Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (3 page)

“This is Charter Square,” Jarod continued. “Cooper Walters is there on the right. Across the square are a lot of smaller shops—Charon’s Goods is nice and Mordechai will treat you right. King’s Road is there just left of the shops . . . that way takes you to the smithy if you need something repaired. There in the middle of the square is the Cursed Sundial, and over here on the left is the Griffon’s Tale Inn, where . . .”

“A cursed sundial?” Edvard exclaimed as he quickly strode over to the pedestal, gazing at the charred and cracked surface peeking out from beneath the snow. “What deep mystery is there here, my good friends! How came this place to become cursed? What tragic story unfolded at this very spot where time itself was assaulted by . . .”

“Come on,” Jarod urged as he crossed the square to the north where a building nearly three stories tall looked down over the street. A large ornamental sign swung noisily from the iron bracket: a crest with a griffon emblazoned on it with a long tail winding around its body. The lettering proclaimed it the
Griffon’s Tale Inn.
“Let’s get inside.”

Jarod opened the door, and Edvard, seeing another chance to make an entrance, rushed into the opening and flourished his cape as he bowed deeply.

“Good day and good morrow to one and all,” Edvard proclaimed, his voice carrying past the great room in which they stood and probably well past the kitchen beyond. “Let no fear enter your hearts, for I have come to ward off the evil that is nigh upon you. I am . . .
the Dragon’s Bard!
”

There were two humans in the great room and a gnome in one far corner. Each looked up at the interruption in mild curiosity. A third human near the large fireplace in the far wall did not even move.

Harv Oakman squinted for a moment. “What was that again?”

“’Tis I,” Edvard crowed once more. “The Dragon’s Bard!”

Harv shook his head. “Sorry, don’t know it.”

Squire Tomas Melthalion broke the awkward moment as he hurried into the room from the kitchen, slamming the door shut behind Jarod and his charges with his shoulder even as he wiped his wide hands on an already filthy apron. “Friends of yours, eh, Master Klum? Well, welcome to the Griffon’s Tale Inn, which—as the proprietor of this-here establishment I can tell you—has been in this location since even before the founding of the village itself.”

“Thank you, good Squire Tomas,” Edvard replied in sudden earnest. “But I come on a matter of great urgency, which . . .” Edvard stopped and pointed at a dark, hunched figure seated by the great fireplace.

“Oh . . . him! Do not concern yourself with Lord Gallivant over there—no one knows his real name—he just sits in the corner talking to his own memories. But as you’ll no doubt be needing a place to lodge, have you heard the story of the great service that I, myself, did for the King when he passed by the village not far from this very spot?”

“Ah, and you touch on my very point at last,” the Dragon’s Bard began. “This beautiful village of Ever-tide . . .”

“Eventide,” Jarod corrected.

“Of course . . . Eventide . . . this very selfsame beautiful village is in the gravest of danger. The great and terrible Khrag—King of Dragons—has sent me here to collect stories for his amusement, and unless . . .”

“Stories! Oh, I’ve a story for you!” Tomas exclaimed.

Jarod groaned. Tomas pressed the stranger down into a chair.

“Here, sit you down next to our resident Lord Gallivant and let this Squire tell you about it! Of course, he was not the King then, and some might have said that the service done was nothing of any real importance, but when you hear how . . .”

“Squire,” Jarod spoke up, “these men are hungry—please bring them dinner.”

“Now?” Tomas sputtered. “But I was just about to tell these travelers . . .”

“Yes, but they have both been arrested by the Constable Pro Tempore, and I must get these dangerous men back under lock and key soon,” Jarod explained. “Of course, if you don’t want the village’s coins for their dinners, then I can take them right back and . . .”

“No bother! No bother,” Tomas replied as he hurried off.

“Are you getting all of this?” Edvard said sotto voce to Abel.

Abel only nodded, not quite keeping up.

As Abel scribbled furiously on a large parchment scroll, Edvard inquired why Jarod had stopped the innkeeper from telling him the story.

“Look, Mister Dragon’s Beard . . .”

