Her Reach is Long

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

It's almost time for Pathfinder Adventure Path #72: The Witch Queen's Revenge, the final installment of the Reign of Winter Adventure Path. In a last-ditch effort to save Golarion from a new ice age, the PCs finally face Queen Elvanna deep inside the inner sanctum of Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut! But they have the aid of the Queen of Witches herself, Baba Yaga, one of the most powerful spellcasters to ever walk Golarion and even more distant worlds. Baba Yaga gets a full write-up in The Witch Queen's Revenge, including a stat block using rules from Pathfinder RPG: Mythic Adventures. Baba Yaga is a mythic character with tiers in the archmage mythic path, with several new special abilities to go along with her mythic path abilities. As a small preview of what's to come in The Witch Queen's Revenge, check out the patron spells granted by a new witch patron—fate—the patron of Baba Yaga and those who wish to follow in her footsteps.

Fate: 2nd—doom, 4th—anticipate peril^UM, 6th—helping hand, 8th—blessing of fervor^APG, 10th—greater forbid action^UM, 12th—contingency, 14th—jolting portent^UC, 16th—maze, 18th—wish.

Rob McCreary
Developer

Aliens and Dragons

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

In the upcoming installment of the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, Pathfinder #70: The Frozen Stars, the PCs' quest brings them to the planet Triaxus in the midst of its generations-long winter. I don't want to spoil anything for those of you playing in the Adventure Path, but there are dragons... and aliens.

Adam Daigle
Developer

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Five: A Diversion

"Hurt a little?" Krunzle began. "Then perhaps we could—" He was unable to continue because his senses were now reporting that his insides and outsides had apparently changed places, and that his entire carcass had subsequently been consumed by a raging firestorm wrapped in a freezing blizzard, then crushed to the size of an ant—and not a very big ant, at that.

He was next conscious of screaming hoarsely, and then vision returned, along with the rest of his sensorium, which advised him that all his systems were now running normally—except for his fear-measuring capacity, which was strained to its limit. He closed his mouth and took in a long, shaky breath through his nostrils. "Please," he said, "don't do that again."

"Typical," said the woman. "I free you from a serious enchantment—a service, I want to point out, that I perform at no charge. And do I see gratitude? Do I hear so much as a murmur of thanks?"

"Thank you," Krunzle murmured.

"Too late now," she said, picking up the knucklebones and rolling them expertly between her palms. "Now let's see what you can do for me in return."

"I thought you said there was no charge."

"Typical," she said again, shaking her blonde locks. She threw the bones onto the tabletop, regarded them for a long moment, then said, "Apparently, the answer is: nothing. You're not part of my future at all."

Krunzle heaved a sigh of relief, until the thought occurred that the bones might be saying he was not part of anybody's future. The demon worshipers next door could likely use a spare body. And he knew that some of the uses to which the bodies were put rendered them useless for any future employment.

She had picked up the amulet again. "So he sends in a thief to steal this piece of gimcrack, which the idiot Didmus gave to the equal idiotic Galathea as some sort of mawkish love-token."

Krunzle dared to interrupt. "Who," he said, "are Didmus and Galathea?"

Again, that look that his teachers used to give him, then she shook her head as one does who accepts that some shortcomings must be borne with. She said, "Galathea is the girl from whom you took the apprentice's eye. She is my daughter. And Baalariot's, for that matter. Didmus is a half-grown half-wit of a sorcerer's apprentice. They think they are in love."

"You and Baalariot are married?" he said.

Again, the look of disbelief. "Men and women do not have to be married to produce children," she said. "Baalariot wants to wed her to one of Hedvand's courtiers. I have a better plan: she will train to become a priestess of Nocticula, cementing my relationship with the cult."

"And Didmus," the thief said, his mind beginning to form the picture into whose frame he had been pressed, "what does he want?"

She assumed an exasperated look. "What does any young man want?"

"He doesn't happen," Krunzle said, "to play the zither?"

"I wouldn't put it past him."

For all its academic shortfalls, Krunzle's intellect was adept at plans and schemes, his own and others'. The pieces now fell into place. He debated for a moment as to whether he should voice his conclusions—but only for a moment. If he was right, events would shortly reveal the facts for themselves, and he would gain nothing by too late a revelation.

"I believe," he said, "that I am here as a diversion."

Hortenza's brows consulted each other, then her eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a heavy concussion sounded from downstairs. The building shook, and shards of plaster sifted down from the hole in the corner of the ceiling.

The priestess recovered quickly. "The bastard!" she said, reaching for the ebony rod and striding to the door. She slammed it behind her and he heard the click of the lock. He gave her a moment to clear the corridor outside then went to kneel at the keyhole, reaching for his picks.

But, even in her hurry, Hortenza had been thinking a step ahead of him. The pick would not engage the tumblers. He went to the table, where she had left the apprentice's eye, and brought it to bear on the door. The lock made the stone glow bright red.

Krunzle said a short and pungent word, then turned to the hole in the ceiling. He pushed a small table underneath, then leapt atop it. When he stood upright, his head and shoulder poked through the opening, so that his eyes rose just above the level of the packed-earth roof.

The open space was in darkness and silence, except for the sound of a zither being inexpertly tuned. Then the thief heard a noise like sand rushing through a giant hourglass, as the great blind snake slithered across the roof toward him. He ducked down and, after a moment, the sound ceased.

The lock clicked. The door opened. In the moment between the two events, Krunzle put the table back where he had found it and himself where Hortenza had left him. The witch stepped through the doorway, panting from the stairs and presumably from the effort of dragging an unwilling young woman all the way up from the sub-basement.

"A good thief knows when to make himself scarce, and Krunzle is better than most."

She flung Galathea into the room. "You stay here, or so help me..." She left the threat implied as she turned to the thief and said, with a meaningful glance at the hole in the ceiling, "Keep her here, and I will make it worth your while. Let her go, and...” She pointed a tapered fingernail at him and left the rest to Krunzle's imagination.

Then she was gone, the door slammed. The girl tried the opener, found it locked, and stamped her foot, saying under her breath a word that was not supposed to be available to gently reared maidens. She looked at Krunzle, and the thief recognized the parents in the child.

"You're thinking," he told her, just to get the process rolling, "what it will cost you to secure my assistance."

She folded her arms. "Well?"

"What have you got?"

She showed her fingers, unringed, her wrists unbraceleted, her neck unlaced. "I had only one thing, an amulet with a green stone."

He patted a bulge in his upper garment. "I already have that."

She stared at him for a moment, then sighed and slipped one arm out of her shift, followed by the other. A loud detonation from outside in the street caused her to pause, then she continued, slipping the garment down to her waist.

