The Rover

by Mel Odom

  “Ye stand there with yer fists a-clenched like that,” the guard said, “an’ ye’re a-gonna make some taskmaster happy in a mine somewheres.” He grinned cruelly. “Ye see, taskmasters hate it when all their slaves do what they’re supposed to do all the time. I have half a mind to give ye a taste of the lash meself this morning. An’ I would, except that ye’re to be sold in a few days an’ I don’t want to pay the price for a-breakin’ yer skin. But I’m a-gonna hope that all that bile ye’re a-holdin’ inside yerself comes loose one day and ye make a mistake.”

  Despite the anger that fed him, Wick’s stomach turned cold at the goblinkin’s threat. To survive and have any chance at all, he had to remain innocuous. This wasn’t the way to do it. But at the same time, he had to ask himself, what chance did he really have?

  He lowered his eyes from the goblin’s. That, according to Esteff’s Rules of Aggressive Engagement, was the first step to take when faced with a hostile confrontation that promised only failure. Or death, Wick thought bitterly. The little librarian stood with slumped shoulders and felt the aches and pains that thrived within him. He watched the goblin’s shadow move suddenly on the ground and prepared himself for the coming blow.

  Instead, a length of rope slapped against the stone ground, sprawling like a striking serpent for just a moment before going still.

  “Tie that around the dead man’s feet,” the goblin ordered.

  Wick stood still, unable to move, frozen by the horror of the suggestion.

  Harran started forward after a moment.

  “Not ye,” the goblin thundered from above. “The little halfer there what’s got such a mouth on ’im.”

  Wick glanced up at the goblin.

  A cold smile twisted the goblin’s lips. “Aye, ye’re the one I want. Tie the rope to yer friend an’ we’ll fetch him out of there afore he starts to rot.”

  Sick dread rolled in Wick’s stomach, but he couldn’t make himself take the rope.

  “Do it, halfer,” the goblin growled, “or I’m a-gonna stick me a feather in yer head.”

  When Wick looked up, the guard held a crossbow in his hands. The little librarian had no doubt that the goblinkin would use it. He only thought for a moment of standing his ground, but he liked the idea of dying less.

  “Do it, Wick,” Harran whispered hoarsely. “He’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  Wick pushed his anger and pain aside, and with it—surprisingly—went much of his fear. He viewed what he had to do as a task. Kneeling, he picked up the rope and wrapped it around Minniger’s ankles. He took care to make sure the rope was secure and tightly knotted. Then he placed his hands on his thighs and waited.

  “Have ye got it then, halfer?” the goblin called down.

  “Yes,” Wick said. He watched silently as the rope was drawn up and the old man’s body with it. Minniger’s arms fell away from his body, sticking out like broken bird’s wings. The image, backed by the red early morning sun, burned into the little librarian’s mind.

  The goblins hauled the body to the patrol walk, then lowered it into a wagon waiting by the slatted wall. Wick watched as the dweller driving the wagon started his team forward. The donkeys’ hooves rang against the stone as it started down the debris-strewn street leading back to the harbor. The little librarian leaned against the wall in exhaustion, watching helplessly till the wagon wound through the whole and broken buildings of the city till it finally disappeared over a hill.

  “Wick,” Harran called.

  The little librarian turned around slowly.

  “You did all that you could do,” Harran said. “Minniger was gone before morning even came.” He held out his hand, holding a ball of gruel. “You need to eat to keep your strength up.”

  “Why?” Wick asked bitterly. “So I can be a slave better and longer?”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “No,” Wick answered. “I want to live, and I want to go back home.”

  Harran placed the gruel ball in Wick’s hand. “We all do, my friend. So let’s eat and pray that it happens. But it will not happen on its own and we will need our strength.”

  Wick looked at the gruel in his hand. He swallowed hard, his throat parched and hurting. “Thank you, Harran.” Slowly, his knees almost buckling under him, the little librarian sat on his haunches by the wall. He adjusted his journal under his shirt so that it remained hidden.

