Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story

by James Maxstadt

  “My pleasure, Miss. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

  With those courtesies observed, we left. I did an amazingly good job of holding it together until we were out of there.

  “What was all that about?” I finally said, when were alone.

  “Well, to start with, I was right. Those are definitely Brownies and they’re being held there against their will.”

  “And you know this by somehow talking to them?”

  “I got a translator from the watchhouse this morning. Sometimes, we get someone in who can’t speak common, so the wizards developed these things so they could understand what we were saying and visa-versa. It works on the dead too.”

  I loved it when she casually threw in references to her work with the deceased, recently or otherwise, like it was a walk in the park.

  “Well, how did they end up there?” I asked.

  “That I’m not sure about yet. We didn’t have a chance to get to it. I mostly told him who I was and he did the same. I got lucky. He’s the leader for his bunch. But we didn’t get much further before we were interrupted. I do know one thing though. There’s more to Fogwell than meets the eye.”

  Of course, there was. There always is.

  I was ready to leave the fair and head home to get some rest, or maybe stop at the tavern. Money was starting to show signs of becoming scarce, so it was time to get back to work tomorrow and see what was on the Board.

  But Lilly insisted that we walk around and “blend in”. Well, if I must, I must, and for me, blending in meant getting something to eat. I discovered a wonderful new food that consisted of a tube shaped meat, surrounded by some sort of coating and served to you on a stick. Wonders never cease at the fair.

  I walked with Lilly, enjoying my meat-on-a-stick, and realized that we were circling back around behind the tent that housed the Brownies. I wasn’t really surprised. When Lilly gets an idea in her head, there’s no stopping her.

  “You stay here,” she said, “and keep a lookout. If anyone comes by, whistle a tune.”

  “Whistle a tune? What tune? I don’t know any tunes!”

  “Oh, for…then just…cough, loudly, three times.”

  “That I can do, but what are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going back in,” she said. “Don’t worry. No one’s going to see me this time.”

  She walked to the back of the tent, bent down, lifted the fabric, and simply disappeared. The tent fabric moved like someone was pushing through the gap, and dropped back into place. Lilly had gone invisible.

  I was surprised. Lilly was a very powerful sorceress, but she was a necromancer. Her abilities mostly lay in dealing with the dead, the un-dead, the demonic, and things of that nature. I knew there was some overlap, but I didn’t think she could do something like that. Then again, what do I know? Magic, as I’ve said before, gives me a headache.

  A few minutes passed and I tried to look as if I were simply hanging about, enjoying my snack, which wasn’t hard. It really was remarkably good. There were a few false alarms, but no one that looked like they worked for the fair approached and asked what I was doing there, and there was no ruckus raised in the tent.

  I saw the tent fabric rise by itself again, and a moment later Lilly was beside me, looking slightly flushed.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and took off, walking quickly toward the exit.

  I hurried after, trying to look casual and keep up with her at the same time. We made it outside of the fair itself and walked across the field back toward the town gates. When we were half-way there, she stopped.

  “This should be far enough,” she said, and grabbed my hand.

  My “for what?” was whisked away as the world spun around me and we appeared on the street in front of Lilly’s house. It was late afternoon, and a few other necromancers were about. They glanced at us, and some waved and then went back to their own business. Comings and goings of this nature were commonplace around here.

  “I didn’t want to draw anything’s attention and do that too close to the fair,” Lilly said. “Now I have to go un-do a couple of wards before we go in. Here, hold this.”

  She reached into a pocket and pulled something out, handing it to me and walking away without another word. I took it and felt something squirm in my hand.

  Looking down, I saw one of the Brownie children, no more than two inches high glaring up at me.

  Later, we were in Lilly’s kitchen, me with a mug of ale, Lilly a cup of wine and the Brownie child seated on a sugar cube. It watched us curiously, but with no fear. Lilly kept speaking to it through the translator and listening for the replies. I was pretty much out of the conversation, since the translator could only be used by one person at a time.

  Soon, the Brownie leaned back and opened its tiny mouth in a truly impressive yawn. Lilly cooed over it and found an old cloth that she cut up and made a tiny bed out of. It crawled into it, squeaked something to Lilly that made her about swoon, and promptly fell asleep.

  Lilly put her fingers to her lips, telling me to be quiet and tip-toed out of the room. I followed her, being as quiet as I could, but certainly not tip-toeing. There are some things a man simply doesn’t do.

  “Are you crazy?” I said to her when we reached her library. “That’s a Brownie in there! It’ll bring all sorts of unpleasantness around!”

  “Oh, stop being such a baby. It’s a child, Duke. And she’s scared and angry, but not at us.”

  “Sure, because that’s better. Now you have a scared, angry, immature magical powerhouse here, rather than a content, happy one. Sooo much better.”

  She looked at me, a wry expression on her face which I was beginning to know well.

  I was being unfair. But those things scared me. There were all sorts of tales and legends about Brownies and what they could do to those who pissed them off. From what I understood, no one yet figured out a way to stop their magic, and I doubted that I could even hit one with the metal balls that my gun fired.

