Douglas Niles - Measure and the Truth

“How would you like a return to the power you once held-or to reach even greater heights?”

The question was whispered so softly that the half-giant whirled around, growling, ready to smite whoever had dared to sneak up on him and mock him. But no one could be seen.

“Who speaks to me?” he growled, his tiny eyes glaring from their fat-enfolded sockets as he stared into the darkness. “Who is there?”

A man-or at least, he thought it was man, based on size and shape-emerged from the darkness at the edge of the trees. The stranger was cloaked from head to toe in black, including a gauzy mask that utterly concealed his face. Most surprisingly of all, he approached the looming half-giant without any obvious display of fear.

“How dare you!” spat Ankhar, starting to take a step toward the interloper, to smite him with, at the very least, a powerful blow from the back of his hand. Surprisingly, however, the half-giant’s booted feet remained frozen in place, as if he had stepped into soft mire that had suddenly congealed around him. He stared in amazement as the man approached casually and took a seat on a log very near to the one where Ankhar had been sitting.

Abruptly, Ankhar’s feet came unstuck, and he stumbled, realizing that a magic spell must have gripped him for a moment. The man who had cast the spell had obviously released him from its thrall-so the interloper had to be regarded with suspicion, but also with a wary respect. The dark-cloaked man settled himself down and waited for a few moments until Ankhar, almost unconsciously, came back to the fire and sat down nearby his strange visitor. The half-giant’s anger had dissipated in the face of his visitor’s cool self-confidence, and he found himself more curious than angry.

“Who are you?” he asked

“Ask your mother-she will know me at once,” replied the man, his tone somehow courteous even though he had refused to answer the question. Somehow, his calm certainty only made Ankhar more uneasy.

“My mother sleeps-the hour is late. Tell me yourself,” he insisted.

Instead, the mysterious visitor said, “This is a nice village,” his masked face turning this way and that as he took in the crude huts, the wooden palisade, the muddy central square. Again, his tone was innocuous, even pleasant, but the half-giant felt himself bristling.

“It is nice enough for my needs,” he declared guardedly.

“But is it secure enough to hold your treasure? The vast wealth your armies took from Garnet and Thelgaard and other places of Solamnia? Don’t you worry that some army will come and batter down your palisade, make off with your cherished hoard?”

Ankhar growled, a deep, menacing sound by any measure, though the black-clad visitor seemed hardly to notice. And in truth, there was little vitriol behind the chieftain’s noisy bluster. Again, his curiosity was stronger than his anger. The growl faded out as he shrugged.

“My treasures were many, but they were taken by the knights after the Battle of the Foothills,” he said. “I do not miss them. They were useless trinkets, heavy to haul around, not good to eat.”

“I see,” came the soft reply.

“Besides, such baubles are more the concern of humans. What need have I of steel and jewels, of great castles and high stone walls? I am happy here, and I am the master of all this place!”

“No doubt you are.”

“I am!” Again Ankhar found the remark vaguely offensive, though it was offered pleasantly. It occurred to him-and he was not a terribly introspective fellow-that it was as though he were arguing with himself. “Warfare is hard and thankless work. And plunder, unless it is good to eat or useful like slaves, tools, or land… well, plunder is too much trouble. There is food in these forests, and a small amount of work will provide for all of my needs.”

“All your needs?” needled the masked visitor.

“Yes-all of them!” barked Ankhar. He thought of Pond-Lily, waiting for him in the crude hut, reposing on the muddy straw pallet flat on the ever-damp ground, and he felt his conviction waver. “Why are you taunting me with these words?” he demanded.

“I do not intend a taunt, my great friend. And you are my friend, whether you know it or not. You and I have done great work in the name of the same master, in the past.”

“I have no master!” The half-giant’s voice rose with his temper.

Only then did he notice the lone chip of color on the black-garbed man. An emerald winked from a pendant at his throat. It was a small piece of stone, too tiny to notice in the dark-except up close. For just a moment, Ankhar could have sworn the green stone flared with some kind of internal light. And with that realization, he recalled another green stone, the mighty arrowhead of emerald that once tipped his great battle spear, the talisman he had carried to war. When he had held that spear high, the power of Hiddukel, the Prince of Lies, had illuminated it with an iridescent strength that could light up a whole valley, driving back the shadows of night.

Now that battle spear lay in the mud of his hut, somewhere near the back wall. The green spearhead had ceased to glow when the half-giant’s horde had been broken at the Battle of the Foothills. He had carried the weapon with him to Lemish out of habit, but whenever he looked at it nowadays the stone seemed to have gone cold, dark, lifeless.

“My lord! Lord Ankhar! Oh, great master, come and see!”

He bolted to his feet, startled by the urgent words coming from his hut. Pond-Lily was calling him, summoning him in a voice filled not with desire, but with wonder. He spun around and gaped in the direction of the hut, startled to see green light spilling from around its door-flap, and penetrating through the many gaps between the logs of the imperfectly constructed walls.

He crossed to the place in a dozen strides and pulled back the flap to find the ogress sitting up on the pallet, gazing with a look of dumb disbelief at the source of the illumination.

His spearhead, almost buried beneath the miscellaneous rubbish at the far wall, was glowing with a brilliance that hurt his eyes. He saw Pond-Lily reach out a tentative hand, as if to grasp the stone, and he cuffed her away with a savage slap.

“Don’t touch!” he roared. “It’s mine!”

Pouncing like a cat, he wrapped his hands around the haft of the spear. The stout stick was as big around as a man’s wrist and some eight feet long. He lifted it reverently, shaking the weapon to break it free of the wet leaves, old food scraps, and other debris. Then he carried it out of the hut and back to the fire, where the masked visitor still sat, watching him with that featureless face.

But it was neither the half-giant nor the strange visitor who next spoke. Instead, there came a cackling laugh from the darkness, and a wrinkled old hobgoblin wench hobbled forth toward the embers of the fire. Laka, Ankhar’s stepmother, had apparently been awakened by the disturbance. The coals in the fire pit seemed to take on a new life as she approached, flaring into brightness, casting a red glow that reflected off of the hob-wench’s few remaining teeth, proving that she could still beam broadly.

“My lord,” she said, surprising Ankhar by kneeling before the masked visitor.

“You know this man?” demanded the half-giant.

“Yes,” Laka replied, climbing to her feet, taking Ankhar by the hand, and leading him to sit on a log beside the masked visitor. “He is the Nightmaster. The Prince of Lies has sent me a dream, saying the Nightmaster would be coming to see you, to tell you important things, and to charge you with a great task.”

“Which is?”

“Listen to him,” the hob-wench said impatiently. “You need to shut up for now and hear the words of the Nightmaster.”