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CHAPTER TWENTY THREE , beginning
11 of Marpenoth 1371, Year of the Unstrung Harp
Master Derk turned out to be a middle-aged halfling with big clever hands, and perpetual expression of mild curiosity painted on his kind myopic face. In a sense, he was an exact opposite of his noisy, over-zealous spouse, but perhaps that was what made their marriage a success – he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts and the many small but important tasks of his profession to have time to be sufficiently irritated with his wife’s bursts of creativity. We went through the shelves of his shop together, sorting through various herbs, roots, blobs of wax, packets of salamander dust, and dried snake tongues in small jars. I felt a strange pang of nostalgia at some point, but it was quickly replaced with an irrational fear of another vision. That was why I deliberately tore my gaze away from the table with some primitive machinery parts. Presumably, it was going to be another household item enhanced with a useful spell or two. The halfling had a practical streak to his character, and most of the projects in his shop were minor improvements of common kitchen appliances. There was for example a steam-pot with self-tightening lid, and a pepper mill that played a little tune as you rotated the crank. Supposedly, it had a ‘low friction’ enchantment woven in, which made the little device very easy to operate. The secondary effect of that spell rendered it virtually immune to day-to-day wear. But by the small gods of cutlery and cupboards - who would need a perpetual pepper machine! I thought amusedly. At least Derk’s hobby was quite harmless, if a little queer.
The halfling showed me his small collection of obscure arcane enchantments that he had collected over many years by buying them off the traveling mages. These were the scrolls for which his well-organized mind could not find any practical application, and that he did not bother to copy to his own sensible little spellbook. Derk kept them primarily for the purpose of exchanging later for something more useful. I could never understand how one could have unknown magic at his fingertips, and not bother to study it, or play with it out of sheer joy of having a new spell at his disposal, even if it was of a rather esoteric nature. Since he refused to take money for these, we had to barter. At the end, I taught him my own variation of the mend cantrip, which I redesigned over the last two weeks of my travels, to deal with the worst effects that the harsh terrain induced on my gear.
In exchange, he let me study and memorize a nonsensical but elegant enchantment that was a nice addition to the trick, which Omwo and I had planned for tonight’s performance. It was called audible glamour, and it pertained to creation of an acoustic illusion at any spot within the specified radius from the focal point of the casting. Simply speaking, one could force any mundane sound or melody to reproduce itself almost indefinitely at a chosen location, without having to pay the musicians and singers for generating the desired noise. I thought with some degree of sarcasm that Omwo should be grateful that Derk did not think of building a magical device with this kind of permanent effect. The moment it will be out on the streets will mark the end of his profession as a lucrative occupation.
Having finished my business with Master Sixthtoe, but still in possession of a few hours before the designated time for the show, I decided to spend an hour or so exploring the village before settling down to the serious business of studying my spellbook, and sorting through all the magical accoutrements that I purchased from the halfling wise man. The most important item that I procured was a wide belt of soft leather, equipped with multitude of tiny compartments, various pockets, and slots. All the vials with multi-colored liquids, desiccated body parts of strange animals, and small bags of bad-smelling powders that I now carried in my pouch required examination, labeling, and creative organizing. I did not really look forward to this work, but it had to be done eventually. On my way out of the Derk’s shop, I passed a small shrine with the crude statue of Arvoreen clutching two short swords to his muscular chest. The stone warrior gave me a stern unsmiling look of his blind eyes, but I ignored the halfling god’s displeasure, and left him to his grim contemplations, no doubt on the nature of the tall people’s perfidy.
Outside the chapel, the world was full of cold, blue brilliance pouring like water from the clear autumn sky framed by majestic outlines of the reddish-brown peaks, some of which were crowned with never-melting snow caps. After the warm and stuffy atmosphere of the shop, the crisp mountain air made me giddy - a sensation not dissimilar to that joyful lightheadedness that one might experience after drinking a full glass of sparkling wine. Since I had never tasted anything of the kind in the life that I claimed as mine own, I wondered briefly if Joneleth was actively channeling these well-forgotten tastes and images into my consciousness, or if I was borrowing from his suppressed memories on my own volition. It hardly mattered at the moment, but the thought gave me a painful jolt. I walked briskly to the edge of the rocky precipice that formed the natural barrier between the village and the narrow valley below, and stopped, taking a deep breath.
The view was magnificent, almost stunningly so. The granite wall under my feet dropped almost vertically, hiding the narrow stone shelf, from which we were lifted up yesterday in the wicker basket. There was a vague trajectory of the river at the bottom of the canyon – a dim silver band woven through the blue-green stalks of the distant trees. I looked up, slowly turning around for a better view. The mountain, upon which the Perch was scattered like a small collection of building blocks thrown by a careless child, did not end at this level, but after forming a kind of a small shoulder continued upwards, soon disappearing from view in the tattered shroud of white clouds. The slope above was covered with a sturdy growth of mountain fir, and tamarack, dotted with an occasional clump of dwarf oaks. And very high above the level of the small plateau upon which I was standing, almost hidden among the swirl of the shifting vapors, I saw the dark, gaping mouth of a cave. Something moved among the clouds, and the thick, wet blanket of fog hid the opening as quickly as it was revealed, as if drawing a curtain over the secret door. I shrugged. My imagination was probably playing tricks with my mind again. After yesterday’s nightmare, it was a miracle that I was not seeing small green dancing men under every bush.
I strolled through the village, ignoring the curious stares of rare passersby, and answering with a polite, silent nod on every circumspect greeting. I imagine, I made a rather ridiculous figure, towering three feet or more over the short but hefty Perch citizens. Omwo reached almost up to my waist, but he was taller than most of his mountain kin. The village consisted of barely a handful of round stone cairns that were built over the entrances into the deeper burrows, and a few more conventional structures, with low walls constructed out of rough grey stone, and roofed over with thin wooden logs, reinforced with clay. The Sixthtoes’ house looked like a palace compared to many of these huts. Almost every house had a small vegetable garden, surrounded by the same gray stone wall. These patches of greenery were now filled with dry stalks of harvested corn, and some brighter spots, where a few late pumpkins and overripe melons were still visible among the dead brown stems and leaves. A number of scrawny chickens, and a milk goat with a small kid haunted the streets. Simply speaking, Perch was the most uninspiring, if picturesque halfling village one could imagine in existence. I was ready to turn around and make my way back to the square box of Olphara’s house, when something unusual finally caught my bored eye.
After the last turn, the single narrow street of the village that followed the mountainside (along which I was currently walking), ended on a small round plaza, paved with the same roughly chiseled flagstones that were used in construction of every other road, and sidewalk in Perch. In the middle of the square stood a low stone arch, built of the same material, and covered with irregular white, orange, and green spots of lichen. I could swear that it looked considerably older than any other building in the hold, including the Sixthtoes’ dwelling and all the low spherical domes that according to Olphara were the oldest houses in the outpost. From the middle of that ancient structure, hung a very old bronze bell, twice as tall as the tallest halfling in Perch. Its tongue was tied with a coil of rope, as thick as the thigh of an adult halfling. The free end of the rope ended with a big knot that almost touched the flagstones. It was quite possible for a halfling to put both of her feet on the knot if desired, and swing freely on the rope, thus ringing the bell that she could not have possibly sounded in any other way. The rope was relatively new compared to the rest of the portico, and there were runes on the bell that looked suspiciously like the letters of an elven alphabet, styled to fit the Common speech. I squinted at the half-visible words.
‘We have made a covenant with thee, and this is our agreement ... should hang the bell under the arch and sound it at the time of ...’
The rest of the phrase was covered under the thick layers of green and white crust.
