Untold Adventures

by John Shirley

  His four companions stayed low as the file of chained orcs and goblins marched by, passing into the notorious Crossroads on the edge of the Chaos Scar. Whips cracked over their heads. The slave master in charge of the company shouted curses. Bab listened appreciatively to the language. Creative, he thought. A phrase or two like that would be useful to help keep the smithereens down while he was hammering metal on his forge in the middle of Wenly Halt. If he should ever see his forge or his home or the village again. A halfling like him should stay where it was safe, but he had no choice. All this was his own fault, sort of. He had been successful where others had failed, and that was the wrong thing to have done.

  The tiny green thread tied around his wrist dimmed. He waited, counting to twenty before he raised his head.

  The others sensed his movement rather than heard it. They were still within the hour affected by the silence charm given them by Priest Nock. Bab had three more of the precious blue beads still on the string around his neck. Besides costing a week’s wages, they were made from mystical ingredients including a precious stone and a hair from his sleeping baby daughter’s head, but he’d rather have them on hand than a hundred gems or an enchanted sword. While they were within the sphere of its magic, they could hear outside sounds, but no one could hear them. Three of his six had already been spent to get them past other perils in the wilderness. He guessed they would have no beads left to get them home again.

  The lack of silencing spells would probably not matter. By the time they were through with their aim, he imagined, the question of getting home would be moot.

  At least, if he didn’t go back, he wouldn’t have to paint the cottage again. Winter had been hard on the little house. The whitewash was definitely beginning to peel. But it was home. He imagined he could hear the swallows in the eaves chirping, his neighbor’s dog barking, his wife Nomi nagging … the fond, familiar sounds that kept him going. He could get a day’s worth of effort out of a good nag from Nomi. The woman had a gift.

  Heartened by the memory, Bab gestured to the others. They scrambled out of the ditch one after the other: Adda, Scorri, Coran, and Legg. Legg’s mouth was moving, though no sound came out of it. Then the charm elapsed. The bead burst and sifted into powder down Bab’s chest. As it did, the old man’s sharp whisper cut through the twilight air like a claw.

  “… I do not believe that I let you talk me into coming back here again! Not when we nearly died the first time. All of us! May your feet come apart between the toes! May your head …!”

  “Shhh!” Bab hissed. “Don’t say those kinds of things here when we’re so close to the … You-Know-What! They might come true!”

  Legg clapped a hand over his mouth. He was tall for a halfling, nearly a dwarf’s height. He had meant no harm. Bab knew it. They were all feeling the strain of gritting their teeth while doing something no sane man would ever do—nor insane man either—unless there was no other way. But there was no other way. The glowing blue-green chunk of rock in the pouch on Bab’s belt was a fact that gave them no choice.

  Oh, the stone had sounded like a sending from the gods. The legend of the fallen star had been one that fathers told their little ones during the dark of the moon to make their hair stand up on the backs of their necks. Bab had loved those stories. He knew at least a few of them were true, since on a moonless night he could see the green fire in the skies to the west, over the cursed mountains beyond the king’s wall. There were also weird beasts that turned up on the outskirts from time to time, misshapen creatures that looked as if they’d been born of two species at once: spider-squirrels, owl-cats, and a piteous thing that was part halfling, but no one in the village dared guess what the other part had been. The priest had given it water and said a blessing over it, but it had died. Monsters and other horrors had come out of the deep valley, tearing up the countryside. Most of them had been turned away from Wenly Halt, by force of arms or by the blessed well at its heart.

  But after so many incursions the village folk had come to be interested in the sacred rock at the center of the legend. It had fallen from the sky, undoubtedly, because there were still those living who had seen it happen. Magical it was, because odd things began to happen, all springing from the kingdom to the west. It didn’t take a scholar to put all the clues together. Power came from the sky, the realm of so many of the gods. It was there for the taking, as the legends said. Those who dared, won. And someone dearly wished, as fools will, that the people of Wenly Halt had some of the magic of their own—for the good of all, of course.

