Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "castle"

In the Milky Way Galaxy is a strange world called Earth that has won the ‘Most Confusing Civilization’ award every year for the last twenty. Every year on Earth, buildings get taller, computers get smaller and lawyers are produced in record numbers (despite numerous intergalactic laws against the practice). These things are considered progress. Earth is home to over seven billion people, most of who don’t get along with each other. Nations are judged great only if they can completely destroy at least one neighboring country. Bonus points are awarded if they can reduce entire cities to radioactive dust.

Civilized beings avoid Earth.

There are equally strange worlds in the Milky Way. Not far from Earth is the world of Other Place, a land of magic and mystery. Many intelligent races on Other Place are found nowhere else, for which most people are grateful. Earth and Other Place share the dubious distinction of having lots of people who hate one another. In place of the tanks and nuclear weapons Earth favors, Other Place natives employ magic wands, terrible beasts, golems of frightening strength and an astounding number of lawyers (more proof that anti-lawyer laws are not being sufficiently enforced).

Other Place contains countless powerful individuals. Ruthless kings command armies in the thousands and pious holy men call upon their God for aid. Cunning wizards bend and twist energy to their needs, while mighty heroes battle hordes of enemies single handedly and win. Merchant princes fight just as fiercely using gold instead of swords and spells, and mad scientists perform experiments too insane to be imagined. Every so often a person is born destined to do great deeds. This sounds exciting, but usually consists of the poor fool trying desperately not to be killed. For better or for worse, these are the people who control the fate of nations.

But for every one of these great people who are the stuff of legends, there are thousands more with no power at all. Commoners, peasants, the little people, call them what you will, but when mighty deeds are being performed, they’re the ones most likely to get crushed underfoot. They long to be left alone, for kings to be content with wine and tournaments, for holy men to lead prayers and not crusades, and for wizards to build their stone towers and stay in them. Let merchant princes count their vast fortunes and mad scientists stay far away. Commoners want nothing to do with them. For these people a boring life is a beautiful one, and they understand more than most the meaning of the Chinese curse, ‘may you live in interesting times.’

Needless to say, few get their wish. This includes Sandra Sower.


“Keep walking,” Sandra told herself. “Almost there.”

Sandra trudged in the dark through ankle deep snow, trying very hard not to slip as she worked her way around a boulder on the trail. She’d been walking for a long time, and the boulders, pitfalls and fallen trees blocking the trail made her journey that much longer. Luckily she was young and in good health. This trip would have killed the older women in her town.

Sandra was twenty years old, tall and slender, her muscles strong from years of hard work. Her brown hair was bundled under a fur hat and wool scarf, and her brown eyes barely showed at all. She wore a long skirt and blouse, both gray, coat, mittens, felt boots, and wool wrappings tightly wound around both legs. A gray cloak covered her back and head.

She had little besides these clothes. Sandra carried an empty wicker basket and an equally empty purse. She considered dumping them to lighten her load, but her peasant upbringing wouldn’t allow such waste. Of more use, she had a bundle of dry sticks for kindling tied to her back, a steel knife strapped to her leg and a lit torch in her right hand.

The land around her was bleak and cold. The Raushtad Mountains were not a healthy place to travel through during summer and infinitely worse in winter. Such high mountains blocked out the sun for most of the day, providing even fewer sunlit hours than normal. The few trails going through the mountains were narrow and poorly maintained, crowded on both sides by tall evergreen trees. Cold wind whipped between the mountains and could blow snow into drifts as high as a wagon.

Sandra was currently traveling toward two nameless peaks and the valley between them. She was tempted to stop for the night and avoid the chance she might trip on a rock or branch buried under the snow, but continued in spite of the risk. She’d already lost eight days to detours around closed trails and digging her way through deep snow. Every delay put her people in peril.

“Just a bit farther.”

There was another reason she kept moving. People in the last inhabited valley she’d traveled through had told her she was close to her destination. If they were right, the man she needed to find was only a few miles away. With luck she could reach him by morning and beg for help…and for food.

Sandra stumbled in the snow. Cursing her bad luck, she struggled to her feet and brushed off her skirt. She pulled the scarf off her mouth and ate some of the snow. Despite the cold, she was overheating in her warm clothes and from the heat generated by walking. The snow cooled her down.

Exhausted, Sandra stopped marching and caught her breath. She was in the shadow cast by a tall and foreboding granite peak. The trail was bracketed by pine trees as tall as church steeples and without branches for the first forty feet. That was unfortunate, since she could have broken off low branches for firewood. The sky overhead was clear and stars twinkled around a full moon. Moonlight reflected off the snow and provided enough light to travel by. She could probably get by without her torch, but fire was good for warding off hungry animals.

“Hi there!” a rough voice said behind her. Sandra spun around and came face to face with a werewolf. Taller than her and bulging with muscles, the werewolf had a luxurious coat of gold fur that almost sparkled under the light of her torch. The monster stepped out of a grove of trees behind her and had both clawed hands outstretched, its mouth open revealing long teeth dripping with drool.

Sandra screamed. She stumbled away from it and swung her torch in front of her. The werewolf backed away and lowered its arms, its eyes opening wide in surprise.

“Hey, wait a minute!” the werewolf protested. It looked confused for a moment before slapping itself across the muzzle. “Ah man, I did it again! I’m sorry. I keep forgetting what I look like this time of the month.”

Sandra stopped screaming. “What?”

The werewolf backed up and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m really sorry. This has been going on for so long you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now. Smiling doesn’t look friendly when you’ve got teeth like these!”

Sandra kept her distance but stopped threatening the werewolf with her torch. Storytellers told many tales about young women meeting werewolves at night, and none of those stories ended well for the women involved. But the monster was talking, and that was a good sign. Once she managed to stop staring at those terrible jaws, she noticed something odd about it.

“You’re wearing pants?” she asked. Sure enough, the werewolf was wearing leather pants with an opening for its tail.

“Yeah, I kind of have to,” the werewolf said sheepishly. “One time I changed back before I got home in the morning. Let me tell you, really embarrassing! I made these pants so there wouldn’t be more mistakes like that. I overheat in them, but it beats streaking the whole town again.”

Some werewolves were ravenous monsters, but Sandra had heard that not all were dangerous. Cautiously, she asked, “You weren’t born a werewolf, were you?”

The werewolf shook its head. “I got bit a year ago, and the next full moon this happened. It’s been a big adjustment, but my family’s been real supportive. Oh hey, where are my manners? The name’s Keith Sunter. Pleased to meet you.”

Sandra gingerly shook the werewolf’s hand while keeping her torch at the ready. Silver was what really hurt werewolves, but she hoped fire would hold it back if it got aggressive. She didn’t bother drawing her knife.

Keith the werewolf didn’t seem to notice the suspicious looks she gave him. “Surprised to see anyone out this late. I come out here so I can be alone. Can’t scare anyone if there’s no one around. Hey, I don’t think I’ve seen you in these parts before.”

