by Ember Lane
Spillwhistle held up his paws. “Calm down, calm down. There’s nothing to be nervous about.” She smiled a ratty smile. “Now,” she said, her paws clasped together in front of her. “What can I do for you?”
“Erm, Finequill, or Fawkes, one or the other, said they’d, I mean you’d, have a map for me. Finequill was quite insistent it would be a…how can I put it…an original.”
Spillwhistle leaned forward. “Just what are you implying?”
Lincoln shuffled from foot to foot, wringing his hands in anguish. He looked down at his feet, across at one of the glowing spheres, and up at the low, lathed-plaster ceiling, eventually accepting Spillwhistle’s glare. “I was told…” he made to answer. “I was told that occasionally, very occasionally, your maps might be…worthless—yes, worthless.” Lincoln nodded furiously to reinforce his point.
Spillwhistle reared to her full four feet in height. “Worthless?”
Lincoln continued nodding. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
Spillwhistle turned and grabbed a scroll from the shelves behind her. She unraveled it on the shop’s counter. “Does this look like a worthless map?”
Lincoln looked down at it. The parchment it was scribed on was yellowed with age, and the ink adorning it, sepia. It showed countless rings flowing around and then out in an embracing arc. A square block of black to one side looked like it had been inked over at a later date as if to mask something—something important. Surrounding all was the thick scribble of what was clearly a forest. No other clues adorned the map, barring a pointer which had the letter R inscribed in an ornate font. Lincoln knew that this was the map he needed, he knew that the closely drawn lines were the mountain he had seen in his vision.
“A map of a forest? Have you got any others?”
Spillwhistle turned and pulled some more scrolls down, spreading them each out with a flourish. “This is a plot near Merrivale quite close to The Silver Road, or this one, halfway to Zybond. This one is south—”
“I want to go north,” Lincoln said.
“North,” Spillwhistle repeated. “The lands to the south are much bigger.”
“But north is where I want to go.”
“Then, you have the ones near Merrivale. I’m sure I have one on the way to Beggle, and another near Lakevale Pass—though that is technically west.”
“Do you have any speed-ups?” Lincoln asked the ceratog.
“Indeed,” said Spillwhistle. “Ten for a silver, up to a thousand hours.”
“And the maps?” Lincoln asked.
“You’re new here, I can see that, and you’ve already spent coin on clothes and training.” She shrugged. “I doubt you’ve got the gold.”
“How much?”
“For one of these precious maps?” Spillwhistle eyed Lincoln up and down. “Ten gold.”
Lincoln mulled the price over. Spillwhistle would be aware that Fawkes had given him six gold, possibly that he got a further four from Finequill, and that he had at least two from his beginner’s sack. What she wouldn’t know was the cut he’d gotten from Allaise for the ale. That could amount to another couple. Ten gold plus the speed-ups would leave him tight, but what use would he have for coin once he’d left the city?
“Ten gold,” he muttered, and leaned in. “There is one other thing I need,” he said, and told Spillwhistle.
The ceratog’s eyes grew wide. “Well, I haven’t been asked for one of those in an age.”
“But can you do it?”
“Easily.”
“And tell me,” said Lincoln, rolling up the maps. “How would you feel about imbuing a wager into it?”
5
Of Gnomes And Harpies
Lincoln held his breath. He heard the muffled voices of the city guard, and he heard Ozmic’s protestations of innocence. All around him, the barrels of Thameerian wine were stacked to accommodate the tiny hollow he was hiding in. It had been a problematic afternoon.
He’d left Spillwhistle's after he’d sealed the deal. If he pulled off his side of the bet, Spillwhistle would be bound to relocate to his new village. If not, Lincoln would have to work for Spillwhistle for the entire duration of his game. Lincoln didn’t intend to lose, but he had a long way to go before he could even begin to lay plans to win. He’d struck the wager from his mind before he’d opened the door to the Fiddler’s Riddle. Inside, Ozmic, Grimble, and Aezal were enjoying their ales and what looked and smelled like a hearty meal. Lincoln’s mouth was watering before he’d even sat at the table.
