Lord Toede

by Jeff Grubb

  "Password?"

  "Password. The response to 'The dragon flies at midnight.' Quickly now, where is Gildentongue?"

  "He left for the city, er, the Lower City, an hour or so ago. Took the captain with him. There was some sort of disturbance…"

  "At the Jetties, yes, what do you know of it?" "Only that there seemed to be some sort of trouble," said the sergeant.

  "Trouble?" howled Toede. "Istar finding itself the bull's-eye for a cosmic game of darts is trouble. Waking up to find a medusa in your bed is trouble! Toede is back, and more dangerous than ever! That is not trouble, that spells disaster!"

  "Toede?" said the sergeant, wondering just when he lost complete and utter control of the conversation. "Wasn't he the bumbler Lord Gildentongue replaced?"

  Toede almost tripped over his tongue in his desire to defend his good name, but restrained himself. "A careful ruse he manifested. He is a being of great and subtle power. That's why he was made highmaster in the first place. He is most displeased with the fact that Gilden-tongue has apparently seized power from Hopsloth the Water Prophet." Toede again touched the disk hanging around his neck. "He destroyed an entire unit of city guards in the common room of the Jetties this very evening.

  'Toede has great wizard's skills! He transforms himself at will into a fiend from the pits, with great bloody spurs on his elbows and knees. He chewed through those men like… like…" A brief silence fell on the room as all (even Groag) imagined the battle-frenzied Toede-fiend tossing men around like rag dolls. Then Toede looked up from his reverie, adding, "Tell me that at least you've sealed the city."

  "Well, I have not received…" began the sergeant.

  "Dark Lady in a festhall!" bellowed Toede. "Do you want to die in your sleep tonight? No, sorry, it's not your fault Gildentongue doesn't trust anyone. Auraks are typically paranoid, but this is not a time for caution. Is Lord Gildentongue living at my… er… the large manor house?"

  "Aye, with the Holy Hopsloth." The sergeant touched his own disk at this point.

  "Good, I'll wait for him there. I want you to alert the full complement. Get as many men as you can to the main gates and posted on the perimeter wall. Toede may have an army out there, for all we know. Triple the guard on the gates to the Rock and the docks. Send a runner to the Jetties to fetch Lord Gildentongue. Am I clear?"

  The sergeant shook his head. "By what authority do you…"

  Toede stomped his foot. "By Lord Gildentongue's authority! If my actions are inappropriate, I will take full responsibility."

  Toede saw by the way the human's face relaxed that he had struck the correct chord. Denying personal responsibility was almost as attractive to humans as it was to hobgoblins.

  The sergeant nodded, motioning to two of the guards. "Escort these two to the Manor." He pointed at the guard who spoke with the northern accent. "You go down to the inn called the Jetties," he barked. "Tell Lord Gildentongue… what?" He turned to Toede.

  "Tell him"-and Toede could not help but suppress a smile at this-"tell him an old friend wishes to discuss an old enemy. At his home and at a time of his convenience."

  The sergeant nodded, and the guard vaporized into the darkness.

  Toede chuckled inwardly. That should bring the damned lizard running, he thought.

  Chapter 8

  In which Our Protagonist returns home, discovers the nature of what has been sleeping in his bed, and lays his trap. As a bonus to the devoted reader, we are treated to a glimpse inside Gildentongue's head before his final battle.

  "What do you know about auraks?" said Toede to Groag, once they had been left alone in the manor's front hall.

  Toede had instructed the two guards to stand watch outside the front door until Gildentongue's return. The windows were shuttered, and light was entirely lacking. This did not bother the hobgoblins, as the red shadows made everything visible to their sensitive eyes. The more visually limited humans were uncomfortable, however, expecting some monster to leap out at any moment. The guards gladly retreated to their newly assigned posts.

  Maison Toede was a lumpish brute of a building. With its imposing walls, it was more apt to be mistaken for a stone giant's mausoleum than a viable structure for the living.

