Heroes And Fools totfa-2

by Margaret Weis

  Day 13, night

  We are aboard the deepswimmer again. The others are asleep.

  The afternoon went well at first for our two comrades. Dromel and Twig found a graveyard and a nearby building where burial preparations took place. The roof was gone, but this allowed them to explore the insides without fear of the shadows and things that might creep within them. Twig discovered a secret place behind a stone wall, a small treasure vault of some sort, and they used long timbers to scrape the treasures out of the darkness within. The materials recovered included a book and many items of jewelry. Dromel thinks the people who prepared the dead here were also thieves who removed valuables that were supposed to be buried with their owners. It is not unknown for this to happen among humans. The rotting book is a kind of accounting ledger, in which the treasures are cataloged with estimated prices in old Ansalonian steel pieces, the dates they were acquired, and from whom. Most thorough, these robbers of the dead. Dromel brought back most of the valuables, which were stored in a large sack strapped to his back.

  As Dromel and Twig were leaving the building thus laden, they were accosted by a shadow wight.

  Twig will not speak of the incident. She is not herself tonight, and her injured foot causes her much pain. Before we boarded, Hunter gathered a few plants that he said were painkilling herbs, and their ministration has let her sleep for a time. She clutched in desperation at anyone who was near her until her eyes closed.

  Dromel told Hunter and me what happened after Twig was unconscious. The shadow wight was in a small shadowed area behind a pile of debris from the long-fallen roof. The debris formed a dark space against the wall by the doorway through which they had entered the ruin. Twig saw the horrible being first and cried out in fear. Dromel said he had never heard a kender make a cry like that. He had difficulty describing the shadow wight’s appearance; he had previously said shadow wights could change their shape to fit whatever the viewer found the most disturbing. He vaguely referred to this one as a dead thing and added that it spoke to them both. Dromel was not able to go further. He buried his face in his hands and wept for many minutes.

  A display like that from a human would normally bore me. Instead, I found it disturbing in the extreme, and it preys on my mind even now. Dromel had struck me as immune to deep emotions, always a source of false cheer and well-meaning lies, an eggshell without a yolk. Hunter comforted him as much as he was able. I kept to myself, pretending to inspect the dirt-covered platinum rings, steel coins, and silver combs that we now possess, though I feel increasingly numb to their value.

  Upon meeting the shadow wight, Dromel and Twig fled the ruined building. At some point, Twig fell off a ledge or stumbled over a rock, spraining her left ankle. Dromel’s account was confusing; I had the impression he was covering up for not having gone back right away to aid Twig. Indeed, I myself heard Twig’s cries for help as I was finishing my previous journal entry. I caught Dromel alone, asked him where Twig was, and had to go back myself to find her and carry her to the deepswimmer. We had no encounters of any sort on the way. Twig was hysterical, alternating between depressed crying and an unnatural excitement like panic. Both she and Dromel often clutched at the drag-onlances on their necklaces, which seemed to provide them with comfort.

  It is uncertain what we will do tomorrow. Twig is starting to talk in her sleep. Among her stammerings she has cried, “Don’t touch me!” and repeats the word “empty” and “nothing” over and over.

  I cannot neglect to mention one last incident. Before Hunter went into his reverie, he reached into his vest and pulled out a dragonlance spearhead on a chain, holding it up for me to see. I looked closely and noticed that he was wearing a second one just like it.

  “Where did you get the extra one?” I asked. “Did you steal it from Dromel?”

  Hunter gave me a smile he would give to a fool. “O trusting one, I did not. This is what I was going to tell you about earlier. It is the thing I found outside a hut in the fishing village. There were footprints leading up to it and away from it, going into the ruins near some shadows. Someone else came here not long before us, and that person had the same idea we did, taking an old magical relic like ours to keep away the shadow wights. Only this person was not smart enough to keep the relic on him at all times.”

  I looked long at the dragonlance head. A small shiver ran through me. “We will not make that mistake,” I said sincerely.

