Gordan of Riss and the Malformed Sprite (A Madcap Fantasy Adventure Book 1) Read online

  Still, the barkeep heard. It wasn’t long before he thumped a full tankard in front of me. But instead of immediately letting it go, he looked me in the eye.

  He was fat, sweaty, and part of his face was hidden beneath a thick black mustache. “There ain’t no trouble here,” he said.

  I blinked at him in surprise, wondering how he knew. Maybe he offered his warning to everyone he served. “Really?” I said.

  “Really. Poodle takes care of that.” He nodded towards the door.

  Poodle? I followed his gaze to a mountain of a man standing serenely against the wall. Or maybe he was the wall. Massively built, he would have topped my height by a good foot or more, and the muscles on his arms and shoulders looked hard enough to easily withstand knives or swords. As I watched, he raised a hand that likely could have crushed rocks and waved delicately in my direction.

  I realized I was staring. I turned back to the barkeep and offered a shadow of my usual grin. “No trouble. No problem. I just want a drink.” Poodle, I thought, was at least part troll. He would have been able to keep the peace in a riot. Despite his ridiculous name.

  Sure that his message had sunk in, the barkeep let go of my tankard. I scattered a few coins on the counter (I’d lifted a couple of coin pouches as soon as I’d walked in) and took a long, deep drink. I thought that the ale tasted somewhat strange, and it had plenty of bubbles.

  A drunk pixie blundered into my airspace. Most pixies I’ve seen looked fairly ordinary, like miniature human beings with wings. But there were exceptions, and this one looked positively feral. He had green skin like a goblin and blood-red eyes like some of the meaner-looking orcs, and a shock of white hair that stuck out from under his cap. If he’d been my size, he would have been terrifying.

  But despite the way he looked, he was still a freeloading pixie just like all the rest. He proved this by settling on the counter in front of me. He wobbled a bit, sauntered over to a puddle of spilled ale, then bent at the waist and started slurping the liquid down.

  Just because I thought it would be fun, I slammed the tankard down on him as hard as I could, sloshing some of the liquid within over the side.

  “Oi!” he said in a high pitched but angry voice.

  I lifted the tankard. “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

  The pixie picked himself up, dusted himself off and straightened his tiny cap, vest and trousers. Then he buzzed into the air on diaphanous wings and hovered a hand span away from my face.

  “Didden see me?! Whaddam I, invisible or sometin’? Yeh stoopid? Blind, mebbe? Didden see me, me tiny ass!” He frowned mightily and waved clenched fists in my general direction while at the same time not quite maintaining his stationary hover.

  “I said I’m sorry,” I said. “And it’s not as if you’re hurt or anything.” Pixies were pretty much indestructible. Stomp them, fling them into a tree, crush them between two rocks and they just kept coming back for more. If they grew any bigger than the palm of my hand and were interested in more than just booze, they would have been downright dangerous.

  “Not good ’nuff! Not good ’nuff by half!” he cried in what must have been close to full volume. He tried to pull his sword even though that weapon would have been hard pressed to draw any more blood than an average needle.

  He was almost too drunk to manage and the effort cost him his stability. His hover degenerated into a spinning dive and I hoped he would crash right onto the counter. At the last moment he pulled out of his dive and looked around, facing the wrong way.

  “Where’ve yeh gone?” he said. “Coward! Come back ’n face me like a man, ifat’s what yeh are!”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said mildly. I was starting to enjoy myself.

  He lurched in mid-air as if I’d startled him and spun around. “Right,” he said, waving his sword. “Right. Now, hol’ still a moment, an’ yeh’re gonna get yehrs! I’ve ’ad more ’an I’m gonna take of Bigfolk thinking yeh can do just whaddeva yeh want to me an’ mine!”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Go ahead, then. Do your worst.”

  “Wha—? Right!”

  With that, the little blighter sped towards my face quicker than I would’ve believed. I only just got my hands up in time, and wouldn’t you know it, being stabbed by a needle-sharp little sword actually hurt! A bit, anyway. Nor was this miniature attack over. The pixie backed up, aimed his sword once more and charged again.

