The Merchant Adventurer Read online

  Dimsbury said, “Creation is a messy business. One makes a great many mistakes, you see. But thankfully, I have a very deep pit in which to bury my failures.”

  In the silence that followed the word ‘failures,’ Asarah could hear the crushed corpse of the poor Orc still bouncing off the sides of the pit far below. Each time, the report of it was fainter and fainter.

  Dimsbury answered the unspoken question, “Bottomless.”

  Samga dragged the heavy cover back into place.

  “Samga?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Send out patrols. Catch them. Bring them to me.”

  “They might get a bit killed during the catching, my Lord,” cautioned Samga.

  “Whatever is left, you bring it to me. And then? We will have them roasted on spits in the main hall.”

  “The Orcs won’t like that, Master. Spoils the flavor of the meat.”

  “So I am told, Samga, but let that be a punishment for letting these dilettantes through in the first place.”

  Samga nodded and turned to go. “Wait,” commanded Dimsbury, turning his attention on the wide-eyed Asarah, who was still staring at the pit in the center of the room.

  “You. Yes,” Dimsbury snapped his fingers, “Yoo-hoo.”

  Asarah looked at him the way a frightened rabbit looks at a fox.

  “Have you changed your mind about entering my employ?”

  Asarah trembled while she shook her head no.

  “Really? Even after what you have just seen?” Dimsbury asked, more fascinated than upset.

  Again, Asarah shook her head. Dimsbury’s eyes darkened, and Asarah knew in her heart that she was going to be crushed and tossed in the pit like the butcher’s scraps.

  Dimsbury waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, very well. Samga, chain her to that table over there. Perhaps boredom will change her mind. And give her some rags so she can clean up the blood on the floor. Excuse me, you stubborn woman, I must return to my work. Be quiet, and I won’t have to waste my time killing you.”

  28

  As soon as Boltac and Relan left the main passageway, the tunnel they were following sloped sharply up, then down. As they pressed on it twisted to the right, and then back to the left, as if the creatures that had made it couldn’t make up their mind which way they really wanted to go.

  When they came to a split in the tunnel Boltac went to the left. “You’re going left?” protested Relan.

  “Shaddap,” said Boltac. Three steps in, the tunnel bent sharply to the left, dropped three feet, and split again. This time Boltac went to the right.

  “Are you happy now?” asked Boltac.

  “Shh,” said Relan.

  “Never mind the melodrama, let’s keep moving,” said Boltac.

  “But what if they are following us?”

  “Then we shouldn’t make ourselves easy to catch,” said Boltac, quickening his pace. But no sooner had he turned the corner than he came to another forking passageway. This time a passage led off to the right and just a few steps further, they could see it split yet again.

  Boltac didn’t break stride as he went to the left again, just to piss Relan off. This tunnel rose steeply and twisted to the right, above the original passage, then dropped into another junction that looked suspiciously like that the one that they had just come from, but that couldn’t be possible.

  “Ennh,” said Boltac.

  “We’re in a maze,” said Relan.

  “No, we’re not, we’re just fine, I know right where we are,” said Boltac, not managing to convince himself or his young Companion. The Merchant turned around and led them back the way they had come, but after three turns, they found themselves back in the same room. Or one that looked exactly like it.

  “We’re in a maze of twisty passages…” said Relan.

  ”…all alike,” finished Boltac. He unslung the sack from his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” said Relan. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  “I’m checking something,” said Boltac, digging around in his sack. “Besides, if all these passages are alike, then it doesn’t matter where we are.”

  “Unless we’re being stalked.”

  “Ah ha!” Boltac lifted the Magic-detecting wand from the bag. He waved it up and down in the air and then held it in each of the four exits. The wand did not react.

  “What?”

  “This maze of little twisty passages is just a twisty little maze of passages. It’s not Magic.”

  “So? We’re still lost.”

  “Yeah, we’re lost, but we’re not completely screwed. A solution exists,” said Boltac holding up his finger.

