Jak Barley-Private Inquisitor and the Case of the Seven Dwarves (12 page)

"Close, I admit my idea of girlish 'charms' are not those that can turn a man into a tapeworm," he said. I was surprised to hear Sergey make the admission. "Though it is not Morgana I fear, but Morganna, the witch. No matter her daughter makes the mother out to be but a spoiled, disagreeable woman. The truth is much darker. There are too many dreadful tales to have her but some simple shrew."

"I would not go on this foolish venture tomorrow night," continued Sergey in a lower voice now steeped in concern. "There are too many tales to dismiss Morganna's misdeeds as gossip or exaggeration. Is it this easy for the spider to draw you into her web--by sending a winsome hatchling?"

"By the God-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned," a shrill voice halted our conversation, "you are living a life of sin, creating a heavy debt that can only be lifted by giving tribute to Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned. You wallow in corruption and your immortal spirit is doomed unless you now offer a sacrifice."

A gaunt faced, jaundiced looking fellow spit out the words. He stood before our table with outstretched hands.

"Be off, you silly simpleton," I ordered in ill temper. My aunt had been a follower of the God-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned and I have more than my fill of cheerless memories associated with the order.

"Tell me, how is Pete?" Sergey asked as if inquiring about a mutual friend, but the priest turned even paler under the candle lights and crouched back.

"Blasphemer, how dare you say the name of Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned!"

"Pete? Pete is the name of Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned?" I asked Sergey in disbelief.

The priest whirled and wove a number of intricate hand signs in the air before my face. "You too will go to Hades for such an abomination. Silence your odious tongue."

"What kind of name is Pete for a god?" I wondered out loud.

"Not much of one," answered my friend while the priest looked as if to have a paroxysm. "I mean, there are still plenty of good names about for a god. Take Baldergon or Mytakel. Even Honesdred would be better that Pete. No wonder they do not want to speak his name. Pete, imagine that."

"All those years being dragged by my aunt by the ear to a temple with a god named Pete," I continued. "I don't think I would have been so fearful in that dark, dank temple with those dour priests if I had but known the god was called Pete. I surmise that it just goes to show you what be in a name. I mean, who could be intimidated by a god named Pete? Who names a god, anyway? The parents? What are their names, Willy and Winny?"

The shaman was now looking wildly about the inn. "You must be still. T'is sacrilege to be bantering about Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned."

"Tell me, how did you discover the name of Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned?" I asked Sergey.

"I was bedding a priestess of the temple and every night she would scream, 'Oh Pete, oh Pete.' It did not take a ferret to deduce that one."

"
It's
private inquisitor," I, by rote, reminded my friend. "You know, Pete could have been her boyfriend."

"Say, you could be right. It could have been a past boyfriend," Sergey admitted then looked at the priest, "but that appears not to be the case."

"Sacrilege, sacrilege," the priest began shouting. "These heretics have blasphemed Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned. They must die."

"For Pete's sake," Sergey tried out-yelling him. "Be still, I am getting a headache."

If we had been in a temple of Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned, then maybe the priest's cries would have elicited some ruinous response. But Glavendale is a nation of mixed origins and religions. Gazing about the dark interior of the inn, I could espy several followers of the Uncle of Karn, one or two Tosters, and a Bilamrian Secessionist, but no followers of Him-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned. The rest of the patrons, like me, were probably skeptics.

I stopped in my inventory when my eyes locked with a patron who was garbed as a pilgrim of Dorga. He sat motionless at a table pressed against a wall not far from a window that was so grimy as to be opaque. We stared at each other and for a brief moment it was as if sound and motion had perished from the world. Here was a malevolent being who made the other rogues in the tavern seem meek--a rabid wolf among dogs. He turned back to his plate to lift his fork and the spell was broken.

For the next 15 minutes Sergey pumped me on my latest perils. I again made him promise not to print any of it until the case was closed.

"I must be going now, Jak."

Sergey had risen to his feet, pausing to grip the back of his chair to steady himself. "The Duburoake coach will be arriving soon and I don't care to miss it and walk back to town. You really must pay more attention to your wardrobe. The disheveled ferret look can be carried too far. It looks as if you have slept in that jerkin for several days."

"I will keep that in mind. And it is private inquisitor," I answered and wished him farewell.

I turned again to view the pilgrim. He was no longer at his seat. Sighing, I tested my injured foot and stood. It did not protest too much. I managed to get back to the bar with barely a limp. Lorenzo's stool was empty and I gave a questioning eye to the barkeeper. He shrugged and grunted something that sounded like my companion had left with the Dorga pilgrim.

I wearily took a stool and debated my next move. Lorenzo had an inclination to disappear at odd times. Should I wait or join Sergey at the coach stop? Though the prospect of a hike home alone was not that appealing, I decided to stay. Curiosity played a major part in my decision. What was Lorenzo doing with the demonic pilgrim?

I did not have to wait long. Halfway through my second Horse Lips Ale, Master Spasm walked through the front door and made his way to the empty stool beside me.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"Go?"

"With the witch."

"Witch?"

"Morganna's daughter."

