“Ordinarily that is so. But there was an old hermit up in the hills. Before he died, he gave me a book and what he called a hand ax. He asked me to deliver them to someone called the Bishop of the Tower …”
“North and west from here?”
“That’s what the hermit said. Up the river, north and west. You know of this Bishop of the Tower?”
“I have heard of him. On the border of the Wasteland.”
“The Wasteland? I did not know. The enchantment world?”
“That’s right,” said Cornwall. “That’s where I am going.”
“We could travel together, then?”
Cornwall nodded. “As far as the Tower. I go beyond the Tower.”
“You know the way?” asked Gib.
“To the Tower? No, just the general direction. There are maps, but not too reliable.”
“I have a friend,” said Gib. “Hal of the Hollow Tree. He has traveled widely. He might know. He might go with us to point out the way.”
“Consider this,” said Cornwall, “before you decide we should go together: Already there has been one attempt to kill me; there might be others.”
“But whoever is concerned already thinks you dead.”
“Yes, of course, at the moment that is true. But there would be many eyes along the way and many tongues. Travelers would be noticed and would be talked about.”
“If Hal went with us, we’d travel no roads or trails. We’d travel in the forest. There would be few to see us.”
“You sound as if you want to travel with me, even knowing …”
“We of the marshes are timid folk,” said Gib. “We feel unsafe when we go far from the marsh. I don’t mind telling you I shrink from the idea of the journey. But with you and Hal along.…”
“You are good friends with Hal?”
“The best friend that I have. We visit back and forth. He is young, about as old as I am, and stronger, and he knows the woods. He knows no fear. He steals from cornfields, he raids garden patches …”
“He sounds a good man to be with.”
“He is all of that,” said Gib.
“You think he’d go with us?”
“I think he would. He is not one to turn his back on adventure.”
10
Sniveley, the gnome, said, “So you want to buy the sword? What do you want the sword for? It is not for such as you. You could scarcely lift it. It is fashioned for a human. No pretty piece of iron, but a sword for a fighting man.”
“I have known you for a long time,” said Gib. “You have known my people for a long time. And the People of the Hills. Can I speak in confidence?”
Sniveley twitched his ears and scratched the back of his head. “You should know better than to ask me that. We are not blabbermouths, we gnomes. We are a business people and we are not gossips. We hear many things and we do not pass them on. Loose mouths can be a fertile source of trouble and we want no trouble. You know full well that we of the Brotherhood—the goblins and the elves and all the rest of us—live in the land of humans on their sufferance. It is only by sticking to our business and staying strictly out of matters that are no affair of ours that we can survive at all. The Inquisition forever sniffs around, but it seldom acts against us if we remain somewhat invisible. But let us become ever so faintly obnoxious and some pesty human will go rushing off to inform on us, and then there is hell to pay. Perhaps I should be the one to ask if this confidential matter that you mention might be the cause of trouble to us.”
“I don’t think so,” Gib told him. “If I had thought so, I would not have come. We marsh people need you and through the years you have dealt fairly with us. You have heard, of course, of the massacre of the pack train just two nights ago.”
Sniveley nodded. “A ghastly business. Your people buried them?”
“We buried what was left of them. We leveled and disguised the graves. We towed the dead animals far out into the marsh. We left no sign of what had happened.”
Sniveley nodded. “That is good,” he said. “The train will be missed, of course, and the authorities, such as they are, may make some investigation. Not too much of an investigation, I would think, for this is still border country and officialdom does not rest quite easy here. If there had been blatant evidence, they would have had to investigate, and that would have been bad. We, none of us—humans or you or the People of the Hill or the Brotherhood—have any desire for human bloodhounds to be snooping in our yards.”
“I feel bad,” said Gib, “about one aspect of it. We could not say the proper words above their graves. We do not know the words. Even if we did, we’d not be the proper persons to recite them. We buried them unshrived.”
