Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (24 page)

“None of that is to the point!” Jep shouted. “The law is clear! Tanner here is a member of the Guild, and that’s guild law! These . . .
things
do not exist by law and therefore they cannot join the Guild . . .”

“Or pay guild dues,” Mordechai interjected.

“Or pay guild . . . that’s not the point at all!” Jep was quivering in his rage. “You’re a fine one to speak, Mordechai Charon! Your business is on the line if these illegal creatures are turned out. You’ve been making money off of them!”

“Because they do fine work!” Mordechai shouted back. “If your barrels were half the quality of their workmanship, you’d be doing far better in your own craft.”

“Please,” the Squire said, pushing his way between Jep and Mordechai. “Can’t we all just agree to be loyal subjects of the crown?”

“Are you questioning my loyalty?” Lucius exclaimed. “Just because I have gnomes working for me?”

“But the law is clear:
there are no gnomes!
” the Squire bellowed.

Jarod rolled his eyes. “Well, the nonexistent gnome is almost standing on your foot, Squire, and I hope he kicks you in the shins with his nonexistent pointed shoes!”

This set off another round of general shouting until, at last, Ward Klum, towering over them at his high desk and tall chair, slammed shut the great book.

Everyone stopped and looked toward the Master of the Counting.

“Listen to me, all of you,” Ward said. “I am the king’s appointed representative here, and I am a keeper of the law. The decrees are clear—regardless of the evidence before us. Gnomes do not exist by express decree of the crown; they have no rights or standing before the law and cannot purchase property. Were such nonexistent persons to be found in the possession of such property, it would be confiscated by the crown—which would do neither Klauf nor Lucius any good. I would be expected to enforce such a law, and even if I chose not to do so, the tax collector would discover it on his first visit after the fall and the result would be the same. There are no gnomes—the king has proclaimed it thus—and therefore they cannot possess property or enter into any contract.”

A silence fell over the assembly, each counting the costs of their victories or their losses and none feeling the better for it.

Then, Alicia Charon, who had been standing at the back, timidly raised her hand.

Ward sighed. “Yes, Alicia, what is it?”

“Well,” she said in halting, shy tones. “Do they
have
to be gnomes?”

Ward squinted slightly and turned his good ear toward the woman. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, what if they
weren’t
gnomes?”

“But, Alicia,” Jep Walters said slowly, “they
are
gnomes.”

Alicia turned to the cooper. “But I thought you said there weren’t any gnomes?”

Jep opened his mouth to answer but no words came out.

“We have dwarves in town,” Alicia said.

“We have one dwarf,” Ward nodded. “What’s your point?”

“I was just thinking,” Alicia said as she stepped forward toward where Klauf had stood wringing his hat in his hands during the entire ordeal. “What if these little people weren’t actually
gnomes?
What if they were a new kind of—short dwarf?”

“Alicia,” Mordechai whispered, “dwarf
means
short.”

“So we’ll call them dwarf-dwarves,” Alicia said, kneeling down in front of Klauf. She held out her hand. “Would you mind terribly, Mister . . . uh . . .”

“Snarburt,” the small man said with a wide, yellow-toothed grin as he grabbed her hand as best he could. “I’m Mister Snarburt . . . a dwarf-dwarf from the Southern Hills.”

Jarod watched Sobrina and Lucius walk northward across Fall’s Court toward the Mordale road, hand in hand. She would be taking him home to see her father, he thought. He smiled, thinking of the day when he would be making that same walk with the same purpose and Caprice on his arm.

“I think they are adorable, don’t you?”

The bubble of Jarod’s dreams burst in a moment.

Vestia Walters coiled her arm around his. “I only hope that he has enough put away for the bride price.”

“What?”

“You’re funny!” Vestia cooed, pushing up against him. “The man who wishes to wed must pay a bride price to the girl’s father. The higher the price, the greater the honor for the bride. I suspect with all that money in that countinghouse of yours you’ll be honoring your bride-to-be most handsomely. I myself expect to fetch a bride price higher than anyone in this town has ever seen before.”

She stepped back and patted him on the cheek.

“So you had best start gathering your treasure together, Jarod!”

Vestia giggled and skipped off toward her home across Charter Square.

