Mistress Hulsey nodded. "I've heard of this organization, too. Generally criminals, as you say. That's why it's a hit odd to find this tattoo on a man like Salamon Beach, architect of a temple devoted to Mishakal, the goddess of healing."
"The tattoo identifies members to each other," Palin explained.
"It sounds as though I should learn as much as I can about this society and then ferret out its members here in Solace," Gerard said.
"Yes," said Palin, frowning. "Though I can't easily guess what a secret gambling society might have to do with the temple accident, or the architect's death."
Gerard couldn't guess, either. Nor did he have a clue as to how to go about gaining access to so secretive a fraternity. Maybe if he took up gambling in the evenings, frequenting the various taverns and inns. Then if he spread enough coin around, word would spread about his "addiction." Members of the society might then be encouraged to approach him.
Vercleese was busy seeking anyone with knowledge of the two ruffians who had been seen assaulting Salamon Beach. But he had to keep one eye on the individuals he questioned and another on his partner, Blair Windholm. The sergeant of the town guard was acting sullen; he wasn't doing his share of the job. Maybe Blair was simply put out because he hadn't been allowed to accompany Beach's body-and the lovely young Kaleen Duhar-back into town. However, if he had an ulterior motive for his desultory assistance, Vercleese wanted to know.
"I don't think it's likely that the two people we're looking for are the same ones who trampled your garden and helped themselves to some of your carrots," he said gently to Mora Skein, the plump, angry seamstress they had met coming out of Stephen's Grocery.
"But you said you're looking for a couple of men who might have been up to no good, and that certainly fits the description of whoever stole my carrots. My prize carrots!" she added, leaning closer for emphasis. "You know, they always take the ribbon at the local fair."
"But we're looking for men with distinct faces. You said you didn't get a good look at your carrot thieves. It might have been just some of the neighborhood boys out doing a little mischief."
"Mischief!" Mora's eyes widened with outrage, and her face darkened. "My best carrots, and you call that mischief?"
"Come on," Blair growled. "We're getting nowhere here."
Mora turned on him. "And you! The town guard can't even protect my vegetable garden, and you pretend to defend all of Solace?"
Blair backed up a few steps, his hands up as if to ward off Mora's words. "I'm sure we'll catch whoever's done this to your garden, ma'am. But first we have to find these two men, who might have committed a real crime-"
"Real crime!" Mora shrieked, gathering attention from passersby. "Desecrating my garden and robbing me of my priceless carrots doesn't qualify as a real crime? I'll have you know that Mistress Dinmore has had her eye on the annual gardening prize for years and will gloat for the rest of her life if she can win it, now that my best carrots have been stolen. She was already out in her yard this morning, smiling in her false way as I discovered the damage to my garden."
"You're right, Mistress Mora," Vercleese said hurriedly, taking her arm and drawing her quietly away from Blair and the collecting crowd. Deftly, considering he had only one arm, the knight took out a small notebook and scribbled some words on it. "I've officially noted your loss, and we will of course investigate the theft of your carrots with all due dispatch. Indeed," he said over his shoulder to Blair, "we might start by talking to some of the folks down at The Trough."
They bade Mora as polite a farewell as they could and rushed away. Blair was muttering imprecations, and Vercleese clapped him on the shoulder. "Buck up. Soon we'll be among ordinary ruffians down at The Trough. They'll seem positively cooperative by comparison, I'm sure."
But the clients of The Trough answered Vercleese's and Blair's questions with surly monosyllables, and none who were present fit the descriptions of the two men Vercleese and Blair sought. Try as he might, Vercleese couldn't find anything suspicious or cagey in the customers' replies. It was as if the two ruffians, striking though their appearances might have been, had drifted into Solace as unnoticed as the evening mist and vanished without leaving a trace.
Vercleese's jaw was clenched in frustration as they marched back to the guard headquarters to meet Gerard and tell him they had learned nothing new.
CHAPTER 14
Gerard and Vercleese heard Tangletoe Snakeweed coming long before they saw him. They had just picked up their horses from the stable and were riding toward the southern edge of town.
