Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (22 page)

The interior courtyard was littered with low-rimmed vats filled with noxious-looking liquids. Sheds and a handful of buildings ringed the interior space, and everywhere one looked there were gnomes—each one no more than two and a half feet tall, and each wearing a strange, orange, conical felt hat with a feather in its peak—dashing from place to place in a frantic rush.

“May as well give you the full tour,” Lucius grinned. “Now, over here in this covered shed is where we keep the dried skins. They come in just the way you see them: dried, stiff, dirty, and largely with their gore still attached. Those we take over here and soak in water vats to get them all cleaned up and softened. Then we take them over to these sheds where you can see Jurt here beating the hides and scraping off all the old flesh and fat. Of course, we still have to get the hair fibers out, too, so we bring them right over to these vats over here.”

Jarod was decidedly losing color in his face at this point.

“Here we soak the cleaned skins in these vats of urine,” Lucius said proudly. “It’s the best thing in the world for removing hide hair. Of course, it takes quite a while, and the process only loosens the hairs. The hairs have to be scraped off the hides with a knife. That’s what Klisten’s doing over there right now . . . how is it going, Klisten?”

The small gnome woman was nearly hidden by the enormous, reeking hide that she was scraping. She waved back at the group with her knife as she flashed them a bright yellow grin.

“Once Klisten’s finished, the hide gets a dip in that salt solution over there and then we take it to the most important part of the process—the bating of the leather. That’s right over here.”

Jarod was having difficulty keeping his stinging eyes open.

“Here’s Klauf and his wife, Enuci, giving their personal touch to the most important part of the art,” Lucius said with pride, pointing toward the far corner of the tannery. “In these rather impressive vats is our special mixture of dung and some, well, additional unsavory ingredients. Dog feces and pigeon droppings are generally the best, although, as you see under that shed over there, we maintain a supply of all kinds of dung for every hide-tanning occasion. You see how Klauf and Enuci are stomping down through the mixture with their bare feet? That kneads the dung into the hides . . .”

“Master Tanner!” Jarod belched the words out.

“You had a question, Jarod?” Lucius asked with eager anticipation. “Was I going too fast?”

“We . . . we need . . .” The stench was overwhelming.

“We have a most important matter to discuss with you,” the Dragon’s Bard managed to force out in a single breath.

“Oh, of course.” Lucius’s smile fell slightly. “But I haven’t shown you the drying and stretching yards yet—”

“Urgent!” Jarod had discovered he could manage single words but nothing more in the odiferous confines of the tannery.

“Oh, in that case, you have my full attention . . .”

“Outside!” Jarod blurted out. “Private!”

“Ah!” Lucius nodded with understanding although he did not understand at all. “As you wish . . . but I hope you’ll all stay for lunch?”

Lucius and Jarod had one thing in common: since they were both young they had each been in love with a Morgan girl.

Lucius found the prickly, distant Sobrina to be an object of abject fascination for him. His father was the tanner in the town, as had been his father before him, so he grew up knowing the wishing well and the wisher-women who tended it. His mother, a free-spirited perfumer woman with the mysterious name of Khaisai Zarkina, had come from Mordale originally and insisted that Lucius be schooled under the tutelage of a young scribe who had recently started at the countinghouse by the name of Ward Klum. He had been dutiful and had proven himself to be an apt student until a tragic dung-cart accident took the life of his father when the boy was seventeen—just as the romance between Lucius and Sobrina was starting to blossom. Lucius took up the family business at the tannery, and the promise of their union evaporated with it.

This was because of the great Tanner blessing—and curse: Lucius, his father, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father before him all had one unique gift that ruled their choice of trade, their fortunes, and their fates.

Not a single one of them had
any
olfactory sense at all.

None of them could smell a thing.

In the tanning business, this was a tremendous comfort and blessing. The process of tanning hides into leather is the most onerously odiferous profession in all the known realms. The lack of any sense of smell allowed the Tanner family down through the generations to perform their seemingly destined trade far more efficiently than others of their profession in other towns.