  Bab rose from the edge of the road. Now that dawn had passed, they need not fear being jumped from behind. Instead, he and his companions could wreak fear in a few hearts. Halfling brigands were well known in the Crossroads, all brothers. He arranged a length of rag over one eye to masquerade as the eldest of the three chieftains and swaggered into the center of the throughway. The others scrambled to follow him. With their clothes dusty and torn they looked the part of the band of thieves. The deceit had worked the last time on the way in. Most of the humans and other things who lived in the Crossroads village were afraid of the halfling brothers—with good reason. Bab traded on the notion that people saw what they thought they saw. If they believed he and his men were those deadly, thieving brothers, then so be it. They certainly had stolen an item of value. Now they were sorry, and were desperate to put back what they had taken.

  The elders of Wenly Halt had been the earliest to catch fire with the idea of having a piece of the fallen star. The village needed to defend itself against raids and attacks, and how better than to fight fire with fire? A rock had brought all that terror and evil to the cursed lands. What if they should secure a piece of it themselves? They’d have power, and to spare. Power in the hands of a halfling village? Sounded foolish when you said it out loud, but it had seemed like sense, a three-month ago.

  Bab had thrown himself into the middle of the discussion. He hadn’t heard any of the warnings that, for example, Dame May had voiced. “The star stone is evil!” she had cried. “A thing of darkness and mayhem!” The boarder who occupied her garden shed, Coran Halfway, agreed with her. He wasn’t a halfling, but a half-elf, and a mage at that. He hardly spoke up in village meetings, so after the nine days’ wonder of having an exotic stranger living among them, they treated him like part of the landscape. But for the elegant pointed ears, he could almost have been a halfling. He was shorter than Legg, with black curls and bright black eyes like a bird’s.

  No, Bab hadn’t listened to a word. After all, until only a month or so before, he’d been in the wars under the generalship of humans and elves, four weeks’ march from his home. Daring deeds were his daily responsibility. He’d crawled into orc dens and come out alive, with an advance in rank, a fearsome scar on his neck, and a trophy or two that he didn’t show the kiddies, to prove he was brave and deadly. He had let himself be talked into leading the incursion to steal a piece of the stone, not that he had needed much persuading. Coran agreed to go along, to help protect the party. They and five others were feted as heroes until the day they set out for the Chaos Scar.

  Vanity! It was like to kill a being. And it had. Two died, in fact. Of the seven of them who had gone in, only five had returned, and none of those unscathed. They’d outwitted wizards and fought monstrous creatures. But they had the stone, a thing of beauty, a smooth, imperfect sphere of blue-green twice the size of a halfling’s fist. The village was jubilant.

  For a while. Ah, well, they were so good at telling themselves what brave folks they were, to have snatched a piece of the sacred stone, that they ignored the signs. Dame May hadn’t. She told them it was a Chaos Shard, and was full of peril for them. They should have listened to the witch.

  So they used it to invoke protections around Wenly Halt. The mayor, who fancied himself a bit of a wizard because he was good at household cantrips, had used the stone. He declared that nothing should pass through its borders without permission. Well, it kept out the gobli
ns that had been making nighttime raids on the henhouses and barns. Traders who liked to sneak in without paying the toll-gate fee were forced to stump up or spend hours more on the road marching toward the next inn. The mayor was well pleased with his magic-making.

  Then the wind died down. No one noticed the eerie calm or the stuffiness that followed, not when the river dammed up at the same time and flowed all the way around the village like it was in a glass bowl. You could see fish swimming up against the edge and turning back again. A stag chased a doe straight toward town. Both of them rammed into the nothing that was there, and fell over. The children were like to laugh themselves to pieces over it, but it alarmed Dame May and those who were coming around to her point of view. Illicit lovers with their tunics half undone chased out of town by angry husbands couldn’t get home again without help. One of them was the son of the mayor himself. In embarrassment, the mayor had to turn to Coran to undo that spell. Well, they made plenty more mistakes like that, not so easily remedied with a night in the stocks or a plate of meat scraps.