"It was the greatest calamity of modern day Ansalon," the kender sang out from a nearby street. "Stones and bricks and chunks of mortar flew everywhere, falling with a mighty roar all around the temple grounds. Timbers shivered with deafening cracks. The dust thrown into the air blocked the sun for most of an hour, threatening to bury alive those who didn't choke to death first. One whole wall of the new temple collapsed in a heap of rubble. I alone among the few survivors managed to maintain my presence of mind, hurrying here and there heroically to tend to the fallen…"
Gerard turned to Vercleese. "Did you see the kender on the scene at the new temple yesterday?"
Vercleese shook his head.
"Me neither," Gerard said. "He must have been hurrying heroically."
"Perhaps we were too dazed by the magnitude of the disaster," Vercleese added with a wry grin.
Gerard made an elaborate show of checking his pockets and purse. "Huh, that's peculiar. I have all my belongings. Another indication that I didn't have any brush with a kender."
"Or maybe Tangletoe wasn't in the 'borrowing' mood. That would be an occasion worthy of recording in the histories kept at the great Library of Palanthas." Vercleese laughed. "People would flock from all across Krynn just to read the account and marvel at it."
"Meanwhile," Tangletoe went on, "Stephen, renowned throughout Solace for his grocery store where the prices are much more reasonable than anywhere else in town and where all the races of Krynn are welcome to do business, had this to say about the accumulating, confusing number of municipal codes enacted by the town council: 'I don't know why we have to have this accumulating, confusing number of municipal codes enacted by the town council. Why do we vote these guys into office if they're just going to tax and regulate us out of business afterward?' That's an exact quote from Stephen himself, folks, or near enough anyway, minus the curse words.
"In other items of the day…"
The kender's voice receded down an adjacent street, swallowed up by the clamor and bustle of another business day in Solace. Gerard and Vercleese wove through the numerous wagons and carts that made their lumbering way through town. Horses snorted and whiffled, donkeys brayed, workmen shouted oaths and directions, barrels thundered as they were rolled up and down gangplanks and across cobblestones, children laughed and called out singsong rhymes, often mocking the workmen, and men and women passing by carried on lively conversations.
For a town that had witnessed "the greatest calamity of modern day Ansalon" just yesterday, Gerard thought, Solace seemed to have dragged itself out of the apocalypse and resumed its normal pursuits with admirable alacrity.
Soon he and Vercleese left the turmoil of town life behind them, riding swiftly down a hard-packed dirt road. The horses leaned into the effort, eager to stretch their legs. Dust swirled up behind them, then dropped without a breeze to carry it. They pounded across the bridge of Solace Stream, passing near Jutlin Wykirk's mill with its creaking, slowly turning wheel.
They continued south. When the horses began breathing harder, the men reined them in, letting them resume a steady canter. Although not yet midmorning, the day was already clear and hot. Gerard wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. After a time, trees closed in around them, just a few here and there at first, but soon growing thicker until the road narrowed to a mere track and the horses had to proceed in tandem instead of abreast. The day, formerly so bright and clear, now seemed
gloomy. Gerard hadn't realized how many birdsongs had enlivened the air around him earlier, until now when they abruptly fell silent. He shivered in the unexpected chill and drew his doublet tighter about him for its scant warmth. At last, Vercleese, in the lead, signaled a halt and slid from the saddle, watching the woods around them warily.
"Just for the record, let me say it again: I don't think this is a good idea," the knight muttered. "I used to try to talk Sheriff Joyner out of it as well. But he always claimed he was lucky."
"He wasn't lucky to be murdered," Gerard said. Though he was striving to lighten the mood, he regretted his bad joke instantly. Darken Wood pressed close around them, dragging at their spirits. Gerard too dismounted. Something akin to magic prickled along his arms and neck, raising the hairs as if he were standing in the midst of an electrical storm.
"No, in the end he wasn't lucky," Vercleese said grimly, staring hard at Gerard.
Gerard shrugged and wrapped Thunderbolt's reins around a branch protruding from a deadfall. Vercleese had been arguing with him about this all morning, without making any headway.