  Too slow this time. I swatted him out of the way. He collided with a comatose orc leaning on the bar and tumbled onto the floor. But he wasn’t done yet; as I said, pixies were tough. In moments he was back, darting at me like an angry hornet again and again, avoiding my swats, scoring a couple of good hits on my hands, and swearing non-stop.

  I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

  This didn’t go down too well with my little winged friend. The look on his face was pure outrage. “Yeh laffing at me? Yeh dare!?” And then he let out an inarticulate cry of rage and redoubled his efforts.

  I ducked and dodged for a while, then decided this had to stop. Our antics were starting to draw the attention of other pixies. Many of them simply hovered and watched, but one or two had drifted closer and looked likely to join in. And that could go badly. Not only could it result in numerous small cuts and a great deal of pain, but it could also contravene the “No trouble here” policy of the barkeep. And that might mean a conversation with Poodle.

  I felt I could do without such a conversation. “Ok, ok, I give up! I surrender!” I said, still chuckling.

  The pixie paused for a moment only. It was as if he enjoyed inflicting pain more than he enjoyed the victory. So I caught him in a sudden clap! and carefully held him up between two fingers. He wriggled around and flailed with his sword, trying to reach me.

  “I said I give up,” I said sweetly. I couldn’t help but admire his courage. He managed to get his weapon around and pricked my finger. “Ow,” I said, and shook him. “Stop that. Look, I’ve apologized more than once. You’ve taken your anger out on me with your sword. Tell you what. If you calm yourself down, I’ll buy you a half-tankard all for yourself.”

  He stopped wriggling but didn’t look altogether convinced.

  “Deal?” I said.

  “Ale?”

  “Ale.”

  He nodded. “Deal.”

  “Then put your sword away.”

  Like a sulky youth, he did so. I let him go, ordered his drink and watched it arrive moments later. He immediately took off his cap and buried his face in thick foam. I raised my tankard, saluted him with it, and drank some more.

  He stayed buried for long enough that I started to wonder if he’d drowned. But eventually he surfaced, wiped remnants of foam from his face with his sleeve, smacked his lips, said, “Aaahhhh!” and belched quite loudly for such a small creature.

  “Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot,” I said. “My name is Gordan of Riss.”

  “So?”

  “So when someone introduces themselves, it’s considered polite to respond in kind.”

  “Polite, huh?” said the pixie. “An’ exactly where on yer scale o’ politeness does bangin’ yer tankard on me head fall?”

  He had a point. “I said I’m sorry,” I said. Even though the ale I’d drunk was starting to make my chest feel a little strange, I offered him my best grin.

  He glared at me for a moment more before he relented. “Name’s Maximus. An’ I won’t say I’m pleased to meetcha, ’cos I ain’t.” He buried his head in the foam again.

  I waited. Max eventually came up for air.

  “So, tell me,” I said. “Do you come here often?”

  Max stopped moving and stared for a while. “You tryin’ to pick me up?” he asked. “’Cos I’m not a fairy. I’m a pixie. That’s two diff’rent things.”

  “No! No, not at all. I just thought, if you came here regularly, you might know of someone I’m looking for.” I’ll admit it. I was
genuinely embarrassed.

  He continued to stare, suspicious. “Who?”

  “A Seer. She’s got red hair and gives readings with a crystal ball. That’s all I know.”

  Max’s suspicion lasted a moment more before he relented. “Yeah. I know ’er. Goes by Gabrielle or Gabriella or sumthin’. Might even be ’ere now. Check upstairs. Tha’s where she usually is.”

  Upstairs? I hadn’t realized there was an upstairs. “Thank you, kind sir. You have been an absolute gentleman, and I do hope you enjoy your ale.” With that, I left him to his drink, grasped my own tankard and went to find the stairs.

