.
“What the hell—?” breathed the northerner.
“Shhh!” Thomas said sharply. The instant the creature had disappeared beneath the plank, Thomas was inside the room and on his knees. He preemptively put a finger to his lips, indicating that everyone else should remain quiet. Now they could all hear the skittering of the tiny creature under the floorboards. Thomas followed it, putting his head against the floor so that he could hear it more clearly. He followed it as it made its way around the room. Seconds later Thomas was crawling under the bed, and then he stopped. He waited a few moments, and said, “Someone slide me a dagger.” Unsurprisingly, the northerner was able to produce one instantly. He knelt and slid it carefully under the bed. They heard a faint scratching, then Thomas emerged from the bed. He extended the dagger to the northerner, hilt first, and then indicated the bed. “Push it aside,” he said.
“But what was that thing?”
“It’s called a pack rat. I heard something scuttling around under the floor downstairs earlier on. When you told me what had happened, I remembered it. They’re pretty common in more deserted areas in the land. If they see something sparkly and are carrying something when they do, they tend to drop whatever it is they have in their paws so that they can grab up the shiny item. And I think its nest is right under there.”
The northerner, needing no further urging, yanked aside the bed and revealed an “X” on the floor that Thomas had carved into it with the dagger. “Now,” said Thomas, “you can use the dagger to pry up the—”
The northerner dropped to one knee, drew back his huge right fist, and slammed it into the floor right on the mark that Thomas had etched upon it. The boards offered no more resistance than would have a thick piece of paper.
“Or you can just punch through the floor,” said Thomas with a faint sigh.
He yanked up the floorboards, and there was an outraged squeal from beneath. There was the pack rat, looking up at them in great indignation, chittering at them and obviously scolding them for the intrusion. The northerner let out a roar like a wounded lion, and the pack rat, apparently realizing its precarious position, opted to bolt from there as quickly as it could. “I don’t believe it,” growled the northerner, staring down into the hole. He reached in, and his large hand emerged with a fistful of brightly glimmering trinkets. Most of them were more or less junk, but there were a few valuable-looking items in there. One of them was his ring, which he quickly slipped onto his oversized finger. And there was Thomas’s coin, which the northerner flipped over to Thomas, who caught it deftly.
“What about the other things in there?” said James.
The northerner glowered at him in that way that only a northerner could. “Adequate payment for my inconvenience,” he said.
James was about to offer protest, but Thomas put a hand on his arm and shook his head, indicating that seeking further hostilities with the beefy man would probably not be in either of their best interests.
Minutes later, they were back at their table in the main room. No one was saying anything to them. Some of them were even looking resentful, which Thomas couldn’t quite understand and said as much to James in a low voice.
“Maybe they’re just ingrates,” said James with a shrug.
“Or maybe,” said a low, clipped voice, “they would have welcomed a brawl, and you spoiled their fun.” The hawk-faced man who had been off in the corner had pulled his chair over to them and was now leaning forward, resting his hands on the handle of his cane. “Of course, they also know on some level that you did them a favor since that behemoth would undoubtedly have massacred the lot of them single-handedly. But they’d never admit to that. So they have no choice but to glower at you in vague dissatisfaction.” He paused and allowed a small smile to pull at the edges of his mouth. “A pack rat. You’re astute.”
“What’s a ‘stute’?” said James uncertainly.
The man stared at James for a moment as if trying to determine whether he was serious or not. Then, apparently, he decided it wasn’t worth the effort and turned back to Thomas. “Of course, if you had not become involved, I have little doubt that I would have been able to figure out the fate of the ring myself. But your intercession was welcome.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. It saved me the minor effort of having to climb the stairs.” He inclined his head slightly in lieu of extending a hand to be shaken. “Quentin Locke. Pleasure to meet you officially.”
“Thomas Kirkman,” said Thomas, and he nodded toward James. “James Skelton.”
“Young Master Skelton,” said Locke, “seems to have taken a dislike to me.”
Thomas looked questioningly to James. James simply shrugged, and said, “I don’t like boastful people.”
“Really. Then you must have little patience with Heroes since they are renowned for standing upon street corners and declaiming their greatness for all and sundry. How will you be Heroes if you do not embrace the proper mind-set?”
“What makes you think we want to be Heroes?” said Thomas.
