~*~
For a week, they trooped over hilly roads in need of pavement. They forded wide streams in need of bridges. They came upon unlucky animals in need of better cover, which Kwestor shot to supplement their rations. The game provided a welcome addition to their stale bread, dried fruit, and jerky. But rabbit on a stick, held over a fire until charred on the outside and almost warm on the inside, is not exactly gourmet fare, and his ability to even view it as food depended largely on his level of hunger and his determination to be a real adventurer. Still, a sauce would have been nice. The meat definitely needed more seasoning. Over dinner one night, Donald had agreed when Kwestor complained about the food, while Muce happily munched on a charred potato.
They came upon surprisingly little human settlement along the road leading to the Warden from Gondford, although it did not really represent much of a road. Kwestor said almost all of the trade, and therefore most of the traffic, between Gotrox and Westgrove went by way of the road connecting Kartok with Dale, short portions of which were actually paved. The one Donald and his companions traveled aided their journey with little more than a twin pair of ruts left by wagon wheels over the years, separated by stunted plants and small stones.
They passed a few small stoutfolk villages, a couple of lumber camps, and the occasional mine off the main trail. On their fourth day out, they met a stoutfolk peddler who spoke Westgrovian on his way to the fair in Gondford. Donald passed a few pleasantries with him and confirmed that the road they were on did indeed lead to the Warden. The peddler said he had stopped there a few days before and had sold several lovely and collectible souvenir paperweights. He offered one to the prince.
Donald’s hand cupped the glass ball, about the size of a ripe redfruit, and he squinted to examine a little model of the Warden imbedded in it. He mentally translated the Gotroxian writing on its wooden base. The Great Guardian of Gotrox.
Donald considered what the short peddler told him and assumed he sold the orbs to pilgrims visiting the site of the Warden. He wanted to pump the man for more information but feared this might rouse suspicion. He bought the paperweight.
It rained on and off the whole day. That night, Kwestor found a spot under an overhanging rock to camp, and they feasted on poorly prepared rabbit, the last of their stale bread, some unintentionally blackened potatoes, and tepid water collected from the last reasonably clear stream. The rock overhang provided little by way of shelter but they appreciated it nonetheless. After a week of hiking over rough roads, Donald felt hungry, sore, and in desperate need of a bath. Adventuring, he realized, is not always quite as romantic as stories would lead one to believe.
Their path merged with another and then that with another and then another. Eventually it grew wide enough for three gond carts to go abreast and stone paving began. The road turned sharply to go around rocky hills until it reached a meandering depression with steep cliffs gradually growing taller on either side. The damp afternoon sky matched the color of the rocks through which the road now snaked, turning their immediate world into a gray watercolor abstract. A light rain began to fall.
The approach to the Warden differed significantly from Donald’s expectations. The tale he had constructed in his mind required them to battle a troll or some other foul beast at the base of a cliff, defeat it with a heroic last chance effort, and then scale the sheer rock to find the magical statue half concealed beneath vines covered with long, sharp and—to add a bit more peril—poisonous thorns.
He never imagined a wide, well paved road with little benches along the way, push carts selling snacks and souvenirs, and colorful flags doing their best, despite the drizzle, to flap festively. He definitely did not expect so many tourists.
Nevertheless, they had undoubtedly arrived at the right spot. Donald could tell because of the sign.
Welcome to the Warden of Mystic Defiance
The Great Guardian of Gotrox
Famous in Song and Legend
Mystery of the Ages
Wonder of Wonders
Voluntary contribution – 1 Silver Piece for Admission
He noticed no sign of the statue itself, though. Kwestor said it stood a bit further on in a canyon, as he recalled. The ranger had come here only once before several years ago before it had become so commercialized. He, too, seemed uncharacteristically surprised by the differences.
They continued past the irregularly spaced carts and vendors along the sides of the road, and through and around clusters of stoutfolk tourists. The trio attracted numerous glances and stares; being the only people there taller than five feet, they seemed very out-of-place.
The road funneled them to the entrance where they came upon a candy-striped booth. A stoutfolk man dressed in traditional but archaic gray lederhosen greeted them.
“Good day, welcome visitors. Would you care to make a contribution for the upkeep of our national treasures?” He smiled weakly at them after reciting his memorized greeting, which he had probably repeated with varying degrees of sincerity many times over the last few years.
Donald had secured his money pouch in his pack before they left Gondford. He had not expected to have need of it. It now rested securely but inconveniently in the pack on his back and covered by his rain gear. He suspected he might have some small change in the pocket of the poncho, though.
