Shadow Chaser

3 The Trouble Begins

We got back to the tavern without any adventures. When I say without any adventures, I mean nothing terrible happened on the way home: Mumr didn’t try to conjure the call of a deliriously happy donkey out of his reed pipe; Hallas didn’t get into an argument with anyone; Kli-Kli didn’t hike up the skirts of any venerable matrons, sing vulgar little songs, or make faces at the guard; and Eel didn’t slit anyone’s throat out of the kindness of his heart.

Walking through the city with my comrades was like dancing a djanga with the Nameless One on a bone-china plate suspended over a chasm full of boiling lava—at any moment the sorcerer might roast you alive, or the plate might shatter, leaving you to take a rather unpleasant bath.

“Home, sweet home!” Kli-Kli sang as he slipped in through the gates of the Learned Owl. “Hey, get off! That hurts!”

These last remarks were addressed to Eel, who had grabbed the jester’s shoulder in a crayfish-tight grip.

“Don’t move,” Eel whispered. “There’s something wrong here. Harold, do you notice anything?”

“It’s too quiet,” I replied, looking round the dark courtyard. “The lantern over the door isn’t lit. I think it’s broken.… There’s not a single attendant, and this morning they were as thick as flies in the yard. The only lights are on the ground floor.”

“Trouble?” Marmot’s dagger jangled quietly as it slid out of its sheath.

“I don’t know,” Eel muttered, letting go of Kli-Kli and taking out his daggers. “But somehow I don’t recall seeing any crossbow bolts in the wall this morning.”

That was when I noticed the bolt sticking out of the wall of the inn, which was brightly lit by the moonlight.

“Split up,” Deler commanded. “Harold, you’re a thief, creep across and try to take a look in the window. We need to find out who came visiting.”

I may be a thief, but I’m not suicidal. I didn’t get a chance to say that out loud. A dark silhouette stirred in the shadow beside the door, a pair of amber-yellow eyes glinted, and a voice asked: “Where have you been all this time?”

My heart tumbled into my boots and lay there like a frightened rabbit, skipping three beats—I thought the color of the messenger’s eyes had changed to red, and I didn’t recognize Ell’s voice straightaway.

“What’s happened, Ell?” Kli-Kli asked, and was just about to go dashing over to the elf, but he was stopped by Eel’s cool command.

“Don’t move, Kli-Kli.”

The goblin froze on the spot and looked round at the Garrakian warrior. Eel hadn’t put his daggers back in their sheaths yet.

“Don’t you recognize Ell?”

“Come out into the light, Ell, if you wouldn’t mind,” the Garrakian said softly instead of answering the goblin.

Far too softly and calmly! Eel was as tense as a taut bowstring, poised to discharge its arrow at the enemy.

Why did he suspect the elf?

A stupid question. Like me, the warrior surely remembered Miralissa telling us that some of the Nameless One’s servants could change their shape so that they looked like your friends, or even make themselves invisible. It was one of those creatures that Tomcat and Egrassa had killed near the shamans’ camp during our journey.

“What’s wrong, Eel?” the elf asked in a rather unfriendly hiss.

The Garrakian didn’t trust anyone, but for an elf unjustified mistrust is a serious insult. So serious that it can even lead to a duel. But Eel wasn’t easily frightened, he knew what he was doing.

“Just come out into the light, that’s all. You know as well as I do what strange things have been happening to us recently.”

Ell stopped arguing and did as he was asked. He cast a quizzical glance at Eel. Swarthy skin, black lips, ash-gray hair with a fringe falling down over his yellow eyes, a pair of huge fangs, a black rose—the emblem of his house—embroidered on his shirt, a heavy elfin bow, and the inevitable s’kash behind his back. Miralissa’s k’lissang gently extended his lips out into a faint mocking smile.

“Well? Do I look right?”

Eel maintained a gloomy silence, studying the elf’s face. Almost casually Deler darted to the left and Arnkh to the right, outflanking the dark elf.

“If I wanted to stop you, you wouldn’t get ten steps,” said the elf.

