I coughed as smoke filled the room.
“THAT. DOES IT.” An angry, muffled voice sounded from where Qualar had once stood. “We’re getting you a gypsy wagon!” He slowly crawled out from under the folds of tent, reaching out toward the fire. “No more tents for you, Fran dear.” The fire swirled into the air and flew toward Qualar, forming into a ball in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, mesmerized, then popped the flaming sphere into his mouth and swallowed it, plunging the lopsided room into darkness.
I gasped in surprise, then coughed as smoke coated my throat. I quickly wrapped the blanket around myself, using one corner of it as a fan, in hopes of clearing the air of smoke.
“What’s going on in there?” Elistra’s voice called from outside.
“It wasn’t me!” Qualar called back, his voice moving closer to me.
“It was all his fault!” I shouted between coughing fits.
“She knocked it down!” Qualar’s voice was directly next to me now.
I huffed. “I wouldn’t have if y…” Hands wrapped behind my neck, fingers entwining with my hair, pulling me into a warm, smoky kiss. I punched my free hand into Qualar’s chest, trying to shove him away without dropping my prize or my blanket. Unfortunately, at the same time, I found my lips—without my permission, mind you—kissing him in return.
One of his hands strayed down my neck, then wrapped around the silk-covered cylinder pressed against my chest. “Mmm… What’s this?” he asked against my lips.
All fuzzy feelings gone, I pushed away from him and stepped back, clinging to my prize. I lost grip of my blanket, stepped on it and stumbled backward. The calves of my legs ran into a trunk, and I tripped and fell against the other side of the tent.
As you can see, with this amount of luck, this is why I don’t play games with dice. I only roll low numbers and still get accused of cheating.
With a creaking, the support pole came tumbling down, flattening the tent on top of us.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Elistra cried from outside.
Qualar let loose an exaggerated moan, “Oooouch. I’m hurting!”
I growled. “That’s what you get for handlin’ my goods, fire maniac!”
Outside, Elistra huffed loud enough for me to hear, “Kids these days.”
THERE I WAS…
If someone had taken a dull spoon and used it to slowly remove each one of my toes, I would have welcomed the torture with open arms. As it was, I had to stand with Qualar outside a small tavern in broad daylight. It was the worst.
“Was it a bottle?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, fire brain. It weren’t.”
“A weird-shaped diary?”
“No! You’ve guessed that already!”
Eight days and two towns had passed since the tent incident, and Qualar was dying to know what it was that I had been hiding in the tent. Thankfully, he didn’t see it and had no idea what it was, but that had only added to his curiosity.
Qualar stepped in front of me, searching my eyes while narrowing his. “Was it… a jug?”
I rolled my eyes again, looking down the busy town street at a woman cradling a tiny baby close. “If it were, I’d be drinking you out of sight and out of mind right now.”
Qualar snorted. “Not likely! Say, how long is Elistra gonna be in there?”
Elistra had been approached by a Deepwood tracker and a woman wearing holy vestments. They said they needed to talk alone with her and offered to buy her a drink, an offer which was not extended to Qualar and me.
I shrugged in answer to Qualar’s question, continuing to watch the woman with her baby until she disappeared around a corner.
“I’m hungry. Let’s go find something to eat.”
I gave Qualar a long, tired look. “Do you have any money, Maniac?”
Before he could answer, a muffled cry made us both pause. Qualar made eye contact with me, raising a questioning eyebrow. I shrugged, but froze when I heard an infant’s wail come from the same direction I had seen the woman and baby.
“Help, some–!” A woman’s cry was cut short, though the baby’s cry continued.
In an instant, Qualar and I were dashing down the street. We rounded the corner just in time to see a half-orc, a man, and a halfling struggling with the young woman. The half-orc had his hand firmly placed over the young woman’s mouth and nose, his other hand holding a sharp blade to her throat. The young woman’s face was red for a lack of air, and tears streamed from her eyes, running down the hand clamped around her face.
The man pried at her arms, trying to take her wailing baby from her.