  “And that is?”

  “Let’s try always taking the right-most passage.” Relan agreed to this and they set off. They walked for what seemed an eternity, but every junction they came to looked the same as the one they had come from. After an unknowable number of intersections, Boltac muttered, “Twisty maze of little passages.” He said it like the curse that it was.

  Relan sat down roughly and half said, half sobbed, “It’s no use. We’re lost.”

  “Easy kid,” said Boltac, “It’s an Adventure. It never goes according to plan.”

  “PLAN!” exploded Relan. “WHAT PLAN?”

  “Shhhh!” said Boltac. “We don’t know where we are. But more importantly, we don’t know where they are.” He sat down next to the young man and said, “We’ll rest here for a minute, get our spirits back.”

  He reached into his Bag of Holding and produced a skin of water and some dried meat. He drank some water and passed it to Relan. Relan swallowed greedily and wiped his chin off with his tunic.

  For a while, they sat chewing the dried meat. Finally, Boltac said, “Okay, kid, I get that I’m an idiot for doing this but, not for nothing, what are you doing here?”

  “I want to be a Hero.”

  “Yeah, but why? I mean, before, I’d sooner die than be forced to listen to your story, but since we’re probably going to die down here anyway…” Boltac said with a smile.

  “Why are you so cheery about it?”

  “You don’t know nuttin, kid? This is an Adventure. Of course, my favorite Adventures are trading expeditions, but same thing. And the First Rule of Adventures is: They’re always miserable. If you expect that–if you expect the worst–then you have a much better time of it.”

  “You mean like my feet and those boots?” Relan said, wiggling his bruised and battered toes.

  “Ah, that’s nothing. Once, we got enveloped in a dust storm coming out of Shatnapur. The winds blew for three days. We had no idea where we were going. Even the damned camels got lost. We were out of water for three days before we found an oasis. Hell, oasis, that’s being generous, it was a puddle of muddy water. Some of the camels wouldn’t even drink from it. But I drank. Felt fine for about an hour. Then I shit myself all the way to the next well. Eh, it was awful. My camel went from sand colored to Boltac’s Bowels Brown. Terrible.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “That’s Adventure. Why d’ya think I own a store?”

  “Because you’re old and fat and mean.”

  “I wasn’t always old and fat, y’know. And someday, if you’re very, very lucky, you’ll be old and fat like me. And you might not mind so much.”

  “Not me,” said Relan, “I’m out to make a name for myself.”

  Boltac stretched his legs out in front of him, and lowered the shutter on the Lantern so that a faint red glow filled the room. The Merchant stared into the gloom for a long time. Then he said, “Once, long before you were born, I carried a sword for a living. From far to the north. I first came to Robrecht from Mercia. To conquer the wilds and make a name for myself.”

  “But you don’t look Mercian.”

  “I’m not. Not exactly. My tribe is, well, we’re scattered. My family traded in the Mercian Empire, but weren’t exactly citizens, you see. So my dream was… well, same as your dream. I was going to go out in the world an
d prove myself to be strong and brave. Make a name for myself. Earn the token of citizenship. And then… and then I don’t know what.

  “My father thought I was an idiot. And it took me years to realize he was right. The day I mustered out for that long march south, he said, ‘Boltac, you’re a trader, a Merchant, it is in your blood. Someday, remember it and learn to be happy.’

  “I told him I was going to be a soldier and make him proud. His eyes filled with tears when he told me that killing would never make him proud. That I should be a Merchant, keep a store, raise a family, know something of life before I died. Add something to the ledger of the world, rather than take, take, take.

  “I don’t remember exactly, but I suppose I said something much like you did. Called him old and fat, probably called him a coward… ehhh. He was a lotta things, my old man, but he wasn’t a coward.” Boltac shook his head and looked away for a long time. “Anyway, I never saw my father again. I came south. I think I imagined we would conquer the Southron Kingdoms single-handedly. There were four of us in the 7th Repreitors. We were thick as thieves and twice as greedy.