"That Samuval is a snake," Vercleese went on, unwilling to let the matter drop. "I'm telling you, I wouldn't-"
"Which way?" Gerard interrupted.
Vercleese stared at him.
"Which way?" Gerard repeated, more gently this time.
Mutely, Vercleese pointed into the forest.
Gerard nodded and clapped his deputy on the shoulder. "You have your instructions," he said, still speaking in a firm but gentle tone. "I'll meet you here this afternoon."
Vercleese put a foot back into his horse's stirrup, then hesitated, looking imploringly at Gerard.
"Don't worry. I'll be all right," Gerard said.
Vercleese hoisted himself into the saddle again and rode off slowly, muttering to himself and not looking back. With a grim smile, Gerard watched his loyal deputy go. Then he shuddered at finding himself alone in Darken Wood, feeling much less brave than he had tried to act a moment before. With a resolute breath, he started off on foot in the direction Vercleese had indicated.
The land climbed, becoming rocky and hilly. Underbrush snagged at his clothes and tore at his skin. Gnats and mosquitoes whined around him, sometimes half blinding him in thick clouds. He bled from a dozen tiny marks, a combination of mosquito bites and thorn-bush scratches. Sweat poured off him. And still the hair-raising presence of magic caused shivers to run up and down his flesh.
He came at last to the top of a bluff, where he stood on a rock outcrop looking out over a clearing some distance beyond. In the midst of the clearing stood the fortress Baron Samuval was erecting in the clearing. The nearly completed wooden stockade was made of thick poles set into the earth, their sharpened ends pointing to the sky. In the open field surrounding the wooden fortress, soldiers and dark knights drilled, churning to dust a ground long dried from the rains. Gerard counted half a dozen dark knights and maybe three times that number of men at arms. The latter made for a motley army, consisting mostly of rough-looking humans, but also a sprinkling of draconians, goblins, ogres, dwarves, and even one or two renegade elves. But what the force lacked in the niceties of appearance, they more than made up for in martial skills, for Gerard noted with professional approval (and personal distaste) the precision and confidence with which they handled themselves. This would be a formidable force for any enemy to face.
That meant that Kirrit Bitterleaf's elves must amount to an equally impressive force if they were resisting Samuval's occupation of their realm; otherwise Samuval wouldn't be wasting the resources to erect this fortress and station so many of his soldiers here on the Qualinesti border.
Gerard took a white scarf from where he had looped it over his belt and proceeded down the bluff, waving the scarf overhead. Within moments, the gate of the fortress had boomed open and a squad of soldiers hurried out, marching straight toward Gerard. He stopped and waited, doing his best to look unconcerned as the half dozen heavily armed, burly soldiers clustered around him. He nodded to them as if there were nothing unusual about their meeting, striving to conceal the loathing he had for these men who occupied the elven realm.
The leader of the squad gave him a fierce once-over, looking as though all he really preferred to do was to kick Gerard halfway to Qualinost. Instead, he cleared his throat, looked to his companions for support, then formally addressed Gerard. "My lord Baron Samuval sends his greetings and requests your presence with him in the compound," he said in a gravelly voice that nevertheless managed to sound almost sissified delivering so composed a message.
A couple of the soldiers snickered, but the leader shot them a glare that quickly brought silence.
"That means you're to come with us," the leader added in a more menacing tone, drawing closer, in case Gerard had failed to comprehend that he was now a de facto prisoner.
"As you wish." Before Gerard could start toward the fortress again, however, the leader of the soldiers grabbed the belt that held Gerard's dagger and unbuckled it.
"You won't be needing this," the leader snarled, tucking dagger and belt under his arm.
Gerard shrugged indifferently and made his way quickly down the bluff, leaving the soldiers falling all over themselves in an effort to catch up and flank him as a proper military escort. Gerard whistled unconcernedly, all the while studying the fortress as he drew nearer. Kirrit Bitterleaf had his work cut out for him if he intended to go up against this kind of defense. But of course the wily elf wouldn't make a direct attack; he would harass Samuval's supply lines and whittle away at patrols that dared to venture beyond the fortress's protection.
