Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (27 page)

Winifred Taylor screeched.

Her pink lemonade pie lifted off of the table and flew about the heads of the judges.

The fiery rum-apple was forming images of pirates fighting each other in the flames.

The walnut peach-berry pie was whistling a jig.

The sparkling bursts over the cherry-pear pie were getting larger above the heads of the judges, exploding around the flying pink lemonade pie, which took exception to the barrage and dove down on the cherry, flipping it skyward with the rim of its pie tin.

The cherry recovered in midair, sectioning itself into eight wedges, each of which gave chase to the lemonade pie.

The townspeople scattered in a panic, knocking over tables and chairs in their desperate attempt to escape.

The rum-apple pie tipped on its side and rolled along the tabletop, shooting flames behind it at the cherry. The cherry, thus diverted, separated three wedges from its pursuit of the lemonade pie and began spitting cherries at the rum from above, the thudding impact of its fruit slamming into the table and spattering red syrup on the innocent bystanders seeking shelter nearby.

The peach-berry pie unrolled its crust and began flinging walnuts. One of them connected with a wedge of cherry, which broke in two and careened in a spiral downward, slamming into the face of Percival Taylor—counted afterward as the first man wounded in the action.

The rum-apple pie had taken a number of hits from the cherry and was wobbling in its course. It veered to the right, leaped a gulf between the tables, and drove straight on its edge toward the peach-berry pie, which immediately began screaming for help while diverting its walnuts toward the onrushing rum-apple pie.

Overhead, the lemonade was still being pursued by several slices of cherry but saw an opportunity. It dove down over the peach-berry and flipped over, spurting whipped cream down onto the peach-berry. The pie choked on the cream and was temporarily silenced.

Suddenly, Jep Walters appeared with his ancient wand in hand. This caused everyone to renew their efforts to flee, as no one could predict what the untested weapon might do.

The peach-berry leaped into the air, trying to avoid the juggernaut of rum-apple driving relentlessly toward it in its quest for pie supremacy. The rum was not fooled, however, and flew into the air as well, just as the remaining cherry wedges and the lemonade converged.

The resulting terrible explosion of pie was so cataclysmic that it covered the farthest corners of Charter Square—and everyone within it.

When the Captain drew himself up from behind the overturned table, his ceremonial saber in hand, he looked about at the carnage, and one thing caught his eye.

Orlynda Klum was holding her cranberry-apple pie—still intact.

He declared her the winner at once.

Jarod never met Caprice that night.

The initial and universal reaction was to arrest the Bard, but Jarod could not live with that. He confessed everything to his mother and his father. Both were upset with their son, but mostly Orlynda Klum, who now was in possession of the Fall Festival pie chalice and was certain that the rest of the women in the town would think she had put Jarod up to this escapade. She insisted that he give every one of the women their money back at once.

Treasure Box in hand, Jarod made the rounds of the four women and called at their back doors. Their reactions, however, surprised Jarod. Each one of them took the money back but begged him not to tell anyone what they had done. He promised that he would keep their secrets, and each one of them was relieved and grateful to him.

Perhaps too grateful, in one case.

“Jarod, you’re a good man,” Livinia Walters said to him at her back door—being careful that no one else could see them.

“Thank you . . . and I’m sorry about all this . . .”

“No, you’ve shown a head for business and are honorable besides,” Livinia said. “You keep our little secret, and I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

“Well, thank you, but that isn’t necessary . . .”

“You just leave it to me, Son,” Livinia said, closing her door.

Livinia nodded resolutely to herself. Jarod Klum was a better man than she had thought.

She determined to do everything she could to square things between Jarod and her daughter, Vestia.

Tale of Frightful Manors

Tale of Frightful Manors

Wherein Jarod is inducted into the Black Guild Brotherhood—the secret men’s society known to everyone in Eventide—but only if he can pass a haunting initiation test.

