by Kay L. Ling
Frinkk was the first to recover his wits. “Begone!” he shouted, and bolts of light that crackled with power erupted behind Tyla. She shielded her eyes as the bolts attacked the swooping bats, and it was all she could do to keep from laughing as the bolts passed harmlessly through.
“What are they?” Frinkk cried, dismayed that his attack was ineffective. “I—”
Then the bats dissolved, leaving no sign they had ever existed. And indeed they hadn’t; they were only an illusion. S had created a ward to keep breghlin away from her suite, and no one had found a way to deactivate it. By now, gnomes who used this passageway had seen the complete repertoire of fake horrors and paid no attention to whatever materialized.
“I forgot to mention the ward,” Tyla said. “We seldom come here, so I tend to forget about it.”
One of them harrumphed at that, probably Frinkk who had wasted his gem powers on an illusion and made a fool of himself. She glanced at Raenihel whose lips were twitching with amusement.
“You don’t really have such creatures, do you—two headed bats?” asked Ertz, with scholarly interest.
“Not anymore,” she answered. “S created creatures far worse than two-headed bats, like her pythanium—intelligent, flying serpents that served as spies. But they’re gone now. Her throne was covered with carved creatures with gems for eyes, and we discovered that burning that hideous thing destroyed her monsters.”
Raenihel said, “Before we burned her throne, Gem Masters Elias and Jules offered a bounty to anyone who killed a monster and brought the head as proof. He preserved and mounted a head from each kind of creature so future generations could see them. They used to be in the library, but we couldn’t stand looking at them anymore so we moved them to S’s suite.”
Tyla sent the mental password to the mirkstone lock and opened the door. The first room, S’s private library, had a seating area like the one in the main library. Artwork, mostly paintings and sketches S had made, hung on one wall. The adjoining room held her desk, a woven sleeping sack that hung from the ceiling, and a few chairs and end tables.
The gem masters waited for Tyla and Raenihel to activate lightgems and then made a quick tour of the first room, showing little interest in S’s books, scrolls, or artwork. They proceeded to the adjoining room, and after overcoming their initial horror at the mounted heads, inspected this room more carefully, discovering the vault behind the tapestry in record time.
“I assume someone has gotten inside. Where are her valuables now?” asked Klemmet with a greedy glint in his eyes.
Tyla wasn’t in the habit of lying. She was honest by nature, and besides, it was a sure way to get witnesses. But she could hardly say that Raenihel had given Elias, Lana, and Jules sacks of gems and other valuables as spoils of war. Back then, no one had known that gnomes had gem powers, and it seemed right to reward the humans for overthrowing S. Elias had offered to give everything back, but for the time being, the valuables were safer in his care.
“There were gems in the vault, and as I mentioned before, the throne was full of them. We raked the ashes and recovered any with beneficial powers. The office has a storage cabinet with trays of gems. We can take you there next, if you like.”
Frinkk and Klemmet suddenly lost interest in S’s suite. “The office,” Frinkk said, rubbing his hands together. “Yes, let’s see what’s there.”
Tyla congratulated herself on handling the question in a way that satisfied the delegates but didn’t reveal the truth. There were gems in the office, but most hadn’t come from the vault or the throne. Elias had donated duplicates from his own collection. There were more gems in a storehouse—common varieties without remarkable powers—but those wouldn’t interest the delegates.
According to Elias and Jules, S’s gem collection was probably among the finest in the world. Before the Great Upheaval, she had been accumulating rare gems, and after the war she had confiscated more from the gnomes trapped inside the Amulet with her. Then, for over two hundred years, she had claimed all the newly mined supply. This region didn’t have every type of gem, but it was a gem-rich area.
Tyla steered the delegates away from the safe and led them to the mounted heads. She pointed out the massive, turtle-like head of the moat monster, a brontskeller. There had only been four, and gnomes and breghlin had killed them shortly after S’s defeat. The gem masters stared in disgust.
Next, she told them the story of the green-and-gray scaled head that had come from the pythanium known as Head Spy, S’s pet and advisor. Its serpent-like head was as large as Tyla’s own, and its evil, yellow eyes still gave her the shivers.
