The Rose and the Skull

16

A fine breeze blew up from the valley, stirring the leaves of the trees of Nalvarre's orchard. Actually, it wasn't his orchard, but he called it his orchard even though he hadn't planted a single one of the pecan or walnut or hickory trees that grew in such profusion here. Nalvarre settled back in a pile of leaves and closed his eyes, letting the breeze cool his tired and aching feet. The wind in the trees and the bubbling of the spring were like a magic lullaby sung by Nature herself. However, it certainly failed to work its drowsy spell on the hundreds of squirrels busily gathering nuts for the winter. They chattered and scurried through the leaves as though winter might descend any moment and catch them unprepared.

Despite last week's early snow, Nalvarre knew that winter was still weeks away, so he allowed himself a few moments' rest from his work. Like the squirrels, he was gathering nuts to store for winter. Two heavy baskets lay nearby, one brimming with pecans, the other with black walnuts. He left the tougher hickory nuts to the squirrels and other animals. Indeed, there was more than enough for everyone. Nalvarre never dreamed of keeping all the nuts to himself, not like the farmers of the lowland forests, who set traps and poisons or kept dogs to protect their orchards from the woodland creatures. He lived in harmony with the land according to the teachings of Chislev, once a goddess of forests and woods. Like the other gods, Chislev had abandoned Krynn during the Chaos War, but Nalvarre still lived by the rhythms of nature. He watched the animals, watched over them, and learned from them how to live without the crutch of civilization.

In autumn he also harvested wild grains from meadows, and apples and persimmons from fruit trees in the valley. On the lower slopes, wild grapes grew, and from them Nalvarre made his own wine. He gathered honey and stored it in jars he made himself, from clay he dug, shaped, and then fired in a primitive stone kiln. His house was made of stones from the stream and thatched with reeds from the lake in the valley. Everything he needed he found around him, and what he didn't use he returned to the land.

The one thing that wasn't in the valley or on the mountain was other people. Nalvarre lived alone, and he liked it that way. By far, he preferred the company of meerkats to merchants, squirrels to squires. Nobody bothered him. No one even knew he was living there.

He lazed away the afternoon under the trees by the brook, watching the squirrels and laughing at their antics. There was no hurry. Really, he didn't even need the nuts. He had plenty of food already stored away, and he only wanted the nuts to make pies for Yule. He still liked to keep the holy days by cooking traditional foods, the sorts of things his mother used to make. He lay in the leaves and thought of all the wonderful things he liked to eat, until his stomach began to growl, and he thought of the barley cakes he'd baked that morning. Quickly, he gathered his laden baskets and hurried down the mountain, leaving the orchard to the squirrels.

The setting sun found him nearing his door. His house was built in the shade of a great beech tree, beside a bank where a mountain stream purled. The chimney stood out against the reddening sky, a tendril of smoke rising in the still autumn air. As he crossed the shallow stream, stepping with familiar ease from stone to stone, he noticed that his door stood ajar, though he remembered closing it. He'd had a problem in the past with trespassing bears, so he always made sure to close it when he went out.

Nalvarre quietly approached the house and set his baskets on the ground beside the woodpile before prying loose a wood axe from a log. He eased up beside the door and glanced quickly inside. The darkened room held no intruders, but a queer smell wafted from the open doorway. It was a wild, musky smell, but not like that of a bear. Some new creature had found its way to the mountain, something beyond Nalvarre's experience. He nervously gripped his axe.

"Hello?" he softly called. Nothing answered him. He slipped inside and peered warily about.

The room seemed empty, but the evidence of intruders was obvious. His favorite chair, the one in which he spent many a winter evening by the fire, lay in shambles on the floor. It was as though some giant had sat in it and collapsed it under his weight. Next, Nalvarre noticed that both the barley cakes he'd baked that morning were gone. A few crumbles on the table marked where he'd left them to cool. The lid of the apple barrel lay on the floor, and about half the apples were missing. He noted in passing that there wasn't a sign of an apple core anywhere, not even a seed. His butter churn was dismantled and lay in pieces under the table, and all the butter had been eaten. Even the bones from the fish he'd had for dinner last night were missing from the refuse jar beside the door. The only thing the marauder hadn't touched were the honey pots lining the mantle.

Nalvarre spun around as something trotted through the still-open door. It was a dog, a very big dog, which skidded to a stop at the sight of him. Not a wild animal, for despite the twigs and leaves snarled in her nappy gray fur, the dog had obviously been well cared for at some time. And not vicious, for the dog seemed more startled by Nalvarre's presence than anything else. Still, he held his axe at the ready. They faced each other across the kitchen table.