  “Athos, he was a scout. And far south of here, just coming out of the mountains, he was scouting wide on the left flank of the army. And he came across an ancient city, crumbling on the edge of the jungle. Of course, there was no one there. But there was the promise of riches. The untold riches of an ancient civilization. You don’t have to be a Merchant’s son to do the math on that one.

  “We bribed the lieutenant. I was a supply sergeant, so I got us what we needed. And off we rode, bold as Heroes.”

  “Did you find riches, powerful weapons, jewels?” asked Relan, his eyes wide with greed and Glory.

  “What we found was jewel-encrusted death. I was the only one who made it out alive. I lifted a terrible sword from a funeral bier, and as soon as I drew it, the sword attacked. Not me though. The cursed thing welded itself to my hand and went after my Companions. Within minutes, they were all dead, and I was alive.”

  “It wasn’t my fault, but I never forgave myself. Of course, I couldn’t go back, not with all of them dead. So I deserted. Six months later I heard that the army had been destroyed, broken against the White Walls of Yorn. So I came to Robrecht, which wasn’t under the Mercian Empire at that point and, well, the rest, as they say… “

  Even as he said this, Boltac recognized that it wasn’t the whole truth, but it was as much of the truth as he was willing to tell.

  “What happened to the sword?” asked Relan.

  “I carried the awful thing with me in my travels. Thinking that the power and the skill of the sword would make me a mighty robber. It saved my life with some bandits, but in the end the screams, the memories of the faces of the men I had killed, especially my comrades in arms–who had become my family after I abandoned my own–I couldn’t bear the touch of the thing.

  “I threw it in the deepest part of the river Swift, and I have not drawn a sword since that day. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t care if I never draw one again.”

  “After you kill the Wizard you mean?”

  “I don’t want to kill anybody.”

  “But he is a terrible man!”

  “Fine, you kill him.”

  Relan thought on this a while and said, “With such a powerful sword, you could have been a King.”

  “Nah, kid. They don’t let guys like me be King. Not even in fairy tales do guys like me get to be King.”

  “Why? Can’t anybody be a King?”

  “You gotta better shot of being King than I do. Farm Boy turns out to be a prince, that’s a great story. Merchant? Nah, that never happens. Not in a million years, kid. And y’know–”

  Boltac put a finger to his lips and looked up sharply. Relan heard it: something moving through the tunnel. The sound of strange, scraping footfalls and a hissing. In the passageway they had just come through they could see the flickering orange glow of torchlight. It grew brighter and brighter. Something was tracking them.

  Boltac whispered, “Draw your sword. This is where you get to be a Hero.”

  “What?” whispered Relan.

  “Listen,” said Boltac, “Here’s how we’re going to do this.”

  29

  Hissglarg smelled human. And orders were very clear about humans. They were to be eaten. Not the crunchy face-parts, no, no. Those were to be saved for identification, of course. But all the rest was fair game. Like all Orcs, Hissglarg loved human meat. Of course, he had been bred to.

  It was a silly trait, one that evolution would never have put up with. All Orcs really needed to survive was a constant diet of the deep minerals they had been grown from. But when Alston Dimsbury set out to do a job of Evil Wizarding, he didn’t leave it half done. No matter what they needed to live, Alston had decided that his Orcs would have a proper lust for the flesh of mankind. What did he care for the delicate processes that formed the natural world?

  This was all well and good (especially for Dimsbury’s vanity) but human meat played hell on an Orc’s digestion. In fact, nothing about an Orc’s digestion was very good. A single Orc, left to its own devices, could eat rock and soil all day yet fail to extract enough nutrition to survive. And so this odd, created species dug and quarried and filtered and smelted and refined. They excavated vast underground complexes, not for pretty jewels or shiny metals, but for dinner.