  “I agree,” he replied. “It is a shame about the fellow who had this one. Judging from the size of the footprints, I believe he may have been a gnome.”

  Day 14, late morning

  Awakening and breakfast were conducted without discussion. Hunter eventually revealed his find to the others, who found it very odd that someone with a dragonlance necklace remarkably like ours had been in the area before. We decided it must have been the gnome who had stowed away on our deepswimmer. His fate could not have been a pleasant one, we agreed. Dromel then cleared his throat.

  “I am not sure it would be. .” He broke off in a fit of coughing before continuing. “I was saying, I am not sure we should go back to the. . um. .”

  “No,” said Twig suddenly. She brushed hair from her face, looking Dromel in the eye. “I think we should. We should go back.” Her voice was clear and calm. We stared at her in amazement.

  “Your leg,” said Hunter, pointing.

  Twig shifted and stretched her legs out experimentally. She grimaced but shrugged it off. “I’m fine now, really. I don’t think I could stand to be stuck in here while you were out exploring and having fun. We’ll just. . stay out of dark places.”

  Until that moment, I had not believed kender were worth the spit from a gully dwarf. I looked at her rather differently now. She talked like a warrior.

  “There is a stone manor house,” I said. “It’s on a hill-”

  “What?” Dromel’s earlier anxiety faded a bit. “What did it look like?”

  “Two stories high, with a central tower,” said Hunter. “It is about a mile beyond the far side of the town.” He smiled. “Isn’t that what we’re looking for?”

  Dromel swallowed and nodded. “I. . yes, of course. Of course, that’s Lord Dwerlen’s manor. We would find wealth enough for us all there. We should go back then, you know. We would be fools to come this far and not to get his money.”

  Perhaps it was his stuttering or the trembling of his hands that told me he was holding back.

  “Who was this Lord Dwerlen?” I asked, leaning close to him. “You haven’t told us about him. I want to know.”

  “L–Lord Dwerlen was just a. . a tax collector or something for-

  I had my right hand around his throat in a second. “Don’t lie to me, damn you!”

  “Red!” Twig screamed. “Don’t hurt him!”

  “Tell me the truth,” I whispered in Dromel’s face. “Who was Lord Dwerlen? Why have you been so determined to find his place?”

  “H-H-H-He was. . a c-cartographer!” Dromel gasped, turning red. “I w-wanted m-m-maps!”

  I released his throat. He fell back, inhaling hoarsely. “A mapmaker,” I repeated. “You talked us into coming here for a bunch of maps?”

  Dromel hesitated, then nodded, watching me with wide eyes. “He was rich,” he wheezed. “He had every sort of map known. He retired to Enstar from the mainland decades ago, before the Chaos War.”

  I leaned away from him, relaxing. This sounded like the truth, more or less-not that I still wasn’t thinking about killing him.

  “So there’s no treasure there, no coins or jewels, only maps,” I said.

  “No, that isn’t it!” Dromel fairly shouted. “No, 1 think there is treasure there, tons of it, but as for me, what I really want is the maps. I’ve got to have the maps!” He took a shuddering breath. “The rest of you can divide what iron pieces we bring out, but I want the maps. Please.”

  “Well, I like maps, too,” said Twig. “How about if-”

  “You can have the maps, Dromel,�
� I interrupted.

  “Hey!” Twig fairly shouted.

  “Shut up,” I said, still looking at Dromel. “But I want to know why you want those maps, and not just half the story.”

  Dromel swallowed. “I like maps,” he said.

  I knew there was more to it, but I decided to be patient. Soon enough I would see the maps for myself. I already had a fair idea of what he had in mind. “Fine. So they’re yours. The rest is ours to divide, but there had better be plenty of treasure there, as you’ve said all along.”

  “We may have to go indoors,” said Hunter softly. “It may be dark in there. There may be more shadow wights around.”

