Ник О'Донохью - Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes

“Harrumph!” snorted Lodston. He was too old and battle-weary to listen to human war stories. Vivid memories of the war still lingered in his aged brain, the war which had forced the mountain dwarves from their traditional homes.

“Well, as I was saying,” he continued, “Dalamar’s been wandering around in the west ever since they threw him out of this Sylvanesti place. He said he had to take some kind of ‘test’ at Wayreth to be a wizard, and it made him sick. I asked him if his stomach hurt, but he just said I wouldn’t understand if he told me. He was up at Solace when a Seeker priest tried to kill him. So he made this raft and sneaked away on the river just before they came to bum him as a witch.”

“Are they after him now?” Martin demanded quick ly. Digfel had been free of the Seeker insanity, and he hoped that Lodston’s refugee would not attract the zealous witchhunters to this rough but quiet comer of Krynn.

“You got me there,” Lodston replied. “I think they lost his trail during the storm that wrecked his raft. Nobody’d ever believe that he could have drifted this far downstream, all the way through the Qualinesti woods. I told him I’d hide him from them maniacs till he was well enough to take care of himself. He didn’t thank me or anything, just rolled over and went to sleep.”

“Did you search his belongings while he was sleeping?” Milo Martin asked eagerly. The opportunistic shopkeeper was imagining what he would have done under the same circumstances.

“What am I, a kender?” cried the insulted dwarf. “Anyway, I didn’t need to snoop. He showed me what was in his box.”

The hermit paused to retrieve a blackened clay pipe from beneath his fur cloak and gestured toward the tobacco jar on the counter.

“How’s about some of that weed, the kind you sprinkle with honey wine? And maybe a little ale and biscuits to go with it,” he added as Martin fetched the tobacco. The hermit might have been nearly blind, but he knew when he had hooked a listener on a story. The shopkeeper thrust a foaming mug of freshly brewed stout at the dwarf, who waited until his pipe was well-fired before accepting it. He was enjoying tempting Milo Martin’s curiosity.

“Ahhh!” exclaimed the hermit, wiping ale from his mouth with a sleeve.

“Get on with it!” demanded the impatient shopkeeper. “What was in the chest?”

“Scrolls and books!” Lodston replied in a coarse whisper. “Dozens of them! And a pair of funny old glasses with wire rims.”

“What was on the scrolls?” cried Martin.

“Spells, I reckon,” growled the dwarf. “How should I know? I can’t read!”

The shopkeeper’s pudgy face clouded. “Then how do you know they were magic?”

” ’Cause I saw Dalamar using one to see the future!”

Martin said nothing for several moments. His eyes were wide with imagination as he speculated to himself about the value of such a treasure—if the old dwarf was telling the truth.

“It was a couple of nights ago. We just ate some fish stew and bread. I’m sitting by the fire smoking some wild tobacco, nothing like this stuff, when Dalamar puts on them glasses. He unrolls a piece of parchment like it was holy and stares at the fire for a long time before he starts to read it. I ask him what he’s doing, but he acts like he don’t hear me.”

Lodston took a long swig of ale and a few more puffs of the fragrant cured tobacco before resuming his story.

“Dalamar reads the words out loud, but they’s in a language I never heard before. The words had a lot of ‘ssss’ and ‘ffff’ sounds that ended in ‘i’s or ‘o’s. You ever hear somebody talking like that?”

“No!” blurted his impatient listener. “Forget the language! What happened then?”

“Settle down, and let me finish the story! There was this light, kind of a white glow like moonshine, that got stronger with every word he read. It was coming from the scroll, but it spread all over his body. By the time he finished reading them words, it got so bright in my cave that it hurt my eyes to look at him.”

“How long did it last?” Milo Martin asked breathlessly.

“I reckon not more than two or three minutes after he stopped reading,” said the hermit. “Soon as it was gone, he stands up and heads for the door. He steps outside and looks around the cave, like he’s checking the ground for footprints or something. ‘What are you doing?’ I asks him. ‘What was that bright light in there?’

” ‘They’re not here yet,’ he says.

” ‘Who’s not here?’ I asks him, but he just comes back inside and sits by the fire again. That’s when I looked at the scroll he was reading.”

“Well? What did it look like?” Martin prompted.

“Nothing,” the dwarf answered. “There was nothing on it at all. Dalamar wrote that list on it this mom-ing!”

The startled shopkeeper dropped the parchment onto the counter as if it were a hot coal. Then he retrieved it and studied the writing more carefully. He even held it near a candle to see if the heat would reveal hidden characters of any kind. Regardless of the events at the hermit’s cave, the “magic scroll” was now nothing more than a grocery list.

“See what I told you?” said Lodston. “The spellwords are gone. All I know is that whatever he saw last night scared him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn’t go right to sleep. He made a sign with some ashes on the inside of the door and then bolted it like he thought somebody was going to try to break in. In the morning, he gave me that list and told me to get the stuff in a hurry. He handed me his staff and said I needed to take it with me; that’s when he whispered the secret word in my ear to make it work.”

“What secret word?” demanded Martin, his eyes riveted to the enchanted weapon.

“None of your business,” replied the dwarf, “and I can’t give you this staff. It’s the elf’s, not mine. Now give me those goods, and let me get back to the cave before dark. I don’t know why he wanted all this stuff, but he told me to hurry.”

“You promised me ...”

“I never promised you anything, Milo Martin!” countered the hermit. “But if you want me to tell Dalamar that you wouldn’t loan him the things on that list ...”

“All right, all right!” growled the cautious merchant. Martin was angry with himself for letting Nugold Lodston trick him into another extension of his credit, but he was also hoping to find a way to acquire much more than just the staff.

“Tell this Dalamar that I want to meet him,” the shopkeeper said in a calmer voice. “I have a few business ideas that may interest him. Knowledge like this can be a valuable piece of merchandise. I know of several people who would pay fortunes to get a single glimpse of the future.”

“Like you?” Lodston snorted sarcastically. He collected the provisions in a bulky sack and headed for the door.

“Don’t forget to tell him what I said!” Martin called as the hermit stumbled into the empty street without looking back.

Lodston’s “cave” was actually an abandoned dwarven gold mine. For centuries before he was born, the hermit’s people had tunneled into the mountainside near the Meltstone River, enriching both themselves and the local human merchants with great amounts of the yellow metal. When iron ingots replaced gold and silver as the most precious substance on Krynn—to make weapons of steel—the rich Hylar dwarves near Digfel became paupers. Only a handful of the sturdy miners remained in human towns in the foothills of the dwarven highlands, becoming blacksmiths and armorers. Human prospectors took their place as miners, but of iron ore rather than softer metals such as gold and silver.