by Joe Mahoney
It would not do to lose the horses. If Neekson ever showed up—and Tanner was growing skeptical on this count—he could find himself with plenty of goods but no animals to carry them. If that happened, he might have no choice but to steal the animals back. He remembered the two stable guards, and almost laughed aloud. He risked all of a stubbed toe confronting the likes of them.
Problem was, Keele would not approve. He had adamantly refused to have anything to do with the theft of the amulet.
“I am a scholar, not a thief,” he had stated firmly when Tanner informed him of his plan.
“Is it the oath you took?” Tanner asked him. Oaths were something he could understand, having sworn several himself, none of which he could remember in any detail.
“It has nothing to do with my oath.”
Tanner was not offended. Keele was a different sort of man, his code was not Tanner’s code, that of the surly miners with whom Tanner and his father had lived in near poverty. Rough-hewn men carving coal out of the Blue Shank Mountains. Or those with whom they had later dwelt and whom Tanner admired most, men of dark humour and lightning fast blades, who took what they wanted when they wanted. Gold from dead men’s teeth, land from arrogant lords, gems off the slender white necks of vain young noblewomen.
Tanner’s plan had revolved around one such creature basking in the moonlight on a remote part of her family’s estate—just as a certain gentleman in Lycatos had said she would be. A simple throat lock made a fool of her inattentive guardian, and Damaris Fen—that was what the fellow in Lycatos had called her, along with other, less flattering names—did not stir as Tanner stole upon her.
Clutching his dagger in one hand, Tanner took hold of the amulet with the other. A flush of warmth spread from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. Attributing the sensation to nerves, he dismissed it, and lifted the amulet from Damaris’ bosom. It felt cool in his palm. He marveled at the intricacy of the engravings on its rim, at the beauty of the crystalline stone set within. A diamond, if Tanner’s loose-lipped acquaintance could be believed—and though half in his cups, the fellow had been right about everything else.
A sharp tug freed the chain from Damaris’ neck. She awoke and felt where the amulet had been. When she did not find it, and spied Tanner crouching beside her, she sat up abruptly. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and sat utterly still, looking at him.
Tanner was transfixed by the look of her. Not because she was the beauty the unhappy fellow in Lycatos had professed her to be—there was a child-like quality to her features that did not appeal to Tanner—it was that he had never seen a woman look half so well scrubbed before.
When Damaris opened her mouth to speak Tanner shushed her by placing a finger to his lips. He feared that her retainers might be lingering near the edge of the woods, not so far away.
She spoke anyway, her voice tremulous. “It was a gift—”
Tanner clapped a hand across her mouth and clutched her to him. “Not a word,” he whispered, brandishing his dagger before a pair of widening eyes.
Damaris’ scent, like that of a freshly bitten peach, enveloped Tanner, made him acutely aware that it was the flesh of a woman beneath his callused hands. He felt her tremble beneath his embrace. She probably thought that he intended to claim another, more ignoble prize.
Tanner released her. “Quiet,” he commanded, as her weeping became audible.
The request was futile.
The fear of being discovered overtook Tanner and he fled back through the woods with his prize. Any misgivings he might have felt for having terrorized Damaris he dismissed as foolishness. Not a single drop of blood had been shed, and such an amulet, worth more than Tanner might honestly earn in his lifetime, was surely but a bauble to the likes of her.
On the road to Wyrth, Keele sat astride his grey and examined the amulet for no more than two seconds before handing it back to Tanner.
“Moonstone,” Keele said. “Not diamond.”
“Moonstone? Never heard of it.”
“A particularly nasty indulgence of the rich.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wore it in the glen, you say. Under the light of a full moon.”
“As was her habit, I’m told.”
“That does not strike you as peculiar?”
Tanner shrugged. “She’s rich. Rich people do all sorts of strange things.”
Keele regarded Tanner for several long seconds. Finally he said, “Do not wear it against your skin, or handle it any more than necessary, especially in moonlight. Try not to look at it. As soon as you can, get rid of it.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Keele twisted in his saddle and squinted down the road behind them. “She will come for it.”
Tanner snorted. That much he knew already. Mere bauble or not, the House of Fen would soon be after him. The rich did not like to be trifled with. Brimming with wrath and righteous indignation, they would hang Tanner from the highest tree for his effrontery, if they could find him. They might find him in Wyrth, if they tried hard enough.
They would not find him in Fanarion.
Leese’s throaty voice jarred Tanner back to the present. “I’ll throw you out by the scruff of the neck if I have to.”
Tanner looked up to see Leese looming over Neekson, who struggled under the weight of a large sack. Neekson said something that Tanner couldn’t quite make out.
A beefy man clad in the burnished leather of the city guard snatched the sack away from Neekson and emptied its contents onto the floor. He snapped up one of the objects and held it aloft. “He brings wares to sell to the kitchen. A bat! He would have us eat this filthy vermin.”
“It’s not for sale.” Neekson made a grab for the bat, but the guard held it just out of reach.
Keele emerged from his room at the top of the stairs.