  But Lilly was smarter than me. We both knew it, even if I didn’t like to admit it. She knew what she was about, and if I wanted to be half as smart, I should trust her.

  “I’m being ridiculous, I know,” I sighed. “If you say you can handle it, then you can handle it.”

  “You’re not being ridiculous,” she said, moving closer to me. “And you’re not wrong. Brownies are dangerous, very. I had to dismantle a few wards to even bring her in here, because they are a threat. But I can’t stand to see them locked up like that, Duke. It breaks my heart.”

  I hated it, but she was right. No-one should be forced into something like that. If they were paid members of the fair then what they did was their business. But they shouldn’t be locked up to be slaves.

  And there was still a bigger question. Who could do that? Not only keep them there; I understood that, in theory. Put enough magic in the cage and you could keep them penned up. But how were they caught in the first place?

  “That’s where this gets scary,” Lilly said when I asked her this. “Brownies are almost impossible to catch. They can disappear at a thought, they can cause all sorts of mischief and harm for those chasing them, and once caught, they can still cause all sorts of mayhem. But Fogwell caught them anyway.”

  “So it was Fogwell.”

  “Petal thinks so. She was very young when it happened. She’s still young, for a Brownie. She can’t really remember being outside of the cage and the only one who ever approaches it, or reaches inside, is Fogwell. He gives them food and water, but if they don’t act happy when they’re on display, later on, he hurts them.”

  I thought of that tiny little thing fast asleep on Lilly’s table and felt my blood boil.

  “What do you mean he hurts them? How can he even do that?”

  “She says his touch. It burns them, horribly, but it never shows. He touched her once because she fell down when she was playing and cried. The audience didn’t like that and Fogwell needed to do some fast ta
lking to make them think she was alright. Later on, he reached into the cage, told them all that if it happened again there would be real punishment, and touched her with his finger. She said it felt like her whole body was on fire. She was screaming and crying, and then he pulled his finger away and it stopped. She also said he was smiling the whole time.”

  I hate bullies, abusers, pimps and anyone else who thinks it’s okay to make someone else do what they want out of fear, because they’re stronger or tougher, or in a better position. I was kind of charmed by Mr. Mustache Fogwell, but now I fingered my gun in anticipation of seeing him again.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Does Fogwell have a translator too? How is he telling them these things?”

  “Apparently, he can speak their language. How I don’t know. If he can, he’ll be the first I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Well you were certainly right about him being more than he seemed. Alright, let’s go back and get the rest of them.”

  “Whoa, slow down there Grandfather,” she laughed. “A minute ago you were having a fit about one small child being here. Now you suddenly want a whole bunch of them wandering around free?”

  “I don’t care what they do. I can’t abide a bully. Mr. Fogwell is going to find out how it feels to be on the other end of it for once.”

  Lilly kissed me.

  “That’s one of the things I love about you. But we have some more work to do first. Fogwell is more than he seems. If I’m right, he’s much more.”

  Lilly went to a shelf and pulled down a large book, which she carried to the desk and opened, motioning me to come over. It was a history, of a part of the world quite far to the north of here.

  Fogwell’s sign lied in about every way that it could. To begin, Brownies aren’t pygmies. They aren’t smaller versions of humans. They’re a whole separate race, as different from us as orcs, goblins, trolls and any others. They have mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles. Brownies stay as families for a while, but then they go off on their own, form new groups, and sometimes whole new families. Their idea of what makes a family is pretty nebulous, which may be because of their life-spans. They live a very long time, by anyone’s standards.

  Cannibalism is about the furthest thing from a Brownie’s mind. In fact, they hardly ever eat meat. The stories are full of farmers leaving them milk, eggs, and bread and reaping rewards for it, such as their stalls being magically mucked out in the morning. Those that didn’t leave them anything found that their stalls wouldn’t ever be clean, no matter how hard they worked.

  And they didn’t come from Yambizi, wherever that was supposed to be. They came from up north, where it was cold a good part of the year. Here in Capital City, it’s mild most of the year, we’ll get some snow and cold weather for a few months, but then it warms up again. Where the Brownies are from, it stays colder much longer, and during the spring and fall, it’s very wet and gloomy.

  They live in burrows, which no one has ever been inside. That’s partly due to their size, but also because you’d have to be insane to invade their homes. If anyone was crazy enough to do that, they weren’t able to write about it after.

  Finally, their reputation, while well-deserved, was also misleading. Yes, they were insanely powerful with magic, and could and would cause lots of problems. If you made one angry enough, their magic could cause serious harm to befall you. But, it was hard to make them that mad. They weren’t savage little killers. They helped those that helped them, and caused mischief for those that didn’t. Okay, they may cause some for their own amusement too, but no one’s perfect.

  Lilly and I read all that, and I gained a new bit of appreciation for our tiny guest, and a new sense of outrage for the rest of her family still trapped. I was ready to go to war with Fogwell and any of his fair cronies, when Lilly calmed me down again.