“I’m passing through.”

“Tough time to be traveling,” Keith said. “My family would love to help if you need a place to spend the night. Lots of things going on at home you might like. Say, we’re having a tent revival this week if you’re interested.”

“Uh, it’s really not a good time for that.”

“Never a bad time to have the Good Lord in your life,” Keith countered.

Sandra stammered, trying to find a way to end this conversation. “I appreciate the offer, it’s just I’m in a real hurry. I need to find a man named Doctor Alberto Moratrayas.”

Keith smiled, baring teeth that could rip a man in half. His ears perked up and his tail wagged. “That’s easy! The doc lives in my town.”

“He does? Where’s the town?” she demanded.

Keith pointed a clawed finger up the trail. “Follow the trail for the next two miles until it comes to a valley. There’s a town there called Refuge and a castle called Fortress X. The doc lives up there.”

“Thank you! You don’t know how much you’ve helped me,” Sandra cried. She shook the werewolf’s hand again and headed up the road.

“Safe trip!” Keith called after her. His tail wagged as he watched her trudge through the snow. “What a sweet girl.”

Keith continued down the road in the direction Sandra had come from. Whistling cheerfully to himself, he set out for another night of exploring the forest around his hometown. Minutes later his keen hearing picked up the sound of men coming up the road. Smiling, he introduced himself.

“Hi there! My name’s—” Wham! A steel mace came down on Keith’s head and knocked him out. He hit the ground in front of his attacker.

“Is it alive?” a man asked.

“Of course it is,” another replied. “Mace isn’t silver, and that’s what kills werewolves. We just stunned it. Anybody got silver on them?”

There was a pause as the men went through their pockets. One of them offered, “I got a lead fishing weight.”

The group’s leader bit back a harsh and well-deserved stream of insults, instead saying, “It’s not the same thing. We’ll have to leave the werewolf. It ain’t who we’re after, anyway.”


Not far ahead, Sandra hurried through the snow. She climbed up a rise in the trail and came onto the top of a hill. She could see light ahead of her. The air was heavy with the scent of wood smoke and cooking food. Food! Sandra’s stomach grumbled at the smell, but she pushed on. She forced her way through a cluster of pine trees growing around a wide river, and then stopped to take in the sight before her.

Filling the valley ahead of her was a prosperous town of perhaps two thousand people, far larger than Sun Valley. The houses were made of granite and were well built. Smoke poured from chimneys and light issued from glass windows. Outside the town were empty fields and orchards harvested long ago, and beyond those were brick lined terraces cut into the mountains and filled with more barren cropland. Sandra saw people walking through cobblestone streets, all of them well fed and happy like she used to be.

Scattered around the town were stranger things that showed all too clearly that this town was the possession of Doctor Moratrayas. An ornate clock tower thirty feet tall dominated the center of town, its four faces showing the time as 7:19. Most cities didn’t have such an extravagance, much less a town this size. At each street corner stood a steel post with a street sign and a black orb on top. Sandra saw five black boxes scattered across the town, big enough to fit a man inside and attached to the ground by thick cables. The boxes hummed and occasionally sparked. Something flew over her head, buzzing as it headed for a castle dug into the side of a mountain.

Sandra walked into the town. People saw her and waved. Some wished her a good day. They laughed and smiled at each other. She’d been away from home and a normal life for so long that this felt alien.

“You look lost, young lady,” a plump, prosperous man said to her. He looked like he was in his fifties and wore warm fur clothing.

“Actually, I think I’m right where I need to be. Does a man named Doctor Alberto Moratrayas live here? I was told he might be in the castle.”

The man nodded. “He lives here, all right. I’ll take you to him.”

The man smiled and led her through the streets. Seeing so many warm homes with cooking fires burning in them made her want to ask (correction, beg) for something to eat. Sandra had abandoned her pride a month ago and no longer minded asking for help. But any delay was too much when she was this close to her goal. Food could wait.

Sandra pointed at a six-inch diameter black tube running through the snow and connecting to a house. “What’s that for?”

“Those tubes pump hot water to our homes,” the man explained.

Still staring at it, she asked, “But how?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. None of us do. The doctor put them in and fixes them when they break. He keeps saying it’s not magic, but if there’s a difference, I don’t know what it is.”

They approached one of the large black boxes, and to Sandra’s amazement the box turned to face her as she walked by. “I’m almost afraid to ask what that does.”

“No idea, but my dog got a nasty shock when he peed on it. I’d keep my distance if I were you.”

“Do you know the doctor? I mean, have you met him, talked with him?” she asked. She didn’t know much about Moratrayas and needed all the advice she could get.

“I’ve spoken to him, but no one truly knows the doctor,” the man said. “What goes on in his mind is a mystery. We live well and he’s a better ruler than any of us had before coming here, so we ignore the little things.”

“Little things like what?” she asked.

On cue, the highest tower on the castle roared like a dragon. Something as big as a wine barrel flew from the tower so fast Sandra didn’t get a good look at it except that it was shiny. It slammed into the opposite mountain and created a deafening boom that echoed through the valley.

“That would be a good example,” the man said, unperturbed by the display. No one else on the street seemed to care, either. “We find it best not to ask what he’s doing. When we do ask, if we’re lucky he won’t say.”

Sandra hesitated before asking, “And if you’re not lucky?”

“He spends hours trying to explain it to us, and nobody understands him.”

“I guess that happens a lot with mad scientists.”

The man stopped in his tracks. “Don’t call him that. Ever.”

“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude to him or you or oh God, is that an insult with him?”

“Something like that. Call him doctor or sir.”

The man led her to a set of granite steps leading up to the castle. There had to be a thousand steps, wide enough for ten men to go up at once and swept clean of snow. At the top of the stairs was a castle.

Sandra had only seen castles in books before now. They were tall and bright and pretty, with soaring towers and pointy rooftops flying pennants. This castle was dark and ugly. It seemed to have grown out of the mountain, a squat thing with dirty walls and narrow windows. Its towers were thick and short. Its gate was closed and made of wood bound with iron bands. What little light came from the dark castle was tinged green.

“Here we are,” the man said. “You’re lucky he’s in. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks at a time doing God only knows what. He’ll see you if you can get up the stairs.”

“If I can get up the stairs? What’s that mean?” Sandra asked.

“You’ll see for yourself.”

That didn’t sound good. “I know you’ve already helped me, but could you introduce me? It would look better if I show up with someone he knows than if I come alone.”

“Not a chance,” the man said firmly. “We don’t go to the castle unless we’re invited. The doctor doesn’t have many rules, but he was clear on that point. He said it’s not always safe up there with his experiments, and we believe him.”

“But—”

The man sighed. “I can tell this is important to you, but I can’t help. For your good and mine, you’ll have to do on your own.”

