Toad

[knight owl]

Toad: young-adult male rock gnome

Toad is very short, even for a gnome, and has a thin almost sickly-looking build. He customarily wears cloth gloves, sturdy boots, leathers, and a deep cowl so that none of his skin or features show. Perhaps the sorriest-looking gnome ever, Toad is a special kind of ugly: he almost doesn't resemble his kin. His skin has a faintly greenish cast to it, and his body is completely hairless. Toad's large yellow eyes bulge above a nose that is hardly a bump with two slits, and he apparently has no lips. His fingertips and toes are fat while the digits themselves are thin, and he possesses no discernible genitalia. When he moves, his limbs jerk with activity, and he often hops around when excited or nervous. When concentrating, Toad often makes unpleasant gurgling noises in his throat, as though he might be gagging or about to cough something up. Aside from these remarkable differences, Toad otherwise conforms to the long-armed short-legged features of the average gnome.

Though Toad moves with gangly stiltedness, he moves quickly. He is agile, and can often be seen making his limbs or digits move at unnatural angles or in ways that would otherwise be painful or even impossible. His attire is usually muted and of natural browns and greens, so that he can be easily overlooked when moving about out-of-doors. For all his demeanor and appearance, Toad is adept at catching folks off guard: merchants, companions, and even enemies often underestimate him, which he uses to his own advantage. He is easily distracted, however, and his small size makes it difficult for him to perform anything requiring a degree of muscle. Though his height could also be considered less than advantageous, Toad is often able to jump high enough to reach things even humans might find out of their range. Lastly, his bulging eyes are quite sensitive, so that Toad often avoids bright light if he can help it.

(Toad was born in a small warren beneath the Misty Forest, which abuts the western edge of the High Moor. Circumstance and ill-luck birthed him with misfortune, and the subsequent fate of the warren thrust Toad into a misery that took the gnome much time to free himself from. Finally, Toad found a life of wandering the open roads and villages and hills all between the most comforting, and he has done so since.)

[knight owl]

The first thing Marva noticed, when she entered the low-ceiling ed kitchen, was that none of the shutters had been battened.

"Tar! Tar?" The woman was not exactly old, but not exactly young either, and so when she called out for her husband while traversing the busy but smallish kitchen all while balancing a heavy bin of collected rubbish at one generous hip, she understandably grew breathy. At her feet, four of the seven cats that called The Fairylamp Board home stretched and purred and wondered with whiskers and soft paws what treats might be forthcoming. None were.

"Tar-"

That last call was interrupted as every shutter at every pane began banging in unison. Marva frowned, went to narrow door set among them, and peered out. The land was cinched in the middle of Uktar's belt, with the cold winds heralding the coming Nightal blowing in early and blowing in hard from off the Delimbiyr. As she peered out, her eyes flicked from the curled dead leaves tossing about in the strong breezes to a small form that squatting down near the alley wall. It was about the size of a child.

"Love?" Tartal tapped her shoulder at the same moment, so that she started and nearly dropped the bin of trash. He winced at her glower, then noticed the heavy winds. "Bit blowy, ain't she?"

It was her husband's private joke between them to endear all manner of ill weather to be female, and it was perhaps the most wrong thing he could say at that moment.

"Tend the cats will you? They want their morneats." She bustled out from under his attempted reconciliatory hug and knocked the back door open with a free arm. "And put the kettle on. It's going to be chilly today."


* * *


"Hoy... you there."

Rubbish fell this way and that from the pile that the small figure squatted before.

The street was not exactly a dressed lane, and the alley was not exactly squalor: in fact, in all of Loudwater the small route that ambled behind this part of the city was perhaps the only part that could be termed 'slum'. It was the dredger's wagon, of course. Always breaking down. If it wasn't the axle or one of the iron-banded wheels it was a sick horse or a drover abed. Marva saw all the trash still piled from the previous days, untouched, and made quiet promise to herself to finally go and have a word or three with the constable.