  Harran sat beside him and slowly pinched bites from his own gruel ball.

  As he ate, Wick became aware of the other dwellers in the pen covertly watching him. Whenever he looked at them, they looked away, as if afraid to meet his gaze. He felt immediately self-conscious. He whispered to Harran. “Why are they looking at me?”

  “Because they’re afraid of you,” Harran answered quietly.

  The answer puzzled Wick. “There’s no reason for them to be afraid of me.”

  “You stood up to the goblins,” Harran said. “It’s not a wise thing to do. Those people think you’re a troublemaker. The guards will remember you, and they will notice anybody with you. If you ever fight them, the goblinkin will kill you as a lesson to all the other slaves. And there’s every chance that they will kill anyone around you as well.”

  Staggered by the improbable concept, Wick shook his head. His sore ear throbbed in response as the heavy marker pulled at the tender flesh. “But I’m no troublemaker,” the little librarian protested.

  “They believe you are.”

  Wick glanced at the other people in the pen, suddenly ashamed of the way they looked away from him. How could anyone ever think he was a troublemaker? Why, they could ask anyone in Greydawn Moors. He was the meekest, mildest dweller ever born. All his life, until the night he’d been shanghaied from his home, he’d never even been in a fight. Dweller children, as a general rule, weren’t overly aggressive. Running and hiding was what they were best at.

  But since that time, he’d fought Boneblights (more or less), faced an Embyr, and been part of a shipboard battle as a pirate. It was a far cry from the Third Level Librarian that he had been.

  “I’ve been through some things lately,” Wick admitted. “More than I like to realize, I think. And perhaps I’ve changed a little in some ways, but I’m not a danger to them.”

  “They see the courage in you,” Harran said.

  Wick shook his head and protested quickly. “I have no courage. When that goblin threatened me, did I dare him to shoot me? That’s something a brave man would have done.” He let out his breath. “If it had been Galadryn Carrolic who’d faced that goblin, why he would have plucked the crossbow arrow from the air and sent it winging back at him. And if I had been Taurak Bleiyz, armed with the mighty warclub, Toadthumper, I would have leapt up and laid waste to all those goblinkin about me.”

  Harran looked aghast at the suggestions.

  “But I didn’t do that,” Wick quickly pointed out.

  “You’re a dweller,” the other man cried. “Those thoughts should not even be in your head.”

  “They’re not,” Wick assured him.

  “But you just thought them.”

  “No,” the little librarian said. “I remembered them. Those are just men in stories. Not even men, really. They’re more like ideas.”

  Harran shook his head. “Ideas are the worst of all, Wick. The most dangerous, thoughtless, and selfish thing a man can do is to have an idea like that. A man who thinks he can do something is more than just a danger to himself. He’s a danger to a whole community if he convinces them to believe in him. You should never remember things like those stories.”

  Grandmagister Frollo would never have put it like that, Wick thought, but he would have agreed with the sentiment. He felt guilty and scared. What if he had such ideas on his own and no one was there to stop him? Could he trick himself into believing he was some kind of hero like the ones in the books in Hralbomm’s Wing? He didn’t think so. And if I did somehow come to believe that here in this stronghold of goblinkin, I would be killed
instantly, made an example for any others who might make the mistake of thinking such thoughts.

  The little librarian shivered. Thinking back on it now, he realized that the incident with the goblin had been a very near thing. Surviving near-death once, facing it in the eye as I did the Embyr, can be very self-deluding. He didn’t recall thinking himself invincible at the moment. Had he? Or had he just not cared at the moment? Either, he knew, was dangerous.

  Wick turned his attention back to Harran. “Why do you sit with me?”

  “Because,” Harran said, looking him squarely in the eye, “if you do something like that again that endangers all of us, I’ll brain you myself.”