"This is scarcely the time," Krunzle said.

She had been about to wriggle the shift down over her hips. "Then what?"

"How well do you know the snake?"

"Hothet? He used to guard me in the cradle."

"Will he obey you?"

She casually signaled an affirmative, as if serpent-commanding was a universal skill.

"Then get dressed and get up on the table."

She looked up at the hole. "The roof is too low, the walls to either side sheer."

"Leave that," he said, "to me."

He boosted her through the gap, then fluidly followed. He crouched next to the hole, ready to duck back down, but then he saw the great reptile coiled at her feet, its spade-sized head rubbing against one thigh.

From the side of building that faced the street came another crump! accompanied by a brief yellow glare. Almost immediately, there followed a metallic rattling sound, like iron hail striking cobblestones. The thief crept to the parapet and looked over. Below in the street, Baalariot stood, legs spread, a nimbus of red light about his head like a halo, one hand holding a carved staff whose upper tip ended in an amorphous cloud of stygian darkness which kept spitting out little zig-zags of white lightning. He raised the implement and pointed it at where the front door would be—with Hortenza presumably in it.

From the blackness at the end of the staff rushed a torrent of colorless force, flecked with sparks of gold and black. The angle of his view prevented Krunzle from seeing where it struck, but he knew the effect must be less than overwhelming when he heard a hiss of rage from directly below him, followed by a rumbling, trundling sound, as of iron-shod wheels on stone. Now a shimmering wall, blue and almost transparent, moved outward from the shrine toward the wizard, rolling back his rush of energy until Baalariot gestured with his staff and the outflow ceased.

The wall moved on, however, even picking up speed, and its outer edges began to curve inward so that soon it would form a tube around the wizard. He made a downward chopping gesture with one hand, while speaking a stream of syllables, and the center of the approaching barrier began to melt and dissolve. A moment later it winked out of existence.

Krunzle heard another hissed curse from below him, and a snarling sound from her opponent. He thought it best to withdraw before either parent became aware of him. Something was now snarling and bellowing in the street below, accompanied by the stamp of heavy, hoofed feet on the cobbles. The animal roars were soon met by a chittering sound, as if ten thousand maddened insects were clashing their mandibles. The tramp of iron-shod hooves was overlaid by a skittering, whispering noise. Krunzle imagined a horde of chitinous scorpions, their pincers clicking, flooding across the street to swarm up some rough beast.

Then he decided there was no profit in imagining such unpleasantness. He crept back across the roof to Galathea, finding the snake asleep in a coil and the girl indulging in some impatient toe-tapping. He felt a brief twinge of compassion for poor, love-sick Didmus, who must eventually learn that the girl's parent's temperaments had bred true in their offspring.

But that was not his concern. "This way," he said, and led her to where his grapnel and knotted rope still hung from the neighboring roof. As she took hold of the cord, the love song from above began again. She went up quickly, and the thief after her. They followed their ears to a corner of the tenement roof sheltered by movable walls of plaited bamboo.

A tender moment ensued, then Krunzle intervened to say, "It would be wise to leave here before the battle below ends and the winner—assuming there is one—comes looking for the prize."

Didmus, a gawky youth with ears almost large enough to serve as wings, said, "I have a carriage. We'll go to my uncle's manse. A priest of Erastil lives next door. We'll be married before midnight."

Galathea looked down at her shift, its hem soiled from the unswept roof. "Married?" she said. "In this?"

Krunzle felt another brief spasm of sympathy for the apprentice wizard, but said, "In what quarter of the city is your uncle's manse?"

The youth's cracked voice said, "By the night market, near the Druma Road Gate."

"Then let us go."

And so, with eldritch lights and harsh sounds fading behind them, they fled the lower city. Didmus, a generous sort for a budding wizard, pressed into Krunzle's hand a small purse of gratitude when they dropped him off at the market. The thief used the funds to buy a change of clothing and a broad-brimmed hat that would obscure and shadow his face.

He pinned the apprentice's eye to his new headgear, then settled himself beside an untenanted booth at the edge of the market. When the gate opened in the morning, he would be first out of it and on the road to Druma and its capital, Kerse, where the streets were literally paved with gold and the walls of the houses inset with gems.

Krunzle had long had a hankering to see Druma. He sat with arms resting on his knees, and head resting on arms, and dreamed of easy locks and unlatched windows.

Follow the rest of Krunzle's adventures in the new Pathfinder Tales novel Song of the Serpent!

Coming Next Week: Piracy and parenthood in the Ironbound Archipelago in Chapter One of Wendy Wagner's "Mother Bears."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Four: Caught

His first awareness was of the ache in his ribs, that swelled every time he took a breath. He cursed the pain, then thought, No, wait, I'm still breathing. That has to go on the positive side of the ledger. He took a deeper breath and groaned, his emotions mixed.

"Get up," said a voice from somewhere above him: female, but without the girlish tone of the amulet-wearer. This was a mature contralto, with strong overtones of I am used to being obeyed. Krunzle opened his eyes and discovered he was lying on a thick carpet. He recognized the hole in the ceiling.

A toe nudged his sore ribs—bruised, not broken, he deduced—and the voice said, "Up."

From this vantage, she seemed extraordinarily tall, an impression that did not diminish when he struggled painfully to his feet and found that she still overtopped him so that he had to crane his neck to meet her eyes. In doing so he discovered that his neck was joining his ribs in registering a complaint of maltreatment. "Ow," he said, rubbing it.

She looked to be of middle years, except for a face as smooth and ageless as magic could make it. She wore a complex headpiece of entwined snakes fashioned from some pale metal, inset with eyes of polished opal. Hair the same shade as that of the girl in the cell cascaded down onto a robe of pale silk, marked in red and black arcane symbols.

"I am Hortenza, and this is my house," she said. "Name yourself."

He did so, without resorting to sleights or subterfuges. She did not look the type to enjoy a frivolous puzzle.

She studied the thief. Krunzle had seen much the same expression on the faces of farmwives deciding which chicken would have its neck wrung for the stewpot. As if interested in the decor, he looked about him. The room was still windowless; there was one exit, besides the one he had made.

"Meddling in the affairs of spellcasters is rarely advisable."

As if she could read his thoughts—and perhaps she could—she said, "The door is locked and the snake is on the roof. He likes to take sleeping birds. But he'd rather have you."

Krunzle thought of several things he could say, but none of them seemed likely to profit him. He remained silent while she studied him some more. Meanwhile, the geas was urging him to escape, and to do so loudly. He focused mentally on the impossibility of doing so, and the urge quieted. Thanks to Cardimion for making it discriminating, he thought.