• Chapter 18 •

The Black Guild Brotherhood

The chill, northwest wind moaned through the Norest Forest, shivering the bare branches of the trees and skittering the dried leaves across the frozen ground. It swept across the deserted Fae Grotto, brushing with it the low autumn clouds as they crossed the full moon overhead. It passed again into the sleeping trees, all cowering from its frigid blast, and came at last, as if bidden there, to shake the shingles and rattle the dark windows of Forgotten Manor.

No one now recalls its former name. In happier years a wealthy family had built the grandiose structure as a palatial summer retreat for members of the court in Mordale, but for reasons never explained—though wildly speculated upon—the imposing building was abandoned shortly after it had been furnished. Most of the stories told about it in Eventide involved secret murders, dark, mystical practices in hidden rooms beneath the foundations, and the haunting of its halls. Only the young and foolish ever dared approach the ruin, for it remained in shadow even in the full light of day, and those who did were so shaken by their experiences there that they vowed never to return again. Occasionally, nervous reports of seeing shadows moving across the windows and even occasional smoke from the long-cold chimneys would come to town. Everyone who had been born to Eventide knew to leave such dark forces well alone. Slowly, over the years, the grandeur that used to be succumbed to the forces of decay as nature slowly encroached upon it. Now, the brooding edifice stood as a dark stain among the leafless trees and beneath the cold light of the harvest moon.

Xander Lamplighter, the Constable Pro Tempore of Eventide, stood next to the long dried-up fountain before the wide steps leading up to the manor, lifting his lantern higher with his left hand. The light barely penetrated the gloom, showing the dirty stone columns flanking the main doors to the house. The finish on the enormous double doors was weathered and cracking. The shifting light from the lantern played tricks on Xander’s eyesight, suggesting something moving among the columns, but Xander steadied his hand and the illusion vanished.

Satisfied, the Constable Pro Tempore turned and moved along the gravel path that was laid parallel to the face of the ruin, his booted feet kicking the fallen leaves just enough for them to be caught by the wind. The dark windows of the three-story manor looked menacingly down upon the feeble circle of light that encompassed Xander and barely kept the smothering darkness at bay.

Xander made his way around the northeast corner of the mansion. There he came to a portico with steps leading up to a smaller entrance. There were double doors here as well, although not nearly as large or as grand as the main entrance. One of the doors slammed closed every few seconds, only to fly open again in the whirling eddies of the howling wind. Xander walked quickly up the granite steps and grabbed the door handle. He raised his lantern again into the opening.

“Who goes there?” Xander cried out loudly over the wailing of the gale behind him. “Answer in the name of the king!”

A faint light shone at the end of the rotting hall, just beyond the limit of Xander’s lantern.

Xander stepped inside, closing the door behind him and making sure the latch caught. Slowly he began walking down the dilapidated corridor, his footsteps forcing the floorboards to creak beneath him. Portraits hung down the length of the hall seemed to follow him with their eyes as he walked. The dim, red-hued light from the room at the end of the hall beckoned him on.

He stepped into the drawing room, its ceiling high overhead. Heavy curtains closed off the windows to his right.

Embers glowed warm in the fireplace.

He felt a rush of air behind him that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

A low moaning sounded in his ear uncomfortably close.

Xander spun around, his lantern casting wild shadows across the room.

“Boo!” said the pixie now hovering inches from his face.

Xander grimaced. “Glix! You little demon . . . you like to frighten this old man to death!”

Peals of laughter came from behind the faded settee, chairs, and tables about the room.

“Oh, and look who’s taking himself too seriously now!” Glix chided.

“Well, it weren’t right, you leaving the door open like that,” Xander said, setting down his lantern on a polished claw-foot table. “I thought some fool might have stumbled in here and found you lot.”

“And what if they had at that?” Glix sneered. “The place is haunted, don’t you know? We’d have run them out so fast their head would have had to hurry to catch their own feet, wouldn’t we, lads?”

The pixies, nearly two hundred in all, had emerged from their hiding places. Now they were scattered all about the room, seated on the mantel, the backs of couches, and the edges of tables and lounging about on cushions. A dozen or so were struggling to toss a log on the fire to liven it up for the evening.