“How’d it go?” Ozmic asked.
“Everything,” Lincoln had replied. “Everything is on the line.” He'd ordered up another round of drinks, and a bowl of meat broth, and a heel of bread for his lunch.
It was just after he’d cleaned his bowl with the last of his bread that Allaise had slipped into the tavern. She’d beckoned him follow her. A small corridor to the side of the bar led to the tavern’s rear stables. There, Allaise had told him that the king’s own guard were searching the city for him.
“They want your ale—even seized a barrel just so the king could taste it.”
“But how did the king get to hear about my…” Then it had dawned on Lincoln that it was the one way Fawkes could keep him in his sights. “Fawkes,” he’d said, and Allaise had nodded.
“What will you do?” Allaise had asked.
“We’ll leave a little earlier,” Ozmic’s voice rang out. “Like right now. The city guard are scouring the streets, and it’s only a matter of time until someone speaks for the promise of some coin.”
And they’d only made it by the skin of Lincoln’s teeth. Ozmic and Grimble had rearranged the barrels to house what they called a deadman’s hole, and it was this hole that he now found himself in. He held his breath. The bark of the guards floating into the cramped space.
Lying there with his hands across his chest, he felt like he was already in his tomb. It was hard leaving Allaise even though they’d only known each other for a day. Guilt still plagued him, Joan’s face spinning through his mind. What was it about this land? Why did it infuse him so? But in truth, he was going to miss Pete too. The half-giant had made a fine impression on him. Sure, they’d both creamed him for a few coins to start with, but that was probably standard fare. Even Finequill was okay in Lincoln’s book, but then, he was in a forgiving mood. He was forgiving them all, one by one, in a bargain with an unseen god. He’d forgive everyone if those guards would just let Ozmic and Grimble’s cart through.
After an interminable and sweaty time, he heard the grind of iron-shod wheels on stone cobbles, and he finally let slip a breath. The confined space stank of oak casks, grape, and Lincoln. It was not a great place to be holed up in, and he knew he had a few hours left before they could risk freeing him from his coffin, for that was what it felt like.
So far so good, Lincoln thought. His ale had the desired effect. He had the map he wanted—the one he suspected was the only real map in the shop. Playing the nervous fool had lulled Spillwhistle into forgetting she’d laid it out in the first place. He had forty speed-ups. He’d wanted more, but with Alexa’s sack, that still gave him fifty, plus, Spillwhistle had said hers could be torn down to halves or quarters. And he’d gotten his wager—his all-important wager.
Yes, things had gone quite well, though he hadn’t expected quite the fervor about the sped-up ale—it wasn’t that great. Then again, their ale was no more than poorly brewed swill served because the water was more than likely tainted anywhere past the western city limits. He gasped when the cart started really bouncing, but it soon drew to a halt, and the barrel that was trapping him was withdrawn. Lincoln squinted against the fresh, amber light. He felt himself being tugged out by his boots.
“Nearly dark,” Aezal said. “We’re setting camp.”
“Were are we?”
“A few hours outside of the city.”
The chatter of a nearby stream caught Lincoln’s attention, and he looked around to see they were indeed on th
e bank of a stream, surrounded by leafy undergrowth and small, bony trees. Ozmic was setting a fire, while Grimble was nowhere to be seen. Aezal looked Lincoln up and down.
“What does it tell you about a king that would hunt down a master brewer rather that a warrior?” Lincoln thought on that mostly because his future was inextricably tied to the king’s and Irydia’s.
Grimble returned with a hare carcass and a bunch of plants that Lincoln didn’t recognize and proceeded to cook up a broth. Lincoln knew he should get working on his perception, which he needed to increase so that he could identify the plants and animals of the land. If he was to create a village, town, city, but more importantly a community, he needed to know everything that grew, what season it grew in, and where it was best planted. He needed to know the races of the land—the elves, the types of elves, the ceratogs—were they truly endangered? What was that frog-like creature he’d seen? And the dark, shadowy one; what part did that being play? Giants: did they still roam the land? So, he started with dwarves.
