by Jeff Grubb
It was still morning, evident from the slant of the light through the doorway bars, light that illuminated the other occupant in his hovel, similarly chained and shackled and securely moored to the anchoring stone.
Toede scowled at him and said, "Well, thank you so very much."
Groag's eyes rolled up in his head again, and the darkness reclaimed him. He pitched backward.
Toede sighed and grabbed the water bucket and ladle placed by the door. He waddled over to his prostrate companion, pulling a ladle full of the cool swamp water. He stood there for half a moment, as if considering the consequences of his intended action. Then he drank from the ladle, set it aside, and poured the water from the bucket over his companion.
Groag awoke with a start, spitting and cursing.
"That was your wake-up call," said Toede smoothly. "Do try to stay conscious for a while."
"You're alive!" sputtered Groag.
"Ah, observant as ever," said Toede. "I can see why the poachers kept you to gather their wood. You've been out a full hour, you know. And unconscious, you're neither entertaining nor enlightening."
"I mean, you're dead," said Groag. "I mean, you're supposed to be dead."
Toede scowled deeply. "Dead! Do I look dead?"
"Well, not now," said Groag, looking hurt and ashamed. "But you were, I mean, are. You're not one of those zombies the necromancer keeps, are you?"
"My dear Groag," said Toede in his best axe-is-about-to-fall voice. "We are in sufficiently serious trouble as it is. Now is not the time to go delirious on me."
"I'm not delirious." Groag shook his oversized head. "I mean, I think I am delirious, but because you're here. I mean, I saw you die!"
"Do I look dead?" said Toede again, a little taken aback by Groag's vehemence on the subject.
"Well, not at the moment," said Groag. "But…" He let the word drift off.
A silence fell between the two hobgoblins. Then Toede sighed and said, "Let's entertain the fantasy for a moment. How did I die?"
"There were these kender…" started Groag.
"I remember the kender," interrupted Toede.
"And there was this dragon…" continued Groag.
"And I remember the dragon," added Toede.
"And the dragon breathed on you and boiled the fat from your bones!" finished Groag.
"Ah," said Toede, standing. He began to pace the small hut, the leg shackles causing him to clank in the process. By the entrance, he turned and pointed at Groag like an accuser in court. "Ah. Here's where our remembrances diverge. You saw what?"
"The fat being boiled off your bones," repeated Groag, more timidly.
"The fat," said Toede.
"Yes." Groag nodded.
"Being boiled," Toede continued.
"Uh," said Groag, "huh."
"From my bones?" finished Toede.
Groag shrugged. The way Toede put it, it did sound a little foolish.
"You're sure it was my fat being boiled?" said Toede sharply.
/"Well, it was wearing your armor," said Groag defensively. "The fat, I mean."
"And from that you assumed I was dead," snarled Toede.
"Well," said Groag, pursing his forehead and lips, "I think it was a fairly, uh, logical assumption."
Toede stared at his fellow prisoner in stony silence.
"Did I mention you left your armor behind, too?" added Groag.
Toede dismissed the argument with a wave of his hand. "Here's what must have happened. I must have been knocked aside by one of our guards. Loyal, brave hobgoblins they were. At least, one of them was."
'They had all fled by that time," said Groag quietly.
"And it was that lone courageous guard that suffered the brunt of the blast, giving his life to save me," continued the highmaster.
"There was only you left," said Groag.
"Then you fled the scene without confirming it was I with the fatless bones, eh? Until I came to and found you here," Toede finished with a clanking flourish and smile. He did not expect applause, but it would have been appreciated.
"Then, milord, where have you been for the past six months?" asked Groag sheepishly.
The smile on Toede's face cracked and dissolved. "Six… months?"
"It has been six months since the hunt when you d- when someone or something that I and everyone else thought was you died," said Groag, eyes wide. "It was autumn's twilight, then, and now it is spring dawning."
Toede sat down with a clank of chains. "One mystery resolved," he muttered, "and another rises to take its place. Amnesia? Some kind of magical effect? I don't think that we're going to find the answers here. Six months, indeed. Well, then, what have you been doing for six months?"