  “Hold on,” she said. “Now that we know a little more about them, let’s see if I could be right in what I’m thinking about Fogwell. Stay put.”

  She replaced the book we were reading and took down another. This book was different. The first one had a leather cover with gilt letters. This one was jet black. I wasn’t sure what it was made of, but it sucked the light into it, so that it didn’t look so much like a book as a book-shaped hole filled with darkness. Lilly held it gingerly and sat behind her desk.

  I moved to stand behind her and read as well, but she waved me off.

  “Not this one, Duke. You need to be trained to read it. If not, your eyes will fall out.”

  “Really?”

  “No, but you really could go mad. Go check on Petal, while I see if I can find what I’m looking for.”

  I looked at her dubiously, but that same voice from earlier told me to trust her and I went back to the kitchen. Petal was still sleeping wrapped in the cloth that Lilly gave her. She was awful cute when she was asleep. When I looked closer, she had her tiny thumb stuck in her mouth, and I think my heart about broke.

  I stood up and looked around, making sure that no one was around, then wiped my eyes and cleared my throat.

  “We’ll get the rest of them back, Petal,” I whispered.

  I got another ale. Because, men drink ale and don’t cry over tiny little Brownies sucking their thumbs.

  When I got back to the library, Lilly was sitting behind her desk with a stunned look on her face. I thought at first that something in the book got to her, some dark magic that she wasn’t ready for. Then she looked up at me, and I realized that she was actually bothered by something that she read.

  “I think I figured it out,” she said. “Or, at least, I figured out what it is that we’re dealing with. But how we’re going to beat it is beyond me.”

  Well, that didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. I saw Lilly beat some scary things and talk to the dead like she would spank them if they didn’t do as they were told. So when she told me that she wasn’t sure how we were going to beat something, it was a little un-nerving.

  “Ahh, come on,” I said. “It’s what we do. Tell me what Fogwell really is, point me in his direction, and I’ll shoot his face off. Done.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, although who knows what that gun can really do. One of these days you’re going to have to let me really examine it, you know. But even so, I really doubt it will be enough.”

  “Why don’t you fill me in here? I’ve fought a lot of things in my day, before I met you even.”

  I smiled and tried to make a joke of it, but Lilly was having none of it.

  “This is different. Duke, I think this time, we’re facing a god, or something damn close to it anyway.”

  That shut my mouth. Yes, I tackled some rough customers in my day. Taken down wizards who could make it rain fire, and triumphed over beasts strong enough to knock down a building by running into it. But a god…now that was a whole different kettle of fish.

  “You did say god?” I asked, hoping that maybe my hearing was off.

  “Well, close. I think it’s one of the Fomorii.”

  That was a name that would strike terror into the heart of pretty much no-one. No one that I knew anyway.

  “What’s a Fomorii?” I asked.

  “They’re an ancient race, one of the Elder races actually. You know, the ones who were here first. No one knows if they were part of Faerie, or enemies of them, or what. Only that they were powerful, capricious and cruel.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Sounds like most gods. But if they were so bad, why aren’t they around anymore?”

  “That’s the thing. They are. They’ve been driven into the depths, either of the earth or the sea, depending on who you talk to. They were so hated that all of the other Elder races joined forces to defeat them.”

  These Fomorii sounded like bad news.

  “Wait,” I said, “this can’t be right. If they’re so evil and powerful, why would one of them waste it’s time messing with a bunch of Brownies and running a fun fair? Wouldn’t it be out conquering l
ands and converting true believers?”

  “If it could, probably,” Lilly said. “But most of the other Elder races are still around too. If it drew too much attention to itself, they might take notice. It could very well be content with causing mischief and pain on a small scale. Making the Brownies miserable and putting them on display for the world to see would be exactly the sort of thing one of them would do.”

  We considered.

  “I think my plan still stands,” I finally said. “I set the gun to ‘god’, we go back to the fair and I send this Fogwell creep to whatever reward the Elder races get when they go bye-bye.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Run like hell.”

  Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. There was a lot more research that Lilly wanted to do before she felt we were ready to face an Elder being. I thought maybe using the same strategy that we used against Reginald’s lich would work, but Lilly told me that compared to an Elder, that lich was a kitten. Still, there had to be a way, didn’t there?

  In the meantime, we took care of Petal, who was glad to be out of the cage and away from Fogwell, but missed her family a lot. I used the translator and could speak to her too, and discovered that even if she was technically older than me, there was still a lot of little kid in her.

  “Like pretty-pretty nice lady,” she told me once, after Lilly tucked her in to her blankets for the night.

  “Me too,” I said. “She’s pretty-pretty great.”

  Petal giggled at this.

  “Funny old man. Like you too.”

  She snuggled down into the blankets and fell asleep.

  Well, I guess I can take being called a funny old man every now and then.

  Finally, Lilly came up with a solution, but it was a doozy.

  “We need its name,” she said. “If we can get that, then you can set your gun with it. Its name will be unique, and no one, Elder or younger race, will have the same one. That should add an extra boost to that weapon of yours and give it enough kick to at least scare the thing.”