Landover. It did snow at the higher elevations, but the snow fell into the fairy mists where it was impossible to get to it. There would be snow aplenty at Carrington once real winter set in. There had been several light snowfalls already.
She brushed the thought from her mind. There was no point in thinking about Carrington. That was over.
She had just reached the small forest that marked the boundaries of the King’s land when Haltwhistle nudged her leg. She moved away, thinking she had strayed into his path, but he nudged her again.
This time she stopped where she was. Apparently it was all right for him to touch her, even though she wasn’t supposed to touch him. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him in surprise, but he was already walking away, moving off to the left toward a huge old Marse Red that dominated the trees around it by sheer size, its branches spreading wide in all directions.
Something was hanging from one of the branches. She walked closer and discovered that it was some sort of creature, all trussed up and suspended by a heavy rope from one of the stouter branches. When she got closer still, she realized, despite all the rope looped about its head and body, that it was a G’home Gnome.
Now, everyone who lived in Landover, whether in the deepest reaches of the lake country or the highest of the Melchor or the most desolate of the wastelands, knew about G’home Gnomes. Mostly, they knew to stay away from them. Their name alone—evolved over time by repeated demands that began or ended with “Go home, Gnome!”—said it all. They were a burrow people with little to offer anyone, scavengers preying on small animals and birds—many of them others’ treasured pets. They enjoyed the reluctant favor of her father for two simple reasons: because they had been the first to swear allegiance to him when he was named King, and because he believed in equal treatment for all his subjects, no matter how low or how despised they might be. Good thing. There was no one lower or more despised than the G’home Gnomes.
Not by her, of course. She rather liked the little creatures. They made her laugh. But then, she hadn’t had a pet eaten by one, either.
She walked up to the bound-and-gagged creature and took a very close look at its muffled face.
“Poggwydd?” she whispered.
She could hardly believe her eyes. It was the G’home Gnome she had stumbled upon when she’d disobeyed Nightshade and gone outside the Deep Fell. She had been tricked into thinking the witch was her friend and was hiding her in the Deep Fell to keep her safe. But eventually, she had given way to an impulse to see something of the world she had left behind. Nightshade had caught them out and tried to kill Poggwydd, but Haltwhistle had intervened and saved him.
All that was some years ago, and she had not seen Poggwydd since.
And now, unexpectedly, here he was.
Quickly she began loosening the little fellow’s bonds, choosing to remove the gag that filled his mouth first, which proved to be a big mistake.
“Careful, you clumsy girl! Are you trying to tear the skin off my face? It isn’t enough that I am humiliated and mistreated by those rat-faced monkeys, but now I have a cruel child to torment me, as well. Stop, stop, don’t yank so hard on those ropes, you’re breaking my wrists! Oh, that I should have come to this!”
She kept working, trying to ignore his complaints, a difficult undertaking by any measure. But the knots in the ropes that held him fast were tight, and it was taking everything she had to loosen them.
“Stop!” he screamed. “Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re breaking my arms! I am in great pain, little girl! Have you no pity for me, trussed and bound as I am? Do I deserve this? Do any G’home Gnomes deserve what happens to them? The world is a cruel place, hard and unforgiving—ouch! And we are its victims every—ouch, I said!—day of our miserable lives! Stop it, stop it!”
She stepped back. “Do you want me to free you or not?”
He stared at her, his lips quivering. “I do. But painlessly, please.”
G’home Gnomes looked a great deal like you might expect, hairy heads with ferret faces mounted on stout bodies. They were small creatures, most not quite four feet tall, and due to the circumstances of their burrow life perpetually dirt-covered and grimy. Poggwydd was no exception.
Enough so, in fact, that she wondered suddenly what had possessed her to attempt to free him by touching his filthy body.
She spoke a few quick words, gestured abruptly, and the bonds that constrained him fell away. As did he, tumbling to the ground in a ragged heap, where he lay gasping for breath.