By now, his new captor seemed to have seen all there was to see. She said, "Baalariot sent you."

Again, the thief saw nothing to be gained by speaking. After a moment, she said, "Answer."

"I did not hear a question."

Her hard face hardened further. She raised a finger whose nail tapered to a black lacquered point and pointed it at him. The air around him crackled and he smelled a whiff of sulfur, then he became aware that every bone in his body had suddenly become hot enough to scald the flesh that touched it. The pain lasted only moments, but the memory of it lingered after she lowered the digit.

"Oh, yes," he said, "that question. Indeed, Baalariot sent me."

"To steal Galathea."

His eyebrows knitted themselves in confusion. "He called it something else."

That brought him a quizzical look. She studied him again, then said, "What, exactly, did he call her?"

Krunzle blinked. Her? But he was in no position to offer a correction. "He called it an apprentice's eye."

As a young student, the thief had never risen to the top of any class in literature, history, or philosophy. His was a practical intelligence, best expressed through his hands, whose remarkable deftness at eye-bamboozling speed had won him his nickname. But his inability to recite even the best-known dates and precedents used to win him a certain look from the preceptors at the day school, a look that said, Can this oaf really be that much of a thimble-wit?

He was seeing that look again, on the face of the witch. Now she looked down at the carpet, where the amulet with the color-changing cabochon lay, the polished, uncut stone now green again. The snake's coiled embrace must have pressed it to him. Indeed, he suspected the hard stone was responsible for one of the bruises on his ribs. The moment he noticed it, he involuntarily stooped and picked it up.

"That?" she said. "You want me to believe he sent you for that?"

The darkening expression on her face told Krunzle that he needed her to believe it, because it was the only explanation for his conduct that he was able to offer.

She was studying him even more closely now. "You're not one of his coterie."

"I have never been a joiner," Krunzle said.

"A hireling?"

"Not as such."

She picked up the amulet and held it to him. The green stone turned red. "Ah," she said.

"Why does it do that?" he said.

"It is an apprentice wizard's tool," she said. "It perceives the energies involved in magic, and mostly serves to prevent the inexperienced from touching that which might do them harm. Right now, it tells me that you have been ensorcelled."

She tilted her head in thought then added, "Which might make you dangerous. Don't move."

She went to a cupboard that stood against the wall, opened a door, and selected an object from several that were stored there. She brought it back and he saw that it was a tube carved from black crystal. She put it to her eye and inspected him through it.

"Ah, Baalariot," she said. "Always the obvious. Of course it would be Cardimion's Discriminating Geas." She went back to the cupboard, chose other items from its contents and brought them to a table. Then she moved a brazier to the same part of the room and, with a mere motion of one hand, ignited its charcoal. She inspected the things she had arranged on the table—Krunzle saw scrimshawed ivory, an ebony rod, some old, time-worn knuckle bones, a scrap of pale hide tattooed with blue runes, a diminutive, oddly shaped skull—then she began to perform actions beyond his comprehension.

"If we were out in the street," she said, touching this and elevating that, "I could scarcely make a dent. But I have an arrangement with Our Lady's sanctuary next door, and that gives me access to a power that..." She broke off, concentrating while she tapped the black rod a precise three times on the top of the skull, then covered the bone with the tattooed skin. The air inside the room was suddenly charged with energy. Kunzle felt a crackling in his ears. Then she looked over at him and aimed the rod in his direction, saying, "This will probably hurt a little."

Coming Next Week: The final chapter of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Three: The Apprentice's Eye

He descended several flights of steps, took a number of turns along torch-lit corridors, and came at last to the threshold of a windowless cell deep below ground. The glowing orb entered and Krunzle did likewise. Once within, the light blinked out, and he had a momentary glimpse of a small, winged man fluttering out through the open doorway and disappearing along the corridor.

Krunzle made to put his head through the opening to see the creature more clearly, but the air that filled the exit now demonstrated the ability to become a clear, springy substance that flung him back into the room. By the light from the corridor, he looked around and found an ill-smelling pallet, a rough stool, and a terra cotta oil lamp with a wick of greasy wool. He was able to just reach this last item around the edge of the door to meet the torch ensconced in the passageway and, with the lamp's feeble light, sat down on the stool and took out the scroll.

It was written in a script that he could read, and he quickly took in what it had to tell him. He was to wait until the pixie returned to lead him out of his cell. Then he must go to a house in the lower town—a map to find the place, an image of its exterior, and a second, multi-leveled map of its interior were provided. He was to find his best way in, locate something called an "apprentice's eye"; the note said that the geas he was under would ensure that he recognized the object when he saw it.

You may use whatever means and procedures you deem appropriate, said the note, but if you offer violence against any persons within the house, the hand you raise will instead strike you where you have already felt a blow.

Once he had achieved the goal of the mission he was to bring the apprentice's eye back to Baalariot. The note said that while exiting the target area he was encouraged to make as much noise and commotion as possible.

"Why would I do that?" he asked the walls of his cell. He received no answer.

Krunzle turned over the single sheet of parchment, but there was nothing on the other side. He reread the note again and, when he realized that the letters were steadily fading away, applied himself to memorizing the map before it disappeared.

A few moments later, he was left with two things: a blank piece of scraped sheepskin and a question. The question was: what was an apprentice's eye?

Then came a third: an overwhelming urge to sleep.

∗∗∗

He awoke to find that his various pains had faded. He was also hungry, and was glad to find that while he slept someone had brought him a platter of bread and cheese, as well as a stoneware jug that proved to contain an almost drinkable wine. He refreshed himself, then sat on the stool and contemplated his predicament. He failed to see any immediate advantage to being the slave of a spied-upon wizard. Nor did he envision that his situation would much improve: as he understood these things, spellslingers tended to rely on conjured assistants, like the pixie, for their domestic needs. They generally kept no slaves—which meant that upon successful completion of his mission, he would become surplus to Baalariot's requirements. The wizard would cast around for some useful purpose that a superfluous thief-slave could serve. Several images came to Krunzle's mind, none of them encouraging.

His early education at a rather prestigious rogue’s academy had taught him the cardinal rule of the thief's life: always have a plan. He quickly devised a scheme that had two parts. Part one: break the enchantment that bound him to Baalariot's will. Part two: depart Elidir at maximum speed.

He was sure he could execute part two with energy and dispatch. Part one, however, remained a problem. His mind failed to gain traction, and soon he lacked the leisure to pursue the matter, because now the winged manlet returned, hovering in the corridor at the center of his globe of light.

