Up Into the Light Part 1

Dwellers of the Forbidden Isle — Session Three, Part One

As recorded by the Lantern of the Thirteenth Word

I see many things. A great many of them belong to other people.

When last I wrote, the company had killed twenty-one jungle goblins on a hillside in a single night, at the bidding of an ancient red dragon, and walked away in the morning without setting foot inside the tomb the goblins had come out of. The door in the hill stood dark, quiet, and open behind them.

It did not stay that way.

The Argument

They argued about it for some time. I will not set the argument down; you have all had it. It goes: we are hurt, we are tired, we have done what we were asked. And then someone says: but what is in there? And that is the end of the argument.

They went back to the hill.

The Room

Xavravio went in first, alone, as thieves do.

He found a stair, and at the top of it a room so large he could not see its walls. Half-orc eyes are good in the dark, better than most, but they reach only so far, and this room went farther. All he could make out in the black ahead was floor, and the feet of great pillars, and in the very middle of it all, a pile.

Lockboxes. Chests. A great heap of them.

Here is what I want you to understand about Xavravio. A man who sees a heap of treasure in the middle of a dark room and walks straight to it is a man who has not met very many dark rooms. Xavravio did not walk to it. He turned west, put his shoulder to the wall, and went the long way round.

All the way round. He followed the wall west and then north, slowly, silently, one hand on the stone, around the entire edge of a room a hundred and ten feet on a side. Only when he had walked every foot of it did he cross to the center, darting from pillar to pillar in the dark.

That is how a thief stays a thief long enough to grow old at it.

What he found as he went was this. The room had been built by masons who knew their work better than anyone living: white stone, every block cut true and set so close you could not fit a knife between them, and serpents carved into all of it. Eight great pillars stood in two rows of four, ten feet out from the east and west walls and ten feet apart, each one massive and carved with snakes.

What he smelled as he went was goblin. Twenty-one of them had lived in that room, and they had lived there the way goblins live: on the floor, among their own leavings, for a long time. A room built by master masons had become a midden. It was the kind of stink that does not so much enter a man as move in.

When he had seen all of it, he came back to the head of the stair and called the others in.

The room was clear.

The Hoard

Osbert's horse would not go near the place. He was tied at the foot of the stair, ears back, stamping, and I do not blame him.

The rest went up, breathed through their mouths, and opened the boxes.

I keep accounts, as you know. Here is this one.

They took three thousand pieces of silver, two thousand of gold — loaded on the horse, who was not consulted — seven hundred of electrum, and ninety of platinum. They took six gems: a large pearl, table-cut; a large cat's-eye carved with a tiny figure; a jacinth and a chip of spinel, both polished; a bead of smoky quartz; and a ruby, tumbled smooth, worth five hundred in gold by itself. They took a plain brooch, an ewer and basin, and a crown.

A crown. In a goblin midden. I record it without comment.

All told, call it something under five thousand in gold.

And they left — I want you to hear this — eight thousand pieces of copper and nearly six thousand of silver lying on the floor of that room, because there is only so much a horse will carry and only so long a man can breathe in there.

Osbert looked at what they had and what they were leaving, and was quiet for a while.

Then he said:

"This is a lot of treasure. We will kick off a gold rush. All the adventurers will come seeking treasure and the city of gold."

This, you will remember, from the man who stood at the edge of a tar pit only days before and declared it no city of gold.

Xavravio did not look up from the box he was emptying.

"The jungle will take care of them."

Remember he said that.

The Price

They were still counting when the horse screamed.

Not a whinny. A scream: the high, raw sound a horse makes when every part of it older than its training is telling it to run. Then, outside, something came down onto the hillside with a thump that went up through the stone floor and into their boots.

Nobody needed to ask.

Sigwulf went out to meet him, as before.

Xarrakixarethasar had come to see how his errand had gone. He looked at the knight, and at the hill, and he thanked the paladin for their hard work — courteously, the way a great lord thanks a tradesman who has finished the job on time.

Then he asked for one thing. Not the hoard. Not the crown. One bar of gold, large and heavy, stamped on its face with three marks: the letter R, then a bell, then the letter V.

They found it among the boxes. The company agreed it was a small price to pay, and

handed it over.

I told you, the last time I wrote, that when a thing that size does you a favor, the favor is never the point.

That was the point.

I also wondered whether the dragon would call it a job done. He did. He said thank you. I find I do not like that any better.

When he had gone, the company held a long and serious debate on how, exactly, a dragon carries a bar of gold. One faction held that he must keep some sort of pouch at the throat. The other held that he simply tucked it into the side of his mouth, the way a sailor keeps a chaw of tobacco.

I know the answer. I am not going to tell you.

The Fog

It was too late to start back, so they camped near the hill. The night passed without

incident.

In the morning, the world was gone.

Fog had come up out of the low ground in the night, and it was not the thin dawn mist that burns off by breakfast. It was thick and white and wet, and it lay over everything, and a man could see perhaps twenty feet into it before the world simply stopped. Sounds came through it from no direction at all. A branch dripping might be beside you or a hundred yards off. A footstep might be your friend's, or not.

They decided to wait for it to lift. It was the sensible thing.

There are creatures on that island that make no sound at all until they are close enough to touch you.

Some of them were already in the fog.

— The Lantern of the Thirteenth Word