“Bard,” Edvard said through a tight smile. “Dragon’s
Bard.
”

“Well, if you’re really interested in hearing the Squire’s story,” Jarod continued, “then I’m sure that the Squire would be more than happy to tell it while dinner is served . . . then refresh your memory of the telling by telling it again while you’re leaving the Inn . . . and again anytime, for that matter, that you come within earshot of the Squire. Believe me, there’s practically no avoiding it, as anyone in the town can pretty well attest, including me.”

“And this fellow here—this Lord Gallivant?” Edvard asked, gesturing toward the gaunt and grizzled man who sat muttering to himself near the fire. His clothing was faded and nearly threadbare; he wore a military cape that looked older than the Epic War itself.

Jarod shrugged. “Don’t know . . . nobody knows. He’s been here as long as I can remember.”

“So what about your story, eh?” the Dragon’s Bard asked.

“Don’t have one,” Jarod answered with a deep-felt sigh.

Abel stopped scribbling at once, glancing up questioningly.

“Then we shall write you one,” the Dragon’s Bard offered cheerfully. “No! Better still, we shall help you to live one! Tell me, are there any women in your life?”

Jarod eyed him with suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

The Dragon’s Bard smiled. “Because every young man’s great story begins with a woman!”

• Chapter 2 •

Wishers of the Well

Caprice Morgan leaned her seventeen-year-old face over the edge of the wishing well, her elbows resting on the cool stone edge and her elegant hands, embarrassingly calloused, cupping her small chin and smooth—if smudged—cheeks. Her carefully combed auburn hair fell around her face. Her wide green eyes gazed down the circular shaft of the well, trying to see something of her own future, though she knew that even if the well
were
working properly, it was not a scrying pool and could not possibly know her future. Still, she leaned against the edge and peered into it.

Her future, if the well were to be believed, was dark.

The village had been founded largely around the Inn, but the Inn had come into existence to serve the travelers who for ages untold had come to the wishing well. The well, in use since the time of legends, sat in the woods northwest of the town, snugly surrounded by the Norest Forest near the foot of Mount Dervin, the highest point in three counties. For centuries the well had been tended by the wish-women—heiresses to enchantment, blessed with knowledge of wishcraft—who kept the well supplied from the magic of the surrounding woods. Dwarves, elves, humans, and others of all ranks and classes would make their way to the well from their distant homes to make wishes come true. The Griffon’s Tale Inn was built to serve those pilgrims, and the town grew up around the Inn.

This great, long, and profitable tradition kept the town safe and secure—until a wizard came one day with a wish that was too big for the well to grant. Brenna Morgan, the High Wish-Woman at the time, failed to please the wizard or fulfill his terrible wish. In dreadful anger, the wizard broke the wishes of the well with a curse that would last until the sundial in Charter Square heralded both sunrise and sunset at the same time.

It was a blow to the economy of the village but a disastrous tragedy for Meryl Morgan and his three daughters. The breaking of the well also broke Brenna’s magical ability and her health. She faded away, this wish-woman who had tended the well since long before her wedding to Meryl, and he was left with his three daughters to struggle on without her. Their girls—Sobrina, Caprice, and Melodi—were natural talents at gathering wishes, as their mother had been, but none of them had the opportunity or the wealth to be properly trained in wishcraft at the Enchanting Academy in Mordale. So each gathered what meager wishes she could to keep the well going.

But the wishes that were now granted from the well always had something peculiarly wrong with them. That they would grant the desires of the wisher was true, but the boon from the well always came in unpredictable and occasionally disastrous ways. One man wished for untold wealth—only to have a sum appear that was too small to mention. A woman asked for renowned beauty—only to find herself the talk of all the Ogre lands. One very unfortunate young lady presumptuously wished that her boyfriend would “grow up.” He thereafter could only find employment as the “tall boy” in Captain Kobold’s Carnival of Freaks.

Although the pilgrims quit coming for the broken wishes of the well, the sisters were able—if barely—to make a living by supplying smaller wishes to the villagers nearby. But such wishes came hard for the wisher-women of the well, and it seemed as though they never had any wishes of their own left over.

“Caprice!”

The sound of her name echoing through the surrounding woods drew the wisher-woman back from her dark reflections at the well.

“Capriiiiice!” came the distant sound.

“Coming, Sobrina,” she called back.

