Delver Magic III: Balance of Fate - Jeff Inlo (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

be right,” Ryson admitted. “Sazar had a lot of people killed in what’s left of Pinesway. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that. He needs to be punished. That’s not all he’s done, either. He threatened our town, looted the dwarf city, and who knows what else. Still, it’s almost as if he’s not on our doorstep right now, we don’t have to worry about him. Like it’s not our problem. Something seems very wrong with that.”

Ryson went even further with his analysis of the situation. “Maybe what Lief is doing is something we all should be doing. If a member of this town did what Sazar did, he wouldn’t be allowed to walk around free. Even if he left town, Sy would send out a party of his men looking for him. If he got away, they would make notices of the man’s name and a description of him and send them with other mail to town’s all across the region. We don’t let people that commit crimes just walk away, why are we letting Sazar get away with what he’s done?”

“So you think you should go out and join Lief and hunt this Sazar down?”

“No, that doesn’t sound right to me, either,” Ryson said with a shake of his head. “Lief is going too far, taking too much responsibility for what’s going on and doing far more than is necessary. He’s out on some kind of mission thinking he should kill every dark creature in the land. What Lief is doing didn’t start with Sazar and it’s not going to end with Sazar. He’s on some kind of crusade. I’m not ready to go that far, but then again something should be done about that serp.”

“Well, what do you think should be done exactly?” Linda asked.

“Like I said, he should be punished for what he did in Pinesway. He can’t be allowed to get away with that.”

“You’re setting yourself in a circle you know,” Linda pointed out. “You think Sazar has to be punished, but in order to punish him you would have to capture him. Lief is going out to capture him, but you’re not sure if that’s a good idea.”

“He’s not going out to capture him. He’s going out to kill him.”

“Well if you think Sazar is captured, do you think he should be executed?”

Ryson didn’t answer.

“Don’t go silent on me again. You need to get this out. What do you think should be done with Sazar?”

“I guess if I had my way he’d be taken to the dwarf town of Dunop and thrown in the dungeon that I was in under the palace. He looted their city and that’s where he should pay for his crimes. Let him rot there until he dies.”

“In my mind, that’s the same as executing him. It’s just a longer duration. The serp would probably prefer being killed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be the one that had to swing an axe down on his neck and so I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it, the dungeon sounds like a good alternative.”

It was now Linda’s turn to look out in the distance to the southwest, in the direction she thought the Lacobian desert to be.

“So I guess the problem is that Sazar is out there and not here in chains.”

“That’s certainly part of the problem,” Ryson agreed, “and now he’s tied in with Tabris who is powerful enough not only to protect him but to make him more of a threat. I’m still not sure if Lief is right in trying to hunt Sazar down on his own, but if he does somehow put an arrow in the serp, I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it.”

Linda thought for a moment on what Ryson said and then questioned him on one part of it. “You said that you aren’t sure if Lief is right in trying to hunt Sazar down on his own. You also said that if someone here in town committed the same crimes that Sy would send a party of men out to capture him. What’s the difference?”

“I guess because Sy is captain of the guard and it’s his responsibility to protect the town.”

“Lief is an elf,” Linda countered. “Maybe his job is to protect all of the land or at least protect Dark Spruce. Much of what Sazar has done has been in or near the forest. Why doesn’t that give him the right to exact justice?”

“I’m not sure that it doesn’t,” Ryson admitted. “Like I said, I don’t know what to think of this thing. In a lot of ways, I think Lief is right. At the same time, I don’t like what I think is motivating him, but I’m not sure if I should try to look at it that way. If you look at just the basics of this mess, Lief is actually justified. I’m not even sure it would be wrong for any one of us in this town to go hunt the serp down. We have the right to defend ourselves. Sazar brought this on himself.”

Ryson then turned and nodded back to the town. “The truth of it is I wish Enin would do something about it. That’s another reason I went to talk to Holli. I wanted to make sure Enin knew about what Lief was up to. I thought maybe it might get him thinking like I’m thinking. If it did, he could stop this whole thing in an instant, but he just keeps on talking about balance and not interfering in people’s choices. It’s frustrating.”

Linda considered that point for a moment and wondered how she would have felt if Enin turned down her request to warn Tabris not to hurt Ryson.

“I see what you’re saying,” Linda offered. “We have this wizard here that’s like a god. When he helps us, we know we’re blessed. When he doesn’t, we wonder why he won’t.”

