Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 03 Read Online Free Page A

and entertainment were ... uh... were."
    Hercules pinched himself again, this time because the idea almost actually made sense, and it was beginning to frighten him. Not the idea itself; the fact that it almost made sense.
    "You go to a small town or large village," Salmoneus explained, practically bouncing on the seat. "You provide what the Thracians call a 'vaudal,' an evening's show, and do you know what you have?"
    "A fortune?" Hercules guessed.
    "Vaudalville!" Salmoneus announced grandly, rising from his seat, arms and reins spread. "Get it?
    Vaudal, meaning entertainment; 'v ill ,' from village." He laughed. "Laughs! Tears! Thrills! Wonders! And all for the price of a few measly dinars!"
    "Sit down," Hercules said.
    Salmoneus sat.
    "Vaudalville?" Hercules looked for the disaster, found the potential for several dozen without half working at it, and said, "No."
    "No? Again? No what?"
    "Principle," Hercules told him. "Just a matter of principle."
    They rode on.
    Flovi began clearing his throat, testing his vocal cords for the notes buried there.
    "Six months," Salmoneus said at last.
    "Really?"
    "Six months, and you're not going to believe it, but it's working."
    Hercules waited until the temptation to say the obvious had passed. Then, before he knew what he was doing, he said, "So why do you need my help?"
    "Because I think somebody," Salmoneus answered, "is trying to ruin me." He shook his head at such a disgusting notion. "That's why I need you, Hercules. Strange things have been happening. Really strange things."
    Out of an acute sense of impending doom, Hercules declared that he didn't want to hear it.
    Salmoneus, whose only sense of doom was sparked by an empty purse or dinner table, told him anyway.

4
    In the beginning, Virgil Cribus believed he had about the best job in the world. He traveled, he saw sights he had never dreamed he would see, he met all kinds of interesting people, and he alone was responsible for the arrangements that made the Salmoneus Traveling Theater of Fun such a great success.
    Lately, however, he figured he was lucky he still had his scalp.
    He supposed it was his face. He looked much younger than he really was, even with the splotchy beard he'd been trying to grow over the past couple of weeks. People just didn't feel much like beating up a kid. Which he wasn't. And until now, he had vehemently denied he was.
    So far, he had been lucky.
    He had arrived in the small town of Phyphe late last night. This morning, energized by decent sleep and a good meal, he had hit Phyphe like a hurricane. Fast talk, sincere smiles, a nudge and a wink, and by midday he had secured rooms for the entire vau-dalvillian troupe at a price Salmoneus would be proud of.
    The hardest part had been Dragar's place. The man insisted on remaining apart from all the others. "To practice, and to keep my secrets from being stolen'' was the reason. Luckily no one ever argued. He was, Virgil had to admit, a damn weird man, even for a magician, and the others were glad they didn't have to share the same roof with him.
    Having completed that task, Virgil ate a quick lunch and strolled to the center of town.
    From what he had learned so far, Phyphe had been founded either by an astute group of businessmen looking for a way to consolidate their shops along one of the area's primary caravan and travel routes, or by a bunch of drunks who stopped here because they couldn't walk any farther.
    Either way, it made for an interesting setup.
    Phyphe was shaped like a wheel.
    All the streets were spokes out of the center, the main street being twice as wide as the others, leading to the road that made its way through the surrounding hills and valleys.
    Just outside town, in a field west of the road, was Phyphe's somewhat petite version of a big-city coliseum: two crescents of six rows each, facing a small paving-stone floor where the community's major events were celebrated. Virgil estimated a hundred people could fill this coliseum; two