But it may also have been a major contributing factor in the dung-cart accident that took Clifholm Tanner’s life.

Worse for Lucius, it was the major reason his romance with Sobrina had gone sour. Working now in the tannery, rather than in the musty but reasonably odor-free countinghouse, Lucius rapidly acquired a distinctive scent that announced his approach to the townspeople of Eventide—depending upon the current wind direction—well in advance of his even being seen. Even Mordechai Charon, to whom Lucius sold all his leather and by whose artistry both of them profited tremendously, had to stand at some distance from the man in order to conclude their negotiations. Tryena, a mysterious trader in pelts who occasionally came to Charon’s Goods, would never deal with Lucius directly—she would only sell her pelts to Charon, who in turn would deal with the tanner.

Lucius was at once keenly aware of the problem and incapable of doing anything about it. He knew that he smelled to other people although the concepts of “smell” and “odor” and “stink to the ninth heaven” were outside of his experience. He also knew that if he bathed and cleaned himself up, people found him more acceptable and he could get closer to them before they fled. But without any ability to gauge his own odor, he could never know if he were acceptable in company. He would occasionally scrub himself raw in the East Wanderwine River and risk a visit to the wishing well, but whenever he saw Sobrina—no matter how hard he tried—down the years she would stand farther and farther off and always upwind.

His mother moved back to Mordale, and for several years her son supported her there, but she passed away during an epidemic in the city. That left Lucius alone.

Then Klauf Snarburt, a gnome, had showed up at the tannery gates one day two years ago, seeking employment. When Lucius’s wages proved to be more than fair, Klauf invited several family members to join him, and, as the Snarburt clan’s abilities in tanning leather were unsurpassed, soon the success of the tannery was beyond Lucius’s dreams. The output of tanned leather tripled, and a future filled with gold coins accruing in his account at the countinghouse seemed assured. He had nearly cleared all his father’s debts on the land and the buildings and was starting to turn a nice profit.

He knew he would become wealthy in just a few more years, but Lucius found no solace in it. All he could think about was Sobrina Morgan still standing well upwind.

“I can sympathize with your problem,” Aren said as he glanced over the top of his book. “But there may be some hope for you yet. Perhaps a wish is in order after all.”

The centaur sat with his legs folded under him on a large floor cushion beside a fireplace that nearly filled the end of the room. A cheerful blaze crackled and hissed above the grate, illuminating Farmer Bennis’s main room in this home. The evening had turned unusually chill for the early summer season, and the aging centaur felt the need for a little warmth. Jarod was glad, for the fire brought out the details of the room: the dented shields that were mounted decoratively on the walls and the pair of short swords crossed above the mantel. The fascinating was mixed in with the mundane: a helmet with a lobster-tail plating down the neck sat on a shelf next to a number of crockery jars. A jeweled dagger lay across a round of cheese. Most intriguing of all was the segmented suit of torso armor standing in the corner on a frame, nearly hidden by the farmer’s leather coat draped over it. Jarod took it all in from his polished chair without questioning any of it while Abel sat opposite him enjoying a slice of rye bread and cheese offered to him by the centaur.

“But the well is broken,” Jarod shrugged. “How can that help?”

“Just because the well is broken doesn’t mean you can’t make a wish,” Aren chuckled as he rubbed his weary eyes. “I see you’re wearing a wishing amulet. You could try that.”

“No.” Jarod shook his head. “I’m not ready to try this one yet. Caprice gave it to me, and she said it was broken.”

“She should know,” Aren mumbled as he turned a page. “She has enough broken wishes of her own.”

“So what would be the point of—”

“Jarod, listen to me,” Aren said, setting his book aside in frustration and looking straight at the young man. “There are things you need to know about the broken wishes of the well. The reason they were broken in the first place is because so many pilgrims were using the well to wish things for themselves. That’s what the great wizard did when he finally broke the well, but it had been weakened long before that. A selfish wish is a hard wish because it does no greater good. It does not contribute to the spirit of the world from which it came. It is also a weak wish because it is self-serving. The best wishes—the kindest and strongest—are those that we wish for others. If you sincerely wish to help Lucius win the somewhat imperious Sobrina for himself, then perhaps your wish has a better chance than you think.”

