Lord Toede

Chapter 16

"I don't feel comfortable about this," said Bunniswot, stopping and rubbing his left shin again. He had injured said limb after the first rock slide, and had been carrying on and limping ever since, seeking sympathy just because he was the one carrying the pack and shovels. "Let's go back and get a few more people."

Toede shook his head and turned to look at the human, amazed to find someone in worse physical shape than himself. Sweat was running down Bunniswot's face, and from his higher elevation, Toede for the first time noted that the human had a small bald patch on the back of his head.

"We could go back," said the former highmaster, "and get some help from Renders, and explain to him why following a hunch was more important than your ogrish erotica."

Bunniswot winced at the suggestion. "Or," Toede added slyly, "we could count on Charka to send a few of his boys into territory that is not only taboo, but under the control of a known, dangerous necromancer. Risk two of his tribe to me and a man called- now what did he name you?"

"Whacks-the-Rabbit," said Bunniswot in a mild voice. His encounters with the gnolls had not been as positive as those enjoyed by Renders.

Toede nodded, continuing, "If I'm right, and by the powers I believe in I think I am, you'll have something really important to take back to Renders." And with that he resumed climbing, not bothering to add that, if Groag had been on speaking terms with Toede, he'd much rather have taken the smaller hobgoblin as opposed to a hapless human.

"Seems like a lot to stake on a dream," said the young scholar, scrambling after him. "It's not very professional."

"Don't discount dreams, child," said Toede. "Raistlin dreamed of sunken Istar before setting sail on the Perechon."

"Where did you hear that?" said Bunniswot sharply. Panting, but sharply nonetheless.

"From Raistlin himself," lied Toede, turning halfway around to look down on the sweaty human. "We talked that morning before he boarded the ship out of Flotsam. Last I ever saw of him, but I still get the occasional letter, magical sending, and whatnot."

"So you knew him?" Bunniswot's voice broke as he said it. "You knew Raistlin, and Caramon, and the Heroes of the Lance?"

"About as well as anyone," said Toede, warming to the subject and wondering how far he should go with his dissembling. "You might even say I gave them their start, but that would be bragging." Toede turned his face to the upward slope, both to handle the difficulty of the climb and make sure his face did not betray the truth in his statement.

"Have you told Renders?" asked Bunniswot, his voice suddenly less haughty, less nasal, and more human.

"Should I?" asked Toede, turning to shoot a practiced blank look at the scholar.

"Should you?" said Bunniswot, catching up with Toede, "You heard Renders tell the story of the War of the Lance to the gnolls last night. Even cut down into language they could understand, it is a moving and epic tale."

"Well, I guess it is," said Toede, shrugging. "I mean, if you like that sort of thing."

"Renders would sell his own grandmother to interview the old Heroes, to talk to people who knew them," chuckled Bunniswot. "When we were in Flotsam, he talked to anyone who might have known them: bartenders, sailors, all sorts of riffraff."

Toede thought idly of the innkeep at the Jetties. Yes, he could imagine that one spinning out wild tales in exchange for a few coins.

"And to think that someone who was there-who knew Raistlin-just wandered into camp." Bunniswot laughed. It was an easy laugh, a laugh of comrades who had shared secrets. "So what were they like? Like they're portrayed in the tales?"

"Well, it would be immodest to speak as if I were a close confidante," Toede said, bowing his head in apparent modesty.

Bunniswot took the bait like a trout rising to a salmon egg. "What about Raistlin? He was my favorite of the group-brooding, dominant, so sure of himself."

"Raistlin, yes," said Toede. "He was a friend, and you don't speak ill of friends who go beyond." The hobgoblin sighed. "I still remember that last night. We both had gotten very, very drunk, and he tore into one of his long crying jags."

The hobgoblin heard the footsteps following him stop. "Crying jag? Raistlin?" said the voice behind him, astonished.

"Afraid so." Toede hunched his shoulders. "Caramon had been… well, you know that Caramon had always been bad tempered, and sometimes took it out on Raistlin. Simple jealousy, really. Raistlin was afraid of him, but couldn't abandon his brother. I offered for him to stay at my place, but…" He let his voice trail off.

