Danilo held out his hands, his palms open and empty “Shall I cast the needed spell?” he asked the priestess. “One that can dispel the effects of others’ spells?”
“Don’t bother,” said a gruff voice from the vicinity of the clock. A door on the pedestal cabinet flew open, and Bentley Mirrorshade, very much alive, strode toward his bier. He snatched the illusionary specter from the air and crumpled it as a frustrated scribe might treat a sheet of blotched parchment. On the bier, as Danilo expected, lay the body of a brindle calf.
The gnome illusionist folded his stubby arms and glared up at the Harper. “All right, then, you got me. What now?”
“That depends upon you.” Dan said. “Tell me, why did you stage your own death?”
Bentley rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Had a responsibility to the girl. She’s trouble-and make no mistake about that-but she don’t deserve the likes of this elf sniffing around. I got no use for those who would use the girl to stir up rebellion-and less for those who would hunt her down to enrich themselves.” He glared at the elf.
“And by leaving behind your own illusionary corpse, you created a diversion that allowed the girl to escape unnoticed, and that condemned Elaith Craulnober to death. Masterfully done,” Danilo complemented him. “But how did you intend to explain your eventual return from the grave? I have my suspicions, mind you, but I’d like hear you tell the tale.”
The gnome had the grace to look sheepish. “I’ve been known to go off fishing now and again. Gives me time alone, time to think. I thought to come back when this was over, act surprised by this rogue’s fate. And yer right in what yen thinking, Harper; I thought to pin the blame for the illusion on you. Yen known for pranks, and for spells gone awry”
Danilo took note of the remarkable change, which came over Elaith during this confession. Understanding, then profound relief, then chilling anger played over his elven features. Danilo sent him a warning look.
“I must say, this leaves me with something of a dilemma,” the Harper said. “Elaith has been found to be without guilt in this case, but to make public your scheme would upset the balance in the Friendly Arm, and would alert those who are seeking the Thione heiress.”
“True enough,” the gnome agreed. “So what yen gonna do, then?”
Danilo sighed. “I see no real choice. I shall take the blame for the illusion, as you intended. If asked, I can cite old and very real enmities between myself and Elaith.” He turned to the elf. “In return for this, I expect your word that you will not hinder Arilyn and me in our task. We intend on taking Isabeau Thione-better known as Sophie the pickpocket-to safety in the north.”
Bentley snorted. “Yer gonna take the word of such a one as this?”
“In your position, I would not be too quick to cast aspersions on the honesty of another,” Elaith said, his voice bubbling with barely controlled wrath. “I am what I am, but the Harper knows that my word, once given, is as good as that of any elf alive, and better than that of any gnome. And so you may believe me when I swear that if ever I meet you beyond these walls, I will kill you in the slowest and most painful manner known to me.”
The gnome shrugged. “Sounds fair enough. But mind you, take care who yen calling a liar. I never said a single thing wasn’t Garl’s honest truth. An illusion ain’t never a lie-people just got a bad habit of believing what they see.”
Danilo took Elaith’s arm and led the furious elf from the temple. “I will keep my oath to you, bard,” the elf hissed from between clenched teeth, “but there is another I long to break! Like any other elf I believe that disturbing the dead is a terrible thing. But I would give fifty years off my life to continue this discussion-with that wretched gnome’s real spirit!”
The Harper shrugged. “We are neither of us quite what we seem, are we? Why, then, should you expect anything else to be what it seems?” Elaith glared at him. After a moment a smile, slow and rueful, softened the elf’s face. “If a Moon elf of noble family commands half the illegal trade in Waterdeep, and if a foolish minstrel from that same city displays insight that an elven sage might envy, why should we make foolish assumptions about speaking with the dead?”
“Exactly,” Danilo agreed, his expression somber. “There is some comfort in having at least one thing proven true.”
“Oh?”
“The dead are every bit as dreary as I have been led to believe. A small thing, to be sure, but in this life we should take our absolutes where we can find them.”