He stressed the 'you' to accent that everything Groag said was probably preposterous.
Groag looked miserable as he was brought back to the here and now. "Well, after you, er, somebody died, I ran like the rest, and carried the news of, er, your death back to Flotsam."
"Except I'm not dead," muttered Toede, though more quietly than before. He hastened to add, "I assume there was a massive outpouring of grief."
"The festiv… ah, mourning ceremonies lasted several days," said Groag. Toede nodded, while his companion took a deep breath and continued.
'Then the kender started putting stories out about how they tricked you into getting yourself killed. They were mostly true." At this Toede shot him an icy glare, so Groag quickly added, "As truthful as kender ever are, of course, with their half-statements and innuendo and rumor and everything." Toede motioned Groag to continue. "I had had my fill of these tales, and at one point went after the kender spreading the lies, Talorin, Kronin's friend. Chased him into the forest, and, ah, got lost for my trouble. Couldn't find my way back and nearly starved before Talorin and another kender, Taywin, Kronin's daughter, rescued… er, captured me."
"Groag," said Toede, shaking his head, "you were ever the most hapless of my retainers. You could get lost in a water closet."
Groag ignored his fellow prisoner and continued. "I pleaded to be released, but they hauled me here to their camp, and I have been their most abysmal prisoner ever since." Groag held up his chains and shook them for emphasis.
Toede had an image of Groag begging for mercy, pulling every stunt, promising every devotion, and plucking every heartstring to save his hide. Yes, Groag would gladly grovel-he had done it before.
"Have they… tortured you?" asked the highmaster hesitantly, thinking of his own favorite amusements and wondering if the kender matched up.
"Worse," sighed Groag. "Were they merely to torture me, I would respond with good hobgoblin stoicism."
At least for the first five seconds, thought Toede, but said nothing.
Groag continued. "No, they were far, far worse. They tried to… tried to…" His face twisted as he attempted to spit out the words. "Rehabilitate me!"
"No!" Toede tried to look shocked.
"Yes!" Tears began to pool at the corners of Groag's eyes. "They keep talking to me about how it's not my fault that I was born into a misshapened shell with the manners of a bloodthirsty wolf and things like that. And that I should aspire to be better than I am."
"Meaning 'more like them' I suppose," sniffed Toede.
Groag went on. "And they don't really yell at me, but they do explain things real loud when I'm wrong. And they say how disappointed they are when I do something bad."
"You mean, like twisting the heads off one of their young?" suggested Toede, with a smile at the thought.
"Er, more like forgetting to turn the goose and letting it burn," said Groag quietly. "I feel horrible to disappoint them. Sorry."
Toede just shook his head.
"And every now and then Kronin's daughter comes by and we go…" His voice sank below audible levels.
"Yes?" prompted Toede.
"We go…"
"Yes?"
"Berry picking!" sobbed Groag, clutching his misshapened head in his hand. "And… and…
she reads poetry!"
Toede mouthed the words "berry picking," and walked softly over to his sobbing companion. He placed a firm foot on Groag's shoulder and shoved him, hard, backward. Groag went flailing in a flurry of chains.
"Berry picking! Poetry! Burning geese!" shouted Toede. "You're a sad excuse for an evil humanoid, Groag! Think about it! Any other member of your tribe would have opened his veins by now in embarrassment, or tried to tunnel out of this predicament with his teeth if need be. 1^ anything, you're even softer now than you were when you were in my court! Well, I'm not going to follow your example. I'm going to get out of here one way or another."
Muttering, Toede stalked back to the opposite side of the hut, which he already thought of, in the first day of incarceration, as "his" side. Trapped in a small hovel with a spineless fool who thinks I'm dead, he thought angrily. Was dead. Yet if I was dead, why am I now alive?
The icy block of blackened memory remained. The heat of the dragon's breath blistered his skin, Toede remembered that. And the shadows of the ghostly god-figures surfaced briefly, promising great things.
Toede shuddered. He glared at Groag, pulled himself back up to his seat, focused all his anger on the other hobgoblin. When it became clear that Groag was not going to burst into flame or otherwise disappear, Toede reopened the conversation, saying, "And…?"