Tanner scrambled to his feet—he had to do something before Keele turned the guard into a toad, or worse. By the time he made it to the entrance, though, Keele was already there, and Neekson was on his hands and knees chasing around a duck. Neekson’s tormentor was nowhere to be seen.
“You’ll turn the entire inn against us!” Tanner whispered to Keele.
Keele looked over Tanner’s shoulder. Tanner spun to see Leese ushering the guard outside. The duck had come from Neekson’s sack, he realised.
Keele’s moustache twitched. “Come with me,” he said. “You too, Neekson.”
Keele led them to the room he shared with Tanner. Neekson cast nervous glances behind them the entire way. In the room, a small array of glass tubes, bottles and jars littered a rickety table in the corner. Much of the apparatus was coated with a greenish residue. The room itself smelled of burnt incense. Keele placed the sack under the table and passed Neekson a small vial containing a yellowish solution.
Tanner had drunk Keele’s concoctions before. He made a face but held his tongue. He didn’t want to discourage Neekson from drinking the solution. Neekson lifted the vial to his mouth and drank the fluid down without a second’s hesitation. He coughed and twisted his face in a grimace but seemed otherwise unaffected.
“I don’t feel any different,” he said. “You haven’t even used the goods I spent all day collecting.”
“They will be put to good use. In a stew I am preparing.”
Neekson stared at the empty vial in his hand. “You’ve taken me for a fool.”
“Perhaps,” Keele said. “Just the same, you will be strong tomorrow.”
“But I’m still small.”
“On the outside. You will be strong on the inside.”
Tanner agreed with Neekson that he didn’t look any different, but he knew better than to underestimate Keele Wren.
“Uh oh.” Neekson steadied himself on the table.
Tanner had been waiting for this. When Neekson�
�s legs buckled, Tanner was there to catch him.
Beads of moisture appeared on Neekson’s forehead. “You’ve killed me!”
“You will run a high fever tonight,” Keele said. “You will sleep through most of it, and dream of the past, the present, and the future. When you wake up, you will be strong.”
Neekson tried to say something but it came out as gibberish. Tanner placed him on Keele’s pallet, where he lay sweating and gasping for air.
“He will be fine,” Keele assured Tanner.
“What about you?” The night would hold more challenges for Keele, Tanner suspected, than it would for Neekson.
“I will be fine too.”
Tanner nodded and left.
Laughter and the stench of stale ale greeted Tanner at the bottom of the stairs, too much of each. Slipping out back of the Heroes Welcome for some fresh air and quiet, he succumbed to the temptation to inspect his prize. He removed the oilskin from its hiding place, carefully uncovered the amulet, and admired it in the day’s fading light.
Despite his caution, the amulet chanced to brush Tanner’s skin. A shock of pleasure swept over him, utterly unlike anything he had ever experienced before. It left him breathless, made him yearn to touch the amulet again, but he resisted, though it took all his will to do so.
With great care, he put the amulet away. He thought about asking Keele more about it, but decided not to. Keele would tell him to get rid of it, and this Tanner would not do. Not until he could sell it for the kind of coin other men spent entire lives pining for. Embittered men, health and spirits broken. Men doomed to shallow graves.
Smarter, bolder than his father, Tanner would neither live nor die like him.
In the morning, Keele sat cross-legged on his pallet, his eyes closed, a thin blue vein pulsing high in his forehead. From time to time he placed a hand on the floor to steady himself.
Neekson sat breaking his fast at the table. Tanner joined him.
“I feel better than ever,” Neekson said, between heaping mouthfuls of stew. “Maybe that potion did something after all.”
Keele opened one bloodshot eye.
“I dreamt, too, just as you said I would. There were enemies all about me. I cut men down with a terrible sword, cut them down by the score, and I was stronger than I ever imagined possible, and finally I grew tired and I wanted to lie down but I couldn’t, my enemies kept on coming. I couldn’t see the end of them.” Neekson placed his spoon down on the table. “What does it mean, a dream like that?”
“Something you ate,” Tanner said.
The others looked at him.
“I have dreams like that all the time,” he explained.
Keele said, “There is a woman in Lycatos who knows a thing or two about dreams. Perhaps you should ask her.”
Neekson nodded. “I might just do that.”
After consuming a dish of Keele’s succulent stew himself, Tanner led Neekson to the smithy next door to determine just how effective Keele’s labours had been. They walked in on the blacksmith holding a horseshoe in place with a pair of iron tongs. Ropy muscles bulged beneath the blacksmith’s filthy tunic as he pounded on the glowing object.
“I’m busy,” he told Tanner. “Come back later, tomorrow maybe. Next week.”
“We’re not looking to hire you.”
“What then?”
Tanner nodded toward the anvil the blacksmith was using. “We want to borrow that.”
“What the devil for?”
“To see if I can lift it,” Neekson said.
The blacksmith placed the freshly formed horseshoe in a bucket of icy water. The water hissed and frothed as the horseshoe cooled. “I told you, I’m busy. Take your drunken nonsense someplace else.”
Before the blacksmith could stop him, Neekson strode toward the anvil and gripped it with both hands. When he straightened up, the anvil rose with him.
