Martin lit a lamp he found on a small table. Its light shone through the haze of flour which he had disturbed when he entered. At the rear of the room, he saw another shattered door leading into a pitch-black tunnel. Whatever force had blasted the heavy timbers of those doors was more than a mere battering ram. In fact, the inner door appeared to have been blown completely off its hinges.
The merchant was just starting toward the tunnel when his feet stumbled over something soft beside the table. He held the lamp closer and realized that it was the old dwarf's tattered woolen cloak. It was draped over something much firmer, something which was the obvious source of the stench in the small chamber. Martin lifted a corner of the filthy rag just enough to verify what he suspected. The old hermit's rotting body was lying inside some kind of mystical diagram with its bloated face staring vacantly at the ceiling. The head and chest were riddled with sharp splinters from the outer door, and the back of the scalp was badly gashed and bruised.
"What did they do to you, old friend? Where's your fine sorcerer's robe now?" Martin mumbled sourly, a few tears moistening his blue eyes. Despite Lodston's crankiness, the merchant knew that he'd miss the dwarfs trips to Digfel. "You were playing with fire when you let that elven wizard teach you magic!" he scolded the silent corpse.
Martin shook his head and turned away from Lodston's body. Being a practical man, he found an empty flour sack and began to rummage through the rubble, looking for anything of value which he might resell in his store. He found a metal cup and spoon in a scorched comer, as well as several half-finished golden figurines and a bit of cheap tobacco he could soak in wine to disguise its harshness. In the lamplight, he could see footprints where the searchers from Qualinesti had tracked flour into the mine. Just inside the mine passage, he could see a sturdy little chest lying empty on its side.
Whatever might have been in that box, magic or otherwise, belongs to the dark elf or his friends now, Martin thought grimly. Just as he was leaving, he noticed the light from the doorway glinting on something under the table, something made of metal and glass.
"Aha! The famous healing spectacles, I'll wager," Martin muttered. He wiped them free of flour and gore from the bloody floor, then balanced them on his nose. The thick lenses distorted his vision so badly that his head began to hurt almost instantly.
Humph! I don't know anybody in Digfel with eyesight bad enough for these glasses. What a waste of good workmanship! he thought. Still, some traveler might have a need for them. Martin frowned and removed the glasses, sticking them impulsively into one of his trouser pockets. Then he turned toward the failing sunlight outside Lodston's shattered door.
Spinner Kenro, you're under arrest!" announced the dragonarmy officer, the point of his blade at my throat.
I swallowed hard, hoping my bobbing adam's apple wouldn't be sliced by the edge of his sword. Struggling to keep my voice from quivering, I said, "I haven't broken any laws. On what charge are you arresting me?"
The officer, a human, his face a mottled mass of burn scars surrounding dead, gray eyes, growled, "You were warned, Kenro, to stop telling your stories. The Highlord doesn't give second chances."
I was standing near the fireplace in the main room of the Paw's Mark Inn. I had just finished telling one of my tales to the assembled audience. How strange it was to see them all in one place; the kender, with their comically brightcolored clothes, stood out like stars in a dark sky against the somber gray beards of the fastidious dwarves and the earthy brown skin of the ever-so diligent gnomes.
The dragonarmy officer seemed to pay them no mind. I suppose he had little fear because his fellow soldiers had entered the inn just behind him and had stationed themselves at every exit.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the kender, Quinby Cull, strut forward. His face had turned red, and his cheeks were puffed out. Though Quinby was unarmed and half the size of the dragonarmy officer, he seemed thoroughly unafraid. I wish I could have said the same for myself.
"Spinner is our friend, and you've no right to arrest him!" declared Quinby.
"There's room for you in the Highlord's prison, too, kender," the dragonarmy officer said darkly.
Quinby seemed to mull that over before he innocently asked, "How much room is there in the Highlord's prison? I thought it was already full."
The officer pulled the edge of his sword away from my throat and stepped forward to threaten Quinby.
I grabbed the officer's arm. "He doesn't mean anything by it," I quickly said. "Leave him be."
Quinby had become a good friend since I arrived in Flotsam just a few short weeks ago. I had been disheveled and my spirit nearly broken until my long, meandering journey from the outskirts of Solace ended in this dark, forbidding city. I had traveled more than half a continent searching for an audience for my stories. And here, at last, I had found one. But more than that, I had found friendship…
"Please," I begged, hanging onto the soldier's arm.
The dragonarmy officer slowly lowered his sword.
"It's all right, Quinby," I said. "I'll go with this soldier and get everything straightened out. I'm sure," I added with more confidence than I felt, "that I'll be free by morning."
A dwarf named Vigre Arch suddenly stepped up beside Quinby and said boldly, "I don't like this. You'd better stay here with us, Spinner."
The dragonarmy officer's eyebrows raised in alarm. Dwarves and kender in agreement? "The Highlord was right," he muttered.
"Right about what?" I asked.
"That you're a dangerous man. Enough of this talk. Let's go, Kenro, or I'll lop off your head right now. That'd put a quick end to your storytelling, now, wouldn't it?" he sneered.
Not having any choice, I started following the officer out of the inn. Both Quinby and Vigre Arch were shouldered aside, but there was a growing rumble among the crowd.
"Where are you taking Spinner?" one of the kender cried.
"We want another story!" shouted a dwarf at the far side of the room. "Let Spinner go!"
"Yeah! Let Spinner go," yelled a young gnome, taking up the cry.
Soon everyone in the room — except, of course, the dragonarmy soldiers — began to chant, "Let Spinner go! Let Spinner go!"
The kender, dwarves, and gnomes who crammed the inn had never joined together for anything — except to fight among themselves — and that had made it easy for the Highlord to rule. But the dragonarmy soldiers were seeing something that opened their eyes to a new and startling reality. The three races had united in my defense!
Frankly, it amazed me, too.
The angry crowd — they easily numbered more than two hundred — began to surge forward.
"Tell them to stop!" ordered the officer.
I saw the dragonarmy soldiers raise their crossbows.
This was madness.
"Listen," I said to the officer, "let me tell them a story. It will calm them down."
The soldier looked at the ugly mob and his nervous troops. He shrugged and then reluctantly said, "Make it a short one."
I held up my hands for quiet.
Everyone quickly settled down into an expectant silence. I was relieved. And so was the officer.
"I have to go with these men, but first let me tell you a simple tale to end this rather remarkable afternoon." I pointedly glanced at the officer who still had not sheathed his sword. He glared back at me.
I took a deep breath and began, "This is a story as old as time but as short as man's memory. It's a story of three orphans growing up in a city not unlike Flotsam."