"And what?" said Groag softly.
"And did they commission a monument to me after I… after it seemed like I died? In Flotsam, I mean." The corners of Toede's mind tried the idea of death on for size, even if it was an uncomfortable fit.
"Ah, not exactly," said Groag.
"A statue perhaps? Something modest and dignified?"
"No, not a statue…" said Groag.
"A plaque, perhaps, commemorating my long and just rule?"
"I'm afraid not." Groag shrugged.
Toede felt the anger building again. "Anything at all to mark my… passing?"
"Well, a proclamation…" began Groag.
"Ah, well, that's something," said Toede, softening a moment. "A memorial holiday in my honor, then."
"Not exactly," sighed Groag. He concentrated on a point beyond Toede's left shoulder. "The proclamation said that all hobgoblins were banned from Flotsam now that you were dead," he said, very quickly.
Groag closed his eyes tight, waiting for another explosion. After half a moment, he opened them to see Toede sitting there, calmly, in deep thought.
"Highmaster Toede?" said Groag softly.
"Who?" said Toede, his voice stone-level.
"Who what?" prompted Groag quietly.
"Who made that proclamation?" snarled Toede. "Who is going to die for his temerity and stupidity!"
Groag rocked backward just far enough to be out of arm's reach. "That would have been Gildentongue, your draconian advisor. I understand that he is involved with some cult or another nowadays, but at the time…"
Toede missed most of the words after "Gildentongue" and was already on his feet, ranting. "Gildentongue!" he shouted. "That cheap gold-plated draconian has my job? My throne? That lizard hasn't got the political savvy to tie his own bootlaces without checking with the dragon high-lords! No doubt about it, we're getting out of here, and going to set that little piece of scalework straight!"
"Please, Highmaster Toede," said Groag, "your voice carries."
"That's Lord Toede, as in Lord of Flotsam," shouted Toede, ignoring Groag's plea for quiet. "When I get hold of that Gildentongue, I'm going to take a long pole with barbed hooks and shove it down his throat, pulling it outward so he can see his own intestines before I pop his eyes out and use them as billiard balls! And then, while he's twisting in his own blood, I'm going to call in the manor guard for some spear practice, then I'll call in a team of hobgoblin tap dancers, and then… and then…"
It was about this time that Toede realized that he and Groag were no longer alone. Halfway through his ranting someone had pulled the bolt free on the hut door, and now a young female kender stood there, framed in the morning sun.
She was frail and beautiful in the childlike way that al^ kender seemed-children who had run off and stayed young by hunting and fishing and living in the wilderness. She was nearly as tall as Toede and half his weight, and was poured into a stylish set of buckskin pants and a loose cotton shirt worn open to the third button. Her boots were custom-made and mud-spattered. A beaming smile dimpled her cheeks, and her fine-boned face was framed in a halo of auburn-red hair. She carried a large wicker basket at her side.
Toede hated her at once.
"Mister Groag, I see you're feeling better," she said, her voice a chirping warble, which to Toede sounded like a sliding cat trying to get purchase on a slate roof. "And your friend is in good voice, too, though he sounds a tad grumpy. Does he want to come berry picking with us?"
Toede's face flushed to the color of overripe tomatoes. "His… friend would rather have himself stripped naked and fed to wild tigers than spend one moment in kender slavery! If my hands were free I'd stretch your poaching little neck far enough to hang draperies on it! How dare you imprison me like this!"
Toede expected the kender to back up, like a tentative courtier daunted by a superior's anger. Instead, the kender held her ground, such that Toede was straining at the end of his leash, his chains taut from his outstretched arms. The kender did not seem daunted in the least. In fact, she wore a small smile.
"Now, that attitude is not going to help," chided the kender merrily. "Your companion has come a long way in the time he has been with us, haven't you, Mr. Groag?" Toede heard a mumbled agreement behind him.