The halfling tapped his foot impatiently. “Come on, missy, stop makin’ this so hard.”
I ducked into a shadowy doorway and Qualar came to a halt. “Hey!”
All three of the woman’s assailants turned toward him.
Qualar put his fists on his hips. Only, I could tell his fingers were digging into the pouches on his belt.
“How many men does it take to assault a helpless girl?” he asked.
The halfling sneered, drawing a knife. “Two and a half?”
Qualar paused, surprise registering on his face. “Wow. You beat me to the punch.”
“The jokes of tall folk are predictable.” The halfling nodded at Qualar, glancing at the half-orc. “Get him.” He jumped up on a rain barrel and jerked the woman by the hair, poking his knife tip against the underside of her jaw. The half-orc turned her loose, letting her catch her breath, and drew a second knife. The human man, looking strangely relieved, pulled a hammer from his side, glowering at Qualar.
Qualar took a solid step back, raising his hands, his fingers curled around something small. “Now, easy boys. We don’t want this to get messy.”
The half-orc and the man rushed forward. Qualar took in a sharp breath. He threw a wad of dust on the ground between him and the thugs, then bent forward and breathed out. Fire exploded from his mouth, touching the dust just as the two unfortunate henchmen stepped on it. The dust exploded, fire and dirt spraying in all directions, lighting the two on fire.
While the dust was still thick and the two scrambled to put themselves out, I slipped from my hiding place and dashed across the ally toward the halfling. I came to a skidding halt when the halfling whisked his cloak with a whispered word and disappeared. The young lady stumbled forward, then glanced back at the empty space where the halfling had been, her expression perplexed.
“Where did…” she started, but I interrupted her.
“Get, girl! Run while you can.” The words had barely left my mouth when I felt a pressure on my leg. A previously invisible barrier surrounding me popped like a bubble and shrank back into my necklace.
Dragon dung. My shield.
The halfling reappeared at my side, a startled look on his face. “Mage armor?”
I scowled and sliced my knife down toward his shoulder, a blow he easily deflected before dancing to the side and drawing another knife.
I crouched low, readying my dagger in my hand. “You aren’t the only one with fancy nick-knacks to help him play unfair.”
The halfling smirked. “Good. I will enjoy plundering yours when we’re done here.”
I took a step back as he advanced, steadying myself and watching his movement. I totally had it under control and knew I was going to disarm him of his two knives with my one dagger, but Qualar ruined all my fun.
A thin sheet of dust blew between the halfling and me.
“Sorry, but can I cut in on this dance of death?” Qualar’s words were the only warning I had before a wall of crackling fire and sparks sprang up in front of my face. I closed my eyes and fell backward, but not before my eyebrows and bangs died a painful death. I heard the halfling cry out, then all went silent.
I opened my eyes to find the halfling was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s get out of here!” a voice cried from down the alley.
“Yeah, I wasn’t paid for this dragon dung,” a second gr
uff voice agreed.
I turned to watch the scorched man and half-orc dash out of the alley, ducking around a corner and out of sight.
I whipped my head from side to side. “Where’d the little guy go?”
Qualar reached down and took my hand, helping me to my feet. “Dunno. He did something fancy with his cape and disappeared. I thought it was a neat trick! Where did the girl and her baby go?”
One more quick glance around told me that the young lady had taken my advice and disappeared. I shrugged in answer to Qualar’s question, reaching up and rubbing my singed eyebrows.
“Those will heal in no time at all.” Qualar said.
“Coming from the guy who didn’t singe his eyebrows off,” I grumbled under my breath.
“Let’s get back to the wagon and see if Elistra has something that will help. Maybe she has a magical potion of eyebrow growing!”
Goofy as he was, Qualar was alert for trouble as we walked back to Elistra’s wagon. He held my hand as we walked, indicating that he didn’t completely trust that I was steady on my feet. I tried to reassure him that my eyebrows had nothing to do with my sense of balance, but he ignored every word of it.