“They died unshrived,” said Sniveley, “and it’s all foolishness, in any case.”
“Foolishness, perhaps,” said Gib, “but no more foolishness, perhaps, than many of our ways.”
“Which brings us,” said Sniveley, “to how all of this is connected with your wanting the sword.”
“Not all of them were killed,” said Gib. “I stumbled on the massacre and found one who was still alive. It’s he who needs the sword.”
“He had a sword before and it was looted from him?”
“His sword, his knife, his purse. The killers took the goods the train was carrying and also stripped the bodies. I gather that the sword he had was not a very good one. One his great-grandfather had passed down. And now he needs a good one.”
“I have other swords,” said Sniveley.
Gib shook his head. “He needs the best. He is going to the Wasteland to hunt out the Old Ones.”
“That is insanity,” said Sniveley. “There may be no Old Ones left. We gnomes have heard ancient tales of them, but that is all they are—old tales. Even if he found them, what would be the use of it?”
“He wants to talk with them. He is a scholar and he wants—”
“No one can talk with them,” said Sniveley. “No one knows their language.”
“Many years ago—perhaps thousands of years ago—a human lived with them for a time and he wrote down their language, or at least some words of their language.”
“Another tale,” said Sniveley. “The Old Ones, if they came across a human, would tear him limb from limb.”
“I do not know,” said Gib. “All of this is what Mark told me.”
“Mark? He is your human?”
“Mark Cornwall. He comes from the west. He has spent the last six years at the University of Wyalusing. He stole a manuscript …”
“So now he is a thief.”
“Not so much thief as finder. The manuscript had been hidden away for centuries. No one knew of it. It would have continued lost if he’d not happened on it.”
“One things occurs to me,” said Sniveley. “You showed me the book and ax that the dying hermit gave you. To be delivered, I believe, to some bishop. Is it possible you and this Mark will make a common journey?”
“That is our intention,” said Gib. “We go together to the Bishop of the Tower. Then he will go into the Wasteland.”
“And you have thoughts of going with him?”
“I had thought of it. But Mark will not allow it.”
“I should hope not,” said Sniveley. “Do you know what the Wasteland is?”
“It’s enchanted ground,” said Gib.
“It is,” said Sniveley, “the last stronghold of the Brotherhood.…”
“But you—”
“Yes, we are of the Brotherhood. We get along all right because this is the Borderland. There are humans, certainly, but individual humans—millers, woodcutters, charcoal burners, small farmers, moonshiners. The human institutions, government and church, do not impinge on us. You have never seen the lands to the south and east?”
Gib shook his head.
“There,” said Sniveley, “you would find few of us. Some in hiding, perhaps, but not living openly as we do. Those who once lived there have been driven out. They have retreated to the Wa
steland. As you may suspect, they hold a hatred for all humankind. In the Wasteland are those who have been driven back to it and those who never left, the ones who had stayed there and hung on grimly to the olden ways of life.”
“But you left.”
“Centuries ago,” said Sniveley, “a group of prospecting gnomes found the ore deposit that underlies these hills. For uncounted millennia the gnomes have been smiths and miners. So we moved here, this small group of us. We have no complaint. But if the so-called human civilization ever moved in full force into the Borderland, we would be driven out.”
“Humans, however, have traveled in the Wasteland,” said Gib. “There was that old traveler who wrote the tale that Mark read.”
“He would have to have had a powerful talisman,” said Sniveley. “Has this friend of yours a talisman?”
“I do not think he has. He never spoke of it.”
“Then he truly is insane. He has not even the excuse of treasure, of finding some great treasure. All he seeks are the Old Ones. And tell me, what will he do if he finds the Old Ones?”
“The ancient traveler did not seek treasure, either,” said Gib. “He simply went to see what he could find.”
“Then he was insane as well. Are you certain there is no way to dissuade this human friend of yours?”
“I think not. There is no way, I am sure, that one could stop him.”
