'Except I'm not dead,' muttered Toede, though more quietly than before. He hastened to add, 'I assume there was a massive outpouring of grief.'
'The festiv… ah, mourning ceremonies lasted several days,' said Groag. Toede nodded, while his companion took a deep breath and continued.
'Then the kender started putting stories out about how they tricked you into getting yourself killed. They were mostly true.' At this Toede shot him an icy glare, so Groag quickly added, 'As truthful as kender ever are, of course, with their half-statements and innuendo and rumor and everything.' Toede motioned Groag to continue. 'I had had my fill of these tales, and at one point went after the kender spreading the lies, Talorin, Kronin's friend. Chased him into the forest, and, ah, got lost for my trouble. Couldn't find my way back and nearly starved before Talorin and another kender, Taywin, Kronin's daughter, rescued… er, captured me.'
'Groag,' said Toede, shaking his head, 'you were ever the most hapless of my retainers. You could get lost in a water closet.'
Groag ignored his fellow prisoner and continued. 'I pleaded to be released, but they hauled me here to their camp, and I have been their most abysmal prisoner ever since.' Groag held up his chains and shook them for emphasis.
Toede had an image of Groag begging for mercy, pulling every stunt, promising every devotion, and plucking every heartstring to save his hide. Yes, Groag would gladly grovel-he had done it before.
'Have they… tortured you?' asked the highmaster hesitantly, thinking of his own favorite amusements and wondering if the kender matched up.
'Worse,' sighed Groag. 'Were they merely to torture me, I would respond with good hobgoblin stoicism.'
At least for the first five seconds, thought Toede, but said nothing.
Groag continued. 'No, they were far, far worse. They tried to… tried to…' His face twisted as he attempted to spit out the words. 'Rehabilitate me!'
'No!' Toede tried to look shocked.
'Yes!' Tears began to pool at the corners of Groag's eyes. 'They keep talking to me about how it's not my fault that I was born into a misshapened shell with the manners of a bloodthirsty wolf and things like that. And that I should aspire to be better than I am.'
'Meaning 'more like them' I suppose,' sniffed Toede.
Groag went on. 'And they don't really yell at me, but they do explain things real loud when I'm wrong. And they say how disappointed they are when I do something bad.'
'You mean, like twisting the heads off one of their young?' suggested Toede, with a smile at the thought.
'Er, more like forgetting to turn the goose and letting it burn,' said Groag quietly. 'I feel horrible to disappoint them. Sorry.'
Toede just shook his head.
'And every now and then Kronin's daughter comes by and we go…' His voice sank below audible levels.
'Yes?' prompted Toede.
'We go…'
'Yes?'
'Berry picking!' sobbed Groag, clutching his misshapened head in his hand. 'And… and… she reads poetry!'
Toede mouthed the words 'berry picking,' and walked softly over to his sobbing companion. He placed a firm foot on Groag's shoulder and shoved him, hard, backward. Groag went flailing in a flurry of chains.
'Berry picking! Poetry! Burning geese!' shouted Toede. 'You're a sad excuse for an evil humanoid, Groag! Think about it! Any other member of your tribe would have opened his veins by now in embarrassment, or tried to tunnel out of this predicament with his teeth if need be. 1^ anything, you're even softer now than you were when you were in my court! Well, I'm not going to follow your example. I'm going to get out of here one way or another.'
Muttering, Toede stalked back to the opposite side of the hut, which he already thought of, in the first day of incarceration, as 'his' side. Trapped in a small hovel with a spineless fool who thinks I'm dead, he thought angrily. Was dead. Yet if I was dead, why am I now alive?
The icy block of blackened memory remained. The heat of the dragon's breath blistered his skin, Toede remembered that. And the shadows of the ghostly god-figures surfaced briefly, promising great things.
Toede shuddered. He glared at Groag, pulled himself back up to his seat, focused all his anger on the other hobgoblin. When it became clear that Groag was not going to burst into flame or otherwise disappear, Toede reopened the conversation, saying, 'And…?'
'And what?' said Groag softly.
'And did they commission a monument to me after I… after it seemed like I died? In Flotsam, I mean.' The corners of Toede's mind tried the idea of death on for size, even if it was an uncomfortable fit.
'Ah, not exactly,' said Groag.
'A statue perhaps? Something modest and dignified?'
'No, not a statue…' said Groag.
'A plaque, perhaps, commemorating my long and just rule?'
'I'm afraid not.' Groag shrugged.
Toede felt the anger building again. 'Anything at all to mark my… passing?'
'Well, a proclamation…' began Groag.
'Ah, well, that's something,' said Toede, softening a moment. 'A memorial holiday in my honor, then.'
'Not exactly,' sighed Groag. He concentrated on a point beyond Toede's left shoulder. 'The proclamation said that all hobgoblins were banned from Flotsam now that you were dead,' he said, very quickly.
Groag closed his eyes tight, waiting for another explosion. After half a moment, he opened them to see Toede sitting there, calmly, in deep thought.
'Highmaster Toede?' said Groag softly.
'Who?' said Toede, his voice stone-level.
'Who what?' prompted Groag quietly.
'Who made that proclamation?' snarled Toede. 'Who is going to die for his temerity and stupidity!'
Groag rocked backward just far enough to be out of arm's reach. 'That would have been Gildentongue, your draconian advisor. I understand that he is involved with some cult or another nowadays, but at the time…'
Toede missed most of the words after 'Gildentongue' and was already on his feet, ranting. 'Gildentongue!' he shouted. 'That cheap gold-plated draconian has my job? My throne? That lizard hasn't got the political savvy to tie his own bootlaces without checking with the dragon high-lords! No doubt about it, we're getting out of here, and going to set that little piece of scalework straight!'
'Please, Highmaster Toede,' said Groag, 'your voice carries.'
'That's Lord Toede, as in Lord of Flotsam,' shouted Toede, ignoring Groag's plea for quiet. 'When I get hold of that Gildentongue, I'm going to take a long pole with barbed hooks and shove it down his throat, pulling it outward so he can see his own intestines before I pop his eyes out and use them as billiard balls! And then, while he's twisting in his own blood, I'm going to call in the manor guard for some spear practice, then I'll call in a team of hobgoblin tap dancers, and then… and then…'
It was about this time that Toede realized that he and Groag were no longer alone. Halfway through his ranting someone had pulled the bolt free on the hut door, and now a young female kender stood there, framed in the morning sun.
She was frail and beautiful in the childlike way that al^ kender seemed-children who had run off and stayed young by hunting and fishing and living in the wilderness. She was nearly as tall as Toede and half his weight, and was poured into a stylish set of buckskin pants and a loose cotton shirt worn open to the third button. Her boots were custom-made and mud-spattered. A beaming smile dimpled her cheeks, and her fine-boned face was framed in a halo of auburn-red hair. She carried a large wicker basket at her side.
Toede hated her at once.
'Mister Groag, I see you're feeling better,' she said, her voice a chirping warble, which to Toede sounded like a sliding cat trying to get purchase on a slate roof. 'And your friend is in good voice, too, though he sounds a tad