It drove me mad how Lorenzo seemed to know everything. It was highly irritating at times.

"Daughter?"

"It sure wasn't the witch's son. Okay, I can see you don't want to talk about it."

"What was with the pilgrim," I asked.

"Pilgrim?"

I cocked my head and eyed him for a moment. "We have a date tomorrow evening at the baron's. I am to pick her up at her mother's."

Lorenzo seemed impressed. "Cool."

I raised my eyebrows.

"He wasn't a pilgrim," Lorenzo offered in return.

I had to smile at how accustomed I had become to our banter. I had been wary of Lorenzo when I first met him on my way to Stagsford. He had a room down the hall in Kaiserhelm and answered his door to a Ghennison Viper Mage.

I remember that first meeting very vividly. I had looked out my door standing bare foot, hair mussed, and mouth agape. Just several yards from me stood a Ghennison Viper Mage and two Glavendale warriors, all now turned to my door and staring in serious displeasure. Even without the conical hat, the wizard was tall. He had an unhealthy yellow complexion like that of a fading bruise and a reek of mold and dank caverns. A guard looked as if he were about to bark a rebuke when the door they had been beating on flew open.

"What the…?"

I assumed the ominous trio elicited such responses wherever they went. I looked at my neighbor with pity. He stood in a state comparable to my own--that of obviously having just risen from bed. I guessed him to be middle aged with dark hair to his shoulders, and a mustache streaked with gray that hung almost to his chin. Olmsted was still hoarsely begging me to shut the door.

The wizard gave my neighbor but a brief glance and said scornfully, "This wretch is not whom we seek."

"Who, dunghead, do you think you're calling a wretch," the man grumpily answered in an unfamiliar accent. "You have a lot of insolence calling anyone a wretch, dressed in that clown getup."

It was not an expected reply. I involuntarily retreated a step into my room but could not completely tear myself from the unfolding drama. The King's men looked outraged then fearful as they turned to see how their companion was reacting--which was not good. Ghennison Viper Mages are known for their arrogance, evil tempers, and as loathsome students of the black arts. This is too often an unfortunate combination of personality traits and talents for those who come under the scrutiny of the notorious magicians.

The wizard's eyes erupted into burning coals as if fanned by the insolence. He reached out with a finger that more closely resembled a bird claw, but it came to an abrupt halt as my foolish neighbor seized the mage's wrist.

"Beat it, Bonzo, and take your two girly boys with you. I'm trying to get some sleep."

An ear-splitting shriek erupted from the wizard, and he thrust his free hand at the foolhardy stranger while mouthing a fierce curse. I frantically closed my eyes and shoved the heals of my hands into my ears. It is dreadfully painful to hear the dead language of the even deader Xlantians spoken by a human tongue. The following discharge of light seared its way through my closed eyelids and sent me staggering against the doorframe. The hall was flooded with the stink of seared meat and hair.

I could hear my half brother Olmsted's lumbering tread behind me as I forced open my eyes. The hall was filled with noxious black fumes that made me lightheaded and stung my watering eyes. Strong hands gripped my arms and tried pulling me back into the room. I struggled reflexively and jerked free in time to see the smoke thinning. A greasy patch of charred cloth and crumbled bones lay on the hallway floor. It looked worse than the meals they call food at the King's Wart Inn. Two frightened faces looked down at the incinerated mass and to each other. The King's guards were bewildered by the sight. Instead of the expected cremation of the stranger, it was the Ghennison Viper Mage who was blasted into ashes and oil.

My neighbor opened his mouth to speak. The soldiers fell over themselves to escape before he could utter a word and their footfalls could be heard pounding down the stairwell after they were out of sight. The amazing event had the opposite effect on me. I stood frozen in my doorway.

"I could have warned the cretin, but he probably wouldn't have listened," said whom I was soon to know as Lorenzo Spasm in a matter-of-fact voice. "I hope they clean the mess up before I leave in the morning. I hate looking at crap like that before breakfast."

"W-what did you do? That was a Ghennison Viper Mage. They are invincible. Even the lizard wizards of Ghostlike fear them."

"The mightier they are, the faster they burn," the stranger replied solemnly as if importing some great wisdom, then stepped back into his room and shut the door.

Olmsted had hesitantly craned his head out the door and gasped when he saw the stinking mass--greasy scraps in the muck still bubbling and smoking.

"Amazing," my half brother said in a husky voice. "I have never heard of a Ghennison Viper Mage bested at his own trick."

I shoved him back into the room and bolted the door against the unpleasant reek.

It was later I learned that Lorenzo, a traveler not of this world, was immune to magic. All curses and spells rebounded upon those who cast them. And since that initial meeting, we have become stalwart comrades.

"I thought something was amiss about him," I said of the supposed pilgrim.

"He was a Reverian Assassin."

I was in the middle of a swallow when Lorenzo made the revelation and I began choking. He slapped me on the back and continued. "His buddies have gone back to town. They are after you, hired more than a month ago in Stagsford. This one does not know the client's identity, though he said others did. He did know whoever hired them was not from Duburoake.

I ran a sleeve across my chin and put down the bottle. "I was not aware Reverian Assassins were so loquacious."