“Then,” said Sniveley, “he does have need of a sword.”
“You mean you’ll sell it to me?”
“Sell it to you? Do you know the price of it?”
“I have some credit with you,” said Gib. “Drood has credit. There are others in the marsh who would be willing …”
“Take three marshes like the one down there,” said Sniveley, “and there would not be credit enough in all of them to buy the sword. Do you know what went into it? Do you know the care and craftsmanship and the magic that was used?”
“Magic?”
“Yes, magic. Do you think that a weapon such as it could be shaped by hands and fire alone, by hammer or by anvil?”
“But my ax—”
“Your ax was made with good workmanship alone. There was no magic in it.”
“I am sorry,” Gib said, “to have bothered you.”
Sniveley snorted and flapped his ears. “You do not bother me. You are an old friend, and I will not sell the sword to you. I will give it to you. Do you understand what I am saying? I will give it to you. I will throw in a belt and scabbard, for I suppose this down-at-heels human has neither one of them. And a shield as well. He will need a shield. I suppose he has no shield.”
“He has no shield,” said Gib. “I told you he has nothing. But I don’t understand.…”
“You underestimate my friendship for the People of the Marshes. You underestimate my pride in matching a sword of my fabrication against the howling horrors of the Wasteland, and you underestimate, as well, my admiration for a puny little human who, from his studies, must know what the Wasteland is and yet is willing to face it and its denizens for some farfetched dream.”
“I still don’t understand you fully,” said Gib, “but I thank you just the same.”
“I’ll get the sword,” said Sniveley, rising from his chair. He was scarcely on his feet when another gnome, wearing a heavy leather apron and who, from the soot on his hands and face, had been working at a forge, came bursting unceremoniously into the room.
“We have visitors,” he screamed.
“Why must you,” asked Sniveley, a little wrathfully, “make so great a hullabaloo about visitors? Visitors are nothing new.…”
“But one of them is a goblin,” screamed the other gnome.
“So one of them is a goblin.”
“There are no goblins nearer than Cat Den Point, and that is more than twenty miles away.”
“Hello, everyone,” said Hal of the Hollow Tree. “What is all the ruckus?”
“Hello, Hal,” said Gib. “I was about to come to see you.”
“You can walk back with me,” said Hal. “How are you, Sniveley? I brought a traveler—Oliver. He’s a rafter goblin.”
“Hello, Oliver,” said Sniveley. “And would you please tell me just what in hell is a rafter goblin? I’ve heard of all sorts of goblins …”
“My domicile,” said Oliver, “is the rafters in the roof atop the library at the University of Wyalusing. I have come here on a quest.”
Coon, who had been hidden from view, walking sedately behind Hal, made a beeline for Gib and leaped into his lap. He nuzzled Gib’s neck and nibbled carefully at his ears. Gib batted at him. “Cut it out,” he said. “Your whiskers tickle and your teeth are sharp.” Coon went on nibbling.
“He likes you,” said Hal. “He has always liked you.”
“We have heard of a pack-train killing,” said the goblin, Oliver. “Word of it put much fear in me. We came to inquire if you might have the details.”
Sniveley made a thumb at Gib. “He can tell you all about it. He found one human still alive.”
Oliver swung on Gib. “There was one still alive? Is he still alive? What might be his name?”
“He is still alive,” said Gib. “His name is Mark Cornwall.”
Oliver slowly sat down on the floor. “Thank all the powers that be,” he murmured. “He is still alive and well?”
“He took a blow on the head,” said Gib, “and a slash on his arm, but both head and arm are healing. Are you the goblin that he told me of?”
“Yes, I am. I advised him to seek out a company of traders and to flee with them. But that was before I knew to whom that cursed monk sold his information. Much good that it did him, for he got his throat slit in the bargain.”
“What is going on?” squeaked Sniveley. “What is all this talk of throat slitting and of fleeing. I dislike the sound of it.”