Krunzle stood and the light moved away. He was able to exit the cell as if the air in the doorway was nothing but air. He strode after the guide, and noticed that he was not retracing the route that had brought him down from Baalariot's chamber. Instead, he and the winged fairy-man proceeded deeper into the warren of dark rooms and barely lit corridors beneath the wizard's manse, until he came to a narrow space which contained a spiral iron staircase leading up and a rough table on which were spread several items Krunzle recognized.

They had all be taken from his person after he had been delivered to the Gyve, and they constituted the tools of his trade: picks and slips; grapples and cords; a double-bent tube with mirrors inside that bent light and allowed him to peek around corners, under doors, and through windows without being seen; and a handful of other objects.

Krunzle was glad to recover them. Not only were they useful, but as part of his first tasks as a journeyman, he had personally made each one of them. Thieves could not usually afford much sentimentality, but an exception was made for the toolkit. He disposed of them in the various concealed pockets and loops that abounded in his garments, and felt slightly better about the course of events.

He was given little time for satisfaction, however. No sooner had he stowed the last implement, than the pixie flew up the staircase, illuminating the darkness above. Krunzle experienced a strong desire to follow and began to climb. He noted, with faint gratitude, that his groin no longer pained him with every lift of a foot.

No sooner had he risen out of the small room—it turned out to have been the bottom of a shaft—than the globe of light disappeared. In complete blackness, Krunzle felt the flying creature flutter past him as it went back to wherever it perched when not on duty. He was unable to do likewise and continued to ascend until he arrived at a confined space that offered not the slightest glimmer of light. He felt in front of him and found a wooden surface which, when he explored further and discovered a simple latch, turned out to be a door.

But thieves' caution prevented him from opening the portal until his searching fingers discovered what he expected to find: another moving part at eye level that, when he slid it aside, uncovered a peephole. He peered out and saw a darkened Elidiran alley, lit only by a few gleams leaking through the closed shutters of houses that turned blank walls to the narrow passage.

He opened the door and stepped out, then looked up at the evening stars to orient himself. The map appeared on the screen in his mind—no magic there, but the mental discipline learned in the academy and practiced ever since—and he set off for the lower town. His route avoided the city's major thoroughfares and plazas, leading him instead along narrow, twisting alleys and down flights of stone steps that reeked of urine and rotting vegetables. Clearly, he thought, whoever occupied the house to which he was headed did not enjoy the elevated social status of the wizard who was sending him.

The building, when he came to it, was not imposing. Mud brick rather than stone, it stood two stories high, with a flat roof; he knew from the map, though, that its foundations had been dug down three levels, creating sub-basements and even a bottomless pit. Baalariot hadn't said anything, but Krunzle knew enough about magic-wielders to have reasoned out that anyone who could steal from a wizard was likely to be another practitioner of the arcane arts. Wizardry and subterranean chambers seemed to be an infallible combination. Maybe it was a matter of containing unruly powers; or maybe it was just that depth muffled the screams.

His urge to get to the target eased when he came to the mouth of an unlit passageway that met the sloping street on which the house stood. His vantage point was several doors down from the entrance, which featured a sturdy-looking front door between tapered pillars, all carved with some complex design he was too far away to see clearly, flanked by two torches that burned with a green flame. There was something about the arrangement of the portal that argued less for decor than for defense.

He would not be going through that door. Some thieves preferred the direct and obvious approach—get in, grab it, and get out while they're still blinking—but Krunzle was an old-fashioned practitioner of the full art.

He wondered how much leeway Cardimion's Discriminatory Geas would grant him. Experimentation revealed that he could move a certain distance from the target structure, but only enough to circumnavigate it. If he tried to go farther, he experienced shaking limbs, nausea, and a sense of impending dread. When he struggled to overcome the resistance, his fist swung up and struck him sharply in an eye whose surrounding flesh was still tender from the wart-nosed torturer's attentions.

Trial and error over, the thief turned his attention to the house that contained the apprentice's eye. The memorized map had highlighted an area in a lower, though not lowest, level of the building. There was probably a concealed entrance much like the one through which he had made his exit from Baalariot's manse, but it would be a waste of time to look for it. He worked his way around the building and its neighbors again, seeking the opportunity that would make the task easier.

The house had not been constructed as a detached structure; its sides abutted directly against the neighboring buildings; its front was two stories of sheer, unbroken mud brick; its rear was separated from the alley behind by a walled courtyard, also lit by green flames.

The courtyard presented easier access but too much light, the thief decided; besides, the rear wall was as unwindowed as the front.

He examined the buildings to either side: one was of stone, tall and solid as a bank, but a half-hidden glyph near the door identified it in the language of thieves and street people as a temple of the demon Nocticula, which meant that its main use was as a brothel, and not a particularly safe one. The other building was a rickety, three-story tenement, with a wooden staircase running up the rear wall to give the residents false hope that they'd be able to escape in the event of a fire.

A lifetime of professional experience told Krunzle that a mud-brick building's greatest weakness was in its roof. He went up the fire steps with practiced quiet, slipping past the noises of clattering pots, squalling babies, and arguing couples, all overlaid by what sounded like a semi-skilled musician singing a maudlin love song while endeavoring to accompany his cracked voice on an out-of-tune zither. At the top of the stairs, a wooden ladder led to the tenement's flat roof. He scaled it and rolled silently onto a surface of dried mud overlying matted reeds.

The zither player was up there, somewhere. But the shadows were thick enough. Krunzle rose to a crouch and made his way to the lip of the roof where it overlooked the mud-brick house, paused to listen for any sounds that indicated someone might be enjoying the upper air—though he was fairly sure the zither-player's amelodic strains would have driven indoors all but the profoundly deaf. He slowly raised his head above the low parapet until he could see down. The flat space was empty and unlit. Krunzle readied a grapnel and its knotted cord.

Moments later, he was crouched in darkness. He had chosen one of the corners of the roof above the front wall. He knew that rooms at the rear of a building were more likely to contain servants busy at their tasks; front rooms were for the quality, who more frequently left them empty while they sashayed out to enjoy privileges denied their underlings.

He took a small, sharp blade from his toolkit and applied its point to the roof's packed-earth surface. The desiccated soil broke into powdery flakes, and soon he had exposed a layer of dried reeds laid over a network of thin laths of wood. He removed a patch of reeds and beneath it saw the pale gleam of plaster.

New tools came to his hands. He drilled a tiny hole through the plaster, inserted a thin tube fitted with an eyepiece, and a moment later he was seeing a fly's eye-view of a sitting room illuminated by brass lamps whose wicks were turned low. The decor tended toward erotically curved furnishings and draped swathes of faux-soie. The room was otherwise empty.

Busy seconds passed, then the thief was standing on the thick-pile carpet beneath a Krunzle-sized hole in the ceiling.

