by Robert Bevan
Julian addressed the horses together, hoping that would keep them nicely synched together. “Horses, walk together slowly.” The plan worked better than he had hoped. The horses movements were perfectly synchronized. It was like Riverdance.
Nutcracker navigated them through the maize until they were far enough away from the house that they could safely travel on the road without being seen. They passed a couple of goblins here and there along the way. Nutcracker put his finger over his lips, and the other goblins went back to work like they hadn’t seen a thing.
“I was wondering,” said Julian, once they were on the road. “And I’m sorry if this is a sensitive question.”
“Then don’t ask it,” said Tim.
“I have to know,” said Julian. “How is it that you all came to be slaves?”
“Julian!” Tim snapped.
“It’s just that I’ve seen other goblins around Cardinia. They seem to be doing all right for themselves.”
“Well good for them,” said Nutcracker. “We ain’t slaves because we’s goblins.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’s cheap because we’s goblins. We’s slaves because we was captured in war.”
“So you’re saying there can be slaves of other races?”
“What kind of fool question is that?”
“We’re not from around here.”
“I ain’t from ‘round here neither,” said Nutcracker, “which, sadly, is the reason I came to be on the losin’ side of the war.”
“Oh.” Julian was curious about how things worked, but he didn’t want to pry too deep into Nutcracker’s personal history.
“To answer your question, anyone can end up a slave. Don’t matter what race you are. I had a human on the auction block on my left, and a minotaur on my right. Both fetched a hell of a lot more coin than I did.”
“So all captured soldiers become the slaves of their enemy?” asked Tim.
“Not all,” said Nutcracker. “Some choose death.”
“Huh?”
“Every soldier gets a choice. Some folks feel they let down their king or country or what have you, and deserve death. Some is more scared of getting’ a bad slave master than they is of death itself. Some prefer a quick death from a fellow soldier to the indignity of being a slave. Me, I figure death’s gonna come sooner or later whether I want it to or not, so I’ll just keep on livin’ and see what else life has in store for me.”
From there, they traveled in silence but for the perfectly timed rhythm of hooves on dirt. It was only about another hour before Nutcracker pointed out Old Man Belmont’s tower on the horizon.
From a distance, the tower looked pretty much like what Julian expected a wizard’s tower to look like. Tall, thin, impractical. But as they got closer, he saw that the tower was merely the focal point of a series of smaller buildings. What’s more, he could hear children playing and laughing.
“Does Old Man Belmont have kids?”
Nutcracker laughed. “No, not for a long time. He got him some pretty little grandkids though. You best let me off here. Won’t do none of us no good for you to be seen with me.”
Julian stopped the horses, and Nutcracker dismounted, careful not to jostle Dave.
“See you back on the farm?” asked Julian.
Nutcracker nodded. “Good luck.”
“Do you think we can trust him?” asked Tim when Julian started the horses moving again.
“With what?”
“The money.”
“I don’t see how he has much use for it,” said Julian.
“What if he tries to make a deal with Chester?” asked Tim. “Secure his freedom for some information on some hidden treasure?”
“I don’t think he’d have time for all that,” said Julian. “Chester would most likely just shoot him again anyway.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Ravenus!” Julian called out.
A few seconds later, Ravenus flew into view and settled atop Julian’s quarterstaff. “Yes, Master Julian?”
“Would you mind flying back and keeping an eye on the hole we just pulled Dave out of?”
“Of course, sir!” Ravenus took off into the sky.
“Feel better?” Julian asked Tim.
“A little.” It would have to do.
The property was surrounded by a cobblestone, chest-high wall. It must have been meant only for decoration, as it would have kept out only the very laziest of would-be intruders. The wall was interrupted only in one place, by an archway constructed of rough-but-shimmery blue-gray stones. There were no gates, and the arch was just large enough for two riders to enter on horseback abreast of one another. It occurred to Julian as they approached the arch that the sound of children’s’ laughter was now conspicuously absent.
They stopped just short of passing under the arch.