“Especially when we’re dealing with magic,” Ryson continued. “If it was just Sazar out there, I think I would have wished Lief luck and figured that would be all we’d have to worry about the serp. The fact that Tabris is now involved changes everything. We don’t know what she’s done, if she’s done anything at all that warrants basically calling an assassin out on her. I’m not sure if Lief can actually kill her, but that’s his basic intention.”

“If she joined with Sazar, then she’s an accomplice to whatever he does.”

“At this point, we don’t know what they’re up to, and we don’t know why she joined Sazar in the first place.”

“You told me that it was Enin’s belief that she had now turned evil.”

“Exactly, and I have no reason to doubt him. He knows things that will happen before they actually do, I can tell that much. He won’t say it, but I can see it. I don’t know if he reads the future, has some kind of visions, or what, but I definitely know that he has some idea of how things are going to play out.”

Linda remembered how certain Enin was that Tabris would not be able to harm Ryson. She did not feel that his guarantees were enough at that time. Listening to Ryson talk about the wizard’s power made her think that maybe his assurances should have relieved her more than they did. Suddenly, she started feeling much more secure about the future.

“Maybe that’s how you should look at it,” Linda said with renewed optimism. “You admit that Enin is powerful and has abilities we really can’t understand. Don’t you think that if his assistance was truly necessary, he would give it freely?”

“But it is needed.”

“Is it? How do we know?”

“We don’t know, but there’s certainly enough going on to make us realize we might need some help.”

“Need help or want help?” Linda asked. “There’s a big difference. Just because we want something or ask for something, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best thing for us. Maybe we can’t always have some higher power help us out. Maybe sometimes we have to figure things out on our own. I don’t know if that’s balance, but that might be what he’s talking about when he goes on about our choices we have to make.”

“So we just go out and do what we can and hope for the best?” Ryson asked.

Linda smiled reassuringly. “Maybe that’s all we can do.”

#

Lief noticed the strange goblin activity before he even set foot in the Lacobian Desert. His travels brought him through the heart of Dark Spruce Forest and while he moved with a mind toward the southwest desert, the activities within the trees could not go ignored. The existence of goblin packs wandering the forest had become commonplace now that magic had returned to the land, and detecting the diminutive monsters became natural practice for all elves that ventured through the trees.

At first, the elf simply tried to avoid the goblins, but their persistent movement was the first hint that something was not quite right. Goblins were not transient, nomadic creatures that constantly ventured across the land. If anything, they moved only when necessary and normally not far from an established source of food and water. During the dormant season when food remained scarce, many goblins even dropped into a near state of hibernation.

Lief, however, found the exact opposite behavior in every group of goblins he encountered. As he ventured further into the heavy trees, he continued to come across roving bands of the dark creatures that showed anything but normal activity. These small groups showed no desire to remain still, but moved with purpose and without squabble over direction. That in itself was almost too much to believe as it was a goblin’s nature to argue and complain within their ranks, especially if they were doing something against their instincts.

He realized that while they were moving in small packs and did not congregate into one horde, they still moved as if they had the same goal in mind. They were all arming themselves, apparently raiding human outposts and possibly even a dwarf mine. Still, even as they collected weapons, they did nothing to establish a territory or even a zone of safety. The latter was the most confusing as the normally suspicious and leery creatures ignored obvious signs of potential predators. They moved about the forest as if they did not have to care about potential threats. Even when hook hawks soared above their heads, the goblins simply continued moving eastward as opposed to shrieking in fear and diving for cover.

“Odd,” the elf noted to himself. “They move as if they have come together, yet they remain apart. This is not like goblins at all.”

The elf knew full well that goblins were capable of combining into a massive horde and moving of like mind and desire. It is at this time these creatures are their most dangerous and prove that they can not be ignored as some weak insignificant pest that can be swatted away. Elflore describes past legends and battles that include a sea of goblins attacking in waves of a purple-gray, pulsating mass that could fill the hillsides like ants on a drop of sugar. Their sheer numbers of incalculable size could overwhelm the best defended castles of men or the tallest tree fortresses of elves.

Still, for goblins to reach this level of a threat, they would need to combine. An underlying need or desire must bring them together into one conjunctive mass. For all the Lief could see, they remained in their small packs, but acted as if their aims were the same.

Remaining high in the trees and deep within the cover of pine branches, Lief avoided being seen by goblins below or flying