Autumn had stripped the maple trees of their green leaves,carpeting the forest in a deep, damp carpet of flame red and russet brown. The smell of damp and mold was everywhere, strangely fresh and enervating.
A man dressed in armor made of black dragon scales plodded silently along the road that meandered through the trees. A shimmering black hell hound pelt hung down his back, the canine’s head sitting atop the man’shelmet and grinning madly with bright white fangs. The man’s hand rested upon ahuge sword that jutted through his belt. Heavy hiking boots, a backpack, a coil of rope… it was the equipment of a man who marched fast and slept rough.Shaven headed, powerful, and suspicious, the Justicar marched his tireless march, his eyes watching the forest for the slightest stir of life.
Hovering gaily in mid air beside him, wearing an outfit to make a mother scream and a father reach for weapons, Escalla the faerie whistled a tune. Two feet tall, her long blonde hair shining straight and free, the faerie travelled without a worry in the world.
Along the road behind them rumbled a mule cart driven by a little man with an axe-beak nose. On the cart hung a banner reading: TRANSPORTS TO ADVENCHER. Polk the teamster drew in deep breaths of satisfaction as he looked about, as if the forest were a personal construction project in which he took huge pride. Beside the cart padded Enid the sphinx-brown haired, smotheredin freckles, and enjoying the dappled forest sun immensely.
They followed an old overgrown road lined occasionally with the heads of sunken statues, the granite faces of ancient kings frowning down at the travelers. Sparing the statues a brief glare of annoyance, the Justicar adjusted the fit of his hell hound and gave a seething growl.
Their road map had finally been found. Polk had been using it as a wrapper for a greasy pile of ham sandwiches. As it turned out, their destination, Hommlet, was not in Keoland as Polk had claimed. Instead it lay three hundred miles to the northeast. Jus was lost, bruised, battered, and had almost been eaten by a hydra a few miles back. This was not one of his better days. Nursing righteous indignation, Jus shot a dire glance back at Polk where he rode upon the wagon.
“Keoland indeed!”
Happy as a clam, Escalla simply shrugged and said, “Get offhis case! So he got the map upside down. It’s the Flanaess! With these kind ofplace names, anyone can make mistakes.” Escalla happily fluttered her wings.“We’ll just go north for a few hundred miles and bam! We’ll be inHommlet.”
Unperturbed by the detour, Escalla, Polk, and Enid simply seemed to look forward to the journey and enjoyed the views. More concerned with safety, food, shelter, and keeping his companions alive, the Justicar looked about the forest and seethed.
“Keoland. I’ve never been to Keoland before.”
“Well, these autumn leaves are neat.” Flying backward,Escalla plucked at a huge red maple leaf. “Feels kind of homey, like I’ve beenhere before.”
The fact that they were totally lost had made no impression on her. Jus looked at her with one raised brow and asked, “Have you beenhere before?”
“Ah, I dunno. Trees… yeah. Leaves… yeah. One patch offorest is really pretty amazingly like another.” Escalla turned around in midairas she flew. “But this”-she gestured at the slowly crumbling remains of a longfallen statue-“this could be familiar! I know I’ve seen statues like thissomewhere before. I mean kinda similar…” She darted forward down the road.“Hey! I know! Let’s follow the road! It must lead to a town!”
“Escalla, we are following the road.”
“Oh. Hoopy!”
The road turned a bend, and a row of thatched roofs suddenly met the travelers’ eyes. It was a village long deserted and left to the weeds.In a wilderness of deserted buildings, only the squirrels reigned. Cottage doors hung open, some creaking slowly like the sagging bones of the dead. Other houses simply lay cold and empty with thistles sprouting from the thatch roofs. The squirrels sped and flitted from roof to roof, wall to wall, perching atop rusted wagons and twittering atop abandoned ploughs. They even perched on the faded sign of an old tavern, making the painted boards sway slowly in the wind.
War had come and gone. The village lay abandoned, the inhabitants having been wise enough to retreat before powers they could not resist. The buildings were still intact but were now home to only an occasional nest of stirges.
As Enid padded her way down the weed-ridden street, Polk the teamster reined the cart to a halt. The sudden silence was deafening.
Grim and tired, the Justicar plodded over to the tavern and prodded the door open with his black sword. The gloomy taproom was deserted, all except for a family of voles.
“Cinders?”
The hell hound searched with senses far sharper than any mortal’s. Stirges, tree hoppers, moss, mold, mouses with tailses, rainpuddles, little spiders.
“No movement?”
