Tales From The Royal Road

By J.M. Thompson

Seven stories from The Royal Road, a highway of merchants, pilgrims, princes and commoners, translated from Old Kestevan into modern English. Here are stories of hedge wizards, real wizards, trolls, gnolls, adventurers and kitchen-scrubbers. The translator makes no claims as to their provenance or accuracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.M. Thompson
• Release date: Aug 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311610621

J.M. Thompson

I am a first-time writer. I have several unpublished manuscripts. Started writing almost ten years ago and publishers seem not to be interested in unknown writers. I am the eldest child with three siblings, but two have since passed on.Writing has become a hobby or a platform for connecting with myself. So many things happened in my life and most of the stuff about which I write has something to do with my life story.I am presently retired taking it real easy, but old age has its own complications yet that is how life is.

Book preview

Tales From The Royal Road

by J.M. Thompson

© 2015

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

www.talesfromtheroyalroad.com

Meet some of the regulars of Skara Station and travelers of The Royal Road …

Wallik, a hedge wizard who sells fog-dragon bottles for a living but suspects he can do better, even if real wizardry isn’t exactly tolerated under royal rule. …

Toral, a tailor who comes across a wizard’s box that once opened seems to have no purpose but to close itself again.

Brom, a kitchen-scrubber who dreams of joining adventurers on a quest and one day appears to get his chance.

A town crier, who must cope with the modern technology of writing. …

Ulric, a scribe whose jottings about his home town of Skara and Skara Station, along with shameless self-promotion, make him well-known up and down The Royal Road.

Rollin, a former Kobold-slayer who dreamed of a war museum in his small town.

Jamaraus, a boy who wants to see real wizards.

Roller, Royal Guard Signal Corps specialist second class, who wonders why a troll has begun studying the Skara Station telegraph tower.

Table of Contents

Wallik, A Hedge Wizard

The Wizard’s Box

A Knight of the Pantry

The Town Crier

The Museum of the Battle

Real Wizards

The Tragedy of Trolls

Afterword

Wallik, A Hedge Wizard

Hey, Wallik!

The voice was hushed.

Are you dealing today?

Wallik the hedge wizard stirred from seated slumber in his little alcove in the Wayside Inn’s common room as a man slid onto the bench across from him. Wallik nodded, a movement exaggerated by his uncombed gray beard, and strained to see through the room’s tobacco haze. A warm breeze brought the smells of alcohol and unwashed beings from the great fireplace and its surround of interlaced wood, a contrast to the fireplace’s uneven red bricks. Wooden box-lanterns hung suspended by iron chains from exposed ceiling beams two stories above. The inn’s owner, Meleven, maintained a rough, unvarnished feel to the place, and Wallik often wondered if it was for lack of funds or want of them. Some pilgrims enjoyed the inn’s reputation and that of Skara Station, of which the Wayside was an integral part. Meleven was happy to indulge them and even enhance the ambiance as long as they paid. That she kept meticulous books, paid her taxes on time and was careful to keep the floors clean and dishware well-organized she didn’t advertise.

Oh, great and powerful Wallik, the stranger whispered, his voice strained and solicitous. I seek an audience with thee, to—

Knock off that rubbish, Wallik said. His pudgy hand disappeared for a moment into the folds of his cloak and emerged with a little green dimpled bottle stoppered with cork and sealed with red wax. No seal proper had been pressed into the wax, however, for a seal’s purpose was to indicate the maker. The maker was Wallik, and the bottle’s legality was as fluid as its contents.

The little man fidgeted and tugged at his blue, middle-class tunic as Wallik fished out the requested object.

It was midday, quiet, and so far only a few humans, a half-troll and two gnomes, the latter guzzling ale, were inside the Wayside’s common room. Wallik had seen the gnomes before and knew they patronized the inn because they didn’t have to request booster seats; Meleven had fitted several of the alcoves with seats built to the height of her shorter customers. Still, the drinking vessels hadn’t been adjusted. The gnomes grasped the mugs with both hands and poured more or less straight down into their throats. The common room’s crowd wouldn’t pick up until late afternoon, when the day’s travelers left the Royal Road and passed through Skara Station’s gates and into the Wayside’s shelter and warmth.

Wallik uncorked the bottle with an incline of his head and a flourish of subversion. He lifted the bottle high by the drum and tilted it over the center of the table. A white mist flowed off the rim, making a little cloud that slowly flowed and rippled down the table’s sides. Wallik kept pouring, for much longer than the bottle’s volume should have allowed, and after a few moments the white mist was joined by a roiling cloud of green. The green coalesced into a miniature winged scaly dragon that clawed at the table and snapped at the two men before bellowing sprays of pastel orange fire at each of them. The fire-spray licked at their beards without singeing either or indeed producing any heat either could feel.

Wallik pushed a finger into the mist and nudged the little beast, which snapped again before glaring and slinking in the direction indicated. It hunkered down for a moment and then, apparently satisfied its tormentor was gone, flew a few inches into the air and disappeared in a belch of emerald-green smoke.

That’s it? the little man sniffed, but his eyes flashed.

‘That’s it?’ Wallik repeated. Do you have any idea of the cost of such a thing?

I presumed it was a handful of silvers. They said you’re the best … well, for a …

And that’s for the full-bottle version, Wallik pressed. This one is for demonstrations. A few seconds of coalescence, and …

The man leaned in and again sniffed, this time of the fading emerald cloud. He lingered this time, then smiled and sat back.

Ah! Yes. The full version, I trust, is more potent?

Indeed, Wallik answered, ice in his words. But this is only a child’s toy. As you say, it’s not as if a real wizard made it.

Oh! But I didn’t … the little man attempted a conciliatory smile. A toy, you say?

Yes, Wallik insisted. If the Guard were here, and questioned either of us, of course we would correctly tell them this is only a child’s toy and has no other purpose.

Oh! said the man. Yes. Of course. There is nothing to see here.

Wallik sighed.

Wallik would have been happy for almost any price. The contents of each bottle by now were fairly easy for him to conjure, with most materials gathered from the hillsides around Skara. They cost little time in the present and an uncertain amount of time in the future. Every casting of magic, Wallik knew, deprived a wizard of some future moments of life, though from the ancient books he’d had fortune to see he could not tell exactly how much. As for the present, he felt a drain of energy with every casting, as though he’d been on a heart-pounding run, though he hadn’t been on one of those in years. It soon returned. As for the future, some smidgen of his future life he’d forgo—but even a hedge wizard had a reputation to uphold. The bargaining continued for a time and ended with the two men parting ways—the little man scurrying out the door with a full, fresh dragon bottle clutched closely in an inside pocket, and looking for all the world as though he had something dreadful and highly illegal in his possession, and Wallik counting three silvers more than the price he had initially thought he could get.

The dragon inside the dragon bottle was a touch of literalism, a flourish, a signifier, a mark that what one was about to experience was middle class or better and in a legal gray area. Fog dragons,