As our campfire snapped and hissed at the moon, the old man settled back,
rubbing a belly full of our stew. "Not the best I've had," he said idly,
"but not quite the worst." Korlin, the cook, glared. "Now I suppose
you'll be wanting a story from me." That got a more favorable response;
Renil looked up from polishing her dagger, and even Korlin softened a bit.
The fellow grunted and tugged his scraggly grey beard. I took a breath to
speak, but he pinned me with his stare as he started his tale.
"Long ago," he began, his tones suddenly rich as a fifth-circle fighter,
"when the earth was young and spirits were freer than they are today, there
was a young Sylvan lad with the unfortunate name of Bungil, and the even
more unfortunate habit of living up to it. Whatever he tried somehow went
wrong. His bread always burned, his axe handles broke, his clothes caught
on thorns and tore. If he was skinning a panther, the knife would slip,
and it's an even bet whether he'd manage to slash the wineskin sitting
nearby or nearly cut off his own finger.
"Thinking that he'd be less likely to destroy their village if he didn't
have to use his hands much, his parents apprenticed him young to a mystic.
Thinking that he'd manage it somehow anyway, they sent him to one as far
away as they could.
"Life with Ma'ta Threnn was a little better for Bungil. At least when he
bobbled a boost, he kept all his fingers. Threnn learned to keep him away
from the kitchen and the rarer books, and gradually he picked up the craft,
working on his studies and helping her in her research."
* * *
"No, not yet!" cried Threnn, snatching the pouch from Bungil's hapless
fingers. "That's a thousand coins' worth of drake egg you just ruined, you
incompetent oaf! Wait until I focus on the crystal, then add the fragments
and concentrate on them with me.
"Okay, let's try this again. Now pay attention, and *be careful*!" Three
long months of work, and they hadn't made a bit of progress toward figuring
out the teleportation crystal that the huge book seemed to hint at. (Threnn
wouldn't let him read it, wouldn't even let him near the ancient tome.)
Its pages were thin and dry as onion skins, half the words faded to
illegibility.
He glanced over at Threnn, saw her eyes unfocus as she concentrated. Was
she ready? How would he know? He looked down again and saw no change in
the dimly glowing crystal. Shrugging, he opened the pouch of drake egg
fragments and scattered a few over the stone, wishing it would work,
wishing Threnn would quit for the night, wishing with all his might that he
were anywhere but there in the lab yet again.
A thundering crash like a precious dish falling off a shelf (a sound that
was all too familiar) left his ears ringing. The world seemed to twist and
buckle around him, then snap back into place. Threnn was gone. The lab
was gone. Bungil's fingers curled in damp grass as he looked up into a
moonless sky. He slowly sat up, taking in the trees around him in
bewilderment. The night was as black as the inside of a panther, broken
only by the innocent glow of the crystal nestled at his side. "Oh, gods,
I've really done it this time," he mumbled, and fainted.
A deep rumbling brought him to his senses. He sat up, glancing nervously
upward for signs of thunderstorms, but only the stars winked back at him.
Pounding again, closer this time. From behind a bush only half a snell
away, a trio of huge, hideous beasts rushed at him, roaring in rage. Their
solitary yellow eyes glared malevolently; their long arms reached out to
pound him to a pulp. Bungil shrieked, snatched up the crystal, and fled
headlong into the forest.
There's nothing like a panicked mystic to bring out all the hungering
beasts of the woods. Narrowly dodging a snake on purple wings, Bungil
veered straight toward a pack of enormous vermines, then turned, only to see
his path blocked by a ferocious ona chigger. The one-eyed green
monstrosities were still on his trail, pounding their war drums and
growling unintelligibly. The only tree in sight was too smooth to climb,
and there in the distance, was that a maha?! Frantically Bungil scrabbled
in his pocket for the teleportation crystal and the pouch. "Oh, gods, let
this work and I'll... do something really nice, I promise!" he whispered
to anyone who might care to hear, then focused as best he could on the
fitfully flickering crystal and tossed the last drake egg fragments onto
it.
* * *
"But what happened?" "Did Bungil make it?" "You have to tell us, old man,
did the crystal work?!" The last was from Korlin the cook, and earned a
smirk from the storyteller.
"I have to tell you, do I? Seems to me you should be able to figure that
out for yourself." He glanced meaningfully at the trees of the Tanglewood
around us, and settled down onto his sleeping roll -- our sleeping roll,
really. The rest of us were silent for a minute, thinking. Finally Yter
snorted. "Come on, old man. You can't expect us to believe that all this
was tangled up by one incompetent apprentice mystic."
A soft snore was his only answer.