She moved down the row of heads, providing information about the monsters. The gem masters listened but didn’t conceal their impatience, clearly more interested in gems than monsters. By the time she reached the last two heads, a two-headed bird called an urgruv, and a gerstlit, better known as a crocodillo, Frinkk was casting longing looks at the door. She finished her speech and ushered the bored gnomes from the suite.
When they reached the office, Tyla stacked gem trays on the desk, hoping their contents would pass for S’s entire horde of better gems.
Frinkk, Klemmet, and Ertz began to pick through the trays, occasionally holding up a gem and making a fuss over it. Completely engrossed in examining the gems, they paid no attention to Tyla and Raenihel, and after a while Tyla went to join Raenihel who was leaning against the wall, watching the gem masters with a concerned frown. After ten or fifteen minutes he whispered, “We should get back to the library.”
He was right, but it wouldn’t be easy to pull the gem masters away. She cleared her throat. “Are you nearly finished? If not, we can come back later. We shouldn’t leave Anatta and Varkandian so long.”
Frinkk looked up with a sour expression.
“Tyla is right. We should go,” Ertz said. “We’ve been gone quite a while.”
Tyla was grateful for his help. “I’ll leave the trays on the desk. We can come back later.” She and Raenihel went to the door and waited expectantly.
Like children reluctant to leave their favorite toys, Frinkk and Klemmet grudgingly followed her and Raenihel out, grumbling about the inconvenience of having the woodspirits along.
As they neared the library, a guard came out, looking troubled. He asked Tyla and Raenihel, “Did you tell Tina Ann to bring our guests raaka?”
Tyla shook her head. “Of course not, why?”
“I didn’t think so,” he said heavily, “but—”
Tina Ann’s raspy breghlin voice came from inside the library, “Yer be better lookin’ than yer sister, ‘specially now she be a big ugly beetle.”
Tyla’s eyes went wide with horror, and Raenihel’s mouth fell open. “No, no, no!” Tyla whispered frantically.
Tina Ann continued, “My beauty be on the inside.”
Tyla forced herself into motion, dragging Raenihel with her. “Tina Ann! What are you doing here?”
Tina Ann turned to Tyla, her eyes round and innocent. “Waitin’ on our guests.”
A silver tray sat on the low table by the couch. Tina Ann had poured cups of raaka, but the woodspirits weren’t drinking it. They stood stiffly behind the couch, as if using it as a barrier to keep the ugly creature away from them. Tina Ann was slightly less deformed than some breghlin, but her wide mouth and crooked yellow teeth—typical of breghlin—gave her a feral look. She had a prominent brow ridge and a couple lumps on her forehead, somewhat masked by her unkempt, short black hair. Like all female breghlin, she was large through the ribcage with no apparent waist.
“That was a very nice gesture, Tina Ann, but we’ll call if we need anything,” Tyla said, her tone conveying an unspoken rebuke.
“We’ll call a gnome,” Raenihel added, not bothering to hide his irritation.
“Suit yerself,” Tina Ann said with a shrug. She gave the woodspirits a smile that bore an unmistakable trace of malice and left the room.
Tyla whispered to Raenihel, “I’d better
talk to her,” and went after her.
Tina Ann was waiting in the passageway as if expecting Tyla.
“How could you?” Tyla demanded in an angry whisper.
“Me, Maggie Ann, and Brenda Ann peeked in on them earlier, and then—”
“So that was you I saw.”
Tina Ann gave a guilty nod. “Said they do my chores fer a week if I go in there. So I took the woodspirits some raaka.”
“You could have just set down the tray and left.”
Tina Ann frowned. “They be starin’ an’ it make me mad. I knows I be ugly. All breghlin be ugly, but it be S’s doin’.”
Tyla sighed. “They didn’t mean to be rude. You took them by surprise.”
“Don’t care. Don’t like them woodspirits . . . don’t trust ‘em, neither.”
“They’re our guests, and we have to be respectful.”
“Us breghlin be watchin’ ‘em,” Tina Ann said with narrowed eyes.
“Don’t you dare spy on them,” Tyla protested in a tense whisper. “You’ll get us all in trouble.”
Tina Ann’s smile was not reassuring. “Don’t worry. Breghlin be good spies. Spent years spyin’ on each other for S.” She turned on her heel and walked away.
