Once Around the Realms (single books)

by Brian Thomsen

  Suzail, where I first met Mister Volo."

  "I also apologize," the youngster agreed, accepting the offered handshake, "and am equally sorry that I corrected your mistake."

  "What mistake?" Passepout asked, wondering if he had once again been insulted.

  "Doesn't matter," said Volo, quickly trying to derail the argument that once again threatened to come barreling down the track. "Does it? Of course not," he continued, trying not to leave enough time for a response from either of-the hotheads. "I'm sure that Passepout here is more than willing to share his worldly wisdom with an eager young student such as yourself. You know, the type of education you left university for."

  "Well, I have led a rather sheltered life," Curtis conceded.

  "Of course you have," Volo agreed. Turning his attention back to Passepout for a moment, he added, "And you, good son of Catinflas and Idle, have previously admitted to having occasional, shall we say, lapses in memory and judgment, particularly around young ladies, if I'm not mistaken."

  ''Well, I guess, sort of."

  "Of course," Volo agreed, and continued to divert the conversation away from the trouble spot by telling a story. "Which reminds me of a tale I once heard about a huge and hungry fish that was troubling the people of the Moonshae Isles, around old Amity town. The townspeople all chipped in to hire a crusty old sea dog to catch him. A young cleric fresh out of university, probably not much older than you, joined him in case there was a need for any ministering or healing or such-provided the fish didn't eat the old coot whole, that is. There was another guy with them, too, a constable from the town guard if I remember correctly, who was reluctant to join them at first, even recommending that they get a bigger boat…"

  Volo, a not bad showman and entertainer himself, continued to spin the rest of the fish story off the top of his head until the sun had begun to set. His two companions had long forgotten their silly disagreement.

  The next morning, all was forgiven, and the three travelers returned to their daily routine. Passepout mentioned that he particularly liked the part where the old sea dog was swallowed whole by the man-eating devil fish, and recommended that they swap "fish stories" among themselves more often.

  Curtis and Volo agreed, and tale telling became a regular part of their evening meal… the only requirement being that there was an unstated agreement that the veracity of the stories was never questioned, commented on, or corrected, which was particularly difficult for Volo to refrain from, or even to keep a straight face while Passepout related to the wide-eyed Curtis the story of how he heroically became the scourge of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

  I bet Ahib Fletcher is rolling in his watery grave now, thought Volo, stealing a quick look far below to the crashing waves.

  "By my calculations," Volo observed, "we are somewhere in the area of either Thay or Rashemen."

  "What's the difference?" Passepout inquired.

  "Not much," the master traveler replied. "Rashemen is a land of berserker barbarians and witches, while Thay is the land of the infamous Red Wizards."

  "Great," replied the sarcastic thespian. "Just what we need, more sorcerers with sour dispositions."

  "Like that one over there?" Curtis inquired, pointing over the starboard bow at a wizened old codger in red robes who was apparently resting on a nearby mountaintop.

  "I guess we're in Thay, then," Volo observed. "Good eyes there, Curtis."

  Not to be outdone, Passepout seized the opportunity to show off.

  "Sure, he has good eyes, but I bet my aim is better," the thespian boasted. "Watch this!"

  Before Volo realized the intentions of the boastful thespian, Passepout had already extracted a red gem from the pouch at his belt and had pitched it overboard, beaning the old wizard on the top of his noggin.

  "Good shot!" Curtis complimented.

  "I don't think that was such a good idea," Volo commented.

  "Why not?" replied the proud thespian, revelling in sure aim and quick arm. "It's not like the old geezer saw us or anything,… and if he did, so what? It's not like he can do anything about it."

  The crackling of flames in motion ripped through the sky around the ship as a fireball made its presence known.

  The Red Wizard on the mountain was none too amused.

  The first fireball had barely missed the ship, and the mage was now readying a second one that he was sure would meet its mark.

  Volo quickly took command. "Curtis," he instructed, "take the helm!"