“Dwarves?” asked Grimble. “Let me see. There’s deep-down dwarves. They live in the bowels of the mountain, under the earth’s crust itself, and rarely come up to see the light of day. There’s the stonecutters, and guess what? They quarry stone and ore. Surface dwarves like me and Ozmic are more closely related to the beggle than perhaps the dwarf. Well, it certainly seems that way.”
“So, there’s dwarves that live underground and atop,” Lincoln confirmed. “So, if I need stone and metal, I need dwarves.”
Both Grimble and Ozmic nodded.
“Wood?”
“Elves,” they both said.
“You’ve got tree elves, wood elves, mountain elves, river elves, and swamp elves,” Grimble muttered.
“They’re everywhere,” Ozmic agreed.
“Little elves, big elves, sea elves, jungle elves—you name it—there’s an elf for it,” Aezal added. “And each type hate one type or another. They all have their own languages. One cuts wood, and another wouldn’t know what a saw was. Elves,” he spat. “Bloody everywhere.” Looking around, his eyes became wide against his dark skin. “Wouldn’t surprise me if we were being watched now.”
Lincoln nodded, soaking everything up like a sponge. So, he thought, each race had plenty of subdivisions each with varying languages, functions, and customs. One thing that did confuse him was why Finequill had singled out gnomes as a hated species. “Why can you kill a gnome on sight?”
“Gnomes?” they all spat, and spat they did.
“Scum of the earth!” Ozmic cried.
“Demons,” lamented Grimble, and Aezal merely rocked back and forth.
“You said it, you said the word.”
“What, gnomes?”
They all shushed him. “Don’t say it?”
Lincoln laughed at their ridiculous behavior. “Why can’t I say gnomes?”
“He said it.” Ozmic turned to Grimble.
“Three times,” Grimble said to Aezal.
“They’ll be coming now.” Aezal’s face was devoid, vacant of any expression.
Lincoln wondered what all the fuss was about. Weren’t gnomes supposed to be tiny little beings growing no taller than your shin? What possible problems could they cause?
“Are they bad?” he asked.
Ozmic gulped. “Masters of illusion; kings of chaos. They’re like a rash you can’t itch, an enemy you can’t defeat.” He shivered at the thought.
“But, are they bad?”
“Of course they’re bad,” said Grimble. “They’re outlawed by the king, so they must be.”
“But why?” Each of them just shrugged in turn, and their manner told him that the subject was closed, but something niggled Lincoln.
He’d always been one to question authority. Even when an AI back home had run the world, he’d still questioned its every public choice. Was any race inherently evil? His thoughts consumed him, and he couldn’t pull himself away from them. He understood he had to dig deep down to understand this land and all its complexities.
Grimble keeled over first; more than one ale too many. Ozmic succumbed next, and soon after, Aezal slumped to slumber. Lincoln had lain down, staring up through the copse’s leafy canopy at the deep blue, starry sky until his eyelids grew heavy and eventually closed.
He slept with a smile on his face under that starry sky, blanketed by the tree’s broad leaves, and within earshot of the chattering stream. Everything was going to be all right. He would forge a great city, a monument to Joan, and he would name it after her, and her memory would live on forever. Yes, he thought in the whispers of his dreams, everything was going to be all right. He slept.
And woke up in a cave. His arms were bound above his head, tugged taut. He looked up to see a rope straining around an upright pole. It then trailed down his side and out of the cave.
He knew it was a cave, mostly because of the soot-stained, rocky ceiling. Another thing he could surmise was that it wasn’t natural; the rock being chiseled, and all that. It was also very small, and Lincoln had the sense that his feet were poking out of its entrance.
“Aargh!” Lincoln shouted, as he saw a beady-eyed, evil-looking midget staring down at him, half blackened by shade.
