Realms of Mystery a-6

by Elaine Cunningham

  The three young men stood up, saluted, mumbled “yes sir” at least five times each, saluted again, and headed off toward the Happy Horse Livery repeatedly tripping over one another the whole way.

  “You, stand guard over the body” he said to the remaining deputy. His name was Riktus, and he was a few years older than the other three. While not a born soldier, Riktus had learned a lot in the three years since Jag took him on. “People are already gathering around and poking at it. If the cursed thing really was brainsick, I don’t want anyone cutting slices off it to take home as souvenirs.”

  The lad snapped off a crisp salute and trotted over to his post. He could handle responsibility, Jag reflected, which meant that the Purple Dragons were sure to snatch him up when next they passed through on a visit. This job was never going to get any easier if he couldn’t find some way to get the qualified soldiers to stay. Still, knowing that the things were beginning to come under control eased the throbbing in Jag’s head. The worst of the day was surely over. Now all the constable had to worry about was that no one got too rowdy in the celebratory atmosphere that pervaded the unaffected quarters of Minroe.

  As if on cue, a crowd of cheering people rounded the corner and marched toward the wreckage of the Dancing Roc. Kethril Fentloque and his son Abril led the way. Jag met them at the barricade.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked. He made sure to keep his posture civil, but spoke in the voice he mastered as a Purple Dragon commander, the one that made raw recruits wet their tabards. Kethril flinched.

  “W-we’re going to remove the head of that giant. The Dancing Roe may have been destroyed, but I’m going to rebuild the inn and name it ‘One Shot In The Eye.’ We’ll get the head stuffed and mounted to hang over the bar.” The frail man pulled his even frailer son close against him. “My boy killed that giant. We have the right to a souvenir!”

  Jag knew it would come to this.

  “I’m sorry, Kethril, but we’ve reason to believe the giant may have some disease. You wouldn’t want to hang a trophy that would poison all your guests now, would you?”

  The sour old man looked unconvinced.

  “If it’s so dangerous, why is that gnome touching it?”

  As the constable turned, the pain in his head surged again. There stood Riktus, obviously at his wits’ end, helplessly trying to convince Ekhar to stand away from the corpse. The gnome, for his part, tut-tutted and poohpoohed the guard, continuing to merrily poke and prod at the cyclops.

  Jag’s eyes narrowed. “He won’t be for long!” the constable muttered half to himself as he stalked over to the site.

  “Sir!” Riktus almost whined. “I tried to stop him, but-”

  “Don’t worry, son” Jag said. “Ekhar! What the hells do you think you’re doing? I already told you we think the thing was brainsick. How am I supposed to keep the citizens away from it when here you are sticking your damned hands in its mouth? By the gods, that’s disgusting!”

  “Oh, my friend, that you’re here I am glad. I’m quite certain now, this giant was not mad.” He held a finger aloft and it was covered with some of the frothy yellow foam that still clung to the giant’s lips. “A brainfevered or sick thing might spew a white lather, but only a poison makes this foam I gather. It may seem I do this just to be bold and defiant, but the truth is I know someone murdered this giant!”

  “Blessed Torm, give me strength-of course it was murdered! I shot it half a dozen times myself!!” The constable turned to the crowd. “How many of you shot the giant?”

  Several dozen hands shot into the air along with a resounding “Huzzah!”

  “See the arrow that sticks from the poor creature’s eye? It felled this great beast-who let that one fly?”

  The crowd shouted, “Abril! Abril! Abril!” and the frail boy flushed with pride.

  “That fragile youth killed such a monstrous attacker? Not a well-seasoned knight, not a slasher and hacker? Come now you Minroeans, you’re all genteel folk. Such an end to this battle seems like a poor joke.”

  Jag looked at Ekhar in bewilderment. “‘Slasher and hacker?’ What the hell is a ‘slasher and hacker?’”