“They have gem powers,” Tyla hissed after her.
Tina Ann turned. “But not dark powers. Or so we been told. An’ if that be a lie, better we knows it now.”
Tyla woke in the middle of the night to discover Lant had shaken her awake. He said she’d been thrashing wildly, crying, “’No, no! Please forgive her!”
Tyla remembered the nightmare. Anatta had caught Tina Ann spying on her and turned her into a brontskeller. Every morning, tearful breghlin stood by the muddy water and threw kitchen scraps to the moat monster who had once been their friend.
What a ridiculous nightmare, Tyla told herself, embarrassed, as she brushed tears from her face. “Go back to sleep,” she told Lant. “I’m under a lot of stress with the delegation here. Sorry I woke you.”
Fortunately, Lant let the matter drop and fell back to sleep almost immediately.
Tyla lay awake for a long time, worrying about Tina Ann. Once or twice she thought about getting up to see if anyone was crouching by the woodspirits’ doors, but gnome guards made regular rounds, and they wouldn’t tolerate breghlin lurking in the passageways.
Now that S was a beetle and couldn’t hurt anyone, Tina Ann had become complacent about gem powers. She believed gnomes with gem powers wouldn’t hurt her, but her companions didn’t share her conviction. They dared her to do things they weren’t brave enough to try, and she was usually happy to oblige.
Not only was Tina Ann the most intelligent female breghlin on staff, Lana and Jules had discovered she could sense dark powers. While standing near S’s throne, she had claimed to feel evil emanating from it. It gave her a strange, cold sensation inside, she said, and after demonstrating that she could detect Dark gems on other occasions, skeptics began to believe her.
Tyla slept fitfully the rest of the night. Lant woke at the usual hour and got up to check on Eemie, and Tyla dressed and made breakfast despite being tired. Afterward, she went down to the kitchen, which was Gossip Central for gnomes and breghlin alike. She found a few breghlin sitting at the table, their backs to her.
Tina Ann was saying, “Musta been a ward ‘cause I put my ear to the door, an’ sumthin’ went zzzzznt, an’ I flied backward an’ landed on my rump.”
“Then what happen?”
“Did she catch ya?”
“Nah, I be too fast,” Tina Ann said proudly. “By the time the door open, I be ‘round the corner.”
“Yer be crazy spyin’ on them. S used ter turn folks inter rats for less.”
Perhaps sensing Tyla’s presence, Maggie Ann turned to look and muttered, “Uh, oh.”
Tina Ann, Brenda Ann, Oliver, and Xenon, all turned and saw Tyla. Tina Ann shot to her feet. “You be up early. Want some raaka?”
Before Tyla could answer, a young male breghlin with a short beard and disheveled black hair came flying down the stairs, saying, “Ya never guess what I just see!” He froze when he saw Tyla.
The others cried, “Tell! Tell! Whad’ya see?”
Ben looked warily at Tyla, but at the continued demands of “Tell! Tell!” he went over to the table and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Them woodspirits be up to no good. Tina Ann was right!”
Tina Ann beckoned for Tyla to join them. “Come on. Ya gotta hear this!”
Tyla sat down with the group, hoping she wouldn’t get into trouble just for listening.
Ben launched into his tale. “I come inter the barn, an’ the male woodspirit be sittin’ on a crate by that fancy carriage, talkin’ to nobody. And nobody be talkin’ back!”
Xenon looked confused. “Yer mean he be talkin’ to hisself?”
“Not ‘xactly—he be talkin’ to a round thing in his hands, an’ a voice be answerin’ him. When he saw me, he took off.”
Ben and the others turned mystified looks on Tyla since they considered her an oracle of anything to do with gem powers.
“How big was the round thing?” she asked.
Ben spread his hands—the size of a round loaf of bread. “I think I saw a face in it,” Ben said. “But I coulda’ ‘magined that after hearin’ the voice.”
“Well, if there was a voice coming from it, seeing a face makes sense,” Tyla said.
“Really?” Brenda Ann asked.