He padded silently to the closed door, opened it, and saw a corridor ending in a downward-leading staircase lit from below. He crept to the top of the stairs and listened, hearing a faint bustle of kitchen noises and beneath it a female voice half-raised in a monotonous chant.

He went down to the ground floor. The clatter of pots and pans grew louder; it came from somewhere to the rear of the building and down another level. The chanting also increased in volume; it originated from behind a pair of large, ornate doors that must lead into a room that took up all of the ground floor's front. A wizard would have his study there, he thought. Or perhaps a witch.

Krunzle looked about. So far he had seen nothing worth stealing, even if this had been a burglary of his own devising. It was possible the apprentice's eye, whatever it was, was in the front chamber, being chanted over right this minute. If not, it would be somewhere it could be kept safe and perhaps guarded. Again, experience told him that somewhere would probably be below ground, behind layers of defense.

He searched his memory for the image of the map Baalariot had provided. He recalled the symbols for more downward-leading steps and soon found them, through they were behind a double-locked door, strongly made, itself concealed behind a wall hanging that depicted a decidedly female person making an intimate though unlikely connection with a snake at least twice her length. Krunzle swiftly picked the locks, opened the door, and stepped through to a small landing above a set of narrow stone steps that circled down into darkness.

"So this is the apprentice's eye."

A rank smell wafted up from the stairwell. Krunzle didn’t recognize the odor, but some part of him decided that it was the kind of reek that ought to raise the hairs on the back of his neck. Cautiously, ears straining the silent darkness, he began to descend.

He counted fifty steps before his outstretched hand encountered a barrier: another door, also well locked. He again deployed his picks and with small effort soon had the way clear. Beyond was yet more darkness, but here the acrid stench was far stronger.

Krunzle put his head through the doorway and looked to either side. There was a dim glow, enough to show him that the door opened onto a vaulted subterranean passage. The source of the illumination was a thin bar of yellow light that he took to be a leak of lamplight from under a door at one end of the corridor. The other end was unlit and ended in a blank wall with what seemed to be a pool of stygian black at its foot. The pit, Krunzle thought. The stench came from there.

Krunzle went on silent feet to the source of the light. It was definitely another door, but there were no locks, only a thick iron bar that slid into a slot in the stone wall. And, his fingers told him, another peephole.

The thief peeped, and saw a windowless cell not much bigger than the one in which he had spent part of the day, but with a good carpet on the floor, a three-wick oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, a narrow cot (though with pillow and quilt), and a table and chair.

Seated on the chair, back turned to the door, was a small figure in a plain white shift—by the narrowness of the shoulders and the fineness of the golden, collar-length hair, either a young woman or an older child. She (or he) was concentrating on something in her (or his) lap.

Krunzle studied the scene, angling to look through the peephole into the corners of the room. He saw no intimations of danger. After one last visual sweep, he slid the latch and eased open the door.

The figure in the chair turned and looked up at him over one shoulder—a girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, startled in the act of reading poetry from the small book now visible in her grasp. Then surprise turned to excitement tinged with pleasure. "Did he send you," she said, "to rescue me?"

Krunzle ignored the girl's question. You will recognize it when you see it, Baalariot's note had said. And now, as the thief looked at the slim, young figure, and especially at the chain around her neck, and most especially at the amulet that hung from it, he knew.

He stepped into the cell, reaching for the apprentice's eye. It looked like nothing all that special. It was a palm-sized circle of some shiny metal, in the center of which was set a large green cabochon. Around the rim ran a legend carved in a script he could not read.

The young woman stood, her face showing alarm. "Wait!" she said.

"I can't," he said, and took hold of the gaudy thing, giving it a yank that expertly parted the chain. As he did so, two events occurred: the unfaceted green gem in the center turned red; and something cold and strong curled itself around one of his ankles and rapidly rose up his leg. The stench that had been so powerful in the corridor was overwhelming now.

Krunzle held tightly to the amulet—the geas made sure of that—at the same time as he tried to shake his leg free of whatever had seized it. He looked down and saw a broad, triangular head, clad in leprous white scales, its eyes filmed and blind but its forked tongue aflickering. The head connected to a thigh-thick, limbless body that continued to slither toward him along the floor of the corridor, even as it slid upward and addressed its huge strength to the task of squeezing air and life from his torso.

He toppled headlong onto the carpet as the great snake opened its fanged maw and hissed into his face.

"Oh dear," said the girl in white.

Coming Next Week: The perils of working for wizards in Chapter Four of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter Two: Axe? Noose? Garrote?

Turn and run they did, the leader of the three knife men just missing having his collar caught by the guard captain. With admirable agility, they sped toward the caravanserai gate, dodging around—or under—mules and camels, leaping over bales and chests, weaving between startled drivers and merchants.

"Stop them!" Idrix bellowed, and his guards leaped to obey. But horse-archers were at their best in the saddle and with their weapons strung. On foot, their recurved bows still in their cases, they were no more agile than anybody else in the crowded compound, and certainly less direly motivated than the three now become fugitives.

Still, the guards at the gate were quick enough to swing the portals closed. Their quarry immediately veered toward the nearest wall, which had an elevated walkway behind its crenellations, reached by sets of wooden steps. Two of them chose separate stairs, took them three at a time and vaulted over the top, without pausing to ascertain what they might land on.

The third, he of the low brow and unsettled gaze, had found no steps within easy reach and had instead opted for several heaped bales of velvet, from which he hoped to spring across a narrow distance to the walkway. But the bales were too loosely stacked to offer firm footing, and he missed his leap, tumbling back to the hard-packed earth at the feet of a hurrying archer. The guard used one of those feet to kick the smaller man sprawling, then used it again to hold him fast to the ground until one of his fellows, with practiced skill, arrived to truss the captive's wrists and ankles securely with bowstrings.

They hauled the prisoner before Idrix and the caravan's headmen, who ordered him taken to where the three dysenteric guards lay in the hospice. Fingers were angrily pointed and curses bitterly flung, then the captive was taken to the city gate and handed over to the provost, whose bailiffs hauled him off to the Gyve.

In a dank, foul-smelling chamber deep below ground, the prisoner declared himself an innocent pearlmonger from Merab, a victim of conspirators and mistaken identity. But the steward's torturers knew their craft well, and soon it was established that the man's true name was Krunzle, sometimes known as Krunzle the Quick, a self-proclaimed master thief. He named his confederates, a pair of locals he had hired on in Elidir.

The plan had been to join the caravan as replacements for the guards they had dosed with loose-leaf, a powerful diarrhetic. Then, while ostensibly standing night guard, they would appropriate as much as they could carry in the way of light but valuable goods, and disappear into the landscape until the caravan had moved on.