Toede spat and cursed, "I am not like Mr. Groag. I am a great and powerful lord, bound for ever greater greatness! Do you have any idea, any idea whatsoever of whom you are… you are…"
Toede hesitated. He was close enough to examine her jewelry in detail, and part of his mind was already involved in estimating its net worth and use. One item caught his attention and began sending messages, marked 'urgent' to the section of his mind that controlled his ranting. Finally, the rant-section of Toede's brain took a look at the message, and then at the item hanging around her neck on a small silver chain.
"Pardon me for a moment," said Toede with sudden calmness, turning back to his companion. He hissed at the other hobgoblin. "Mister Groag, this wouldn't be by any chance Kronin's daughter that I am now addressing? The one that took you captive?"
Groag nodded.
Toede continued in a low mutter. "And is that a key she is wearing right here?" He motioned to his sternum, trying not to clatter his chains.
Groag nodded again.
"And would that be the key to these locks?" he whispered between clenched teeth, motioning as gently as possible to his wrist manacles.
Groag nodded again.
"Aha," he said, and Groag saw his former master's smile widen to the point it seemed to split his face. That had always been a bad sign in the past, so Groag began to back away from the highmaster.
Toede turned to the kender girl, his smile softening slightly, his face becoming a placid plate of contentment. "I must apologize, my dear kender. I have been under a great deal of stress recently and sometimes lose my temper. I say things I do not mean, and, well, hurt the feelings of others. I'm sorry. Very sorry. Perhaps I do merely need a change of lifestyle."
The kender's smile lit up the room. Toede felt his stomach tighten in a spasm of pain at the very sight.
Instead, he locked his teeth together, fought his own rising gorge, and continued. "Do you have any idea how much I truly enjoy berry picking? Why, I'm an old, seasoned hand at it. And perhaps, if I could be so bold, might there be some poetry as well?"
"If you wish." The kender smiled with genuine excitement. "Though I thought we might go easy your first time out."
"Oh, of course," said Toede. Groag shook his head, wondering, not for the first time, if Toede were dead, and this was some strange and bewildering spirit that had moved into his body.
/> The young kender pulled the key from its silver chain and began unlocking their fetters from the central bolt. Only when her back was turned did Groag see Toede's face immediately cloud and small lightning bolts of anger dance beneath his deeply creased brows. The only Toede present, realized Groag, was the one that had always inhabited that body.
Chapter 3
In which Our Protagonist and his faithful companion go berry picking and attempt to part company with the kender way of life, in the process discovering the merits and perils of bungee diving and white-water rafting.
The kender's full name was Taywin Kroninsdau, at least that's what Toede thought she said when she made introductions, making mention of Kronin's name. Thankfully neither Kronin nor Talorin were immediately at hand to discern his true identity, and Toede hoped no one caught the early part of his self-identifying rant. Taywin seemed perfectly agreeable to calling him Mr. Underhill. Were the kender to figure out who they really had tumbled upon, they might try to ransom him. And that old scaleflint Gildentongue would probably rather leave him there to rot than part with one sliver of steel.
As it was, Taywin Kroninsdau nodded brightly (she was the type of semi-sentient who did everything brightly) when he introduced himself as Mr. Underhill and gave no sign that she doubted his words.
Their hut had a kender guard posted outside, a sleepy sort who seemed lazy even by kender standards, who was to accompany them along with Taywin. Toede and Groag had their chains lengthened so they could take shortened, hopping strides, with about ten feet of chain connecting them.
Taywin led the way, the large basket in hand. The two chained hobgoblins were reduced to skipping to keep up with her. The amused kender guard, armed with a particularly wicked-looking spear, brought up the rear, alongside a shag-muzzled, honey-colored mastiff. Taywin introduced the guard as Miles and made Toede shake hands politely. Introductions were not made to the dog.
The sought-after fruit hung from low, dense raspberry bushes that flanked a small river, the probable outflow of the lake Toede had seen earlier (the presence of which had forced him to stray into kender territory). The tumbling water was too small to do the name "river" proper justice, and too large and energetic to be considered a mere stream or creek. It was a whitened cascade of water about twenty feet across, thundering over falls and cresting in hydraulics, the latter being great standing waves three feet higher at the top than at the base. The spray from the water hung like a low fog, and the omnipresent dampness encouraged the bushes to bear fruit throughout the warm months.