The man tipped his hat to her and headed back to the town, leaving Sandra alone at the foot of the stairs. She looked up at the gate high above her and shuddered. Something about the way the man had spoke made her think going up those stairs would be a lot harder than it looked.

Sandra hesitated. Up in that castle was Doctor Moratrayas. He was a mad scientist, regardless of what he liked to be called, and stories about him circulated even in places as isolated as Sun Valley. Rumor was he built life from metal and stone, fearsome things small as a cat or as big as an ox.

Moratrayas was said to be far more frightening than his creations. Ill-mannered, vicious, possibly insane, the doctor had a reputation as a man who seldom started fights but always ended them, usually in the most violent way possible. Sandra should be doing everything in her power to avoid him, and that’s what she wanted most of all. But there was a chance, be it however so slim, that his power could save her people, so she went on.

“Great. I’m heading to a big scary castle with a mad scientist to ask for help,” Sandra said as she started up the stairs. She talked to herself a lot, more so since she began her long trip alone through the mountains. “Jennet Foster gets to go ask the great hero Julius Craton for help, the little minx. I’m probably going to get dropped into a vat of acid while she’s looking for a genuine hero…who’s tall and handsome and single and brave and courteous and loyal and single and I’m stuck here!”

Sandra waved her arms toward the castle. “I’m heading toward a mad scientist’s castle! There are lots of stories about what happens to young girls that meet mad scientists. They don’t end well for the girls. Come to think of it, just about all the girls in stories end up in trouble. I bet that wouldn’t happen if there were more women storytellers.”

She grumbled and kept climbing the staircase. “This is mother’s fault. ‘We need help’, she says. ‘I’m sending you because I trust you’, she says. Who does she send her oldest daughter to get? Doctor Alberto ‘the mad tailor’ Moratrayas. I’m going after a super scary mad scientist who beats up ogres for a hobby. Thanks a lot, mom!”

Still fuming over the injustice of it all, Sandra climbed the stairs in silence for the next few seconds. Tired, hungry and upset, it took her longer than normal to notice she wasn’t getting any closer to the castle.

“What the…hey!” Sandra looked down and saw the stairs she was climbing moving down toward the town. The stairs moved so smoothly and silently she barely noticed she was actually going backwards. She ran up the stairs, but they sped up so she still wasn’t making any progress. Sandra collapsed in exhaustion and was carried smoothly back to the bottom.

“That’s a lousy trick!” she shouted at the castle. If anyone heard her, they didn’t reply. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on. Wizards used tamed griffins or unicorns to guard their estates from intruders. But Moratrayas was a mad scientist. He’d build some crazy thing made of steel and bottled lightning to keep people away. Angry, she shouted, “Maybe that keeps salesmen out, but you need way better than that for me!”

Sandra studied the moving stairs. They sank into the ground at the base of the staircase. The stairs were motionless when she wasn’t on them, but if she climbed higher than the third stair they went backwards. The moving stairs were a different color than the ones farther up the staircase. It looked like she’d have to get past fifty feet of moving stairs before she could go on.
The sides of the staircase were polished smooth, leaving nothing to grip if she tried to climb around the stairs. To either side of the staircase was a huge drop off. Sandra was a good climber, her getting through the mountains proved that, but a climb this difficult required tools and rope she didn’t have.

“Can’t go around, can’t go under, can’t climb up,” she mused. “So, what does that leave?” Sandra snapped her fingers. “Got it!”

She pulled out the knife strapped to her leg and poked around the edge of the moving stairs. There was a slight gap at the base of the steps, which she would have seen earlier if there was better lighting. The thin knife fit in the gap, but no matter how far she pushed, the knife didn’t press against anything. It went in up to the hilt and she still didn’t feel any resistance.

“Come on, there’s got to be something here I can cut.” She pressed the knife in as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge. Suddenly an idea came to her. Sandra left the knife in place and climbed the stairs. One step, two steps, three steps, and like magic the stairs began their descent, but this time there was a thud followed by a whirring noise. The stairs lurched and stopped. Sandra climbed higher. Four steps, five steps, six steps. The stairs made a grinding sound, but with the knife jammed in they couldn’t go down.

“Got you!” she said with a smile. Defeating the moving stairs meant leaving her knife behind to keep them jammed. Being close to poverty her whole life made Sandra hate waste in any form, but if losing her knife was the price she paid to save her town then she could live with it.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as she continued onwards. Once she was past the moving stairs she heard the grinding and whirring stop. Apparently the good doctor wasn’t going to waste time on a trap that was already defeated. “Yeah, that wasn’t so bad. If Moratrayas fights ogres and wins then he’s got to have a lot meaner tricks up his sleeve than that.”

Sandra continued up more cautiously. She didn’t see anyone by the castle, but if the moving stairs had turned off then someone was watching her, probably Moratrayas. With his first trap disabled he’d likely spring another. That trap was at the bottom of the stairs. If she were placing these obstacles, Sandra would put the next one near the middle.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said aloud. “Maybe he’s doing something dangerous, and if I break his concentration he’ll screw it up. Or he might be with a lady lab ‘assistant’. I’ve heard about them. Yeah, that’d be great. I break in his house, asking for help, and he’s alone with a pretty girl whose chest measurements are bigger than her IQ. That’s a great way to make a good first impression.”

The next trap announced its presence with a whirring noise and a clank-clank. Huge pincers two feet across lifted up from the left of the staircase to menace Sandra. She backed away and the pincers came closer. The contraption was made of brass and what looked like polished obsidian, and contained glass panels with some strange glowing green fluid moving inside. The pincers hung off an arm made of the same mismatched materials. The pincers snapped open and closed, clank-clank.

Sandra was much closer to the castle now. She shouted, “Doctor Moratrayas! I need to talk to you! It’s very important! Please turn this thing off!”

Clank-clank. The pincers snapped again. The arm extended and carried the whirring menace closer. If Moratrayas heard her he wasn’t answering. “Fine,” she said. “We do this the hard way.”

Sandra didn’t approach the pincers, fearful of how much damage it could do if it grabbed her. The arm carrying it was long enough to reach the entire width of the stairs and a height of at least twenty steps above her. That was a lot of space to cover for just one weapon, and it moved slowly.

Sandra walked casually to the left edge of the stairs. The pincers and arm followed. Once she and it were as far over as they both could get, she ran to the right end of the stairs as fast as she could and climbed up.

The whirring noise sped up until it sounded like a swarm of angry bees. Moving as fast as a running deer, the arm swung after her. The pincers opened wide, and before she could dodge they closed around her waist. Sandra struggled to pull them apart, but they wouldn’t budge. The arm and pincers lifted her effortlessly and set her back down where she’d started. The pincers opened and freed her, then waved in front of her face like a mother scolding a naughty child.

