Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (33 page)

“Everyone knows that story,” Jarod said, turning back to contemplate the farmer’s demise.

“Do you?” Ward Klum asked.

Jarod turned an astonished look toward his father.

“It’s a good story,” his father said. “You should listen to the Bard.”

“The prince was surrounded, captured, and imprisoned in the mountain fortress of Urchik, who had vowed to torture the prince to death for the wrongs his father had supposedly done to Urchik’s followers. Lord Pompeanus vowed to lay siege to Urchik’s fortress, but Teron and Karmados argued for a rescue instead—a rescue that would have failed if a common centaur warrior had not volunteered to go with them.”

“Yes, I know this one, too,” Jarod nodded. “Bentarius Magnus, who charged the gates of Urchik Keep and held it against the hordes of the Soul-thieves until Teron freed the prince and—”

Jarod froze in shocked realization.

“But . . .” Jarod stammered. “He was a farmer!”

“He was many things,” the Dragon’s Bard said, considering the multitude that overwhelmed the green around the church.

“But you must be mistaken,” Jarod said. “Bentarius Magnus was rewarded with vast treasures by the king! And he had a companion—a knight errant who was with him at those gates who was driven mad by Urchik’s visions-horde and whom the centaur warrior refused to leave behind. Bentarius vowed never to be parted from him.”

“Interesting calling to be a knight errant,” the Dragon’s Bard smiled. “How they
gallivant
around the countryside and all.”

“He was rich,” Ward Klum interjected.

Jarod turned back to his father. “He was? You
knew
who he was?”

“Yes, Son, I knew,” Ward said. “Both Meryl Morgan and I knew, though Meryl would never speak of it. You see, Master Bard, there is more to the story than even you know.”

The Bard frowned. “No, I think I’ve got the complete epic—”

“It’s not always about the epic,” Ward smiled a gentle smile. “Many years ago there was a young centaur who was in love with a beautiful centaur filly. But he was a poor and unaccomplished farmer and he didn’t feel he had enough to offer her. So he took up the king’s call and joined his army for the Epic War. But the war was long—far longer than anyone feared in their darkest nightmares. And while this young centaur grew older on the endless fields of battle, his beloved filly fell in love with someone else—a handsome young human man.”

Ward turned to look Jarod in the eye. “And because this filly centaur happened to be a wish-woman of the well, she made a great wish—perhaps too great a wish—and forsook her centaur form to become a woman. All she kept was her name—Brenna.”

“No,” Jarod breathed.

Ward nodded. “By the time Aren returned, the woman he had left to impress was no longer waiting for him—in fact, had changed completely. All the riches he had acquired, all the praise and the stories and the legends became as worthless as dust. He went back to his farm and lived his life as best he could. He never loved another—but he helped others quietly and without their knowledge when he could. He kept his wealth a secret. His life was his treasure—how he lived it and what he did with it.”

“I never knew what he was trying to tell me,” Jarod said, letting out a long breath. “I never understood.”

“Abel!” Edvard said in a stage whisper behind his hand. “Did you get all that?”

The scribe poked the Bard with his stylus.

Jarod turned suddenly and started pushing his way out of the throng.

“Jarod!” his father called in an urgent, low voice. “Where are you going?”

“To assemble a treasure!” Jarod replied as quietly as he could and then disappeared in the sea of people.

“So
now
he knows where to find one,” the Bard sniffed. “Which reminds me, what ever happened to the farmer’s treasures, Master Klum?”

Ward adjusted his hat more squarely on his head. “He left them to the town, Master Bard.”

“Ah, so I suppose the mill will be rebuilt after all,” Edvard observed in flat tones. “I don’t suppose he mentioned me in his will at all, did he?”

The sun was setting beyond the trees of the Norest Forest. The autumn sky was brilliant with orange and salmon hues as the spent storm clouds gave way to brighter skies. They cast a rosy glow down on the glade atop a small rise and the figure of Caprice Morgan as she made her way from Wishing Lane up the ancient path toward the well.

“Caprice! Please, wait!”

The young woman stopped and turned to see Jarod Klum running up the path behind her. He had somehow lost his awkward gait. There was something about him that was sure and, to the eye of the young woman, straighter than he had been before.

“Master Klum, it is getting late,” Caprice said.

“But not too late,” Jarod answered, slightly out of breath. “May I accompany you to the well?”

She smiled slightly and nodded. He fell into step beside her as they walked side by side silently up the path. As the wishing well came into view, Jarod, too, smiled.

The wishing well was magnificent in the deepening sunset. The wooden latticework was completely healed, its white finish now a shiny polish glistening beneath the brilliant sky. The stones about the well were clean. The well itself emanated a cheerful, amber glow. All round the now restored gazebo that sheltered the well, a wide circle of grass had awakened and become green again while flowers were budding and blooming all around the base of the well.

“It’s miraculous!” Jarod breathed as they approached the well.

“That’s the way it is supposed to be with wishes,” Caprice said, stepping up to the well. “A perpetual spring even in the depths of winter.”

“Really?” Jarod said, stepping into the gazebo to join her next to the well. “So how is it supposed to work?”

“It’s simple enough,” Caprice said, leaning against the low wall surrounding the well itself. The glow from the well shone in her auburn hair, giving it a wondrous radiance. “You put something of value in the metal box over there—giving up something to the wishes in the well—and then come over here and make your wish. The more you put into the box, the more the wishes in the well will give you back.”