No monsters, no magic.
Jus knelt to carefully examine the street. The hard-packed earth was carpeted with weeds, none of which seemed bent or broken by the passing of feet. “And no tracks.”
“Hey! Look at this! It’s a dead elephant!” Escalla hoveredover a broken cottage. “Wow! Ivory! We could find a fortune in ivory!”
Jus walked over to the girl and looked at a row of crushed and shattered houses. Lying sprawled amongst the fallen walls was a huge skeleton easily three times the size of a man. The skeleton’s feet were wrappedin moldering boots. A tree limb had served it for a club. It lay long dead, furred with moss, and with dandelions growing from the sockets of its eyes.
Escalla darted above the houses and rubbed her hands in glee. “There’s another elephant over here! And another!”
“They’re not elephants, Escalla. They’re giants.”
“How do you know?”
“A remarkable lack of elephant-like properties.” Jus levereda flaking piece of bone from the top of a giant’s shin and passed it up toCinders. “I judge them about sixteen feet tall. They must have driven off thevillagers.”
Sitting on a rooftop, Escalla went into a sulk. “Well, theycould have been elephants.”
“Escalla, there are no elephants in the Flanaess.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a ranger. Trust me.”
Whatever had happened to the village, it had happened many years before. The place was clean, no dangers, no enemies. With a heavy sigh, the Justicar unfastened the paws of the hell hound pelt from his neck and drew Cinders from his shoulders to shake the dust out of his friend’s fur. The bigman walked back and sat down on a mounting block outside the tavern, unfastened his helmet and let it crash down into the grass, then began to carefully brush the hell hound’s fur.
Cinders’ tail thumped as the dog skin grinned its madpiranha grin. Camp? Start fire?
“Yep. Guess we can.” The Justicar, a ranger who had fought asavage war against injustice for more years than he cared to tell, spread his friend out across his lap. A big currycomb brushed the hell hound’s fur to abrilliant shine.
Tired and with his ribs aching from a hydra’s bite that hadfailed to pierce his armor’s scales, the Justicar and rose heavily to his feet.New territories meant new work. There would be towns here, meaning inequality and injustice. More than enough labor for a mortal man to do…
“Night’s coming,” he announced. “We’ll stay in the tavern.It’s big, and we can block the doors. Polk, get the mules under cover before thestirges get them. Enid, see if there’s any water down that well.” The rangerretrieved his helmet and his hell hound skin, then shoved open the tavern door. “Check every room. Keep your eyes open. If there’s trouble, call me.”
Inside the tavern, heavy ceiling beams were still hung with bunches of dried herbs. A single iron pot lay overturned beside the hearth. Jus strode ahead of Escalla, checked the kitchens with their pot hooks and empty pantries, then clumped upstairs to check for lurking terrors. A single stirge-big as a small dog, feathery, and shaped like a mosquito-fled in terrorout a window of the master bedroom. Jus banged the shutters closed then turned to make his way back downstairs.
Escalla sprang into view beside him, shedding invisibility with a barely audible pop. Her long blonde hair shimmered like golden silk as the faerie toyed with it nervously in her mouth.
“Hey, Jus? Good fight with the hydra back there, huh? Reallylivened up the day. I mean, you look at a place and think, ‘Gee, now here’s adead spot.’”
She wavered nervously, keeping out of reach. Bone tired, Jus sat down on the steps, wincing as his bruised side twinged. He unclipped the shoulder fastenings of his dragon scale cuirass, unbuckled his sword belt, and let the whole ensemble crash heavily to the ground.
“You and your hydra! Damned thing almost stove in my ribcage.”
“Yeah, but you’re not mad about it or anything, are you?” Thegirl hovered back and forth like a nervous bee. “I mean, it just lets you seehow cool this journey is! Danger everywhere! And I’m sure we can find someinjustice just dying to be, um… re-justiced and stuff.”
The Justicar pierced Escalla with one dire eye and said, “Escalla, we just found a twelve-headed hydra in a watchtower. That’s enoughactivity for today.”
Going into a magnificent sulk, the faerie kicked at a dead woodlouse on the floor. “You’re mad about the hydra. I knew it. Why does it haveto be my fault?”
Unamused, Jus looked levelly at Escalla. “You swiped scrollsfrom its treasure horde, didn’t you?”
“Only one!”
“I thought we had decided not to go haring off on our own?”Jus’ words had the damning weight of common sense. “What did I tell you aboutwandering away where I can’t protect you?”
Stung, Escalla proudly sat her little bottom on a broken stool.