Elaith gave the Harper an odd look. After a moment, a wry chuckle trickled from his lips. He stopped and extended his hand, and his amber eyes were utterly devoid of mockery or disdain.
The gesture was all the apology, and all the thanks, that Danilo would ever receive. For once, the Harper felt no need to seek for hidden meanings or illusionary truths. He knew the proud, complex elf for what he was, but there were some absolutes that Danilo took when and where he found them. Friendship was one of them.
Without hesitation, he clasped Elaith’s wrist in a comrade’s salute.
A Walk in the Snow
Dave Gross
Ogden smiled. This was his favorite task.
It had been better when Maere was still alive to share the chores of the White Hart, the inn they'd built together. Then the kitchen would be filled with the aroma of baking bread and stewing meat as well as the sweet odor of cooling malt.
The chore was better even when his old friend Robert had lent a hand, at least with the hopping and fermenting. Rob had visited mainly to keep the widower from despair in the first few months of his solitude. When Rob's first son was born, he showed only every other time. After the second son, Ogden was on his own.
Even in solitude, years past any useful company, brewing the ale for the Hart was still one of his few pleasures.
A breathless voice from the common room cut through the innkeeper's pleasant reverie. "Ogden!"
Startled, Ogden let the steaming brew kettle slip onto his round belly. With a pained hiss he shifted it back over the lip of the oaken tun before him. Cloudy amber liquid resumed its course into the barrel, splashing some foam into life.
"Not now, lad," shouted Ogden. "I'm sparging the wort. It's a delicate part of the proc-"
A bear-sized bulk crashed through the kitchen's bolt-less door. It turned toward the innkeeper, tiny eyes round on a pink face. His pug nose was wide and runny. The first foliage of a beard was evident upon the young man's face. "But Ogden, it's-"
"Whatever it is, it can wait until I've emptied the kettle." The happy smile that had warmed his face faded into Ogden's day-old whiskers. He never shaved on brew day; that was one of his other small pleasures, though when he saw a mirror, he fretted at the conquest of the gray stubble over the familiar brown.
"But-"
Ogden caught the big boy's mouth with his free hand. The kettle shifted again, and Ogden stepped around the tun, keeping his palm firmly pressed over Portnoy's lips.
"Count to twenty," said Ogden. He felt Portnoy's lips move beneath his palm and added, "Silently!"
Portnoy's deep brow creased with the effort, but his tiny eyes set in determination as he struggled to obey. That should take him a while, thought Ogden with a smile of relief. His sister's son was not quite an idiot, but he was often mistaken for one.
The innkeeper wiped his hand on his heavy apron before regaining a grip on the kettle.
"Here, hold the tun steady," said Ogden. Portnoy hesitated, perhaps wondering whether it was a trick to interrupt his counting. Deciding that obedience was the better course, he gripped the oak tun.
"I was trying to tell you that-"
"Uh, uh! There," said Ogden. "Now tilt it back. Careful, it's a bit warm, still…"
Portnoy was far better with his hands than with his brain. His thick fingers were clamps, holding the tun at just the right angle to let Ogden pour the remaining malt with the least splashing. When the kettle was empty at last, Ogden favored Portnoy with a smile. Maybe he sh
ould show the lad the whole process soon. Surely it was simple enough.
"Good." Ogden set a lid atop the tun. The malt would need a few more hours to cool, and then he could hop and cask it. A few months later, he'd have another batch of rich ale to serve the villagers of Myrloch. "That's the last one."
He turned to his young charge. The boy was only fifteen years old, but already he stood taller than the war veteran and outweighed him by four stone. Nonetheless, Ogden managed to look down at the boy with fatherly condescension while looking up to see the lad's broad face. "Now what is it that has you carrying on so madly?"
"It's Cole," replied Portnoy. "The wizard."
"Aye?"
"He's dead."
"Mind the village while I'm gone, old friend."
Lord Donnell always said the same thing when he left Cantrev Myrloch. It had become something of a joke between the two veterans of the Darkwalker war. It had carried them through the years of rebuilding after the defeat of Kazgoroth, and it lived on into the reign of Alicia, Tristan's daughter and their new queen.
