Douglas Niles: The Heir of Kayolin

Still, using his cane to probe before him, he hobbled along at a fair clip, despite the wear and tear of a life that had bent his backbone and forced a permanent stoop onto his once-broad shoulders. He was a Theiwar, with the distinguishing pale skin and light, almost fawn-colored, irises in his sensitive eyes that mark so many of that breed. His beard was long, but thin, the wispy hairs a universal slate gray in color, and his balding pate was fringed by only a meager few strands of the same colorless gray.

He glanced around and squinted nervously as other dwarves, hustling and bustling, stepped around him and hurried on their way. The old dwarf veered to the other side of the street so he didn’t have to meet approaching pedestrians face-to-face. At one point he paused to glare at the outside of a shuttered shop, the little store displaying the Abercrumb’s Fine Silverwerks sign. Satisfied that the interior was dark, devoid of customers, he continued on another dozen paces and turned in at a door on the other side of the street. He entered the little shop and slammed the door hard enough to start the overhead sign, Two Guilders Novelty and Pharmology Emporium , swinging violently.

He stood in front of the counter of a small store. Every bit of the wall space, except for the front door and another door leading into the interior, was lined by shelving-smooth stones of slate that rested in precise grooves cut into the rock walls. Those shelves, in turn, were covered almost to overflowing with bottles and tins, small boxes and casks, ceramic mortars and glass beakers, and an array of even-harder-to-identify materials. One jar held preserved eyeballs, which seemed to stare nosily in every direction. Other containers held more mysterious objects, such as worms or entrails coiling in viscous liquid. Something that looked like a pile of dead, dry bats-which, in fact, it was-rose in moldy chaos in one dark corner.

Other rows of merchandise were more practical and immediately useful in nature, such as the cabinets of clothing that included exotic items like boots that made the wearer tread utterly silently and cloaks that camouflaged one into matching almost perfectly the surroundings of stone or water. All the goods were for sale, at prices that could be negotiated but that were invariably high. The products were many and varied; customers, however, were few.

Peat and Sadie Guilder were both accomplished Theiwar magic-users, belonging to the order of the red robes, and for decades they had made a decent living sharing the fruits of their magical skills with those dwarves who could overcome their inherent distrust of magic enough to spend hard-earned steel on one or another of the unique products that the Two Guilders Emporium offered. Unfortunately, such dwarves had proved to be very rare indeed.

“I’m here!” the old Theiwar called loudly. “I’m home!”

“Who’s there?” came the query from the back room. “Is someone there?” The voice was female, raspy with age, and tart with determined curiosity.

“It’s your husband!” the Theiwar snapped. “Who else would it be? You didn’t exactly expect a customer, did you?”

The crone of a dwarf woman who emerged through the interior door gave no response to his question. She was stooped and aged like her husband, with a wrinkled face and tiny, glittering eyes. Her white hair was tied in a thin braid that trailed down her back. She wore a shapeless dress, and when she momentarily glared at Peat, she smacked her lips to reveal a precious few yellowed teeth standing sentinel on her gums. She stepped past him and went to the front door. Pulling it open, she glared up and down the street before she flipped the sign on the outside of the door from Open to Closed . Shutting the door, she carefully made sure it was locked. Only then did she turn and look at the dwarf who was her husband of more than one hundred years.

“You could at least tell me you’re home!” she declared querulously. “And what took you so long?” she demanded. “I’ve been about stewing in my lizard broth waiting for you!”

“Well, Sadie, I don’t exactly move like I used to,” Peat replied patiently. “But I circled the whole square, stopped to get the gossip, and even had a beer with a sergeant of the palace guard. All in all, a good day’s work-though I could use another beer, now that I think of it.”

“There’ll be time for that later!” Sadie snapped, still glaring. “Didn’t you think of me back here worrying about you?”

Peat shrugged, squinting nearsightedly at the blurry features of his wife’s face. Doggedly he continued his report. “Then old Abercrumb caught up with me in the middle of the square-there was no way I could dodge him. I had to listen to him go on for an hour about the state of business along First Street. Couldn’t hardly disagree with him, but I just wanted to be out of there. He finally left, told me he had to get back to his shop.”

“Well, at least you didn’t meet old Abercrumb,” she muttered vaguely. “That nosy Hylar would have wasted even more of your time! Did you get to the square?”

“I told you-ah, never mind,” Peat said, rolling his eyes. He held up a small piece of parchment that was marked with some arcane symbols, hastily scratched with the piece of graphite Peat carried in his belt pocket.

Sadie smacked her lips around her few remaining teeth and studied the sheet. She huffed and muttered indecipherably, but her anger had passed. “Well, come in the back, then,” she said at last. “And tell me what you learned.”

The back room of the Two Guilders shop was as crowded and messy as the front. The notable difference was that the rear chamber was larger. Two very big desks occupied one wall, while a hard sleeping pallet took up the far corner. A magical light, feeble and flickering as the power of the incantation waned, glowed from an unburned candle mounted on the wall. The desktops were strewn with parchments, and an array of quills and inkwells were scattered around the papers.

“What are you working on?” Peat asked, glancing at the fresh ink on one of the parchments.

“I was doing some work to pass the time,” Sadie admitted, waving at the desk.

“I can see that much!” Peat replied. “Answer me straight for once. What were you doing? ”

“Yes-I was stewing!” she barked. “I told you that! Don’t tell me you’re going deaf as well as blind!”

Peat merely sighed and followed her past the desk.

She shook her head impatiently. “So what’s going on in the city? Did you get the information the Master requested?”

Peat instinctively ducked and glanced over his shoulder, though the two elderly dwarves were alone in the shop’s workroom. Even so, he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“The king is going to cancel the Festival of the Forge-claims it’s heretical and obscene, of course, just like everything else he doesn’t like. And when he makes the announcement, he wants his troops in position to squelch any uprising in the city. So he’ll keep most of his men-at-arms in the palace garrison and the Midfort to keep order. All four of the city gates will be lightly manned, so that Jungor Stonespringer can divert the number of soldiers he needs to watch his own people in the heart of Norbardin.”

“As if he doesn’t have the city cowed like a whipped rat,” Sadie said scornfully. “He’ll never be overthrown from within anyway!”

Peat continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I spoke to some of the gatehouse captains-bribed them with a bottle of dwarf spirits. Enhanced, of course.” He glanced nervously at one of the potion bottles on a nearby shelf. “The officers were quite specific in their deployments. I wrote the numbers down as soon as I could get away.”