All Jarod could think of was his empty Treasure Box still sitting in his cupboard . . . and how he vowed to fill it for his Caprice. He needed a treasure worthy of her, and he knew only one man who might know how to come by such wealth in a hurry.

He’d have to ask the Dragon’s Bard.

Fair Hero

Fair Hero

Wherein the Fall Festival provides
Jarod the opportunity to gather sizable wealth . . . with disastrous results.

• Chapter 16 •

River Fairies

A great trumpet sounded in the evening air!

Merinda Oakman heard it from inside her shop, glancing up as a smile bloomed on her face. With giddy delight she ushered her clients out the door, locked it, and hastily hung up a sign saying only that she was closed.

The two notes came again, deep and resounding in the twilight.

Jep Walters arrested his hammer in midswing in the cooperage and left the hoop sitting on the anvil to cool while he wiped off his hands and tossed aside his apron.

The heralding sound called again through the streets of Eventide, seeming to dance the autumn leaves across the cold cobblestones under the fading light of day and whirl them down the darkening alleys.

Both Deniva Kolyan and Madeline Muffe anxiously watched the goods in their ovens, willing them to cook faster, and they waited not a moment longer than they had to before pulling out their goods and hastily banking their fires.

Townsfolk were pouring out of their homes and shops under the deepening hue of an autumn sky, drawn toward the sound of the horns. They grabbed their shawls and their jackets, their coats and their hats against the chill of encroaching night and danced among the bright dry leaves that spiced the streets.

Beulandreus Dudgeon smiled his wide, gap-toothed grin and quickly set about closing up his own shop, much to the confusion of the Dragon’s Bard and his scribe.

“Whatever are you doing?” Edvard exclaimed to the dwarf. The Dragon’s Bard had been canvassing the town since spring, cataloguing everyone’s stories with his tireless assistant in tow. He had insisted that Abel meticulously record a seemingly endless cascade of tales whose content was of dubious universal interest and had been in the process of asking the dwarf a series of the most mundane and pointless questions Abel had ever heard. At such times, the scribe found better use in sketching illuminations, as he felt sure his editorial judgment at leaving out the entire history of steel tempering would somehow not adversely affect their next volume.

“Did you not hear the horns?” the dwarf exclaimed with delight as he banked his forge fire. The street outside the smithy had been nearly deserted in the deepening evening but was suddenly filling with humans, a few centaurs, and a number of dwarf-dwarves who seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Well, I most certainly did, and a fine-sounding set of notes they were,” the Dragon’s Bard said. “But what do they mean? Where is everyone going?”

“It is the River Fairies,” the smith exclaimed as he grabbed his leather coat and broad-brimmed hat. “’Tis the harvest, and they’ve come—and that signals the Festival! Now, out with you two!”

The dwarf grabbed Edvard and Abel by their arms and ushered them with considerable strength out into Hammer Court. He pulled the last of the shutters closed on his open-sided shop and secured them with a great lock and key. Then, with astonishing speed, Beulandreus rushed down King’s Road, one hand holding his hat firmly on his head against the autumn wind. Even the pixies had joined in the excitement, forgetting their usual antics and flashing back and forth above the crowd as if they were actually excited to light the way.

The Dragon’s Bard and his assistant quickly joined in the growing stream of laughing children and giddy adults. Several dwarf-dwarves passed them doing backflips in their overflowing exuberance. It seemed that the entire town was turning out at a moment’s notice as the quiet streets were suddenly alive with laughter and filled with boundless energy. Edvard gazed about him with slack-jawed wonder while Abel, faithful to his calling, quit his doodling with his stylus and, unbidden by the awestruck Bard, began taking notes of his own accord.

The crowd moved north across Fall’s Court and spread out along the place where the Mordale road slopes down gently to the banks of the Wanderwine River north of town. The treeline of the Norest Forest stood on the other side just to the west. Everyone stood on tiptoe straining to look north up the course of the river, the pixies hovering above the crowd and bathing everyone in a softer glow than usual. Farmer Bennis stood athwart the road, his presence recognized by everyone there as the boundary of the town’s gathering. Even the grizzle-chinned centaur looked happy, with a twinkle in his eye.

The horn once again sounded its two notes, one low and one high, from somewhere up around the bend in the river.

The town cheered.

