Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (23 page)

At long last, shivering and with his skin rubbed raw, he managed to pull his nightshirt into the water with him and, after considerable effort, got it clean enough so that he could stand to wear it. He staggered out of the river, dripping and a little confused about his surroundings with every new sniff of his nose.

It was in this condition that he showed up on the doorstep of a very surprised Mordechai and Alicia Charon in his still-dripping nightshirt. Of two things he was certain.

Never again would Sobrina have to stand upwind of him.

And his business was ruined forever.

• Chapter 15 •

There Are No Gnomes!

I didn’t mean it that way!” Jarod thought darkly to himself with his arms folded tightly across his chest. “I wished that he would stop stinking, not start smelling well! This is all my fault . . .”

But he kept his faults to himself as he leaned against a post in middle of the small group gathering in the Charon’s Goods store. Damper Muffe, Madeline’s dumpling and doughy sixteen-year-old son, had come into the store, as he often did first thing in the morning, to look through the seven different maps that Mordechai Charon had for trade. He never bought any of them but liked to dream that he had a use for their distant places and the roads that might have taken him there. What he discovered was the shocking sight of Lucius Tanner sitting on a stool with a blanket pulled around him, complaining about how damp wool smelled. Damper fled the store to sound the alarm that the tanner was in town, but as Damper was known to tell a tall tale now and then—and since a single check of the air gave no hint of the tanner’s presence—nearly everyone discounted the news entirely as a fabrication. Jarod, however, had come at once to Charon’s Goods on the run—the sight of which drew the attention of Jesse Hall, a tinker setting up his goods early in Trader’s Square, who commented on the fact to the passing Widow Merryweather, who was on her way with Ariela Soliandrus to call on Madeline Muffe to extend their sympathy on having such a foolish son as Damper. After that, it was only a matter of a very short time before the entire town knew of Lucius Tanner’s plight. The news, however, did not translate into the kind of event where the townsfolk gathered, by and large. There were fields to be tended, grains to be ground, baked goods to brush with churned butter, and iron to be forged. None of those things could be left at the moment to see a man whose novelty was that he no longer stank.

This unfortunately meant that those who had nothing better to do were the ones, by and large, who appeared.

“It’s those pixies, Lucius, just as sure as I’m sitting here,” said the Widow Merryweather, her tone defying anyone to contradict her pronouncements. “They’ve been meddling with the town for quite some time and now they’ve gone too far! Someone needs to do something about it right now or, mark my words, there’ll be more of this terrible mischief and worse upon worse until we’re all murdered in our beds!”

Being murdered in her bed was Widow Merryweather’s preferred expression of a romantically tragic ending. Ariela Soliandrus, the Gossip Fairy, had picked up on it early in their relationship and used the phrase constantly no matter how remotely it fit the situation. Unfortunately, through overuse its impact in the town had diminished to the point where no one actually was afraid of being murdered in their beds. Some had muttered under their breath that they hoped someone
would
be murdered in their beds so that at least the ladies of Cobblestone Street could talk about something knowledgeably.

“It’s not the pixies,” Lucius sighed, shaking his head. He sat in the middle of the floor on a chair, still in his nightshirt but now wrapped in a blanket. Alicia had offered him some of Mordechai’s clothing, but Lucius had politely refused. He was confused and assaulted by new smells and sensations. It was difficult for him to think clearly.

“How do you know?” the Widow Merryweather exclaimed. “They could have come in the night . . .”

“Perhaps while he was
in his bed?
” Harv Oakman was leaning against the counter. His wife’s millinery shop was next door to Charon’s, and his woodworking yard ran behind both shops. Merinda could not leave her shop and so had insisted that Harv drop what he was doing and come over to offer their help in her stead. Harv had dutifully set aside his work and come to his neighbor’s store.

“Precisely!” Ariela chimed in with her high, fluting voice. She fluttered about three feet above the ground in front of where the miserable Lucius sat.

“Good thing he wasn’t murdered while they were at it,” added the Squire with a quick wink in Harv’s direction. Tomas Melthalion was between the early and noon meals and so had managed to cross Charter Square to offer what help he could.

“Who is to say or understand the whims of pixies or the gods?” Edvard exclaimed.

