by T. H. Lain
He looked at her with an obviously forced smile and asked, “Where will you go?”
She had to clear her throat, then pause for a moment before she could say, “Fairbye, to start, I suppose. I can pick up the trade road from there to New Koratia and beyond.”
The old man nodded and said, “Beyond…”
“I have no intention of getting myself killed,” she said.
The old man shrugged. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “You’re a good little mage, Naull, and with luck you might live to be great one, but there is something you need to understand.”
Naull waited while Larktiss struggled with what he felt he had to say next.
“If you leave here before I believe you’re ready,” he said finally, “you will not be welcomed back.”
Naull sniffed, wiped the tears from her face, and said, “Like hell, old man. I’ll be back to visit you every year, no matter what life hands me, no matter where I end up.”
The old man nodded, but his eyes were distant. Naull understood that he believed it wouldn’t matter if she was welcomed or not or intended to return or not. He was sure he would never see her again.
“Fairbye,” he said, crossing slowly, stiffly to the door. “You’ll need some things. I can give you pouches-you’ll need pouches, you know, for spell components, and-”
He stopped talking so he could keep himself from crying. After a moment, he opened the door.
“Get dressed,” said the old man. “I can spare a backpack, I think, and a torch or three. Don’t forget your spellbook.” He turned to face her, his face serious, his eyes red. “Never, ever forget your spellbook, girl. It is a mage’s-”
“Life,” she finished for him. She’d heard him say it enough. “It’s a mage’s life.”
He smiled weakly and walked through the door. She listened to his shuffling footsteps recede for a minute, then took the pouch from the table and left the room herself.
Larktiss had gone down the steep spiral stairs that ran up the center of the cylindrical tower. Naull went up. She took the steps two at a time-a habit that always annoyed and worried Larktiss-and was through the door into her cramped bedchamber in less than a minute.
She scanned the room quickly, having worked out long ago what she would take with her when she left. There was the crossbow and a quiver of quarrels, a flint and steel, her long, straight quarterstaff. She scooped up the earrings that were all she had left of her mother and put them on. They were heavy, jagged things that only accentuated her boyish haircut, but they were her only possession of any real value.
She stripped out of her work clothes and slid on a pair of beige harem pants she’d sewn herself and never worn, then a long-sleeved, corseted top and a stiff leather riding hood. There was a tall mirror in her room, and she looked at herself. She looked like a traveler, a pilgrim, a wanderer, an adventurer. She looked like anything but a sheltered girl bent to endless study.
She smiled and, taking her staff, turned and walked out of the room she’d called her own for six years without looking back. If she’d thought about it, she might have spent a moment or two soaking in the sights and smells of the tower as she made her way down the long spiral stairs. Instead, she took the stairs practically at a run and almost bowled her aging mentor over when they emptied out onto the ground floor of the tower.
“At least have the good manners not to appear to be in such a gods-bedamned hurry, girl,” Larktiss said, sincerely annoyed.
Naull took a deep breath and steadied herself. The old man held up a strap of old, threadbare pouches. He nodded, and she tipped her head down to let him drape them over her shoulder. The bandoleer was surprisingly light, the leather soft with age. She straightened and forced a smile.
In his other hand he held a little leather sack, bunched together at the top and tied. He handed it to her, and she took it, surprised by the weight.
“A few coins,” he said, then nodded to a backpack on the floor at her feet.
Naull smiled and said, “Larktiss…”
“Bah,” the old man scoffed, waving a hand at her. “Don’t get too excited, girl, they’re mostly coppers… but they’ll get you started if you stay clear of thieves and avoid the finer things in life.”
Naull laughed, and Larktiss looked away. She was sure she saw the old man smile. He turned and opened the door, letting in the bright late afternoon sun and the warm, muggy air. Naull bent and grabbed the backpack, slipping it around her shoulders. It was heavy.
Her mentor waved her out the door, avoiding her eyes as she passed. She stopped in the doorway to give him a kiss on the cheek. He did smile then, and patted her on the shoulder the way he always did when he didn’t know what else to do.
“Farewell, Larktiss,” Naull said, stepping out of the tower into the wide world.
