by Peter Plasse
“You sleep, old friend. I can check the wardings.”
“That,” said Iqbal, “would never happen, and you know it. Could I live with myself if ever anything were to happen to you, or the family you have staying with you, that I could have prevented by doing my job? But go now. Let me do what I must do. Then, I will sleep.”
Elsie strolled away from the rivulet awash with the feeling that is only possible from having an old and trusted friend. It was such a good thing to be able to have Iqbal as that friend, however strange it was that he lived in a swamp, and whose shape was that of a ten thousand pound wet cigar with tentacles. And his friendship was especially important to her right now with the great sadness she felt every waking moment of every day over the recent passing of her sister. Still, she knew she must be strong. Everything depended on this fragile new alliance, and there was much to do. The Trolls were poised to completely eradicate the remaining Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. And who knows if they would stop there; regardless, for the Gnomes to exist for the rest of time as nothing more than slaves to these monsters was an entirely unbearable thought.
“Well how difficult would it be to cook it?” asked Jacqueline. “Don’t you guys have any matches, or lighters, or anything?” She turned to Cinnamon. “I am not going to rub two sticks together. I saw that movie ‘Castaway', and I’m definitely not going to do that to my hands.”
Jacqueline and Cinnamon sat facing the four Wolves that they had bargained with so as to be able to climb down from the treetops of the Agden Forest without fear of being eaten. It had been a chance, there could be no doubt about that, but Jacqueline had a feeling about these Wolves. And when it came to feelings about animals, she was seldom, if ever, wrong.
“Are you listening?” she asked. “Hello.”
“We’re listening,” said Roly, who had positioned himself in between the carcass of the bird that Jacqueline had thrown down and the other three Wolves: Franklin, Stefen, and Dillon. “Tell you what, Human, show us the stone you wear around your neck, and we will not only give you the things you need to make a fire, we will give you clothes with which to keep warm and a piece of this fine bird that your cat caught for you.”
“How nice of you,” said Cinnamon, “Thank you.”
“Sure,” said Jacqueline, “What’s the big deal about seeing my stone anyway?” She fingered the fine chain around her neck and pulled it out. All of the Wolves slowly, cautiously, carefully, crowded in close, but not too close. Jacqueline could see that despite their obvious curiosity, they were clearly intimidated by it, afraid of it even. Eight eyes stared at it as though it might suddenly send forth lightning and thunder. On a whim, she held it up and charged at them saying, “Boooo!!!” They scattered like chickens, all with their ears tucked back.
She laughed uproariously.
“Come back,” she called. “Come on now. It’s all right. I was only fooling. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Little by little the Wolves circled their way back until they were again crowded around her. As hungry as they were, they nevertheless had completely forgotten about the food that lay not ten feet away. “Why are you so afraid of this?” she asked them.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” asked Franklin.
“Never mind that right now,” interrupted Cinnamon, “First things first. You promised us if you got to see her gemstone, you would, a) let us have a portion of the bird, b) give us the implements we need to start a fire, and, c) provide the girl with some clothing for warmth. Guess what, it’s A.B.C.-time. Spit-spot, then.”
“Pardon her,” said Jacqueline. “She’s British.” She looked at Cinnamon. “Aren’t the British supposed to have the world’s best manners? By the way, my name is Jacqueline. Jacqueline Elizabeth Strong. And this is my favorite cat, Cinnamon.”
“Mine is Roly. This is Franklin, Stefen, and Dillon.” Each of the great beasts nodded in turn as their names were called. “And yes, Cinnamon, we did promise those things. Unfortunately, we cannot make good on them without a short walk. Franklin, why don’t you grab the bird. Follow me.”
They walked about an hour without another word spoken. Roly led the way, followed by Jacqueline and Cinnamon, with the three remaining Wolves bringing up the rear. They came to a clearing, and Roly pointed to a tree that towered hundreds of feet over them. It was so high, they couldn’t make out the top as they craned their necks, looking skyward. In the base of it was a large hollow, representing the work of ants over hundreds of years. “In there,” he said, “Have a look.”