  The central building was two stories high, with stubby wings to the right and left of the main hall. To the right was the treasury (once inside, Toede noted that Gilden-tongue at least had the good sense to put a new lock on the heavy brass door). To the left were the kitchen and the servants' quarters. Opposite the entrance were the great

  iron-shod doors that led to the audience room. On either side of the doors, a pair of staircases wound up to a balcony and an upper hallway. Private rooms were located on the upper levels, and in its heyday the building had been alive with hobgoblin feasts, revels and mayhem.

  Such was not the case in the warm, fetid darkness of the present administration. Gildentongue had definitely let the place go downhill.

  Groag looked around, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark, thinking about Toede's question. "I know auraks are ugly creatures," he said at last.

  "Aye," said Toede. "Heads of dragons, bodies of men, souls of fiends. Short tails and long claws. Skin the color of ancient coins. And Gildentongue's among the ugliest of the lot. See if you can find some torches in this tomb."

  Toede took the two satchels (finally) from Groag and scaled the right-hand stairs two at a time, talking as he did so. "We'd best hurry. I think Gildentongue will be running back as soon as he gets the message."

  "He can't fly?" asked Groag, shouting up from the first floor. The acoustics were perfect in the hall, such that Groag's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was a very good building for long pronouncements and speeches, which was one reason Toede had requisitioned it in the first place.

  "Thank the Dark Lady, no," replied Toede. "Auraks can run pretty fast and pop around a bit, vanish from one place and appear in another. They can render themselves invisible to human sight and change their shape. They can throw fireballs off from their hands, or at least something that looks like fireballs. They spit acid, use magic, and are unaffected by most spells. And they can control minds, but you probably figured that out from his effect on that parade-goer this afternoon. So don't look him in the eyes, okay?"

  As he spoke, Toede reached the top of the landing directly above the iron doors to his old audience room. He unslung and opened both packs, holding his breath as the black dust wafted up from one. Most of the paper containers of the dust had been broken open, but Toede made sure the rest were ruptured as well.

  Then he turned to the other satchel, the one that clinked solidly with glass. It was filled with a rack of light wood, and each slot in the rack was filled with a small glass bottle. Toede set the rack upright in its satchel, and unstop-pered about half the vials. A rich, musky odor surrounded him as he did so.

  "I heard the highlords make draconians out of good dragon eggs," shouted Groag, accompanied by the back-beat of cabinets being opened and closed.

  "Kender lies and propaganda," replied Toede. "Discount that. It's not as if we don't have enough to be concerned about."

  "Fireballs, acid, magic, mind control. Right," shouted Groag. "Anything else I should worry about?"

  "Don't stand too close to him when he dies. They really get mad when they're killed."

  "Good joke," Groag replied. "Hey, I found some torches and a lit brazier in the kitchen."

  "Not joking," said Toede quietly, finishing his preparations. Louder, he shouted, "Put the torches in the main hall and the audience room. I want him to know where I am, so he doesn't go wandering about." There was silence down below. "Groag?"

  "I think you better come down here," said Groag in a voice cracking with fear.

  Toede descended the staircase, though not before loading the crossbow with one of the special bolts he kept, floating in an ichorous, oily substance, in the separate box. He was careful enough to don gloves before loading the weapon. But d
ownstairs, instead of a battle, he found Groag, torch in hand, standing in front of the open iron doors leading to the main audience chamber.

  "What's so bloody…" Toede walked up and stopped next to him.

  Bloody was the correct term. The entire room had become a charnel house, filled with torn and dismembered bodies. Some had been reduced to a few gnawed bones, others were bags of dripping flesh, and there were a few semi-whole corpses, missing only some minor portion of anatomy. The stench was enough to send anyone but a hobgoblin reeling.

  "Can't say I care for his decorator," muttered Toede.

  "It sure explains why the guards are afraid of him," said Groag quietly.

  "And why there seem to be few servants in evidence," added Toede. "Living ones at least. Let's see what other changes Gildentongue's made."

