One brisk autumn evening, the fatigued travelers and
farmhands of the neighboring villages gathered at the local tavern, a seedy
place with plenty of rough edged character, for their nightly ritual of
drinking away their troubles, discussing their day, and purging their
frustration with a lively, yet sometimes brutal game of cards. This usually brought some comfort to their
aching bones and weary spirits. However,
something would happen on this particular night that would make this evening
different.
The sun was just beginning to fade in the west, when a slender,
frightened woman, plainly dressed in a pale blue cotton gown and faded,
yellowed bonnet, burst through the door with her young, sandy-haired son in
tow. Upon entering the dimly lit room, they
were immediately met by the overwhelming smell of musty, swirling pipe smoke,
and the pungent odor of warm ale. As she
looked around, the boisterous, overlapping conversations, scraping of forks on
metal plates and clunking of mugs being smacked down on the table were gone in
an instant.
With a quick glance, she assessed the blank expressions on
the faces of the patrons in the room. Cold,
lifeless eyes, set deeply into hardened, sunbaked faces stared back at her and
caused her to instinctively pull her son closer to her, briefly rethinking her
choice of action. A tavern was not a
proper place for a humble farmer’s wife, but her need for help out weighed her
need for propriety.
Mustering her courage she pleaded,
and anxious catch in her throat, “Please, I need help!”
Upon hearing her plea, almost all of the patrons looked
away. A few even shrunk down in their
seats and averted their gaze, reluctant to get involved; others simply did not
care one way or another, and coldly refused to pay her further notice,
returning instead to their games, discussions, and meals.
Looking down at her son, still too young to understand her
concern, she rushed toward the nearest man to her. He was sitting at one of the square, wooden
dining tables. He was tall and lanky,
with long fingers wrapped around a large mug of cider. He looked up at her with
a staggered, anxious expression, his eyes pleading for her not to speak to
him.
“Please… I need your help,” she
pleaded, but he looked away, sipped from his mug, and turned her back toward
her.
She could see that he was not willing to come to her aid, so
she looked around for anyone else that she should plead her case too. She hurried to another man sitting
nearby. He was stocky, unshaved and
disheveled, and smelled of body odor. He
glared at her with his one good eye in a way that spoke volumes as to his
unwillingness to even hear what she had to say.
She wanted to approach a man who seemed to be cowering in a corner, a
small man, with a kind face, even if he was a Montique (part man, and part
mouse). His kind was known for their big-heartedness,
but this man seemed to be a whimpering shell, emotionally damaged, as well as
physically. There was a large chunk
taken from his left ear. Out of pity she
looked for someone else, though he was the friendlies face in the tavern.
Turning away, she approached a portly man sitting just to
her left. He held a half-eaten turkey
leg in his hand. Again, she
reconsidered, for he shook his head slightly, his eyes wide and pleading. Her eyes found the tavern keeper. He was a stout man with a scar on his cheek,
the neglected scruff of whiskers on his chin, and a worn soiled apron covering
his potbelly. He stared from behind the
bar, taking notice of her humble appearance and panicked expression, but made
no gesture to show her any willingness to come to her aid. His
wary gaze pinned her in place as he spit into the bottom of a glass mug, which
he proceeded to wipe with a cloth that he had tucked in his apron.
She wavered a moment, fearful, and unsure, but decided that
even if he was indifferent that she would have to get someone’s attention.
She launched into an explanation,
“Please. I need help. Someone has taken my husband! Some…men took him off the main road, large
men… sort of!” She hesitated, looked down at her son, too young to really
understand what was happening and then began again, “Some men took him! He is gone and I just don’t know what to
do. No one in town will help me. I’m frightened and I don’t know where to
turn.”
With her words unleashed she lost her composure and sobbed
into her handkerchief. At her side, her
young, brown-haired son stood fiddling with a bit of her skirt, his grey eyes
wide with fear.
“Huh…,”
the tavern keeper grunted. His voice was
cold. “What would you like me to do
about it?”
Horror stopped her tears. She could not believe she had heard him
correctly.
The tavern keeper continued, his
voice sounding hollow, “There is trouble all around, after all. I can’t run to check on everyone.” He resumed his work behind the bar.
Just then a shadowed figure hulking
near the tavern’s hearth roared with an animal growl, “Palen!”
Everyone in the room turned to look
in his direction. His bulky, fur covered
body was silhouetted by the fire burning in the hearth just behind him, and the
soft light from candles, which hung from the ceiling on a wagon wheel,
reflected in his solid black eyes. The
tavern keeper took a shamed step backward and lowered his gaze.
The woman looked up hopefully. The ancient-looking figure who watched her
had charcoal grey gone white at the temples and twisted into long, tight braids
that hung down his back. He wore a deep
green cloak with velvet trim and traces of dirt at the hem. He stood and his robe, which flowed down to
the floor, cascaded down. He tightened
the rope belt around his stout, furry body, and grunted as he patted his
extended belly. After adjusting the
wire-framed glasses on his broad snout, his pointed ears shifted, as he looked
over the woman and her son. With a
slight limp in his stride, he approached the woman and took her hand gently
between his clawed paws, and escorted her to a chair near the hearth.
“Lily?” He beckoned to the
barmaid. “Will you please get this woman
some water?”