  Twig shuddered violently. She wrapped her arms around her as if for warmth. “We have the relics,” she said softly, “but we should not go indoors unless we can’t help it. I’m still here and breathing, so the things obviously work, just as you said they would, right? We can go where we want if we have to, just not for long.”

  She was getting braver by the minute. She was a warrior after all.

  “Is anyone good at locks?” said Dromel, rubbing his throat carefully, avoiding any looks at me. “I figure we’ll need to get through some doors to reach whatever his lordship had for a vault.”

  Hunter wore an enigmatic smile. “I am.” He held up a dragonlance spearhead. “I can use the tip of this if necessary.”

  We left the deepswimmer within the hour. I must finish this entry, as we have finished our rest break outside Dwerlen’s stone manor and are preparing to enter. The weather has held for us so far on our trip, and the sky is clear. No clouds, no shadow wights. It is close to noon. My next entry will either find us triumphant or doomed. I wish I knew the outcome, but I do not.

  Day 14, evening

  We have built a great fire. We are burning everything in the town we can find. There is no time to get back to the deepswimmer before the sun is gone. No time to-

  Day 15, evening

  My hand is not as steady as it once was. It feels like it has been a year since I last opened this diary. I barely remember what I wrote only a day ago. My memory is riddled with fog.

  Twig and Dromel are sleeping, their lips stained green from chewing painkiller herb. The dark red hair across my right arm, between my wrist and elbow, has turned silver-white in a splash shape. I feel nothing there; all sensation has been lost, as if the nerves were sliced through. The fingers on my great right hand tremble, and my handwriting is like a dying elder’s.

  I have only a bare recollection of what transpired when the three of us passed through the old entry arch into the stone manor. I remember the roof had caved in, partly, so there was some light. We cleared the doorway to make sure nothing would block our hasty retreat. Inside was a small greeting hall, with open doorways to a dining hall and several darker workrooms and storerooms beyond. We lit two torches each, one per hand, and went in. Weapons were worthless here, though we took them with us anyway. Only fire had a chance of driving a shadow wight back here-fire and our relics.

  I am not sure what went on after that. I have a confused memory of roofless rooms and rubble-choked passages, and a narrow stone staircase leading up to a missing second floor. We wandered farther, aimlessly, until we found a broad stairway descending to a great set of old, locked doors. It was a vault. We had found our riches.

  Otherwise we had seen nothing of value in the ruined manor. The doors at the bottom beckoned. Like moths to a furnace flame, we responded.

  My memory is not what it once was. I do not remember who opened the doors, though I suspect it was Twig, as kender are all thieves, even those with warrior hearts. Once inside, we were exploring the room when Dromel cried out. It startled us all, but he was unharmed. He had found a seaman’s chest. He flung the lid open before we could utter a warning, and his hands carefully pulled forth long rolls of aged paper, preserved in the cellar over the decades. He did not explain to us what they were, but I knew he had probably found what he had actually come here for-the map collection of Lord Dwerlen. Dromel was no fool. A good map was worth more than steel. So many of the old maps had been lost in the Chaos War, so many cities and libraries burned, so many guilds gutted and ruined, that a single good map of our world was invaluable. Dromel swiftly put as many maps as possible into a sack that he tied to his back. One in particular made him cry out with delight when he found it, and this one he tucked into his shirt. He even allowed Twig to take a few after he had gathered his fill. The rest of us were wasting time, and the end of the day was approaching. At the far end of the great underground room was another locked door. Again, one of us worked on the lock, though it resisted easy opening. I still have a strangely clear memory of standing in the room near the stairs out, keeping guard with my torches, hearing nothing but the moaning wind above in the fallen stones and walls. Cobwebs covered the dark timber ceiling. I remember thinking, this is a bad place to be. We should move on.

  The bright warm sunlight falling on the stairs going down to us suddenly disappeared, and a chill flowed down through the air.

  A great cloud had covered the sun. We had not been paying attention to the weather.

  I turned to shout at my comrades. I was too late. The shadow wights had waited for this to happen. They fell upon us like night.