"I can't believe that!" said Bunniswot. "It goes against what the tales said. Caramon loved his brother!"

"Well, he did," said Toede. "Thaf s why Raistlin stayed. Of course, he would get into these moods, and Raistlin would try to help and… oh, my, it was awful. Simply awful." Toede stopped by a large boulder that looked like a falcon or some other bird of prey, and stole a glance at Bunniswot.

The look on the young scholar's face was priceless. His eyes were the color, shape, and size of newly minted steel groats. His eyebrows had nearly vanished beneath his ragged hairline. His jaw was hanging loose, as if on a single thread.

Toede continued, as if embarrassed. "You see why I don't mention it. Here these people were heroes to you, and just people to me."

"I just find it hard to believe," said Bunniswot, obviously finding it incredibly easy to believe. "But what about the others? What about Tanis?"

"Tanis? Oh, he was the stalwart of the party. Brave, loyal, noble, honest. Of course, sometimes…" Toede made the motion of tipping a flask to his lips.

Bunniswot's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "He drank?"

"Like a fish," sighed Toede. "But he has had a lot of help and counseling since then, and I understand it's under control nowadays. Still, I remember Riverwind and Goldmoon pouring him into the ship that morning. Sad, just sad. Maybe it's better to not mention this to Renders. Rested? Let's get on."

"One more: Tika," said Bunniswot.

Toede feigned an embarrassed blush. "I really don't feel comfortable talking about Tika," said Toede. "I mean she was pleasant enough, but she never liked nonhumans, not even kender. And me being a hobgoblin, well, that just sparked all kinds of fireworks. One reason I never joined them."-sigh-"The stories I could tell of their time in Flotsam… No, no, the world needs heroes, and once you start showing them to be ordinary men and women, everything falls apart. They earned their status, and let's only recall the good times."

Toede started up the hill past the falcon-shaped rock, remembering how easy the journey had been in his dream. His knees were complaining.

Despite the pain Toede smirked to himself, sincerely hoping that his newfound nobility did not preclude him feeling so good about lying to the officious little scrivener.

'Toede?" the scrivener in question asked.

Toede replied testily, "Yes? I mean, what about him?"

"Highmaster Toede," said Bunniswot. "You're a hobgoblin, and Toede was in charge of Flotsam at the time. You had to have met him. Were you one of his bodyguards? Maybe a servant?"

Toede huffed menacingly. "The human assumption is that all nonhumans know each other. Do I assume you knew Astinus of Palanthas, just because you are both scholarly humans?"

Bunniswot looked hurt. "Well, I knew of him."

"Exactly," said Toede. "And I knew of the highmaster. And I also knew what people said about him after he disappeared. In my experience, limited though it might be, I thought of Highmaster Toede as a fair, reasonable, rational being, thoroughly misunderstood by later human bards and scholars who were engaged in a desperate scramble to create 'good guys' and l›ad guys' for their epics."

"Sorry," said Bunniswot. "Didn't mean to upset you."

Toede huffed. "I'm not upset as much as disappointed. You're a bright young human, but you swallow all the lies and half-truths your elders dig up, tainted by blatant pro-human rhetoric."

"Sorry," repeated Bunniswot. "If it is any consolation, in retrospect the highmaster didn't nearly seem the bum-bler he was made out to be."

"How's that?" said Toede.

"Well, his successor was a draconian," said Bunniswot, "who apparently murdered small children in their beds, as it turns out. And his successor is Toede's old mount, this Hopsloth abomination, who's dressed out in finery and has his own corrupt priesthood. So in comparison, Toede seems almost enlightened."

"My point exactly," said Toede. "You never know how good you have it until it's gone."

"Groag knew him, I think," added the young scholar. "He said that Toede had died, but was sent back to fight Gildentongue, then both Toede and the draconian died in battle. Groag was there, and said Toede was a hero. So you're right, he was sadly misunderstood."

Toede turned and smiled. "Groag said that?"

Bunniswot nodded. "For a while, right after he recovered from his burns. Then he stopped talking about Toede. I think…" Bunniswot paused, puffing for breath, "I think that Hopsloth's cultists got to him and convinced him to hush up."

"You're very observant," said Toede, and the pair continued the climb in silence.