“I wasn’t wandering. There was a plan.” Sniffing,Escalla tried to weasel her way out of making an apology. “I’m a ruinexploration professional. Do I want my comrades to be burdened by useless side trips?” Escalla placed one hand loftily upon her breast. “I was merelyattempting to add to party assets without slowing your travel time. The presence of the hydra was simply an unforeseen variable!”
“You screwed up.”
Escalla regarded her friend through leveled lashes. “I am afaerie. Faeries do not screw up. We just have occasional bouts of adverse results production.”
“Uh-huh. Well, at least you got a spell scroll out of it.”Jus found a dried apricot in his pouch and gave the girl the bigger half. “Arethe rest of the pixies in the forest just like you?”
“Nah. I’m the cute one, one of a kind, and I’m sure as hellno pixie!” Escalla stood, turning to clench her rear. “See those lines?”
“Pure thoroughbred.” Jus lifted one arm experimentally andgave a wince. “I think I hurt.”
“You think?”
“All right, I do hurt.” The man planted a hand beneathhis sweaty tunic and shoved a healing spell into himself, the magic crackling like a pine cone in a fire. “That damned hydra almost killed me!”
“He never laid a glove on you. This is just a trail sore.”Escalla whirred up into the air. “Hey! We found a tavern. I bet there’s abathtub here!” The girl called out of a window. “Hey, Enid! Was there water inthat well?”
The sphinx was sitting in the tavern yard eating a freshly killed stirge. She guiltily hid her meal and cleared her throat. “Um, yes therewas!”
“Well, find a bucket! We’ve got work to do!” Escalla hung herhead out of the window and frowned at the sphinx. “Are you snacking betweenmeals again?”
“No!”
“Enid, stop it! How are we going to land you a niceandrosphinx if you won’t listen to your fashion advisor?” The faerie leanedthrough the windowsill. “Check my bags on the wagon. Have we got any faeriecakes left?”
“One.”
“Hoopy! We can have it with dinner!”
“Ah,” Enid peered into a leather bag. “It’s a bit green.”
“I like ’em green!”
“Ah, it’s a bit greener than you like it.” Enid tilted herhead. “Actually, it’s really kind of furry.”
Escalla opened up her arms. “It’s fungoid enriched! Justbring it in!” The faerie turned happily to Jus. “See J-man, you just relax.Auntie Escalla will take care of everything. A nice bath… and I kept a faeriecake! Enid can walk on your back. She’ll keep her claws in this time, I swear!”
The Justicar expectantly raised one brow, waiting. Escalla turned, muttered beneath her breath, looked at him sourly, and finally sniffed in irritation. “All right, all right! I’m sorry about the hydra! Not that it wasmy fault!”
Evening in the abandoned village had a certain picturesquequality that soothed the soul. The quiet roofs and empty streets caught the light of sunset just so. The plaintive hoots of surges echoed through the trees. Woodsmoke drifted beautiful blue curls against the evening sky. Somewhere in the background, a delicious smell of cooking stole through the tavern, making mouths water and all thoughts turn to supper.
In a stone room at the back of the kitchen, a giant wine barrel had been converted to a makeshift bath. Sitting like a ponderous leviathan, the Justicar let his shaven head jut over the barrel’s rim. Hot watersteamed, heat soothed, and he seemed uncertain whether such luxuries really befitted his role as defender of the weak.
Escalla sat in a copper pot, seething like meat in a stew. The faerie, who always read in the bath, was flipping through the scorched pages of a book rescued from the hydra’s lair. It hovered in midair, held by theeffects of one of her spells. The book was ancient. Escalla became more and more fascinated by the pages and even managed to lose interest in the delicious smell of frying meat coming from the kitchen a few feet away. After several long minutes of relaxed reading, she set the book aside and used an old toothbrush to scrub at an itchy spot between her wings. With her foot drumming the bottom of her bath like a well scratched dog, she looked over to where the Justicar’s headfloated amidst the steam. She gave a satisfied sigh and swam closer for a better look.
“Hey, Jus! Do you have to shave your head a lot? I mean, isit just a once a week thing? Once a day?”
“Whenever.” Jus moved and a vast swell of water spilled overthe edge of the gigantic barrel. “It’s not important.”
“You know, I could wax it for you-smoother finish thanshaving.”
“I just shave it to be practical.”
“Yeah right, and in no way to project a monastic, ruthlessappeal.” Escalla dipped her brush in her bath and scrubbed at something beneaththe waterline. “But hey, there’s candles and stuff here. We can do wax.”