  I wrote the above lines and have done nothing else but stare at the page for a great while. My right arm tingles in a peculiar way around the area where the hair has turned white. I feel pain there, though not a normal pain. I wonder if the skin and bone are dead. I wonder if I will die soon.

  A shadow wight came down the stairs at me. It spoke as it reached for me. I will never write down what it looked like or what it said to me. I struck at it clumsily with the torch, and my arm passed through its own outstretched arm by accident. I believe I screamed. I had never felt such pain as I did then. As I fell back, I saw one of the shadow wight’s arms pass through the wall at the bottom of the stairs, as if the wall was not real and the shadow wight was. Even in my agony I remember thinking, it moves so smoothly, like water flowing. It approached me again, and I hurled both torches into its face.

  I have no idea if the fire did any harm to the thing. I have no idea what happened after that. I ran, though. I ran, and I should be ashamed, but shame is such an irrelevant, trivial thing. Running was all there was left to do. Shadow wights blacker than darkness came through the doors at the far side of the room, through the floor, down from the ceiling. I remember that I grabbed for Twig, as she was closest to me. It is strange I grabbed for Twig, as only a minotaur warrior is worth saving, and she is only a kender, but I caught her up and ran for the stairs.

  Many shadow wights had gathered around the stairway to block our flight. They were all around us, an army of black-smoke figures that reached for me but did not make contact. I believe I was quite insane for a time. The memory of this presses hard on my mind.

  I remember Dromel had a dragonlance spearhead on a chain in his hands, and another around his neck, and I hissed, “Where did you get an extra one?” The question seemed to startle him, and he stared at it in his hand. “I thought you. . or someone. . dropped it back there,” he said. Dromel swung the chain around his head, screaming as he did. He struck at a group of shadow wights, and they fell back from him, dissolving into nothing.

  The chain. The dragonlance head. I remember looking around the room and seeing another, stuck into the lock in the doors across the underground room. Someone had left it there, perhaps while picking the lock. It was the kender’s fault, I thought, and I charged for it and snatched it out. I put Twig in my left arm, and I began swinging the newfound dragonlance on the chain, swinging it at the other shadow wights. They fell back. I charged for the stairs out. They fled before me, their feet never touching the ground.

  It was almost sundown. Dromel, Twig, and I ran into the open for Hovost, the town near the lord’s ruined manor, and there we made our stand. As the sun fell below the horizon, I started a fire. We got a tremendous bonfire roaring and fed
it with every stick of wood we could find. We burned everything that could burn, and the yellow flames crackled and snapped high in the black sky, holding back the army of darkness.

  All around us, the shadow wights gathered and waited until they numbered in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands. They spoke to us. I clamped my hands over Twig’s ears to shut it out of her mind, but she screamed and screamed again as they spoke. I remember looking around until I found a kind of plant that I once heard would kill pain and cause sleep. I made Twig eat that plant, and she screamed less, then collapsed. I wrapped my extra dragonlance and chain around her body to protect her. No monster would touch her then.

  I had nothing to keep the words of the shadow wights out of my own ears, nothing to keep them out of my head. They urged us to come out, to join them. Dromel and I listened to them all that night long, and no one heard us scream but ourselves.

  I do not remember how we got back to the deepswim-mer. All I know is that we are here, and though we are probably safe, it comforts me not.

  Day??

  I have no idea what day this is. Twig and I have remained inside the deepswimmer, though only I have been conscious of late. I fed Twig too much of that painkilling «plant earlier, and she continues to sleep without waking. I do not remember why we are waiting, or how long we have been doing so. I remember only that we two came to Enstar to get rich. Twig had some maps, I believe, and we got this deepswimmer, though I do not recall how we got it. I think Twig had a lot to do with things, as I do not remember setting up the trip myself. My head is clouded with the words of the shadow wights, urging me to join them. I was one of them, they said, one of the worthless. They told me to lay aside my dragonlance and join them. When I did so, I would be free.