Anthology - Realms of Mystery Part 11

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 pa.s.sion 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 abrighter 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 st.u.r.diest 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 pa.s.sion, 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 naivety 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 att.i.tudes 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 was 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 ahalf-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 pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ties 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! G.o.ds 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 h.e.l.ls out of my way?

There haven't been any murders in Minroe since that time Jenna the seamstress found out Taca 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 p.r.o.ne 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 d.a.m.ned 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 surrept.i.tious. Who knows. Those giants are dumb enough to think that just because their heads are buried in bushes, no one will notice their enormous b.u.t.ts 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 d.a.m.ned thing did. It kicked in the front of the schoolhouse, tore the roof off M'Greely's general store, and was absolutely wrecking the Dancing 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 a.s.signment 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 thatcyclops out of town before it has a chance to start stinking up the place."

The three young men stood up, saluted, mumbled "yes sir" at least five times each, saluted again, and headed off toward the Happy Horse Livery repeatedly tripping over one another the whole way.

"You, stand guard over the body" he said to the remaining deputy. His name was Riktus, and he was a few years older than the other three. While not a born soldier, Riktus had learned a lot in the three years since Jag took him on. "People are already gathering around and poking at it. If the cursed thing really was brainsick, I don't want anyone cutting slices off it to take home as souvenirs."

The lad snapped off a crisp salute and trotted over to his post. He could handle responsibility, Jag reflected, which meant that the Purple Dragons were sure to s.n.a.t.c.h him up when next they pa.s.sed through on a visit. This job was never going to get any easier if he couldn't find some way to get the qualified soldiers to stay. Still, knowing that the things were beginning to come under control eased the throbbing in Jag's head. The worst of the day was surely over. Now all the constable had to worry about was that no one got too rowdy in the celebratory atmosphere that pervaded the unaffected quarters of Minroe.

As if on cue, a crowd of cheering people rounded the corner and marched toward the wreckage of the Dancing Roc. Kethril Fentloque and his son Abril led the way. Jag met them at the barricade.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked. He made sure to keep his posture civil, but spoke in the voice he mastered as a Purple Dragon commander, the one that made raw recruits wet their tabards.

Kethril flinched.

"W-we're going to remove the head of that giant. The Dancing Roe may have been destroyed, but I'm going to rebuild the inn and name it 'One Shot In The Eye.' We'll get the head stuffed and mounted to hang over the bar." The frail man pulled his even frailer son close against him. "My boy killed that giant.

We have the right to a souvenir!"

Jag knew it would come to this.

"I'm sorry, Kethril, but we've reason to believe the giant may have some disease. You wouldn't want to hang a trophy that would poison all your guests now, would you?"

The sour old man looked unconvinced.

"If it's so dangerous, why is that gnome touching it?"

As the constable turned, the pain in his head surged again. There stood Riktus, obviously at his wits'

end, helplessly trying to convince Ekhar to stand away from the corpse. The gnome, for his part, tut-tutted and poohpoohed the guard, continuing to merrily poke and prod at the cyclops.

Jag's eyes narrowed. "He won't be for long!" the constable muttered half to himself as he stalked over to the site.

"Sir!" Riktus almost whined. "I tried to stop him, but-"

"Don't worry, son" Jag said. "Ekhar! What the h.e.l.ls do you think you're doing? I already told you we think the thing was brainsick. How am I supposed to keep the citizens away from it when here you are sticking your d.a.m.ned hands in its mouth? By the G.o.ds, that's disgusting!"

"Oh, my friend, that you're here I am glad. I'm quite certain now, this giant was not mad." He held a finger aloft and it was covered with some of the frothy yellow foam that still clung to the giant's lips. "A brainfevered or sick thing might spew a white lather, but only a poison makes this foam I gather. It may seem I do this just to be bold and defiant, but the truth is I know someone murdered this giant!"

"Blessed Torm, give me strength-of course it was murdered! I shot it half a dozen times myself!!"

The constable turned to the crowd. "How many of you shot the giant?"

Several dozen hands shot into the air along with a resounding "Huzzah!"

"See the arrow that sticks from the poor creature's eye? It felled this great beast-who let that one fly?"

The crowd shouted, "Abril! Abril! Abril!" and the frail boy flushed with pride.