"Who d'ye think minds it when you're here?" That was always Ogden's reply.
A hundred times had Donnell left the village in Ogden's charge, and it had always been a quiet jest. Donnell would return and say, "What have you been doing all this time? I had hoped for some improvement, a new tower or two, at least. You've grown lazy as well as fat."
"It's the baldness that slows me, my lord," Ogden would apologize. Then he would invite Lord Donnell to supper.
They would spend the rest of the day in Ogden's inn, the White Hart. Inside, the lord would tell his friend everything that had happened on his travels, and the innkeeper would tell his friend what he made of it. After some hours, Lord Donnell would emerge and invite the crowd that had invariably gathered to listen at the door to enter.
"Let the gossip begin!" And he would walk, unsteadily more often than not, up to his stately manor. The villagers would swarm into the inn, where Ogden would share the gossip he and Donnell had agreed should spread. And he would sell a barrel of ale.
Ogden valued that relationship, and he wanted to keep it. That was why he took it so badly that someone should die while Lord Donnell was away at Caer Callidyr, in audience with Queen Alicia. He was due to return today, and Ogden had better have some answers for him when he arrived. He placed one big hand on each of Portnoy's expansive shoulders and fixed his eyes on the lad's own.
"He's what?"
"He's dead, Uncle Ogden."
"You're sure of this, are you?"
"They said he's dead as a stone."
"Well, I suppose they know what it is they're talking about." Ogden gave Portnoy a dubious frown. "Who's 'they.'"
"Dare and Eowan. They says Enid saw 'im this morning, as she was bringing 'is milk and eggs around."
"Did you see him yourself?"
"No, I ran right home."
"Good lad," said Ogden. Portnoy was not a fool, despite appearances. He untied his apron. "Now, you clean up this kitchen while I have a look myself."
By the time he reached Cole's cottage, Ogden wished he had brought his walking stick. The first snow had fallen last night. It paled the low mountains that sheltered Myrloch Vale from eastern Gwynneth. Even so far from the sea, the winds blew unhindered before reaching those rugged hills. They brought the northeastern chill with them, planting it deep within Ogden's old wound. The scar left by a northman's axe still creased his shin from knee to ankle. Each winter it grew a little stronger, the only child of his youth.
Fortunately, the wizard's home was less than a mile north, and the snow was only two or three inches deep, not yet deep enough to obscure the furrows of the barley fields through which Ogden walked. He passed the white-capped houses of the nearest farmers, close enough to wave but far enough to avoid prying questions about his destination and his unusual task.
The snow began to fall again, light enough to leave the boot prints of those who had preceded Ogden to the wizard's home. All of the trails came from the center of the village, where gossip always traveled first. Ogden followed the converging paths until they became a single trail. Soon, he saw a cluster of villagers standing a cautious distance from Cole's door, craning their necks to look through the small front window.
Most of the crowd were Cole's neighbors, but some had walked all the way from the village center to see for themselves. Cole was not exactly hated among the Ffolk of Myrloch, but he was always a curiosity to be observed from a distance. He had come across the sea at the behest of Keane, the queen's wizard and-if Donnell’s court gossip were true-the man soon to be the high king himself. Since King Tristan's abdication, town wizards had become something of a fashion among the towns and cities of the Moonshaes. Every petty lord tried to adopt one, granting him a parcel of land in return for ambiguous promises of protection and advice.
The people of Myrloch were astonished when their sensible lord Donnell announced that he was granting a hundred acres to a spindly foreign sorcerer. The grayer heads of Myrloch speculated that Keane had set Cole the task of keeping an eye on Myrloch Vale, just over the western hills. It was to Myrloch that old King Tristan and his druid wife Robyn had retired. That theory was enough to satisfy the people that Donnell had not become frivolous or, worse yet, fashionable. Eventually, the gossip died away.