Everyone turned to look at him in blank incomprehension, except for Abel, who was used to such random and pointless pronouncements.

“What I mean to say is, perhaps your craft is not lost after all!” the Dragon’s Bard amended. “Perhaps you might, in time, get used to the smell of the—”

“I can hardly stay in this room, Master Bard. Mordechai is my biggest buyer, and the few leather goods he has in this store are making me feel ill. No, I think I’m dead to my trade,” Lucius said, shaking his head. Then he sniffed. “Say, does wet wool smell funny to anyone else?”

The Widow Merryweather puffed herself up and drew in a deep breath. “Well, if you ask
me
 . . .”

The door to the shop banged open so hard that Alicia was momentarily afraid it might come off entirely.

Jarod slowly unfolded his arms, standing as he gazed at the person in the open doorway.

Sobrina Morgan leaned into the room with both hands on the door frame. She was flushed, and her breath was coming in quick gulps. When she caught sight of the people in the shop she let go of the frame and stood her slender, tall figure once more erect. Her hair was pulled back into its customary bun but somewhat off center and with strands of long hair sticking out of it. She stood still, affecting the cool detachment that everyone in town associated with her.

But her lower lip quivered.

Lucius looked up, drawing the blanket self-consciously around him.

“Is it true, Lucius?” she said.

“Yes, Miss Morgan,” he replied quietly. “I may be presentable in polite company now, but I’ll never be able to go back to my work.”

Sobrina took two steps across the floorboards and abruptly stopped in front of where Lucius sat. “How did this happen?”

Lucius had not been this close to her since he was seventeen. He smiled shyly and looked down at her dust-covered shoes.

“A wish can be a powerful thing, Miss Morgan,” he said.

She stood there before him as immovable as marble for a long moment. Then, hesitantly, she extended her hand toward him.

“I’m so sorry, Lucius,” she said, her voice trembling for the first time in anyone’s memory.

He looked at her hand in wonder and then slowly, carefully, as though afraid it would vanish into smoke, took it in his own. He looked up with wide, watery eyes. “I’m not, Bree . . . not sorry one bit.”

Widow Merryweather and the Gossip Fairy rushed from the shop at once, which was a shame because neither of them was there when a loud, guttural cough shook the riveted attention in Charon’s Goods away from Sobrina and Lucius.

There, standing in the store, was a gnome.

The reaction of the people present was decidedly mixed. Lucius smiled. Sobrina stared. The Squire looked away. Mordechai frowned, while Alicia simply turned and walked through the door into the back room of her shop. Edvard was curious. Abel picked up his writing tablet in anticipation.

Jarod was astonished. He remembered this gnome from their visit to the tannery just the day before. He was a bit too preoccupied to have caught the name at the time, but he seemed to recall that this was the father or husband of the gnome clan at the tannery—the leader of them in some capacity. He was no taller than two and a half feet and was wearing the pointy orange hat that seemed ubiquitous among his kin. He had on a pale green shirt with pants and doublet of leather. His shoes were pointed and curled upward at their tip. His skin was chestnut brown and his expressive eyes were dark green. A long, grey beard extended from his chin down to where it nearly touched his waist.

Most astonishing of all to Jarod, the little creature did not carry a whiff of a scent about him.

“Klauf!” Lucius said. “Good morning.”

“Master Tanner,” Klauf replied in a low, gravelly voice. He reached up quickly and snatched the orange hat from his head, revealing a gleaming bald spot at its crown.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Lucius said. “Mordechai, have I introduced you to my foreman, Klauf Snarburt?”

“No,” Mordechai answered in a tone that left little doubt that he had no desire to meet the gnome.

“And you, Squire, have you . . . Squire?”

Tomas was looking in any possible direction but where Lucius might get his attention.

Jarod frowned deeply in thought.

Klauf sighed, then continued. “Begging your pardon, sir, but we were wondering when you might be coming back to the tannery?”

Lucius looked up at Sobrina and then back at the gnome. “I’m afraid I won’t be coming back, Klauf. I’m . . . well, I’m quitting the tanning craft.”