“Escalla, there aren’t enough healing spells in all theFlanaess to let you wax my head.”
Trying to get on with the business of his bath, Jus sniffed suspiciously at a piece of soap-flower scented and taken from Enid and Escalla’sprivate stores-then awkwardly began to scrub his feet.
“Good book?” he asked.
“It’s a spellbook,” she replied. “High level. There’s onlyone or two bits I can understand.” Escalla made a little sign with one finger,retrieved her book, and turned a page. Little flakes of burned parchment showered onto the floor. “I might be able to salvage something useful and get afew new spells out of it.”
Jus raised one shaggy brow and said, “How do you get morespells? Will you have to go see your teacher?”
The change in Escalla’s countenance was infinitely subtle.Only someone who knew her well would ever have noticed the pallid stiffness of her hands.
“I don’t have teachers.” Pages closed with a coldsnap. “I work alone.”
The subject lay where it had fallen. Jus had hounded countess clues to ground before now, but he knew when to leave well enough alone. Escalla’s past was a line drawn across her soul. The period before she had takenup with Jus and Cinders was something she preferred to forget.
Jus threw a wash cloth at her. It hit with a satisfactory splat.
“Spell copying is expensive. Don’t you need gems to grindinto ink?”
“It’s no problem!” Escalla peeled the wet cloth away from herface and looked into the kitchen. “Hey, Polk! Do we have any gems?”
Enid and Polk had just pulverized gems in a pestle to make Enid’s next stun symbol papyrus. Freezing guiltily, Enid covered the pestle withone paw and said, “Ah, no.”
“Damn!” Escalla rested in her tub with her pretty pink feetsteaming out in the open air. “Polk, go look in my bags, will you?”
Indignant at being disturbed, Polk slammed pots and pans about the kitchen table, putting the powdered gems dangerously close to the seasonings for the night’s meal.
“We spent ’em, girl!” shouted the teamster. “That’s whattreasure’s for! Supplies! Essentials! Gifts to the needy and glory to the gods!”
The faerie pursed her mouth. “You spent it on booze, didn’tyou?”
“Essential exploration assets!” Polk waved his hands. “Anevening drink by the campfire is a prime piece of any adventure! Just read the literature!”
“Polk, one of these days, you are going to get such a pinch.”Escalla irritably went back to her book. “All right, I’ll use the burned versionfor now, but we need some gems-just little semi-precious ones.”
Jus reached out with the point of his sword and tugged a hanging blanket back into place, sealing the bathroom off from the kitchen.
“If I find any lying around, I’ll let you know.”
With an expressive little sigh, the faerie slung her hair down the back of the cooking pot. She leaned her head against the rim of her bath and paddled with her toes.
“My water’s getting cold. Can we get Cinders in here to warmit up?”
“Near a bath? Remember last time?”
The last time had been in the city of Trigol about two months before. The trouble of dunking a wailing hell hound skin into an unwanted bath had been amusing, to say the least. Escalla chuckled, then suddenly discovered that she was sitting on her scrubbing brush. “You know, for a refugee from theAbyss, that dog can be a real coward!” The girl lay in her bath and smiled. “Doyou think they ever replaced that ceiling?”
“Remember the noise he made?”
“I remember.” Rolling her head, Escalla slyly regarded hershaven-headed friend. “Hey, J-man! That was the first time I saw you getting outof the bath.”
Jus decided not to comment. He propped his sword within easy reach and reclined once again.
Unperturbed, Escalla leaned over the rim of her pot and gave a feline little smile. “You have two cute little dimples in your rear.”
Jus glowered. “That is called ‘muscle confirmation’.”
“That just happen to be shaped like cute itty bitty dimples!”
Jus nursed his pride with a sniff and rearranged his sword again.
There was something odd about the village. Something disquieting. Jus knew Cinders had sensed it, though the hell hound had seen nothing invisible. There were no traps and apparently no creatures lurking underneath the floors, yet there was a sense of imminence, as though something dark and sinister had the place on its mind.
For her part, Escalla had no suspicions. She seemed to have other troubles on her mind. Coming to the edge of her bath, she looked out of the cooking pot at the Justicar.
“This is kind of a nice place though, huh?” The girl waved anervous hand about the room. “It’s a convenient little stop. Did you see all thesquirrels? Those things are really cute!”
“Very.”
“I like them. Too bad we can’t stop. We should get out ofhere first thing tomorrow.” Escalla sighed and sniffed the delicious smell offrying in the kitchen. “I thought we only had hard tack left. What’s fordinner?”