The top of the low plateau they had been scaling was not especially high, but just high enough to discourage Saturday-afternoon adventurers. As they reached the summit, Toede turned to look out over the land below. Most of it was covered in a low autumn haze that appeared most dense over the marshlands. The birches were golden, and Toede could see the smoke rising from the scholars' camp-fire. Farther off, hidden by several ridges, was another wisp of smoke. Toede fancied that one to be kender in origin. To his left was a deep valley, and on the opposite side of the vale was a citadel, dark and misty against the white haze. Its general shape was that of a skull, and Toede surmised that was the intended effect of its construction.

"So there is a necromancer," he said to the panting Bunniswot.

Trees had grown up on the plateau, atop the low hillocks that had been in Toede's dream buildings of amber and

glowing jade. What was once the main thoroughfare was now a bracken-filled mass of shrubbery. In the back, vaguely definable through the dead, brown brush, the leafless and lifeless trees, and the withered vines of wild grapes, was a hillock somewhat higher than the rest.

"That's where we're heading," said Toede. "Come along." He plunged into the brush, unaware of, and totally ignoring the scholar's moans and complaints trailing behind him.

The two explorers did not have much to say as they pressed their way across the plateau's cluttered debris and waste. Their conversation was limited to warning each other about branches or loose rocks beneath their feet. Sometimes the original flagstone pavement would appear, taunting them for feet, sometimes yards, before diving beneath another tangle of briars.

In time they reached the hill that, according to Toede's dream, would cradle the buried temple. The hill in question was relatively free of brush, and nothing more healthy than a sickly, yellowing moss grew on its flanks.

Toede scaled the hill about halfway, pointed to an otherwise unremarkable depression in the dirt, and ordered, "Dig here."

Bunniswot muttered a few vague curses, but pitched in with the larger of the two shovels. The dirt was not packed solid, however, and after breaking through the sod, the scholar quickly uncovered a low carved stone, wider from side to side than bottom to top.

"A step!" said Bunniswot, delighted. Toede just shrugged as the scholar dropped to his knees to examine it. "No writing on it, but the carving technique is identical to the forest of stones. But this city is so far removed from the plinths. The question is why?"

Toede frowned. "Far for your legs or mine. Perhaps your proto-ogres had longer limbs, or more endurance. Also, the neighborhood has changed a great deal since these areas were last used. What say we keep looking, eh?"

Bunniswot's enthusiasm lasted for a second step and most of the third. He started to tire significantly by the fourth, and if there had been a fifth step, he would have insisted that Toede take a turn at the shovel.

Instead, metal hit metal. Bunniswot beamed at the hobgoblin. "Pay dirt," he said, and began clearing the area around the door, until a two-foot-square area of rusted iron was revealed.

Toede smiled, noting, "You're going to have to clear a lot more. The door swings outward."

Bunniswot reversed his shovel and pressed the handle firmly against the iron barrier. It fell away at his touch, and the sound of it striking the flagstones rang through the darkness beyond. A strong breeze smelling of wet rot and decay billowed out, and both human and hobgoblin stood there for a moment, gagging on the fumes.

"First time you're wrong," smiled Bunniswot. Toede just furrowed his brow and peered deeper into the hole. It yawned like the Abyss. No far wall was visible from their entrance.

"Awful dark in there," said Bunniswot, then added, "We didn't bring torches."

"I don't need them," said the hobgoblin. "My people were hunting by night while yours were still trying to invent

socks. But here…"

Toede fished through his pocket, pulled out Renders's gem, placed it in another pocket, and produced the small box containing the magically lit stone.

"My stone," said Bunniswot. "You never returned it," he added sharply.

"You never asked for it," said Toede absentmindedly, looking into the temple's new entrance. "But that's all right-you've been busy."

While it was true that hobgoblins such as Toede did not particularly need light to see, the presence of light did help him discern colors, and now revealed to him a checkerboard of purple and bright yellow stretching out into the darkness.

"Guess we better go in," said Toede.

"After you," said Bunniswot. "You are smaller than I."

"The history should say that Sir Bunniswot was the first to enter the greatest temple discovery since the War of the Lance," said Toede. "Please, I'm feeling noble about it," he added for anyone or anything that might be listening.