“That’s just rude!” she told it. The arm and pincers hung there and whirred away. Clank-clank. “I already heard that line tonight.”

Sandra tapped her hand against her wicker basket. “Too fast to go around, too strong to force back, so what does that leave?”

If she jammed the moving stairs, she might be able to do the same with this trap. But with what? The basket was too flimsy. The pincers would crush it and go after her again. She had a bundle of kindling. Unlike her knife it was replaceable, so losing it didn’t bother her. The bundle was tied together with a strip of leather. She remembered a fable that mentioned sticks together being stronger than if they were alone. Would that be strong enough so the pincers couldn’t break it?

Sandra pulled the bundle off her back and held it in front of her. The pincers waited patiently for her next attempt to get around them. Clank-clank. This time she headed straight for them. The whirring noise sped up again and the pincers opened wide. She jammed the bundle into the pincers and ran around it.

The pincers tried to close on the bundle and crush it. As Sandra ran by she heard the kindling snap and break, but there were so many sticks that when one broke there were others holding the pincers open. The arm swung left to right, then up and down. It slammed against the stairs and dislodged the broken bundle of kindling.

Sandra kept running. The arm swung around and grabbed for her again. She was up another fifteen steps when the pincers grabbed her by the ankles. She tripped and fell, dropping her torch. The pincers were built to grab a person around the waist or chest. Faced with something as small as Sandra’s feet, they couldn’t close tightly enough to get a good grip. She slipped through the pincers and scrambled up the stairs out of its reach.

Clank-clank. The arm retracted off the stairs, lowering it and the pincers from view, and the whirring noise died away. Her torch was still burning but had rolled down next to where the pincers had been. Retrieving it risked another attack, so she left it behind.

“I’m two for two!” Sandra shouted at the castle. “Can we stop this and talk?”

Again there was no answer. Sandra had met people who assumed she was as dumb as a stump because she was a woman. Could that be the reason she was getting so much trouble? After all, mad scientists had a reputation for being stubborn and proud. Frowning, Sandra asked, “Is this because I’m a girl? You’re supposed to be a genius. Aren’t you above that kind of thinking?”

There was a crackling noise from the castle, followed by a man’s booming voice. “Gender bias has nothing to do with your situation. You face the same tests as those before you. Should I show you favor because you are of the fairer sex?”

“You should hear me out! I don’t have time for this!” She stopped shouting and rubbed her eyes. Arguing with him might make him angry enough to refuse her. “I just, can we talk this over like adults?”

“Of course. I am nothing if not reasonable. You simply have to reach the castle and you will have my full attention. You’ve dealt with the first two obstacles. The third should prove no harder. To turn it off now would cheapen your achievement, and I have no desire to insult you in that fashion.”

Sandra stared at the castle and its unseen owner. “Oh yeah, putting me through all this is a real honor.”

She headed up again. The voice had said there was a third trap. It would probably be right in front of the door. Sandra wondered what else he would throw at her.

“Julius Craton wouldn’t test me,” she said bitterly. “Tibolt Broadbeard wouldn’t test me. Ask them for help and they say, ‘sure, we’d love to.’ I get sent to a man who sets lethal traps for visitors.”

The booming voice said, “None of my traps are lethal.”

“Not for you they’re not,” she muttered, and rubbed her side where the pincers had grabbed her.

Ten steps from the top of the stairs, Sandra heard a whirring noise. She dropped to her knees and prepared for the worst. A cylinder two feet wide and three feet tall rose up from the stair in front of her. Startled, she stepped back. The cylinder was made of brass and obsidian, just like the arm and pincers. Glass panels lit up with the now familiar green glow. A panel opened on the side of the cylinder, displaying row after row of white tipped darts.

“Hey!” Sandra ran back down the stairs while the trap fired darts at her. The cylinder shot them out faster than any man could throw. Most missed her or hit her basket. Two darts stuck in her cloak, damaging the material but nothing else. “You said nothing here was lethal!”

“The poison is merely paralytic,” the booming voice said.
Sandra pulled a dart from her cloak. “Poison? That’s not fair!”

The cylinder stopped firing once Sandra was fifteen steps away. Breathing hard, she studied the devise. It had fired at least twenty darts, but as she watched more darts slid into place in the panel. How many more were there? Maybe she could trick it into firing all its darts. But it only needed to hit her once to poison her and win. She didn’t like those odds.

Sandra plucked the darts out of her basket. They were stuck in good and it took some effort to pull them out. The darts didn’t hit with enough force to punch all the way through. It didn’t take much to stop them. She looked at the tiny holes in her cloak.

“I’m going to regret this.” Sandra took off her cloak and held it in front of her. Cautiously, she advanced on the cylinder. It began firing again once she was close enough. Darts flew out three a second and hit her thick cloak. Dozens of darts stuck halfway through the material. The cylinder ran out of darts, reloaded from some inner reserve and fired again. Sandra advanced steadily, keeping her entire body behind her cloak. She finally reached the cylinder and jammed her tattered cloak into the dart panel. The cylinder whirred in protest, but couldn’t fire or even sink back into the staircase.

“That’s three,” she said. “You owe me a cloak.”
Sandra climbed up the last few steps and approached the castle’s huge doors. She grabbed an enormous iron ring hanging from the doors and swung it hard. The boom it made echoed throughout the valley. She waited a moment, and when the doors remained closed she swung the ring again.

A small door opened to the left of the ring, and a man poked his head out. He was nothing to look at, with beady eyes, a pronounced chin and a nose like a hawk. The man wore a billowing cloak with a hood. He eyed her suspiciously before speaking.

“We’re not buying cookies.” He didn’t sound like the booming voice Sandra had heard earlier.

Puzzled, she said, “I’m not selling cookies.”

“We’re not buying candy, either.”

“Aren’t you supposed to open the door?” she asked.

The man shrugged. “I don’t have to. Seriously, we don’t want cookies, candy, tins of popcorn or peanut brittle. Mind you, a nice sponge cake would hit the spot right about now.”

Exasperated, Sandra demanded, “Why do you think I’d come all this way to sell you treats?”

“In the last four months only one other person has gotten this far, and she was a Girl Scout.”

Sandra pointed at the brass cylinder. “A Girl Scout got through that?”

“Surprised us, too. Apparently there was a quota she had to meet, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Doc was very upset by the whole thing.”

“I’m a little old to be a Girl Scout.”

The man shrugged. “Some folks advance slower than most.”

Sandra put her hands on her hips and scowled. “Listen to me very closely. I spent three weeks getting here, and let me tell you, it wasn’t fun. I got through your master’s traps, and it cost me a perfectly good knife and my only cloak. I really need to see him, because if I don’t a lot of people I care for are going to die. Please open the door.”

