But the clients of The Trough answered Vercleese's and Blair's questions with surly monosyllables, and none who were present fit the descriptions of the two men Vercleese and Blair sought. Try as he might, Vercleese couldn't find anything suspicious or cagey in the customers' replies. It was as if the two ruffians, striking though their appearances might have been, had drifted into Solace as unnoticed as the evening mist and vanished without leaving a trace.
Vercleese's jaw was clenched in frustration as they marched back to the guard headquarters to meet Gerard and tell him they had learned nothing new.
CHAPTER 14
Gerard and Vercleese heard Tangletoe Snakeweed coming long before they saw him. They had just picked up their horses from the stable and were riding toward the southern edge of town.
"It was the greatest calamity of modern day Ansalon," the kender sang out from a nearby street. "Stones and bricks and chunks of mortar flew everywhere, falling with a mighty roar all around the temple grounds. Timbers shivered with deafening cracks. The dust thrown into the air blocked the sun for most of an hour, threatening to bury alive those who didn't choke to death first. One whole wall of the new temple collapsed in a heap of rubble. I alone among the few survivors managed to maintain my presence of mind, hurrying here and there heroically to tend to the fallen…"
Gerard turned to Vercleese. "Did you see the kender on the scene at the new temple yesterday?"
Vercleese shook his head.
"Me neither," Gerard said. "He must have been hurrying heroically."
"Perhaps we were too dazed by the magnitude of the disaster," Vercleese added with a wry grin.
Gerard made an elaborate show of checking his pockets and purse. "Huh, that's peculiar. I have all my belongings. Another indication that I didn't have any brush with a kender."
"Or maybe Tangletoe wasn't in the 'borrowing' mood. That would be an occasion worthy of recording in the histories kept at the great Library of Palanthas." Vercleese laughed. "People would flock from all across Krynn just to read the account and marvel at it."
"Meanwhile," Tangletoe went on, "Stephen, renowned throughout Solace for his grocery store where the prices are much more reasonable than anywhere else in town and where all the races of Krynn are welcome to do business, had this to say about the accumulating, confusing number of municipal codes enacted by the town council: 'I don't know why we have to have this accumulating, confusing number of municipal codes enacted by the town council. Why do we vote these guys into office if they're just going to tax and regulate us out of business afterward?' That's an exact quote from Stephen himself, folks, or near enough anyway, minus the curse words.
"In other items of the day…"
The kender's voice receded down an adjacent street, swallowed up by the clamor and bustle of another business day in Solace. Gerard and Vercleese wove through the numerous wagons and carts that made their lumbering way through town. Horses snorted and whiffled, donkeys brayed, workmen shouted oaths and directions, barrels thundered as they were rolled up and down gangplanks and across cobblestones, children laughed and called out singsong rhymes, often mocking the workmen, and men and women passing by carried on lively conversations.
For a town that had witnessed "the greatest calamity of modern day Ansalon" just yesterday, Gerard thought, Solace seemed to have dragged itself out of the apocalypse and resumed its normal pursuits with admirable alacrity.
Soon he and Vercleese left the turmoil of town life behind them, riding swiftly down a hard-packed dirt road. The horses leaned into the effort, eager to stretch their legs. Dust swirled up behind them, then dropped without a breeze to carry it. They pounded across the bridge of Solace Stream, passing near Jutlin Wykirk's mill with its creaking, slowly turning wheel.
They continued south. When the horses began breathing harder, the men reined them in, letting them resume a steady canter. Although not yet midmorning, the day was already clear and hot. Gerard wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. After a time, trees closed in around them, just a few here and there at first, but soon growing thicker until the road narrowed to a mere track and the horses had to proceed in tandem instead of abreast. The day, formerly so bright and clear, now seemed gloomy. Gerard hadn't realized how many birdsongs had enlivened the air around him earlier, until now when they abruptly fell silent. He shivered in the unexpected chill and drew his doublet tighter about him for its scant warmth. At last, Vercleese, in the lead, signaled a halt and slid from the saddle, watching the woods around them warily.
"Just for the record, let me say it again: I don't think this is a good idea," the knight muttered. "I used to try to talk Sheriff Joyner out of it as well. But he always claimed he was lucky."
"He wasn't lucky to be murdered," Gerard said. Though he was striving to lighten the mood, he regretted his bad joke instantly. Darken Wood pressed close around them, dragging at their spirits. Gerard too dismounted. Something akin to magic prickled along his arms and neck, raising the hairs as if he were standing in the midst of an electrical storm.
"No, in the end he wasn't lucky," Vercleese said grimly, staring hard at Gerard.
Gerard shrugged and wrapped Thunderbolt's reins around a branch protruding from a deadfall. Vercleese had been arguing with him about this all morning, without making any headway.
"That Samuval is a snake," Vercleese went on, unwilling to let the matter drop. "I'm telling you, I wouldn't-"
"Which way?" Gerard interrupted.
Vercleese stared at him.
"Which way?" Gerard repeated, more gently this time.
Mutely, Vercleese pointed into the forest.
Gerard nodded and clapped his deputy on the shoulder. "You have your instructions," he said, still speaking in a firm but gentle tone. "I'll meet you here this afternoon."
Vercleese put a foot back into his horse's stirrup, then hesitated, looking imploringly at Gerard.
"Don't worry. I'll be all right," Gerard said.
Vercleese hoisted himself into the saddle again and rode off slowly, muttering to himself and not looking back. With a grim smile, Gerard watched his loyal deputy go. Then he shuddered at finding himself alone in Darken Wood, feeling much less brave than he had tried to act a moment before. With a resolute breath, he started off on foot in the direction Vercleese had indicated.
The land climbed, becoming rocky and hilly. Underbrush snagged at his clothes and tore at his skin. Gnats and mosquitoes whined around him, sometimes half blinding him in thick clouds. He bled from a dozen tiny marks, a combination of mosquito bites and thorn-bush scratches. Sweat poured off him. And still the hair-raising presence of magic caused shivers to run up and down his flesh.
He came at last to the top of a bluff, where he stood on a rock outcrop looking out over a clearing some distance beyond. In the midst of the clearing stood the fortress Baron Samuval was erecting in the clearing. The nearly completed wooden stockade was made of thick poles set into the earth, their sharpened ends pointing to the sky. In the open field surrounding the wooden fortress, soldiers and dark knights drilled, churning to dust a ground long dried from the rains. Gerard counted half a dozen dark knights and maybe three times that number of men at arms. The latter made for a motley army, consisting mostly of rough-looking humans, but also a sprinkling of draconians, goblins, ogres, dwarves, and even one or two renegade elves. But what the force lacked in the niceties of appearance, they more than made up for in martial skills, for Gerard noted with professional approval (and personal distaste) the precision and confidence with which they handled themselves. This would be a formidable force for any enemy to face.