Klauf pursed his lower lip, causing his long beard to jut forward. “Then you’ll be selling the tannery, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” Lucius said. “I hadn’t really thought about that. I’d have to find someone interested in—”

“We’ll buy it,” Klauf said at once.

Sobrina caught her breath.

Lucius looked at the gnome in amazement. “You? But how can you possibly have the money to—”

“We got some little saved by,” Klauf said, “and you’ve seen us work. We could pay it out to you regular-like from a measure of our increase until—”

“No, it won’t work,” Jarod said, his forefinger pressed against his chin as he stood in thought.

“What do you mean, ‘It won’t work’?” Lucius was incredulous. “It’s wonderful! I’d have enough to start over again . . . get married . . .”

“You can’t sell the tannery to Klauf,” Jarod sighed.

“Why ever not?” Sobrina demanded.

“Because there
are no gnomes!
” Jarod said in frustration.

There were in those days, by royal decree, no gnomes. Their existence as a race went entirely unrecognized by the crown, who, having never met one and finding tales of them to be entirely fantastical in nature, had mandated that there were no such beings.

This news came as something of a blow to Klauf Snarburt and his clan. Klauf’s family—his wife, Enuci, brother Laut, and son Jurt, as well as his cousin Grig Philput and sister-in-law Klisten Brinswart—all worked at the tannery at the far southern end of Swamp Lane. They had all come to Eventide after Klauf, a tanner by trade, had come into the village and had immediately found employment from a very grateful and relieved Lucius. Klauf sent word at once to the Foglaiden Mounds in the South Country for his family and relations to join him here, and all found welcome employment from Lucius. The increased production output at the tannery proved a boon both to Lucius and to Mordechai Charon, whose sale of leather-tooled goods was also able to increase manyfold and provide the foundation of his family’s meteoric rise in both the financial and social circles of the village.

The problem was, of course, that Klauf Snarburt and his kin were all gnomes.

And now, by decree, they didn’t exist.

This proved to be an awkward challenge for the townsfolk who were used to trading with Klauf’s people. Some now felt duty bound
not
to acknowledge their existence out of a sense of loyalty to the king. Others tried politely to suggest that perhaps the Snarburt clan should move away so as not to embarrass the town by making everyone look unpatriotic. Some secretly voiced the nasty opinion that Klauf was intentionally insisting on being a gnome just to foment a rebellion against the crown.

Gnomes were ignored, suspected, dismissed, talked about, and occasionally sympathized with, but there was one thing that was clear to Jarod from all the years he had been working in the countinghouse: No gnome could legally own land or enter into a binding contract . . . because gnomes did not exist.

Ward Klum was flipping at a furious pace through an enormous book on his desk. Around him seethed a sea of individuals arguing back and forth within the walls of the countinghouse.

“It’s sedition! Sedition, I tell you,” Jep Walters shouted, pounding his fist on Ward’s desk, causing the accountant to grab both it and the book to steady it. “The just rulers of our land have decreed there are no gnomes, and it’s up to every servant of the kingdom to uphold the letter of their law!”

“Man the barricades!” shouted the Dragon’s Bard while his scribe stood in the corner furiously scribbling in a vain attempt to keep up. “The gnomes are threatening!”

“There are no gnomes!” Jep insisted.

“But he’s standing
right there,
Walters!” Lucius shouted into the cooper’s face. “He’s no figment of imagination!”

“But the law says he doesn’t exist,” the Squire insisted.

“I would that
you
didn’t exist!” Sobrina fumed. Even in her agitated state, she knew better than to use the word
wish.

“Listen, everybody, we’ve just got to calm down,” Harv Oakman pleaded. “Why can’t we just arrange among ourselves for the bargain? Why can’t the . . . the . . . you know, why can’t Klauf here just pay Lucius the money and we all just recognize who owns what around here. Nobody in Mordale needs to know . . .”

“And what happens when the tax collector comes,” Ward said, his eyes still scanning the book, “and he finds all these nonexistent creatures operating the single largest revenue-producing effort in the county?”

“Really?” Lucius asked with a grin. “Are we really doing that well?”

Ward looked up. “Actually, your earnings prior to two years ago were flat, but your increase in the last two seasons alone was—”