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

“You old fool! Don’t you know you can’t fight all of those bumpkins by yourself, with or without a magic staff?” Milo’s gentle reprimand was undercut by an excited sparkle in his crisp blue eyes. The merchant was thrilled at the promise of something new to talk about at the Pig Iron Alehouse. He was also bursting with curiosity about the mysterious bronzewood stick that seemed to have a life of its own.

“Bah!” spat the dwarf. “You humans think that you know everything. My people mined these mountains before you farmers learned how to grow your nauseating vegetables. We dig more than potatoes out of the dirt, I’ll tell you that much!”

Martin nodded judiciously, although he knew that the old hermit’s dwarven pride was only momentary. Lodston lived alone because he had alienated his own people as much as he had the humans in Digfel. The merchant wanted to divert the conversation toward the staff. He certainly did not want to provoke a long-winded discourse on past dwarven glories and present human frailties.

“That’s a fascinating quarterstaff, Nugold,” he probed. “If you tell me how you came by it, I might pay good iron ingots for it. I’ve been needing a fine old stick like that!”

Lodston’s bearded mouth curled in a sly smirk. Martin’s face was a mere blur to him, but the silkiness in the wily human’s voice betrayed his usual greed.

“How much?” he demanded quickly, cocking his head at the shopkeeper’s fuzzy features.

“Enough to pay what you owe me, and maybe for this trip as well— if the staff is worth that much,” Martin added shrewdly.

“Oh, it’s worth ten times the trash you sell in this place,” vowed the dwarf. “I got it from an elven wizard!”

If the hermit’s vision had been sharper, he might have recognized the immediate frown on the shop keeper’s face as a look of disbelief.

“There aren’t any elves in Hylar! No elf I’ve ever met would have anything to do with a dwarf!”

“There’s one who would, all right, and he lives in my cave!” Lodston retorted defiantly. The hermit pulled a small keg of pickled fish closer to the fireplace and sat on it. He clutched the magical staff in front of him as if he were guarding it from the merchant’s covetous gaze. Then he reached into a pocket and handed Martin a crumpled piece of parchment.

“He wrote down what we need. You fetch all those things while I rest my legs, and I’ll tell you the strangest tale you’ll ever hear in this ugly town of simpletons.”

Milo Martin’s frown deepened as he grabbed the list from the hermit’s filthy fingers. He expected to see a barely literate scrawl, and was astonished when he recognized the fine penmanship of a scholar on the crude parchment. Each character was fashioned with elegant swirls, while the spelling and phrases were archaic.

“‘Balls of twyne, a sette of three;

“Grinded millett, so fyne as to pass through a tea sieve;

“Twin hyves of honey, with compleat combs for the waxxe ...’”

It was obvious that the old dwarf hadn’t written the list. Martin doubted if the hermit was literate at all, and he was positive that those gnarled hands and failing vision would be incapable of such careful strokes of a nib.

“This is quite a list, Nugold,” he admitted. “I might not have it all. Tell me about this ‘elven wizard’ who lives in your cave while I gather whatever I can to suit you and your guest.”

“His name’s Dalamar,” the dwarf began. “I found him on the riverbank last month, half-starved and out of his head. I knew he was strange, because of his white skin and long hair as jet black as his sorcerer’s robe. ‘This ain’t no human,’ I says to myself. Then I drug him into my cave and made him a bed by the fire. When he woke up, I thought he’d be afraid, but he was just as calm as he could be. He acted like he knew where he was, and like he knew me, too. Even called me by name, he did!”

Milo Martin paused with some candles in his hand. “Black hair, you say? Not just dark?”

“Nay!” Lodston replied irritably. “I said black, and I meant it! It be black as soot, and his skin like white linen, so white that it shines like a full moon in a night sky.”

The merchant stroked his chubby chin, considering the dwarf’s words. “Well, if he’s an elf as you say, I’d guess that he was from Sylvanesti. I’ve heard that the eastern elves look like that, but I’ve never seen one of them.”

The dwarf nodded excitedly. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Sylvanesti is where he said he was from! You beat all I’ve ever seen with those wild guesses, Milo!”

The shopkeeper shrugged. It was no guess, but he decided to let the hermit believe that he possessed such an unpredictable skill. People were more reluctant to cheat someone who could “outguess” them.

“Go on with your story. Tell me about the staff,” urged Martin as he turned toward his shelves to collect more items on the list.

“Well, he asks me right off if I found his box. When I tell him not to fret about some box after I save him from drowning, he doesn’t say anything. He just stares at the fire for a long time. Then he gets up and heads for the door. ‘Wait!’ I calls. ‘You ain’t fit enough to walk!’

‘Come to the river with me,’ he says in this strange voice. It was like his words were stronger than I was! Before I knew what I was doing, I was up to my ankles in mud, helping the elf find this staff and that danged box.”

“What kind of box?” Milo Martin had stopped gathering items from the list and was leaning against his counter. His curiosity had grown too great to bother hiding.

“A little wooden chest bound with brass strips,” Lodston replied. “I carried it back to the cave after we found the staff. When we both was dry and warm again, he told me his name and said he used to be a wizard for some king named ‘Lorac.’ ”

The name meant nothing to Martin. The enthralled shopkeeper motioned for Lodston to continue.

“Dalamar said he got into some kind of trouble back at this Sylvanesti place for changing his robes from white to black or something like that. Said he had to leave before the king killed him. When I told him I didn’t think a king’d worry that much about the color of a man’s clothes, he just smiled and laid his head back against the hearth.”

Martin knew very little about magic and wizards, but he did know more than old Lodston. The shopkeeper’s pudgy face flushed as he flaunted his superior knowledge of matters arcane.

“Idiot! Don’t you even know the difference between white-robed and black-robed sorcerers? You ever heard of an evil elf, much less an evil elven wizard?”

“Evil?” demanded the hermit. “You mean like Joss out there and his scum-brained kids?”

“No!” Martin growled. “I don’t mean simple pickpockets and drunks. If you’d ever got out of that cave of yours, you’d know that some dark force is sweeping over Krynn, and it sounds to me like your new buddy is part of it!”

The shopkeeper’s crisp eyes clouded. The normally jolly and mercurial man seemed suddenly overwhelmed with melancholia. “I thought Digfel was too little to get involved in this thing,” he muttered sadly. “I thought everybody would leave us alone as long as we supplied them with steel for their swords and spears.”

“What in Reorx’s name are you mumbling about?” Lodston demanded.

“I’m talking about that guest of yours!” Martin replied angrily. “He and his evil friends will bring the war to Digfel!”

“War? What war? I don’t understand what ...”

“Go on with your story,” the shopkeeper urged, interrupting the dwarf’s flurry of questions in a calmer voice. The hermit’s naive ignorance of the outside world was incorrigible. Martin could barely explain the sinister events of recent years to himself, much less to the reclusive dwarf.