Jeff Crook - The Rose and the Skull

"Yes, yes, very funny," Giles snarled as he used the hammer to pry the boards loose from the door. "You'd just better be ready with that reward. Don't you try to cheat me, or I'll nail you up in there with them." He knocked the wooden bar free and snatched open the door.

"Breakfast is served!" he shouted as he motioned the stranger inside. Slowly, with seeming trepidation, the stranger approached the low door, his feet squelching in the slushy snow on the ground. Without removing his cowl, he ducked inside.

The rain beat down on Giles's unprotected head as he waited outside the coop. Some forgotten motherly part of his mind told him that he would catch his death out here, but he only ground his teeth and glanced at his dead chickens to remind himself of his purpose. Somebody had to pay, that's all he was sure of.

All of a sudden, the stranger stepped out of the coop. He turned to face Giles, his features still hidden by the cowl, his hands wrapped in the fold of his voluminous sleeves.

"There issss no one in there," he hissed angrily.

"What? Impossible!" Giles shrieked as he threw down his hammer and ducked into the coop. Again, it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Meanwhile, he shouted, "Where are you, you miserable little rats?" Silence answered him.

He thrashed about the interior of the coop, tossing aside nests and shelves and bales of hay in his fury. "They can't have escaped!" he cried. "It's impossible. There is no way out. This coop is as tight as a ship. Not even a weasel can get in here when it is shut up!"

Exhausted by emotion and exposure, Giles shuffled wearily back to the open doorway. Outside, the stranger stood impassively in the rain. "I don't understand," Giles complained as he sank to the floor, his face in his hands. "I just don't understand."

A strange pattern of ice on the floor caught his attention. It was a footprint, a slushy footprint. A slushy three-toed, reptilian footprint. Giles jerked and fell over backwards, as though struck a blow by some invisible weapon.

"Draconian!" he gasped.

"Ah, now that isssss unfortunate. And after all the care I took to concccceal my identity," the stranger lamented as he pushed back his cowl. A long reptilian snout emerged, surmounted by a wide, heavy brow overshadowing dark, beetling eyes. Long bronze horns swept back from his low, crested forehead. A narrow forked tongue as red as blood slithered out from between two long fangish teeth and flickered in the air.

"What do you want with three gully dwarves?" Giles asked.

"Three? I only want the one. The otherssss, they are nothing, but the one, I would have paid handsssomely for the one. Now, you mussst pay," the draconian said.

"Wait!" Giles shrieked.

The draconian took a few steps back, then planted his feet in the mud. "Sssssomebody mussssst pay," he hissed as he drew a wand from his robes. He pointed it at the coop.

"No, wait!" Giles screamed.

The draconian spoke a single word, and a tiny ball of light streaked from the wand and into the coop, where it struck Giles squarely in the chest and exploded with flame. The roof of the coop sailed high into the air as the walls burst outward. For a few moments, a living ball of fire writhed on the floor, screaming hideously, before it grew still.

Satisfied, the draconian pulled his hood back over his head, turned, and stalked away. Moments after he vanished around the corner of the cottage, the barn door opened and Lumpo appeared, a metal pail dangling from his hand.

"Look. The inn is on fire!" he said. He lifted the pail to his lips and drank deeply. When he finally lowered it, creamy milk flowed in runnels to the tip of his scraggly beard. He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly. Millisant trotted out, and seeing the lowered bucket, stuck her head into it and lapped greedily. Lumpo seemed not to notice.

Uhoh stepped out from behind him and gazed at the roaring flames that was once the chicken coop. "It a good thing we get out before he nail door shut," he commented as he squeezed milk from his beard. "That two times we nearly killed already. We not listen to Glabella no more."

"What I do?" Glabella shouted from inside the barn.

"You no have luck picking inn. Slagd find us in Pig Mud Inn yesterday, nearly catch me. Lucky I got lots of nice pig mud on me, slip away like worm," he laughed, wriggling in imitation of his narrow escape the day before. "Now Chicken Inn burn down. Lucky I decide to milk nice cow for breakfast, before it go bang!"

"I say we milk cow!" Lumpo argued. "Me got lots of luck that way."

He sniffed the air. "I be glad when nice man get back with bacon," he commented.

"You eat too much," Uhoh said.

"Do not!" Lumpo protested.

"You eat two chickens last night. Now you hungry again," Uhoh accused as he turned and entered the barn.

"Do not! I only eat two chickens," Lumpo said as he followed Uhoh.

"Ha! I see you eat two chickens. You not deny it."

"Two chickens? I only eat two, not more than two."

Slowly, the barn door closed as the burning ruin of the chicken coop spit and hissed in the rain.

As Seamus Gavin skidded to a stop outside the door to the library, a sheaf of papers spilled from his large leather portfolio and fluttered in all directions. He stooped and hurriedly gathered them, only to have the pair of heavy books that he held precariously under one arm slip and tumble noisily to the floor. All the while, he muttered "Sorry, so sorry," even though he was quite alone in the hall.

While he fumbled on the floor for his things, the door to the library opened, spilling a warm light into the hall. Seamus peered up and puffed at the loose gray hairs dangling in his eyes.

"Seamus Gavin! I thought I heard you out here. We'd almost given up on you," Lady Meredith Turningdale chuckled as she helped the elderly merchant from Palanthas to rise.

He patted her arm and sighed. "There never is enough time in the day, Lady Meredith. If it's not one thing, it's another. I don't know how I manage. Thank you. You are so very kind," he said as she gathered his papers and books and carried them in a stack into the library. "Just set that anywhere. I'll sort it out after I catch my breath."

As he entered, some of the other Knights in the library greeted him cordially, and he smiled and nodded to each in turn. Quintayne Fogorner poured him a glass of brandy, while Liam Ehrling offered him the largest and most comfortable chair nearest the fire. Meanwhile, Lady Meredith introduced him to the other Knights, the ones he didn't know. These men and women were not Knights of Solamnia. They wore the dreaded symbols of the Knights of Takhisis. He shook hands with Lord Tohr Malen and Alya Starblade, and with the queer-looking dark elven Knight, Sir Valian Escu. Last of all, he met a Knight robed all in gray; Trevalyn Kesper was his name, but this man declined to offer his hand in greeting. Instead, he shot Seamus a look of appalled indignation and returned his attention to the book in his lap. With an icy glare at the Knight, Meredith pulled Seamus away and settled him into a chair by the fire.

"We were just discussing what the Knighthood should be called, now that our two grand orders are to be joined," Lady Meredith said to Seamus.

"Is that so?" Seamus said pleasantly. "And what have you decided?"

"Nothing as yet. Sir Quintayne and many others believe it should remain the Knights of Solamnia, but Lord Tohr is against this. He believes Gunthar's intention was that the two orders of Knighthood should merge, not that one should absorb the other," Meredith said.

"Yes, but as the new Knights of Solamnia. Greater, stronger, more powerful than before," Quintayne said.

"Then why not call it the Knights of Takhisis?" Alya asked as she smiled over the rim of her wine glass. "What difference would it make?"