Jak Barley-Private Inquisitor and the Case of the Seven Dwarves (7 page)

But at last their task was done.

"We found an array of victuals in these assassins," Fren finally reported. "But all of them had eaten within the last six hours a meal that included a rye bread, turnip greens, and turtle seasoned heavily with mint and garlic."

I wasn't even aware I had been holding my breath until Fren gave his findings and I let out a deep, slow breath. There was only one place that fit all the clues--The Coal Diggers Inn. It nestled along a back road leading in to Duburoake, tucked back among abandoned mining equipment in various stages of rot and decay. Unlike dwarves, humans tended to be slovenly with such enterprises. The veins of coal in that area had played out years ago and the once thriving village of Magic was now but a ghost town; the abandoned, dilapidated homes and stores like the skeletal remains of some great beast.

Only one enterprise remains open on the three-block stretch of brick streets that interrupts the otherwise hard-packed dirt path leading down into Duburoake. With the mining families long packed up and left, the Coal Diggers Tavern survives on business from smugglers, poachers, and now what has proven to be Reverian Assassins. And the house specialty of that den of thieves is garlic-mint turtle soup, made from the monster snappers that live nearby in the Bear River.

They say there are seven flavors of meats to a turtle, which is enough to make me suspicious. After beef, pork, fish, chicken and dragon, what is there left? Dog? Cat? Rat? Those lobster bugs at the Inn of the Six Toed Cat? I have always been leery of turtle soup.

The Coal Diggers Tavern had once been a favorite haunt of my youth. I and other students of the private inquisitor academy would spend unruly weekends at the secluded tavern drinking and consorting with the wanton women who tended to patronize the inn. For us green youngsters, mixing with the nefarious locals who patronized the inn was an added spice to the garlic-mint turtle soup. Looking back, I am surprised none of us ended up in some nearby gully with out throats slit and wallets emptied.

"Fren," I startled the dwarf as I spun around and confronted him, "they say these hills are riddled with burrows, both ancient and recent. Do you know of any that extend all the way to the Seddon Hills?"

The bloodletter seemed still dazed by the recent events and looked at me blindly.

"These assassins obviously did not come by the front entrance or there would have been a hue and cry by the time Lorenzo and I arrived. They must have come through some little traveled passage. I have reason to believe that before setting off today, they stopped at an inn in the Seddon Hills."

"There be an abundance of such warrens in these parts, many of them collapsed or too perilous to traverse." he answered. "No one knows them all."

I found myself with clenched jaws, frustrated by the delay in pursuing the rogues.

"Do you have trackers?" I asked.

"Trackers?"

"Those who have talents at trailing others?" I am afraid I yelled at the poor dwarf.

"We be coroners and bloodletters, not some constabulary," Fren said as if excusing his kind for an unforgivable limitation.

"I am sorry, Fren. I do not mean to be surly. But I fear for Lorenzo's safety. He is in danger for aiding me," I apologized.

I realized my distress was ironic in that I had not even liked Lorenzo when I first met him on the caravan ride through the Megaoulas Mountains to the royal city of Stagsford. I had a chip on my shoulder at the time. Being a proud West Glavendale native of Duburoake, I believed my smaller port city was just as intriguing and urbane as the royal metropolis. Better, since it did not have in residence our pig of a former king who had been noted for a number of sordid habits and vile entertainments best left for the thoughts of those with baser imaginations.

The only reason I had been traveling to Stagsford was because of the annual private inquisitor convention. Olmsted accompanied me to lead a symposium on "The Detection and Conviction of Brigands, Embezzlers, Highwaymen, Swindlers and Assassins Through the Modern Science of Alchemy."

Jennair had her own reasons she kept close to her bosom, though at the time I believed it dealt with distant relatives who reside in Stagsford. Frajan refugees are scattered across the world and have sought havens in many cities.

"We have Snorg," Fren interrupted my thought with an exclamation.

"Snorg?"

"Snorg."

"What is a Snorg?"

"Snorg be a he. A dwarf not given to the talents of bloodletting, but has twice proven clever at finding young ones who became lost in the burrows. I will send for him."

Before I could stop Fren, he'd snapped his fingers and sent a clerk off to find this Snorg.

"This is a little more involved than finding a lost child. Snorg may be more of a hindrance than help."

Fren waved his hand as if brushing away my apprehension. "Don't look a gift dwarf in the mouth."