“Once we’re inside the wagon, maybe I should check to make sure you don’t have any other burns?” Qualar asked as we came up to Elistra’s gypsy wagon.
I knit my brows, knowing they weren’t there, a bit of a smirk turning up the corner of my mouth. “Check where, exactly?”
Qualar shrugged as he grabbed the door latch. “Oh, I don’t know. I figured a head-to-toe search would be the way to start, ya know?”
As he opened the door, I saw a quick movement in the shadows of the dark wagon.
I set my hand on Qualar’s shoulder and drew my knife. Qualar took a quick step back, inhaling sharply.
“Shhhhh!” a voice hissed from inside the wagon. “Please! I really need your help!”
I stared for a long moment until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Though hidden under one of Elistra’s blankets, I recognized the face staring back at me as the young woman with the baby. My eyes drifted to her arms, concealed by the blanket.
“Where’s your baby?” I whispered.
She hesitated, then pushed the blanket aside, revealing the tiniest baby I’d ever seen sound asleep in her arms. “Please, help us. We’re in serious trouble. My family wants to kill my baby.”
I AIN’T NO SOFTY…
I like to think of myself as calloused and cold-hearted as a standard criminal comes.
Note: I said standard criminal. There is a line I do not cross in the cold-hearted world, and that is when it comes to the murder of innocents. Not-so-innocents? Eh, they’re fair game. But innocent little babies are as innocent as they come. Especially when they have bright red ringlets of hair… and big green eyes… and coo like a dove.
I sat next to the campfire blazing brightly in the darkness. The tiny baby nestled in my arms sucked at her fist before holding it out and cooing at me. I smiled and cooed back. (No judging! What’s a hardened thief like myself supposed to do when a baby coos at them? COO BACK. Okay? It’s an unwritten rule.)
“How old is she, Rashel?” Elistra asked.
“About f-four months, I think? Yes. Four months.” The mother answered from inside Elistra’s wagon, where she was changing.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Raina.”
I smiled at Raina, stroking her tiny soft face with my finger. “Hi, Raina.”
Okay, I’ll just admit it: I’d fallen in love. It wasn’t hard to do. She was so sweet and adorable.
Qualar moved up behind me, peering down at the baby as he popped some seeds into his mouth. “She’s so itty bitty!” He exclaimed for the umpteenth time. “Why is she so small?”
I looked up at the fire-eater and scowled. “What kind of a question is that, burn-brain?”
“No, i-it’s okay.” Rashel said as she stepped from the wagon wearing a set of Elistra’s clothes, “Her father was… well… he wasn’t human. He was a bit on the smallish side.”
Elistra walked around Rashel, checking to make sure the clothes fit. “Not a human? Is that why your family wants to kill the child?”
Rashel nodded, her eyes glued to the baby in my arms. “He was the nicest person I’d ever met, but they never understood that. When he died suddenly, my parents said I needed to wipe my slate clean and pretend it never happened. They wanted me to marry into a well-to-do family in Dunwynn.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Dunnies—bunch of manure-shoveling xenophobes.”
Rashel nodded. “Of course any proper Dunwynn family would shun my family if they knew I had a… half-breed child. So, when my family said that they wanted me to wipe the slate clean…”
“They meant wipe it clean with blood.” Qualar finished somberly for the girl.
Rashel nodded, looking down at her feet. “For the greater good of the family name.”
“How did her father die?” Elistra stepped behind Rashel and began to braid her long brown hair.
The young woman twisted a toe in the dirt. “Wolf attack.”
Elistra narrowed her eyes. “Did you see it?”
Rashel shook her head, and the violet eyes standing behind her narrowed further, filled with suspicion.
“Where did you live?” Qualar asked, finishing off another handful of seeds.
Rashel looked up, eyes focusing back on Raina. “I grew up in a little town east of Bardon’s Gap.”
For a brief moment, my mind flitted to a mansion in Bardon’s Gap that I had, um, familiarized myself with some time ago. It was the same very same mansion where I had acquired my mysterious cylindrical object.