The man twisted his lips and looked to his left like he was considering her position. “Hmm, well, okay.”
The man closed the little door and slowly swung the larger one open. Light and warm air spilled out from inside the castle. Sandra saw the rest of the man she’d been speaking to. He was a foot shorter than she was and his right shoulder had a pronounced hunch.
Smiling, he shook her hand and beckoned for her to come inside.

“I’m Igor, professional lab assistant. Come on, the doc is waiting for you in the main hall. I can’t promise you’ll get what you want, but the doc will listen to you. He’s impressed. You beat the Girl Scout’s time by four minutes.”

Igor led Sandra into Moratrayas’ castle. The hunchback filled the air with endless trivialities, making it hard for Sandra to focus on her surroundings. That wasn’t good. Her father had taught her when she was a child to always be aware of what was around her in case trouble came. It was a valuable lesson for someone living in mountains, where rockslides, avalanches and monsters were a constant threat.

“Of course we didn’t build the place,” Igor rambled on. “It was empty when we arrived. So was the whole valley. The old owner was still here, but in the shape he was in you’d only recognize him if you were a big fan of jigsaw puzzles. Either a catapult boulder hit him or a dragon sat on him. My money’s on the dragon.”

“I guess that happens to some people,” she replied.

Igor led her down a long hallway lined with arrow slits on the walls and murder holes on the ceiling. Most signs of invasion and war had been removed from the hallway, but there were scratches and dark stains on the walls that suggested someone once tried to force their way in and failed badly.

Doctor Moratrayas had clearly made changes to the castle since taking up residence. Glowing green spheres hung from the walls and provided light. The arrow slits and murder holes were sealed with brass and obsidian panels that hummed. Sandra was willing to bet that those panels could open to release attacks a lot nastier than arrows if someone tried to invade the castle today.

“The problem we’ve run into is space,” Igor said. “The doc needs a lot of room for his experiments. Sure, the troop barrack and dungeon are plenty big enough, but the rest of the castle was cut up into little rooms. We had to knock out a few walls for the third lab. That happens when you don’t build the place yourself.”

“So who else works here besides you and the doctor?”

“That’s it, I’m afraid. There are a few goblins running around the place, but they just watch the fun. The doc can’t find good help. That was the reason for those messages he left.”

Puzzled, she asked, “What messages?”

Igor leaned in close to her. “You don’t know? This is a first, we get a walk in and without advertising.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t follow that.”

Igor brought her to a set of iron doors. He pulled a lever hidden in the left door, and was rewarded with a series of clanking and whirring noises. The door hummed and opened up to the castle’s main hall.

The main hall was bigger than Sandra’s home back in Sun Valley, and that included the barn and chicken coop. There was a huge open space with chairs and couches along the walls, and an oak table with chairs in the center of the room. A broad staircase led up to a second floor landing and hallway. Brass chandeliers holding glowing green orbs lit the room. There were two doors on the first floor and three more on the landing. The room was bare of paintings, tapestries, statues or any other decoration.

Igor hurried up the stairs. “Wait here. The doc will be around once he’s shut down some equipment. If you see anything move, don’t panic.”

“The last thing I saw moving tried to shoot me.”

“That happens around here,” Igor said before ducking into a doorway.

Nervous, Sandra sat down on a plush couch. She felt out of place here. The main hall wasn’t decorated, but the furniture was far better than anything she had back home. Wearing patched and well-worn clothing that showed its age, she felt like a beggar at a royal ball.
There was a whirring noise as something scrambled under the oak table. Sandra edged away from it. More whirring came from up the stairs. This time she saw something scurry from one doorway to another. She didn’t get a good look at it, just enough to see it was as big as a cat, shiny, and had too many legs. A pair of small brass and obsidian creations hurried down the hallway, a veritable herd of legs and arms scrubbing the floor as they went. Their movements were quick and jerky, and they soon disappeared into a room. She’d wondered how Moratrayas kept the place running with only one assistant. But if he could build help, why hire it?

Another thought occurred to her. His creations were just cleaning the castle. That suggested one of two things. A) Moratrayas wasn’t good at setting priorities if he was using them for something so simple. That seemed unlikely. B) Moratrayas had so many of these strange creations that he didn’t mind using some for menial jobs. That seemed more likely, but was also a bit scary. How many of these monsters had he built?

“Good evening,” a man said as he stepped out onto the landing. His voice had a commanding presence to it, with a clear, crisp tone that suggested both intelligence and authority. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Doctor Alberto Moratrayas.”

Sandra looked up the stairs and finally saw the man she’d come so far to meet. Moratrayas didn’t disappoint. The doctor was much younger than she’d expected, tall with an athletic build. His hair was black and cut short, and his skin was tanned. Moratrayas wore black pants, black shoes, a white shirt that buttoned on the left-hand side, and black gloves that reached up to his elbows. Black goggles rimmed with brass concealed his eyes. He carried a brass cane, but didn’t seem to need it to walk.

Moratrayas came down the hallway and descended the stairs. His eyes were locked on her the entire time, studying her intently. In stark contrast to his creations, he moved as gracefully as a cat, and with the same expression of casual interest. His steps were smooth, and he practically flowed down the stairs. He carried himself like an acrobat, or a—

“You move like a dancer,” she breathed.

Moratrayas froze in mid-step. “I what?”

Sudden realization swept over Sandra. She hadn’t just thought those words. She clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped before apologies came flowing out of her lips like a river in flood. “Oh, oh God, I can’t believe I said that! I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry, I just, I, sorry, mouth moving faster than my brain for a second! I, I didn’t mean to insult you or, oh God that sounded bad. I am so sorry!”

Moratrayas gave her a slight smile as he continued down the stairs. “Over the years I’ve been compared to many things, most of them cold blooded and covered in slime. I suppose being compared to a dancer is no insult. It is, however, a first.”

“Uh, hi, I’m Sandra Sower,” she managed to say. She rose to meet him and tried to curtsy, but Moratrayas waved his hands and smiled.

“No need for pointless formalities, Ms. Sower. Let kings and nobles bother with such things.” He pointed to the table and said, “Please, sit.”

“Thank you.” Sandra climbed into one of the large chairs while Moratrayas took the one opposite her. “I’ve been walking for so long I think my feet might fall off.”

“Indeed. I was not expecting anyone so late in the year. You must have desired to reach me very badly to brave the mountains in winter.”

Igor hurried down the stairs carrying a silver tray brimming with food. He set it down in front of them and stepped behind the doctor. Moratrayas gestured to the tray and said, “You carry little baggage, and what you do possess appears empty. Allow me to provide some minor hospitality to a guest who has traveled far to get here.”

Sandra dug into the food with an appetite that would make a wolf proud. The tray included cream soup, a chicken dish that smelled of wine, sliced apples cooked in honey, and fresh bread slathered with butter. The meal didn’t last long enough to cool. Moratrayas watched her devour the food with mild surprise while Igor smiled. Finishing the repast, she realized too late that people with money had all sorts of rules about eating and table manners, and she’d probably broken every one of them.

