'Yes, yes, of course. When was this 'Exalted Inquisitor' here?'
'Well, he might still be here-that's the thing. It was midsummer when he arrived, a little more than a month ago. I know, because the Four Dukes held a grand reception for him on his arrival. Never did hear about him moving on.'
'Exalted Inquisitor of Helm?' Keane didn't know the hierarchy of Helm's worship, but the rank sounded impressive. And not every wayfaring holy man was granted a meeting with the Four Dukes of Baldur's Gate!
'Aye-not a fellow you'd want to be crossing, and that's the truth,' continued Miles. 'Why, it's said that he had one of his own acolytes whipped-and only for showing a courtesy to a priest of a different faith.'
Keane grimaced. He'd forgotten a fact that Miles had just brought home. The clerics of Helm were notoriously stiff-necked and rigid in their approach to worship. One who did not agree with their tenets was, as often as not, branded as an infidel or a faithless swine. In fact, during the initial invasion of Maztica little more than a decade before, the clerics of Helm had been primarily responsible for the ruthless campaign to wipe out the native religions. Helm was indeed a vigilant and jealous god.
Yet he didn't see that he had another choice-at least, not so long as he remained in Baldur's Gate. And he had no idea where else to go. Waterdeep came to mind, of course, but that was a city of commerce and sorcery, little known for clerical accomplishment. In fact, it seemed that his best hope of finding a cure for the king's injury might be found at the local Temple of Helm.
'Do you know where the Exalted Inquisitor stayed when he came to Baldur's Gate?' Keane asked.
'Why, sure I do!' replied Miles enthusiastically. 'The temple keeps a great house for luminaries like him. Right across the street from the shrine, it is.'
'Tell me how to get there,' Keane requested. He had already decided that he would seek out the inquisitor in the morning.
An infant squalled in one of the rude caves, until the mother cuffed it into silence with a few sharp blows. Elsewhere a wolfdog barked, the gruff sound fading into a low snarl as one of the elders stared the beast down over a well-chewed sliver of elk bone. Fires smoldered, dank wood sending clouds of gray smoke past the dirty cave mouths. Normally a hearty haunch of meat would have sizzled over at least one hearth, casting its alluring scent through the village of Blackleaf, but now there was no meat to be had.
Thurgol, self-appointed chief of the village, decided that he would inspect the other cookfires. His own wench, a stooped but sturdy giant-kin named Karloth, had failed to provide him with a single delicacy in several days. The hulking firbolg chieftain, stooped and misshapen kin to the giant races, had thumped her well tonight. Thurgol let her know that such carelessness would not be allowed to continue, for, in the finest traditions of humanoid logic, he conveniently ignored the fact that his club, snares, and rocks had brought them no game for more than a month, though it was past the peak of high summer!
Scowling from beneath his low-hanging brows, massive hands clamped around the base of a club that was nearly as tall as a full-grown human, the chieftain of Blackleaf stumped around the periphery of his village. Firbolgs and trolls scowled back at him, hungry and afraid. Nowhere did he see food, but Thurgol suspected this was because they all hoarded it for times when their leader was absent.
A flurry of activity caught his attention, and he spun in time to see a huge troll lift something to his tooth- studded gap of a mouth. Baatlrap! Thurgol recognized the hulking form of the ugly beast as Baatlrap hoisted a scrawny rat by its tail. The troll's black eyes glared impassively at the firbolg chieftain, challenging him to object.
A scowl darkened Thurgol's face into an ominous thundercloud as he regarded the insolent troll. He restrained, with difficulty, a brutal urge to attack. Baatlrap was one of the few humanoids in Blackleaf, whether firbolg or trollish of blood, who possessed a true sword. The weapon lay beside him now, the bronze blade nearly as long as Thurgol's club, with a line of sharp serrations down each edge giving it a saw-toothed look. Baatlrap had used the sword, together with his truly impressive size, to bull his way to leadership of the troll community in Blackleaf. Now he tantalized the chieftain with his display of an actual morsel of meat.