Qualar poked a stick into the fire. “And where are you on your way to?”
“Bendenwood, I presume?” Elistra finished Rashel’s braid off, laying it over her shoulder.
Rashel nodded, looking back at the seeress with concern. “How did you know?”
“I’m a fortune teller, dear,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Rashel knit her brows and nodded slowly in belied understanding.
I wrinkled my nose again. “Why Bendenwood? It’s just a bunch of tree huggers and basket weavers. Only thing that could possibly make it any worse is if a bunch of elves lived there too.”
“My family won’t argue with druids. It was the safest place I could think of for us to stay.” Rashel smiled, looking at me. “Basket weaving is an old hobby of mine.”
I frowned with a sigh and looked down at Raina. “Your future looks full of tree hugging, flower picking, and basket weaving, little one. I’m sorry.”
The baby slobbered on her fist, staring at me intently.
IT WAS PITCH BLACK…
Under my blanket. Almost.
The moon was out and full. The embers of the fire were dying, but still aglow.
Crickets chirped, the wind whistled softly through the trees, and Qualar’s snoring was loud and sounded like a choking banshee.
I had slipped under my blanket to block out the evening light and give myself some privacy, but unfortunately, there was no hiding from the sound of Qualar getting the restful sleep I wished I was getting.
The thought occurred to me that my blanket could stifle his snoring. Permanently. But then Elistra would be sad to find that her fire-eater had unfortunately suffocated sometime during the night, and I couldn’t very well do that to the poor girl.
With a soft sigh, I silently reached into a small purse on my side. My hand sank further and further into it, until I was almost elbow-deep in the tiny bag. I thought about my jewel-encrusted cylinder, and suddenly felt something slip into my hand.
I pulled it out and held it in front of my face. My eyes were very sharp in the dark, and even under my blanket, I could make out the individual symbols surrounding the cylinder. I twisted the symbols around and listened to a soft clicking inside the cylinder.
Puzzles like this are child’s play. If only I could understan
d what language these symbols were in...
I studied them carefully, trying to make out some sort of pattern.
“Spiders! Giant spiders!”
The campfire roared to life.
I sprang to my feet at Qualar’s outcry. I spun around breathlessly, looking for any sign of enormous arachnids. Heart slowing, I angled my eyes down to the still-sleeping man. Qualar whimpered again, then rolled over, his breathing even and slow.
I growled under my breath. “You and that stupid spider dream.”
My gaze was drawn to the wagon when I heard the baby cry. It was only a small cry, soon put to rest as her mother began to softly console her. Soon, everything was quiet again, except for the crackling fire that was now bright and alive.
I shifted my gaze to Elistra on the other side of the fire and found the fortune teller sitting up, shaking her head softly as she stared at Qualar. She made eye contact with me, then softly patted the ground next to her.
I scooped up my bedroll, carefully tucking my cylinder inside my blanket, out of sight. I spread everything out next to her, wadded my blanket up and flopped down on the ground with it in my lap.
“One of these days, I’m gonna make a fake giant spider and hang it above his head while he’s asleep, and maybe, if I’m very lucky, he’ll die of fright.” I whispered.
Elistra cleared her throat softly. “More likely than not, he would just start the wildfire of the century trying to kill it.”
I sighed and nodded, staring at the slowly dying fire.
“What were you holding in your hand a moment ago?”
I internally froze at the seeress’ question. “Um… blankets?”
Elistra softly giggled. “No. It’s hiding inside the blanket now.”
I mentally cursed myself for being so hasty to respond to the boy who cried spider. As I tried to think my way out of showing it to Elistra, the fortune teller leaned close, her violet eyes catching mine.
“If you want help with the puzzle, you’ll have to trust me with the secret.”
I squinted at her, knowing better than to ask how she knew it was a puzzle. After a moment of thought, I shrugged and unwrapped the blanket from around my prize. I held it out to Elistra, keeping a vice-like grip on it.
Tales From Thac Page 22