Some fancy clothes, a high-falutin' name, and a story or two, he decided, were the only requirements for a successful career as a minstrel. That very night Sir Delbridge Fidington was born, and the name he'd assumed as steward, Hector Smithson, was lost forever.
Using skills vaguely learned during one of his earlier professions, Waldo lifted some fine clothing from his employer, including the green jacket and breeches he now wore. He also had helped himself to a number of priceless items from the manor, knowing that proceeds from their sale would allow him to live comfortably until he established himself as a bard.
Unfortunately, that process took much longer than he had expected or budgeted for. He repeated the stories he'd heard from the bard at Thelgaard Keep, but they never went over quite as well for him. He blamed that on the crowds. The farmers and other riffraff he was obliged to entertain certainly weren't sophisticated enough to appreciate the sort of stories that amused nobles at Thelgaard Keep. Still he was certain that success would come as soon as he managed to tell the right story in front of the right crowd.
In recent days, however, Waldo had begun suspecting that perhaps a bard's job was not as easy as it looked. Perhaps it actually required talent; perhaps he had none. Indeed, perhaps he stank. He couldn't even draw applause in an ale tent in a backwater such as Solace.
And then, like a gift from the blue, he met a tinker with a magical bracelet and a loose tongue.
After knocking out the tinker the night before, Waldo had slipped posthaste from Solace, walked the five miles east to Que-kiri in moonlight, then camped alongside the road on the north edge of the village. Hitting the trail early, he was headed for the nearest port on New Sea, to put as much ground between him and the conked-out tinker as possible. But the first ride he got was with a farmer who was not going to the sea. Instead, he was headed for his hometown, with a stop along the way, a remote village called Tantallon, high in the Eastwall Mountains, which, not coincidentally, was also as far as the road went.
Having no love for sailing ships-actually, he was frightened of them-Waldo decided a remote village was as good a place as any for a prognosticator who wanted a comfortable life and anonymity, at least temporarily. Besides, his motto was "Never turn down anything free," and that included rides.
There was room on the wagon's front bench for only one, so Waldo rode in back atop heaped burlap sacks filled with rutabagas. In spite of the lumpy bed, he clasped the lucky copper bracelet and thought smugly, "I think my luck is about to change." He slipped the bracelet into his pack for safekeeping. Reclining on the rutabagas, he silently thanked the unfortunate tinker for his new good fortune.
One bumpy, bruised hour later, the wagon rattled into a small village.
"Ravenvale," called the farmer as he reined in the wagon before the grocer's shop on the village square.
Delbridge hopped down to stretch his short legs. Brushing road dust from the hem of his green jacket, he asked, "How far to Tantallon?"
The farmer squinted as he hefted a rutabaga sack over his shoulder. "Don't know for sure. Eight-no, probably ten miles north. The trail gets a bit rough from here on, and it's slow going." With that, the farmer stepped into the store and began negotiating a price for his wares with the greengrocer.
The sight of fresh produce made Delbridge's stomach rumble, and he smacked his thick lips. Remembering the adage by which he ran his life-"Never buy what you can steal-" he looked quickly about and snatched up a wedge of yellow cheese from a vending cart outside the store. Passing the potent-smelling chunk under his pug nose for approval, he dropped it in his meager pack for a snack along the trail. Next he plucked two shiny red Goodlundian apples and gulped them in three hungry bites each.
Before long, the farmer emerged from the store and clambered back onto the buckboard. Delbridge lowered himself onto the somewhat smaller but still lumpy heap of rutabaga bags and contemplated his immediate future as they rattled northward out of town. Delbridge glanced ruefully at what the farmer had optimistically called a road; it could easily have been mistaken for a goat path, and a well-churned one at that.
First thing in Tantallon, Delbridge decided, he would need to purchase himself a new look. Fortune-tellers wore flowing, colorful robes and those odd little hat things, which were really just bits of cloth wrapped around their heads.
Fortune-tellers also had unusual-sounding names, like Omardicar or Hosni. He settled on Omardicar. Omardicar the Omnipotent.
The trees were budding, tiny green leaves poking out around the bark-covered limbs, which were still bleak and gray from winter. Dotting the foothills that climbed up toward the mountains were fluffy clumps of white and pink crab apple and plum trees in full bloom. Their soft-looking branches scraped along the sides of the wooden wagon as it jolted along the narrow trail, showering Delbridge and the rutabagas with fragrant, multicolored petals.
The pastoral beauty was wasted on Delbridge. Lulled by the warm spring sun on his face and the swaying and bumping of the wagon on the rutted road, the bard-turned-soothsayer leaned back on the filthy bags and fell asleep.
He was rudely awakened some time later when the hard wheels of the wagon struck a very large rock in the road and sent the cart bouncing high into the air. Delbridge spun about to look ahead of the wagon but could only see the back of the farmer's head. He struggled to raise himself to his knees among the bags.
From where they perched at the crest of a hill, he could see that they were past the foothills and well into the mountains. Below them, nestled in a small valley already in shadows from the surrounding mountains, was a town about the size of Solace-Tantallon. Although it was not yet dusk, lanterns were winking through the trees and the wind was tinged with the smell of wood smoke from home fires. A swift, cold stream ran from the west, where the largest mountains of the range lay.
And there, rising majestically out of a rocky outcropping beyond the stream was an imposing stone facade,
its tall turrets, towers, and defensive barbican reflecting purple in the fading light.
"What's that?" Delbridge called ahead to the farmer, who had signaled the horses to continue on the road, which spiraled down into the valley.
"Castle Tantallon."
Delbridge was intrigued. "Who lives there?"
"As the story goes," said the farmer, warming up to gossip, "it's owned by a Knight of Solamnia whose family, if one believes the tales one is told, left Solamnia in the north shortly after the Cataclysm, when the persecution of the knights was just beginning.
"Our province of Abanasinia, as you may remember from your history lessons, was in chaos as well. So when the current knight's ancestor and his armed retinue arrived in exile here, they brought a bit of law and order with them. Such survivors of the Cataclysm as they found were organized and well led so that the family and everyone under it prospered. Even through hard times, the family fortune remained intact."
The farmer beamed with community pride. "The Curston line has since lived, uninterrupted, in that castle above the town that the first Lord Curston established more than three hundred years ago."
Riding down into the town now, Delbridge was surprised to find such an isolated village so prosperous; the roads were skillfully cobbled, and not a scrap of waste littered them. The buildings were whitewashed, their stones neatly tuck-pointed with mortar, thatched roofs thick and in good repair. Very few businesses or homes had oiled paper for windows-expensive stained or opaque glass was the norm. It looked like a storybook village. Such prosperity could only be a good omen, Delbridge decided.