The onlookers erupted in an uproar of excitement and curiosity. A path opened through the crowd and a Rashemi witch and a figure in a voluminous cloak walked forward to meet the judges. People bowed in respect to the witch and stared in open curiosity at the slender woman accompanying her. The two walked to Teza’s side and stopped before the judges.
The figure in the cloak threw back her hood to reveal the green hair and lovely face of the selkie. She gave Teza a beaming smile of gratitude. “Lord Rath is dead,” she whispered. “He fell for your bait. The aughisky came for me as soon as he finished with the man.” Her eyes sparkled like gems. “I went to your friend the witch as quickly as I could. She has promised me protection for my information.”
“Your friend, the witch.” Teza liked those words. She lifted her gaze to the enigmatic mask of the black-robed witch and nodded her thanks.
“Young woman,” boomed a judged. “Are you the one who just confessed to killing Lord Gireth?”
The selkie turned to the men at the table. “Yes. My captor, Lord Rath, forced me to kill Gireth in the stable at the Red Stallion Inn. Lord Gireth had learned through his servant that his brother-in-law was about to betray him to the huhrong over a small matter of smuggling and bribery. He despised Gireth, but not enough to dirty his own hands with the crime, so he threatened to destroy my skin and beat me to death if I did not do his bidding. Even then I might have wavered, so he drugged me with a poison that weakened my will to fight him. He gave me the dagger, hid me in the stable and lured Gireth out with a false message.”
Teza silently produced the dagger and laid it and the bloodstained purse before the Elders. The witch watched impassively. Kanlara’s face brightened with rising hope.
The judges asked many questions of the selkie and Kanlara and they carefully examined the dagger and the purse. To everyone’s surprise, the witch with the selkie filled in a number of details about Lord Rath’s activities in Immilmar and other cities in Rashemen. The judges decided a full investigation of his crimes needed to be held immediately and they recommended that word be sent to the huhrong to have Lord Rath arrested.
Teza glanced at the selkie and dropped her eyelid in a slow wink. She didn’t think there was a need to rush.
“In the face of such clear evidence, we free Kanlara from the charges of murder and release her,” announced the judges.
Teza whooped with joy. She sprang around the Fang guard and untied Kanlara’s hands herself. The wizardess fell into her arms and returned her overjoyed hug.
“Thank you, my sister,” she whispered to Teza. “Thank you for everything.”
The horse thief grinned. “Wait till you hear the rest of the story.”
Ekhar Lorrent: Gnome Detective
Steven “Stan!” Brown
Have you traveled along the Way of the Dragon, southeast from Espar to Waymoot? Curving across the empty plains and through the quietest parts of the King’s Forest, it is a lonely stretch of road. You may feel there is not another living creature within a griffon’s flight.
Would it shock you to know there is a village not five miles from where the Way plunges into the tree line? Nestled in a fragrant dale, where the dusty foothills of the Storm Horns almost touch the fragile leaves of the forest rests a little town with little houses where little folk live languorous lives. The hearth smoke that climbs to the clouds is usually mistaken for campfires by travelers who, on their journeys, happen to glance away to the south. The place cannot be found on a map; in fact, it is too small to have a name of its own. The haiflings and gnomes who live there simply call it Home. Not a building in sight stands taller than ten feet at chimney top, and each one has a garden filled with the fruits, flowers, or herbs its owner fancies. Visitors often mistake fields of corn, standing tall beside the tiny houses, for orchards filled with saplings of some strange, leafy willow tree.
Gardening is the passion of these folk, and so it should surprise no one that on a sunny spring morning, Ekhar Lorrent was up to his gnomish elbows in mud and muck. The rains of the last few days threatened to drown his beloved snapdragon tomatoes-a stock he’d gotten as art import from Maztica and crossbred himself-ruining his dreams of lazy summer evenings contentedly chewing on the fruit, pickled in vinegar and sugar. As the planting bed drained, he gently held the fragile roots, speaking softly to them.