“Of course Grandier,” Lily replied
as she rushed to do as he asked, leaving behind a pungent trail of honeysuckle perfume.
Grateful, the woman looked up into Grandier’s solid black
eyes. When the barmaid returned, the
woman took the mug and drank deeply.
While she did, Grandier asked Lily to take the boy to get a slice of pie
while he spoke to his mother.
Lily
nodded and stretched out her hand to the boy.
“Come
along, sweetheart. It will be okay. Would you like a treat?” She smiled to coax the shy boy away from his
mother, but he fiddled with his fingers, twisting them in his mothers’ skirt.
“I’ll be
right her,” his mother reassured him.
“Go and enjoy some pie with the lady.”
She tried to hide her fear briefly with a small grin.
The boy
looked up with brighter eyes, took the barmaid’s hand, and eagerly followed her
to a distant table.
“Now,
why don’t you tell me what happened?” Grandier’s gruff voice was compassionate,
his expression concerned.
Still, it took a moment for the farm wife to compose herself
and gather the hazy details of the event into a coherent tale. She wiped her nose with a handkerchief,
pulled from her pocket, and then began.
“It was my husband.
We were going to the market down the road, to get some supplies, and a
man approached us, asking my husband some information.”
“Can you
tell me what the man looked like?” he asked her.
She
thought hard for a moment, but shook her head slightly. “It is so difficult to
remember. I was just so frightened.”
Grandier’s
voice was patient. “Just think a
moment. Was there anything unusual about
him?”
The
woman looked at him with a surprised expression and replied urgently,
“Everything about him was unusual. I
have never seen his like before.” She shuddered. “He was a rough-looking man, with dark eyes
and stringy black hair, and his face, he very odd features.”
“What do
you mean?” He leaned forward, curious.
“Well,
he had mud brown eyes, but they were deep and dead. And he was big, very big- but not just
tall. He was wide. His face was strange, with the features of a
wild warthog, and he had short tusks on either side of his crooked mouth. He smelled like the black mushroom roots in
the Muskin Fields, dirt, and sweat.
Leery of the stranger, my husband asked me to wait inside the grain shop
with our son. I was reluctant to leave
him, but I did as he asked.”
Grandier
looked at her with a stern furrow in his thick brow, but he waited quietly for
her to continue.
She
paused to think again, and then she said, “It was strange. I noticed as he approached that he had a mark
on his hand. It was some kind of
birthmark or something.”
“How do
you mean?” Grandier asked.
“Well,
it looked like a misshapen red spider,” she replied innocently.
The
barmaid gasped from where she stood beside the boy, who was hungrily eating a
generous slice of mixed berry pie.
The
woman looked back at her in surprise.
Her anxiety deepening, she asked, “Does that mean something?”
Grandier’s
reply was casual. “To some.” However, he cast the barmaid a disapproving
look and then added, “It has long been believed that the mark of the spider is
borne by those who should never be trusted, and in fact avoided. The beings that bear it usually practice the
dark arts and use malicious tactics to get what they want. But please, I need to know more. Go on.
What happened next?”
She took
a deep breath and began again. “I went
inside, but I kept an eye on them, watching them through the thick, wavy glass
in the storefront. It was difficult to
make out the details, but seemed to be having a normal conversation, but then,
quite suddenly, it seemed to change.”
She sniffed into her handkerchief.
“My husband’s demeanor became aggressive. He began to argue with the man as if he had
insulted him, but then as the man began to step toward him, my husband suddenly
seemed to notice something behind him.
My husband struggled with the stranger, and as he backed up, he was lost
from my view. I rushed to the window,
but I could not see him. I asked my son
to wait inside till I got back. I ran
out to the street but could find my husband.
I looked around, and even called to him, but there was no sign of him. Then I saw the creature who had been talking
to my husband a moment before, hurrying out of a nearby alley. He rode away with two other men, of his
kind. They charged away from the town, all three on
horseback.
“One of
them held a large sack over his lap.
That made me suspicious, but I became even more frantic when the thing
in the sack struggled. I saw Argus’s
shoe and legs sticking out from the bottom of the sack. They had my husband!” She broke down again,
sobbing into her hands.
When she
collected herself, she continued, her voice rough with suppressed tears. “I ran after them, but their horses were too
quick. I called after them. I pleaded for help, but everyone else there
on the street just threw me frightened looks and hurried into the closest place
of business. I yelled, and yelled, but
no one would come. I ran here when no
one else would help me…”
She
unleashed her tears again as she took her by the arm and helped her to steady
herself, and he called to the boy to come with them. Together the three of them left the tavern,
but not before Grandier turned and glared at the other patrons. He shook his head with disapproval and
followed the woman out the door. The
farm wife took Grandier to the market, briefly pointing out where the incident
had occurred. After interviewing the
clerk, Grandier escorted the woman and her son to the guardhouse where she
again explained what had happened.
Grandier
stayed with her until she had told her tale.
He reassured her that all would be well, but as the door closed behind
him and he looked out into the darkening street, the moss roofed and faded grey,
wooden building disappearing in shadow, as the lamplighter was lighting the
torches along the dirt main road he wondered to himself if it would. Nothing he had heard of the growing number of
missing person reports made any sense.
There had even been stories of conflicts arising between the rulers of
kingdoms that had until recently been peaceful allies. Grandier knew that he had to do
something. He would have to speak to Zimm.