“Belmont,” said Tim, reading a brass plaque mounted on the arch. “I guess we’re at the right place.”
“Should we just go in?” asked Julian.
“I don’t see a bell or anything,” said Tim.
“Fuck it,” said Cooper. “Let’s just go in.”
A cool breeze blew through Julian’s hair, which was odd, considering he was wearing his sombrero. He looked up and discovered that the giant hat was hovering about a foot above his head. “Well that’s interesting.“
“OW!” cried Cooper. “What the fuck!”
When Julian turned to look, Cooper was holding a crossbow bolt in his hand. The tip was rounded to a nub, but it still left a nasty welt on his chest.
“That hurt, you little shit!” Cooper said to the little blonde-haired girl who was suddenly standing on the wall, on the left side of the arch. She might have been about nine or ten years old if she was human. Judging by the size of her pointed ears in proportion to the rest of her head, Julian guessed she was half-elven. He wasn’t sure how quickly they aged. In her left hand she brandished a wooden sword. In her right, she wielded a miniature, and apparently quite functional, hand-crossbow.
“Who goes there?” said a young male voice. Julian looked at the other side of the arch. A half-elven boy, maybe a year or two younger than the girl, stood atop the wall unarmed, but with his left hand raised confidently in the air. His hair was a thick, wild mess of autumnal colors. His grinning teeth seemed a little too big for his mouth, and his eyes were two different colors. He was going through an awkward phase, but Julian guessed he’d be handsome when he grew out of it.
Julian tried to grab his hovering sombrero, but the little boy jerked his hand higher, causing the hat to ascend just beyond Julian’s reach.
“State your business here!” demanded the little girl. “What’s that you’ve got tied up between the horses?”
“None of your business,” said Cooper.
“You’re ugly,” said the girl, matter-of-factly in the cruelly honest way that children are wont to do.
“Your mother’s a whore!” shouted Cooper. Julian shot him a severe glare. “…rrible dancer.” It was as good a save as Julian could hope to expect.
“No she isn’t,” said the girl. “My mother is an excellent dancer. She’s performed for the Duke and Duchess of Windhollow-Brandyshire.” Her tone carried a certain smugness that suggested that she’d just put Cooper in his place.
“Oh,” said Cooper. “I guess I was misinformed.”
“He’s stupid, too,” said the little boy, waving his hand in a circular motion, causing Julian’s hat to do somersaults in the air above his head. “Let’s ask Poppy to turn him into a pig so we can keep him.”
Julian had no choice but to move the conversation forward. “Is your Poppy in? We really need to see him.”
“He’s ‘round back by the stable,” said the girl, “arguin’ with Mamma.”
“Come on in!” said the boy. “My name’s Stamen. That’s my sister, Pistil.” He hopped down off the wall, and Julian’s hat fell into place on his head.
Julian started the horses through the stone arch. As they pas
sed underneath it, he was blinded by a sudden flash of white light. Before that could even register, he was falling through the air. He almost caught himself with his feet, but fell over backwards, stopping when his back met the unforgiving hard-packed dirt path below him. His vision came back pretty quickly, the light having come and gone like a camera flash.
“Oh, my ass!” said Cooper.
“Oh, your ass!” said Tim, who had landed on his back between Cooper’s legs.
The half-elven boy and girl were crippled by fits of laughter. Stamen was rolling around on the grass, while Pistil was hugging the arch to avoid falling off the wall. Both of them were wheezing like hyenas choking on mustard gas. A Tom and Jerry cartoon might well have killed them.
The horses were gone.
Tim rolled away from Cooper’s legs and toward the Dave statue. A look of terror swept across his face.
“What’s wrong?” asked Julian.
Tim peeked under a piece of Cooper’s bag that was wrapped around Dave. “Oh shit.”
“What is it?” asked Julian, hoping he was wrong about what he presumed the answer would be. He wasn’t.