What’s true is true. Unlike Miralissa and Egrassa, Ell had no knowledge of shamanism (magic is a matter for the higher clans of the elfin houses), but he was a superb shot. All seven of us would have got an arrow in the eye before Kli-Kli could even say “Boo!”

“Yes, it’s you,” Eel said with a nod, and put his daggers away in their sheaths, while keeping his eyes on the elf’s bow. “Sorry.”

I couldn’t hear any remorse in the proud Garrakian’s voice.

“Praiseworthy caution.” Ell’s lips curved into a genuine smile.

“What’s happened?” Kli-Kli asked with a sniff.

“Go inside, Miralissa will tell you everything. Then one of you can relieve me.… We have to find Honeycomb, too.”

“Where’s he gone off to?” asked Deler, as puzzled as all the rest of us.

“Ask Miralissa,” the elf said curtly, and disappeared into the darkness.

“He’s hiding in the shadows. Ha! But see the way his eyes glow! A blind man could spot him, and a gnome certainly could,” Hallas declared boastfully.

“You’re wrong,” said Eel, shaking his head. “He wanted us to see him. Never underestimate an elf, gnome.”

Hallas grunted, tugged on his beard, and walked into the inn, but I didn’t think he had changed his opinion about an elf’s skill when it came to lying in ambush. I followed him in and froze in the doorway—the floor was wet with wine that had soaked into the boards. The reason for this disgraceful state of affairs was a large wine barrel on a stand, into which some swine had fired five crossbow bolts. Naturally, all the wine had spilled out onto the floor, almost flooding the inn.

There were lots of bolts stuck in the oak door leading to the kitchen, and we saw at least as many in the walls. Most of the tables and chairs had been overturned or moved. And there were six bodies lying beside the bar counter.

I recognized one of the dead—it was the innkeeper, Master Pito. I could tell that three others were members of his staff. The final two were unfamiliar to me, and they had been slashed with a sword instead of shot with bolts like the master of the establishment and his employees.

Miralissa, Egrassa, and Alistan were standing in the very center of the large room. Milord Markauz was impassively cleaning the blood off his Canian-forged battery sword, while the elves were talking to each other in low voices. Uncle was sitting on the bar, clutching a beer mug in his left hand. The sergeant’s left shoulder was bandaged up and there was blood seeping through the white material.

“So there you are, rot your souls!” he swore as soon as he saw us. “In the name of the Nameless One, what are you doing wandering the streets when I need you here? I’ll tear your heads off, damn you, you assholes. Do I have to carry the can for all of you, may a stinking goat dance on your bones!”

“What happened?” Deler asked guiltily.

Quite uninhibited by Miralissa’s presence, Uncle proceeded to say what he thought of us in a style that we would understand, one best suited to conversation between stevedores in the Port City. The only more or less normal words I made out in his monologue were “have,” “on,” “go,” and “to.”

No one risked trying to interrupt him, and when he finished blowing off steam the sergeant finally condescended to explain.…

Alistan, Uncle, Loudmouth, and Honeycomb had been the only ones left in the inn. Less than an hour after we left, a group of strangers with crossbows had broken in and without any explanation started trying to dispatch everyone to the next world.

Honeycomb had pulled Uncle off his chair just in time, and the sergeant had taken a crossbow bolt in the shoulder instead of the heart, but the unfortunate Master Pito and his staff had been riddled with bolts. Honeycomb and Uncle had made a dash for the safety of the kitchen and Alistan had followed the two Wild Hearts, after first putting his sword to use and killing two enemies who had already emptied their crossbows. The Wild Hearts had barricaded the oak door of the kitchen, and the attackers had not even attempted to break it down.

But Loudmouth had been unlucky—when his comrades retreated to the kitchen, he was on the other side of the hall with three crossbows trained on him.

“When we came out after they left,” Uncle continued, “the whole wall where those bastards caught him off his guard was studded with bolts, and the floor was covered in blood.”

“I don’t see his body,” said Eel, nodding toward the dead men lying beside the bar.