“Not to worry, my sweets, you will make it through. Summer wouldn’t be summer if it were not for you. Your spicy juice helps cool a long humid night. And your flowers keep filling me with the delight of the thought of pies cooked in a tomato crust. No, you must all survive. Yes, you all simply… must…“
Ekhar’s voice trailed off as though he could no longer remember the thought he had begun. For a full minute he sat there, hands buried in the ground cradling the tomato roots, with an odd look on his face. Some folk have this look when they try to remember long ago times and places, others when they are listening for a sound that only dogs and elves can hear. Ekhar had the look for another reason, a far too familiar one. So he was not at all surprised when his great gnomish ears began to wiggle, then flap as though blown by a terrible gale. He was not at all worried, as he stood up and wiped the dirt from his hands, that the sound of his lobes slapping against the side of his head could be heard clearly ten yards away. It bothered him not a bit, as he went inside to wash up and change, that his ears were now a brighter red than a salamander’s scales. And he didn’t even notice his fallen snapdragon tomatoes wilting in the mud as he put on his cloak, grabbed his sturdiest walking stick, and left his house and Home.
Ekhar’s neighbors rolled their wide haifling eyes, chuckled to one another, then went back to tending their own gardens. This was hardly the first time the daft old gnome had mysteriously dropped everything and walked off into the world, oblivious of everything and everyone around him. They knew he would return in a day, or a week, with tales of intrigue and violent death. For, though gardening was Ekhar Lorrent’s passion, murder was the gnome’s one true love.
“What I want to know is what you’re going to do about the damage that… that… thing did to my inn!”
The dull ache Jag Dubbispeir felt at the base of his skull grew suddenly to a constant pounding above his left eye. The danger was past, the town was safe, but if one of his men didn’t escort Kethril Fentloque, owner of the recently demolished Dancing Roc Inn, back behind the barricade, there would be one more name added to the list of today’s casualties.
Luckily, the problem was averted as a throng of villagers rushed up to the barman, slapping him on the back, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. They lifted Kethril over their heads and carried his kicking, screaming, spindly frame to the center of town. Along the way, cries of “that’s some boy you have there!” and “you sure must be proud!” nearly drowned out the undertone of “better your inn than mine” and “somehow, this is just too fitting!” Jag was left alone with his deputies to contemplate what their next step should be.
“Dang thing sure is big!”
“Not much point in calling it a giant otherwise.” Jag, who was widely considered to be the most patient man in Minroe, had no time for the naпvetй of his men. They all came from this small town or its outlying farming communities, and signed on as deputies only to save themselves from ending up working behind a plow from sunup to sundown every day of their tiresome lives. Besides, the local maids were crazy for anyone dressed in a tight-fitting, dull-gray deputy’s uniform. On most days, the unprofessional attitudes of his men were nothing more than a minor annoyance. Today, however, they factored heavily into Jag’s headache, which now throbbed above both eyes.
Unlike his deputies, Jag lived in Minroe by choice. You might not guess it to look at him, with his unkempt hair, scruffy beard, and stained and wrinkled uniform, but Jag Dubbispeir was perhaps the finest officer ever to grace the Waymoot garrison of the Purple Dragons. He worked his way up through the ranks, earning every promotion he got with blood, sweat, and more blood. By the time he wa
s made a commander, Jag could no longer count the number of close friends he saw killed in the line of duty, nor how many times he came within an arrow’s breadth (or dragon’s breath, or sword ann’s length) from joining them, but every single one of those memories haunted him. When he finally realized that he had to retreat from this life if he wanted to have any life left at all, Jag chose to come here because, according to every map he knew, nowhere was farther off the beaten track than the tiny village of Minroe.
When he first arrived, Jag was surprised at how big the town looked. The buildings, while weather-worn and of an architectural style that went out of fashion three generations ago, were tall and strong and well kept up. In the last century, Minroe was a bustling mining town, the caverns in the surrounding hills yielding rubies, emeralds, and other gems by the bucketful. When the lodes ran dry, though, the town nearly did as well. The people who stayed were hardy folk who made their livings farming the rocky, uncooperative soil, or collecting pixie cap mushrooms and selling them to Suzailan merchants. They took a great pride in their little town and did everything in their power to maintain it. Of a summer afternoon, it was not unusual to see several neighbors working together to repair the shingles, fix the garden wall, and add a new coat of paint to a building that no one had lived in for twenty years. That’s just how the people of Minroe were, and it suited Jag just fine.