Tim pulled out a piece of Dave’s head. The statue had fractured just above Dave’s right ear, diagonally down his face to the mass of beard under his left jaw. “Oh my god, what have we done?”
“Does that mean he’s…” Julian couldn’t bring himself to say the word.
“Why didn’t you keep track of the spell duration for those stupid horses?” Tim snapped at Julian.
“The spell duration had nothing to do with it!” said Julian. “We had a good half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes left before the horses timed out. There’s some kind of anti-magic magic in this arch!”
“Dude,” said Cooper. “Flip it over and see if you can see his brain.”
Julian’s first instinct was to club him over the head or at least tell him to shut up, but curiosity got the better of him. He nodded to Tim.
Tim flipped the chunk of Dave’s stone head over. Disappointingly, it turned out just to be solid stone on the inside.
“He might not be dead,” said Julian.
“His head’s fucking cracked in half!” cried Tim.
“We have to try,” said Julian. “Hey Stamen. Take me to your Poppy.” The boy was still red in the face, tears streaming down from both eyes. “Come on, move your ass. This is an emergency!”
Stamen reined in control of his laughter and stood up. He and his sister led them around back behind the center building. Tim carried the stone head fragment, and Cooper carried the rest of the statue. As they approached, Julian could hear the aforementioned argument in progress.
“You ain’t given him a proper chance, Daddy.” It was a woman’s voice, speaking elven.
“Proper chance!” responded an older man’s voice. “Y’all been married ten years already, and I ain’t seen a copper piece of rent money.”
“He’s workin’ his tail off,” said the woman. “Raisin’ two kids is expensive.”
“Don’t I know it! It’s me been payin’ for them.”
“That ain’t fair, Daddy. You know he does the best he can.”
“He plays an accordion in a tavern. I reckon I don’t have to remind you who bought that.”
“Don’t even bring that up. You said yourself it was a birthday present.” The woman’s voice was beginning to crack.
“Aw don’t go an’ get yourself all worked up again. Everyone makes mistakes, Daffodil. I warned you ‘bout gettin’ involved with a human. I just hope you won’t make the same mistake again once this one finally plays his last note.”
“Daddy!”
“I think we can find him from here,” said Julian. “I don’t know if you kids should be hearing this.”
“Ain’t nothin’ we ain’t heard before,” said Pistil. “Daddy and Poppy don’t get along so well.”
They finally rounded the corner to the back of the house, and Julian saw something he never expected to see. A fat elf. The old man had really let himself go by elf standards. Add to that the fact that he was wearing overalls without a shirt, and he wouldn’t have looked out of place at Wal-Mart. He also wore a huge burlap satchel, presumably filled with carrots, like the one he was currently feeding to a horse.
“Well what have we here?” he said. He spoke in the Common tongue, the courteous thing to do in mixed company.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Julian. “Mr. Belmont, is it?”
“Aye, that’s me,” said Old Man Belmont. “This is my daughter, Daphne.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Daphne, acknowledging only Julian. She curtsied, lifting the sides of a dress made of corn husks and rose petals. The flora of the garment was not at all withered, as if she had tailored it less than twenty minutes ago, or it was being kept alive by some other means. Even the two twigs holding her orange hair up in a bob boasted vibrant green leaves.
And who might you be?” asked Old Man Belmont.
“My name is Julian, and…” He couldn’t think of a very good segue. “We were wondering if you could help our friend.” He gestured behind him to Tim and Cooper, who held up their pieces of Dave. “His head fell off.”
Old Man Belmont frowned. His flaccid jowls sagged like distorted reflections of his pointy ears. “I’m sorry about your friend there, but magic don’t come cheap. A spell like that’s like to cost more than you fellers can afford. There’s costs involved on my end, you see. Spell components, time spent researching, simple supply and demand. This is a business, you see. And I have a reputation to protect. I can’t just give away spells to any vagrant who walks in off –“”
“We’ve got money,” said Cooper, reaching into his bag.
“Cooper!” cried Tim. “Don’t –“ But it was too late.