“We didn’t see it, either.”

“You think they took him with them? But what for?”

“I don’t know, perhaps he’s still alive.”

Alive? Miracles are too rare in this world to hope that things could have worked out like that.

I had no doubt at all that Loudmouth was dead. If the attackers had killed the harmless innkeeper without the slightest qualm, they would surely have shot an experienced soldier on the spot. As for the body … who could tell what they might need it for? Yet another irretrievable loss for our little band. Good-bye, Loudmouth.

“What did those men want?” I asked Miralissa, setting aside my thoughts on the death of one more of our comrades.

“The Key, Harold. They took the Key.”

Things were getting worse and worse! Fortune and her little sister Lady Luck were definitely not on our side today.

“What key is that?” asked Deler, who, like the rest of the Wild Hearts, knew nothing about that story. Miralissa and Alistan had not thought it necessary to tell the members of the team about the elfin relic.

“Without the Key it’s doubtful if I can even get into the heart of Hrad Spein,” I explained to the dwarf. “Basically, if we don’t have it, we might as well not go anywhere, we can just sit here and wait for the Nameless One to arrive in Ranneng. No Key, no Rainbow Horn!”

“Shtikhs!” Deler swore in gnomish, and his frown darkened even further. “And how could they have found out about this key of yours?”

“Who knows?” said Egrassa, taking the slim silver crown off his head and tossing it onto a table in annoyance. “Human cities are full of talkative little birds. Someone knew, someone blabbed, someone heard and took action. We’ve lost one of the most important elfin relics!”

About fifteen hundred years earlier, when the elves and the orcs had only just finished building the upper halls of the Palaces of Bone (that was after they stopped even visiting the lower levels of the ogres), both races regarded Hrad Spein as a holy place and would not risk spilling each other’s blood in the labyrinths. But their hatred had proved too strong and war had broken out under the ground, too. The palaces had become deadly places for the Firstborn and the elves. And ever since those ancient times Hrad Spein had been a dangerous place, filled with many things that even ogres spoke about only in whispers.

To this day no one knows who (or what) founded those Palaces of Bone so deep under the ground at a time when the race of ogres was still young.

It was only later that the ogres transformed Hrad Spein into burial chambers (and then their bad example was followed by the orcs, elves, and men), but no one has yet worked out what the original purpose of the underground labyrinths was.

The race of ogres occupied the lower levels and started to construct their own, but they lost their minds and their reason, becoming stupid, bloodthirsty animals. The elves and orcs took the ogres’ place, but they were smarter than their predecessors and didn’t go down into the gloomy depths of the lower level of Night. In fact, they didn’t even risk going down into the former realms of the ogres, fearing that they would awaken the ogres’ dark shamanism.

But the blood of the two younger races drove them on to do what reason had prohibited. Blood and hate were the two edges of the sword that slashed the rip in reason’s defenses.

The elves and the Firstborn realized just in time that they must get out of the path of the evil that had awoken in those deep underground halls, and before it could break out, the elves blocked its path with Doors on the third level, cutting off the passage from one level to another.

The Doors were created using the magic of the dark elves’ shamans and the light elves’ magicians. In order to lock them, the elves needed a magic key, and for help in making it they turned to the dwarves, to whom they lied that they were sealing up the palaces so that the orcs could not get in. The Key had sealed the Doors forever, and there were very few bold enough to venture down into the depths of the palaces by the roundabout route, a route which, for some reason, the evil could not follow.

After the Doors were locked, the Key had remained in Listva, the capital of the dark elves’ kingdom, for a very long time, until this past year when the House of the Black Moon had taken the Key from the House of the Black Flame and given it to Miralissa.

She had taken the artifact to Stalkon, knowing that the party setting out for Hrad Spein would not be able to complete its mission without it. The route through the Doors on the third level was the quickest and the safest—or, rather, the least dangerous.

“Without the Key I’d have a better chance of sticking my head in an ogre’s mouth and taking it out safely than completing my jaunt around Hrad Spein successfully. The whole business is getting more and more hopeless. Does anyone have any idea what we should do now?”