Jarod nodded. “I’ve been thinking about what to put in a box for quite some time. And I’ve finally brought it—the right gift for you.”

“A gift?” Caprice asked skeptically.

“A treasure,” Jarod corrected.

He handed her the marvelous Treasure Box.

“It’s beautiful,” Caprice said, turning the small box in her hands and examining it closely.

“I’ve been searching all year for something to put in it for you,” Jarod said, his eyes shining in the fading light. “I first thought of a hat . . .”

“Don’t mention hats,” Caprice said with a warning smile.

“I thought maybe gold or status or reputation might be good enough . . .”

“How were you going to put a reputation in a box?” Caprice chided.

“I wanted to find something . . .
something
I could bring to you,” he said. “And I think today I finally found it. Open it!”

She laughed. “I don’t know how! Show me?”

“Press the diamond shapes on either side,” he said.

Caprice pressed the sides of the box. Its sides unfolded in her hands, growing larger as she held it. It unfolded again . . . then again . . . and again . . .

Caprice set down the box quickly in the greening grass at the side of the wishing well and stepped back.

It stopped when it reached the size of a large traveling trunk.

Caprice waited a moment, the evening breeze rustling the tall grasses and bringing a scent of violets around them.

“Now what?”

“Now we open it,” Jarod said.

Together they lifted the lid of the trunk and peered inside.

The inside of the Treasure Box was larger than the outside. Within she saw the interior of a one-room cottage. A fireplace stood to one side with a pair of chairs next to it. There were two more chairs up against a small, clean table. A bed stood pushed against one corner. Cupboards and a few chests completed the room.

“This is my life,” Jarod said to her in a quiet voice. “That’s what I put in the box, and I’m giving it to you. It’s all I have—all that I am—and it’s yours if you’ll take it.”

Caprice smiled wistfully as she looked in the box. “It’s not enough.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” she said turning toward him and putting her arms around his neck. “Not until I put my life in it, too.”

Caprice and Jarod continued down Wishing Lane hand in hand. The sky had deepened in color with the coming night. As they crested the hill, Jarod could see the unfinished mansion of the Morgan household below. Lucius Tanner was sawing some timbers. The once-abandoned work to complete the house was begun anew and, with the well no longer cursed, the future of the Morgans looked bright once more.

Caprice tugged at Jarod’s hand, leading him toward the bright and warm light of the kitchen door, where her father was no doubt waiting for them both.

Within the county of Windriftshire, north and east from the Blackshore anchorage and up the northern road two leagues beyond where the Butterfield road branches off to the east, is the village of Eventide. You know the village well . . . for you or someone you know has been in or from one of uncounted similar townships that struggle everywhere to survive. It’s a quiet place that people often come from but seldom are going to. The villagers there are stronger, kinder, happier, and gentler than those of more recent acquaintance—a place that grows in its longing proportionate to its distance in memory. The greatest heroes of legend always come from Eventide or places so similar as to be interchangeable in any tale of our age, though these same heroes seldom return to these humble, quiet places that they claim as the home of their origin.

Eventide lies on both sides of the Wanderwine River, the main waterway through Windriftshire County and, as such, an ancient trade route between the sea and the plains cities to the north. Here the Wanderwine splits into the West Wanderwine and the East Wanderwine Rivers; the West Wanderwine is six feet longer than the East Wanderwine, as measured twice by Jep Walters after losing a bet with Squire Tomas Melthalion. The river runs exactly one thousand forty-four feet and five or seven inches from the tip of Prow Rock where the river splits to the end of the sand spit at the river’s confluence just south of the newly renamed Dwarf-dwarf Tannery. The rivers diverge in the north and converge in the south, surrounding a piece of land known locally as Boar’s Island—although no one remembers ever seeing a boar there. It is a matter of local pride that the courses of both the West Wanderwine and the East Wanderwine lie entirely within the charter limits of their town.

Eventide is also blessed to be at what everyone in the town considers to be an important crossroads of trade. Not only does it lie squarely on the route between the deep, if somewhat narrow, harbor of Blackshore and the city of Mordale to the north, but at the junction of the roads to Butterfield to the southeast, Welston to the northeast, and Meade to the west—thereby making Eventide the place where cheese, grain, and ale all meet in commerce. This happy fact led to the early establishment of the market in Trader’s Square and the increased prosperity permitted the local fathers to finance the construction of the Pantheon Church—which elevated Eventide from the status of hamlet to a full village by Royal Charter.

As for the village itself, its greatest claim to fame is the wishing well that lies north of town on the eastern slopes of Mount Dervin, a grandly named hill that barely crests nine hundred and eighty feet above sea level. The wishing well of Eventide grew in fame during the years before the Epic War, bringing an increasing number of pilgrims until the tragic curse that broke the well and rendered its wishes somewhat unpredictable in their results. Since then, the broken well has been tended and kept supplied with wishes by the Fate Sisters, who live in the home—on which construction has recently been renewed—near the wishing well, where they also tend to their widowed father, Meryl Morgan. Sobrina is the eldest: stern, thin, and austere, although far less so after her marriage to Lucius Tanner—a man made wealthy by the sale of his business to dwarf-dwarves. Melodi is the youngest: forgiving, plump, and prone to giggle—and a lover of fine books as well as of those who write them.

Which, of course, leaves Caprice Morgan and Jarod Klum very much in the middle of just about everything as the dragon-slaying hero from Eventide and his princess who both brought their wishes to the well.