At the gate, Gerard had to wait a few minutes to be admitted, giving his captors time to catch up. They huffed and sweated, being burdened with armor, and before the gate opened, the leader approached Gerard with a dirty, folded scarf. Gerard cocked an eyebrow. "What's this for?"
"Baron's orders," the leader snapped. Gerard allowed the scarf to be wrapped around his eyes and tied securely behind his head, all the while wondering why Samuval felt the need for it. Was Samuval concerned Gerard would learn the exact number of soldiers quartered at the fortress and communicate that intelligence to Kirrit Bitterleaf? Had Sheriff Joyner been received on his visits here with similar distrust?
Once the blindfold was in place, Gerard heard the gate creak open, admitting the noise of construction, for inside carpenters were hammering, sawing, hewing, and planing, trying to complete the fortress. The cacophony was reminiscent of the temple construction, Gerard reflected wryly. And, just as at the temple grounds, the air here was redolent with the tang of freshly cut wood. But here too was the noise of soldiers marching in cadence with heavy, booted feet, of officers barking out orders, and of smiths pounding metal in their forges.
One of the soldiers prodded Gerard sharply in the back, propelling him into the midst of the din. He stumbled along, shoved periodically to indicate where he should go. He tried to sort out the sources of sounds, but it was an impossible task. There was too much to take in. Besides, his purpose here, he reminded himself, wasn't to learn the number and disposition of Samuval's forces; it was to learn all he could that might help him solve Sheriff Joyner's murder. Much as Gerard would have liked to lead a troop of knights in here and clear out the riffraff, that wasn't the sheriff's obligation. His job now was to parley with the man he detested.
Abruptly, a rough hand on Gerard's chest brought him to a halt, and he heard a door open. One of the guards announced him and pushed him inside. The door closed and the blindfold was whipped away from his eyes. A quick glance around revealed a crude but efficient wooden room that apparently served as Samuval's headquarters. There were windows on two of the walls, with closed curtains leaving the room gloomy despite the hour of the day. The noise from outside could still be dimly heard through the thick wooden walls. A couple of candles flickered on a large worktable, on which a rolled map had been spread. A middle-aged man of medium height with the powerful arras of an a
rcher was bent over the map. He paused, ran his hand through his short salt-and-pepper hair, then rolled up the map and turned at last to Gerard. A ripple of recognition washed over his initial expression of cool composure. "So it is you!"
Gerard gave a mock half-bow. "At your service, Baron." He gave the final word an emphasis that undercut its authority.
"They told me it was you. But what is a Knight of Neraka doing as sheriff of Solace?"
"I am a former knight, but of Solamnia, I hasten to emphasize, not Neraka," Gerard explained.
"But when I saw you once before, in the siege outside Solanthus, you wore the armor of Neraka. And you had a prisoner, a young woman who was a Knight of Solamnia."
"So I did, and that armor enabled me and my 'prisoner' to escape."
"So you were a spy," Samuval said, his lip curling in a sneer. "Yes."
"Well, now I have you again. But this time, no disguises."
Gerard nodded. "No disguises." Samuval laughed. "Well, that war is over. Now we must come to terms with the present." He accepted Gerard's dagger from the leader of the squad that had brought him in, then made a gesture to an aide who had been standing at mute attention at the back of the room. The aide approached Gerard and patted him down thoroughly, finding and confiscating a couple of other knives he had strapped to his arm and shin. The aide tossed the weapons onto the table.
"Fools!" Samuval hissed to the soldiers who had brought Gerard in. "Didn't you check him for hidden weapons first?" The leader of the squad cringed. "I'll deal with you later," Samuval said angrily and dismissed the soldiers with a sharp gesture. The soldiers spilled from the room in rapid disorder, so anxious were they to escape their leader's wrath.
Samuval sighed, waving to one of the crude wooden camp stools around the table. "Sit," he told Gerard. "Let's have tea together and discuss whatever you came here for like the two gentlemen we are."
Gerard refrained from saying what he thought of the outlaw leader's claim to gentility.
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