He said nothing, just closed the door behind her.
3
Regdar crouched and ran a finger over the dry grass. When he drew his hand back, the tips of his fingers were stained with blood.
“Sheep?” Jozan asked him.
Regdar looked up at the priest, grunted, and said, “You overestimate my abilities as a tracker.”
Jozan smiled and nodded. “This is the place the shepherd boy described?”
Regdar stood. “Something was killed here,” he said, “and recently.”
He looked around again and saw no sign of giant spiders, though there were dozens of sheep wandering the short, drought-stunted grass on the side of the hill.
“Very good, Randar,” Lidda said. “So, everything’s fine here.” She clapped her hands once and took a step back away from the two heavily armored men. “The spiders are gone, and the sheep look fine. So, thanks for everything, but-”
“My name is Regdar,” Regdar cut in. “And you will be free to go when Jozan says you’re free to go. If you pretend to not understand that, I will be forced to-”
“Easy there, big fella,” she sneered, “you’re sweeping me off my-”
“That’ll be all,” Jozan interrupted in turn, glancing at Regdar, “from both of you. Let us assume that what the shepherd boy said was true and that a sheep was attacked and killed here. He said it was dragged off… in which direction?”
Regdar looked back at the ground and said, “There’ll be a trail of blood. It hasn’t rained, so the blood wasn’t washed away, but it has soaked into the dry grass.” He held up his bloodstained fingers.
“So once again, Pelor shows us that the path to enlightenment is best traveled on our knees,” Jozan said. He knelt as quickly as his stiff armor allowed and began to pass his hands over the brown grass. “We may not be able to see the blood trail, but we can feel it.”
Regdar lowered himself to his knees near where he’d found the first bit of blood. He passed his hands over the ground in front of him the same as Jozan and soon found the patch of blood-soaked grass. In a less than a minute, he had determined a rough perimeter of where the sheep was initially attacked and was reasonably sure he knew in which direction it was dragged.
“It’s this way, Jozan,” he said. “Find anything, Lidda?”
There was no answer, and Jozan said, “Lidda?”
Regdar looked around and saw Jozan do the same thing. The halfling woman was gone.
Regdar drew his greatsword from his back and ran in one direction while Jozan ran in the other. They both knew she wouldn’t go back to Fairbye, so they didn’t bother looking for her that way. The hills made it hard to see very far, and there was the odd copse of trees here and there and in one direction, the edge of a proper forest.
Regdar had never been trained to hide, but he had been trained to seek. He scanned the shadows under the trees for any movement and the underbrush for signs of anything bigger than a squirrel. He kept moving the whole time. She’d been gone for a couple minutes, no more, but a fast little halfling, who was most likely a thief just like the people of Fairbye thought, could get far in a couple minutes.
“Anything?” he
called out to Jozan.
“She’s gone,” Jozan answered. “Never mind. Let her go.”
Regdar turned around, and it was all he could do to keep from sprinting in Jozan’s direction. He hadn’t known the priest long, but he knew Jozan wouldn’t decide to stop looking for the halfling. Though Regdar wasn’t sure what the priest was trying to tell him, it was obvious that Regdar was looking in the wrong direction.
He was nearly at Jozan’s side when the priest waved him off. Regdar met the other man’s gaze, and Jozan nodded once, then moved his eyes slowly to one side without turning his head. Regdar resisted the temptation to look in the direction Jozan had indicated. Instead, he sheathed his sword and bent to one knee.
Regdar touched the ground and said, “Good riddance to bad company, then. I’ll find the trail again, and we’ll get on with it.”
The fighter tensed his legs, ready to spring forward into a run, and Jozan took a few steps backward, but in the direction he’d indicated with his eyes. There was a sheep a few yards from him, grazing at the dry grass, as oblivious as one would expect a sheep to be. It was grazing near the edge of a copse of trees that were being choked by a dense mat of underbrush-tall bushes with brilliant yellow flowers. The branches were dense enough, and the shadows dark enough to hide a halfling.
Jozan whispered something, and Regdar was about to ask him to repeat himself when the priest looked up and shouted, “Scream!” in a voice that made gooseflesh burst up on the undersides of Regdar’s arms.