"How did you get here, girl?" Nalvarre asked in a calm but forced tone.

At the sound of his voice, her head dropped and her tail began to wag. She waggled over and nuzzled his extended hand. He leaned the axe against the table and stooped to pet her. She licked his face and thumped her tail against the floor.

"Are you lost? Where is your master?" Nalvarre asked as he examined her. She seemed in good condition, certainly well fed. "You've been eating well, I see," he said. "Probably from my larder." He petted and stroked her, picking leaves and other debris from her fur.

"You're a hunting dog," he said as he rose. He took a log from the bin beside the hearth and used it to stoke up the coals of his fire, then added wood chips and sticks until he had a small, merry blaze.

"Did you lose the trail? You've done a remarkable job of getting lost. There isn't a castle or village within miles of here," Nalvarre said. "I imagine you are hungry, aren't you? I was going to have barley cakes for my supper, but since you ate them, we'll have to find something else. How about fish? Do you like fish?"

The dog edged closer to the fire and wagged her tail.

"Fish it is, then. I'll just go out and see if there are any in my traps." He walked to the door and turned, expecting the dog to follow him, but she remained near the warmth of the hearth. "Why don't you stay here," he laughed. "I won't be long."

Nalvarre walked downstream about a hundred yards to a place where the current widened after spilling over a small fall. He waded out into the stream and reached under the surface, then pulled up a large, funnel-shaped basket woven of wooden sticks. In it wriggled five shinybrown trout. He nearly dropped the basket in his surprise. Never before had he caught so many at once. In the summer months, he would have returned to the stream those he couldn't eat himself, but tonight he had a guest, and since his winter store had been unexpectedly depleted, he decided he'd dry whatever fish he and the dog didn't eat. He waded ashore and sat on a rock to clean the fish while the last light remained in the sky.

As he returned to his cabin, Nalvarre heard voices inside, and through the open doorway, he saw shadows dancing on the walls. It sounded and looked like two or three or maybe fifty people arguing. There was a loud scream and a crash. He rushed inside.

He found in the middle of the floor a heap of broken sticks and thrashing blankets that had once been his bed. Somehow, it had fallen from the loft. In the midst of the disaster, several small creatures were fighting and spitting, punching and gouging, all the while cursing like drunken sailors. Nalvarre waded into this and grabbed one of them by the scruff of its neck, yanking it free of the wreckage. "A gully dwarf!" he exclaimed when he finally saw what he'd caught. The other two continued their battle.

"What's this all about?" he demanded, shaking the suddenly docile gully dwarf.

"Lumpo keep taking all of blanket," Uhoh explained.

"Not!" Lumpo shouted as he angrily swung his elbow and clocked Glabella under the chin. She went sprawling across the floor, a very surprised look on her face. Nalvarre angrily snatched her to her feet while Lumpo, victorious, settled down in the wreckage of the bed and pulled all the blankets around him. He didn't seem to mind the sticks and splinters.

"See," Glabella muttered drunkenly. "Him take all of blanket."

"Yes, I see," Nalvarre said. He reached in and pulled Lumpo from the bed and set him roughly on his feet. "I also see that you've wrecked my bed! Just look at it!"

The three gully dwarves gathered close to look at the bed. "It not a very good bed," Glabella commented.

"Stick poke me in back," Lumpo said as he rubbed his kidney. "How you sleep in bed like that?"

"It didn't used to look like that," Nalvarre said. "It used to be a good bed, until you three destroyed it. Just look at what you've done." He lifted the broken pieces of the bed, trying to see if any of it was salvageable. In frustration, he threw the pieces to the floor.

"And just look at my chair!" he shouted as he walked over to the fireplace. "You broke this, too, didn't you?"

"No. Millisant broke chair," Uhoh said with assurance.

Nalvarre turned to Glabella. "Why did you break my chair?" he asked.

"I not break chair. Millisant break chair," she said.

"Well, which one is Millisant?"

Uhoh pointed at the dog curled up by the hearth, watching them with her chin on her paws. At the sound of her name, she wagged her tail.

"Lumpo stand on chair to reach pots on shelf, but he too short," Uhoh explained. "So I climb on Lumpo's shoulders. Then Glabella climb on me. We do good. Glabella reach pot. Then Millisant jump on chair, chair break. Millisant break chair."

Nalvarre sighed and shook his head. "You ate all my food. You ate my barley cakes. You even ate the garbage. Why?"

"We very hungry," Uhoh said.

Lumpo nodded in agreement. "Bad fish. Too many bones," he said.