Jacqueline and Cinnamon slipped inside and in several minutes emerged. Jacqueline now wore a proper cold-weather outfit, complete with a scarlet, hooded cloak, and a belt; what’s more, she now sported a sheath knife. She was ecstatic at the thought of being warm for a change. Racing forward, she threw her arms around Roly’s neck. He recoiled, almost as though he was still a little afraid of this girl who wore the stone. She hugged him ferociously, then called all of them forward, hugging each in turn and saying, “Thank you, thank you.” There were tears in her eyes.
The huge animals almost seemed embarrassed at the display.
Finally, Roly said, “Okay, okay, that’s enough now. We would like to eat, and I imagine you would want to cut off your piece first.”
“Pieces,” said Jacqueline, glancing at Cinnamon with a smile.
Cinnamon had to guide her, but soon she had their two pieces filleted out from the breast, which she wrapped in a couple off large leaves from the tree. Then she withdrew the flint-and-steel, that they had discovered on their rummage within the great tree trunk, and sparked a fire. It took her the longest time, but finally it caught, and soon after that was blazing happily.
“You know,” said Cinnamon, “if we made one right in front of the hollow of the tree and piled rocks all around it, it would keep us warm all night.”
“Good idea,” said Jacqueline. “How do you know these things?”
“I sometimes used to watch the hunting channel with your father,” she said.
“I hate the hunting channel,” said Jacqueline.
Chapter 26
Once the crew had passed by him, and they and the stench that they carried was gone, he moved quietly towards the opening to the cesspits of Ghasten. Breathing his last breath of reasonably healthy air, he moved through the opening and went inside. He had already tried this the night before, but had come within a hair’s breadth of being discovered by a random patrol.
He knew that the way he and his party, that had included Doreen, had escaped some days ago had been resealed, but that wasn’t the way he wanted to go anyway. He sought the room in which were locked the prisoners who were never allowed to leave: those poor souls whose crimes had gotten them sentenced to not only a life of slaving away in the filth of others, making sure that the sewer lines never got backed up, but who literally lived where they worked, locked in every afternoon at the end of their shifts after an hour or so in the fresh air immediately outside of the opening to the underground sewers. He thought he remembered that the prison block was hard off to the right.
The going was slow in the darkness as he groped for the door and the large brass key that he knew would hang on a ring beside it. He found the door, and next the key, and silently slipped it into the lock. There was a distinct “clack” as the tumblers engaged. The door creaked slightly as he gently swung it inward and he heard the prisoners stirring in their cells. Calls of, “Hey?” “What’s going on?” “Who’s there?” echoed in the underground prison.
This was going to be tough. He couldn’t see anything, and there were sure to be patrols about who would hear the commotion if things got out of control.
“Silence!” he hissed. “Your Emperor will have for tomorrow’s breakfast the tongue of the next Troll that I hear make a sound! Where is there flame? One voice and one voice alone. If I hear two, two Trolls die. Is there a Troll here named Sivic?”
“I am Sivic,” said a voice from the cell directly in
front of him.
“Good,” he said. “I will speak with you and you only. Is there flame? A candle would do it.”
“Off to the right of the entryway,” called the voice. “Just inside the door is a table. On it you will find a striker and an oil lamp.”
He clattered around in the corner for a couple of minutes and managed to get it lit. Crossing back over to the cells, he announced, “My name is Maxilius Bravarus. I act on the authority of Commander in his Emperor’s army. Any who wish may leave. Any who make the slightest trouble for me, I will kill. Go now. Go to your families or your friends, and find a way to avoid capture. Do not stay long with them, or they will suffer the same fate as you if you are caught.”
“What about any who would stand with you?” called out a voice from the rear.