The command was followed immediately by a loud, shrill scream like a little girl’s. It was coming from the underbrush, and Regdar leaped to his feet, counting off the seconds to himself.
…two…
Under the scream he heard footsteps, light and close together, and receding.
…three…
He led the sound of the halfling’s feet and launched himself over the first row of yellow bushes.
…four…
He saw the side of her face whip past the trunk of a tree and turned so he would come up just behind her.
…five…
She stopped and swerved on one heel with a lithe grace Regdar had to admire even as he was cursing it. He practically fell sideways to compensate.
…six…
She stopped screaming and dived for cover behind another tree, but Regdar’s hand came down and took up a handful of her long, carefully braided hair.
Lidda jumped toward him. It was exactly what Regdar would have done if he was in her place, so he knew how and when to take advantage of it. There was a flash of steel, and Regdar brought his other hand up past his chest and batted the hand Lidda was holding the dagger in away from his throat. The weapon went sailing, and Lidda gasped in pain and surprise.
Regdar slipped a hand around her waist and turned her around to face him. He took his hand from her hair and wrapped it around the pommel of her sheathed short sword.
And to think, he hadn’t stopped Jozan from talking the townspeople into giving her her weapons back.
She tried once to squirm out of his grip, but when he squeezed her she stopped.
“Yeah, well, all right, then,” she said, not breathing as hard as Regdar would have expected. “Watch the spiky bits, there, Ramdor.”
He dropped her to her feet, careful not to snag her on any of his armor’s spikes. Regdar slid his right arm around to under her arm and back behind her head. His left hand stayed on her sword. She must have known how easy it would be for him to break her neck, so she didn’t try to get away. Jozan approached, having some trouble moving through the undergrowth. Regdar dropped to one knee, so he wasn’t improperly balanced, leaning over the halfling who was only half his height.
Lidda turned her head enough to see Jozan and said, “Yeah, like that was fair. Your god actually lets you do that sort of thing to an innocent girl just trying to see a little of the world?”
“Pelor,” Jozan said, smiling, “moves in mysterious ways.”
Lidda opened her mouth to speak again but stopped herself. Regdar figured even she was smart enough to know that you can insult a priest, but you better think twice before insulting his god.
***
Tzrg gripped the tray with both hands and eyed the slippery surface of the flowstone ledge. Rezrex and two of his hobgoblins sat near the edge, tossing loose stones off the high drop-off-as tall as thirteen or fourteen goblins-into the normally mirror-still water of the big crystal pool below. The hobgoblins looked angular and brutal against the smooth, rounded white surface of the flowstone.
“Beer!” the big hobgoblin shouted, waving Tzrg forward.
Tzrg didn’t used to serve beer. It was a female’s job before Rezrex came and should have been a female’s job afterward. Rezrex didn’t like the female goblins coming near him, though. He said things about them in the hobgoblin language that Tzrg didn’t understand. Rezrex had killed a total of twelve of the Stonedeep goblins-either himself, one of his other hobgoblins, or in battle against the Cavemouth Tribe-but none of them female. It meant the Stonedeep Tribe might still have a future, but either way it would be a future created for them by Rezrex.
A single harsh word in the hobgoblin tongue echoed against the ceiling some hundred feet up. Tzrg jumped. It was Rezrex who had shouted, because Tzrg wasn’t bringing the beer fast enough.
With three heavy stone flagons full of beer on it, the tray was heavy. It wasn’t easy for Tzrg to carry it without spilling, and he knew he’d be punished if he spilled. He walked carefully, not looking over the edge, and managed to get within the huge hobgoblin’s reach without spilling any of the bitter fungus beer.
Rezrex’s face twisted into a hideous, huge grin, showing ragged yellow fangs and diseased gums. Tzrg looked away before he made eye contact. He looked down and felt Rezrex take one of the flagons from the slate tray. As the other two hobgoblins took their drinks, Tzrg’s eyes wandered to the cave behind where Rezrex was sitting on a carved stone chair. Behind Rezrex and to Tzrg’s left was the dark, round entrance to the side-passage that was once Tzrg’s private cave. It was the cave that all the chiefs of the Stonedeep Tribe had lived in for generation after generation. Tzrg hadn’t seen the inside of it in weeks.