Hot breath billowed from the tiny thing, from one of the most evil, gargoyle-like faces Lincoln had ever set eyes on. If Pete was a half-giant, the man staring down was a half-kid, except he was a demon; Lincoln had no doubt about that. He had a dirty, blue cap on. Hair as black as coal sprouted limply from under it, cut short, showing the creature's big, pierced ears. Wide, round eyes looked out from grime-encrusted skin until it was lost to a greasy, but trimmed, beard. He wore a long, blue coat with its sleeves cropped at the shoulders, and a blue shirt, pants, and boots all caked in grime, all creased and worn.
“Well,” the thing said, his voice oddly whiny. “Whatta you got to say fer yerself?” The little man’s bulbous nose twitched up and down, and Lincoln spied his wicked grin for the first time.
“What do you mean?” Lincoln asked.
“Don’t yer wadcha mean me, yer lanky bugger! We ‘eard ya, we ‘eard yer askin’.”
“Asking?”
Lincoln saw it before he could move. The little man had a stick, and it arced toward his head in a vicious swipe. Lincoln scrunched his eyes up and waited for the pain, but he just felt a brush of wind and opened his eyes to see the stick a slither above the end of his nose.
“Waddya mean whenya said ‘Are they all bad?’? Of course we’re all bad, an’ dontcha go spreadin’ rumors to the like, eh?”
“Eh?” The little man was making no sense. “Are you a gnome?”
“Whatcha gonna do about it if I say I was, eh?”
The little man stamped his feet and pulled his stick away, twirling it like a baton and settling it under the crook of his arm.
“So…gnomes are bad?”
“Aye.”
“All of you?”
“Aye.”
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?”
“Lincoln.”
“Digberts, it is, that’s my name.”
“So, gnomes are all bad, and they don’t do anything good. Is that about right…Digberts?”
Digberts waved his finger at Lincoln. His gruesome grin spreading farther across his filthy face. “All bad, like hornets.”
“Okay, can I go now?”
Digberts shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because, we gotta a job fer you to do, that only you can do and we can’t.”
“What job?”
Digberts tapped his finger onto his nose and nodded knowingly. “Okay boys, haul him out!” he shouted.
Lincoln felt his feet lifted, then tied together and then he heard a big shout. “Heave!” He lurched out of the cave by about a foot. “Heave!” And another foot. “Heave!” “Heave!” “Heave!” Lincoln blinked in the sunlight, straining to look around from his prostrate position. All arou
nd him, a crowd of gnomes backed away. They all looked like little two-foot-high pirates, vagabonds, and rascals. Every one of them was filthy from head to foot. Then saw…saw…saw them and screamed.
Draped over every bare branch, and straddled over every protruding rock were what Lincoln could only think resembled half-naked, overly made up harpies, and he realized he’d been captured by a dread band. One of the harpies flew down and landed right in front of him. She had the body and head of a human except her face was pointy and cruel-looking. Her ears were sharp and her hair sharper. Skinny, brown wings like a frog’s feet, sprouted from her back, and talons replaced her fingers and toes. She drew a claw seductively over her thin lips.
“So…Lincoln, we have a slight problem,” she purred.
Lincoln gulped.
“Problem?”
“That only you can help us with.”
“And what is this problem?”
“Troll!” the whole gang shouted at once. The harpie-type-gnome-type woman leaned closer, and Lincoln got a whiff of her fetid breath.
“We need you to get rid of a troll for us.”
“A troll?” Lincoln asked. He had no idea what a troll was, but it sounded quite…scary. “Why me?”
“Because, because of…issues, fella. Yes, issues,” said Digberts, draping his arm around the harpie. “We can’t attack a troll on accounts of us being sworn allies. As you and your friends are sworn enemies with the trolly fellas, it seems much more sensible fer yous to do it. Whaddya think? You havin’ an open mind an’ all.”
“Why would I?”
The screech of blades being drawn, arrows being nocked, and staffs tapped on branches rang out. “Because if not, we’ll beat you to Quislaine and back, that’s why.”
“Can I go get my friends? They could help me.”
Digberts chuckled and whispered something in the harpie’s pointed ear. The harpie roared with laughter.
“No,” said Digberts.
“Why?” asked Lincoln.
“Drugged,” said Digberts. “Plus, it wouldn’t help.”