“Why Thomas, don’t you know?” James said sarcastically. “Mr. Quentin Locke here knows everything. After all, he would have been able to figure out about the pack rat if he could only be bothered to climb a flight of stairs. He said so himself. Easy to figure th
ings out after the fact.”
“Indeed.” Locke gave James no more than a cursory glance. “You come from a poor family in Bowerstone. Multiple siblings of which you are the second oldest. You have a fondness for sweets that you do not indulge as much as you would like, and you are only barely literate. You attend this young man”—and he nodded toward Thomas—“as a servant although you are as much friend as he has ever had. And you, Mr. Kirkman,” he continued, “are a well-off son of a textile merchant, your mother died recently, and you have boundless antipathy toward your father and an excessive interest in balverines.”
The boys sat stunned at this litany. It wasn’t as if he was telling them anything they did not know, but the fact that he knew it as well completely blindsided them. “He’s a wizard,” whispered James. “You’re a wizard.”
“He’s right. You’re a wizard.”
“Hardly.”
“How did you know all that?” said Thomas.
“I know what I know, and that is all you need to know, save this.” And he leaned forward, and said in a hushed voice, “There is more danger on your path than you could possibly anticipate. There are things going on, forces at work, that could swallow you whole unless you’re careful.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am as sure of this as I am that the northerner will come to you in a manner that you will perceive as threatening but which actually is not. Be ready for all things.” He pulled slightly on the handle of his cane, and the boys were surprised to see it come loose from the walking stick to reveal the gleaming edge of a blade attached to it. There was a sword secreted within the cane. Quentin Locke nodded once to acknowledge that they had seen what he was showing them before sliding it back into place. He touched his brow, as if tapping the brim of a nonexistent hat, and said, “We will see each other again, I have no doubt.” And with that he rose from the table and was out the door.
The boys regarded each other with an equal mix of amazement, skepticism, and amusement. “What the hell are we supposed to make of that?” said James at last.
“He said he wasn’t a wizard.”
“Would someone who was a wizard admit to it, in this day and age?”
“A good point,” admitted Thomas. “Still . . . I suppose maybe he was some sort of eccentric making lucky guesses.” But he wasn’t entirely convincing even himself, much less James.
Suddenly, James was half rising to his feet defensively. Thomas turned to see what James was looking at, and there came the northerner, gripping a musket in his hand.
“Oh no,” muttered James.
Thomas was likewise worried, his hand moving toward his sword.
If the northerner saw the defensive gesture, he gave no indication. Instead, he laid the gun down on the table and stepped back. “I don’t understand,” said Thomas.
“This is for you. Oh, and this.” And he tossed a small leather bag onto the table next to the rifle. “Some ammunition. Wouldn’t be of much use without it.”
“I . . . still don’t understand.”
“I can’t abide being in any man’s debt. Against the northern creed. We give weapons as thanks.”
“That’s . . . interesting,” James said slowly. “Just out of curiosity, how often do northerners get attacked while they’re trying to express their gratitude?”
“More often than ye’d think. People are just ungrateful, I guess.”
James nodded. “That’s probably it.”
“Anyway”—and the northerner patted the musket—“use it wisely. Have yuh ever fired one before?”
“No. I imagine that it’s like a bow?”
“Yes, except the recoil can knock out yer teeth if you’re not careful.” He smiled broadly for the first time, pulling back his lips. There was a gaping hole in the middle.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good man.” He patted Thomas on the shoulder, nearly dislocating it in the process, and then turned and walked away.
“Well,” said James in amazement, staring at the newly acquired rifle on the table. “What do you think of that?”
“I think,” said Thomas, “it’s rather interesting that that’s the first time in my life anyone has ever referred to me as a man instead of a boy. I have to say”—and he grinned broadly—“I rather like it. It all worked out well.”
James raised his glass. “To the pack rat.”
“To the pack rat,” agreed Thomas, and they clinked glasses.
As they did so, the tavern wench came over and slapped down a piece of paper between them. Thomas looked down at it and arched an eyebrow. “What’s this?”
“The bill for the hole in the upstairs floor that’s there thanks to you.”
“But we didn’t punch a hole in the floor!” James protested. “The northerner did!”
“Then you tell him to pay,” she said.
James was about to continue to complain, but Thomas, with a heavy sigh, reached into his money purse and pulled out the requisite amount. The wench pocketed it with a disdainful look and walked away.
