The Wanderer's Tale Read Online Free

empty memorial to all that had transpired there.
    Many grumbled that their search had not been thorough enough, and that there must still be hidden places storing great treasures. Others feared that it would attract new evil to it were it left open, so the entire complex was sealed and entrusted to the guardianship of the Oghain, whose homeland lay but a few days away over the water.
    But in time, as often happens, original priorities are forgotten, and even the sentinels eventually drifted away. Vaagenfjord Maw came to be just a name, a place of ill omen that lay safely remote somewhere far, far away to the North. Out of both sight and mind, it became nothing more than a kind of bogeyman, a byword for evil.
    Despite the strict decree that all items found there were to be destroyed on pain of death, most Peladanes felt that the vanquished Rawgr owed them something, and they resorted to the time-honoured rule of war that plunder was the right of the conqueror. As a result, many innocuous souvenirs managed to find themselves resting upon the mantelpieces of returning veterans, or hanging from their parlour walls gathering dust. Many, in time, were lost, broken or discarded, and not a few eventually reached the marketplaces of the South to be sold as relics of the glorious campaign. They represented a profitable source of income for those soldiers who bargained wisely.
    Eventually, centuries later, at a time when the names of Drauglir and Vaagenfjord Maw had passed into the ignominy of folklore, and nearly all the relics of that place had disappeared or disintegrated one way or another, one such item found itself again heading for the bargaining table. Wrapped up in a thick layer of oily sackcloth, a long and curiously shaped sword was being brought to market. Dumped carelessly atop a small pile of millet sacks, it was bounced about in the back of a large camel-cart with every bump in the road.
    Amongst the other payload in the cart on this day were several kegs of dried ox-meat, a cartwheel being taken to town for repair, and two dark-skinned men dressed in rough camelhair cloaks. Their heads wrapped in grubby cheches to keep out the dust, they were jolted up and down uncomfortably as they slumped awkwardly against the millet sacks. One had on a tether a small brown-and-black goat that crouched wretchedly between a huge basket of green lemons and a tobacco bale. Now and then its owner would stretch out his leg lazily and kick it for daring to pass its droppings, thus confusing the cringing, bleating animal even more. A third man, lighter-skinned with blond hair and an untidy red beard (clearly a traveller from the North), sat upon a large pile of rugs, wondering if he could jump unnoticed from the cart and avoid paying his fare.
    A large iron-bound chest was tucked unobtrusively but carefully between two crates of dates. This was heavily padlocked as it contained some unusual items that might just make this whole dusty, sweaty journey worth all the bother. The driver of the cart hated this particular route. Snaking up by the banks of the Qaladr and through the desert, the road was open to all sorts of danger: wild animals, thieves and, worst disaster of all, the very real possibility that any one of the vital water-holes along the way might have dried up. Was it all worth it just to sell the pathetic selection of wares he now carried in the back?
    Still, at least he had those little bottles of smelly stuff in the chest there. Those and the carefully wrapped bars of metal, those strange ‘scholarly instruments’ – whatever they might be – and the jars of powders. They should fetch a good price, just so long as the alchemist was still in business.
    A strange man, that one, he had been in Qaladmir for years now. Never could tell how he made a living, but he always had a stack of cash at hand, ready to buy funny items that no one else had any use for. Sometimes you’d bring him bits and bobs worth a gold piece or two and