"Did you ask if you could come in my house and eat my food and break my chair and destroy my bed?" Nalvarre asked.

"No," Uhoh said.

"No, you didn't!"

"Of course, you not here when we get here," Uhoh amended.

"Well, I'm here now! What do you have to say?" Nalvarre shouted.

"I tired and hungry. I stay two days," Glabella answered. Uhoh and Lumpo concurred.

Nalvarre was stunned to silence. He'd heard about gully dwarves, he had seen them at a distance but had never encountered one before. These seemed to be prime examples. Well, he didn't mind the occasional visitor- that went for raccoons raiding his fish traps or bears devouring his picked berries. Looking them over Nalvarre laughed.

"Oh, I see," he said. "Only two days?"

"Not more than two," Uhoh said.

"Well, supper will be ready in a bit," Nalvarre said. "Do sit down." The gully dwarves eagerly settled themselves on the floor around the fireplace.

"You can sit at the table. There is a bench," Nalvarre said. "I'll be back. Lucky for me, you didn't find my root cellar." He stepped outside.

"Uhoh, you think he gonna nail door shut like the last innkeeper?" Glabella wondered aloud. "I not want this inn to burn down with us in it."

"You do bad job picking inns," Uhoh said. "One burn down, one hit by lightning, one we wake up everybody gone poof, one they chase us out with sticks." He rubbed his head with pained remembrance.

"At least I pick inns. Way you go, there no inns nowhere. Just trees and rocks and nothing to eat forever," Glabella said. "I starve. I disappear poof if I not get supper."

Uhoh countered. "I pick this inn. This good inn!"

"Bed break. Chair break. Lumpo get bone stuck in throat. I eat two apples and my belly hurt," she said.

"You eat two and two and two apples. You not fool me,"‹ Uhoh said.

Nalvarre bustled back in the room, his arms loaded with various edible roots. He tossed them directly into the fire. Lumpo began to sniff the air and eye them hungrily.

"You're still sitting on the floor!" Nalvarre said. "Please, do try the benches." With obvious reluctance, the three rose from the floor and settled onto the bench beside the table-Lumpo at one end, Glabella at the other, and Uhoh in the middle.

Nalvarre lifted a skillet from the nail where it hung and set it on the coals of the fire. He looked around, then snapped his fingers.

"No butter," he said. "Well, we must make do. A little wine, perhaps."

From a gourd, he sent a stream of red liquid hissing into the heating pan. He tossed the fish in after it, then while shielding his face against the heat with the palm of one hand, he sprinkled herbs over the lot and flipped the trout with a wooden fork. A fine aroma filled the air, and Lumpo's stomach growled like a bear. Millisant pricked up her ears.

In no time at all, Nalvarre had a hearty meal prepared and set on the table for all. Millisant had already begun her supper; she lay on the packed earth floor and gingerly picked out fish bones with her teeth. The gully dwarves would have begun as well, but Nalvarre thwacked their knuckles with his fork enough times that they finally agreed to wait until everything was ready. He produced a loaf of bread from somewhere (how the gully dwarves had missed it was a mystery, but he was glad they had), and though there was no butter, there was plenty of fresh, sweet honey. He set candles of beeswax on the table and the mantle, and he filled a large stone bowl with wine into which everyone dipped their cups. Neither Glabella nor Lumpo had ever before tasted wine, but Uhoh had sometimes been allowed to lick clean Lord Gunthar's glass at the end of meals. Nalvarre's heady upland vintage was more potent than anything Uhoh had tasted, and it certainly delivered a stouter wallop than the beers and ales familiar to the gully dwarves' palates.

"This one good inn!" Glabella proclaimed after her third cup. "Best inn." She slapped Uhoh on the back in congratulations of his choice, causing him to spill his drink. He eyed her angrily and dipped his cup into the bowl again.

"Inn?" Nalvarre asked, puzzled. "Oh, I see. You think this is an inn."

"That right. I always pick inn, but Uhoh pick this inn. He pick good," Glabella said a little loudly as she took a yam from Uhoh's plate and stuffed it into her mouth.

"So you three are travelers," Nalvarre said.

"No, we Aghar," Lumpo said from the end of the table. "That mean we gully dwarves. Traveler is Papa's horse."

"Yes, of course. What I meant to say was, you three ^ gully dwarves are on a journey," Nalvarre amended.

"I thought you say this a bench," Lumpo said as he eyed the bench suspiciously.

Nalvarre laughed. "It is still a bench," he said. Lumpo relaxed. "What brings you to my… hmmm… inn?"