“Sorry, it’s just…”

“No need to apologize for enjoying the meal,”

Moratrayas said with an indulgent smile. “An empty plate is the best compliment a cook can receive. I take it you have not eaten in some time.”

Sandra looked down at the empty tray. “Three days.”

“Unfortunate. I assure you that such unpleasantness is behind you now. Those who work for me are treated with the respect they deserve and want for nothing.”

“Work for you?”

Moratrayas leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him. “I watched you overcome my traps with great interest. Few attempt what you did, and only one other succeeded. For reasons I would prefer not to discuss, she proved unsuitable for my needs. You used no special equipment, making your victory all the more impressive. I take it you are not what the unenlightened refer to as a mad scientist?”

“Uh, no,” she mumbled. “Someone told me you didn’t like to be called that.”

Moratrayas nodded. “That’s quite true. I am a scientist, but I prefer to be considered inspired. Still, it’s not important if you don’t have the same education and training as I. A woman with your determination and quick wits will be a most valuable asset.”

Sandra looked down and tried not to sound as scared as she felt. “There’s been some kind of mistake. I didn’t come for a job.”

“You didn’t?” he asked. She shook her head. “Then you know nothing of the message I left when I defeated the wizard Tadcaster.”

“Who?”

“The wizard who took over the town of Granite Peaks and ruled it with an iron fist. I defeated him and freed the inhabitants from his despotic rule. I left a message inviting others to join me here.”

“I didn’t hear anything about a wizard in Granite Peaks,” Sandra admitted. “My town doesn’t get many merchants or bards bringing news.”

Moratrayas’ expression darkened. “Didn’t hear about it? What about my eradication of the pixie plague threatening the town of Two Rocks?” Sandra shook her head again. Annoyed, Moratrayas asked, “Is it too much to ask if you heard how I defeated the ogre bandits attacking river barges on the Moderately Magnificent Talum River?”

“That one I heard about!” Sandra said excitedly. “You beat four full grown ogres single handedly and opened the river to traffic again.”

“On that occasion I also left a message inviting likeminded people to join me in the town of Refuge.”

Frightened all over again, Sandra replied, “Nobody told me that part.”

Moratrayas slapped his palms against the table. “Three times I saved towns from great danger and no one heard about it! Hundreds of people in those towns promised to tell all they met!” Moratrayas shook his head in disgust. He looked at Sandra and asked, “If you know nothing of my invitations, then what is your reason for coming here?”

Before she could answer, he threw back his head and cried out, “Merciful God in Heaven, tell me you’re not selling cookies!”

“No! No, I, I’m not,” she said and waved her hands. This was bad. He’d been expecting a helper, and she was supposed to join his cause (whatever that was) or swear fealty to him. Instead she was trying to get him involved in her problem. Fearing the response, Sandra told him the truth.

“I’m from the town of Sun Valley. Armed men attacked us a month ago. We don’t know who they were or where they came from. They looted the town of our valuables and most of our food. They carried nearly all the men away in chains. There’s no one left but women, children and old men. We need help. I, I thought that since you got rid of those ogres on the Talum River, and did that other stuff, you could help us, too.”

His reaction was not encouraging. Moratrayas’ jaw clenched and his hands balled up into fists. There was a slight tremor in his shoulders and his lips twitched. His faced darkened. Igor looked nervous and backed away from his master.

“I see,” Moratrayas said through gritted teeth. “I will consider your request.”

Desperate, Sandra grabbed his hand. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t turn me down! No one else can help. The towns around us said they couldn’t send soldiers this late in the year, and that they don’t even know where to send them. What else can we do?”

Moratrayas pulled away from her and sank back in his chair. “You will have an answer soon. Igor, show her out.”

“No, wait!”

Igor took her by the arm and led her away. “This way, please. Mind your step, the cleaning crew is coming through.”

A horde of Moratrayas’ creations swept into the main hall and cleaned everything in sight. Made of brass and obsidian with glowing green glass panels, they were as tall as Sandra and looked like spindly men. Moratrayas ignored his creations as they went about their work, and he ignored Sandra’s pleas. Stony faced, he remained in his chair.

“You can’t do this!” she shouted at the hunchback. “We need help!”

“I know,” he said compassionately. “He’s like this sometimes. If you try to force him to do something, he’ll dig in his heels and fight you every step of the way. I pity the person who toilet trained him.”

Sandra pulled away from Igor and stopped before he took her outside the castle. “Igor, please, I’m begging you! These people have my dad and brother. The ones they left behind won’t last a year without men to work the fields. I know I’m trying to get him involved in my problem, and I’ve got nothing to give in return. If Moratrayas wants followers then I’ll help him if he does this for me.”

“He won’t take an offer like that. The doc wants genuine loyalty or nothing at all.” Igor patted Sandra on the arm. “He doesn’t want to admit it, but he needs a chance like this. Saving those towns was to get the attention of other mad scientists, but they didn’t come. Some grand adventure is just what he needs to get the word out about who he is and what he’s doing.”

“Then what do we do?”

Igor took two silver coins from his belt pouch and pressed them into her hand. “Stay at the inn down in the center of town. This will cover the cost and then some. Give me a day to work on him, two at most, and he’ll come to you.”

Sandra was on the verge of tears. “These people have my family.”

“And we’ll get them back,” Igor assured her. “The doc does care. Give him a chance and he’ll prove he’s as good as gold.”

Igor opened the main gate and led her out of the castle. “I turned off the traps, so going down will be a lot easier than coming up.”

Silently, Sandra left the castle and headed down the stairs. She’d failed. She’d come all this way, endured so much, and she’d failed. Sandra saw that the streets below were empty. No doubt locals in the town had gone inside to avoid the cold. This only added to her feeling of isolation and despair.

Distracted by her experience with Moratrayas, Sandra was almost at the bottom of the stairs when she saw a group of men coming up. There were five of them, wearing chain armor and armed with swords and maces. They had thick winter clothes under their armor and backpacks heavy with supplies. Dirty and poorly shaven, they reeked of body odor and sweat. Even under moonlight, she recognized the men who’d ravaged her town.

One of them pointed a steel mace at her and grinned.
“Grab her.”


Back in the castle, Moratrayas continued to fume as his creations finished their work and went to clean another room. Whistling cheerfully, Igor returned to take the empty tray away.

“Is she gone?” Moratrayas asked sourly.

Igor sat on a chair and put his feet on the table. “She’s on her way.”

“Seven months,” he complained. “I spent seven months and half my money demonstrating what I could accomplish. I saved thousands of people, and no one knows about it.”

Moratrayas slammed his fists on the table. “I knew it would be difficult, but we didn’t get a single recruit. Not one! I was sure at least one person in my field would show up, if only for protection and free food. Even a handful of flunkies willing to follow orders would have helped. Instead I get a Girl Scout selling cookies and a woman who wants me to spend even more time and money. Where did I go wrong?”