“I’ve got to go,” Jarod said, suddenly jumping up from his chair.

“You’ve got to . . . but you just got here,” Aren protested.

“I, uh, I forgot something I have to do,” Jarod said. “Thank you, Master Bennis. I’m much indebted to you!”

Jarod had closed the front door behind him before the centaur could respond.

“You are welcome, young master Klum,” Aren chuckled as he reached again for his book. “Would you care for another slice of cheese, Abel? Please help yourself.”

The stars wheeled across the heavens on that chill night in early summer. The moon was full and stood directly above the broken wishing well. Bright stars stood in line with it, and the meager wishes in the well swelled and surged as they had not done in a very long time.

Unknown to each other, three separate people had determined to approach the well, all on the same night. Each came in his or her turn and left before the next arrived. None of them could have known it but, in the alignment of the heavens, each came for nearly the same purpose.

The first to the well was Jarod Klum. He brought with him the few coins he had managed to save over the last three months. It was not a great amount, measured against the fortunes of the prominent families of Eventide, but it was dearly purchased through his own careful efforts. Because of that, the power of the spirit that it carried was far greater than a hundred times its weight in gold. He put the coins in the metal box, heard their sound as they fell, and then stepped to the well.

“I wish Lucius didn’t smell so badly,” he said into its depths.

Then with a sigh he left down Wishing Lane so that he might not be too late for supper.

Next to come was Caprice, who did not check the box for coins but instead dropped a ribbon of her mother’s into the well. She had kept it for many years, and its wishing was powerful indeed.

“I wish someone would marry my sister Sobrina,” she said in carefully practiced words, for she was a wisher-woman and knew that the wording of a wish was critical, especially when the wishes were broken.

As she left, the third person was watching her from the woods to the south. He waited until she departed over the hill toward the Morgan home before he stepped up the grassy slope to the rotting well, careful of the direction of the wind blowing from the west so that he would not be discovered by the Morgan household.

He placed as many coins as he could fit into the box and then leaned over the well.

“I wish Sobrina could be happy,” Lucius said, a single tear falling from his cheek down into the well.

After a moment’s reflection, Lucius hurried quickly south into the woods to make his lonely way back to the tannery.

Wishing wells are, in the best of times, difficult in their dealings. Their understanding of speech is often uncertain and their willingness to properly interpret the wisher’s intention is dubious at best. Yet with the stars and moon aligned, even a broken well could not help but do its best to grant the wishes of three aligned individuals wishing so hard for each other’s welfare.

Lucius woke up in the morning to a strange and incredibly unpleasant sensation. At first he was not sure what to make of it. It seemed like tasting food. He smacked his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth, but he had not eaten anything. He was not sure what to make of it.

Then he sniffed.

An overpoweringly horrible sensation filled his head.

Lucius sat up at once in his bed. He looked around frantically, searching for what might be causing this fearsome experience. He felt sick to his stomach, like the time he had eaten meat that had gone bad—only he had not eaten anything.

His stomach heaved.

He jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs into the tanning yard.

New sensations assaulted his nose here. Lucius cried out amid the urine vats where he stood in his nightshirt. All of the gnomes looked up at him in alarm.

Still yelling in terror, Lucius bolted for the tannery gates, yanked them open, and fled up the road toward the center of Boar’s Island. The terrible sensations were abating, replaced with more pleasant ones, but still the persistent, sickly sourness followed him.

Lucius stopped suddenly in the middle of the road.

He sniffed again.

His eyes began to water. It was
him!
This horrible thing was coming from
him!

Lucius turned toward the southern bridge and pulled off his nightshirt. He plunged naked into the chill waters of the Wanderwine River, furiously scrubbing at his arms and legs, his feet and his hands, his face, hair, and neck. Then he would sniff . . . and scrub some more.