But then, in the next instant, the rat disappeared. Smacking his thin, bony lips, Baatlrap grimaced in triumph. Thurgol flushed, knowing that the troll had waited until the chieftain could see him. The firbolg bit back the urge to charge over to the hulking troll, but with the morsel already consumed, there was nothing he could do in any event.
Fools! Rage caused the giant's limbs to tremble, and for a second, his temper threatened an explosion that would certainly have resulted in bloodshed, if not death, but then he whirled on his heel and stalked away, past the dirty caves and through the narrow, rocky niche that gave the village its only easy means of egress. Wolfdogs scuttled from his path, cringing away from the clublike feet that had on previous occasions booted many a canine posterior.
Too long they'd been hungry! Thurgol swung his hefty club, a tapered oak limb studded with round knots, into the base of a pine tree, grunting from the pain that shot down his arm. The tree swayed vigorously, but no sound of splintering treated the firbolg's ears.
That was different, also. As recently as last spring, that pine trunk, or any other of equal girth, would have snapped like a dry twig from such a blow. Now the trees were healthy again, thriving with a vibrancy they hadn't displayed for twenty years. All around him, throughout the great valley of Myrloch, the forests and meadows had surged into life with renewed vitality.
And the failure of the firbolg and troll hunters wasn't because the game had disappeared, either. If anything, the numbers of deer and rabbits, fox and squirrels, had increased during this vibrant season. But at the same time as life invigorated the plants, so had the animals become more alert, quicker, more nimble.
The hunting tactics of Thurgol and his band had always been crude, at best. The thrown rock was the deadliest weapon in the giant-kin arsenal, and the club, however heavy and knotted, was no way to bring down a deer. Of course, during the chieftain's youth, the band had possessed the Silverhaft Axe, and while that was no hunting weapon, at least in design, it seemed that the diamond-studded blade and whichever firbolg wielded it had always been able to provide fresh meat. Indeed, one of Thurgol's earliest memories was of a grand feast-a huge bear, slain by Klatnaught, the former chieftain, with the Silverhaft Axe. Klatnaught's wife, the shaman Garisa, had provided Thurgol with a tender morsel from the beast's ribs.
Yet it had now been two decades since the Silverhaft Axe had been stolen. During these past years, the firbolgs had ranged the width and breadth of the wide valley in the heart of the island of Gwynneth, stumbling across listless animals and bashing their brains out. Now, he knew, those days were gone, along with the mighty axe.
He came to the shore of a pool of still water. Previously he had come here to study his reflection, drawing comfort from the craggy precipice of his brow, the heavy jowls and large, wart-covered nose. Those features, together with his broad-girthed mass of shoulders and chest, his stumplike legs as sturdy as two weathered oak trunks, had combined to make Thurgol lord and master of Blackleaf.
But even that visage was lost to him now, thanks to the cloudy film that colored the previously clear water. Not only did the liquid have a distinct cast of milky white color, but in the full dark of the night, it also actually seemed to glow!
Thurgol wasn't terribly certain of the latter fact. On one night several weeks earlier, however, he had certainly gotten the impression that the pool possessed some kind of luminescence. On that occasion, shaken by a dim, supernatural fear, he had hastened back to the village, and he hadn't approached the pond after nightfall since.
Now, in his capacity as ruler, he knew that he had to do something about his people's current malaise. Thurgol liked having his pick of the wenches, and it was a source of great satisfaction for him to lord it over the trolls. In the past, those scaly, hideous humanoids wouldn't have consented to such an arrangement, but now the hard times in the vale had driven them to seek the protection of the firbolgs. Without Thurgol and his giant-kin, the trolls would almost certainly have been exterminated by the dwarves, who were the other significant occupants of northern Myrloch Vale.
For many years, the firbolgs and dwarves had existed in uneasy truce, sharing the large valley to the north of the great lake itself. The dwarves claimed the lands to the east of Codsrun Creek, the firbolgs to the west. Surrounded as they were by rugged highlands to north, east, and west, and isolated by the huge lake to the south, the two tribes had lived in seclusion from the rest of the Moonshae population. Indeed, since the druids had