Still, no one warmed to the wizard. He wasn't particularly aloof, though he visited the Hart only twice or thrice a month. When he added his voice to the gossip, it was only on the most innocuous of subjects. At fairs he never danced nor courted, though the eyes of most village girls had been seen to linger on his slim figure from time to time-which fact surely did not endear him the more to the village men. Cole's dark figure haunted the edges of the crowds. He was never apart from the Ffolk, but he was never fully a part of them.
Death makes all men more interesting to their neighbors, thought Ogden as he joined the silent cluster of Ffolk. He stood with them for a moment, watching their breaths expand and fade. Even in the late morning the sun was too weak to burn the frost completely from the air.
Ogden spied Enid's blond head among the gathering. The slender girl was the only child of Conn and Branwen, who raised cattle and kept chickens. She was a familiar sight to all villagers, for she delivered fresh eggs and milk each morning to those who traded with her father. By the wizard's door stood a covered pail and basket. An empty pail lay by Enid's feet, nestled in the snow. Her eyes met Ogden's as soon as he spied her.
"So you found him, did you, Enid?"
"Aye, constable."
Ogden winced. He'd forgotten that Donnell had bequeathed him with that title officially some years ago. They had both been drunk at fair, and Ogden could never quite remember whether it had been a joke or an honor. This was the first time anyone had called him "constable" in anything but jest.
"How long ago was that?"
"A little more than an hour. His was my last delivery."
"Do you deliver to him every day?"
"Every other."
Ogden nodded, trying to look wise and thoughtful before the other villagers. Some of them nodded at him, expressing their confidence in this line of questioning. Others remained stone-faced, reserving their judgment. Ogden was of a mind with them. He had no idea whether Enid's answers were of any use, but he suspected not.
Ogden nodded. "Well, let's have a look."
"Door's locked, constable." Mane Ferguson was the speaker. He was a dark-eyed boy of Enid's age. In one callused hand, Mane clutched a long branch, recently trimmed. Ogden suspected that the boy had been trying to poke the wizard's body through the window. Mane glanced briefly at Enid before facing the innkeeper. Ogden knew that he wanted to make sure that the girl was watching.
"Back door, too?" asked Ogden.
"Aye, and the back windows're latched," the boy said. "But you can see him plain enough through the front window."
"I don't suppose you tried slipping down the chimney?"
"Ah, no sir.
You don't want me to try, do you?" Mane looked very much as though he hoped Ogden would not want him to climb into the wizard's home, but he had to make a good show of it before Enid. Who knew what one might find in a wizard's chimney? Enid hid a smile behind one slender hand, but Mane remained oblivious to her amusement.
"Not at the moment, but stay handy."
"Aye, constable." Mane turned proudly to Enid and mistook her smile for approval. Or perhaps he wasn't mistaken, thought Ogden. And maybe Portnoy isn't the dullest lad in town.
The little crowd parted for Ogden as he walked to the window. Peering in, he spied the wizard's body sprawled upon the floor beside a fine padded chair and a cluttered table. Ogden saw no blood, but he watched long enough to see that Cole was not breathing.
Ogden turned back to the expectant villagers. "Let's have a look inside."
"You won't want to blunder through a wizard's door," cautioned Old Angus. The ancient farmer was likely the first on the scene after Enid. Since his sons took over his land for him, he spent his days walking the perimeter of the village, visiting anyone who would spend an hour's conversation with him.
"Aye," added Mane with a tone of great authority. "You'll likely be hexed or transformed or reduced to-"
"Likely so," interrupted Ogden. He gave Mane a solemn look. Cole had never demonstrated any such spectacular powers, but none doubted he was in fact a wizard. Cole always seemed to know secrets, usually petty stories about his neighbors. Fortunately, he wasn't himself a gossip. But his knowing smile or nod or shake of the head whenever he overheard such tales was enough to convince the village that he observed all indiscretions through his magical mirror, or crystal, or pool, or something.
Ogden smiled at Mane then. "That's why I'll need you to slip through the window, here, and open the door for me."
Realms of Mystery a-6 Page 4