"Have you anything more to add?" the interrogator said.

Krunzle could think of several things he wanted to say to the hulking, wart-nosed torturer, but none of them would have served him well. He shook his bruised head, spraying a few last drops of blood.

They manacled and fettered him, then took him to a lightless cell and left him there, groaning on damp straw that stank of black mold and worse. The night passed, and then the morning, though the semi-conscious prisoner had lost his inner sense of time's passage, and neither breakfast nor lunch arrived to mark the hinges of the day.

At some point, a bailiff came and collected him. As Krunzle limped, clanking, up the stone stairs, he said, "Am I being taken before the magistrates?"

His escort laughed gently. "We are an impoverished land, grimly overtaxed by our Chelish overlords. We cannot afford to waste the court's time."

"But I wish to plead my case!"

The bailiff spoke as if to a not-very-bright child. "Your 'case' evaporated when you confessed."

"But the confession was extracted by torture!"

"Most are. We are, as I say, efficient."

They had arrived at the top of the stairs. The bailiff unlocked a sturdy door and led the shackled thief, blinking in the noonday glare, out into a courtyard. At one side was a wooden hustings, with a set of stairs leading up. At the top of the steps were gathered some bored, official-looking personages, while at the bottom stood a line of about a dozen wan-faced men and women who all wore the same heavy wrist-and-ankle jewelry as Krunzle's.

"What is it to be?" the thief said. "Axe? Noose? Garrote?" He shuddered. "Not the half-strangle followed by disemboweling?"

The escort chuckled indulgently. "I have said, we are a poor country. We don't waste good flesh and sinew." He delivered Krunzle to the rear of the line. "Now stand there until it's your turn to go up."

A horn blew and the courtyard's outer gate opened. In came a motley crowd of Elidiran citizens who bustled over to the line of prisoners and began to poke and prod their persons. Krunzle noted that great attention was being paid to the thickness of arm and leg muscles, and struggled to recall if cannibalism featured in the city's reputation.

Few of the newcomers gave the thief more than a passing glance. A plump Elidiran in a merchant's robe and a floppy hat squeezed his lean bicep. The man's mouth twisted in a disparaging moue, and he made a backhanded gesture as if Krunzle was a fly to be shooed away.

"Baalariot gets straight to the point."

The inspection of the goods completed, the first prisoner in line was called up and bidding began. Krunzle was no expert in slave-market economics, but it seemed to him that the bidding was neither enthusiastic nor competitive: most of the items went for a few pieces of silver.

Then it was his turn. He laboriously mounted the hustings and looked out over the diminishing throng. Purchasers were leading their new acquisitions away, and only two faces looked up at him. One, the merchant who had prodded him, gave his head a shake, turned and walked off. The other was the gaunt, blade-nosed man from the tavern and the caravanserai. He regarded Krunzle with a dispassionate aspect and said, "One copper."

There being no other bidders, the official in charge of the auction banged the butt of his staff of authority on the boards and said, "Sold."

Krunzle was hustled down the steps and into the care of the man in the figured robe, who scarcely cast a glance in his direction as he paid over the single coin and signed a document held out to him on a scribe's copy board. Then he signaled to the bailiff that the manacles and fetters should be struck off.

A few moments later, lighter by several pounds of iron, Krunzle regarded his purchaser from the corner of his eye as he assessed his own condition. Being unfed for a whole day had sapped some of his vigor, and the torture had taken even more out of him, but once out the gate and into the warren of streets and alleys around the Gyve, he thought, there might come an opportunity or two...

His thoughts were interrupted by the tall man's action. He placed a round metal object against Krunzle's forehead and voiced an obscure word. The thief felt a coldness that penetrated through to the inner reaches of his skull, and for a moment his eyes bulged of their own accord. Then the medallion was withdrawn and the sensations ebbed.

"Strike yourself smartly," said the man who had bought him, "in the groin."

Krunzle was framing a derisory reply when a bolt of agony shot from his crotch to every other part of his torso, and the breath left his body. He found himself in an involuntary, knock-kneed crouch, a posture which gave him a good view of his own fist still wedged into the softness at the apex of his legs. The strangled sound he made was as much from surprise as pain.

"Good," said the man who had bought him. "Now come with me."

∗∗∗

"You have inadvertently done me a service," said Krunzle's purchaser when they were settled in the sumptuous room to which the thief had been led. They had reached it by traversing half the city, climbing to the elevated district where large public buildings and major temples predominated. Then they had ducked down an alley—by then Krunzle was walking almost normally—and through an unobtrusive gate in a blank wall, across a small courtyard and through a heavy ironbound door that opened when the robed man said a quiet word.

"I am Baalariot," he said, seating himself on a backless chair made of polished wood and curved aurochs horns. "My profession should be obvious to a discerning thief. You are now in my service."

From the man's portentous tone, Krunzle deduced that he was expected to express a respectful gratitude. Somehow the sentiment eluded him, but he judged that the circumstances—especially the residual ache between his legs—called for a measure of dissembling. "I look forward to—" he began, and was interrupted.

"Spare me the soft-soaping," Baalariot said. "I would rather trust to my skills than to your feigned goodwill."

Krunzle was not pleased at having been bought for small change and introduced to a novel form of self-abuse, but he smiled and agreed that his owner was a gentleman of rare insight.

Baalariot raised an eyebrow. "You are a canny one," he said. "I believe you will not only succeed in your mission, you may even survive."

The implied possibility that he might not survive whatever the wizard contemplated immediately focused the thief's attention. "What mission?" he said.

The other man preened the lay of his robe and said, off-handedly, "One that requires an able member of the thieving profession."

"Ah," said Krunzle, "I see where the error lies. I am but a traveling pearlmonger from—"

"Shh," said Baalariot, and Krunzle found that his lips and tongue would no longer obey his brain. "I've seen your transcript from the Gyve," he said. "More to the point, I know how you inveigled your way into the caravan's guards troop. You even fixed it so poor Idrix had to talk you into taking the job."

Speechless, Krunzle replied with a confessional lift and settle of eyebrows and shoulders.

"You showed intelligence and resource," said the man in the chair, "and, as I say, you've done me a service. I was on my way to Kerse to purchase someone like you from the Kalistocracy's prisons—they catch some of the cunningest specimens there, you know—but now you've saved me many days travel, there and back. Plus, you were a bargain."

Krunzle's face and hands now expressed a desire to communicate. "You may speak," said his owner, "so long as you do not waste my time. And,"—he glanced around at the walls of the chamber—"so long as you do not use... blunt language."