  4

  A Little Miss Fortune

  “Upstairs” turned out to be a small mezzanine, with room for no more than a dozen tables. My target sat at one of those tables, tucked in the corner where the light was dim.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Perhaps a wizened crone with a hooked nose covered in hairy warts, cackling around a single tooth as she plied her trade. Maybe a young maiden dressed in a delicate gown embroidered with mystic symbols, or a middle-aged, blind woman with a dirty bandage covering her eyes and a Seer’s tattoo branding her forehead. Any of those old clichés, really.

  What I wasn’t expecting was the shapely beauty sharing a raucous drink with a fat man who might have been the bread merchant’s brother, a couple of halflings (doesn’t that make a whole-ling?), a shriveled oldster who was staring fixedly at her breasts, and a gnome. She was laughing at something one of the halflings had said and sloshing her tankard about, completely unmindful of the oldster’s leers.

  I paused and joined in with the leering. It wasn’t difficult. Curves less fine than hers had been known to make the most devout of clerics doubt their chosen course and end marriages thought eternally stable, and there was little enough fabric to cover them up. Had I not known she was a Seer (and had the crystal ball on her table not proclaimed her as such), I would have guessed at a much earthier profession.

  She caught me leering from several tables away and hollered, “Like what you see?” in my direction.

  I transferred my gaze to her face. Beautiful blue eyes, wide friendly smile with a hint of knowing seduction. “How could I not?” I replied, and gave her my best grin.

  Despite my cool response, I was sweating. I was still young and had yet to truly master the art of flirtation. My tongue felt like it had swollen and closed off my throat. Perhaps another drink, I thought, and took a swallow despite the slight strangeness growing in my chest. I tried not to blush even as I walked, steadily I hoped, to her table and sat myself down in the chair opposite.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked.

  Her smile grew broader. She raised her tankard like a salute in my direction. “As you desire,” she said, her voice a warm purr and her words an open invitation. As far as I was concerned, her companions might have ceased to exist. It was just me and her on that fine (all right, gloomy and drizzly) afternoon, with ale in our hands and the whole evening in front of us. She held my gaze and for the longest moment it felt as if we had a connection, as if I’d known her forever even though we’d only just met. “As long as you’ve coin enough and a craving to know what the future holds,” she finished, breaking the mood. To her I was no more than the next paying client. The laughter of the men, the halflings and the gnome flooded back.

  I shrugged, my grin a memory and no more real than the connection we’d shared. Strangely despondent, I drained another swallow of ale and said, “You’d be Gabby, then?”

  A flash of danger touched her eyes. “Gabriella,” she corrected. “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Would it be so strange for a woman such as yourself to be known throughout the land? I’ll wager I’m not the first to have journeyed far to learn my fortune from you.”

  It seemed to satisfy her. “No, you’re not the first. Although some seem to expect more for their coin than knowledge of their futures. So tell me, what do you want to know? Is it riches you’re hunting? Love perhaps? Or…” she looked me up and down “…do you seek a way out of some kind of trouble?”

  I wondered if I was wearing a sign.

  “You’re the Seer,” I said, “So you tell me what I’m looking for.”

  A second flash of annoyance. “Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.”

  I figured that if I kept this up, she’d be throwing knives at me soon.

  Even so, she put down her tankard, leaned over the table (giving me a very fine view as she did) and knitted her brow as she stared into the depths of the crystal.

  Up until then, my attention had been taken by the Seer herself. But now I considered the object of her study. While I couldn’t exactly call myself a connoisseur, Gabby’s crystal ball did little to inspire confidence. It was smaller than the palm of my hand and instead of being the perfect sphere I’d always imagined, it was sort of oval, like an egg but not so smooth or even. And it was a long way from perfectly clear. Yellowish was a more accurate description, as if it had been sitting unused in a dark pit somewhere, growing old. There was even a network of cracks on the underside near the darkwood base.

  “Not a very good crystal ball, is it?” I said.

  “Do you mind?” Gabby replied. She looked at me as if I was some sort of bug. Then she resumed her study.

