brown eyes. Maybe…
But no. If there were any magic in the shabby little pipe at all, it lay in the fact that Tas, that inveterate and inevitable collector, could be induced to believe that he must leave behind a pipe he swore was enchanted.
Tanis grinned again. That, he supposed, was magic enough for one pipe.
Nugold Lodston shook a gnarled fist at his youthful tormentors.
'Get away! Pester somebody else! Leave me alone!'
The old hermit shielded his face with his forearm from another flurry of pebbles amid the laughter of the dirty street urchins and their audience of amused onlookers. He despised these trips into Digfel and longed for the quiet solitude of his cave on the banks of the Meltstone River.
'We don't want your kind in Digfel, you old miser. Go home to Hylar where you belong, and take your worthless gold with you!'
The aged dwarf squinted in the general direction of the adult voice. His eyesight was terrible, even for his four hundred years. A blurry outline of a heavy human figure loomed in front of him, barring his way into Milo Martin's shop. It was obvious that he had to either push past the abusive speaker or retreat through his delinquent henchmen without buying winter provisions.
'Remove your carcass from my path, and take your ill-bred issue with you!' Lodston shouted. Several of the spectators laughed at the old hermit's taunt. The blurry-faced speaker leaned closer, revealing his florid cheeks and filthy, tobacco-stained mouth to the dwarf's faded eyes.
'You heard what I said, scum! Get out of Digfel before I feed your scrawny bones to my dogs!' blustered the fat townsman. Lodston smelled the odors of stale wine and unwashed human skin even before he could see the man's quivering red jowls. He grinned and gestured toward the beggar children.
'If those are your mongrels, you ought to be more careful when you mate. You'll ruin your bloodline!' Lodston sneered and shook his quarterstaff in the drunk's face, which was darkening with rage as the catcalls grew louder.
'You gonna let him talk to you like that, Joss?' someone goaded the drunk.
'Kick that uppity dwarf in the teeth, if he's got any!' yelled one of the urchins.
The drunken bully sputtered a curse and raised a beefy hand. In the same instant, Lodston muttered a single word with his bearded mouth pressed against the smooth shaft of his heavy staff. The stick of rare bronzewood glowed suddenly with an inner light and began to vibrate in the hermit's hand. The old dwarf seemed almost as surprised as everyone else by the force within the enchanted weapon and nearly dropped it. He clutched its shaft more tightly, feeling its inner power throbbing as it lifted itself in the air above the bully's head.
Suddenly the staff descended repeatedly, faster than the eye could see, upon the head of Nugold Lodston's assailant. It appeared to the astonished onlookers as if it were a drumstick in the hands of a practiced drummer. Each blow landed with vicious force and accuracy, producing lacerations and bruises on the startled bully's scalp and face.
'Run, Joss! It's a magical staff! He'll kill you!' The bully's eyes were blinded with his own blood from the wounds on his forehead. He backed away from Lodston's flashing staff, his hands raised in front of his face to ward off the unerring blows of the enchanted weapon. To the hermit's failing eyes, the scene was a muddled image of fleeing shapes as the street emptied. Digfel was a superstitious town, especially in the rough section where Milo Martin kept his store.
'Get in here, Nugold, before they come back!' Martin's rotund figure was standing in the doorway of his shop. He was gesturing frantically for the hermit to come inside. The staff had already lost the aura summoned by the ancient command word, but the merchant's bulging eyes were staring greedily at it.
The hermit grunted a minor dwarvish epithet to himself and pushed past the excited shopkeeper into the store. Smells of candlewax, oil, and soap mingled with those of wood smoke, spices, and leather — the comfortable and familiar odors of Martin's General Store. Lodston came to Digfel no more than four or five times a year, and this was one of the few places he liked to shop for provisions. Digfel was a rowdy human mining town on the outskirts of the dwarven mountains, steeped in fears and prejudices dating to the Cataclysm. Milo Martin's shop had a reputation as a brief haven amid the turmoil of the times, perhaps because Martin himself was such a tolerant man. The jolly but enterprising little merchant sold his goods to anyone with iron coins in his pockets, whether dwarf, human, or elf. Only kender, those notorious shoplifters, were unwelcome in his store.
'You old fool! Don't you know you can't fight all of those bumpkins by yourself, with or without a magic staff?' Milo's gentle reprimand was undercut by an excited sparkle in his crisp blue eyes. The merchant was thrilled at the promise of something new to talk about at the Pig Iron Alehouse. He was also bursting with curiosity about the mysterious bronzewood stick that seemed to have a life of its own.
'Bah!' spat the dwarf. 'You humans think that you know everything. My people mined these mountains before you farmers learned how to grow your nauseating vegetables. We dig more than potatoes out of the dirt, I'll tell you that much!'
Martin nodded judiciously, although he knew that the old hermit's dwarven pride was only momentary. Lodston lived alone because he had alienated his own people as much as he had the humans in Digfel. The merchant wanted to divert the conversation toward the staff. He certainly did not want to provoke a long-winded discourse on past dwarven glories and present human frailties.
'That's a fascinating quarterstaff, Nugold,' he probed. 'If you tell me how you came by it, I might pay good iron ingots for it. I've been needing a fine old stick like that!'
Lodston's bearded mouth curled in a sly smirk. Martin's face was a mere blur to him, but the silkiness in the wily human's voice betrayed his usual greed.
'How much?' he demanded quickly, cocking his head at the shopkeeper's fuzzy features.
'Enough to pay what you owe me, and maybe for this trip as well — IF the staff is worth that much,' Martin added shrewdly.
'Oh, it's worth ten times the trash you sell in this place,' vowed the dwarf. 'I got it from an elven wizard!'
If the hermit's vision had been sharper, he might have recognized the immediate frown on the shop keeper's face as a look of disbelief.
'There aren't any elves in Hylar! No elf I've ever met would have anything to do with a dwarf!'
'There's one who would, all right, and he lives in my cave!' Lodston retorted defiantly. The hermit pulled a small keg of pickled fish closer to the fireplace and sat on it. He clutched the magical staff in front of him as if he were guarding it from the merchant's covetous gaze. Then he reached into a pocket and handed Martin a crumpled piece of parchment.
'He wrote down what we need. You fetch all those things while I rest my legs, and I'll tell you the strangest tale you'll ever hear in this ugly town of simpletons.'
Milo Martin's frown deepened as he grabbed the list from the hermit's filthy fingers. He expected to see a barely literate scrawl, and was astonished when he recognized the fine penmanship of a scholar on the crude parchment. Each character was fashioned with elegant swirls, while the spelling and phrases were archaic.
''Balls of twyne, a sette of three;
'Grinded millett, so fyne as to pass through a tea sieve;
'Twin hyves of honey, with compleat combs for the waxxe…''
It was obvious that the old dwarf hadn't written the list. Martin doubted if the hermit was literate at all, and he was positive that those gnarled hands and failing vision would be incapable of such careful strokes of a nib.
'This is quite a list, Nugold,' he admitted. 'I might not have it all. Tell me about this 'elven wizard' who lives in your cave while I gather whatever I can to suit you and your guest.'
'His name's Dalamar,' the dwarf began. 'I found him on the riverbank last month, half-starved and out of his head. I knew he was strange, because of his white skin and long hair as jet black as his sorcerer's robe. 'This ain't no human,' I says to myself. Then I drug him into my cave and made him a bed by the fire. When he woke up, I thought he'd be afraid, but he was just as calm as he could be. He acted like he knew where he was, and like he