  Toede took a torch and entered, stepping as gingerly as possible over the fresher-looking corpses. There were a large number of humans, but also kender, elves, and not a few hobgoblins. Toede could guess the fate of his loyal supporters and now understood why the populace seemed so supportive of Gildentongue. Just the rumor of such a place would inspire either fearful praise or revolution.

  "It looks like a battlefield," said Groag.

  "Battlefields are seldom this bountiful," replied Toede. "Hi-ho. This is different."

  He stood over a wide, square hole punched into the flagstone floor. It was about fifteen feet square and opened into darkness. There was the slosh of water below.

  "It's the chute to Hopsloth's lair," said Toede, who then canted his head and let his voice go chirpy. "Hoppppp-sloth! You there, boy?" He clicked his tongue a few times.

  Something dark and malodorous broke the water like a dead kraken bobbing in an ebony sea. Twin orbs opened, throwing back the torchlight like accesses to the very Abyss.

  "Miss me, Hopsloth?" asked Toede.

  The response was a deep, enthusiastic belch.

  "We'll be ri-ight back after we deal with that na-asty old Gildentongue, okay, Hopsey?"

  There was another slosh of water, and the twin fires closed.

  Groag looked at his lord and said, "Hopsey?"

  Toede cleared his throat. "Well, it's obvious the aurak's been treating him poorly. Probably just takes him out for show. And smell this place."

  Groag nodded at the hole. "Gildentongue… he bored the chute in the floor to dispose of…"-he waved at the carnage in the abattoir around them-"… all this?"

  Toede shook his head. "Does 'all this' look disposed of to you? Auraks like to kill things. You saw it this afternoon. It's one of those personal habits that endears them to the dragon highlords. They just aren't all that hot on cleaning up after they're done playing with their food. Poor Hopsloth. Trapped down there, a religious icon, with all this food up here." He sighed and tossed what may have been a leg down into the water. There was a splash of impact and the larger splash of something submerging beneath the surface.

  "See that. Starving," noted Toede. "But Gildentongue didn't bore the hole as much as remove the trapdoors that I had already installed. It was a great trick for retainers who met my disfavor." He did not notice Groag's pained reaction. "You call them into a private audience, throw the lever, and catch the look on their faces as the floor drops out beneath them."

  Groag, the favor-currying retainer, looked around. "I guess if s too late to recommend we go someplace else for the rest of our lives."

  Toede grabbed his companion by the shoulders. "You have nothing to fear, Groag," he lied calmly. "Gildentongue will be after me first, and that's the way we both want it. All you have to do is hide up on the balcony. When I shout 'now' you throw the first satchel. When I shout 'again' you throw the one with glass in it. Got that?"

  Groag nodded his head.

  'Then you run," said Toede. If his plan didn't work, it would be better to have two hobgoblins running around the city as opposed to one. Not that Groag would live that long, but his dead body might throw off the search for Toede's live one.

  Groag nodded again. "Right. Now what?"

  "We get a mirror from the upstairs hall. Then we throw the dead bolt on the front door. And we wait."

  Gildentongue returned from the Lower City alone, as he could make better time on his own than with a retinue of mewling humans. The captain would make a sufficiently tasty meal, he decided, for dragging him out at ten bells for the wild goose chase to the Jetties. Now it was nearly midnight. The messenger, the soldier from the north, he would die first, then the captain. No, the toadying innkeep of the Jetties, the messenger, and then the captain.

  Or all three at once, he thought, smiling, as he waved his way past the guards at the Rock Gate. The guards saluted and stepped aside, as it was obvious even to them that Lord Gildentongue was not in the best of moods. Indeed, steam seemed to puff from the creature's dragon-like muzzle, and energies already were radiating from his balled fists.

  It had to be Toede, Gildentongue realized. No one else would care to imitate the old highmaster. And since most of his old court was now part of Gildentongue's "collection" there were few left who knew the city well enough to get around. The old wart probably had a secret passage burrowed into the Rock for just this purpose. The Jetties was just a diversion.