"Nobody bring us. We come alone," Glabella said as she swallowed the last of the yam. "We walk two days and two and two days, hunted by slagd. We hungry, we cold, but we brave. We not scared of slagd."

"I scared of slagd," Lumpo said.

"I not. I bite slagd on nose. That show 'em!" Glabella boasted.

Uhoh snorted. Glabella slapped him.

"Slagd scary," Lumpo agreed.

"Excuse me, but what are slagd?" Nalvarre asked.

"Dragonmen," Uhoh said with great solemnity.

"Draconians?" Nalvarre asked in astonishment.

"That right!" Glabella said."He's smart."

"Draconians are chasing you?"

"Uhoh see them kill Papa," Glabella said.

"That big secret!" Uhoh shouted as he slapped Glabella. He turned to Nalvarre and said fiercely, "You not supposed to hear that."

"Draconians killed your father?" Nalvarre asked mystified. "I don't understand. Why would they kill a gully dwarf?

"They not kill gully dwarf, they kill Papa," Glabella said.

"You not supposed to say!" Uhoh shouted.

"When did this killing happen?" Nalvarre asked with genuine curiosity.

Draconians were even more rare in his experience than gully dwarves. Of course he had heard of the evil dragonbred creatures, but to have gully dwarves and draconians both cross his threshold-mixed up together somehow- was hard to credit.

"Papa not killed two days ago," Lumpo said. Uhoh turned on him again, and seemed ready to strangle him. "I not tell him!" he whined as he backed to the end of the bench.

"Why we not tell?" Glabella asked Uhoh. "You say Papa tell you warn others. He others."

"He not others. You others. He maybe a bad Knight," Uhoh said.

"I'm not a Knight," Nalvarre said, a little miffed.

"You human," Uhoh said.

"That's right, but not all humans are Knights. I was a priest of Chislev once, the goddess of nature," Nalvarre said.

"You talk to gods?" Uhoh said in awe.

"I did, once upon a time," he explained hesitantly. "I still do sometimes, when I feel alone. I don't know if she listens, or if she can even hear me. But I protect and care for the land and the creatures that live on it. If draconians are really hunting you, though I can't imagine why, and you are in danger, perhaps I can help. I'd like to know more."

Uhoh gave him a long hard look, as though weighing his decision with all the mental powers at his disposal. Gunthar had been right when he said Uhoh was unusual for a gully dwarf, for he was unusually self-aware. Perhaps this was a result of his mother dropping him on his head when he was a baby, no one knew. The gully dwarf had spent the last few years living with Knights (or at least in their stables and kennels), so to him, being human had come to mean being a Knight. But this human was obviously quite different than every Knight he'd ever met. For one thing, Nalvarre wore a truly attractive beard, one enviable even by gully dwarf standards. No Knight of Solamnia wore a beard like that. His clothes weren't in much better condition than Uhoh's, while Knights tended to dress meticulously when not encased in armor.

Then, too, Nalvarre smiled at Uhoh and his companions just as Gunthar had always done, and he had gray hair like Gunthar, though not as gray nor so well groomed as the Grand Master's. Nalvarre spoke to Uhoh, not at him, very much unlike most Knights, except for Gunthar.

Still, Uhoh didn't know whether to trust Nalvarre. Already on this trip they'd nearly been captured twice by their dreaded slagd pursuers.

Throughout their journey, the shadowy creatures had dogged their trail, filling the gully dwarves with terror. They were allowed no rest, no time to stop and feed to their satisfaction. At night in the lonely places of the wild, they heard whispers and stealthy footsteps stalking around their hiding places, and only their gully dwarf instincts for selfpreservation kept them still and quiet, and thus alive.

Uhoh was weary, weary down to his very bones. He nodded and sighed.

"Tell me what happened," Nalvarre softly said.

"It all happened when me and Papa and Garr hunt big ugly pig, Man-something-or-other," Uhoh said.

"Mannjaeger?" Nalvarre exclaimed.

"That him," Uhoh said.

"You were hunting Mannjaeger, you and your father and Garr?" Nalvarre asked.

"Yes."

Nalvarre's eyes widened. "You are a remarkable fellow," he said.

Uhoh stared at him without comprehension.

"Go ahead with your story," Nalvarre said.

"First Garr die, but he got only a little scratch," Uhoh continued.

"Was Garr your brother?" Nalvarre asked.

Glabella burst out laughing. "Garr a dog, like Millisant," she giggled.

"I'm sorry. So the boar killed Garr. Do continue," Nalvarre said.

