His uncle shrugged. “Send them out from the village to fetch it. It’s magic and I’ll have none of it.”
“It wasn’t magic that killed her,” the widow said. “And it won’t be magic that kills this boy.”
His uncle shook his head and stomped off. The widow sighed. “There goes a stubborn man. It wasn’t magic, that’s what I keep telling him.”
“Who? Who died?” But even as he asked, he knew the answers. It was as close to his heart as her book about Waterdeep.
“Your mother was always twice the wizard that I was,” said the widow. “And restless with it. That farm was far too small to hold her. But it stole the laughter from him when she took to wandering. She was all the family he had.”
“He has me.” Gustin knew even as he said it that the day was coming when he would follow his mother’s footsteps out of the village. The adventurers might have tricked him, even run off and left him, but it didn’t make their tales any less appealing. He would go to Waterdeep and see the City of Splendors for himself.
“Make me a promise,” said the widow as they walked through the woods. “The next time you leave, tell us both good-bye. Don’t make her mistake and go running off without a word.”
“I promise,” Gustin said, and with a whisper of magic, he made his words echo from all the treetops.
TO CHAOS AND BACK AGAIN
Bab threw himself into the ditch just in time. The foul, gritty red dust went up his nose and sifted into his curly brown hair, but he held his breath until the urge to sneeze passed. Not that anyone could have heard it, of course. He gripped his hammer until his fingertips could have pierced through the thick leather wrappings on the handle. The solid metal gave him comfort. Passed down from his grandfather’s many-times grandfather, it was ingrained with virtues that helped him shape metal or slay enemies usually beyond the capability of a halfling.
His four companions stayed low as the file of chained orcs and goblins marched by, passing into the notorious Crossroads on the edge of the Chaos Scar. Whips cracked over their heads. The slave master in charge of the company shouted curses. Bab listened appreciatively to the language. Creative, he thought. A phrase or two like that would be useful to help keep the smithereens down while he was hammering metal on his forge in the middle of Wenly Halt. If he should ever see his forge or his home or the village again. A halfling like him should stay where it was safe, but he had no choice. All this was his own fault, sort of. He had been successful where others had failed, and that was the wrong thing to have done.
The tiny green thread tied around his wrist dimmed. He waited, counting to twenty before he raised his head.
The others sensed his movement rather than heard it. They were still within the hour affected by the silence charm given them by Priest Nock. Bab had three more of the precious blue beads still on the string around his neck. Besides costing a week’s wages, they were made from mystical ingredients including a precious stone and a hair from his sleeping baby daughter’s head, but he’d rather have them on hand than a hundred gems or an enchanted sword. While they were within the sphere of its magic, they could hear outside sounds, but no one could hear them. Three of his six had already been spent to get them past other perils in the wilderness. He guessed they would have no beads left to get them home again.
The lack of silencing spells would probably not matter. By the time they were through with their aim, he imagined, the question of getting home would be moot.
At least, if he didn’t go back, he wouldn’t have to paint the cottage again. Winter had been hard on the little house. The whitewash was definitely beginning to peel. But it was home. He imagined he could hear the swallows in the eaves chirping, his neighbor’s dog barking, his wife Nomi nagging… the fond, familiar sounds that kept him going. He could get a day’s worth of effort out of a good nag from Nomi. The woman had a gift.
Heartened by the memory, Bab gestured to the others. They scrambled out of the ditch one after the other: Adda, Scorri, Coran, and Legg. Legg’s mouth was moving, though no sound came out of it. Then the charm elapsed. The bead burst and sifted into powder down Bab’s chest. As it did, the old man’s sharp whisper cut through the twilight air like a claw.
“… I do not believe that I let you talk me into coming back here again! Not when we nearly died the first time. All of us! May your feet come apart between the toes! May your head…!”
“Shhh!” Bab hissed. “Don’t say those kinds of things here when we’re so close to the… You-Know-What! They might come true!”
Legg clapped a hand over his mouth. He was tall for a halfling, nearly a dwarf’s height. He had meant no harm. Bab knew it. They were all feeling the strain of gritting their teeth while doing something no sane man would ever do-nor insane man either-unless there was no other way. But there was no other way. The glowing blue-green chunk of rock in the pouch on Bab’s belt was a fact that gave them no choice.
Oh, the stone had sounded like a sending from the gods. The legend of the fallen star had been one that fathers told their little ones during the dark of the moon to make their hair stand up on the backs of their necks. Bab had loved those stories. He knew at least a few of them were true, since on a moonless night he could see the green fire in the skies to the west, over the cursed mountains beyond the king’s wall. There were also weird beasts that turned up on the outskirts from time to time, misshapen creatures that looked as if they’d been born of two species at once: spider-squirrels, owl-cats, and a piteous thing that was part halfling, but no one in the village dared guess what the other part had been. The priest had given it water and said a blessing over it, but it had died. Monsters and other horrors had come out of the deep valley, tearing up the countryside. Most of them had been turned away from Wenly Halt, by force of arms or by the blessed well at its heart.
But after so many incursions the village folk had come to be interested in the sacred rock at the center of the legend. It had fallen from the sky, undoubtedly, because there were still those living who had seen it happen. Magical it was, because odd things began to happen, all springing from the kingdom to the west. It didn’t take a scholar to put all the clues together. Power came from the sky, the realm of so many of the gods. It was there for the taking, as the legends said. Those who dared, won. And someone dearly wished, as fools will, that the people of Wenly Halt had some of the magic of their own-for the good of all, of course.
Bab rose from the edge of the road. Now that dawn had passed, they need not fear being jumped from behind. Instead, he and his companions could wreak fear in a few hearts. Halfling brigands were well known in the Crossroads, all brothers. He arranged a length of rag over one eye to masquerade as the eldest of the three chieftains and swaggered into the center of the throughway. The others scrambled to follow him. With their clothes dusty and torn they looked the part of the band of thieves. The deceit had worked the last time on the way in. Most of the humans and other things who lived in the Crossroads village were afraid of the halfling brothers-with good reason. Bab traded on the notion that people saw what they thought they saw. If they believed he and his men were those deadly, thieving brothers, then so be it. They certainly had stolen an item of value. Now they were sorry, and were desperate to put back what they had taken.
The elders of Wenly Halt had been the earliest to catch fire with the idea of having a piece of the fallen star. The village needed to defend itself against raids and attacks, and how better than to fight fire with fire? A rock had brought all that terror and evil to the cursed lands. What if they should secure a piece of it themselves? They’d have power, and to spare. Power in the hands of a halfling village? Sounded foolish when you said it out loud, but it had seemed like sense, a three-month ago.