by Garon Whited
“No. The savages live down in the grasslands, not in the mountains. Orku, perhaps.”
Orku rang bells. I knew that word. Orcs.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, of course not. They favor colder climes and mountains. The galgar like the mountains, as well. The Eastrange is a dangerous place.”
Galgar sounded the word goblin in my head.
“Hmmm. How are you feeling?”
“Better, thank you. But hungry.”
“We’ll camp here for the rest of today; maybe we’ll see the rest of the survivors trooping this way. Tonight, I’ll get you something more material to eat and see you to the gate. After that, I’m going to check out the smoke. I’ve never seen an orc.”
There was a pause for a beat too long, then she asked, “You will leave me?”
I looked at her. There was something in her tone that sounded strange. But the answer was obvious.
“No, I’m not leaving. You’ll see me again; I just don’t want to put you at risk while I satisfy my curiosity.”
Shada nodded. “Oh,” was all she said. Either she had great faith in me or wasn’t impressed by orku and galgar.
“So what can you tell me about these things?”
“They are not smart, but they are cunning, fierce, and strong. Have a care.”
“I will.”
It was a fairly long ride through the pass; I didn’t realize the mountain range was that wide. But my initial impression of the pass was correct. It was like a giant axe had fallen across the Eastrange and darn near divided it. Well, maybe it took a couple of axe-strokes; the pass wasn’t fully straight, but jogged left or right on occasion. It sloped upward from the plains, very gradually, to meet the top of the foothills on the western side. From the looks of it, the pass flooded when it rained; maybe erosion had worn the pass deeper toward the east.
Getting in through the Eastgate was more of a challenge than I expected. I mean, it was obvious we weren’t the natives of the eastern plains, so I didn’t think it would be all that hard. Here we are, driven off course by a storm, shipwrecked in a savage land of bloodthirsty barbarians, by some miracle spared a horrible death at their hands, fortunate to even make it this close to home—at least, that was our story—and nobody will open the bloody door!
I resolved to learn how to disintegrate things. Without causing an explosion. Someday.
“Listen to me you arrogant, overpaid, lazy excuse for a soldier! You open this gate right now or I’ll have your head for a footstool! Or maybe just give you a case of piles, scurvy, and a permanent limp!”
The guard I addressed spat over the wall.
“You a magician, then?” he asked, drawling.
“A wizard.”
“Oh.”
We waited. Nothing happened. Zip. I watched. He didn’t move an inch.
I gestured, reaching out to him with a spell. I set fire to one of his shoes. There ensued a howl and much commotion. Once extinguished, he leaned over the battlement, shook his fist in my general direction, and hurled epithets.
“Next time,” I shouted back, “I’ll set fire to your face! Now open the damned gate!”
He shut up.
Much clanking and groaning followed, as well as much stomping and lesser clanging from men arranging themselves on the wall. If you’re opening a gate, you’re arming the wall and rousing the garrison. Fortunately, this particular garrison was about as lax as you can get; they would never have let us in if they were professional. I guess nobody takes the “eastern barbarians” seriously anymore.
With the scream of rusty hinges, the gate opened and the portcullis rose. We rode in through the opened portal and started parrying questions. Someone, I think the garrison commander, demanded the whole story. I invited him to come with us to our inn and share a meal and some wine while we talked. That went over very well and he accepted, on duty or not.
I twisted the truth a little, adding the bits about a storm, a shipwreck, and hitting shore on the wrong side of the Eastrange. Anything he asked that could have been difficult I answered with, “I’m a wizard, not a sailor; I have no idea.”
It worked, too. The wine may have helped. I thanked him for his help at the gate and gave him one of the pearls the sea-people provided. That went over very well. It was late in the afternoon when he finally went away.
By sunset, I saw Shada safely installed in a room of her own and well-supplied with funding; the sea-people had been quite generous. But then, even gold was just a pretty form of ballast to them.