“Wait,” Egrassa answered, mechanically running his finger round the hoop of silver lying in front of him. “Now we’re going to wait.…”

“Wait for what? Is someone hoping that these lads will be stupid enough to give us back the Key, along with a sincere apology?”

“What Tresh Egrassa says makes good sense, Harold. Don’t start getting agitated,” said Uncle, raising his beer mug to his bearded face.

“I’m not getting agitated.”

“Good, there’s no need. Honeycomb went after the thieves.”

“Honeycomb?”

“Who else? We couldn’t wait for you clunkheads,” the sergeant growled. “The elves weren’t here, I’m wounded. Milord Alistan is a knight, not a tracker. You were all gadding around the taverns and getting into fights. Honeycomb was the only one left.”

“Has he been gone long?” asked Marmot.

“Yes, about two hours.…”

“Hallas, enough sitting around,” said Deler, making for the door. “Ell asked us to relieve him; he could still overtake the big bruiser.”

The gnome and the dwarf went out.

“I thought you always carried the Key with you, Lady Miralissa,” said Kli-Kli, interrupting the lingering silence.

This time there was none of the jester’s usual snickering and tittering. Even the resolutely cheerful goblin understood the fix we were in.

“My mistake, jester.”

An elf admitting a mistake! This was something new. They usually accuse other people of making the mistakes.

“No one’s to blame,” Milord Alistan reassured Miralissa. “We had assumed no one would know that we had the Key.”

“We should have assumed differently!” said the elfess, and her eyes flashed. “I was careless and I am to blame! I didn’t even bother to erect a defense round the artifact!”

“How could they even have heard about our arrival?” Egrassa said thoughtfully.

The dark elf seemed to be reading my thoughts. There was only one answer to that question—they had been waiting for us, and waiting for long time.

“Someone reported that we were here,” Alistan replied to the elf. “We were in open view as we rode through the city. There are hundreds of eyes, they could have been watching out for us.…”

Eel strode across the room and leaned down over the bodies of the strangers. He studied the dead men’s faces for a long time and then calmly checked their pockets and their hands. Why their hands?

“They’re soldiers, all right. No doubt about it,” the Garrakian declared.

“We can see for ourselves that they’re soldiers, not priests of the goddess of love,” Uncle snorted. “The question is whose service these scum were in.”

“If they had simply shot us, I would have assumed one of the noble houses had decided to liquidate our group because they thought we’d been hired by their rivals. Then this would have been a warning,” Alistan said after a long pause.

Some warning! A warning is when they break your finger and promise to break your arm the next time, and after that your neck. But when they shoot you full of crossbow bolts, that’s not a warning.

“These dead men were followers of the Nameless One,” said Eel, tossing two rings onto the table. “Look what I found on them.”

I picked up one small circle of metal and turned it over in my hand. A ring in the form of a branch of poison ivy—the crest of the Nameless One. As worn by his servants when carrying out the will of their lord.

“Clear enough.” I put the ring back down on the table and wiped my hands.

When I touched that ring it was probably the first time I had ever felt revulsion for an object made of pure gold. Even if there had been an entire trunk full of the things lying there in front of me, there was no way I would have purloined them. Stalkon was right when he condemned men who serve the Nameless One to be boiled alive.

The sorcerer’s followers are fanatics, putrid filth, vile weeds in the garden of our kingdom, and the king’s Sandmen, the ruthless gardeners, take real pleasure in pulling them up by the roots.

A man I didn’t know came into the room and Miralissa introduced him as the late Master Pito’s nephew.

“What a terrible disaster, Tresh Miralissa! May the gods punish the accursed murderers!” the heir wailed, wringing his hands despairingly.

“They will, Master Quidd, you may be certain of it,” said Miralissa, patting the new owner of the inn on the shoulder to raise his spirits. “I shall make certain that the villain responsible for all this does not go unpunished.”

“Thank you,” said Quidd, nodding gratefully to the elfess.

“Does the guard know what has happened?”