  “It’s true!” came a shrill voice from the crowd. Kethril Fentloque broke the barricade and walked straight up to Ekhar Lorrent. Jag marveled at the fact that next to an elderly gnome, even the spindly Kethril looked hail and hardy. “My boy did it! Everyone else was shooting the blasted thing in the arms and chest and back. But only my Abril was smart enough and brave enough to wait until it turned to look at him, then shoot it square in the eye.”

  “A Wise move it’s true, and not easily done. The boy stood and fired when most others would run. It’s an action to be considered uncommonly brave, since the boy’s family and home were in danger so grave.”

  “Is that so hard to believe?” Kethril fumed. “That my boy has a backbone?” The innkeeper turned to face the crowd. “You all teased him so. Every day he would come home from school battered and bloodied, but he kept going back. All you did was toughen his spirit!”

  Several of the young men who had earlier carried Abril on their shoulders looked abashed and scuffed their shoes in the mud, unwilling to meet the elder Fentloque’s gaze.

  “Though brave he may be, and remarkably quick, neither of these two skills today did the trick. The giant died not from a piercing of marrow, instead he was poisoned by the tip of the arrow.”

  Jag, who had been mouthing the Words ‘slasher and hacker’ over and over to himself, suddenly regained his focus. “By all that’s right and just, Ekhar, who cares? The giant attacked the town. Do you think it matters to anyone that the lad used poison instead of muscle to kill it?”

  “Yes! Yes!” cried Kethril. “I think he showed uncommon sense. I’ve always said he was a bright one, my Abril. Not like you, Alon M’Greely, who gave him a job and snatched it away all in the same week. So he sometimes gave back the wrong change-bah! That was no reason to fire him, let alone embarrass him the way you did!”

  Ekhar Lorrent nodded to himself. Of all those gathered only Jag noticed, but then he was also the only who knew the gnome well enough to guess at the gesture’s significance. He was sure now that the pounding in his head would never stop.

  “But you, innkeeper Kethril, you believe in your boy. Have you filled his whole life with nothing but joy?”

  Someone from the back of the crowd yelled, “What about when the lad wanted to go to Waterdeep to study at the bardic academy? I thought you were going to flay the skin off him right there in the main room of the Dancing Roc!” And everyone gathered murmured their agreement.

  “Bah! It was for his own good!” Kethril snorted. “Bardic academy indeed! We Fentloques run inns, we don’t perform in them!”

  “The murder is solved, I’m happy to say. I know who it was killed the giant today!” Ekhar bounced about like a squirrel with its tail caught in a bear trap.

  “Oh, Ekhar!” Jag groaned. “Abril killed the giant. I’ve been telling you that since the minute you arrived!”

  “The boy killed the giant, that much is true, but how and why he did it just might surprise you!”

  The gnome had every eye in the crowd on him. As much as Jag wanted to tell him to close his fool mouth, he knew that at this point the citizens would demand to hear Ekhar’s wild theory. Best just to let him go, the constable thought.

  “Wary was I of the giant’s foamy lip. The odd yellow froth gave me my first tip. You don’t care that the boy used poison to fell the cyclops, but the next thing I tell you may make your eyes pop. The poison he used is called yellow-root-brew. Inn cooks use but a drop to spice their stew. But if a man were to drink a cup full of this mix, he’d be dead as that giant lying still on your bricks. In order to kill such a tremendous beast, the boy would need use a gallon, at least.”

  The crowd stood mesmerized by the gnome. His explanation was the best theater Minroe had seen all year. Between his excited hopping about and his rhyming cant, it see
med to be a mixture of ballet and opera. Only Jag shook his head ruefully. He prayed Ekhar wasn’t going to say something they would all regret.

  “He couldn’t possibly fit that much poison on an arrow,” shouted a man from the crowd.

  “Yes!” yelled a woman closer to the front. “How did he do it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” the gnome continued, “but first I must pray, that you listen quite closely to all that I say. Look, if you will, at the monster’s still feet. The mud you see there will quite closely meet, upon closer inspection if you only stare, the same exact type found on Abril’s shoes there.”