"You are mixing your metaphors, but besides that, this will probably be extremely dangerous and I would not want to involve some little dwarf in these sinister affairs."

"You do not believe we be not already involved?" Fren spoke with sudden passion. He was snapping out of his befuddlement. Again waving his hand, this time at the bodies scattered about the room, he said, "What be this called if not involvement?"

He had a point. The coroners were now involved whether they liked it or not. I sighed and prepared myself for a long wait until this Snorg was found. I crouched over one of the assassins and checked to see if I had missed any clues. The search had barely begun when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"I be Snorg," a surprisingly deep voice said.

I craned my neck, expecting to find an exceptionally large dwarf looking down at me, but the voice came from a creature even smaller than Fren.

"I be Snorg," the dwarf again rumbled.

"Ah, glad to meet you, Snorg," I hastily replied while rising to my feet.

I held out a hand and he took it with fingers almost as long as my own, though thicker. We examined each other as we shook. Snorg might be lacking in height, but his stout build spoke of a condensed strength. He wore his black hair long and disheveled, like my own, though mine is brown. He had a pleasant enough face.

When Fren had spoken of Snorg not having the talents of a bloodletter, I had imagined some idiot product of cousins marrying cousins for one too many generations down here in the tunnels. Some Hound Boy who could sniff out lost children by shuffling down the burrows with his nose pressed close to the ground. But Snorg, despite his name, had an intelligent look about him. I believed I could even detect a glint to his eyes that spoke of a tart wit.

"Fren says you can track and know the tunnels."

"As good as anyone."

"I want to find the assassins who did this work. Do you believe you can follow their flight?" I asked.

"Good as anyone."

"It will most likely be perilous. Are you good with a blade."

"Good as anyone."

"Are you purposely trying to be irksome?" I snapped, not in the mood for some jester's half-wit.

"Why should I aid you? Are you not the reason these assassins were here? That be my uncle lying on the floor, a good dwarf who loved his family."

I was taken aback. Snorg's challenge was calmly spoken. I could not detect outright dislike in his voice. He was undecided how he should react to this misfortune and it was up to me to convince him to be on my side.

"Snorg, the men who did this are evil and a peril to all good beings. Yes, they might have come here because of some link to me. I cannot deny this. I am sorry this tragedy occurred to your family. But these rogues must be stopped before they repeat this evil on other innocent folk. Stay or come with me, but I must leave now," I spoke, anxious to be on my way.

It was a brief speech, but it was all the time I was willing to argue with the dwarf. He looked at me for several quiet seconds then nodded his head.

Chapter Five

"We be off," Snorg said, crossing the room and out the door before I realized he was one not to loiter once he made up his mind. I rushed to catch up with the dwarf. He was smartly marching down the corridor with his torch thrust out before him.

We took several bends and split off into a side tunnel before I uneasily asked, "Where are we going? How do you know this is the way the assassins retreated?"

"I can smell them. They passed this way."

Oh no, I thought, I did get Hound Boy. I tried imagining what I would do if he went to his hands and knees and began sniffing about the floor.

Snorg must have read something in my expression. He abruptly stopped and ordered, "Breathe deeply, slowly through your nose."

I was nettled by the delay, but Snorg was intently staring at me and I guessed he would not go on until I had humored him. I drew in a long pull of air through my nose and was just about to impatiently exhale when I stopped and sucked just a bit more air into my lungs. What was that a faint scent that seemed to be lingering in the dank air of the burrow?

Snorg smiled. "You smell that?"

I did a few more test snorts and again caught just faint hints of a maddeningly familiar fragrance. "What is it?"

"It be Old Spice."

"What?"

"The balm your friend, Lorenzo Spasm, wears. He gave a glass vessel of it to my grandfather. He said it be used after shaving, though my grandfather has a beard down to his knees," Snorg smiled.

I now recognized the fragrance as that belonging to Lorenzo, but he had never worn it strong enough to detect other than as a hint. Snorg dropped to his knees and I feared he was going to do a hound boy routine. He instead rubbed a finger on the floor and brought it up to his nose, then offered me a sniff. It was this Old Spice odor, and very stout. My friend must be leaving dribbles of the strange scent as markers. Why couldn't Lorenzo just drop torn pieces of parchment or scratch arrows into the rock walls?