“No, and they won’t find out,” the innkeeper replied. “Those spongers are only good for collecting taxes and taking bribes. But when something like this happens, they’re never anywhere to be found.”

“Then you better have the bodies removed from the hall before someone happens to look into the inn.”

“Yes,” Quidd said with a mournful nod. “Yes indeed, I’ll see to it. I’ll go and fetch my assistants, Tresh Miralissa, we’ll take the dead men to my house and then the women can do what must be done. Prepare them for burial…,” Quidd said in the same sorrowful voice. “But with your permission, I’ll have the two enemies buried at the back of the inn, beside the cattle yard.”

“Just as you wish, Master Quidd.”

Uncle finished his beer and came across to us.

“How’s the shoulder?” Arnkh asked him in a rather guilty voice.

“It’ll heal in no time at all. Thanks to the elfess—she used her shamanism on it. In a week it’ll be as good as new.”

“I feel sorry for Loudmouth,” Kli-Kli sighed.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to bury him, greenface! Maybe he’s still alive,” Marmot told the jester. “The Nameless One’s men wouldn’t have hauled away a dead body, they took him alive, I can feel it in my heart.”

Maybe they did … and maybe they didn’t.… The absence of Loudmouth’s constant nagging and grousing had left a gap in our little band.

The minutes crept by and the drops of time dripped onto the red-hot coals of anticipation, but none of the gods even tried to make them fall faster, to turn the drops into rain and quench the heat of the fire.

Quidd came back with his assistants, loaded the bodies onto stretchers, and carried them out of the inn.

Hallas looked in twice. The first time he reported that all was in order and the second time he took two mugs of beer. When Uncle asked what Deler and he were going to do with booze on watch, the guileless dwarf replied laconically: “Drink it.” The sergeant frowned, but decided not to argue.

Meanwhile Alistan ran a whetstone along the edge of his sword with an imperturbability that persons of the royal blood might have envied. Apparently he wanted to make it the sharpest sword in the universe.

The count’s example proved infectious. Eel took out one of his two blades and set to work. In my opinion, sharpening a Garrakian sword is an unnecessary waste of time. The narrow, elegant “brother” can slice through elfin drokr without the slightest effort, never mind plain ordinary silk.

I asked Uncle where my beloved crossbow and knife were. The sergeant jabbed one finger toward the farthest table, where all our weapons were heaped up.

What’s to be done if I don’t know how to use those yard-long lumps of metal they call swords, poleaxes, and all the rest? A crossbow, now, that’s a different matter altogether—with my miniature friend I could easily hit the target at seventy paces. In any case, the art of using all those sharp things for stabbing and slicing is no business for a decent thief. Where would I go waving a sword about, I ask you? In a fight with the guards? Much better to run for it than wait for some beer-soaked guard to stick a piece of metal in your belly. I wasn’t made for fencing and dueling, although thanks to For and his “secret battles” I have a pretty good understanding of all that.

Marmot was stuffing Invincible with yet another portion of grub—it looked as if the warrior was trying to fatten the little beast up. Arnkh, Uncle, and Egrassa had started playing dice to pass the time, and the elf had already won six games.

Kli-Kli was whispering to the elfin princess with a perfectly serious expression on his face. When I tried to go over to them, he gave me a rather unwelcoming glance, so I left them in peace. So did the goblin and the elfess have secrets of their own now?

Lamplighter was playing a quiet, sad melody on his reed pipe, and I was the only one left with nothing to keep me busy, so I decided to do something useful. I took the maps of Hrad Spein out of my bag and studied them until Ell walked in.

Miralissa raised one eyebrow inquiringly, but he only shook his head.

“I didn’t find it.”

“No trace of the men?” asked Alistan, looking up from his sword.

“On the contrary. I followed the men who stole the Key right across the city and found them, but they were already dead.”

“How’s that?”

“Absolutely dead, all of them. Stuck full of arrows. If those men were carrying the artifact, someone took it from them. Six bodies in a dark alley. No Key, no Honeycomb, and absolutely no tracks. As if someone had swept them away with a broom. I looked, but it was useless.…”

The men who attacked us had fallen into an ambush themselves? So who had finished them off—their own side? Or had a third party joined in? But if so, who?