The scholar could not dispute that last point, and so, taking the light-stone, he poked his head through the small opening and slowly wormed his body through the doorway. When there were no immediate screams of pain or sounds of flying axe blades whirring through the air, Toede tossed in the large shovel and followed.

Bunniswot had not wandered too far from the door, and indeed was inspecting the frame and tiles that the falling iron door had smashed.

"You were right," he said, the scholarly part of his mind running at full tilt. "This door should have opened outward. The pins had rusted almost clear through, and that push knocked it off its hinges."

The air was thick with humidity, and in the darkness Toede could hear the distant sound of water dripping. Seepage from farther up the hill, or perhaps some natural spring.

Toede picked up the shattered tiles. They were square, about a foot across and the thickness of a fingernail. The purple ones were lapis lazuli, sliced to a thinness that would make a dwarven craftsman salivate. The yellowish ones were beaten gold, sliced even thinner. Toede held one of the purple ones up against the doorway. The light reflected through its thinness, casting smokey purple shadows on his face.

The tilework stretched farther into the darkness. Bunniswot shouted and was rewarded with a crisp, clear echo.

So there was a solid wall on the far side, far out of reach.

The human and the hobgoblin exchanged glances as they started down the hallway.

The entranceway was lined with statues and inscriptions. The statues were humanoid and bilaterally symmetrical-that is, the left side of each blobby figure matched the right side. Some had definite heads or arms, but others seemed to be nothing more than fire or water caught at an opportune moment and transformed to stone.

"Are these your proto-ogres?" asked Toede.

"Yes and no," said Bunniswot. "I think their sculpture, aside from the carvings down in the camp, is supposed to represent the 'true form' of an individual. In the temple's prime, there would have been colorful pigments smeared.on the stones, or even magically illuminated ones." ' Toede grunted, wondering about the sanity of these creatures, if they truly were the ancestors of the ogres. He had heard worse tales, but he definitely did not want to meet the original models of some of the statuary-particularly the ones represented clutching spikes.

The hallway opened into a large room, its side walls falling away in the darkness on the right and left. The tile-work continued, ending in a great edifice carved into the living rock at the center of the hill. This carving was over thirty feet high and tilted forward at the top, so as to loom over those below.

There was no abstract nature to this carving. It was the leering head of a jackal or coyote, its eyes not circular, but hexagonal hollows that once held lights or flames. The jackal head only had an upper jaw, its ivory spears of teeth set into stone. What would have been the lower jaw was instead a wide horizontal roller, like that used for children's toys or a baker's rolling pin.

Both explorers stopped and looked up at the monstrosity. It towered over them so that the ceiling itself was lost to view.

At length, Bunniswot said, "The legends I told you about, the ones that brought us here?" His voice carried a thrill of wonderment.

"Uh-huh," said Toede, suddenly aware of a chill in the air.

"In those legends, the ur-ogres had fought an Abyss-spawned fiend, defeated it, and trapped it."

Toede thought of his own dream, of the ogres burying the temple. "You think this is commemorating the battle?"

"Uh-huh," said Bunniswot. "Or warning people that here is where the fiend is trapped."

Bunniswot, with the light, took two steps backward, just in case. Toede took two steps forward, to examine the carvings closer.

Several hundred years before, the timbers supporting portions of the floor had rotted away, such that little was holding up the panels of the ancient floor. Stone and gold made thinner than a sheaf of paper were now spanning deep pits and hidden underground passages.

Toede stepped onto one such location, where four unsupported tiles met. They cracked immediately beneath his modest weight.

The hobgoblin pitched forward, his arms pinwheeling to grab on to something concrete. He shouted what might have been a cry for help, a curse, or both.

The scholar shouted something back and stepped forward, but Toede was already gone. Bunniswot counted to three before he heard the impact, a loud splash. The sound echoed and rebounded off the walls, booming in the scholar's ears like a castle falling into the sea.

The booming diminished, until finally Bunniswot was left with the silence.

He dropped flat on the floor and crawled to the edge, testing every move before placing any weight on the fragile surface. He edged up to the rim of the void below.

"Hello?" he asked meekly, afraid there would be no reply.