  "Aye, aye, Captain Volo," Curtis responded, "but

  I don't think she can dodge those fireballs. This ship was not cut out for bobbing and weaving."

  Volo quickly came up with a plan.

  "Curtis, you just hold her steady, laying a course that will get us out of here as fast as possible. Passepout," the master traveler instructed, turning his attention to the direct cause of their current situation, "I want you to run from stem to stern as fast as you can, back and forth."

  "Back and forth," the frantic thespian complained, "how many times?"

  "Until I tell you to stop," the master traveler shouted. "Now!"

  Passepout responded just as the evil mage let loose with his second fireball and started preparing a third.

  The radical shifts in weight and balance on board, caused by Passepout running back and forth, succeeded in causing the ship to tip and bob as if it were gliding along rough and tempest-ridden seas. The fireballs just missed the ship, passing over its bow and under its stern as the ship continued its rapid exit away from the mountainside, bobbing, jumping, and weaving in tune to Passepout's laps back and forth along the deck.

  When the last fireball failed even to come close, Volo shouted, "That's it! We're out of range. You can stop running now."

  An exhausted Passepout sank to the deck in exhaustion.

  "I will never throw anything at a wizard again," he huffed and puffed.

  "For as long as you live?" Volo queried.

  "Longer," the thespian conceded, adding, "but what's that smell?"

  "What smell?"

  "Smells like smoke," the exhausted rotund thespian observed.

  "Fire!" Curtis yelled down to his two companions and pointed to the hull below.

  Though they had managed to avoid any direct hits, one of the fireballs that had passed below had ignited a section of the hull with its flaming streamers.

  Volo and Passepout spent the better part of an hour trying to contain the flames, while Curtis held them on their course. The fire finally put out and their course stabilized, all three travelers hit their bunks, exhausted beyond description.

  They slept through the night, only to be awakened by the morning sun and the observation that everything seemed to be back to normal.

  It was a few days before they even realized they were losing altitude.

  Chapter 14

  Taan or Hostage to the Horde

  "What do you mean, we're going down?" said the on-the-verge-of panic Passepout, whose aforementioned fear of heights now seemed to have been replaced by a fear of vertical sudden impact.

  "The balloon seems to be tearing at its seams," replied Curtis, whose bravery did not mask his realization of their possible doom. "The strain of maneuvering around those fireballs and the constant changes in air pressure are finally taking their toll."

  "Well," replied Volo, fingering his beard while thinking out loud, "she wasn't really constructed to hold the ship aloft."

  Curtis continued with the bad news at hand. "I also fear that we can no longer steer. The strain of the ropes pulling on it will only hasten the wearing of the inflated material."

  "Well, then," Volo replied, "we seem to have only two choices. We can let the ship steer itself until eventually the balloon deflates or breaks, at which point we will surely crash, or we can try to continue to steer her, thus accelerating the damage to the balloon, and the resultant crash."

  "Great," replied Passepout, rolling his eyes, and wondering why they were wasting time ex
amining two equally lethal alternatives, "but what's the difference where we crash?"

  "A plain is always better than a jagged mountainside, and a gradual descent is much better than a freely accelerating plummet. Remember, when falling it is much better to emulate a feather than a rock-unless, of course, you want to make a hole in the ground or to be a pancake."

  "Mister Volo," Curtis interjected, "meaning no offense, of course, but I really don't think this is a good time for pithy epigraphs from some Kara-Tur fate biscuit."

  "Point well taken, lad," the master traveler replied. "On to the course of action. We must control and delay our descent for as long as we can, or at least until our chances of surviving a landing have increased dramatically. First, we must find something either to patch the leaks or at least cushion the balloon's surface from the abrasion of the ropes during steering. Might I recommend using the thunder lizard's skin as a cushion against the ropes? Its value as sun reflector is now outweighed by the matters at hand. And we can use the remaining paste and paint as a temporary sealant on those areas where the balloon has already worn thin."

  "Aye, aye, sir," replied Curtis, who immediately hopped to the task at hand.