Xander removed his hat and coat, tossing them in the general direction of the couch, where several of the pixies intercepted them. The hat they laid carefully with its crown down on the table, while the coat they folded and draped across the back of the couch.

“That ain’t the point,” Xander said to Glix as he sat down with accustomed ease in the large chair near the fireplace. “The last thing we need is having anyone snooping about out here. So long as they be afraid of this manor house, then we’ve got the good life and that’s a fact. If ever they get the idea of what’s going on out here, then they’ll be out to pin the lot of you in a glass display case and me along with you.”

“What’s with the lamplighter?” Plix said with both his fists on his hips. “Who put a gnome in his hat?”

“Maybe you lot don’t remember,” Xander said, taking off his boots and rubbing his feet. The fire was starting to brighten again. “Where were we before we fell into this, eh? That’s right. Wandering about the country from town to town doing that ‘Pixie Circus’ act and then moving on when it all got stale. Starving half the time, we was. Then we lands here and sweet as you please we’re set up for life—if we play it right. We get food, regular pay, and you lot get to sit pretty as you like in them lanterns every night making fun of the people what’s passing underneath. They get their streets all lit up from your jollies and no one’s the wiser, see?”

“Sure, and that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it, though?” Glix beamed. “Say, the boys and I were thinking it time to expand a bit, as it were—explore another room or two here in the residence . . .”

“There’ll be no more talk of that!” Xander said emphatically, pounding his fist down on the arm of the chair and causing a cloud of dust to rise from its ancient upholstery. “I told you lot to leave the rest of the house be. There be something not right about that part of the house, and I don’t want any of you causing trouble. We’ve taken rooms enough.”

“Afraid of the ghosts, are you, Xander?” Plix sneered.

“Ghosts, bah!” Xander said with a wave of his hand. “The spirits don’t frighten me near as much as the idea that some fool might come out here and ruin it for all of us! Mind you, if someone does come in here, you’d best show them the most frightening haunt that ever sprang out of a nightmare or it will be pitchforks and torches for the lot of us!”

Jarod Klum was forced to his knees and the blindfold was removed from his eyes.

Blinking, he knew at once that he was in the Hidden Chamber of the Black Guild Brotherhood located in the basement of the Guild Hall. He had been politely blindfolded by Harv Oakman and Joaquim Taylor after he answered their request to meet them in the alley behind Bolly’s Mill. No doubt he was subsequently led through the secret door in the back of the third closet on the right in the main hall and down the circular stairs to the Hidden Chamber.

The Black Guild Brotherhood was, as everybody knew, a secret organization. Only the most successful and skilled tradesmen and craftsmen of the village were allowed into its ranks, and then only after a strenuous test of the applicant’s courage and determination to be admitted. The men met in secret lairs—or the basement of the old Guild Hall—and they practiced unspeakable rituals—or played cards over drinks—while they plotted among themselves the future of the village. Who was listed among the society’s secret ranks was known to everyone in the town, and to be counted among them was to have one’s future assured.

It was for this reason that Livinia Walters insisted that her husband, Jep—the Supreme Shahanshah of the Eventide Black Guild Brotherhood—admit Jarod Klum into their ranks or suffer the wrath of the wife of the Supreme Shahanshah. Vestia wanted him, and the young man had proved himself to possess both business savvy and the ability to keep a secret with regards to the unfortunate pie incident. So Livinia told her husband to make sure that Jarod was properly initiated into the Black Guild Brotherhood and the sooner the better.

Jep dutifully carried out all the necessary preliminaries for Jarod’s initiation. His name was brought up for recommendation as an
Initiati
and dutifully considered by the other Black Guild Brothers during a break between hands of cards. With the required unanimous consent of the attending
Corpus Brothus
achieved, a secret invitation was issued on special brown parchment written with red ink and sealed in wax with the Shahanshah’s own signet ring.

By the time the invitation arrived in Jarod’s hands, there was hardly a person left in Eventide who didn’t know the invitation had been issued.