"That fragile youth killed such a monstrous attacker? Not a well-seasoned knight, not a slasher and hacker? Come now you Minroeans, you're all genteel folk. Such an end to this battle seems like a poor joke."

Jag looked at Ekhar in bewilderment. "'Slasher and hacker?' What the h.e.l.l is a 'slasher andhacker?'"

"It's true!" came a shrill voice from the crowd. Kethril Fentloque broke the barricade and walked straight up to Ekhar Lorrent. Jag marveled at the fact that next to an elderly gnome, even the spindly Kethril looked hail and hardy. "My boy did it! Everyone else was shooting the blasted thing in the arms and chest and back. But only my Abril was smart enough and brave enough to wait until it turned to look at him, then shoot it square in the eye."

"A Wise move it's true, and not easily done. The boy stood and fired when most others would run.

It's an action to be considered uncommonly brave, since the boy's family and home were in danger so grave."

"Is that so hard to believe?" Kethril fumed. "That my boy has a backbone?" The innkeeper turned to face the crowd. "You all teased him so. Every day he would come home from school battered and bloodied, but he kept going back. All you did was toughen his spirit!"

Several of the young men who had earlier carried Abril on their shoulders looked abashed and scuffed their shoes in the mud, unwilling to meet the elder Fentloque's gaze.

"Though brave he may be, and remarkably quick, neither of these two skills today did the trick. The giant died not from a piercing of marrow, instead he was poisoned by the tip of the arrow."

Jag, who had been mouthing the Words 'slasher and hacker' over and over to himself, suddenly regained his focus. "By all that's right and just, Ekhar, who cares? The giant attacked the town. Do you think it matters to anyone that the lad used poison instead of muscle to kill it?"

"Yes! Yes!" cried Kethril. "I think he showed uncommon sense. I've always said he was a bright one, my Abril. Not like you, Alon M'Greely, who gave him a job and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away all in the same week. So he sometimes gave back the wrong change-bah! That was no reason to fire him, let alone embarra.s.s him the way you did!"

Ekhar Lorrent nodded to himself. Of all those gathered only Jag noticed, but then he was also the only who knew the gnome well enough to guess at the gesture's significance. He was sure now that the pounding in his head would never stop.

"But you, innkeeper Kethril, you believe in your boy. Have you filled his whole life with nothing but joy?"

Someone from the back of the crowd yelled, "What about when the lad wanted to go to Waterdeep to study at the bardic academy? I thought you were going to flay the skin off him right there in the main room of the Dancing Roc!" And everyone gathered murmured their agreement.

"Bah! It was for his own good!" Kethril snorted. "Bardic academy indeed! We Fentloques run inns, we don't perform in them!"

"The murder is solved, I'm happy to say. I know who it was killed the giant today!" Ekhar bounced about like a squirrel with its tail caught in a bear trap.

"Oh, Ekhar!" Jag groaned. "Abril killed the giant. I've been telling you that since the minute you arrived!"

"The boy killed the giant, that much is true, but how and why he did it just might surprise you!"

The gnome had every eye in the crowd on him. As much as Jag wanted to tell him to close his fool mouth, he knew that at this point the citizens would demand to hear Ekhar's wild theory. Best just to let him go, the constable thought.

"Wary was I of the giant's foamy lip. The odd yellow froth gave me my first tip. You don't care that the boy used poison to fell the cyclops, but the next thing I tell you may make your eyes pop. The poison he used is called yellow-root-brew. Inn cooks use but a drop to spice their stew. But if a man were to drink a cup full of this mix, he'd be dead as that giant lying still on your bricks. In order to kill such a tremendous beast, the boy would need use a gallon, at least."

The crowd stood mesmerized by the gnome. His explanation was the best theater Minroe had seen all year. Between his excited hopping about and his rhyming cant, it seemed to be a mixture of ballet and opera. Only Jag shook his head ruefully. He prayed Ekhar wasn't going to say something they would all regret.

"He couldn't possibly fit that much poison on an arrow," shouted a man from the crowd."Yes!" yelled a woman closer to the front. "How did he do it?"

"I'll tell you," the gnome continued, "but first I must pray, that you listen quite closely to all that I say.

Look, if you will, at the monster's still feet. The mud you see there will quite closely meet, upon closer inspection if you only stare, the same exact type found on Abril's shoes there."