From time to time, friends who yet served with the Purple Dragons visited Jag, though they often seemed most interested in inspecting his deputies for someone worth recruiting. So far, he’d lost a half-dozen fine officers-not to mention the only true friends he had in town-to the Dragons. After all, who would remain in a dying town like Minroe when the Purple Dragons offered to show you the world? Who indeed, except for Jag. Before they’d leave, though, old comrade and departing deputy alike invariably would comment that Minroe was no place for Jag to be. “You’re like an eagle roosting in a henhouse,” they’d say. “A man like you should go out and meet the world head on.”
In his years with the Purple Dragons, Jag met, fought, and killed practically every creature native to the Heart-lands, and a few from other regions, continents, and even planes. Truthfully, he’d had quite enough of it. He figured that moving to a backwater town like Minroe meant that the most dangerous creature he was likely to face was a drunken dwarf or love-sick half-ogre. That illusion was shattered within weeks of his arrival. Minroe’s trouble with medusas is well-chronicled, and talk of it is partly what has kept the town from regaining any of its lost status or population, all this despite the fact that Jag, who suddenly found himself saddled with the position of Chief Constable, successfully brought the medusas under control in less than a month and with only three deputies (all of whom the Purple Dragons soon recruited). Being this far off the beaten track, he came to realize, meant only that he was the sole mechanism keeping the chaos of the wilderness at bay. Today, that chaos expressed itself in the form of a twenty-two foot tall cyclops rampaging through the heart of Minroe.
Jag spat on the ground.
It was no surprise that giants lived in the hills surrounding his sleepy little town. It was an unusual week that passed without one farmer or another running into his office, blue in the face over the fact that he’d seen a hill or mountain giant casting a hungry eye at his livestock… or his daughter. Nothing ever came of these incidents. The giants wanted no troub1e. They lived their tremendous lives in the hills and, occasionally, the smaller ones even visited Minroe to buy large quantities of supplies. They were generally good, if unruly, neighbors.
“Ow!” he was startled back to the here and now by a rap against his ribs, the kind you might get from a mischievous friend’s elbow. Unfortunately, Jag didn’t have any mischievous friends. The headache beat savagely across his brow.
The constable turned, ready to take all his frustrations out on the person attached to that unwanted elbow, but only stared in bewilderment at the empty air beside him. No one was there. Then he felt another dull rap, this time against his knee.
“If you look nose-to-nose there is nothing to see, but mind your feet, Constable Dubbispeir, or you’ll trip over me!”
Jag’s teeth clacked as his chin snapped against his chest, and the pain behind his eyes soared like a Waterdhavian opera. This might have been from changing his gaze so dramatically, but more likely it was the sight of the gray-haired gnome puffing on a long-stemmed clay pipe and gently tapping a walking stick against the constable’s leg.
“Ekhar Lorrent! Gods above, that’s all I need!!”
“You’ve trouble, friend Jag, that much I know. Murder most foul, my wagging ears tell me so. Ekhar is here, set your mind at ease. Together we’ll solve this case, quick as you please!”
Jag covered his eyes and counted to ten under his breath, then looked down at the gnome and said, “Look, Ekhar, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but would you get the hells out of my way? There haven’t been any murders in Minroe since that time Jenna the seamstress found out Taсa Felibrook was having an affair with her husband, and sewed the pair of them into a suit and evening gown.”
“‘The Case of the Tailor-Made Corpse,’ I remember it well. But come now, Jag, have you nothing to tell?” His steel-gray eyes glanced at the debris that surrounded them. The gnome winked and said, “Quite a large corpse I see lying prone over there. Something untoward happened, the scent’s in the air.”
Ekhar Lorrent could be counted on to show up every time things got out of control and blood was shed. He seemed to have a sixth sense about murder. The Fell-brook case was only one of a dozen or so that Ekhar had gotten involved in over the years. The gnome had a head for investigative work, Jag had to give him that much credit. But his knack for being in the right place at the right time and tripping over clues was more than outweighed by the fact that he was so damned annoying.
