"I have heard of him. On the border of the Wasteland."
"The Wasteland? I did not know. The enchantment world?"
"That's right," said Cornwall. "That's where I am going."
"We could travel together, then?"
Cornwall nodded. "As far as the Tower. I go beyond the Tower.*
"You know the way?" asked Gib.
"To the Tower? No, just the general direction. There are maps, but not too reliable."
"I have a friend," said Gib. "Hal of the Hollow Tree. He has traveled widely. He might know. He might go with us to point out the way."
"Consider this," said Cornwall, "before you decide we should go together: Already there has been one attempt to kill me; there might be others."
"But whoever is concerned already thinks you dead."
"Yes, of course, at the moment that is true. But there would be many eyes along the way and many tongues. Travelers would be noticed and would be talked about."
"If Hal went with us, we'd travel no roads or trails. We'd travel in the forest. There would be few to see us."
"You sound as if you want to travel with me, even knowing…"
"We of the marshes are timid folk," said Gib. "We feel unsafe when we go far from the marsh. I don't mind telling you I shrink from the idea of the journey. But with you and Hal along…"
"You are good friends with Hal?"
"The best friend that I have. We visit back and forth. He is young, about as old as I am, and stronger, and he knows the woods. He knows no fear. He steals from cornfields, he raids garden patches…"
"He sounds a good man to be with."
"He is all of that," said Gib.
"You think he'd go with us?"
"I think he would. He is not one to turn his back on adventure."
10
Sniveley, the gnome, said, "So you want to buy the sword? What do you want the sword for? It is not for such as you. You could scarcely lift it. It is fashioned for a human. No pretty piece of iron, but a sword for a fighting man."
"I have known you for a long time," said Gib. "You have known my people for a long time. And the People of the Hills. Can I speak in confidence?"
Sniveley twitched his ears and scratched the back of his head. "You should know better than to ask me that. We are not blabbermouths, we gnomes. We are a business people and we are not gossips. We hear many things and we do not pass them on. Loose mouths can be a fertile source of trouble and we want no trouble. You know full well that we of the Brotherhood—the goblins and the elves and all the rest of us—live in the land of humans on their sufferance. It is only by sticking to our business and staying strictly out of matters that are no affair of ours that we can survive at all. The Inquisition forever sniffs around, but it seldom acts against us if we remain somewhat invisible. But let us become ever so faintly obnoxious and some pesty human will go rushing off to inform on us, and then there is hell to pay. Perhaps I should be the one to ask if this confidential matter that you mention might be the cause of trouble to us."
"I don't think so," Gib told him. "If I had thought so, I would not have come. We marsh people need you and through the years you have dealt fairly with us. You have heard, of course, of the massacre of the pack train just two nights ago."
Sniveley nodded. "A ghastly business. Your people buried them?"
"We buried what was left of them. We leveled and disguised the graves. We towed the dead animals far out into the marsh. We left no sign of what had happened."
Sniveley nodded. "That is good," he said. "The train will be missed, of course, and the authorities, such as they are, may make some investigation. Not too much of an investigation, I would think, for this is still border country and officialdom does not rest quite easy here. If there had been blatant evidence, they would have had to investigate, and that would have been bad. We, none of us—humans or you or the People of the Hill or the Brotherhood—have any desire for human bloodhounds to be snooping in our yards."
"I feel bad," said Gib, "about one aspect of it. We could not say the proper words above their graves. We do not know the words. Even if we did, we'd not be the proper persons to recite them. We buried them unshrived."
"They died unshrived," said Sniveley, "and it's all foolishness, in any case."
"Foolishness, perhaps," said Gib, "but no more foolishness, perhaps, than many of our ways."
"Which brings us," said Sniveley, "to how all of this is connected with your wanting the sword."
"Not all of them were killed," said Gib. "I stumbled on the massacre and found one who was still alive. It's he who needs the sword."
"He had a sword before and it was looted from him?"
"His sword, his knife, his purse. The killers took the goods the train was carrying and also stripped the bodies. I gather that the sword he had was not a very good one. One his great-grandfather had passed down. And now he needs a good one."
"I have other swords," said Sniveley.
Gib shook his head. "He needs the best. He is going to the Wasteland to hunt out the Old Ones."
"That is insanity," said Sniveley. "There may be no Old Ones left. We gnomes have heard ancient tales of them, but that is all they are-old tales. Even if he found them, what would be the use of it?"
"He wants to talk with them. He is a scholar and he wants—"
"No one can talk with them," said Sniveley. "No one knows their language."
"Many years ago—perhaps thousands of years ago—a human lived with them for a time and he wrote down their language, or at least some words of their language."
"Another tale," said Sniveley. "The Old Ones, if they came across a human, would tear him limb from limb."
"I do not know," said Gib. "All of this is what Mark told me."
"Mark? He is your human?"
"Mark Cornwall. He comes from the west. He has spent the last six years at the University of Wyalusing. He stole a manuscript…"
"So now he is a thief."
"Not so much thief as finder. The manuscript had been hidden away for centuries. No one knew of it. It would have continued lost if he'd not happened on it."
"One thing occurs to me," said Sniveley. "You showed me the book and ax that the dying hermit gave you. To be delivered, I believe, to some bishop. Is it possible you and this Mark will make a common journey?"
"That is our intention," said Gib. "We go together to the Bishop of the Tower. Then he will go into the Wasteland."
"And you have thoughts of going with him?"
"I had thought of it. But Mark will not allow it."
"I should hope not," said Sniveley. "Do you know what the Wasteland is?"
"It's enchanted ground," said Gib.
"It is," said Sniveley, "the last stronghold of the Brotherhood…»
"But you—"
"Yes, we are of the Brotherhood. We get along all right because this is the Borderland. There are humans, certainly, but individual humans—millers, woodcutters, charcoal burners, small farmers, moonshiners. The human institutions, government and church, do not impinge on us. You have never seen the lands to the south and east?"
Gib shook his head.
"There," said Sniveley, "you would find few of us. Some in hiding, perhaps, but not living openly as we do. Those who once lived there have been driven out. They have retreated to the Wasteland. As you may suspect, they hold a hatred for all humankind. In the Wasteland are those who have been driven back to it and those who never left, the ones who had stayed there and hung on grimly to the olden ways of life."
"But you left."
"Centuries ago," said Sniveley, "a group of prospecting gnomes found the ore deposit that underlies these hills. For uncounted millennia the gnomes have been smiths and miners. So we moved here, this small group of us. We have no complaint. But if the so-called human civilization ever moved in full force into the Borderland, we would be driven out."