The rumble of conversation in the Reed diminished as all eyes in the tiny pub turned furtively toward the ruined figure.
Silhouetted on the hearth, the stranger looked like some huge and ill-formed marionette. He lacked an arm, for his right sleeve was pinned to the shoulder and his left hand did all the adjusting of his fetid form. Deliberately, that widowed hand now drew back some of his robes, but the sodden figure beneath looked no less shapeless. For all his shifting, he did not remove the hood from his head, a head that appeared two sizes too small for his body. Beneath the hood, the man's face was old and lightless, with cold-stiffened lips, a narrow black beard, and a hooked nose. In all, his form looked as though a large man hid within those robes, holding some poorly proportioned puppet head to serve as his face.
He spoke then, and his hollow voice and rasping tongue made the patrons jump a bit. "Can any of you spare a silver for a bowl of blood soup and a quaff of ale?"
None responded except by blank, refusing stares. Not even Horace behind the bar would offer this stranger a glass of water. Apparently, all would rather dare his wrath than know their charities had provided sustenance to him.
The man was apparently all too acquainted with this response, for he shook his head slowly and laughed a dry, dead-leaf laugh. A few staggering steps brought him to a chair, vacated upon his arrival and still warm from its former occupant. There he collapsed with a wheeze like a punctured bellows.
"In the lands of Sossal, whence I hail, a man can earn his blood and barley by telling a good tale. And I happen to have such a tale, for my land gave birth to the greatest hero who ever lived. Perhaps his story will earn me something warm."
Those who had hoped to dismiss him with bald glares and cruel silence now tried turning away and speaking among themselves. Horace, for his part, retreated through a swinging door to the kitchen, to the gray dishwater and the piles of pots.
Unaffected, the shabby wanderer began the telling of his tale with a snap of his rigid blue fingers. Green sparks ignited in air, swirled about him, and spread outward like a lambent palm in the heavy darkness. The sparking tracers lighted on all those seated in the taproom, and each tiny star extinguished itself in the oily folds of flesh between a patron's knotted brows.
The faint crackling of magic gave way to a single, hushed sigh. In moments, the place fell silent again, and the tale began. "The lands of Sossal were once guarded by a noble knight, Sir Paramore, the greatest hero who ever lived-"
Golden haired, with eyes like platinum, Sir Paramore strode in full armor through the throne room of King Caen. Any other knight would have been stripped of arms and armaments upon crossing the threshold, but not noble Paramore. He marched forward, brandishing his spell-slaying long sword Kneuma and dragging a bag behind him as he approached the royal dais. There the king and princess and a nervous retinue of nobles ceased their conference and looked to him. Only when within a sword swipe of His Majesty did Paramore finally halt, drop to one armored knee, and bow his fealty.
The king, his face ringed with early white locks, spoke. "And have you apprehended the kidnappers?"
"Better, milord," replied Paramore, rising with a haste that in anyone else would have been arrogance. He reached into the bag and drew out in one great and hideous clump the five heads of the kidnappers he had slain.
The king's daughter recoiled in shock. Only now did King Caen himself see the wide, slick line of red that Sir Para-more's bag had dragged across the cold flagstones behind him.
"You gaze, my liege, on the faces of the hoodlums you sought," the knight explained.
In the throat-clenched silence that followed, the wizard Dorsoom moved from behind the great throne, where his black-bearded lips had grown accustomed to plying the king's ears. "You were to bring them here for questioning, Paramore, not lop off their heads."
"Peace, Dorsoom," chided the king with an off-putting gesture. "Let our knight tell his tale."
"The tale is simple, milord," replied Paramore. "I questioned the abductors myself and, when I found them wanting of answers, removed their empty heads."
"This is nonsense," Dorsoom said. "You might have simply cut the heads off the first five peasants you saw, then brought them here and claimed them the culprits. There should have been a trial. And even if these five were guilty- which we can never know now-we do not know who assigned these ruffians their heinous task."
"They were kidnappers who had stolen away the children of these noble folk gathered around us," Paramore replied with even steel in his voice. "If anything, I was too lenient."
"You prevented their trial-"
"Still the wagging tongue of this worm," Paramore demanded of the king, leveling his mighty sword against the meddling mage. "Or perhaps these warriors of mine shall do the task first!"
The great doors of the throne room suddenly swung wide, and a clamor of stomping feet answered… small feet, the feet of children, running happily up the aisle behind their rescuer. Their shrill voices were raised in an unseemly psalm of praise to Sir Paramore as they ran.
Seeing their children, the nobles emptied from the dais and rushed to embrace their sons and daughters, held captive these long tendays. The ebullient weeping and cooing that followed drowned the protests of Dorsoom, who retreated to his spot of quiet counsel behind the throne. It was as though the sounds of joy themselves had driven him back into the darkness.
Over the pleasant noise, the grinning Paramore called out to the king. "I believe, my liege, you are in my debt. As was promised me upon the rescue of these dear little ones, I claim the fairest hand in all of Sossal. It is the hand of your beautiful daughter, Princess Daedra, that I seek."
Paramore's claim was answered by a chorus of shouts from the joyous children, who now abandoned their parents to crowd the heels of their rescuer. From their spot beside him, the children ardently pleaded the knight's case.
Daedra's bone-white skin flushed, and her lips formed a wound-red line across her face. The king's visage paled in doubt. Before either could speak, though, the children's entreaties were silenced by an angry cry.
"Hush now, younglings!" commanded a thin nobleman, his ebony eyes sparkling angrily beneath equally black brows and hair. "Your childish desires have no say here. The hand of the princess has been pledged to me these long years since my childhood, since before she was born. This usurping knight - " he said the word as though it bore a taint " – cannot steal her from me, nor can your piteous caterwauling."
"Tis too true," the king said sadly, shaking his head. He paused a moment, as though listening to some silent voice whisper behind his throne. "I am pressed by convention, Paramore, to grant her hand to Lord Ferris."
Sir Paramore sheathed his sword and crossed angry arms over his chest. "Come out, wicked mage, from your place of hiding in the shadow of this great man. Your whisperings cannot dissuade my lord and monarch from granting what his and mine and the princess's hearts desire."
With that, Paramore touched the handle of his mighty sword, Kneuma, to dispel whatever enchantment Dorsoom might have cast on the king. Then he snapped his fingers, and the tiny percussion of his nails struck sparks in the air. The king's retinue and the king himself, as though awakening from a dream, turned toward the shadow-garbed mage. Dorsoom sullenly answered the summons and moved into the light.