“When will you be back?” she asked, holding a double handful of wealth.
“Tomorrow night, probably; maybe the night after.”
“What do I do if you don’t come back?”
I shrugged. “Find someplace and settle down? Buy some land and hire some peasants? I don’t know.”
She let the loot tumble to the tabletop and laid her hand on my arm. “Please… do nothing stupid.”
“It is too late for that,” I said, smiling. “But I’ll try not to repeat myself.”
She smiled slightly and nodded. “All right. I don’t understand what attracts you so to a bit of smoke. But satisfy your curiosity. Go do—whatever it is you have to.”
So I did.
I waited until after dark before setting out; I didn’t want to just barely get started before whipping out a body bag. Besides, the local inn had a bathchamber; I needed a good scrubbing.
Getting back out through the gate was easier; it just involved some bribery. From this side, I could hand a man some gold and ask him to open the gate. No problem. It was all downhill from there, all the way back to the plains. Then a hard left in the marshy area at the eastern mouth of the pass and I started looking for smoke.
As I rode north along the foothills—up and down, up and down; Bronze, I suspected, liked to jump—I began to wonder about Shada’s comment… why my sudden interest? I didn’t have anything special to do immediately, that was true… but I had just rescued/helped Shada and was leaving her to her own devices again in a strange town. I also felt an urge to talk to Tamara again—about what I had no idea; maybe just to talk to her. But what I was doing was riding off to investigate a thin line of smoke in the wilderness.
I shook my head. That just didn’t sound right, somehow.
Reining up, I thought about this. Why the sudden curiosity? What did I want with this line of smoke? Why was it so important to find out about it? Just to see a real, live orc? Or goblin?
I shook my head. I had no idea. Curiosity, maybe. Divine guidance, perhaps. Infernal influence, possibly. But whatever the reason, I was going to go, look around, and decide from there. Yes.
Questioning my own thought processes is not merely difficult, but futile. My mind is normally a black box; my senses go into it, my conclusions come out. I like it that way, especially since the results are frequently correct. Examining my method of thinking might bring on the centipede’s dilemma. But I know enough of my own mind to realize something about this was as off as week-old milk; nothing for it but to go find out what it was, though.
Bronze rumbled up into a canter again and we covered ground. We were within an hour or so of where I thought the place should be when I stopped for sunrise. Lying in a body bag with a bronze horse standing guard over you isn’t the most pleasant experience in the world, but you’d be amazed at what you can get used to. It’s better than frying in the sun, certainly.
So now I had a dilemma. Go on and look around during the day, or hang back and wait for nightfall?
Decisions, decisions. We would go and look around, carefully. At the first sign of trouble, we would be gone like the wind.
So Bronze bore me up into the mountains and we sought for smoke. It was almost noon before I saw the smoke again. We headed for it and came up over the shoulder of another slope to look at it from a distance. Bronze waited, several paces lower down, while I crept up along a large, slanted slab of stone to peer over the edge.
It was a tower
. Not a large tower, but a squat, heavy one. Smoke was trailing up from a sizable chimney—a very small amount of smoke for such a large chimney. Santa would have an easy time with this place.
There was no one in sight.
This did not count as trouble, no, but I considered getting some distance anyway. I had intended to look around, see who or what was present, and then figure out whether to greet them or avoid them. But there was nobody visible.
Fine. I lay down on my large rock, covered my head with my jacket, put my chin on my forearms, and watched. Someone would be coming out, sooner or later. And if ‘later’ meant ‘after sunset,’ I would probably just go in and have a look around anyway.
Such were my thoughts as I settled in for a light nap.
And couldn’t.
I was comfortable enough, but I was unable to so much as nod off. The tower was right there, and it was a place of mystery. I wanted to go in, look around, rummage through somebody’s stuff. Or knock on the door and ask for a cup of sugar. Even peek down the chimney and see how big the fireplace was. Something. Anything.