  "We must also reduce the strain on the balloon's buoyancy itself," Volo continued. "Therefore Passepout, you and I must get rid of anything that is not an absolute necessity, to lighten our load… and that includes food."

  "Aye, aye sir," replied Passepout, who oddly enough also immediately hopped to the task at hand and set off for the food stores.

  "Mister Volo," Curtis asked, while tending to the removal of the patch from the hull, "what next? I mean, this won't really solve the problem."

  "No, lad," the master traveler replied, "but it will buy us time."

  Volo left the lad to his task and followed Passepout's lead to the ship's stores, but instead of finding the thespian busy casting the supplies overboard, he instead found him gorging himself with all of the provisions at hand.

  "Passepout, what are you doing?"

  "Oonk, ooff, sputter, foo," the thespian replied, which Volo's keen ear easily translating as "getting rid of the food."

  "That doesn't help us one bit," the master traveler scolded. "The food weighs the same inside you as it does inside the stores."

  "But we can't just throw it overboard," the pudgy Passepout protested. "What will we do for supper?"

  "Supper will only concern us if we survive that long," Volo corrected. "Now move it!"

  The thespian's grumbling retort was interrupted by the arrival of Curtis, whose flustered manner seemed to indicate that his task was also not going as well as expected. "Mister Volo," he implored, "it won't work."

  "What won't work?"

  "The thunder lizard's skin. I got it up from the hull all right, but I can't cut it down to a manageable size to line the ropes. The skin is too tough, and now the hull seems to be cracking as well."

  The two older travelers left the stores and accompanied the young beachcomber to the site of the former patch. The skin had been loosened and pushed to the side, now revealing two ever-widening cracks that reached out from both sides of the hole in the hull, threatening to bisect the ship lengthwise.

  "The strain of dodging those fireballs must have been too much for her," the master traveler observed.

  "Well, don't just stand there, Curtis," Passepout ordered. "Replace the patch! Put the skin back!"

  "It's too late for that," Volo replied. "The hole's gotten too big."

  Suddenly the ship lurched to the left, setting the deck askew.

  "What happened?" the frantic Passepout demanded.

  "The ropes holding the balloon to the boat must have shifted," Volo replied. "She's deflating faster than I thought."

  "We have to do something," Curtis implored.

  Volo climbed up top to check the riggings, his two crew mates in tow. As he feared, the balloon was deflating, the ship descending at an ever-increasing rate. Volo was at a loss, but both of his crew mates were looking to him for guidance and inspiration.

  "Well," he said out loud, trying to defuse their impending panic, "too bad Grumby cut out with the only available Chultian air support… wait! That's it! It just might work!"

  Passepout and Curtis were shocked by the sudden change in the calm conduct of their airship captain, who was quickly undoing ropes and rushing around the deck like an ant on the edge of the abyss.

  "Here!" their animated leader instructed. "Tie these ropes to each of the four corners of the lizard skin. Fast!"

  "Why?" the two crewman replied, while simultaneously following orders.

  "I remember reading in the papers of the explorer Artus Cimber on some of the obscure customs of some of tribes of Chult. I think it was the Tabaxi who had some sort of manhood ritual whereby the young males, upon reaching maturity, would have to throw themselves off a cliff with only an umbrella-shaped blanket to slow them down. You see, the warm air currents would slow their descent just like the geyser that inflated our balloon, thus allowing them to survive the fall. Supposedly it was done in honor of three Tabaxi who saved their king by helping him escape from the Batiri goblin tribes. I think their names were Gherri, Aahnnie, and Modesti."

  "But how does this help us?" Passepout implored.

  Volo pointed to the ground that they were approaching.

  "There!" he instructed. "If we stay on board at our current rate of descent we will be bashed to our deaths on those rocky ridges. Ergo, we must abandon ship before we reach there."

  "So we can be bashed to our deaths on the plains below?" Passepout asked.

  "Maybe," Volo replied, "but hopefully not. Good, that should be secure enough. Curtis, pass me my pack."