  Halflings, as good, decent folk, never realized what kind of dark thoughts some of them had about the others. The last straw, or so the village saw it, was when on behalf of the Moot Court, the monthly call for judgment, the mayor declared with the stone’s power behind him, that “the truth shall come out, no matter what!”

  So money palmed by a thief screamed to be put back in the purse of the victim. That led to a few beatings. The bruises on the ruffians’ flesh spoke out in gasping, breathless voices as to the manner of their infliction. Then the dead rose to speak out against their killers. The trauma of having to face deceased loved ones nearly drove families to their own end. Bab felt that was what drove Adda to the final edge of madness, not that he hadn’t been going there for a long time.

  Bab glanced over his shoulder at the locksmith. Adda ought to have stayed behind in Wenly Halt, but the others felt he was a good luck charm. He was lucky, but lucky for himself, not for them, if you asked Bab, because things that happened to other people just missed him, almost every time.

  Still, Adda had a knack with a lock, magical or otherwise. In fact, the bespelled pouch that held their unwanted treasure had been tied and retied more than once, Bab could tell. He hoped that it had not lost any of the charm that kept the smooth rock safe. It was just that Adda couldn’t resist looking. Priest Nock said it was a holy madness, though under the auspice of what god, no one knew. No amount of Nock praying and bothering his own patron deity had proved enough to reveal it. Bab guessed that He or She was one of the ones who had gone insane from power, the very sound of whose name would result in the ground being heaved asunder—well, wait, that had already happened. But Nock assured them Adda was preserved by a benevolent god, not an evil one, as that who reigned in the Scar.

  In the meanwhile, Bab and the others needed supplies, and maybe a rest. He swaggered toward the rough-beamed trading post where the human with one silver eye held court. Everything cost too much in the Crossroads because it had to be carried in by cart or enforced labor. A halfling couldn’t trust any food grown in the polluted local soil. Water for the foul-tasting beer in the Poisoned Chalice pub had to be distilled three times, but there was plain water, drawn from a couple of decently deep wells. It cost a toll to fill waterskins at them, but it was necessary. Each of them carried enough journeybread in their backpacks for a month’s wandering, in case no other food was available, but Bab hated to live on those dry mouthfuls for more than a few days. Still, it paid to be prepared. The last time they’d come, they ran out of provisions. He wasn’t risking it again.

  The Scar was full of perils. Not only thugs and thieves waiting for a chance to jump helpless travelers and deprive them of valuables, life, or both. On their first journey inward, they had come up on an underground temple that just oozed ill will and death, but Coran’s prognostications showed that a star stone was hidden there, and they hoped to secure it.

  It had, indeed, held one of the Chaos Shards, but the stone was not unguarded. At the heart of an arena smelling of blood, Adda had caught sight of a halfling woman in mystic robes seated upon a throne surrounded by armed male halflings, and he had fallen for her at once. She was a bonny one, to be sure, but a whistle of appreciation from Adda brought the entire bodyguard racing for him. They had only managed to escape by swiftness of foot and Coran spilling all his magic out in illusions.

  The silver-eyed man in the trading post had thought the story wildly funny when they had stopped for provisions on their way home. Morgana, that was the halfling’s name, took slaves and tore the guts out of living captives. She rarely traveled to the neck of the pass, but it was always bad news for someone. At least they’d gotten out alive that time. Bab kept his one uncovered eye roving to ensure that Morgana was nowhere in sight.

  A fist-sized rock whizzed toward Bab. He jumped to one side, in plenty of time for it to pass. He drew his small sword and showed the most vicious face he could in the direction of the line of buildings.

  “Who did that?” he demanded.

  The answer was a rain of stones. Bab lowered his face so that the old army helmet took the brunt. He waited until the clattering stopped and looked up. A pebble bounced off his shoulder and hit him on the nose. His eyes watered with the pain. Mad cackling echoed in the air.

  “Who’s doing that?”