That simply isn’t normal. I’d have done something about it, too, but I was more concerned with my favorite skin than with any curiosity itch. It was wrong. It didn’t change the fact I wanted to know more about this tower.
So I thought to myself, Self, if we’re going to go down there and look around, we should make sure we’re prepared.
I checked my pistol, made sure I’d reloaded it with intact ammunition from Bronze’s saddlebags (and bemoaned the loss of the ammunition I had carried with me), then gathered up some good throwing rocks. I winged a rock downrange and heard the loud “thunk” on the wood. I waited a bit, then pitched another one. I was about to throw a third when someone came to the top of the tower.
I say “someone.” I may be giving the wrong impression. It could have been something, but it was too humanoid for that. From the look of it, it was about four feet tall, skinny, with bulbous nose, greenish-black skin, and greasy, dark hair. It had a crossbow and looked like it was annoyed by the daylight. It peered over the edge and then looked around. I ducked and waited.
Then it said something I didn’t understand, beyond the basic level of comprehension involved in any frustrated curse. With that, it went back down into the tower.
I’m pretty sure I saw my first goblin. My curiosity, shall we say, spiked.
I regarded the tower more critically, with an eye toward magical effects. Yes, there was definitely a spell of some sort radiating from the structure. It bore some resemblance to a Calling, but I couldn’t see any indication of what it was Calling. Normally, a Calling is after something specific. This just… Called. Anyone in range, apparently.
Like a bug zapper. With me as a potential bug.
It is a measure of the spell’s effectiveness that I never even considered turning around and leaving it alone. It attacked me in that most vulnerable of places—my need to know. The only thing that kept me from marching down there and knocking on the door was a keen sense of self-preservation.
Fine. I sat down and gathered power, weaving a couple of spells. Normally, it takes a while to gather power together—a second or two of concentration, if it’s a simple spell. In a fight, this can get you killed.
So I cheated. I prepared a spell or two in advance. Think of it as typing up a contract without actually signing it; it means nothing until the signatures are on the paper. It just sits there, waiting, until you set it off. You can also tap a hanging spell for the energy you tied up in it and just go blasting power at your problems, but that’s far, far less efficient. But if I’d had a spell hanging ready, I would have been able to set fire to the guards’ swords in the torture chamber even if they were swinging at me at the time, instead of needing the time it took for them to close with me.
Of course, preparing a spell in advance also means that another magic-worker can see you have spells hanging around you, and a good smack by a strong will can disrupt them. Most mages have magical objects to put spells into to prevent that sort of thing; that’s one reason wizards are so fond of carrying a staff. Also, when you’re out of ready spells, it’s still a whacking great chunk of wood.
I wonder where my dryad-staff is?
Which brings me to another point. Magic-workers can cleverly fry each other with spells, or they can both duke it out mentally with sheer force of will. Jon and I took a few throws that way; he was a strong-willed, imaginative, and devious old coot. I lost, seven falls out of ten.
In some ways, a battle of wills is more dangerous than swapping hostile spells. It’s not as pyrotechnic, of course, unless you can see magic, but it carries with it the danger of having your mind liquefied. I don’t want to sit quietly and drool while someone gets a knife out to finish the job. Or worse, doesn’t finish the job at all. Being as coherent as a moderately-retarded houseplant doesn’t appeal to me.
Anyway, I digress.
I hung a couple of spells around me. A pair of good hammering spells, each like a good stroke with a battering ram. Handy for forcing doors if I had to leave in a hurry. And, while I was at it, a translation spell, since I don’t speak goblinoid. Goblinese. Goblin. Gobbledygook. Whatever. It took about an hour and a half to assemble things.
Then, with sword and pistol at hand, I went up to the tower and rapped smartly on the door. Bronze I left behind, out of sight but in earshot. Just in case. I don’t think she liked it much.
It wasn’t long before the same fellow stuck his oversized nose over the edge. He looked surprised to see me. He made a startled exclamation, then addressed a question to me.