Caprice turned from the well and stepped out of the gazebo that enclosed it. It once had been a beautifully maintained lattice structure that rose gracefully to a point exactly above the well. Now the paint that had protected it from the elements was badly weathered, and pieces of the ornamental carvings had fallen into such decay that some of them were no longer recognizable. Short pieces of the latticework had also fallen down and lay kicked to one side or the other. The ground about the well was covered in glittering white where ice crystals had formed on the crest of the snowfall. There were paths trodden down through the snow that led from the wintry glade down the slope from the well to Wishing Lane and more narrow paths that led into the surrounding forest of trees in their winter sleep. Caprice knew them all because she and her sisters had made them in their continuous work at keeping wishes in their well.

She paused by the rusting iron box next to the gazebo. The lock had long since broken and there had never been enough coin to have it fixed. She raised the lid on the box quickly, half out of habit and half out of hope. The hinges squealed terribly into the silence of the woods around her.

The box was empty.

Caprice slammed the lid shut with a clang and pulled her thick shawl closer around her shoulders. It had been an impulse to look in the box, and now she felt both angry and foolish for having done so. She knew that there had been times in the past—her father’s past—when that box had had to be emptied morning and afternoon because of the grateful donations that had been left in it by wishers at the well. There had been more wealth than even the wish-women could have wished for, which, Caprice reminded herself, would never have worked anyway because wish-women wishing their own wishes from the wishes they collected formed a complete circle, which was forbidden by the basic rules of wishcraft—or so her mother had told them when they were young.

Not that she or any of her sisters actually knew much of anything about the craft, she thought darkly as she plodded down the path to the lane below. Her mother had taught them the basics at home. It was part of their family life—especially after her mother had delivered a third daughter into the household. Her mother told each of them that when the time was right they would be sent to the Enchanting Academy in Mordale and learn proper wishcraft. But that was before the well was cursed, the wishes were broken, and her mother passed away.

Caprice reached the lane. Left would take her farther down to the banks of the Wanderwine River and the footbridge that eventually crossed the river to the Mordale road and Eventide. She turned to the right instead and followed the more narrow lane around a low hill and into Wisher’s Hollow.

Her home was in the shadow of a grand edifice only partly realized. The foundations had been laid for a palatial structure with grand turrets at the corners and cone-peaked roofs. A quarter of the intended building had been fully finished by Meryl Morgan at the insistence of his wife, Brenna, so that they might live there while the rest of the house was completed. Thus the kitchen, pantries, and what would have been servants’ quarters were finished, with the archways to the imagined rooms beyond boarded over. The stone for the walls, the tools, the hods, piles of timber, and frayed bags of sand lay stacked under the blanketing snow. They had seen many such snowfalls down the long and painful years, hiding the memory of their abandoned hopes.

Thin smoke rose from the chimney, curling over with the chill northern breeze falling down the side of Mount Dervin beyond. A tall, thin figure stood on the porch still calling out her name.

“Capriiiiiiiiice!”

“Here!” she replied as loudly as she could, risking the release of one side of her shawl to wave her gloved hand.

Sobrina, standing on the step, looked in her direction and then turned, reentering the house. Caprice knew that it was all the acknowledgement she would get. She continued down the lane to the finished portion of the house, carefully climbed the short steps onto the porch, opened the door, and stepped inside.

She stopped momentarily in the mudroom, pulling her shawl from her shoulders and hanging it on a wall peg. She tugged at the shoes on her feet, impatient about unlacing them, and finally managed to get them off. Then she slid her feet into her slippers and donned an apron. She didn’t much care for the apron and would have eschewed wearing it if possible. Her elder sister’s presence nearby made such a choice impossible.

Caprice entered the kitchen and was struck by a flood of sensations: the wet warmth of cooking and the smell of boiling onions and cabbage. She heard the hiss of the stew as it boiled over the edges of the iron pot suspended above the fire and the faint humming of her sister Melodi as she sat completely lost in the book she was reading in the corner. A long wooden spoon stirred the pot seemingly on its own while Sobrina leaned over the table in the center of the kitchen, her left index finger running down the lines of a recipe in the narrow book while her right hand twisted behind her in the air as without thought she projected her magic to move the spoon in the pot. Everything in the kitchen seemed timed to the gentle, rhythmic creaking of the rocking chair in the inglenook next to the fireplace, where their father sat staring into the flames that never seemed to warm him.