Cooper pulled the sack of gold out of his bag and dropped it on the ground. A few gold coins spilled out of the top. “How much?”
Stamen and Pistil gasped. Their mother’s mouth hung open.
Old Man Belmont’s fluffy white eyebrows rose as he looked at the sack full of money. “Um… that much.”
“Awesome,” said Cooper. “What are the odds of that? Talk about a lucky break.”
Julian and Tim glared at him.
Cooper frowned. “What?”
“Bullshit!” Tim said to Old Man Belmont. “You give us your honest price, or we’ll take our business elsewhere.”
“I’ve told you my price, little feller,” said the fat old elf. “Mind you don’t jostle those pieces too much on your way out. When those rough edges grind together, tiny little bits crumble away. The more dust you lose, the less of a chance he’ll survive the conversion back to flesh.”
Tim looked at his hand. His fingertips were already white with dust. He pursed his lips and looked at Julian.
“Cooper,” said Julian. “Talk to Mr. Belmont for a minute, would you?”
“Why?”
“Because I need to talk to Tim alone,” said Julian. He looked at Old Man Belmont. “And elves have an excellent sense of hearing.”
Old Man Belmont shrugged and nodded.
“So,” said Cooper. “Magic, huh?”
Julian took Tim by the arm and led him around the side of the house. “We’ve got to pay him what he wants.”
“We could get this done somewhere else at a fraction of the cost!”
“Look at your goddamn fingers!” said Julian. “They’re coated in Dave’s powdered brain!”
“Ew,” said Tim, wiping his hand on his pants.
“Don’t get greedy,” said Julian. “There’s plenty more gold where that came from. The more time we spend squabbling over a few coins here, the bigger the chance Chester takes note of our absence. If he starts asking the right questions to the right goblins, there’s a chance he could get to the rest of that gold before we do.”
Tim stood quietly for a few seconds, presumably trying to find a hole in Julian’s argument. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
Diplomacy. Natural
20.
When they came back around to the back of the house, Cooper, Old Man Belmont, and Daphne were huddled together like they were plotting to kill Caesar.
“Well up to that point,” Old Man Belmont was saying to Cooper when Julian and Tim returned, “Rodney hadn’t never been with a woman.”
Cooper folded his arms and scowled. “And she just left him there on the island?”
“Could you love a man who said the things he did to her uncle?”
Cooper pointed at the ground and raised his voice in anger. “I could love a man who –“ He paused thoughtfully. “Wait, where does that leave Bernard’s pet pig?”
Daphne put her hands on her hips and leaned in closer to Cooper than most people could stand. “There never was a pig to begin with.”
“Of course!” said Cooper, slapping himself on the forehead. “It all makes sense! That heartless bitch!”
“Excuse me,” said Julian. “We’ve come to a decision. We’ll pay the money.”
“Well all right then,” said Old Man Belmont. “Let’s get started.” He took the carrot satchel off of his shoulder. “Stamen!”
The young half-elf boy stood at attention. “Yessir!”
“Make yourself useful.” Old Man Belmont tossed his satchel to the boy, who fell over under the weight of what looked to be a couple hundred carrots. “Follow me, gentlemen. Bring your friend.”
The fat old elf led them to the tower.
Aside from its height, the tower was a pretty mundane affair. A simple column of gray stone, punctuated here and there by a seemingly arbitrary pattern of windows. The top of floor was wider around than the rest of the tower, like a tuna can on top of a stack of Coke cans.
Old Man Belmont walked into an unimpressive, doorless entryway, little more than a rectangular hole in the wall.
The inside of the first floor was even more of a letdown. It was magically lit by permanently enchanted stones such as Julian had seen in any number of dungeons, cellars, and even city street lamps at night. But here, why even bother with the light? There wasn’t much to see. The inside walls were the same bare, rough stone as the outside. The floor was just plain dirt, bare except for a small circular rug in the center. Most notably absent was any obvious means of getting to the second floor. There were no stairs, no ladders, not even a hole in the ceiling.