Seven boats emerged from the forest canopy beneath a darkening indigo sky, gliding gently down the Wanderwine. Their hulls were elegantly shaped, each with a long keel curving to an elegant, high prow in the front and a raised afterdeck at the end. There was a sleekness to their hulls, with long, flat slats running bow to stern, widening to nearly flat in the middle, giving the boats a shallow draft. None of them had a mast or sail or any oars to be seen, yet each glided swift and sure across the waters heedless of any currents.

Within the boats, singing as they spun and wheeled above the decks, were the River Fairies. Their bright and garish costumes flashed in the air. Their tambourines banged and rattled in tempo with their swaying and their song. Along both sides of the lead boat’s bow were fixed two enormous horns, which were sounded again, each in turn, by fairies at their narrow mouthpieces amidships. None of the boats were more than thirty feet long, but to the scale of the fairies who manned them, they were enormous craft. Each was also laden with the fairies’ provisions and a few tents brought along for the benefit of any larger guest creatures that they might wish to accommodate in their encampment along the way.

Yet it was above the hulls and fairies that the greatest wonder was seen. There, woven in light and haze, was the dream-smoke of the fairy folk, drifting upward from the brazier near the center of each of their boats and weaving images shaped from the thoughts and dreams of the people at the river’s edge. A tumbling cascade of visions formed, dissolved, and then re-formed above the ships—passionate, beautiful, vengeful, innocent, suggestive, sad, joyful—the softly glowing images in the dream-smoke delighted, embarrassed, and thrilled the townsfolk as the boats turned as one and rode up onto the far bank of the river.

Edvard’s smile broadened. “I know of these fine fellows, Abel! These are the River Fairies of Clan Obsintia! They are famous—or infamous, depending upon who you ask—throughout Windriftshire. I knew that they made a circuit of the rivers every year, but I had no idea that Eventide was graced by their presence. Wherever they stop, there is cause for celebration indeed, for their camp is renowned for its performances, dances, music, and entertainments . . . not to mention less scrupulous dealings that, now that I think of it, might be turned to one’s advantage.”

Abel gave the Dragon’s Bard a dubious look.

“Excuse me!” Edvard called across the crowd. “Lady Merryweather! Yoohoo!”

Abel cringed as the stately woman pushed her way through the crowd. “Yes, Edvard, how delightful, is it not? The Fall Festival has begun at last!”

“Delightful indeed, Lady Merryweather . . .”

“Ah, alas, you must call me the Widow Merryweather,” she said with a practiced sigh in her voice. “My dear late husband left for sea some fifteen years back and has never returned to me.”

“Then he is late, indeed, madam . . .”

Abel kicked his master in the shin.

“ . . . and I do share your loss. Would that I had met the, uh, captain . . .”

“My good Neddie was a Sailing Master, sir,” the Widow Merryweather said, raising her chin imperiously. “So he would tell you, were he with us here today.”

“As we all wish he was,” Edvard smiled, “but please tell me about the River Fairies.”

“Oh, you don’t know them?” the widow chirped. “Well, let me tell you! They are vagabonds of the water, sir, carefree wanderers of the world. The gods alone know how they get
up
the river, but they come
down
the Wanderwine each fall and arrive when it is harvest time. They stop here above Bolly Falls for a week while the citizens of the town help them transfer their boats down past the falls. They set their camp in the Fae Grotto just to the west of here and provide all kinds of entertainments. The Dance of the Leaves is the traditional opening of the celebrations—although it is a far too refined entertainment for the young. When the fairies leave at last on the seventh evening, then the town holds its own celebration fair, often featuring some of the clever things we have bartered from the fairies while they were here. And, of course, there is the baking contest sponsored by Deniva Kolyan and Madeline Muffe that evening for the Festival Prize. Between you and me, Edmund—”

“That’s
Edvard,
” the Dragon’s Bard corrected.

“Well, between you and me, the competition in this town for that prize is more pitched than the Battle of the Five Kings. Livinia Walters has taken that prize for the last three years running. No one knows how she’s doing it since none of the women in the town have ever seen her lift a finger in her kitchen. Daphne Melthalion—the Squire’s wife—has been fit to be tied each time; she would do anything to beat Livinia at any given contest. Of course, both Winifred Taylor and Orlynda Klum try each year as well, and I myself have come close a time or two.”