Jeff Crook - The Rose and the Skull

Uhoh and his companions did indeed stay with Nalvarre two days. They stayed two and two and two, until it seemed the food might run out after all.

After the first day, he learned not to leave the gully dwarves unsupervised in the house while he was gone in search of food. They would attack nearly everything that was even marginally chewable, even the leather hinges on the cupboard doors. They were worse than goats. Nalvarre had never approved of locks, but for the time being, he rigged a simple bolt to the door to keep everyone out. Uhoh, Lumpo, and Glabella were free to wander where they liked (Nalvarre pointed out more than once the nearness of the stream and its usefulness as a bathing facility) and to eat anything they found, just so long as they stayed out of the house and the root cellar.

Millisant hunted rabbits and rollicked in the meadows like a filly in clover, while Glabella became quite adept at snatching trout from the stream without net or hook. She sat on the bank as still as a cat and scooped them out when they swam by, flinging them onto the bank where Uhoh and Lumpo waited. Most were eaten long before they found their way to a skillet.

Meanwhile, no shadowy figures lurked in the trees, no stealthy footsteps haunted their dreams. Uhoh was content and happy in a way he had not been since before Gunthar's death. At night, they slept as only happy gully dwarves can sleep-like stones. Millisant chased rabbits in her dreams.

At night, they sat by the fire and Nalvarre told them tales of the gods of long ago and of the ways of the forest creatures, and for the most part Lumpo slept through his stories and Glabella half-listened while she nibbled and snacked almost without stop. Only Uhoh seemed truly interested.

The gully dwarves also told tales, but these were quickly unfolded and quickly resolved in the usual gully dwarf fashion, without point or purpose. The standard model sounded something like this: "You remember that time when… " followed by much laughter, and a few lingering comments along the lines of "That funny story. Tell it again." Sometimes the story was told wrong, which led to rip-roaring fights on the floor, which didn't do the furniture much good. Nalvarre's carpentry skills improved.

When things got quiet, someone was sure to break into "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer." That usually lasted them until they dropped with exhaustion, hoarse and croaking, as they never had got the idea that you were supposed to count backward in the song. Every verse told of the endless supply of ninety-nine bottles of beer.

A disquiet crept over the wood as autumn deepened into winter. Nalvarre felt it, though he was at a loss to name its source. The gully dwarves, it seemed, felt it as well, for Lumpo's dreams had turned and he often woke screaming, and Uhoh spent more and more time standing in the door after supper watching the quiet woods. Glabella's appetite increased; she seemed like a bear putting on fat for the lean times ahead.

More than once, as he returned home through the darkling woods, Nalvarre turned at some half-glimpsed shadow, only to find nothing there. He found himself listening for stealthy footsteps on the path or wondering at the sudden quiet and whispering of the trees. It left him feeling unsettled. He took to carrying an axe everywhere he went. Images of red dragons hovering in the sky came unbidden to his mind. He began to wonder if Pyrothraxus were not extending his influence from his northern lair at Mount Nevermind.

One morning, as Nalvarre was preparing breakfast, he said to the gully dwarves, "If I don't lock the door today, will you promise not to mess things up here? I may not be home by nightfall, in which case you three may need to stay here alone. Can you do that, and can I trust you not to wreck the place?"

"You trust us," Glabella assured him as she patted his leg. "We good."

"I'll leave plenty of food out, so you won't need to go rooting around for more. You'll have to trust me that I'll be back tomorrow," Nalvarre continued.

"We trust you," Uhoh said. "We promise. I watch these gulpfungers. Uhoh boss!"

So it was that after breakfast, and with many grave misgivings, Nalvarre left the three waving good-bye in the doorway of his house. He took his staff and started down the mountainside. He planned to travel to the valley floor, to an ancient well hidden deep in the forest there. It was the meeting place for rangers and druids, a place to leave trade goods and to find useful items in the unique barter system used by the denizens of the forest. Only rarely did two traders meet face to face. One might leave a basket of apples. The next person might take the apples but leave an elven knife. The third might take the knife but leave a sack of flour. Then the first might return and take the sack of flour.

This time Nalvarre wasn't going there to trade. He felt the need for news of what was passing in the outside world, and he hoped to run into someone at the well who might shed light on his recent forebodings.

It took him most of the day to make his way to the valley forest. He followed the stream that ran by his door, traveling a path he knew well, for he had made it himself. Wherever the path crossed the stream, he'd built simple bridges-of logs on the heights and of rushes nearer to the valley. As it meandered down the mountainside, the stream gathered to itself other smaller streams, rivulets, and trickles, until as it neared the valley floor, it became a torrent, rolling and tumbling over many a noisy fall and rapid. Finally, it reached the lower meadows and slowed to a cold crawl, wandering through bogs and fens until it reached the lake, where it spread its waters beneath the sun to warm. Reeds grew there in abundance in the shallows, providing shelter for multitudes of small water birds, while trout thrived in its cold depths.

The air was considerably warmer in the valley. While on the heights winter was fast approaching, in the valley autumn lingered in a profusion of harvest golds and brilliant scarlets. The forest rustled with a soft breeze, and sunlight dappled the path in a shifting dancing pattern of golden patches of light. It seemed so pleasant here that it was hard to believe anything was wrong, and Nalvarre began to doubt himself. He stopped and through a gap in the trees gazed back up at the mountain. He wondered what the gully dwarves were doing, and visions of them devouring every stick of furniture in the house brought a chuckle.

As the day waned and Nalvarre penetrated the heart of the forest, the sun found fewer and fewer holes in the canopy through which to shine. A deep and abiding gloom embraced the very center of the forest, for here the trees were ancient beyond reckoning, mighty and tall. Like pillars in a dark and silent temple, their gray trunks marched in serried ranks in every direction, blending in a dark haze at the very edge of vision. Only the path, barely visible in the gloom, marked the way. No water flowed here, no stream crossed the path, for the rain that fell here rarely found its way through the thick canopy to the ground below. It was intolerably dusty and dry, almost like a desert.

The gloom only deepened as night fell, but Nalvarre did not stop for the evening, and neither did he light a torch. He knew the path by heart, so he continued well into the night. Soon, a cool wet breeze rose before him, freshening his pace with its promise of water, and before long he stepped out of the wood as though passing through a door in a wall. A wide ring of oaks towered above a forest meadow fully a hundred paces across. In the center of the clearing stood a ruin of wide marble columns, glowing like a vision from an enchanted dream. High above, the unfamiliar stars of Krynn, newly formed after the Chaos War when the Greystone of Gargath shattered, wheeled in a crystalline black sky. Dew glimmered on the thigh-high grasses, wetting Nalvarre's robes as he passed through on his way to the well beside the ruin. A small fire burned there, promising warmth as well as news and company.