  The lad complied without thinking.

  "Good," the master traveler responded, hoisting it into place on his back, with the shoulder straps. "Now quickly, take the other end of one of the ropes, and attach it to the front of your belt. On second thought, Passepout attach an end on each side."

  Both complied, unaware of the rhyme or the reason for their actions, and ever aware of the approaching doom of the rocky mountain cliffs.

  "Good, now one more rope, tied around us, holding us back to back to back," the master traveler continued. "Better make it twice around. Good."

  "But I don't understand," Curtis queried, while still complying.

  "We're all going to die," the thespian replied in resignation.

  "I hope not," Volo responded, shifting their bound, three-person bulk toward the ship's bow. "If it works for the Tabaxi, it might work for us."

  "What did you say those guys' names were?" Passepout asked.

  Volo checked the security of the ropes and straightened out the unfurled thunder lizard's skin as he replied. "Gherri, Aahnnie, Mo…"

  Once again the ship lurched. The hull cracked in two. The three bound travelers were thrown backward over the bow, the lizard skin following at a rope's length.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  Falling… lurch upward.

  The skin caught the wind and became inflated, slowing their descent drastically.

  "It's working!" Curtis replied.

  "We're going to die!" Passepout cried.

  "Hold the ropes!" Volo shouted. "Use both hands! We should hit the plains in seconds."

  True to his word, they did.

  Volo managed to extricate himself first from beneath the lizard skin that had landed on top of them, and managed to catch one last look at the airship Minnow as it crashed into the rocky ridge and tumbled down the mountainside, breaking into unrecognizable splinters and shards of airbag and wood.

  Under his breath, and unheard by his crew members, Volo breathed a sigh of relief, saying, "I honestly didn't think we'd make it. I guess I owe Artus Cimber one."

  The master traveler then turned his attention back to Passepout and Curtis, who were having trouble extricating themselves from the rope-and-skin contraption that had saved their lives.

  "My aching
body," Passepout complained, "and we forgot the food."

  "We made it!" Curtis announced in disbelief.

  "Of course," Volo replied. "Was there ever any doubt? Let's make camp here. The sun is setting, and our makeshift sky sail will also make a perfect windbreak and blanket to protect us from the evening chill."

  Few words were spoken, and the exhausted threesome were at rest before the sun had fully dipped below the horizon.

  Fatigue had won out over caution, and the night passed uneventfully despite the lack of a guard on watch.

  As the sun made its appearance on the opposite horizon, Curtis and Passepout awoke to muscles and joints that were now just beginning to make known their complaints about the activities of the previous day.

  "Good morning," greeted Volo, who had obviously been up since the first crack of sunlight had started to illuminate the shadow-ridden plains. He was contemplating the enchanted map, which he had luckily placed in his pack at the first sign of trouble with the Red Wizard. "As best I can estimate, we're somewhere around here, in the northern part of the Quoya Desert, around the Horse Plains."

  "Huh?" Passepout replied, wiping the sands of slumber from his eyes and yawning.

  "The Horse Plains, also called the Hordelands, or Taan as it's known in the native tongue," Volo elaborated. "Not too bad, considering the alternative."

  "What alternative?" the thespian groaned, the complaints of his joints drowned out by the rumblings of his stomach.

  "Death," the master traveler succinctly replied.

  "Oh," the thespian acquiesced.

  "But aren't the people of the Hordelands hostile?" Curtis asked. "And didn't King Azoun and his Purple Dragons defeat them and their savage and barbaric ways during the Horde Wars?"

  Volo chuckled.

  "Well, I guess we found an area that your alleged education is lacking in. Sure, Azoun and his boys managed to turn back the Horde invasion… but savage and barbaric ways? I don't think so, that is unless you happen to be one of the merchants whose caravans were plundered of their wealth and wares. From what I understand, Yamun Khahan, leader of the Tuigan (that's what they call themselves, the Horde is a western moniker) would even offer his captives the choice of joining him and his raiding party on their invasion westward."