“I’m only going to say this one time, Ekhar. We’ve had a little giant trouble today. A bit of property damage, a few broken bones, but no one’s been murdered-so go home!”
“No murder, you say? Can it really be true? You don’t mind if I just look about town, do you?”
The constable let out a long sigh of relief.
“No, no. Go ahead. Look around all you like, Ekhar. Just stay out from under my feet.”
“You’ve much work to do, that much I can see. What happened to bring this giant trouble on thee?”
Jag groaned. His headache now encircled his skull like a crown of pain. He wasn’t sure whether Ekhar’s rhyming patter was an affectation or a curse placed upon the gnome by some witch, but the lengths to which the diminutive detective would go for a rhyme was maddening.
“I don’t know Ekhar, and that’s most of the problem. It’s been a quiet few weeks, which is fine with me. There haven’t even been any bar fights for my men to break up. Then, out of nowhere, this cyclops was seen circling the town.” Jag pointed absentmindedly at the dead giant. “It showed up for a few hours each day, crawling around in the scrub brush, watching the comings and goings around town. I think it was trying to be surreptitious. Who knows. Those giants are dumb enough to think that just because their heads are buried in bushes, no one will notice their enormous butts sticking in the air.”
“It spied on the town for a few days you, say?” Ekhar had his face scrunched up in a look that Jag knew only too well. “Please, finish your tale, and I’ll be out of your way.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” Jag continued. “It stopped showing up about three days ago. I figured that it’d grown bored with whatever game it was playing and gone back into the hills. Then, this morning, it comes screaming down the main road. I mean, we could hear it coming a good ten minutes before it got here. It was waving its hands in the air and shouting about how mean we all were and how it was going to wreck the town.
“You can see all the damage the damned thing did. It kicked in the front of the schoolhouse, tore the roof off M’Greely’s general store, and was absolutely wrecking the Da
ncing Roc Inn when we finally brought it down. I figure the confounded thing was mad, or maybe it ate some brainfever berries.”
Ekhar, who had been gazing at the buildings that had been ruined, or perhaps at the half dozen or so intervening ones that had not been touched, was struck by this last comment.
“Bainfevered, you think? Or under a spell? What makes you say this giant was unwell?”
Running his hand through his short-cropped gray hair, Jag accepted the fact that the gnome, like his headache, was not going to just go away. “You mean besides the fact that we peppered it with at least six dozen arrows before it fell? Man, I’ve never seen anything take that much punishment without even batting an eyelash. But, my first big clue was that it started foaming at the mouth just before it fell over.”
Ekhar tapped the stem of his pipe against his thin lips and raised one eyebrow. Tyr save me, Jag thought, he’s got a theory.
“The mad giant’s rampage was a tragedy nearly, but no murder’s been done, you’ve shown me quite clearly. You’ve much work to do, Jag, and I’ve no wish to delay. May I look at the giant, before I’m away?”
The constable nodded mutely. The gnome had listened to reason. He was going to leave. Jag’s prayers had been answered.
Ekhar bowed deeply, clamped his clay pipe in his teeth, and walked purposefully toward the lifeless cyclops. He stood there for a while, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at the dozens of arrows sticking out of the body. He paid particular attention to those around the giant’s face and neck, especially the one poking directly out of its sightless eye.
All of this would have been interesting, possibly even amusing to Jag Dubblspeir, except that he still had so much to do. He called four of his men aside and they huddled around him as he squatted in the muddy street.
“Three of you go around to every barn, stable, and manger in town” he pointed to the three newest recruits. He knew it was best to send them on an assignment together. It just about guaranteed that they’d stay focused on the job at hand. “Gather up every plow horse, oxen, and mule in Minroe and bring them to the hitching post in front of the Dancing Roc. While you’re at it, grab every coil of rope you come across. Make sure they’re strong and at least twenty feet long, though. We’re going to drag that cyclops out of town before it has a chance to start stinking up the place.”
Realms of Mystery a-6 Page 13