"Then pig attack Papa and knock Papa down, so I throw rocks at pig and pig let Papa go. Then Papa stick pig with pig sticker. Pig run away," Uhoh said.

"Your father stabbed Mannjaeger with a knife?" Nalvarre asked in disbelief.

"No, it long stick with knife on end. Very heavy," Uhoh explained.

"I see," Nalvarre said.

The longer this story went on, the less he felt like believing it. To think, the gully dwarf was not only hunting Mannjaeger, but actually wounding him, and with a spear! It was common knowledge that an armed gully dwarf is more a danger to himself than to his enemies.

"Then Papa die, like this," Uhoh said as he performed a remarkable imitation of the convulsions which twisted Gunthar's body.

"Papa get scratch here," Uhoh continued, indicating his thigh. "He say, 'Come close' and he tell me big secret nobody supposed to know. Then Papa say," Uhoh croaked in a remarkable imitation of a dying man's whispered last words. " 'The book… Kalaman… Liam… in bell room… tell him… tell no one.' Then slagd come, and I run away home," he finished in his normal voice.

"We go home too," Glabella said.

Lumpo's head hit the table and he began to snore.

"But what does this big secret mean?" Nalvarre asked, scratching his thick, tangled beard.

"You not suppose to know secret," Uhoh said, pounding the table. "I tell you, that before."

"I'm sorry, but let's get back to the draconians. I thought you said the draconians killed Papa. Why?"

"I come to that!" Uhoh frowned. "You tell story, or me?"

"Do continue," Nalvarre apologized.

"Before hunt, slagd do this and that. They make hoobajooba with hands so dogs don't go right way, but me and Papa we go right way," Uhoh said.

"And Garr," Glabella added.

"What?" Nalvarre asked in bewilderment.

"That easy spell," Glabella interrupted. "I learn do that when I only two."

"A spell?" Nalvarre asked. "Do you mean they performed magic?"

"Big magic. That hoobajooba spell easy. All you need is chicken foot," she said. "I got chicken foot. You wanna see?" She began to dig in her bag.

"Some other time," Nalvarre said to her. He turned to Uhoh. "So the draconians cast a spell to confuse the hunters? But somehow allowing you, and your father, and Garr to find the boar. It sounds feasible… "

"That what I say," Uhoh said. "Feasible!"

"Remarkable!" The very strangeness of the story did lend credence to it. "So after Papa died, then what happened?" he asked.

"I fall asleep. I wake up with draconians all around. Two, at least two. So I fight and get away."

"Really?" Nalvarre asked in surprise.

"No!" Glabella shouted. "Millisant bite slagd on tail and he drop Uhoh on head, just like when he a baby."

"Then I run," Uhoh said a little sheepishly. "They chase. I run away home."

"Where is home?"

"Town," Uhoh said.

Town. Nalvarre had heard rumors of this place. It was a fairly recent colony of gully dwarves. Almost no one knew of its precise whereabouts. There were a few other people, like Nalvarre, who lived in the wild hills alone: rangers, druids, hermits, and the like. Occasionally they met to exchange news or to trade. Recently, there had been talk of this burgeoning gully dwarf Town with everyone wondering how so large a population of the miserable creatures had sprung into being, virtually overnight.

Town was said to lie several days journey to the north, well into the acknowledged realm of the red dragon Pyrothraxus. The only human habitation in the area was an old castle of the Solamnic Knights, built to guard a pass that had fallen out of use ages ago. Over the nine years since Nalvarre had lived in this region, the castle had only been garrisoned twice; the rest of that time it stood empty, a home to rooks and lizards.

"That is quite some tale," Nalvarre said at last. "I don't quite understand all the details, but I trust they'll emerge in the light of day. In the meanwhile, you three are welcome to stay here as long as you like."

Uhoh was nodding sleepily, as Glabella blinked. She reached across the table for another yam and tried to stuff it in her mouth, but somewhere along the way she drifted off. Her head fell on the table with a thud, though her fingers remained firmly locked on the yam. She snuggled it to her cheek like a doll.

Uhoh yawned, his jaws cracking. "We stay two days," he said. "Not more than two." He stretched and rose from his seat, stumbled over and curled up with Millisant by the fire.

"Poor little buggers," Nalvarre whispered as he looked at them.

He quietly cleaned up the supper dishes, extracted his blankets from the wreck of the bed, and climbed into the loft to find a place to stretch out. As he drifted off, he gazed down on his visitors and wondered. He thought about them as sleep stole over him, and in the night he dreamed the trees were full of thousands of squirrels with gully dwarf faces, all jabbering ceaselessly, while black wolves stalked the ground below.