Quickly Oliver sketched the story for him. “I felt that I was responsible for the lad,” he said. “After all, I got myself involved …”
“You spoke,” said Gib, “of this human to whom the monk sold his information.”
“That’s the crux of it,” said Oliver. “He calls himself Lawrence Beckett and pretends to be a trader. I don’t know what his real name is, and I suppose it does not matter, but I know he’s not a trader. He is an agent of the Inquisition and the most thoroughgoing ruffian in the border country.…”
“But the Inquisition,” said Sniveley. “It is …”
“Sure,” said Oliver. “You know what it is supposed to be. The militant arm of the Church, with its function to uproot heresy, although heresy, in many instances, is given a definition which far outstrips the meaning of the term. When its agents turn bad, and most of them turn bad, they become a law unto themselves. No one is safe from them, no perfidy too low.…”
“You think,” said Gib, “that this Beckett and his men massacred the pack train?”
“I would doubt very much they did the actual killing. But I am certain it was arranged by Beckett. He got word to someone.”
“In hopes of killing Mark?”
“With the certainty of killing Mark. That was the only, purpose of it. All were supposed to be killed. According to what you say, they stripped Mark, took everything he had. They thought that he was dead, although probably they did not know that the purpose of the attack was to kill one certain man.”
“They didn’t find the page of manuscript. He had it in his boot.”
“They weren’t looking for the manuscript. Beckett thought he had it. He stole it from Mark’s room.”
“The fake,” said Hal. “The copy.”
“That is right,” said Oliver.
“And you came all this way,” said Gib, “to warn him against Beckett before it was too late.”
“I was responsible. And I was late. Small thanks to me that he still lives.”
“It seems to me,” said Sniveley gravely, “that the key to all of this may lie in what was written in that fake copy Beckett has. Can you enl
ighten us on that?”
“Willingly,” said Oliver. “We worked it out together and, as I remember it, were quite gleeful at the neatness of it. Some things we had to leave as they were, for the monk would tell whoever he sold the information to where the page of parchment had been found, in what book it had been hidden—the book that Taylor had written about his travels in the Wasteland. Most of which, I am convinced, was a tissue of lies. I even have my doubts he was ever in the Wasteland.
“But be that as it may, we had to leave the most of it, only taking out all mention of the Old Ones. In its place we inserted a story based on legend, a very obscure legend that Mark had come upon in his reading of some ancient tome. The legend of a hidden, legendary university, where was housed incredibly ancient, and equally legendary, books, and a great hoard of primeval treasure. Only a hint that it was in the Wasteland, only something that Taylor had heard about.…”
“Are you mad?” howled Sniveley. “Do you know what you have done? Of all the nincompoop ideas—”
“What is the matter?” asked Oliver. “What do you mean?”
“You moron!” shouted Sniveley. “You cretin! You should have known. There is such a university!”
He stopped in midsentence and fixed his gaze on Gib, shifted it onto Hal.
“You two,” he said, “you’re not supposed to know. No one outside the Brotherhood is supposed to know. It is an old secret. It is sacred to us.”
He grabbed Oliver by the shoulder and jerked him to his feet. “How come you didn’t know?”
Oliver cringed away. “So help me, I never knew. I never heard of it. I am just a lowly rafter goblin. Who was there to tell me? We thought it was a fable.”
Sniveley let Oliver loose. Coon crouched in Gib’s lap, whimpering.
“Never in my life,” said Hal to Sniveley, “have I seen you so upset.”
“I have a right to be upset,” said Sniveley. “A pack of fools. A set of various fools who have been snared up in something they should have kept their fingers out of. But, worse than that, an agent of the Inquisition has been given knowledge, faked knowledge that happens to be true, and what do you think he’ll do with it? I know what he’ll do—head straight into the Wasteland. Not for the treasure that was mentioned, but for the ancient books. Can’t you see the power and glory that would descend upon a churchly human who found old heathen books and consigned them to the flames?”