“Wait outside and we will speak after I have spoken with Sivic. Remain hidden. Do not let yourselves get caught by patrols that might be in the area.”
He opened the cell doors and dozens of Trolls flooded out. All carried the same stench. Most went to the mouth of the cavern and fled into the night. A few waited outside.
He leaned forward and took the hand of Sivic, who had yet to exit his cell.
“Sivic,” he said, pumping the Troll’s hand up and down.
“Commander,” he returned. “I’m not sure that was the wisest set of words to use.”
“Probably not,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter much. I’m headed northwest. I need to find a Troll named Forrester Ragamund. He was a prisoner here. Did you know him?”
“Of course,” he said. “There’s not a one of us who didn’t know him.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Now how would I know that?”
“Right. Of course. Well, if you were going to try and find him, where would you start?”
“He used to talk about a place out by the Vargus Foothills. That’s as close as I can get you to where it is that I would start looking. Get there,” he smiled, “and I’ll bet he finds you. You know he studied in the magic arts?”
Maxilius smiled.
“I suspect he was a lot more learned than he ever let on here, but I can tell you he was diligent. He put in many hours every day. The things he showed us were simple tricks, like you would see performed by the hawkers and gaggers of fairs and such. But he knew more. Much more. I am sure of it.”
“Will you come with me?” asked Maxilius.
Sivic shook his head, “No,” and said, “That is a decent offer you make, Commander, and there is no other Troll in his Emperor’s army with whom I would consider going, but I have compelling reasons to stay put. Stay safe.”
“You as well.”
“One more thing, Commander,” Sivic added. “There are those in that group that awaits you who cannot be trusted. Avoid them all. Consider them as poison.”
They clasped each other by the forearms in the formal military way and Maxilius slid out of the entrance to the sewers as silent as the passage of a cloud. The small band of those waiting never noticed him as he slipped right by them, hugging the wall of the cavern’s entrance. In a few minutes he had simply disappeared and was loping along, proceeding due north, headed for the Vargus Foothills. If he knew the Forrester Ragamund he thought he knew, Sivic was probably right. All he had to do was get close enough, and somehow Forrester Ragamund would find him.
Back in his cell, Sivic waited a little while and then walked outside for a breath of fresh air, intending to return to it in a few minutes. He had only a month left before his final parole hearing and release, and was not about to jeopardize it by this, or any other unplanned escape. He might be the only prisoner in the cells come morning, but be there he would. The sentences for many of the prisoners were for life, and escape opportunities were few and far between ever since Forrester Ragamund had up and walked away. But escaping was categorically not part of his plan. He was too close to regaining his freedom. No, he would return to his cell and await the mess that was sure to be with the arrival of the guards, come morning.
At least that was his plan, until a large boulder, dropped by unseen hands from the darkness above, came crashing down on his head, crushing his skull like an egg.
“I think we have it,” said Orie. “Careful now. Careful! We don’t want to break it.”
Forrester Ragamund picked the entire bed frame up and out of Orie’s reach. He shot him a look of exasperation. “Now what do you want to go and do that for?” he asked. “I’m telling you, we’re almost there.”
He held it up higher, causing them both to suddenly break out laughing. They had been at this task for several hours now without a break and were feeling a little giddy. “Come on now,” said Orie in between chortles, “set it down. Come on, Forrester. I’ve almost got it.”
Forrester started to laugh again, causing Orie to begin laughing as well. After a while, as they caught their breath, Forrester asked, “Why are we trying to get this thing out, anyway?”
“It rolls like this,” said Orie. “The bed switch is set for the weight of either Cirrhus or you, and it interfaces … it connects … it talks to the tell-all. See? So if we remove it and take it with us, we can get it to do the good-bye thing, and whatever else it will do, from wherever we happen to be. The only other way for it to work is to run the tell-all from here by sitting on the bed and therefore turning on the bed itself, which is like a fancy transmitter. I would bet it’s a very complex alloy … Anyway, we need the switch.”