“Stupid pack rat,” muttered James.
I FROWN, PUZZLED, SOME BIT OF INFORMATION niggling at me. That’s how it often seems to me these days. That there is always something I am trying to recall and it is just beyond me, just out of reach.
“Locke,” I finally say, as the narrator of this little fable stops and looks at me in guarded surprise. “Quentin Locke.”
“Yes,” says the speaker, and then adds almost as afterthought, “What of him?”
“The names of Thomas Kirkman and James Skelton are unknown to me, although I mean no insult to what I am sure are two sterling young men ...”
“You are the king. You can insult whomever you wish if that is your desire.”
“That is as may be, but the point is that the name Quentin Locke is known to me. Or . . . perhaps someone else with that name, or a similar name . . . ?”
“He has relatives. They tend to get around.”
“Thomas and James.”
“Pardon, Your Majesty?”
“The boys. You left them in the tavern, so to speak.”
“Ah. You were prompting me to continue. A thousand pardons, Majesty, I should have understood immediately.” He settles back into his narrative. “The two hardy lads—or more precisely, one who was a man and the other who had aspirations to be so—departed upon the next morning and made their way east.
“Hunting was not always plentiful, however, and the travelers were not always sanguine about spending their nights sleeping out under the stars, particularly as—the farther east they went—the more inclement and even unpredictable the weather would become. But taking up residence indoors naturally cost money, and although Thomas was not without financial resources, it was easy for them to become depleted. And so—”
“They took up jobs? Resorted to thievery?”
“Neither extreme, as it turns out,” he tells me with a smile. “James, as it so happens, was quite proficient in games of skill and chance for monetary benefits—”
“You mean gambling.”
“I do. He was quite the cardplayer, was James Skelton. Thomas, as honest as the day is long, did not have the requisite control over his demeanor. He was an abysmal liar and therefore not particularly adept at bluffing or discerning when it was better to withdraw from a game or push hard for further gain. James, by contrast, was a skilled reader of others’ moods and temperaments. Plus he was wise enough to win just so much and no more. Not enough to garner ill will or engender anger or confrontation, but more than enough for their purposes, particularly as they moved from town to town.
“And all along the way, Thomas would inquire of balverines. For every fifty people he would ask, from forty-nine of them he would receive laughs or disdainful looks or pitying stares followed by the invariable shaking of heads and mutters of, ‘Some people’ or ‘A grown man, believing in such things. Imagine!’
“But there was always the one in fifty . . . the one in f
ifty whose voice would drop to a hush and who would look around fearfully as if concerned that creatures might leap from the shadows cast upon the walls by firelight from a nearby hearth . . . who would nod and speak of the creatures that Thomas sought. They might tell a tale of having come upon one themselves and reveal a vicious scar that was a souvenir of the encounter. Or they might claim to know someone, or know someone who knew someone else, although the more distant the source, the more elaborate the description.
“ ‘Where to find them, then?’ Thomas would ask.
“And they would look at him as if upon a lunatic, and they would ask why in the world someone would seek out such creatures instead of determining where they were and then taking pains to head in the exact opposite direction. And Thomas’s face would be set and determined, and he would simply say, ‘I have my reasons.’ ‘So do madmen have their reasons for what they do, but that does not make them any the less mad,’ would be the reply, or some variation thereof. Finally, though, the advice would always come down to the same thing. ‘East,’ he would be told. ‘East is the way of the balverine. Last I’ve heard, last I knew, last anyone knew, they all withdrew east.’ ”
“Why?” I interject. I am aware that this man, this spinner of stories, dislikes interruptions, but then again, I am king, and royalty does have its privileges. I know that and so does he, and so although there is a brief flash of impatience upon his face, he does not give voice to that impatience. “Why east?”
“Why do you think, Majesty?” he says.
I give it some brief thought. “They would have been either running away from something . . . or toward something. If the former, then—were I to hazard a guess—it would be away from the things of man. Balverines are creatures of myth and magic, and mankind has developed into a race that deplores such things. Mankind ...” And I despise saying the words aloud, but it is all too true. “Mankind is becoming tame in its view of the natural world, and balverines are by definition unnatural and untamed. Thus would they flee such deplorable concepts as science or industrialization and seek more . . . primal climes. If it is the latter, on the other hand—if they are running toward something ...”