Tanner whistled. “Set it down now, carefully,” he said. “Bend your knees, not your back.”
Neekson did as Tanner instructed.
“What devilry is this?” The blacksmith wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I can’t move that anvil without a team of oxen.”
Tanner had witnessed Keele accomplish several mind-boggling feats in the time that he’d known him, yet even he was impressed.
Neekson stood stock still, staring at his hands. His mien had darkened. “Let them mock me now.”
“Give me the goods you promised me,” Tanner said, “or I’ll do more than mock you.”
“You’ll have your goods,” Neekson said. “Just—I need time to get them together.”
Tanner recalled his father’s profound distrust of gnomes. But Neekson would have Keele to contend with if he tried anything foolish. Either way, Tanner would get his goods. “Be quick about it,” he said. “We’re in a hurry.”
Sour red beans and water the colour of urine constituted board at the Heroes Welcome. Tanner toyed with the beans, then forced himself to eat every last one. He meant to be in Fanarion by late afternoon, and a man wanted a full belly before setting foot in a place like that.
The innkeeper placed a mug on the table. Startled, Tanner stuck his nose over the brim. It smelled like wine. Tanner hadn’t drunk wine—real wine—in over a year.
The innkeeper sat down beside him. He had dark circles under his eyes that had not been there the day before. “Seems I’ve offended your friend,” he said. “Had dealings with his kind before, you know. Snakes there were, dozens of them. Lucky to get out of there alive. Be the same tonight, won’t it?”
Tanner bid the innkeeper lean closer. “You served him cow’s milk, a terrible mistake. Keele considers cows holy, or mystical, or some damned thing.”
The innkeeper rubbed his temple with a knuckle, hard. “Don’t want to have to go through another night like that one.”
Tanner thought about the coin he owed the stable master. “You could make it up to him.”
The innkeeper sighed. “I was afraid you’d say something like that. How much do you want?”
The idea that Tanner had any real influence over Keele was absurd, but the innkeeper had no way of knowing that. Tanner fiddled with his mug. Wine slopped over the brim and onto the table.
The innkeeper peered at him, waiting.
“Two guild,” Tanner said. There was no way around it, not if he wanted his horses back.
The innkeeper refused to look Tanner in the eye. He gave Tanner the coin and left. Afterward, Tanner sampled the wine and made a face. It was real wine all right, but only just. He took another slug of the stuff just the same.
Catching a glimpse of Neekson coming through the entrance Tanner spat the wine out all over the table. Clad in complete battle regalia, everything Neekson wore was too large by half. Chain mail drooped below his knees. His helm refused to stay put over his eyes. Tanner wondered at the gnome’s ability to walk in the outrageous outfit, but walk he could, for he strode right up and pressed a short sword firmly against Leese’s belly.
The door warden’s lips curled in disbelief at the sight of Neekson’s costume. She pushed Neekson’s sword aside with a finger. “What in the Seven Levels of Hell are you?”
“I want in. Let me in.”
Leese sighed. “You’re not welcome here, gnome.”
All the life seemed to go out of Neekson. He lowered both sword and gaze. Then, issuing a loud cry, he struck, neither quickly nor assuredly, yet the force of the blow was enough to tear Leese’s hastily drawn weapon from her grasp and send it clattering to the floor.
“Sorcery,” Leese observed, retrieving her weapon. Rising and twisting all in one motion, she struck Neekson full on the chest, sending him aloft in a shower of sparks. Neekson came crashing to the floor half a span from where he had been standing.
Neekson rose to his feet, scowling. The e
xpression did not make him any prettier. A large dent was visible in his armour, yet he appeared unharmed.
Leese offered up a series of short, probing jabs. It soon became painfully obvious that Neekson did not know the first thing about wielding a sword. He countered Leese’s advances gamely enough, but his own clumsy forays Leese swept aside with about as much effort as a cat batting aside an errant whisker.
The time came to end the charade. Leese stepped in deftly and slapped Neekson on the side of the head with the flat of her blade. Neekson’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor. Leese lugged him unceremoniously out of the Heroes Welcome by the straps of his breastplate and was back inside the Heroes Welcome seconds later as if nothing at all untoward had happened.
Tanner suspected that for a woman like Leese, in a place like the Heroes Welcome, nothing had.
He found Neekson sitting forlornly on the front steps of the Heroes Welcome with his helm off, a small, purplish bruise marring his left temple. Kneeling, Tanner made to examine the bruise but Neekson shied away.
“Neekson,” Tanner said. “Look at me.”
Neekson lifted his chin.
Leese had landed at least one blow that would have cracked an ordinary man’s ribs, yet Tanner could find no evidence of it. After a brief but thorough inspection, he said, “You’ll live. Thanks to Keele’s arts, I expect.”
Neekson muttered something under his breath.
“What did you say?”
“I said that’s something, at least.”
“Figured to best her easily, did you? Suppose you thought it would be enough to be strong.” Tanner sat down at Neekson’s side. “What you need to do is find yourself a master. Throw yourself at his mercy. Beg him to teach you everything he knows. Train morning, noon and night for seven years. Then find Leese again.”