“Be fair, doc, you knew it would be hard to get another mad scientist to come work for you,” Igor reminded him.

“Work with me,” Moratrayas corrected him, “and we’re not mad. Mildly annoyed, perhaps, but that’s it.”

“Not your fault it turned out like this,” Igor said. “There’s a lot of big news lately. The new King of the Goblins led the goblins in war and won. That’s a first, and one most people aren’t happy about. Plus the same guy destroyed the Staff of Skulls and buried the Eternal Army. Big news items like that drown out smaller stories.”

“That proves my point!” he yelled. “This Bradshaw person comes from another world, yet rallies goblins, trolls and men to his side, making the world a better place. If he can do it then why can’t I?”

Casually, Igor said, “There’s another way to make sure people hear about you.”

“I am not hiring a publicist!” Moratrayas thundered. More calmly, he added, “Especially not at the rates I was quoted.”

“Then you need to do something else to get people’s attention.”

Genuinely curious, he asked, “The woman’s offer?”

“Look at it as an opportunity,” Igor replied. He looked off into an imaginary horizon and pointed at some distant threat. “You’ll be pitting your creations against hordes of armed men, slavers or worse. Hundred to one odds, and the forces of science prevail! Cheering crowds! Dozens of beautiful women throwing themselves at you! I’ll catch as many of them as I can, good friend that I am.”

“You said that last time.” Moratrayas sank deeper into his chair.

Igor shrugged. “Reputations are like plants. They need constant attention or they wither away. One more big display could do the trick.”

Moratrayas tapped his fingers on the table. “It would eat up the last of my reserve funds, plus take me away from my research for weeks or months. And in the end what would we accomplish? We save one town or four or forty. What does it matter if they’re in danger again next year?”

“At least they get a year’s peace.”

An ear-piercing scream split the air, echoing though the castle and shocking Moratrayas out of his depression. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his cane.

“That sounded like Sandra,” Igor said.

Moratrayas raced for the castle gates. “She must have run into one of my traps.”

“I turned them off!”


The five men attacking Sandra weren’t having an easy time of it. She made it halfway up the stairs before one of them tackled her. Sandra dropped her basket when she fell, but landed next to the torch she’d dropped earlier that night. No longer burning, it was still long and fairly sturdy. She grabbed it and swung it into his face, giving him a black eye and forcing him to let go.

“Hurry!” their leader urged. “That scream will bring him coming.”

Sandra struck another man across the face with the burned out torch. He swung his sword and chopped the torch in half. A second man came at her from behind and grabbed her. Sandra stomped on his feet as hard as she could and he let go, yelping and jumping up and down. A third man went for his sword, but their leader slapped his hand away.

“We need her alive for questioning!”

Two men tackled Sandra and pinned her down. The group’s leader pulled a length of rope from his belt and bent down to tie her up. Sandra kicked the leader in the crotch, and was rewarded with a shrill cry of pain.

“Drag her out of here,” another man said. “We have to leave before Moratrayas shows up.”

“Oh, it’s much too late for that,” a menacing voice declared.

All five men looked up in shock as Moratrayas and Igor ran down the stairs. The look of pure outrage on the doctor’s face would have made a hungry dragon back away. Igor climbed off the stairs onto a small ledge while Moratrayas went straight for the men.

Still hurting from Sandra’s kick, the group’s leader gasped, “This is no business of yours.”

“No?” the doctor asked, his voice as dark as his expression. Moratrayas pressed a button on his cane.
With a hiss it extended to twice its length, becoming a brass staff with a sparking tip. “You come onto my property without permission and bearing arms, attack a petitioner, and a woman at that, and you have the gall to say it’s not my business? You, sir, have just invited yourself to a world of pain.”

The nearest man drew his sword and attacked. Moratrayas dodged the clumsy overhand swing and whirled his staff around. He jabbed the sparking tip into his attacker’s chest, releasing a bolt of electricity that ran through his body and convulsed his muscles. His attacker could only manage a strangled cry as his eyes bugged out and smoke rose up from his chest. Moratrayas pulled his cane away and allowed the smoldering man to collapse.

The remaining four men drew their swords and formed a semicircle around Moratrayas. They attacked more carefully, trying to draw him into attacking one man while a second swung at him from another direction. Moratrayas dodged one attack after another, refusing to give ground but unable to score a hit.

Clank-clank. The arm and pinchers trap rose up to attack, this time with Igor riding it. He’d folded out a small seat at the base, and opened a panel to reveal knobs and levers to control it. Whirring faster and louder, Igor directed the pincers to grab the nearest attacker and pin his arms to his chest.

“Curse you, let go of me!” the man shouted. The arm lifted him as effortlessly as it had Sandra, but under Igor’s control it carried him off the stairs and dangled him over the drop-off. “Don’t let go, don’t let go!”

“I’ll think about it,” Igor said cheerfully.

Sandra climbed back to her feet, bruised and angry. She wasn’t sure what these men were planning on doing to her, but the ideas she came up with were bad. The remaining men had turned their backs on her, proof they didn’t think she was a threat with Moratrayas on the field. That was going to cost them.

She’d already lost her knife, cloak, torch and kindling tonight. That didn’t leave her a lot to work with. She grabbed her wicker basket. Yes, this would do nicely. She stepped behind the man who’d been giving orders, the one she’d kicked in the crotch. His day was about to get even worse.

Sandra swung her basket overhand and hooked it over the leader’s head. He barely had time to say, “What the—”, before she pulled as hard as she could. Caught by surprise and pulled backwards, he fell down the stairs, crying out in pain as he rolled down the hard granite steps.

The last two men turned for a fraction of a second to see what happened to their leader, giving Moratrayas the opening he needed. He swung his staff and caught another man with the electrified tip, shocking him unconscious. The last man standing abandoned the others and ran for his life. Moratrayas whirled his staff around and struck him in the back of the knee. He stumbled and fell. The man was about to scream when Moratrayas brought the staff down on the man’s neck, shocking him as well.

Igor climbed back onto the stairs. “Nasty lot.”

“Indeed.” Moratrayas retracted the staff back down to a cane and shut off the sparks. “In three years no bandit or brigand has been fool enough to enter this valley, and approaching my castle is stupidity on the verge of being suicidal. They didn’t just want a victim to rob, nor were they after a random woman for vile purposes. They could have gotten either of those more easily by attacking someone in town. They wanted you, Ms. Sower. They must have greatly desired to stop you if they were willing to risk drawing my attention.”

“That’s not all,” she told him. Sandra pointed to one of the downed men. “These are some of the men who attacked my town.”

“Then they traveled as far as you did through the mountains in the dead of winter,” Moratrayas said. “Why did they so fear you reaching me? This is a question I demand an answer to.”