  Bab heard at least three voices tittering. They sounded like insane children.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Scorri said. She was their scout, a thickset girl with a long brown braid hidden down the back of her heavy hogskin tunic and spiked leather anklets above her hairy, bare feet.

  No one in the road seemed to be looking at them, but more missiles pelted them. Coran threw up a hand and pebbles fell at his feet. Legg, magicless, got hit right between the eyes.

  “Brats! I’ll learn you to stone me!” Legg cried, shaking his fist. Sword in hand, he ran in the direction of the attack. The cackling receded ahead of him.

  “No, Legg!” Bab shouted. The man was just too hot-headed. He could get them all killed!

  He ran after Legg. The others fell in behind him. The laughter led them through the rough streets, on past the stinking heap of refuse behind the trading post, and into the narrow passage between The Poisoned Chalice inn and leaning, dilapidated hovels. They emerged in the rolling wasteland beyond the makeshift village’s environs. Bab spotted Legg dodging between stunted trees and bushes.

  “Do you smell that?” Scorri asked.

  Bab took in a breath, then gagged. A stench like rotting bodies flavored with hot ash and bitter metal stung his nose. “He’s here! Legg, Mordint’s here!”

  The tall halfling racing ahead of them heard and turned around in mid stride. His face was pale with fear as he headed back to them. The earth wizard was one of two beings that none of them ever wanted to meet again. Bab cursed. Why didn’t they bring an army? Of course Mordint wanted to find them! The stone had been the center of his unholy labyrinth!

  The rock-throwers had to be tempters, then. These malign little imps were a product of the roiling evil that came from the star stone. They harassed or lured hapless travelers into following them. Most were never found again. Those who returned told tales of having had to fight their way free of a dark maw full of tongues and teeth. Mordint used them to lure unwary travelers to use as gifts to the dark spirits. Bab had had a taste of being tied to a post as tentacles licked around his legs. That’d never happen again.

  The stench grew stronger and stronger. The earth wizard had to be close by. Bab cast around.

  “Where is he? Can we hold him off?” Bab asked.

  “Touch me,” Coran commanded. “Everyone come close.”

  The half-elf dipped a hand into the black satchel hanging on his hip and emerged with a bubble of green glass. It glowed and began to grow, casting its peculiar light on the scrub grass. Bab felt as if he were holding a great shield before him. Adda dived to the ground and wrapped his arms around Coran�
�s ankles like a snake. The sphere grew until they were all contained within it.

  All but Legg. He hurtled toward them, knees pumping under his leather jerkin. Ten feet to safety. Five feet. Bab stretched out an arm to pull him inside. Legg reached for it.

  And vanished into thin air. The wail of his protest died out like the tolling of a distant bell.

  “Curse him!” Bab snarled. It was Mordint’s favorite trick. If not for Coran’s spell, the rest of them might have been scooped up, too. “Where have they gone?”

  Coran lowered his hands and the bubble faded away. Scorri sniffed the air. She pointed toward the west. “That way.”

  “We have to go after him,” Coran said.

  Adda nodded. “He’ll be beyond the five doors and the eight traps.”

  Adda meant Mordint’s lair. Five days’ hard walk to the northwest. Well, they were going there anyhow.

  Bab groaned. He checked the pouch at his belt to make certain it was secured. “We’d better go get our supplies.”

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Adda insisted again, as they turned toward the sunset. “We have to go back again.” He’d said that at least once a mile.

  “We are not going near Morgana’s temple,” Bab said sourly. It was the second day since they’d left the Crossroads. “Not again, not ever!”

  “She fancied me,” Adda said, his round face lit up beatifically. “Those eyes of hers—lovely, like shining chestnuts. And her hair! And that chest!”

  “All I saw was the necklace of shriveled eyeballs hanging on it,” Scorri said sourly. “And none of those matched.”

  They were retracing an unwelcome path. Chuuls lurked in the murky waterways and thick mud in the channel to the lower side of the narrow, irregular road. Bab kept the others well clear of it. He had had enough of tentacles to last him a lifetime.