  Even Ekhar was taken aback by the volume of the gasp that escaped the crowd. It was true. The mud on the cyclops’s boots was a rich brown hue since it came from the dark soil of the creature’s mountain cave, very different from the tan-colored dirt found in town. And, when they looked, the same dark mud could be clearly seen on Abril’s shoes and pant cuffs.

  “The boy has been spending his time in the hills, befriending the monster, bending it to his wills. He’d bring it food from his father’s own inn, to make it believe it could trust only him. But on the gift food he would liberally sprinkle, the yellow-root brew mixed with raw periwinkle. This covered the scent so the giant could smell just the food not the poison, he never could tell.”

  It seemed to Jag that the crowd was closing in on Ekhar, leaning in closer and closer so that they didn’t miss a word of this explanation.

  “Something I must tell you about yellow-root-brew, it remains long in your blood whatever you do. Though each time the giant ate but a wee tiny drop, he was slowly being poisoned and the boy did not stop. He fed the beast more until he was certain, just one sprinkle more would bring death’s black curtain.”

  “Why?” someone shouted, though he needn’t have. Everyone was pressed so closely together that a whisper would have probably been heard by most of the crowd. “Why would Abril do this? I mean, no one here would mourn the killing of a cyclops, but why do it in such a round about way?”

  “Yes,” cried Kethril, who was growing quite nervous at this sordid tale the gnome wove about his son. Actually, the tale didn’t bother him as much as the thought that it might be true. Could Abril be so cunning?

  “Why, you ask? It’s quite easy to tell. To strike back at those people who made his life hell! When he fed the dumb giant he also did show, the bruises he got from his life in Minroe. Abril shared with the giant his pain and his sorrow, in hopes that the creature would beg steal or borrow, to help his new friend take revenge on his foes. Just a pawn in his plans, but that’s how it goes.

  “And what buildings suffered in the giant’s attack? Why those the boy hated, if you’ll only think back. The school where he learned to suffer daily torment, had its door torn in half and it’s portico rent. Then the store where he worked till his boss kicked him out, had its roof torn right off then littered about. And his father, innkeeper of the Dancing Roe, abused the poor boy, beat him merely to shock him from going away to pursue a career as a singer of songs that fall light on the ear. For his father he saved the most horrible loss, to see his dear inn turned to rubble and dross.

  “The creature crushed everything Abril did ask, and what reward did he get for this terrible task? Once the damage was done, the revenge carried through, his friend shot him dead where he lies before you. And the final insult to both giant and town, is that Abril’s the ‘hero’ who brought the beast down.

  “So there you have it, my story’s complete. Abril has blood on his hands and damning mud on his feet. I know not what punishment you’ll likely mete out, but let justice be served-the truth’s been let out!”

  All was silence.

  Jag stared at Ekhar, then at Abril, and finally at the crowd who still stood transfixed. It was as if they were mentally chewing on the tale the gnome told. And slowly, one by one, they swallowed it-and they began to laugh.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” cried Alon M’Greely. “I can see Abril getting in a lucky shot with his bow, but weaving such an intricate plot over imagined slights? The boy’s so scatter-brained he’s lucky he remembers to put his pants on in the morning!”

  The laughter rose and rose. Jag imagined he even saw the buildings of the town shaking with mirth. Although most of the town had a higher opinion of the lad’s intellect than M’Greely did, no one believed that Abril was capable of hatching such a heinous plot. No one, that is, except Ekhar Lorrent-anci Abril himself.

  It was only after five full minutes of raucous laughter that anyone noticed the boy sitting in the mud. His head buried in his hands, Abril wept. And when every eye was on him, he looked up red eyed and said simply, “It’s true.”

  The entire crowd took a single step backward, and Jag felt like his head would explode.

  “It’s truet It happened just the way the gnome said. Everything, everyone in this town holds nothing for me other than painful memories. I’d gone up into the hills to run away when I came across the cyclops. He was my first true friend. But his friendship was nothing compared to my need to be revenged.”

  Now the lad stood, radiating more menace than his slight frame should have been capable of holding.

  “So I figured a plan to get my revenge, and make myself the hero of Minroe at the same time! It would have worked too, if not for that meddling gnome!”