She sighed, set the bin she held down, and called out again.

"Ain't gonna hurt ya none." The figure moved again and Marva saw that it looked male, appeared to be one of the small races, and that it had been eating something from the garbage. He leapt suddenly to one side with a muted squeal.

Now, Marva had been proprietor of The Fairylamp Board for quite a few of her years, been a wife longer than that, and had been a smart and capable woman even longer. She was never one to turn away from need when it stared her down, nor was she feared easily. The boardinghouse behind her was a testament to this generosity and ability to look beyond circumstances, for half the folks she and her husband had hosted over the years had been homeless or coinless or just plain lost.

"You hungry then?"

The figure hesitated. After a wet breath, it nodded.

Marva smiled warmly at him, took up the bin again, and gestured to the open door behind her with it. "Go on in. Find a chair at the big table. Be right there." She moved to dump the garbage out, looked around for a proper spot, sighed and then just set the whole thing down.

The wind gusted about her as she stood, giving the big woman a shiver and a twist as she bustled quickly after the lad and shut the door behind them.


* * *


"So many!" Tartal leaned on both arms, staring across the table at the Fairylamp's newest guest. The plate of warm golden popovers was already half-emptied, and the small figure didn't appear to be slowing down in appetite anytime soon. "And I don't just mean the tarts. How many strays you gonna collect, woman?" Appropriately, the many cats drifting languidly about the tablelegs sent up a chorus of hungry mewlings.

Marva chucked him on the head with a dishtowel and clucked.

"Go bind the shutters, will you." He got up with the speed and consistency of every husband who'd ever had their wife hand them out a task. "And don't slam the-"

The door slammed behind him.

Whispering something softly to herself, Marva stepped over to the gnome and set a big brown mug full of milk next to him. Once the figure had undone the ratty scarf bound about his lower face, she could see his wrinkled chin and guessed him to be a gnome, and probably not much older than a boy. She eased herself into the seat next to him, goading him to eat and drink his fill with a gesture, and took up her own mug: the hot tea would soothe the morning into noon. Marva sipped it and watched her new guest thoughtfully, romantic notions of just where this strange lad had come from and imagined with great fancy all manner of histories for him as she sat and watched him eat her simple cooking. It was her way, of course, and though she thought it just a bit of entertaining while-away, she truly had no way of knowing that this would be the last guest she'd ever invite inside the Fairylamp Board again.


* * *



"Well did he say just where he was from?"

Marva watched as Ansi strapped the leather tote about her back, hooked it to the broad girdle she wore, and began up the ladder.

All around them, the dimly-lit store of stacked books was in disarray. Oh, the wooden shelves set into three of the place's four walls were neat and tidy and proper, but the rest of the place was a dismal maze of stock. Marva glanced at the unusual state of Ansi's shop as the proprietress balanced one knee against a rail and then leaned out impossibly far to begin shuffling the contents of the tote over one shoulder and onto a high shelf. The half-elf was pretty, in a far-off dreamy-eyed farmer's daughter sort of way, and it still amazed that she held to nearly twice the years that Marva herself did. Since the new library just outside town was announced, the various pawns and oddshops in Loudwater had either begun to box their books and tomes and send them over or hoard them tightly up in attics or down in dry cellars (or bring them by the stackful over here to the Word Unheard, she mused). Ansi was neither sort, for she loved books and had been the first seller to open her shelves on this side of the Delimbiyr. More than her books, however, Ansi loved what they held: knowledge. Recipes, instructions, histories, ribald tales of lust, romances, mysteries, religious articles... all were a wonder to her mind and her way of thinking and, when her shop was not open for custom, she would sit in the back parlor poring over whatever newest trove had met her way. Appropriately, though they'd been friends for much longer than even the Fairylamp had been open, Ansi and Marva met often and doted on one another constantly, the sister neither had ever had.

"He... has trouble speaking, I think." Marva thought on something. "He's... he's off."

Ansi glanced down and caught the look on the woman's face.

"Off?" She turned back to her task and finished emptying the tote. Marva immediately went to the ladder and steadied it out of habit as the half-elf descended and unraveled the tote and leather girdle from about herself with practiced hands. She was accustomed to hearing tale and trial of just about every guest that the Fairylamp had hosted, and this sounded like just another one of Marva and Tartal's lastest charities. O they were good folk, honest and kind and generous, but those same qualities seemed to attract every flybit and hardluck that crossed Stoneshoulder's bridge.

"He's... got something wrong with his voice." She hesitated. "And his manner."

Ansi gestured to the parlor at the rear of the shop, and led them to it. "Manner, eh?" She ruffled about with one of the draperies before drawing it back and letting in the cold daylight. "You did say he's a gnome though? You're certain?" The parlor was small but welcoming, and it was well-stocked for Ansi's routine stays. She went to one of the narrow cabinets set between a trio of neatly-stuffed armchairs and fetched an amber bottle and a pair of stone cups. Marva eyed the cups with a smile in her eyes: both appeared to be scowling dwarven faces, one with crossed eyes and the other with tongue stuck out. She nodded as Ansi poured them generous tots of brandy, and settled into 'her' chair.

"He's the size of one... though..", she furrowed her brow at a memory. "Though he keeps himself all covered up. Couldn't even see his eyes if you looked straight at 'em." She paused again, recalling. "Do you know of the Redcap burrow?" She took the offered cup, saw that it was the one with the tongue, and cheered her hostess brightly. "He said his burrow was the Redcaps, and that they lived near 'toad settle'."

The half-elf returned her friend's cheer, sat down in her own chair, and considered.

"I don't know of any burrows locally, though there is a place called Toadknettle... it's a pond, out at the western lip of the moorlands."

The moorlands. Marva nodded and her mind's eye blossomed with images of that vast place of rolling hills and swells, studded with bogs and peaty mounds that could be hard underfoot or could suck your boot off of your leg for its sticky morass... and all shrouded with an endless fog. Oh that fog. How many times had Tartal and Beezer gotten themselves lost in it... gone to hunt up some pheasant or moorhens and instead met with adventurers looking for ruins or fled a few angry goblins or even that time Beezer's boy went out netting for feylights and caught himself a massive carrion fly the size of a small pony... ...but that fog. O how it frightened her... the way it tossed sound around like a genie playing with spells, hiding the world from her sight and her from it. She'd gotten lost in it once, on a trip to Secomber with her parents when she was just a little girl. Her father had nearly driven their wagon off the road in it, and they'd all screamed when they'd lurched near the ditching and the wheels had spun widdershins and the fog had rushed out off the grasses and around them like a fell wraith...

She shuddered, tossed back the rest of the brandy, and shook that memory away.

"The Misty Forest could hide a gnome burrow... surely." Ansi's features suddenly twisted with surprise. "I know!" She sprang up and away, forgetting to set her cup down and taking it with her as she disappeared out the parlor entry and into the stacks of books beyond.

Marva blinked after her, leaned back, and looked out the window.

Something was wrong with the gnome.

She couldn't tell Ansi all of it: how she's heard him moving around his little room at all hours, singing weirdly to himself... how he'd not eat meat of any sort, or hardly any of the foods she prepared for their suppers, not even the good smoked pork... how she'd caught him snatching spiders off the thornhedge behind the alley and popping them in his mouth... and most recently and most alarmingly, how she'd seen him at his bath. She hadn't meant to see, and it certainly had been an accident that she'd been bringing bedlinens to store away when the privy door had been open a crack and... and there'd been the strange sound of water splashing... and... and she'd looked...

Marva had only caught a glimpse, but it had been enough. The gnome had set the washbasin on the floor and was squatting in it, nearly unclothed but for a generous clout wound about his middle. He appeared to be a gnome in form, had seemed to be all bundled up in clothing, but here... squatting in that bowl... His skin was loose and sallow, with an almost greenish hue, and he had no hair at all that she could see... but his head... it was... shaped like a slouching onion, with ears all curled over and angry-looking... and even from behind she could see the unnatural bulge of his huge yellow eyes, blinking weirdly as he whisper-sang to himself... she hadn't even shut the door, but went back downstairs with the linens and left them on the table there. Tartal had found her later, shaking and unable to tell him what she'd seen of their new boarder. It wasn't the matter of the gnome's differences... no. It was the... the wrongness of him.

So, she'd come to her dear friend, hoping to find answers but hoping even more that there weren't any to be had.

"Answers!" Ansi appeared in the doorway with a large book, her hand stuck into its middle to mark a place. "I've found it!"

Marva tried to return her grin and found she just couldn't.


* * *


Out along the open road, the heavily-bundled figure swayed along with the mount underneath, inching along the terrain. Cold winds blew down the Delimbiyr on one side, the trees and copses dotting its banks shedding leaves to their passing, while on the other side the road dropped away and down to where the grassy plains rose and fell among gentle knolls and brackens and sweetly-still pools boasting all color of late-blooming lilies or mushrooms or bogflowers.

Marva held the reins tightly as old Sour took them further west.

She was terrified, not just of the fog she could see creeping along in the vale below nor of the heavy clouds hung above that threatened rain or worse. She was wearing the padded armor that Tartal had insisted on, the sort that those just learning to ride a horse wore to spoil falls and mishaps, and she'd the largest cleaver out of the kitchen she could find tucked into her belt. She'd even brought along a canister of cooking grease and a handflint, just in case a wandering troll got too near.

None of that kept her mind, though.

Ansi and she had sat down with that book and she'd showed her... the Misty Forest... sometimes called Mustafel Glen by those who call the place home... grows right up to the edge of the moorlands. She pointed to a picture of lithe-limbed elves and told Marva about the rumors of wildkin who live among the trees there, and about the vast numbers of moorhares that seek the roots of the place for wintering. One of the woodcuts, opposite the one with the elves, showed a tree-lined ridge with foggy tendrils seeping between, and here is where Ansi set the book down, turned it to face Marva, and laid a slender finger near. She pointed to the corner of the picture, to where a tiny figure could be seen sitting on one of the roots at the edge of the ridge, something like a pipe or a birdflute held to its mouth. Only one passage remarked on gnomes at all, and that was but scant itself: 'Long have there dwelt among the southern flanks of the pines and stands of duskwoods a small cluster of gnomekind. The family line is called Redcap, after their ancestor Gilles Gorgefiller Redcap who hailed from the southwest and whose family held lands in the Heartlands under the name Gorgefiller...' Here the passage broke into a narrative describing a journey the author or someone the author knew well took down into the moorlands while mapping the southern portion of the Misty Forest. There followed several pages of this, including a lengthy diatribe on the proper care and handling of surveyor's equipment, before Ansi caught something else. There, just after a drawing of a plumber's bob, was another reference to Redcap: '...supply lines of the dwarven trade indicate the materials are come out of the frontier region, possibly from beneath the moors themselves or nearby. It is said that redcap cinnabar is the best to be had, though none know exactly where it is mined at. Dwarven traders occupy the...' That was it. That was all.

But it had been enough.

[knight owl]

"Alright... that's good there", Tartal spoke through a cluster of iron nails clamped in his teeth. "Right there."

Under his arm, the little gnome shifted this way and that while holding up his burden: the burnished mirror had arrived on the day Marva had left, but it was absolutely perfect. His wife had chosen just the right size and just the right color... it would hang in the entry, resplendent, forever after.

If they could just manage to get it hung.

"Holding. Yes."

The gnome's words were muffled but Tartal was used to their burble now. He whacked one nail, then a second, neatly into the wall. After a moment, he added a third. Tartal glanced down as he shifted on his perch, reached out and steadied the large mirror so that the hooks caught at the nails. The gnome was far from strong, and so it took Tartal to lean out precariously and fetch both arms about the beveled glass, drawing it back to the wall and onto the nails. A few breathless moments passed and they both saw that it was done. Tartal came down off the chair with a grin, patting the gnome on his bundled head, who let out a childlike squeal of delight as they both shuffled about to stand side-by-side and stared at themselves in the golden-hued device. It was the first luxury the couple had afforded themselves in such a long long while, that mirror. As he stared at his reflection, his features there an orange-pink and his timeworn brow glowing with youthfulness, he grinned and pictured his wife returning from her errand to see herself thusly as well. At his feet, the gnome reached out to touch the surface of the glass, then gasped and hopped about excitedly. Tartal chuckled.

"You like it, eh?"

The gnome stopped and peered again. "Toad like. Like!"

Tartal blinked and nearly dropped the hammer he held.

"'Toad?' Your name is... is toad?"

The gnome seemingly ignored the question and pressed closer to the mirror's surface, so close that his breath laid brief phantoms to the glass. After a moment, he breathed wetly. "Fire."

Tartal watched him in the mirror, saw the wrinkled flesh of the gnome's mouth exposed briefly. After a long moment, he said "I suppose it does look like fire. A bit."

They both looked at one another now, reflected in that wonderful golden mirror.

"Toad like fire. Like!"

He sighed then grinned again.

"Let's go get you something to eat, eh... Toad?" The gnome padded quickly after, step in step. All the while, Tartal could only wonder at who would name their child Toad?


* * *


The trip was taking far longer than she'd expected.

For her part, Sour was less a mount and more a carting mare. Though she'd held up fine so far, Marva could clearly see the road ahead dipped and rose abruptly and so worried for the old horse. As if hearing her thoughts, Sour whickered and flicked her head back to peer at Marva, who patted the horse softly.

"We can rest here."

She directed them off the road and under the lee of a thick old tree, where succulents grew in its shade. At first, Sour reluctantly eyed the lee and stamped and snorted but when Marva glanced back she was eating her fill.

They'd passed no one since leaving the forested road behind, and seen no farms nor any houses of any sort, save for a stand of somber ruins that jutted out of the wild moorgrasses where the road had made a sharp turn some time back. Marva had stared at those ruins with a deeply unsettled feeling: the stone stacks were clearly the chimneys of homes or buildings that were now long gone, and all about the thicket lay a peaceful calm, but... she could not deny the chill fear that licked at her as she sat astride Sour... that they were being watched. Marva only lingered there long enough to water the mare and herself before moving on, taking her comfort in a piece of cheese and a growing distance as they put the ruins behind them.

Now, night was coming. While Sour munched contentedly, Marva busied herself gathering whatever dry sticks she could manage and tied them into a bundle before adding them to her mount's burden and then pattering about in the bags there until she finally located a thin iron lantern and drew it out. The old roadlamp was always kept full, no matter for the traveling, and her mood brightened considerably once she'd gotten the thing on its pole and the pole set into its stirrup on the foresaddle. Sour began huffing and tossed her head back and forth, clearly displeased that they would be continuing on and in the dark. Marva spoke calmly and soothingly and assured the horse that they would stop and find a place to bed down wherever one could be found.

They would reach their destination soon, she hoped.


* * *


"What", she laughed, struggling to keep it in check, "Are you wearing?"

Ansi sat at the big kitchen table, steaming jacks of chicory set out and her eyes alight with amusement. She watched as Tartal, clad in one of Marva's cooking smocks, gave her a wounded sneer and then broke into a grin himself. He set the platter down before her and then went to get a covered dish that sat on the end of the counter by its lonesome.

"It is called professional courtesy, my dear, and I should think at your age you'd be well-versed in it." The man's back was to her, so Ansi couldn't tell if he was truly offended or if he was laughing at her teasing.

"'At my age'? Just what-"

Toad hopped in at that moment, and the half-elf found she forgot the rest of what she was going to say, entirely. She stared as the bundled gnome sniffed the air, then approached the table and stood up to peer at one of the cups of chicory. If he saw Ansi, the gnome made no show of it.

Marva had asked her to look in on her husband and the Fairylamp Board while she was away. Seeing as they really had no custom, save the small gnome, Ansi thought it a good opportunity to have someone else do the cooking and the chatting. She'd shown up early, a tote of freshly-ground chicory for brewing, and a wooden box full of carved dice... the kind that Tar enjoyed throwing by himself or with his friends over at the Three Silver Spoons. Marva had described their latest boarder to her, but seeing his form and all his strange manner was startling.

"Toad! That's mighty hot. Have a care." Tartal reached down and lifted the flourcloth from atop the platter, revealing a pair of thick, golden-brown pies. "Here lad, go fetch your plate and cup." Ansi watched the gnome scamper off and waited a good breath before tugging lightly on Tartal's sleeve as the man sorted a large knife from the forks.

"His name is Toad?"

Tartal nodded as he worked, cutting first one pastry and then the other into neat halves and Ansi saw that one was an herbed egg pie, the other stuffed with spiced apples and dark sugar and nuts.

"Who would-" The half-elf broke off as the gnome reappeared, shuffling over to the table and laying out a small tin place the sort of which served young children. She watched as Toad clambered up into a chair and pulled himself forward excitedly. Tartal brought the covered dish over and laid it next to the gnome before removing the lid and nudging the contents. Both Ansi and Toad leaned forward to see, but there seemed to be just some simple grasses and a few finger-sized roots. Toad lifted one, sniffed it, then began gnawing on it happily. Tar sat himself, served a slice of egg pie to Ansi and then served himself. After a moment, he realized the half-elf was still starting at the gnome. He swallowed the bite he was chewing.

"Dug them up himself." Ansi and Tar exchanged looks. "We got up early and walked over to the park center... didn't we Toad?"

The gnome didn't respond but Ansi made a face.

Some thought suddenly struck her, and the half-elf turned around. "Where are the cats?"

"Oh... Toad, drink that up." Tartal cut a narrow slice from the second pie. "They've all taken to swarming about Marva's favorite chair, since she's gone." He chuckled. "They're keeping a vigil, I think."

Toad sat up and looked around. "Lady where."

Ansi nodded brightly as Tar offered her some of the apple pastry.

"She's gone to see your family, young sir", she said brightly. The gnome only made a brief choking sound, then toppled out of his chair. Tartal, quite used to grabbing at all manner of objects that inattentive guests or curious cats might upset, reached out and snatched the gnome from his fall.

"Careful there, Toad", he managed, righting the gnome's chair with one foot and slipping him back onto it. "Wouldn't do to have us an injured guest now, would it?"

Tartal and Ansi exchanged looks, and for the next while they spoke nothing and ate little.

Finally, the half-elf broke the silence.

"She'll be back soon", was all she could manage.


* * *


"Careful there, Sour." Marva tugged on the rein and the horse turned her head aside. "Those're nettles there. Bad for you."

Both rider and mount were exhausted. They'd wandered along well after sunfall, until the road dipped and the trickle of running water could be heard. There, a few paces off the road, was an old travelers' shelter... it had a frowning wooden stoop and a somber tallstone bearing a crude outline of a bearded man standing watch and little else. But it was dry and it was safe. They'd bedded at that small shrine until they'd been wakened and warmed enough by the rising sun to continue on. Near midday, Marva and Sour had crested a low hillock, where the road had become as grassy and unkempt as the moor wilds all below them, and she spotted something down the slope ahead.

It turned out to be an old road sign, carved of wood and set standing at a tilt. Arms pointed back east and west, with several languages announcing that Secomber and eventually Waterdeep lay ahead, Moorsedge and Loudwater behind. Marva peered at the sign, and noticed where a third arm must have once been attached. Her eyes followed where it should have pointed, and found herself staring southwest... down across the moors.

"Lost your way, madam?"

Marva was startled so suddenly that she let out a yelp of complete surprise. Sour whickered uneasily at the noise, and both turned to see an old man standing in the road behind them. He had no mount and dirty leggings and looked to have simply stepped right out of the wilds around them. He grasped a small walking stick in one gnarled hand, and held to the strap of a shoulderbag with the other.

"Ah... fair day sir." She stammered, heart still wild, and gestured at the sign. "Wondering what befell here?"

The old man looked at the sign and scowled.

"Been meaning to fix that." He looked south, then west. "Afraid Moorsedge is... no more." He shook his head and seemed about to say more but didn't.

Marva had heard of the village but she'd no idea where it might have been. She hadn't passed any village since Loudwater, what with Zelbross up off the main and Secomber yet before her. She calmed somewhat and led Sour around so that the mare could sniff at the stranger, who allowed it and even let the horse nose at his walking stick. Marva introduced herself and they spoke for a while. She learned that Moorsedge had been sacked by some unknown group a number of years back, and that it had been abandoned by villagers and by all trade soon after that. She told him of the gnome whom she and her husband had taken in, and what she was doing out on the moors. He told her of himself, that his name was Andero and he was a simple animal doctorer who had long retired from his practice in Secomber and had taken to wandering afield.

Andero explained that there was, indeed, a gnome settlement (if one could call a burrow and a small mine a settlement), and it had stood southwest. He led Marva and Sour off the road then, showed them where cart tracks had once cut a path down into the moors where it curved and twisted and stayed on hard earth. As they walked they talked, and Andero answered whatever questions he was asked: the tracks led to where there was once a burrow, and the burrow was called for the family that operated the mine, the Redcaps. When she asked him about Toad Settle he only laughed and waved his stick about. Andero explained that the area itself was home to a large number of toads, so that the pond that lay nearby was named Toadnettle. The locals called it the other, for there was always a toad or two squatting nearby, watching. She questioned him long about the gnomes themselves, but the old man only hinted at where they'd gone to. There seemed to Marva to be a rather large and uncomfortable thing unspoken after each bit of information Andero passed her, so she did not press him.

At last, where the moorgrasses and long grown too tall to see over, the trail they were following broke. Quite suddenly, they stood looking down upon a large lake of blood-red water.

Jutting just out of the edge nearest them was a tangle of bones and sun-rotted leathery hide. Andero reached out with his walking stick and poked at the mass. Marva hissed as the creature's head swung into view, revealing a young deer with wide, wild eyes and tongue dark red and protruding.

Andero sighed, shifted his shoulderbag off, and bent down to examine the sad remains more closely.

"What- what happened to it?", she asked at his shoulder. "And why is the water so... red?"

The old man dragged a cloth bundle from the bag and hefted it with a grunt. Slowly, he unwound a good length of material, revealing a ceramic crock in its middle. He finally answered her after donning a stained leather glove and uncapping the crock.

"That", he said somberly, reaching into the container and drawing out pinches of a white powder, "Is what befalls those who drink from the water." He flicked the powder out and down along the edge of the pond, sketching grainy lines of the stuff as he went. "It's the cinnabar, you see. The gnomes mined it here. Sold it off at a good pace, too." Sour, who had been left tied off to a stumpy root further back on the path, whinnied and brayed with contentment at all the forage to be had around her. "Turned the water dark." He gestured, tossing out the powder. "Bad for beasts... and folks."

Andero explained to Marva, who gave him questions to answer, which he slowly replied to in his way. The Redcaps had initially come to the area to mine for the silver salts under the moors, which they used in their alchemy. When the gnomes were expanding their burrow, they'd discovered a pair of red cinnabar veins running through the bedrock there. The stuff made a great addition to their potions and unguents, but became a popular draw for the humans and dwarfs as well, for cinnabar had many uses outside of alchemy. So a trade was begun, and the Redcaps prospered. It wasn't until they'd started smoking the stuff that the trouble had begun.

"It was a process", Andero told her, "That is forbidden to human alchemy. Firing the cinnabar destroys it, but leaves behind a rather different product." By this time, Andero had completed his work and rewrapped the crock and returned it to his bag. "That's why I am leaving lime here along the pond's edge... to keep animals away. Been doing it for... don't really know how long it's been now." She had strayed back from the edge of the pond a good deal since his explanation, and he joined her and motioned to follow him. Reluctantly, Marva left Sour where she stood. Andero led her around the pond, along a track that was now completely covered over by the wilds. How the old man could see it and knew where to go, she'd no idea. Eventually, the wilds broke into a wood, and there the track grew only slightly less difficult.

"They cooked the cinnabar", the old man continued his tale as they went, "And produced madsilver. That was a problem, for though the stuff is apparently useful it is also quite dangerous. Very poisonous to humans, at least... not so much to the dwarfs who sought it here and convinced the gnomes to turn their cinnabar operation to producing madsilver entirely." He gestured then and Marva saw. Under one of the old leafy trees was a large wooden shed. The fence it was connected to had long fallen down and then been host to a number of mosses and ferns, and more moss had collected all along the shed like cobwebs, but there was one thing she saw clearly: hung above the shed entry, where a door must have once stood, was a rusting metal sign... a horse's head. 'Andero', the only legible word graven on the sign, stared out at them solemnly. The old man told her, then, of his small business he'd begun there.

"I was young back then, and... foolish." Marva listened as Andero related the things she'd heard unspoken from before. "I'd heard about the Recaps from a dwarf passing through Secomber, seeking to barter with them. I knew where the pond was, so I went with him. On the way, his pony was nearly hobbled with a fall in a rut... the moors are thick with nasty tricks like that... roots that grab at feet... mists that conceal holes and ruts... even friar's lamps that trick you into following them far out into the bogs where you grow trapped." Andero frowned at some unspoken memory and then continued. "When we reached the pond, some of the gnomes met us and brought us to the village for bartering. I treated the pony's leg there... learned the trade from my father, who kept a stables in Secomber and managed quite a bit of business from it. Well, the gnomes were hoping to begin a bigger trade, and offered me a place to tend the mounts of travelers. Oh... there was other work to be done besides... the Redcaps kept a large badger family nearby and a massive weasel they called 'Manky' who dwelt in their burrow with them, and I was kept busy with them alone for quite a bit of time. Eventually, I was taught by the gnomes to go out and undo hunters' traps that had been left behind or forgotten or one of too many set out. Some of the traps were sprung already, and bore injured animals which I would treat as well. Mostly though, mostly there was just the traders coming and going and having mounts that were not properly shod for travel off the road."

Marva stopped.

Andero had led her up behind the shed and deeper into the woods, where a few trees had been cleared and the stumps turned into sloping chairs, of a sort. Behind this small clearing, back along the treeline of huge and towering shadowtops, she saw the burrow entrance. It was larger than she'd expected, especially for a place so few folks knew of, and bore an actual doorway: a pair of portals, painted bright yellow and green and decorated with twin wreaths of dried wildflowers stood closed there. Somewhere, Andero told her, the smelting chimney was even deeper among the trees. The old man then went to the doors, rapped loudly at one before easing it open and calling loudly for anyone within.

"You see?" Andero left the door open but rapped on it again for good measure. "No one is here anymore. The gnomes have all left, been gone for... for quite some time that I can remember. At least, long after I opened my shop in Secomber and stopped coming here." She frowned and stared at the open door as if expecting a gnome to pop out of it suddenly.

"Your young friend can't have come from here. The Redcaps simply don't live here anymore."

Marva started to say something but the skies above them suddenly cracked and echoed. Through the trees above, they both looked up to see the angry-colored evening roiling about. The rain started falling just after.

"I suppose we ought to remain here until it passes", Andero said softly, patting Marva's shoulder and gesturing to the burrow.

"I'll go back and fetch the mare."