  The next three days went by in a blur for Wick. As it turned out, slaves waiting to be sold at auction were hired out as temporary labor for cleaning up Hanged Elf’s Point. The work started at dawn, when gruel was doled out at the gates leading into the pens, and finished when sunset colored the western skies. The work was hard and dangerous. There wasn’t a day that went by that Wick didn’t return to the stockades tired and hurting. Three people from their pen were killed when a wall gave way suddenly and crushed the life from them before the fatigued work force could rescue them.

  On the morning of the fourth day, they were fed one last time and herded over to the slave market in full slave collars and wrist manacles.

  The slave market was only two streets over from the stockades. Wick walked in single file behind the other slaves and worried about where he would end up. The other slaves in his pen still didn’t talk to him much, and even Harran’s camaraderie had waned. And for the last three nights, though he had waited up and slept fitfully, Wick hadn’t seen the man in black again.

  The little librarian trudged through the broken alley between two shattered buildings that weren’t worth restoration. In their day, they had been beautiful works of architecture. Now they were only crumbled remains.

  He stepped around a snarling gargoyle head that had a jagged neck stump, surprised that one of the goblinkin hadn’t seized the once ornate piece as a trophy to keep in its den. Most of the slaves ended up in the mines. He’d learned that from listening to the members in the work force. But a great number of them were used in the arena, too, as gladiators. Dwellers who had physical infirmities were often used as gravediggers for the casualties of the battles that drew so many people from outlying villages. Orpho Kadar’s vicious entertainment drew a blood-lusting crowd that lined the money purses of the pirate king.

  Then there were the fields and orchards, Wick supposed, which wouldn’t be as bad as being enclosed in a mine. They’d heard about the terrible accidents that happened in the mines as well.

  What was really surprising about the possibility of being sold today, he’d realized, was that he’d started looking to the stockades for safety and security. While working on the cleanup crews, goblinkin roving the streets of Hanged Elf’s Point felt compelled to heap verbal and physical abuse on every dweller they saw. However, they had to stop short of permanent physical damage. Of course, a lot of pain could be inflicted that wasn’t permanent. So, would he be better off wherever he ended up? He didn’t know, but he was convinced that leaving the stockades was bad.

  The little librarian was so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the footsteps coming up on his side until the passerby was even with him. Black boots splashed through the puddles left from last night’s rain, covering Wick’s already-drenched pants. He ignored the soaking, chalking it up as one more miserable event in an otherwise horrible day.

  Then a mocking voice that he recognized whispered so low that only he could hear. “So, my little friend, you’re off to the sale today. And do you still have your secret in your possession?”

  Startled, Wick glanced up at the man beside him, not surprised to find him dressed in a black cloak that nearly hid all his features. Only his bearded chin below an amused smile showed.

  “And the one who buys you,” the man in black said, “will have your precious secret as well. Of course, that’s only if that person knows that you have such a thing.” Without another word, the man lengthened his stride, leaving Wick far behind.

  The little librarian watched the man in black go, not at all amazed at how quickly the tall human was able to disappear into the thronging crowd moving toward the slave auction. Before he was able to calm down from the man’s mocking threat, Wick saw the huge fountain in the courtyard before him. Shock twisted his stomach threateningly.

  The fountain was one of a kind, mentioned in dozens of books Wick had read at the Library. He knew where he was. And the knowledge, the realization of what the place had become, turned his stomach with sour sickness.

  14

  Sold!

  The fountain stood three stories tall and filled the center of the huge courtyard in front of Wick. Crumbling hulks of tall buildings encircled the courtyard on all sides, dwarfing even the fountain.

  Mountains stood tall and elegant on the fountain, ringed by a verdant forest of trees that had been painstakingly chipped from emerald-veined quartz that created hundreds of tiny rainbows in the spray that filtered through the fountain from the artesian well. On the right side of the fountain as Wick faced it, the quartz trees held small elven houses. Once, the little librarian knew from the books he’d read at the Library, gossamer strands of silver and horses’ hair had joined those little houses, creating arboreal walkways.