  The crowd, who had been standing stock still, suddenly came to angry life. They screamed for Abril’s head on a pike-none louder than his own father-and surged toward the lad, bent on getting it themselves.

  “Riktus! Help me push these people back!” Jag yelled as he grabbed a fallen beam that used to support the roof of the Dancing Roc Inn. The young deputy was already at work, though, pulling Abril away from the clasping mob, then coming back to help Jag press them back. It was a fight they were destined to lose.

  Luckily, the three other deputies chose that moment to come around the bend leading seven horses, twelve mules, four oxen, and a camel toward the fallen giant. The commotion of the crowd spooked the animals such that they all reared up, knocking the hapless deputies off their feet, then sprinting out of town.

  “My plow horse! You stole my plow horse!” one member of the mob yelled.

  “What are you doing with Sand Treader?” another one cried.

  As quickly as it had begun, the riot ended as the citizens all ran off either to rein in their frightened mounts, or to get home as quickly as possible to ensure that they too had not been the victims of looters. Within minutes, the only people left on the streets were Jag Dubblspeir, his four deputies, Abril Fentloque, and Ekhar Lorrent.

  “Take him to the stockade.” Jag said, grabbing Abril’s arm and handing it to Riktus. “Quickly… before they decide to come back.”

  The young man hurried off with his prisoner.

  “Well, Ekhar, I hope you’re satisfied. You took a town in the midst of a celebration and turned it in against itself. The hero of the day is now likely to spend the next year or more of his life in prison, if his friends and family don’t decide to hang him instead.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve no need for thanks. Just knowing the boy and his deadly pranks will receive justice most swift is all that I need. Now my job here is done, I’ll go home with all speed. And tell often the story of what I’ve seen here today. The lessons I’ve learned will not soon fade away. ‘The Case of the Really Big Corpse’ is my true masterpiece. This pride that I feel may never surcease.

  “So I bid you farewell, Jag, my one truest friend. The mystery is solved, this is finally the end.”

  With that, Ekhar Lorrent dusted off his lapel and headed toward Home, never once looking back to see Jag Dubbispeir, sword in his hand and murder in his eye, barely being restrained by his three deputies. The only clue available to the gnome, had he cared to observe it, was a slight twitching in his left earlobe.

  The Devil and Tertius Wands

  Jeff Grubb

  There’s a common saying
that I have recently taken to heart. It’s normally the type of phrase you hear among adventurers, freebooters, tax collectors, and other individuals of low moral character. The phrase, if you pardon my language, is “a special place in the Hells.”

  Normally such a comment would be heard in adventuring dives, usually uttered when a particularly large barbanan, laden heavily with scars, tattoos, and other body modifications, heads for the door. One of the other adventuring types would give a head-nod toward the barbarian’s slouched, fur-covered back and say something like, “There’s a special place in the Hells for that one.” Sometimes they might just say “hell,” or something more exact “the Nine Hells,” or “the Myriad Pits,” or, if they are among the intelligentsia, they would call it “Baator,” home of the baatezu. In any event, said adventurer-type would invoke that lower dimension of lava pits, imps, devils (another name for baatezu) and brimstone. His companion would probably grunt in agreement. Or start a tavern-clearing brawl. Such is the way things are done among professional adventurers, as I understand it.

  Never would I imagine that my own name, Tertius Wands, would be connected with that dark domain, nor that I would potentially have my own named parcel of abyssal real estate. But such might have been the case, if not for my ever-present and ever-wise companion, the genie Ampratines.

  Let me start at the beginning, which in this case is not in the However-Many Hells but in the city of Iriaebor, crown gem of the upper reaches of the River Chionthar. Iriaebor consists of two cities, an upper city built along a narrow ridge overlooking the river, and a lower city bunched up along the sides of that selfsame ridge. The upper city is a tight jumble of important buildings, all stacked next to each other like children’s blocks. Space is at a premium in the upper city, and none of the various merchant lords wants to move from their lofty (if crowded) perch into the Lower City.