“I hope nothing bad has happened to Honeycomb and he has better luck than our Ell,” Uncle muttered querulously.

“Mumr, Marmot,” Milord Rat said in a quiet voice, “relieve Hallas and Deler.”

Lamplighter put down his reed pipe and went to carry out Alistan’s order.

The gnome and the dwarf burst into the inn, occupied the bar, and set about annihilating the strategic supplies of beer while they recalled their friend Loudmouth, may he dwell in the light, with a few kind words.

Everyone else went back to their own pastimes, casting occasional worried glances at the door.

I went back to studying my papers. But the cursed labyrinths of the Palaces of Bone absolutely refused to stay fixed in my memory, and I barely managed to make myself remember the route through the first level to the steps that led to the second. Eventually, when it was already after midnight and our patience was all but exhausted, Honeycomb showed up. Without saying a word he took a mug full of dark heavy beer out of Deler’s hand and drained it in a single swallow.

“I found them,” the young giant laughed, wiping his mustache with the back of his hand. “They’re in a house in the southern district of Ranneng.”

“The southern district?” Miralissa said with a frown. “There’s nothing there but the mansions of the higher nobility!”

“That’s right … Hallas, another beer.”

Honeycomb handed his mug to the gnome, who filled it without a murmur.

“Did you find out anything about Loudmouth?”

“Not a thing. He disappeared into thin air,” said Honeycomb, taking another swig of his beer.

“So what happened? Ell wasn’t able to find you.”

“No?” said Honeycomb, glancing at the elf.

“I found nothing but bodies.…”

“Ah yes! When I left the inn, I was about ten minutes behind our killers. And there were guards dashing around all over the Upper City, so I had to keep my head down. Anyway, I was a bit late reaching the scene of the fight. When I got there, there was nothing but dead bodies and a dozen lads with bows walking out of the dark alley. I had to make the best of it, so I followed them.”

“Did they say anything?”

“No…,” Honeycomb said after thinking for a moment. “But later, when the killers met another man, he said that now the Master might be pleased with them.”

“The Master?” Miralissa asked in alarm, casting a warning glance in my direction.

“That’s what they said.” Honeycomb shrugged and took a swig from his mug. “I had to follow them for quite a long time, and then hang about for even longer in a little hidey-hole while they waited for the man. They gave him the item that was stolen from you, Tresh Miralissa, took their money, sang the praises of the Master, and went on their way.”

“And what about the man?”

“He went off in the opposite direction, so I had to choose who to follow. I decided the stolen item was more important and followed the man. A cunning pest, I tell you; I almost lost him.”

“Did he notice you?” Miralissa asked anxiously.

“Oh no … He couldn’t have.”

“Why didn’t you finish him off, if he had the Key?” the gnome asked in a disappointed voice.

“There were four others with him. Bodyguards. And he looked like a dangerous enough specimen himself. I even thought he might be a shaman—his skin was so pale.”

“Did you say pale?” I exclaimed.

“White. As white as chalk.”

Could this be my old acquaintance Rolio? If so, then it really was him I’d seen at the Large Market. The Nameless One’s followers had done the job for Paleface, and the Master’s servants had simply lain in waiting for their prey in the dark alley, shot the thieves with their bows, and taken the Key. Tonight the hired killer had done what the Master’s shaman had failed to do fifteen hundred years earlier in the Mountains of the Dwarves, and now the Master would at long last hold in his hands the artifact he craved so badly.

“Carry on, Honeycomb,” Egrassa said.

“Carry on with what?” Honeycomb asked with a shrug. “I’m not Tomcat, may his soul dwell in the light, I’m about as good a tracker as Hallas is a jeweler, but I managed to stick with the lad to the end. He’s in a huge mansion in the southern district of the city. And that’s the whole story.”

“What kind of house is it? Where exactly is it located?”