Without warning, Snorg bolted into action and once again we were on the hunt. Each time we came to branches in the tunnel, Snorg would squat in one entrance then the other until he detected a pointer left by Lorenzo. I even found myself snorting about a side passage I had reached before the dwarf, thanking the fickle gods that no one from the King's Wart Inn was there to see me.

I gradually became aware that our route was taking us through passages that were more crudely cut into the stone, as well as growing smaller. The air was becoming increasingly musty and the occasional support beams were showing signs of rot.

We paused as Snorg exchanged the sputtering torch for one of several he had hanging from his belt. I felt unease, as if the walls were pressing in on me. I knew it only to be a whimsy caused by the narrowing of the passages and their growing state of disrepair.

I bumped into Snorg when he abruptly halted. His torchlight revealed a half-collapsed shaft. We gingerly picked our way over a slide of splintered rocks.

It was a tight fit at one point that took a bit of squirming. It did not get any better. We found ourselves in a cramped burrow. Snorg could still walk, though with a stooped gait. I was forced to crawl along the rubble-strewn floor. Though the smoke from the torch was making my eyes water, I still hated to think of traversing these shafts without light.

"What is this?" I asked Snorg as we entered a small room carved from the rock. It was then I noticed a number of bones scattered about. I nervously fingered the hilt of my blade.

"This be a stable."

"Stable?"

"For the ponies that pulled the mine carts," Snorg informed me.

Pausing to examine remains, I could see the bones were those of very small horses or ponies. The creatures could not have been more than three feet high from hoof to head. Thinking of my own mount, Hazel, I could not help but feel saddened by the thought of the little ponies dying in this dark hole, far away from the wind and green grasses. Those thoughts in turn made me restless. I felt the tons of stone above me pressing down and the air seemed staler and more difficult to breathe. The small airshafts in the ceiling were becoming further apart.

Snorg must have sensed my discomfort, for he again set off on the search. We came upon several more crossroads, each time pausing to find the scented marker left by Lorenzo. We also found a burned out torch. The dwarf didn't recognize the style and whispered that he believed it was from the assassins. My knees were beginning to ache and I could feel the muscles in my shoulder and neck burning from the awkward way I was forced to walk and crawl.

We were forced to squeeze past more and more partial tunnel collapses. I became wedged between a dislodged bolder and the wall. Snorg grasped my outstretched hand and bracing both his boots against the boulder, pulled until it felt as he were going to be dislocate my shoulder. Just as I was about to say his ministrations were not going to work, I popped through the rent like a cork from a bottle.

I was rubbing my arm and flexing my fingers when Snorg made a startled grunt. I looked up just in time to see his feet disappear into the ceiling before the mine was plunged into darkness. A furious scuffle ensued in the overhead shaft and I heard something shriek in pain. It had not sounded like Snorg, but I couldn't be sure.

Seconds later his torch dropped back into the tunnel and I scrambled to retrieve it then scuttled backwards when I realized I was directly under the shaft into which Snorg had just so quickly been snatched.

I drew my blade and nervously licked my suddenly dry lips. I was not about to stick my head under the opening to see what had become of the dwarf. I imagined a long green tentacle whipping around my head and hoisting me up into some demon's den. Tapping the blade at the edge of hole, I was tensed to leap back if something emerged. The mercurial flame of the torch was the only visible movement.

Behind me was the collapsed tunnel I had just barely squeezed through with Snorg's help. Blocking my advancement was the menacing airshaft and just beyond that another tight spot to squeeze through. Even if I got safely past the airshaft, I would be at the mercy of the creature for several minutes while trying to squirm though the blockage.

I tried thinking if such a situation had been covered during one of my private inquisitor classes at the academy. It is amazing how the academic world never seems to deal with the actual reality of life.

Again edging my sword forward, this time I thrust the torch into the shaft and watched the reflection on my blade. I wished I had polished it more often. I believe my heart actually skipped a beat when for an instant I saw what looked like blood-red eyes burning like coals in the darkness above. I almost dropped the torch and stumbled backwards until I bumped into the rockslide.

A sliding, grating noise began echoing from the shaft and bits of fine rock rained onto the floor. I tightly gripped my sword and crouched as best I could into a fighting posture. I found myself panting and took one deep breath before forcing myself to breathe in a more steady fashion. I can face all manner of scoundrels and villains with a resolute stance, but moaning specters, teeth-laden monsters, jabbering ghouls, giant maggots, and loathsome, bloodsucking creatures of the dark just scare the piss out of me.