“As you wish, teacher.”
Forrester set the bed frame down with one hand and with the other smothered Orie’s face, who kept right on talking. “Mmmf mmmf mum … ”
They both laughed again, and Forrester called a halt to the procedure until they had both gotten some food into them. “The last thing we can afford,” he said, “is to mess this up and render the portal useless to us. Come now, lad. Walk away. Come on now, you’re going to break it!”
Orie moved over to the bed frame and continued to gently jiggle the stubborn switch.
“Orie,” said Forrester. “That will do for now!”
“Jeez, you sound like my dad,” said Orie.
“That’s a good thing,” said Forrester. “It’s for him, for all of them, that we’re doing this. Let’s not break it and ruin everything.”
Stepping back away from the bed frame, Orie stood silent as his face paled, the sudden realization of the consequences of breaking the switch washing over him like the tide over a clam flat.
“You’re right, Forrester,” he said. “What was I thinking?”
“No harm done,” said his huge friend. “No harm done. Let’s keep it that way.”
“How many barrels so far?” asked Turman Pandieth.
He looked around at the inside of the huge warehouse on the northern-most beach of Queen’s Port. It was by far the largest structure in the entire town, easily two hundred feet long and a hundred wide. It had vaulted ceilings, sixty feet high, with level after level of lofts in which all different sorts of pickled, smoked, dried, and salted creatures of the sea had found semi-permanent homes in the thousands of barrels that were stored neatly in rows.
Laying in the vast quantity of foodstuffs had actually been fairly easy to carry out. With no interest in any form of seafood, the Trolls had not even noticed the harvesting and processing of these riches from the sea.
“Over four thousand,” said the dock foreman. His name was Laborth, and he was huge by Gnome standards, standing nearly a head taller than Turman Pandieth himself. But unlike the slender Turman, he was heavily muscled, having spent endless hours moving barrels of seafood up into, then back out of, and all around the warehouse. It was his life’s work.
“That’s good,” said Turman Pandieth, with a broad smile. “No. That’s great. Far more than we had hoped.”
“Are you sure he’s going to be here?” asked Laborth.
“He is, the Old One willing.”
Laborth looked all around the warehouse. “You kno
w,” he said, “I’m not much for politics. Or politicians. The way I see it, politicians come and politicians go, and the one thing that remains constant is that the work has to get done by the working folks or, come winter, the working folks starve to death. But the thought that I might get to meet and shake hands with the Emperor himself, well, that’s pretty good.”
“Well, meet him you will, Laborth, and you know something?”
“What’s that?”
“It will be an honor.”
“It will.”
“I meant it will be an honor for him. That’s the kind of Gnome you have for an Emperor. The honor will be in him meeting you. As it was with his father, so it is with Singular Night.
“Now, what about those wagons?”
Having returned to the camp they had set up on the southeastern aspect of
Mos Summit in the northern forests of Ravenwild, a quick survey indicated that nothing had been disturbed. The weather was starting to warm up noticeably. There were only scattered patches of snow here and there now, and when it did fall, the flakes did not stick to the ground anymore.
“Time to go,” said Jared, tossing his rucksack down in the cave that almost seemed like home to them now, especially having survived the brutal trip they had made to the border of the Enchanted Northland.
“Could we discuss, again, where it is that we are going and why?” asked Diana, checking a few personal items that up to now hung undiscovered in the back of the cave.
“We need to find the remaining leadership of Ravenwild,” he said. “Your mother and father, specifically, and any others that have survived to date. We have done what we were meant to do. Hopefully Doreen is the one named, but she may not be.”
“She has to be,” said Diana. “If you remember the prophecy as perfectly as you recite it, and I’m sure you do, it’s a perfect match. Imagine that,” she continued, “We, you and I, little old you and I, were foretold in Prophecy hundreds, no, thousands of years ago. Isn’t that something?”