“You speak any other languages?” I asked. He frowned at me. It wasn’t an improvement for his features, and I thought almost anything would be. He addressed me again, apparently in the same tongue. I let loose my translation spell and answered, “I’m sorry, but could you repeat that?”
The look on his face was astonishing. Suddenly, he “heard” what I said, in his own language, in his head. I knew he wouldn’t like it, but it’s hard to get the idea across and then ask for permission without a common language. The fact that touching his brain with a spell didn’t bother me was another marker for how strong the curiosity-spell on the tower was.
His immediate reply was graphic, obscene, and forceful.
“No,” I replied. “You aren’t my type.”
“Who are you?” he demanded. That wasn’t precisely what he said, but that was the idea. His actual terminology was more colorful. I noticed the crossbow had peeped over the edge and was held ready.
“I’m just curious. I saw the smoke and thought I’d drop by, say hello, that sort of thing. I take it I’m not welcome?”
“Oh, everyone’s welcome,” he replied, sneering. “Most don’t just walk up and knock.”
“Then I’ll wait here while you open the door,” I suggested.
“Yeah, right, you do that.” He withdrew and I waited.
Presently, the door clunked and rattled, then groaned inward. I stepped inside.
Let me make something clear I had not fully realized until a moment later.
I’m hard to hurt. I am by no means invulnerable, but it is difficult to inflict serious injury on me. Even during the day, I am exceptionally tough and resilient—far more than a normal human being. I can take a punch from a mailed fist and just about shrug it off. Part of that is the excessive density—no wisecracks, please—and part of it is the new way my cells all hold together. I think.
In addition to this, I wear a vest designed to stop small-arms fire and sharp pointy things. Even if I am injured, if I can survive until the sun goes down all will be well in short order, since I regenerate rapidly. It gives a person confidence to know these things. When risk is lessened, one can substitute confidence for bravery.
It can also make a person bloody stupid.
Intellectually, I realized I could still be killed. But viscerally, down in the guts, I felt pretty near immortal.
A whal
e of a knock on my noggin did much to dispel that gut feeling of invincibility, as well as my own rather limited intellect.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8TH
Sunset woke me. Judging by the overwhelming annoyance of having my skull itch—not the scalp, mind you, but the bone—I’d say I had a concussion. Or had had one. Whatever the grammar is. It went away. I listened, didn’t immediately hear anything special, and took stock.
I was naked on a cold stone floor. The spells I had taken pains to have ready had been discharged, disrupted, or dispelled. The air was damp-ish and smelled of straw, feces, and a general unwashedness. Something was around my ankle. I opened my eyes.
It was a cell. Typically, I’d have expected to be in a deep hole; that’s the easy way to keep someone from going anywhere. A cell told me there might be considerable traffic in and out. Not for the prisoner, of course; there was a large metal cuff around my left ankle and what looked like a primitive spun-cylinder combination lock.
That last implied—at least to me—that prisoners weren’t kept here for long. A key lock you’re stuck with; a combination lock just takes patience and lots and lots and lots of time. I could shorten it considerably; the hasp was iron, and a good, sharp twist should break it. At least, at night—during the day I’d need a lever of some sort. Which I didn’t have, of course.
I hate being naked and locked in a dungeon. I’m really learning about a whole new range of unpleasant experiences. I much preferred the idea of waking up in a strange bedroom. But I wasn’t ready to charge out into the hall naked. Best to look helpless while gathering some intelligence about the place.
I settled down against the wall and let my tendrils feel their way around. I was underground. There were two lives nearby, just outside the door. Nothing else without going up or down. No sign of my things.
Of course, that just gave me time to think about why I was here. I had been incredibly stupid. Hindsight being 20/20, I considered it to be the capstone of my career of stupidity. What in the name of heaven possessed me to go wandering off into the alien landscape to chase a faint wisp of smoke?