The rain of grit slacked off. I found myself holding my breath; the only remaining sound that of some far off water drops plunking into a puddle. Then, as if testing a pond's temperature before taking a dip, a scarred, pointed tip of horn emerged from the ceiling. It was sparsely covered with tufts of coarse hair.

Without thinking, I lunged forward and thrust the torch against what could be only the foot of a giant wolf spider, known to prowl abandoned mines and half-collapsed buildings. The foot was quickly jerked away. I only hoped that it still seeking quarry meant Snorg had somehow escaped. The dwarf appeared formidable enough, despite his lack of height. And he was armed with a short blade.

I looked about my narrow confines for anything that could be of aid. There was no wood for making a fire under the shaft. The boulder behind me was too large to move.

The foot again emerged from the overhead opening. This time I let it descend as far as the first joint. Twisting about so my sword was partially behind me, I swung it back around as a lumberman would drive his axe into a tree. The creature squealed a string of violent, twirpy chirpings that made my skin crawl and teeth hurt.

I might not polish my blade as often as I should, but I do keep it well whetted. The sword had split through the more vulnerable area of the joint, and though not completely severing the lower part of the leg, the blow had to have crippled it.

Still, the monster spider had seven legs to go. There was nothing to do but wait and hope the creature became weary and left before my torch died. Several times I poked the flame into the opening just to let the spider know its meal had not fallen asleep.

I am not sure how much time passed before my torch started the sputtering that precedes its demise. The thought of being in total darkness with a hungry, giant wolf spider was not comforting. The notion of some giant hairy bug slamming me to the floor in complete darkness, ramming a suction tube into my navel and sucking me dry was not one to soothe my nerves. I found myself shivering, though the cave's temperature had not changed.

More debris began falling from the shaft. The spider must have sensed I was about to become blind and helpless. All Duburoake school children learn wolf spiders can detect their prey by sensing body heat. It would see me, but I would not be able to see it.

In preparation of the imminent attack, I again moved the blade back over my shoulder as I would an axe. The muscles in my back and right leg were knotting and I wanted nothing so much as to be able to stand straight and stretch.

Again I wished my instructors at the private inquisitor academy had detailed what course of action could be taken when stranded miles within a Hades-black labyrinth of tunnels with a giant wolf spider preparing to dine upon your body juices, leaving just a wrinkled husk for your friends to find--if your remains were ever discovered and not finished off by avaricious cavern rats.

I shifted my weight and could tell my left leg was going to sleep. And I recalled my imprisonment by brigands while on the way to Stagsford. I had thought that about as bad as it could get. I had come to the next day with bright sunlight nearly blinding my aching eyes. I had to force my lids open. The floor of the valley was gently rotating beneath my head. I was hanging over a chasm, upside down, bound, and gagged. And from the light breeze playing about my aching body, I could tell I was naked.

It would be safe to say, until finding myself in this tunnel, I had never found myself in a more troubling dilemma--except maybe during my recent trip to Duburoake.

I had found myself the victim of outlaws who had left me swinging naked and upside down from a rope above a deep crevice. I could not even yell for help because it was unlikely there would have been assistance on that remote highway. My slow spinning had brought me around to view the rock wall. Clutching to the stone face with large sucker toes were a number of tiny, green lizards. They nervously scampered back and forth while never taking their bright red eyes off me, like anxious puppies scared to make the jump to their master's wagon.

One finally gained the courage and leaped--landing and clutching onto the ropes that bound my arms to my side. It forthwith tried a tasting of the large feast before I jerked from the needle-sharp nip. The lizard did not have a secure grip and my spasm sent it toppling into the void. Its mates paused in their pacing long enough to watch their unlucky hatchmate dwindle into nothingness then resumed their hungry scurrying.

My revolution continued and I again faced out over the gorge. I felt the mad scrambling of another lizard as it slid down my back to finally catch in my hair. I vigorously shook my head and dislodged the second attacker at the expense of violently exasperating my headache.

I tried not imagining myself covered with scavenging reptiles, the tiny creatures swiftly reducing my body to a few meatless bones dangling in the breeze like some frightful wind chime. My private inquisitor instructors said cool heads prevail, but I doubted any of them had found themselves in similar circumstances. If they did, the solution to such a conundrum was never imparted during class.