  The line of trees led the eye naturally down the mountains to a series of mines cut into the foothills. The broken-toothed ruins of dwarven houses stood there, crafted of small, individually made bricks. Here and there, remnants still remained of forges. Perhaps, Wick thought, one of the small iron forges made for the fountain still remained in the rubble of what had been the dwarven village.

  Tears blurred Wick’s vision as he saw what was left of what he had seen in the books at the Vault of All Known Knowledge. The Shattered Coast, he knew, ran much further south than any of the Librarians and even Grandmagisters guessed.

  Trails led from the dwarven village to a seacoast that had been chipped from a piece of dark gray granite longer than a wagon and the team that pulled it. The shelf of rock thrust out into the sea, which was represented by a huge, moon-shaped bowl that held only brackish water and broken rock now. In the beginning, though, it had represented the Silver Sea, one of the smallest ocean bodies in the area. In those days, huge reefs and a sickle-shape of mountains created by underwater volcanoes had ringed the sea, keeping it protected and easily defended. Those mountains had been called the Black Shields, named for the hard black rock that had risen from the sea when the volcanoes erupted.

  The seafaring humans had settled the Silver Sea, and from that safe port they had established trade routes that had connected the world. If water touches it, then a Silver Sea merchantman has been there, Wick remembered. The saying was ancient, and had remained true until the Cataclysm. The little librarian stared at the brackish water and saw a few miniature broken ships floating in the sargasso created by algae and rocks. In one place, a section of mast stuck up that held broken, paper-thin sails of flaked alabaster.

  The three races had lived harmoniously in the area but they hadn’t ever been truly united until the Changelings—or whatever their true names had been in those times, Wick amended—had stretched forth their hands in friendship. The little librarian didn’t know much about the Changelings’ history even though he had spent countless hours in pursuit of the knowledge. He had wanted to learn what he could of the race as a gift to Nayghal. The library janitor was also a Changeling. The only writings of them were by a few scholars who had the conceit to think they knew the Changelings. Often the books that Wick had read contradicted each other. But most of the accounts had agreed on one thing: the formation of the city where Wick stood in a slave’s chains waiting to be sold—this evil place that was now called Hanged Elf’s Point.

  The little librarian raised his eyes, following the trails that led up from the miniature
Silver Sea and the harbor where only crushed buildings remained that had been the human city. In the drawings he had seen, the human city was huge. Reports that had survived the Cataclysm indicated that it was the largest site of human habitation. Despite the restless energy and zeal for things new and different that drove them, thousands of humans had settled along the Silver Sea.

  High above the Silver Sea, though, stood yet another city. The fountain representation of the city included many tall buildings that Wick saw were achingly familiar. He had passed by the buildings the fountain models had been based on when he’d arrived in the city. The Changelings never revealed their home in the area, and there were some historians who ventured the opinion that the Changelings lived somewhere inside or outside time and space as the rest of the world knew it. But all agreed that for the Changelings, this place held great importance. Or, perhaps, was a source of the magic they wielded so easily.

  Wick stared at the city on the fountain, seeing the nine ledges that led up to it. Ringed as it was in mountainous terrain, the city wasn’t easily accessible. Its location had been chosen with deliberation. The high ledges made it easily possible to keep out those who weren’t wanted. And there, a congress of human, elf, dwarf, and Changeling representatives had gathered to tie together the needs and wants of all their races.

  They had named the city Dream, because that was what it was and what it represented. Dream, Wick remembered as he stood there feeling the weight of his chains, stood as a testament to the world that anything that could be dared could be achieved.

  Goblinkin hated the city because the combined armies of humans, elves, and dwarves had driven them from all the nearby areas. The caravan trade routes that wound through the mountains taking goods to and from the Silver Sea merchantmen rapidly became dangerous places for the goblinkin rather than the tradesmen.