The slave found that his vocal apparatus was his own again. He thought he understood the admonition against blunt speech, and said, "You have bought me to 'acquire' something for you?"

"Technically, to 'acquire' something back from the one who 'acquired' it from me."

"And my reward?"

Baalariot moved a finger in a circular gesture. Krunzle felt a sudden intrusion, like a whirlwind of red-hot sand, in an intimate orifice. After a moment, it ceased, and so did his hopping about. "I see," he said.

"Good," said the wizard. "Best not to labor under any misapprehensions."

Krunzle gave over fanning the seat of his breeches. "So what is this object?"

"I cannot say."

"You don't know?"

"I know," said the wizard. "But I cannot say." He gestured toward the walls of the chamber. "Some of the spiders and cockroaches are in thrall to the... opposition. If I speak the name of the... object, it will be reported."

Krunzle wrinkled his brow. "And I'll wager you can't tell me who the opposition is, either."

"I said you were canny. The small eavesdroppers do not understand much," he tilted his head toward one wall, "but they are empowered to notice certain key words and report their utterance to the one who commands them. Then that person listens in. Sometimes, also, the listener tunes in at random intervals."

"Why don't you just kill the vermin?"

"Because they would be replaced by something else, and that something might be more difficult to circumvent."

"So how do I–"

"I will instruct you in your duties," Baalariot said, loudly, with a meaningful flick of his eyes toward the walls. "The floors must be swept morning and evening, the censers and braziers continually refilled..." He went on listing domestic requirements, but meanwhile, his hand slipped inside his robe and emerged with a small scroll, tightly rolled and tied with a horsehair. This he proffered to Krunzle, who took it and secreted it within his own upper garment.

"Your quarters are in the lower basement," the spellcaster finished. "You will remain there when not on duty. You will take your meals—two a day—in the servants' refectory, and—"

The wizard broke off, and Krunzle presumed that whatever force informed him of the surveillance had also signaled its end. He pointed at Krunzle and made a few incomprehensible sounds, then said, "There. I have placed you under the influence of Cardimion's Discriminating Geas. You will go to your quarters and study the scroll. When a chime sounds, you will set off on the mission detailed there."

"But," said the thief, "I don't know what I'm—" There was no point finishing the complaint because he found that he was suddenly possessed by an overwhelming desire to find the lower basement and read the scroll. He exited the room and found a corridor. For a moment he did not know which way to go, but then a small globe of light appeared in the air some distance away. When he turned toward it, it moved off at a walking pace. He followed it.

Coming Next Week: The perils of secret missions in Chapter Three of Hugh Matthews's "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter One: Honest Travelers

It was a good plan, cunningly simple. It just didn't go the way the planner had meant it to.

A caravan from Egorian arrived in the late afternoon at the heavily fortified caravanserai just outside the walls of Elidir. The merchants who had pooled their resources—and defenses—into the cavalcade of fifty mule-drawn wagons and forty pack animals intended to remain at the way station until the following midday so that they could pick over the best offerings of Elidir's purveyors of precious goods. Those exquisitries would be added to the caravan's panniers and coffers that already bulged with fine wares from half a dozen lands around the Inner Sea. Then at noon the next day, the caravan would move on, bound for the luxury markets of Kerse in Druma.

While the hauling and carrying beasts rested and the traders chaffered, safe within the caravanserai's crenellated walls, half of the sixteen-strong complement of horse-archers were granted leave to visit the city's taverns and brothels, while the half who had lost the coin toss stayed behind and remained vigilant.

Three of the liberty contingent went no farther than a raucous and crowded establishment just inside the city gates, where they called for a keg of strong ale. While they were waiting for the drink to be fetched, they bellied up to the board stretched along one wall and filled wooden plates with bread and meats spiced with the fiery local sauces. They looked around for seats and saw no empty tables, only one long trestle that had half its bench-seats unfilled.

A trio of travelers were already seated at the table, by their style of dress identifiable as a small-scale merchant and his assistants. The former good-naturedly waved the guards to take the empty places. A lean, saturnine figure seated at the head of the table, wearing a robe marked with obscure symbols, gave no indication that he was aware of any of them. His blade-like nose was buried in an antique libram bound in red leather and marked with strange devices, and he sipped something green from a tall, slim glass without removing his hooded eyes from the page.

The guards accepted the travelers' invitation. They sat, and names and origins were politely exchanged, then the ale arrived and some time was spent washing away the throat-dust accumulated between Egorian and Elidir. The merchant then leaned forward and raised a finger as if to begin a conversation, but was forestalled by the man in wizard's garb, who put down his book and directed a question to the guards.

"Your caravan leaves when?"

"Midday tomorrow," the senior of the archers answered.

"Will it take on passengers?"

"We usually do. You'll have to ask the head men at the caravanserai in the morning."

The spellslinger nodded and, without thanking the guard, returned to his reading. A moment later, the first course of his meal was brought by the serving girl, and he addressed himself to the food without removing his gaze from the book.

Meanwhile, the leader of the trio of merchants, who said he was a pearlmonger from Merab across the Inner Sea, and now bound for Kerse, asked about road conditions ahead. Because the guards had accompanied similar caravans along this route, they were able to offer expert advice.

The self-described pearl merchant, a small and wiry fellow with a narrow brow and eyes that seldom settled in one position, said, "It is good that honest travelers share their intelligence. The roads are full of highwaymen and ditch-haunters, desperadoes all of them, who will slit a throat for a half-polished button."

The senior man of the archers agreed that it was a sad world, yet not altogether so. "Were it not for bandits and brigands, I would still be pushing a plow and swallowing horse farts in the hill country below the Menadors, instead of seeing other lands and drinking good ale in amiable company."

Hearing such an ably argued view, the pearlmonger declared himself forced to agree. He proposed a toast, and when the guards hoisted their wooden mugs, he insisted that they let him top up their ale with good arrack from the big black bottle he had been sharing with his assistants.

The caravan guards gladly accepted, and offered a toast of their own. It was soon decided that more of the strong-flavored arrack was needed, and the narrow-browed fellow raised an imperious finger to summon the serving maid. Events then settled into a repetitive pattern: more healths were drunk, songs were sung, anecdotes and spicy stories told, and lasting friendships boozily sworn. Somewhere early on in this process, the reader irritably snapped his book shut and left the tavern.

He also left, barely touched, a spiced apple dipped in plum sauce. The alleged pearlmonger scooped the desert toward him and devoured it with two quick bites. Soon after, he and his companions declared themselves spent. They retired to their rooms, while the archers continued to fill and empty their cups from the bottles of arrack the Merabite had kindly left behind.