  Only Toede would have the stones to commandeer his own manor house and send for Gildentongue to meet him there. "Old friend," indeed.

  If Toede was in the manor house, the outside chance existed that the hobgoblin would enlist Hopsloth as an ally. Gildentongue had never liked the amphidragon much, though it had obvious uses. Perhaps it was time to add a few poisonous spices to the beast's next meal. It wasn't as if anyone needed to see the smelly frog-dragon anymore in order to venerate "the Water Prophet." Probably be better for the faith if the faithful had to use their imaginations a little more.

  There were a pair of guards at the front door of the manor, who quickly and quietly melted away on his approach. The shutters were closed, but he could see that someone had lit torches or lamps within. He pulled on the double doors, one handle tightly gripped in each hand.

  The doors pulled a half inch forward, then stopped. Gildentongue could see the dead bolt in place.

  Someone. Toede. He had been assured the little beast was dead, but somehow, like an unlucky coin, he had resurfaced.

  Gildentongue considered ripping open the doors with raw strength, but held himself in check. Such rages were typical, and there was no point in destroying his own lair. There were subtler ways.

  Gildentongue wrapped himself in his cloak and muttered a few words, moving quickly from here on one side of the door to there on the other side. He did it within the course of a single breath and poised ready for attack in the main hallway.

  He looked around. Torches had been lit in the hall, casting scarlet shadows on the bloodstained floor. He nosed the air for a moment-no, no alien magics were present- nothing illusionary or invisible at work here, either.

  The iron doors to his private room were ajar. Fewer lights there, a pair of braziers set before the chute down to Hopsloth's muck-pit. On the far side of the pit the old throne still stood on a low dais, and standing on the seat of that throne…

  … Toede, looking quite contented with himself.

  "Come on in," shouted the squat little creature. "Mind the chute. And thanks for keeping my place warm."

  Gildentongue snarled as Toede's words echoed through the hall. The idea of gripping Toede's face like an overripe melon, driving his thumb-claws into the tatters of the hobgoblin's eye sockets, appealed to him. But all things have their time and place, and first he would have to trick and trap his prey.

  Gildentongue wrapped himself in his cloak and muttered a few more words, moving quickly from here by the doorway to there on the other side of the pit, directly in front of the dais. He did it within the course of a single breath, and upon emerging on the other side, immediately lashed out, driving his clawed talon into Toede's heart.

  Chapter 9

  In which t
he battle is joined between Our Protagonist and his hated foe, a final resolution of sorts is reached, a final revelation of sorts is made, and a final meal, of sorts, is served.

  Or rather, Gildentongue drove his taloned claw into the space where Toede should have been, had the hobgoblin truly been standing on the throne. Instead, Gildentongue drove his hand into the hallway mirror Toede and Groag had positioned on the seat.

  The glass surface of the mirror spider-webbed and shattered, raining shards of glass in all directions. The mirror's metal backing ruptured under his claws, and three of his talons pierced the steel entirely. Gildentongue cursed and tried to shake the metal from his hand. Small wounds laced across his scaled skin, but they were minor scratches that welled with blood and would swiftly heal.

  There was a low, mocking whistle behind him. Toede stepped out of his hiding place among the dead bodies, crossbow tucked under his arm. Toede looked as if he were one of the landed gentry out shooting coneys. Tilting the mirror on the throne, to create the illusion of his presence there, was an old trick, more suitable for a traveling show than anything else, but it had proved effective.

  Toede laughed as Gildentongue attempted to disengage himself from the shards of the mirror. This infuriated the

  draconian further, such that steam was leaking upward from each nostril. Toede raised the crossbow and…

  Gildentongue disappeared with the soft popping of a soap bubble.

  Toede hesitated for a second. Had Gildentongue magically moved, or…

  The frame of the mirror, still on the throne, moved slightly, as if an unseen hand was trying to extricate itself. Which was exactly what was happening.

  Toede aimed at the wobbling frame and shot.

  Gildentongue reappeared as the arrow struck him and bounced off his scaly hide.