“Just eat it. You’ll love it.”
The faerie squirted water through her clasped hands. “So arewe leaving at dawn?”
“Maybe.” The Justicar heaved a sigh. “Polk’s gotten us lost.We’ll have to circle around, find a settlement, and figure out just where we areso we can plan a route.”
“Will it take long?”
The Justicar rose half out of his barrel, stretching and cracking his shoulders. His skin was pale where his armor always covered him, but his head and hands were tanned. “You’re very keen for us to keep heading forHommlet.”
“Yeah.” The faerie shrugged, sat up, and began to wring outher long blonde hair. “There’s something weird about these woods, something…I don’t know. It makes me feel creepy. I just want to get out of here.” The girlsighed. “I wanna go to Hommlet. We’ve got the deeds, man! Still, I want to makesure no one’s really unhappy about it or anything.”
“No one’s unhappy.” Jus watched Escalla for a long moment,strangely pleased by the efficient way she wound her wet hair into a towel and tied it into a turban. “Most everything has good in it. You just have to knowwhere to look.”
With her slim, naked back to him, Escalla’s little wingsgracefully fanned themselves dry. “I’ve never really been told that I have muchgood in me.”
Jus knew when to listen. He rose out of his bath and sat with a towel wound about his middle, leaning forward onto his hairy knees and watching her in silence. Slim and strangely graceful, Escalla quietly wound herself inside a towel. She turned to look over at him, her face thin, her shape tiny and vulnerable.
“I lived alone for a long time, Jus. A long, long time.” Thegirl turned away and pulled her towel tight. “Thanks. You know, just for… forstuff.”
Jus studied the faerie for a long, quiet moment. She fidgeted with her towel, staring at a puddle of bath water on the floor. Jus had never gotten on particularly well with people. He did what he had to in order to follow clues, sift information, and feel the pulse of a town, but his days and nights were spent in the company of his own thoughts. First Cinders and then Escalla had come to knock on the doors of his citadel, and now his days of solitude were over.
Trudging damply over to Escalla’s side, the man took hersmall hand into his fingers, squeezed softly-and then turned to wander off andfind his clothes.
“Dinner’s done.”
Escalla looked down at her hand and gave a rueful little smile. Wavering up into the air, she flew off in search of Cinders, hoping he hadn’t eaten too much brown coal before blowing her hair dry. Polk ran past herthrough the kitchen holding plates of surprisingly glittery-looking meat. There was whiskey in the jug and a fire in the grate. All in all it seemed the village offered them a cheery night.
* * *
With the kitchen now deserted, an eerie quiet fell. Outsideon the roofs, the stirges hooted plaintively for blood. Ashes hissed in the stove, and an old brown tea kettle leaked steam into the breeze. Above the stove, there was a subtle stir of motion. A wisp of smoke in the chimney swirled then crept out into the light to hover just above the floor. A single eye solidified in the smoke, and then a long trunk-like snout sniffed and snuffled at the table top. The smoke creature drifted carefully along the table then flowed down onto the floor. It sniffed at the giant wine barrel with its cloudy water.
A scent caught the trunk’s attention. The eye swiveled,blinked, and the creature hovered above Escalla’s deserted bath. The trunksniffed deeply at the water while the eye carefully examined the old rusty pot.
A single golden hair lay floating in the water. The smoke creature carefully picked up its find, examined it carefully, staring at it inch by inch, then gripped the strand tight.
A sudden noise came from the door. The smoke creature made a splash as it tore across the room and shot back up the chimney, fleeing into the night. Padding into the kitchen with an empty bucket hanging from her mouth, Enid blinked, then put down her bucket and frowned. She lumbered into the room, sniffing carefully and following a smoky trail that wound across the table and over toward the baths.
Escalla’s voice pealed in from the taproom behind her. “Enid!Come on, hon! We have to rinse all this gem powder off the food before it sets!”
Her freckled nose snuffling, Enid creased her pretty brows into a frown. “Wait! There’s something here!” The cat-woman peered suspiciouslyat the chimney. “Something’s up the chimney.”
“It’s just a stirge. Don’t worry. I blocked the chimney witha metal grate.” Escalla, still resplendent in a pair of little towels, poppedinto the room. “Come on. Let’s clean off this fried rabbit or whatever it is,then we can beat Polk with a stick!”
Reluctantly Enid filled a bucket from Jus’ bath then turnedto go. With a last look behind her, she padded back to the taproom to join her dinner and her friends.