“The darkness only knows where it’s located. I’ve never been in this city before. I only just managed to find my way back here. But I can recognize it. It’s not a house, it’s a palace, and it has fancy gates, with some kind of birds on them.”

“That’s great! Now we’ll break those birds’ little wings!” said Hallas. He stuffed a piece of bread in his mouth and reached for his battle-mattock.

“Where do you think you’re going in such a great hurry?” Uncle asked, watching the gnome curiously.

“What do you mean? We have to get that Key back from them.”

“With one incomplete platoon? Without knowing who we’re going up against? Without knowing how many guards there are? Get a grip, Hallas! That smack you got in the teeth must have been too hard,” the dwarf quipped.

“Sit down, Hallas,” Alistan said quietly, and the gnome, who had been on the point of starting a brawl with Deler, went back to his seat, shamefaced. “We need to find out who we’re dealing with before we get into a fight.”

“Who we’re dealing with? I think I can probably answer that question for you, Milord Alistan,” I blurted out without thinking, and then bit my tongue, but it was already too late.

“Have you become a visionary, thief?” Count Markauz asked me.

“Oh no, Your Grace. It’s all much simpler than that. The man who took the Key from the Nameless One’s men who attacked us is my old friend Paleface. And Paleface, as you recall, serves the Master. I think we can assume that whoever lives in that house is another one of the Master’s errand boys, like Rolio.”

“Well now, that is logical,” Miralissa agreed, and snapped her fingers in annoyance. “So this Master has thwarted us yet again.…”

Alistan chuckled scornfully, making it very clear that he found my reasoning unconvincing.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Miralissa,” Eel drawled, speaking for the first time. “Just recently the lads and I heard you talk about this mysterious Master. Could you tell us a little more about him? We feel like blind kittens—we don’t even know which direction danger might strike from.”

“I think Harold can tell you more than I can.”

The Wild Hearts all turned to look at me.

“Mumr, pour me some beer,” I said to Lamplighter. “This is going to be a long story.”

“Well, I’ve already heard it, so I’ll be off to bed,” Kli-Kli said with a yawn.

“I’ll hit the hay, too,” said the gnome. “Just tell me tomorrow, that is, today, where this Master’s head is, and I’ll give it a tap with my mattock, so he won’t bother us anymore.”

“You’re a great hero,” Deler snorted.

“Sure, not like certain dwarves who wear stupid hats on their empty heads,” said the gnome, and walked out before Deler could come up with a worthy reply.

I had a potbellied mug of beer in front of me, and I began my story.…

“Mmm, yes…,” Deler grunted when he had heard me out. “This is an interesting business we’ve got involved in, right, Uncle?”

“Don’t whine,” the sergeant told the dwarf. “You knew what you were getting into when you left the Lonely Giant with us.”

“I did,” Deler agreed with a nod. “We’ve seen worse in our time. Survived ogres in snows of the Desolate Lands, went hungry for weeks at a time, walked all the way to the emerald green Needles of Ice. We won’t retreat now just because of some creep.”

“No, we won’t, dwarf,” Alistan declared quietly. “We have nowhere left to retreat to. There’s a good chance that the Key will leave the mansion before the night’s over. Are there any volunteers?”

“I’ll catch up on my sleep in the morning,” said Marmot, taking Invincible off his shoulder and handing him to me. “Take care of him. I’m with you, Honeycomb.”

“Wait, I’ll take a stroll with you,” said Egrassa, getting up from the table. He took his s’kash and walked out of the tavern with the two Wild Hearts.

“Mmm,” Deler drawled thoughtfully. “Am I imagining things, or did Tresh Egrassa really take a sword with him?”

“The law of Ranneng does not apply to elves, Deler,” Miralissa said with a smile. “We can carry weapons wherever we wish.”

The dwarf grunted in disappointment and muttered to himself, but not loudly enough for Miralissa to hear: “If you’ve got long pointy teeth you can carry a ballista around if you like, but they won’t let an honest dwarf take his own ax into town.”

I picked up the dozing ling and went off to bed.