  Credit where credit’s due, the crystal ball certainly responded like it ought to. Almost as soon as Gabby started doing her thing, billowing clouds formed within it, then quickly parted. I caught very brief glimpses of a thousand different things, most of which suggested danger. Swords and knives abounded, and fire as well, but there were also people. Was that the immaculate Captain of the Guard looking angry? And was that just another drunken, enraged, scary-looking pixie, or was it Max, who I’d just met? And were those orcs? I didn’t normally have anything to do with orcs if I could help it. And could that possibly have been a dragon?

  None of it made a lot of sense to me. Which is why Gabby was the Seer and I wasn’t. So I shook my head and leaned back in my chair, content to wait and sip my ale. Maybe it was the bubbles making me feel a trifle strange.

  “I see,” Gabby began, then stopped. Then, “Aha! I’ve got it!” She looked up at me with a quizzical expression. “You’re after the Fracture,” she said.

  “Yes!” I agreed, surprised. I hadn’t expected her to be able to guess.

  “Why?”

  “Because—” I started, then found I didn’t want to continue. It was too private and this was too public a place. I nodded back to the crystal. “If you really want to know, find out for yourself. But you’ve seen it. You know where it is. I’ll pay you to tell me where.”

  Now it was Gabby’s turn to look uncertain. Instead of telling me what she knew, she turned to study the crystal again.

  “Um,” I said.

  “Quiet. I have to know I can trust you.”

  Trust me with what? I wondered.

  I decided I could wait. But then she jerked her gaze away as if what she saw had burned her.

  “You ruiner!” she said.

  “What?” I was genuinely puzzled.

  “They’re coming for you!”

  “What? Who?”

  “Little guy with a crossbow. He set it up. But it’s your fault!” She stood abruptly. It was as if she was eager to get away from me, some imagined danger or both.

  Unfortunately, she knocked the table as she did.

  I saw it as if it happened in slow motion.

  If the crystal ball had been perfectly spherical, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. But it wasn’t. It was shaped somewhat like an egg, with the widest, heaviest bit near the top. The darkwood base failed to hold it. The knock Gabby had given the table was enough to topple it over and start it rolling.

  Gabby had time to cover her mouth with her hands as if that would help. The crystal rolled, rolled, and rolled some more. It reached the edge of the table, started to slow … and I did exactly the wrong thing at
exactly the worst time imaginable: I lunged for it.

  My only intent was to stop it from falling off the table. But Gabby reached for it at the same time. Our hands collided and neither of us managed to catch it. Worse, we nudged the crystal ball just enough to send it over the edge.

  Even then, it should have been fine. Any other crystal would have survived a fall from such a height, especially as the floor on this mezzanine level was made of wood rather than stone.

  But this crystal already had a network of fine cracks, like a spider web covering one side. It touched the floor and bounced. Then it touched the floor a second time and shattered into ten thousand shards.

  Time sped back up.

  “No!” cried Gabby. She turned to me with an expression close to hatred. “You half-witted dolt!” she said as if it had been my fault.

  Strangely, my only thought was to try to comfort her somehow, for it was obvious that the crystal meant a lot. But just at that moment there was a commotion downstairs. This, combined with her warning and the strange feeling in my chest (which had suddenly become more urgent) was enough to impel me to action.

  I sprang to my feet and took two quick steps to the banister. Looking over, I saw a full dozen armed guardsmen pushing their way into the tavern, led by the Immaculate Captain.

  That worthy chose the wrong moment to look up. Or perhaps it was the right moment. Depends on your point of view, really. In any event, our eyes met and he recognized me without any problems at all.

  “There he is!” he yelled. “Get him!”

  I couldn’t believe that they would still be after me because of my earlier antics at the market. What had Thork Yurger told them?

  Dismissing the question as unknowable, I hurled my tankard as hard as I could at the Captain’s face. It would have been a good shot too, but a pixie chose that moment to blunder into the way, deflecting the tankard just enough that it missed the Captain completely. It hit another guardsman on the shoulder, doing little damage. The pixie (could it have been Max?) circled like a falcon with a damaged wing and crashed to the ground.