Rezrex said something in the hobgoblin language, but the only word Tzrg recognized was what he had come to think of as Rezrex’s nickname for him. Tzrg didn’t know exactly what the word meant, but he was pretty sure it was an insult. He’d never heard Rezrex use it to refer to anyone else.
Tzrg looked up and saw that Rezrex was looking at him expectantly, as if he was waiting for the goblin to respond. Tzrg had been in this situation more than once with Rezrex and usually, he just said “Tzrg pzvmp.”-Tzrg serves.
This time, though, the words caught in Tzrg’s throat. There were a dozen goblins in the deep shadows off to his right and back, away from the hobgoblin. They were eyeing the beer barrel, their eyes flicking from it to Tzrg and back again. They wanted beer, but Rezrex was denying them drink. They were limited to water as if they were females, and they didn’t like it. They kept looking at Tzrg as if he could do something about it.
Rezrex batted the tray out of Tzrg’s hands, and it smashed him in the face. He stepped back and pinwheeled his arms. Behind him was a sheer drop into water Tzrg knew was over his head. He managed not to fall off only by the slightest margin. The tray went spinning down, bouncing off the smooth, pale flowstone, and splashed into the crystal pool.
The two hobgoblins, who sat on either side of Rezrex, laughed hysterically.
“Kdl Tzrg,” the hobgoblin growled. “Kdl Rezrex.”-Tzrg’s cave. Rezrex’s cave.
Tzrg couldn’t help glancing at the entrance to the little cave that used to mark him as the chief of the Stonedeep Tribe. The goblins who’d been looking to him to get them beer came forward a few steps, craning their necks to see him.
Tzrg had a flash of anger-he was angry at the other goblins, his goblins. They had stepped aside when Rezrex came, hadn’t resisted the hobgoblins e
ither. They all looked at him like he was supposed to do something, but none of them were willing to do anything themselves. They went up the cave with Rezrex and raided the Cavemouth Tribe. They even helped to steal the Cavemouth’s hive spider queen. They all knew what that meant for the Cavemouth goblins: feral spiders, chaos, death. They helped to shatter the old treaties that kept the Cavemouth Tribe safely up high, and the Stonedeep Tribe safely below. They did what Rezrex told them to do, just like Tzrg, but they still had the nerve to look at him like Tzrg was lurched forward so fast and so hard his neck almost snapped. Rezrex was holding him by the front of his ragged tunic, taking up some of Tzrg’s chest hair with the mildewed old cloth. Tzrg hissed in pain as he was lifted off his feet and drawn in close to the hobgoblin’s huge, stinking face.
“Listen, Tzrg,” Rezrex growled in halting Goblin. “Rezrex leads. More than eighteen goblins. More than eighteen tribes. Rezrex leads. Leads goblins. Tzrg knows?”
Tzrg nodded, letting himself hang there. Tzrg understood what the hobgoblin meant. He was going to lead all the goblins. Every goblin would fall under his leadership. Tzrg couldn’t imagine how such a thing might be possible, then he considered the size of the beast that was holding him off the ground with one hand. There was the magical mace, too, and the hobgoblin henchmen… and the Stonedeep Tribe. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to imagine after all.
It had taken Rezrex less than a week to take complete control of the Stonedeep Tribe. The Cavemouth goblins had resisted, and all that did was get more than eighteen of them killed and the rest thrown into cages to think about the folly of their resistance. Tzrg knew goblins-Stonedeep, Cavemouth, or whatever tribe-well enough to know they’d give in soon enough and give in completely. What else could they to do?
“Tzrg knows,” Rezrex said, looking the goblin in the eye.
Tzrg nodded and said, “Tzrg knows.”
He was launched backward into the cool cave air. His arms started flapping-he couldn’t stop them. His stomach jumped up into his chest. Tzrg fell and fell for what seemed like a full minute but wasn’t really more than a couple seconds. He hit the water hard-hard enough to smash the air from his lungs and leave him in the freezing cold pool, locked in mid-gasp lest he take in a lungful of water.