He dug in his hand and produced about eight copper pieces, which provided some relief and a pleasant surprise. He expected far less. He gave them all to the short, bearded fellow in the funny pants.
The gatekeeper looked at them briefly and held his hand back out for more.
“I’m afraid that’s all I have handy,” Donald explained.
The prince read Gotroxian well enough. Unfortunately, he did not actually speak it. He knew the words, and he could understand what people said—with a little thought, if they said it slowly and clearly—but his pronunciation left much to be desired.
The Gotroxian winced at such gruesome mangling of his mother tongue, but he seemed to take no offense. Most tallfolk sounded like they were struggling to sing the words to a tune they did not know when trying to speak the guttural language, usually putting the stress on the wrong syllables and getting lost around the umlauts.
“It’s not enough,” the stoutfolk man said.
“I thought it was a voluntary contribution.”
“It is a contribution. That makes it voluntary. If it were an admission fee then it wouldn’t be. But you got to pay it anyway.”
“So, how much do we have to pay?”
“Whatever you want,” he replied with a hint of exasperation. “It’s a contribution. But everyone gives a silver piece each.”
“How can it be whatever we want if it’s a silver piece?”
“Well, you can pay two, if you want.”
Donald wiggled out of his poncho, undid the buckles on his pack, dug for his coin purse, and handed over three Westgrovian silver-fruit coins. The attendant tried to hand back the coppers he had originally been given but the prince declined. “Keep it as our voluntary contribution.”
“Thank you very much.” The gateman smiled and waved them through. As they passed, he handed each of them a piece of paper folded into thirds.
After securing his pack and slipping on his poncho, Donald examined the paper. On one side, he found a map of the Warden’s site with points of interest clearly marked out. The other side held several lines of small Gotroxian writing above which in larger print it said, The Legend of the Warden. Donald refolded it and put it in his pocket to read later.
Beyond the entrance, the cut in the rocks became narrower and curved sharply to the right. No vendor carts crowded the path past the little striped booth, but flags mounted into the rock faces on either side fluttered damply as far as they could see, which was not far since the crack twisted and turned constantly. They made their steady way through the meandering corridor and among the jostling tourists for about ten minutes before they emerged into a large circular canyon alm
ost like a natural amphitheater. However, in place of tiered seating, the rock walls rose at a sharp angle, high and smooth, reflecting light like polished silver. And there, in the center, stood the Warden. It would be impossible for anyone who came this far to miss it.
Donald could not take his eyes off the massive figure before him. It easily stretched twenty times his height with a blacker than black surface as dark as the bottom of the deepest well. It contrasted sharply with the reflective crater walls around it. Light seemed to be sucked into it like water spiraling into a drain.
He approached it slowly, one tiny, hesitant step at a time, staring into the stern black face and the cold black eyes, which somehow seemed alive. The statue held its bulging arms crossed over its broad chest defiantly. It could see him, he felt sure of it. It knew who he was and he was unwelcome. It inspected him, judged him. It did not want him here.
He started at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and he turned his head to see Muce standing at his side.
“You better watch where you’re going, Your Highness. You almost stepped on that little kid.”
Donald looked down. There right in front of him a stoutfolk child, no more than five years old, wearing a flannel shirt and bib overalls stood with its back to him. Donald could not tell if it was a boy or a girl.
It also seemed fascinated by the Warden, tilting its head from side to side while silently staring upward. It calmly turned around to walk away before it glimpsed Donald. The child stopped in its tracks, its eyes going as round as cartwheels. Its jaw dropped and a delayed scream emerged just before it took flight.
“I think you scared her,” Muce said.
The thought of a child finding him scarier than the monstrous thing before him disturbed him, and it showed on his face.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Muce said in a comforting tone. “She’s probably just never seen anyone as big as you before. No one that isn’t made out of rock, that is.”
“Uh, yeah,” Donald replied distractedly, looking around. He located the little—girl. How could he tell? She stood with a stoutfolk adult now and pointed in his direction.
In Gondford, the tallfolk and stoutfolk mingled freely. No one gave him a second glance there. Here, the sight of him scared little children. He did not know what to make of this but felt it might be worth thinking about sometime. It would have to wait. Now, he needed to investigate this awesome threat and, if he could, save the kingdom.
Donald approached the Warden monument. It stood there stiff, foreboding, and steadfast. How could such a thing have been made? How could it ever be moved, let alone move by itself? However, if it did, oh, what a formidable weapon it would make. His imagination put in a little more overtime as he visualized the Warden’s eyes begin to glow red with unstoppable purpose, its arms unfold and its stony muscles flex as it took its first step, its foot cracking the gray stone seamlessly paving the entire area within the circular canyon. Yes, he told himself, this could be a serious threat to his father’s kingdom. One he might be in a position to stop.