As the first gray light of day glimmered over the mountains that separated Isger from Druma, the three guards rose, albeit unsteadily, to return to the caravanserai. They knew themselves to be well under the spell of strong drink, but that was nothing new. They could spend the morning sleeping off the effects of the carousal, while their employers chaffered with the merchants of Elidir. By the time the caravan set off again, the archers would be able to sit a saddle. And their ability to put a gray-fletched arrow into a hand-sized target at a hundred paces would be unimpaired.

"Never trust a knifeman."

Halfway between the gate and the caravanserai, the first of the guards experienced a sudden shifting of his innards, as if a large and liquid weight had decided to fling itself from one side of him to the other. He stopped abruptly, and his face assumed an unusual aspect that paradoxically combined deep uncertainty with a dread conviction. He then walked with a rapid, spraddle-legged gait to a stand of low bushes beside the road, his fingers fumbling at the ties and points of his breeches.

The other two archers stopped to make rude noises and offer tactless comments at their companion's expense. But after a moment, their smiles collapsed as their own faces assumed the same haunted expression they had been mocking. Now each of them hurried to find his own bush.

Some time later, three pale and groaning figures presented themselves at the caravanserai's gates. Idrix, the captain of the archers, was called. He examined the men and declared them unfit for service.

"A belly flux," he said, and ordered them to report to the caravanserai's hospice, to be collected when the caravan returned on its way out of Druma. Their pay would be docked.

"I will go into the city," he told his second in command, "and see what I can find in the way of replacements. I don’t want to go up into the mountains under strength."

He was not happy about having to choose from what Elidir had to offer. It was common knowledge among fighting men of many nations that the Goblinblood Wars had robbed Isger of every warrior who knew which end of a sword to hold, and those who were left were either untested youths or haunted-eyed old veterans long since lost to drink. As he rode toward the city gate, the captain was thinking that he might be best advised to visit the slave market and see if there were any well set-up foreigners with military experience for sale.

Just outside the gate, he reined in as three men in leather and buckram came out. They paused to adjust their packs and touch the tips of their staffs together, as travelers often did for luck at the beginning of a journey. They were none of them large, but each had a hard and wiry look to him, and Idrix could see, even at a casual glance, at least eight daggers and throwing knives distributed about their persons.

"Gentlemen," he said, "would you be Druma-bound, by any chance?"

The apparent leader of the trio, a low-browed fellow with restless eyes, looked up at him with suspicion. "What business is that of yours?" he said. "If you're thinking we three are easy meat for a highwayman on a tall horse, here's an opportunity to change your opinion."

There was a vertical post set in the ground near the road outside the gate. Hedvend VI's judges sometimes sentenced certain classes of malefactors to be bound there, exposed to the caprices of passersby until they thoroughly repented of their offenses or expired—whichever came first. The post was untenanted this morning, but within moments of the wiry man's words, and after a brief flurry of motions, the wood was suddenly pierced by a half-dozen blades, their hilts aquiver from the impacts.

"Impressive," said the guard captain.

The three travelers were already working their weapons free of the wood and returning them to scabbards and sheaths. "It means so much to us to have won your high regard," said the low-browed one. He tucked away a short but wide-bladed throwing knife and turned to face the high country to the east.

"Wait," said Idrix.

The other man turned an irritated gaze his way. "We have a long, uphill walk ahead of us and the sun is already above those peaks."

"How would you to like to ride instead of walk?"

The knife-thrower's look of suspicion only deepened.

"And be paid for it," the captain added.

"We are busy men. If you have something to say, stop poncing about and say it."

Idrix was not used to being talked to in such a manner, but he swallowed his irritation and told them he was three guards short of a full complement and wished to offer them employment.

The three looked at him with suspicion, then gave each other questioning glances. A brief negotiation followed, during which Idrix was driven far off from his offering price. Detailed terms of service were also haggled over, the leader of the three initially expressing horror at the thought that when the caravan laagered for the night, they would have to stand watch on the perimeter.

"Well," said Idrix, pushing back his helmet and scratching his head, "where would you spend your nights when you're on the road alone?"

"We make a fire," said the smaller man, "then move out into the darkness and dig shallow trenches, where we lie under a layer of bushes and bracken. We watch in turns, and should any night-lurker creeps up to the fire, we silently leap up, our finely balanced knives in hand, and"—he made a whispery sound: whit, whit, whit—"soon he has gained a new and unsought knowledge of life's capacity to play cruel tricks."

Idrix contemplated making a comment, then decided not to. Instead he said, "Night sentry duty is a necessary part of your duties."

The three regarded him without enthusiasm. Then the leader said, "Can we at least stand watch together? We are used to supporting each other."

The guard captain found that a reasonable condition, and after a few more details were worked out, an agreement was struck and he led them back to the caravanserai to sign them onto the rolls. Within the fortified compound, the traders and their drivers were efficiently repacking wagons and saddlebags, preparing to set off at noon. Idrix and his three reluctant recruits wove their way through an organized chaos of stamping hooves, swearing men, tangles of harness, and side-stepping beasts to the spot where the merchants who had commissioned the whole enterprise stood in conversation with some persons from Elidir.

A half-dozen individuals were gathered around the caravan's owners, seeking to purchase the right to join the cavalcade, it being the safest means of crossing the wild lands between Isger and Druma, where goblinoids of various sorts still occasionally ambushed travelers. As the archer captain and the three new guards came up, one of the passage-seekers, a sinewy, grim-featured specimen in an ankle-length robe marked with strange runes, turned his head and noticed the trio.

"You!" he said. "Do you know you spoiled my dinner and gave me indigestion that kept me up half the night? You and those damned archers!"

The low-browed one looked anywhere but at the wizard, saying, "You mistake me, sir, for another..."

"No, I don't —" began the accuser, but then he broke off and his hooded gaze went from the three newcomers to the guard captain, whose brows were now knitting up a skein of suspicion.

"Aha!" the gaunt man said, "I've smoked it! You nobbled the guards so you could take their—"

As he'd been speaking, the pearlmonger's face had been showing growing alarm, and his hand had been moving smoothly and slowly toward the haft of one of the knives strapped to his chest. The man in the figured robe saw the way things were going and moved his own hand in a particular motion that ended with the fingers configured in precise arrangements. He spoke two syllables.

The accused man's hand now attained its goal, but when he sought to draw the throwing knife—and as his companions made similar attempts—they all found that the blades were fixed permanently in their scabbards.

A moment of silence and suspension occurred. Then the low-browed man said, in a whisper all could hear, "Run!"

Coming Next Week: Thieves and wizards in Chapter Two of Hugh Matthews’s "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich