Part 6 (1/2)
”I can do this by myself, thank you. Besides, I have Haltwhistle.”
”That's right. You have the a.s.sistance of your weird little dog. Clearly, he is a better friend to you than I am.”
”What are you talking about?” she snapped.
”Well, you trust him enough to take him along, but not me. He probably knows the truth about what you're doing, doesn't he?”
Her mind was racing. ”I don't know what you are talking about.”
”Then allow me to enlighten you. Maybe it slipped your mind, but you are running away.”
”I am not!” She tried to sound indignant. ”If you don't give me my bag right now, I really will stop being your friend!”
”Sneaking out of the castle at night, having me meet you with clothes and travel stuff you could have carried out by yourself, and then telling me you intend to go somewhere mysterious alone? Sounds like someone running away to me.”
She regretted ever thinking it a good idea to give her bag to this ferret-faced idiot. But it was too late for regrets. She had thought herself so clever, letting Poggwydd do the hauling. That way, she had reasoned, she wouldn't be burdened with the extra weight and if caught could argue that she was just going for a walk.
”You better tell me the truth about this right now!” he insisted. ”If you don't, I'm going to start yelling.”
”All right, don't do that!” She sighed, resigned to the inevitable. ”My parents and I have had a disagreement. I am going to visit my grandfather for a while, and I don't want them to know where I am. Okay?”
Poggwydd looked horrified. He leaped to his feet, arms waving. ”You really are running away?”
”Not exactly. Just ... taking a vacation.”
”Vacation? You're running away! And I'm helping you! And after you're gone, they're going to find out about me, and they're going to say that it is all my fault!”
She held up her hands in an attempt to calm him. ”No, they're not. Why would they blame you?”
”Because G'home Gnomes get blamed for everything, that's why! And I'll get blamed for this! Someone will remember that I was the last one to visit you. Someone will remember that I left carrying a bag of clothing. Someone will tell that kobold, and he will come after me and hang me from the tree again!”
”No, he won't. Bunion promised-”
”It doesn't matter what he promised!” Poggwydd snapped, cutting her short. He was beside himself, hopping up and down in agitation and dismay. ”This is all your fault! You're leaving me behind to pay for your bad behavior! You used me to help you, and now you are leaving me! Well, I won't stand for it! I shall alert the watch immediately and then they can't blame me!”
He started to turn away, heading for the castle, and she was forced to reach out and grab his arm. ”Wait! You can come with me!”
He tried to jerk his arm free and failed. ”Why would I do that?” he demanded, stopping where he was. ”Why would I come with you?”
”Because we're friends!”
That silenced him for a moment, and he stood there looking at her as if she had just turned into a bog wump.
”Friends don't leave friends behind,” she continued. ”You were right about my decision to leave without you. I was being selfish. You should come with me.”
He seemed suddenly confused. ”I was was right, wasn't I? I knew I was. But ...” He stopped again, trying to think it through. ”You're going to see your grandfather? The River Master? You want me to go with you to the lake country? But they don't like G'home Gnomes there. They like them there even less than they do everywhere else.” He paused. ”Except maybe in the Deep Fell, where the witch lives.” right, wasn't I? I knew I was. But ...” He stopped again, trying to think it through. ”You're going to see your grandfather? The River Master? You want me to go with you to the lake country? But they don't like G'home Gnomes there. They like them there even less than they do everywhere else.” He paused. ”Except maybe in the Deep Fell, where the witch lives.”
”We're not going to the Deep Fell,” she a.s.sured him, although suddenly she was thinking that maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. With Nightshade still not returned from wherever her misguided magic had dispatched her almost five years earlier, the Deep Fell was safe enough. Well, maybe not all that safe, she conceded.
”I think this is a bad idea,” he continued. ”You shouldn't leave home like this. You should tell someone or they will worry and come hunting for you. If they find you, they'll find me and I'll get all the blame!”
She was ma.s.sively irritated with his whining, but she recognized that there was a reason for it and that she had brought the whole thing on herself by involving him in the first place.
”What if I write you a note?” she asked him.
”A note? What sort of note?”
”One that says you are not to blame for this. They would know my handwriting. They would know it was genuine.”
He thought about it a moment. ”I think I will just come with you and take my chances,” he said finally.
She almost started arguing against it, then remembered it had been her suggestion in the first place. ”Well, that's settled then. Can I have my bag now, please?”
Grudgingly, he released his grip and shoved it toward her. ”Here. Take the old thing. Do what you want with it.” Surly and grumpy-faced, he lurched to his feet. ”Let's get going while we still can.”
She started off without speaking, already determined to get rid of him at the first opportunity.
MISERY LOVES COMPANY.
Whatever reservations Mistaya might have harbored about her decision to allow Poggwydd to accompany her on her journey to the River Master were quickly proved insufficient.
He started to annoy her almost immediately by talking without taking a breath. He didn't appear to have any idea at all that it was possible to travel in silence. It began to seem after the first hour that his mouth was somehow connected to his feet, and that if one moved, the other must naturally follow suit. He talked about everything-about things he was seeing, about what he was thinking, about his worries and hopes and expectations, about his aches and pains, about his struggles to get by in life, but mostly about the undeserved lot of all G'home Gnomes.
”We have been set upon relentlessly, Princess,” he declared, shaking his finger at her as if she were somehow to blame. ”We are persecuted from the day we are born until the day we die, and there is never any letup in the effort. All creatures feel it is their bound duty to make our lives miserable. They do so without compunction and without reason. I think it is a game with them-an evil, malicious exercise. They consider it a pastime, an activity in which all must partic.i.p.ate and from which great enjoyment is to be gained. They see us as toys-small playthings made for their amus.e.m.e.nt.”
She tried to slow him down. ”Perhaps if you-”
”There is no 'perhaps' about any of it,” he continued, cutting her short. ”Do not try to change the reality, Princess, with encouraging words and empty promises of better days ahead. We Gnomes know better. It is our lot in life to be abused, and however unfair and arbitrary, we have learned to accept it. Teasing and taunting, sticks and stones, beating and flaying, even the burning of our homes”-this one slowed her down a bit, since G'home Gnomes lived in burrows in the ground-”are all part and parcel of our everyday lives. We bear up n.o.bly under our burden. You will not see a G'home Gnome flinch or hear him cry out. You will not witness a moment of despair revealed in our faces.”
She could hardly believe what she was hearing, but she decided not to get into an argument about it. ”Yet you continue to steal what isn't yours, which just encourages your mistreatment by others?”
”We do what we must to survive, nothing more.” He sniffed with obvious indignation. ”Most of the accusations of theft are baseless. Most are the product of overactive imaginations and willful resentments. When a G'home Gnome takes something that doesn't belong to him-a rare occurrence, as you know-it is usually because there is no clear owners.h.i.+p discernible of the thing taken or because there is a starving, homeless child to be cared for by a parent trying to do the best he or she can. I, myself, have witnessed this on more than one occasion. But do our persecutors take this into consideration? Do they give one moment's thought to those helpless children so in need of food and shelter? Sadly, no.”
”If you kept to your own territories-”
”We are citizens of the world, Princess,” Poggwydd interrupted her again. ”We are nomadic travelers of all the parts of the land, and we cannot be confined to a single patch of ground. It would destroy us to do so. It would contradict and diminish centuries of Gnomic lives gone before, make mockery of all that we are, belittle our heritage-what little we have-a travesty of unparalleled proportions ...”
And so on. And so forth.
She endured it stoically, all the while plotting his demise. If she could drop him into a pit, she would. If she could feed him to a hungry tiger flunk, she wouldn't hesitate. She would welcome lockjaw in any form. She kept hoping that something would happen to cause him to turn back. But nothing suggested this was about to happen, as was apparent from his a.s.surances between his endless tales of Gnomic persecution.
”But we are not like them, and so I shall stay at your side, Princess, and do what I can to see you through this trying time.” He puffed up a bit at this p.r.o.nouncement. Apparently, he had forgotten his stand on the matter some hours earlier. ”No danger, however dire, shall force me to leave you. We G'home Gnomes are a strong-hearted and determined people, as you shall see for yourself. We do not abandon or mistreat our friends. Unlike some I know. Why, not two weeks ago, there was a farmer with a pitchfork ...”
And so on. And so forth.
They walked steadily through the moonlit night for several hours, traveling south out of Sterling Silver's boundaries and into the wooded hills that fronted the lake country. All the while, Poggwydd talked and Mistaya gritted her teeth and tried not to listen. Even Haltwhistle, ever faithful, had disappeared from view, obviously not any happier with the irritating Gnome than she was. She tried turning her attention to her surroundings. The sky had been mostly clear at the beginning of their journey, but now it began to fill with clouds. Moon and stars disappeared behind their heavy screen, and the dry, warm air turned damp and cool. By midnight, it had begun to rain-lightly, at first, and then heavily.