Tyla couldn’t be sure without seeing it, but it might be a dendrite ball, a crystal with black fernlike forms inside, used for communications. When in use, the dendrites formed moving pictures, and the crystal transmitted sounds. From what she had read, they were even rarer than the communications gems in the Pedestal Room.
“I may know what it is,” Tyla said, “but I can’t be sure without seeing it.”
“Whatever it be, I don’t like it,” Ben said.
Tyla looked at the breghlin’s worried faces. “Look, even if it’s a dendrite ball, there’s nothing evil about it, and Varkandian has the right to use one.”
“So why act like he be hidin’ somethin’?” Tina Ann demanded.
“He was having a private conversation, and Ben came in and startled him,” Tyla suggested reasonably.
“What about S’s sister,” Tina Ann persisted. “If she ern’t hidin’ nothin’, why she ward her room?”
“So overly-suspicious breghlin won’t sneak in and spy on her,” Tyla said, trying not to laugh.
Ben gave a disgusted grunt. “Yer be far too trustin’.”
Tina Ann folded her arms. “I hopes they go away soon, but till they do, we be keepin’ an eye on ‘em.”
Tyla gave an inward groan. Trying to dissuade Tina Ann from spying would make her all the more likely to do it. “I’ll leave you to your gossip.” She got up to get some raaka. The pot was sitting on a glowing heap of corrustone, which served as the kitchen “fire.” Tyla hesitated when she saw a filkin curled up by the corrustone, enjoying the heat. The breghlin had named this one Killer, an intentional jab, since gnomes were afraid of filkins even though the giant, fuzzy worms were utterly harmless. Tyla poured herself a mug of raaka, staying well clear of the filkin.
Before long, the males went off to the barns, the females began their kitchen duties, and more of “the Anns” came in: Peggy Ann, Ruth Ann, and Linda Ann. After S’s defeat, Lana had renamed the breghlin staff, finding the one-and-two-letter “names” S had given them impersonal and demeaning. Tyla had to agree that a name like B or TA was insulting. Lana had looked past the breghlin’s deformities and crude behavior and been kind to them.
Tyla finished her raaka and left, still thinking about Ben’s description of the mysterious orb. Even if it wasn’t a dendrite ball, it had to be a rare gem of some kind, but since Varkandian was reluctant to use it in public, she might never see it. Sometimes Tyla wished she wasn’t a respected member of the staff. It wouldn’t do to be caught spying on him, but she was tempted.
Chapter 4
Rather than make repeated trips to the broom closet, Tyla and Raenihel decided to leave S in the library while the woodspirits were here. Four new guards arrived while the delegates were at breakfast, and Tyla briefed them before going to the dining room to make sure the guests had everything they needed.
She found the woodspirits on one side of the table and the gnomes as far as possible on the other side. A tense silence filled the air.
The gnomes bent over their plates, eating orelia eggs, seed-covered loaves of dark bread, sausage, and fruit. The woodspirits had fresh greens and roasted root vegetables and seemed happy with that. S had always shown a breghlin-like preference for raw meat, bugs, and rotting fruit, but apparently other woodspirits didn’t eat such things.
“Good day,” Tyla said to the group. “I hope you slept well.”
“The bed was fine,” Varkandian said, “but Anatta and I were given rooms next to the gnomes, and their snoring kept us awake.”
“Nonsense,” Klemmet retorted. “Sounds don’t carry through stone walls.”
“Enough to be heard by those who aren’t old and deaf,” Anatta said.
“I’m neither old nor deaf,” Frinkk protested, “and I didn’t hear anything.”
“Because your snoring drowned out the others,” Varkandian said.
Desperate to change the subject, Tyla said brightly, “I hope you’re enjoying your breakfast. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like.”
Frinkk said, “We realize your resources are limited . . . due to the devastation within the Amulet.” He might as well have said, due to the devastation Sheamathan caused.
Varkandian said, “The land appears to be healing, and Elantoth can obtain seedlings from Aberell. Pasture animals, too, for that matter.”
“We didn’t see many animals on the way here. Were they all eaten by Sheamathan’s monsters?” Klemmet asked.
“We have a few varieties of herd animals as well as wild animals, but it’s true that Sheamathan’s monsters ate a lot of them, and the elders say many animals became extinct generations ago due to the ecological damage.”