He circled behind the impassive monument. A stone building with a slate roof stood at the back. Painted in large letters on the wide front window he read, Warden of Mystic Defiance Museum and Gift Shop. A sign hanging on the door said, closed for inventory–come back tomorrow.
Glancing in the half-blinded window as he slowly strolled past, Donald noticed a twin of the paperweight he had purchased from the traveling peddler a few days before on display at a price slightly cheaper than the one he paid.
He slowly walked away from the museum building, Muce following behind. Both of them gawked like tourists, which may have been the only thing they shared with most of the other visitors. Kwestor looked around, too, but more often at the people than at the architecture and artifacts.
Donald meandered among the tourists until he completed three increasingly wide, irregular circles around the Warden. He examined some of the marble pedestals, three-foot cubes with sloping tops, placed irregularly around the focal point of the exhibit. Affixed to each, there were bronze plates, which contained short paragraphs of speculation, greatly abridged versions of the various and often contradictory myths about the Warden, or some bit of archeological trivia.
He paused at several of these, eventually making his way to the outer wall. He felt his hand drawn to it, and he ran his fingers over the surface, finding it as smooth as it looked—and cold, surprisingly cold.
“Would you mind not doing that, Stretch?”
Donald looked behind him and then a bit down and to the left. He found a stoutfolk woman in lederhosen standing next to him. He guessed she might be just the far side of middle age, although he could not be sure, and a little on the stout side even for one of her race. She held both of her hands on the handle of a small pushcart containing barrels of trash, brooms, buckets and rags. She tilted her head to him with the look parents reserve for children caught making crayon murals on the living room wall.
“Excuse me?” he said.
The woman smiled at the sound of his heavily accented Gotroxian. “Your hand, Stretch. You’re leaving marks I can’t reach.”
Donald looked and indeed a smudge showed where his fingers had recently trailed along the silvered rock face.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”
“Oh that’s all right. No harm done. Everyone has to touch the wall. They touch the feet of Big Guy, too, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing shows on him. But this wall! What were those ancients thinking when they made this thing? Every fingerprint and every brush from a dirty elbow leaves a mark. I don’t mind you touching it. Everyone does. There’s nothing else like it in the world. You almost have to reach out and touch it just to see what it feels like. It doesn’t feel quite real, does it?”
Donald found himself able to understand her without much difficulty. Perhaps his ear had somehow attuned itself to the sound of the language. He thought her last question rhetorical at first, but she seemed to expect an answer, so perhaps he still misread some inflections.
“No. It doesn’t feel like rock, anyway. It’s more like porcelain.”
“Yeah, maybe a bit, but it isn’t. You couldn’t chip this stuff with a miner’s hammer, and I’m sure some have tried. It sure does collect marks though. Still, it cleans up easy, so it could be worse. Just a little vinegar water and it shines up real nice. It can get old after a while, I’m telling you, wiping off fingerprints eight hours a day. Like I said, I don’t mind. I mean, if people didn’t keep touching it, I’d be out of a job, and that wouldn’t be very good now, would it? Not with me just three years away from my pension.”
She squirted a little bit of cleaning solution on a rag and handed it to Donald.
“No, I imagine it wouldn’t,” he replied distractedly, wiping off some of the offending marks.
“So, go ahead and give it a feel, but just try to do it a bit lower down, all right? Where I won’t have to stretch so much to reach.”
Kwestor approached at this point. Although he admitted to a more limited understanding of the language than Donald possessed, he apparently could follow their conversation. “Ask her about an inn. There weren’t any last time I came here, but I imagine there are now. We could all do with a dry room and a bath. And our bodyguard there,” he added, pointing to Muce, “has pretty much depleted the provisions.”
Muce smiled sheepishly, although Donald suspected the notso could not be responsible for much more than half of what they had consumed. All of them shared their stock of food.
“Oh, I also thought you might like me to remind you that tomorrow is the equinox.”
“Thank you, Kwestor.”
The cleaning woman watched as they spoke, showing no sign of comprehension. It seemed she did not understand the Westgrovian language.
“My friend here wondered if there might be an inn nearby where we could spend the night and have something to eat,” he translated for her.
She smiled broadly, revealing a mouthful of straight
beige teeth. “Sure, there are three of them not more than a mile or so from the entrance. Just follow the paved road to the wide one on the right and follow it. You can’t miss it.”
He thanked her and turned to his companions. “I think we better go. We have an early day tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirteen