Chapter 9 - Part 5

He walked in from the northwest, sticking to the trees. At first glance he appeared to be a human in breastplate armor with a greataxe and worn clothing that spoke of a long time traveling in the wild. He moved like a ghost through the trees, even in armor, and he was not spotted until the trees thinned out too much to provide any cover.

Gelth saw him first. The wizened goblin was tending to his goats and fretting about the news in last week’s Korranberg Chronicle when he finally saw the tall shape come out of the trees.

“Hey there!” Gelth shouted, grabbing his little sling. His goats made alarmed noises and drifted away from the strangers approach. “Who are you then, sneaking up on an old goatherder!” The man who had come out of the forest was almost six feet tall, and covered in a hooded cloak despite the summer heat.

“I mean no harm,” the man said in a rich baritone. His voice sounded oddly curious, as if the fellow had not heard himself speak in a while. “I am Thomas, I have come from the Icehorn Mountains.” He placed his greataxe handle in a complicated sheath on his back, to try to show that he was peaceable. Gelth saw two javelins in the man’s belt, and more disturbingly, something on the man’s neck moved. It was a long creature kind of like a ferret. The goblin only got a glimpse before the man dropped his cloak. “I am trying to find a town.”

“Merylsward is that way,” Gelth told him. “My town. Lots of people, largest place within three hundred miles.” He peered within the man’s hood. Something about his eyes… “You from Alvirado?”

“No,” Thomas told him. “I am originally from a land far from here, but I have been living by myself for years. Does the war still go on?”

“Aye, more and more dead all the time,” Gelth told him. “You looking for trouble?”

“No, no!” Thomas assured him. “I have had dreams. I need to be in Merylsward today, though I do not know why. I have been dreaming about a woman’s name. Pienna.”

“Really?” Gelth told him. “Well then you are in luck. Pienna got here near a month ago, and she’s still here, staying at the inn with some crazy halfling from Talenta. All the halflings are crazy there. They ride lizards, not horses, can you fathom that? Or do you come from there?”

“I do not come from Talenta, but I know what it is,” Thomas told him. “This Pienna, is she a priest or a healer?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the goblin said, finally putting his sling back in his belt. “She’s a druid, or druidess. A gatekeeper.”

“A gatekeeper?” Thomas said. The man’s voice held sheer terror. “No! No! Are you sure?”

Gelth’s hand went back to the sling. “Look, Thomas, I think you had better move on, I have goats to watch.” That thing under the cloak had twitched in time with Thomas’ exclamation.

“I have no hope, there is no end to this if I do not go,” Thomas moaned, perhaps to himself. “Very well. I will go. Thank you for talking to me, honorable goatherder.” Thomas sighed and walked past the goblin, a great lack of enthusiasm evident in his pace. As he passed, Gelth got a good look at Thomas’ face beneath the hood. He seemed like a human, but his eyes were – wrong. Gelth suddenly had a shiver of racial memory run through him.

“You uh, you’re not looking for trouble then?” he asked as Thomas was walking down the small incline to the trail that led into town.

“No, no, I am looking for rest,” Thomas told him bitterly. “And I may never find it, except in the grave.”

“Um, you want to read the paper and catch up on the world?” Gelth asked him, feeling sorry for the man, and having nothing else to offer him.

“It will accomplish nothing,” Thomas told him sadly. The man’s pace picked up, and he was soon out of sight.

Gelth wondered at this strange visitor, then dismissed it from his mind. He had not finished the Chronicle. The stories that held the goblin’s attention were many, but the most interesting were about town of Cragwar going back to Breland after a particularly nasty battle, and an airship crashing in Cyre. There was also a smaller piece about an elderly halfling woman named Visha perishing in a fire at an orphanage in Thrane while saving children, but one old halfling lady couldn’t be all that important to the grand scheme of things in Gelth’s estimation.