  Hissglarg held the barely sputtering torch close the ceiling and sniffed the air. Yes, this time to the left. He sucked the air and scuttled forward. Strictly speaking, Hissglarg didn’t need light. Born and raised underground, the feeling of the rock under his claws and the scents of minerals, warren-mates, and intruders were all he needed to navigate his way through the most tortuous of underground passages. He could never get lost. He would just follow his own smell back the way he had come.

  Orcs carried the torches because of something the-one-who-spoke-the-human-tongue had told them. Hissglarg couldn’t remember the exact words right now, especially with the intoxicating smell of meat so close. It was something about humans liking light, that if they were lost in the dark they would come right toward it. (It was close enough, what Samga had told his fellow Orcs was, “Keep the light in their eyes. They are easier to catch that way.”)

  As he stepped out into the junction, he thought he saw something move to his left. But he when he turned to look at it, brilliant light flooded the passageway. It was so brilliant he thought it was that most abhorred of things, the sun. But what would the sun be doing underground? Hissglarg covered his eyes and cried out in pain. Then he threw his sputtering torch at the source of light. The light faded. In the returning darkness, he saw a fat sack of human meat scrambling along the ground after a lantern. Ah, dinner! thought Hissglarg.

  The entree on the ground turned and looked behind Hissglarg. Its eyes went wide and it shouted something in the meat-tongue. Hissglarg did not understand what it said, but he looked behind him anyway. And there, to his surprise, was more meat. This one held a sword in its shaking hand. It was younger and thinner than the one on the ground. In fact, it looked kind of stringy. But Hissglarg would eat the sword too. Metal was tasty and good for you. The Orc grabbed the shaking metal blade in one of his taloned hands. Tears streamed down the boy’s face, but he did not run.

  Then there was a thud-clink and blackness closed in from around the edges of Hissglarg’s vision. The Orc collapsed to the floor unconscious.

  Relan blinked the tears back from his eyes and saw Boltac standing over the collapsed Orc with a heavy coin purse in his right hand.

  “Why didn’t you stab him?” Boltac demanded.

  “What did you hit him with?” Relan asked, still shaking and trying to change the subject.

  “Money. About 150 gold pieces. Mightier than the sword,” Boltac said with a wink.

  30

  After she was shackled, Asarah crawled under the table and lay down. She did not cry. She did not give up. But, when the rage and the adrenaline shivered out
of her, she grew tired.

  She struggled to stay awake, to observe her surroundings and her captor carefully, to find a weak link in her chain, a soft spot in the wood of the table, or any flicker of distraction that she could use against the Wizard. But there was none. After Samga had left, Dimsbury had turned his back on her and devoted his full attention to the out-of-focus flame on the other side of the chamber.

  She had watched him for about 15 minutes before the chanting started. It was low and guttural, and sounded like the Wizard was speaking with more than one voice. The sound of it seemed to come from behind her. But when she whirled around, there was only the curving stone wall of the spherical chamber, catching the echoes and playing tricks on her.

  The effect of the strange humming/singing noise coming from the Wizard’s throat, the stench of a smoldering brazier in the corner, and the hypnotic flickering of the in-focus/out-of-focus flame/non-flame trapped under a cylinder of blown glass all conspired to put her to sleep.

  When Asarah awoke, she could not have said if minutes had passed, or days. She heard voices. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the strange flame under glass was brighter now, and in better focus. The fingers of eerie light it cast throughout the room were more substantial, carved deeper shadows. On the far side of the room, two of the shadows were talking.

  Dimsbury towered over a cowled figure standing in the deepest shadows. The two of them spoke in whispers. She couldn’t make out any of what they said, until the Wizard stood up straight and exclaimed, “What? Come to rescue… the cook? You must be joking.”

  The smaller figure shook his head and murmured more intently. When he paused, the Wizard said, “Ho, ho, ho, no. Really? That is rich. Yes, yes. No, wait: bring them here. Making an example of them will be a pleasant diversion.”

  “Yes,” continued the Wizard, after another pause, “of course there will be a reward. I presume someone like you does nothing out of the goodness of your heart.”