Moratrayas walked down the stairs. “I will retrieve the man Ms. Sower dealt with. Igor, Ms. Sower, bring the rest of the prisoners to the castle for questioning.”

The last man awake remained struggling in the pincers’ grip. Dangling over the drop off, he shouted, “We’ll tell you nothing!”

“To the contrary,” Moratrayas began, “you will tell me everything I need to know to find your home base, where you took Ms. Sower’s people and who’s behind this attack.”

Alarmed, Sandra asked, “You’re not going to torture them, are you?”

“Of course not,” Moratrayas replied. “Torture is for the unimaginative.”

He stopped and glanced back at Sandra. “You requested my assistance, Ms. Sower, and you have it. No one brings violence into my home.”

Leaving them behind, Moratrayas reached the bottom of the stairs. He found curious townsfolk gathered around the crippled attacker. The people muttered to one another nervously, stopping when they saw the doctor.
One of the men said, “Doctor, we heard a woman scream. When we came to investigate, we found this man. He’s hurt badly.”

“The woman is well,” he told them. “This man and four more attacked her. The others are no longer a concern.”
People in the crowd grimaced. A man asked, “They attacked her on the castle steps?”

Moratrayas picked up the wounded man and headed back for the castle. “Yes. They have annoyed me.”

“Right, we’ll start digging graves in the morning,” the man said.

“It might not come to that,” Moratrayas replied. “I’ll keep you informed.”


An hour later, Sandra, Igor and Moratrayas had securely tied the five men up in the main hall. Sandra went through the men’s backpacks, handing items to Moratrayas for him to study. The doctor sent Igor to the castle’s library for maps, although Sandra couldn’t see how they’d help.

Four of the men required medical care, which Sandra reluctantly provided. Only one man of the five was able to talk, and he proved unhelpful.

“Where are you from?” Sandra demanded. “What kingdom?”

The man glared at her and said nothing. Angry, Sandra said, “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? You could be executed as bandits for what you did tonight.”

“We’re not bandits,” he snapped.

“He’s not a bandit,” Moratrayas agreed. He studied the man’s sword, turning it over in his hands and looking for marks. “This weapon was made less than a year ago. It’s human manufacture, hasn’t seen much use and is well cared for. All five men are identically armed and by the same swordsmith. The armor is good, too.”

Moratrayas tossed the sword aside and examined the man’s boots. “Bandits get weapons wherever they can, stealing more when they can get them, holding onto old weapons until they are too dull or rusted to use. To have five bandits this well armed and with the same style is nearly impossible.”

Igor walked back into the room with a bundle of papers under his arms. “Got the maps you wanted,” he explained before dumping his load on the table. “This is everything we have on the Raushtad Mountains and surrounding kingdoms. Planning a holiday get away?”

“Nothing so dull. The men’s boots are new, too, hobnailed, leather, no fur trim. I recognize the style. Representatives from the Peck Merchant House came this spring trying to peddle the same type as mountaineering boots. Peck is new to the region and hasn’t reached the north of the Raushtad yet. You’re not from far away.”

Moratrayas turned his attention to Sandra. “Describe the attack on your town. Leave out no detail.”

“They came during the morning,” she said. “It wasn’t even dawn when ten river barges appeared outside town. We thought they might be merchants late getting out of the mountains before winter. When the barges came to shore, armed men rushed out and attacked.”

“How many?”

“Three hundred, maybe four.” Sandra shuddered at the memory of that day. “They used clubs and nets on us. They ran us down and beat the men viciously, then tied them up and took them back to the barges. A few people got to their homes in time and barred themselves inside. Those wretches set the houses on fire to flush them out. They took any man old enough to do work and carried them off. Then they took our money and half our food supplies. Then they took our sunstone.”

Moratrayas’ head snapped up from the backpack he was searching. “You had a sunstone?”

“It’s why we’re called Sun Valley. We’ve had it for five generations, using its light to speed up the growth of our crops.”

“Yes, they are most valuable,” Moratrayas mused. “Continue.”

“There’s not much more to say. Once they had what they wanted, they got back in the barges and left. We begged them for mercy, promised them anything they wanted if they would just let our people go. They laughed and said there was nothing left worth taking. I don’t know why they didn’t take the rest of us, too, or take over the town. Farmland isn’t easy to come by in the mountains, and ours is worth having.”

Moratrayas checked the maps Igor brought in. “That narrows down our enemy’s location even more. River barges are large vessels. Most rivers are too rough or narrow for them to travel.” He took a wineskin from the man’s backpack and handed it to Igor. “You know wines better than I.”

Igor took a swig of wine and swished it around in his mouth before he swallowed. “It’s sour and smells like the wine barrel it came from had a dead rat in it. Must be from Prenton Vineyards.” He took another swig.

“How can you drink that?” Sandra asked.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Igor said, and drank the wineskin in one long pull. “If that’s the only wine you can acquire, you drink it.”

Moratrayas took the largest map of the region and began making circles with ink and quill. “Prenton Vineyard only sells locally and to people too poor to buy better wine. That narrows our search down to the middle section of the Raushtad.”

The prisoner began to sweat. “We stole the wine. We broke into a farmhouse and took it. It was the only wine they had.”

“Keep talking and I’ll gag you,” Moratrayas warned him. He checked the man’s hands next. “You’re new at this.”

Sandra peered over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“He has no scars. A man who fights for a living gets hurt in battles and training accidents. The other men are the same. Their faces and hands are unblemished except from the injuries we inflicted today.”
Moratrayas went through their pockets next. He took out a collection of copper coins and dumped them on the table.

“Hey, that’s mine!” the prisoner shouted. “I earned it!”

“Igor, if you please?” Moratrayas asked. Igor stuffed an old sock in the prisoner’s mouth to shut him up. “Thank you. Most of the coinage is minted locally. I see a few from Granite Peaks, with their particularly stupid emblem of a frightened woodchuck. But these others are new to me, and he has a lot of them. They have a fist imprinted on one side and a starburst on the other.”

“I’ve seen them before,” Sandra told him.

“You have? Where?”

“Back at home. Merchants have been passing them around for two years. We hadn’t seen them before that, and suddenly a lot of them are going around. The metal’s not too pure, but we have to take what we can get.”

Moratrayas rubbed his chin. “Interesting. Who would be minting new coins?”
With Sandra and Igor watching, Moratrayas drew one circle after another on the map. Each circle was smaller than the one before and inside the larger one. “Not too far north based on the boots, closer to the middle of the mountains based on the wine…yes. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions, but based off the evidence our enemies have provided and which rivers are large enough for their boats to pass, the attack against your village came from the Kingdom of Stone Heart. That’s unfortunate.”

Curious, Sandra asked, “Why?”

“I was born there.”

Sandra woke up the next morning on a couch in the castle’s main hall. She yawned and sat up, still sore from the fight. The five men who’d attacked her were gone, carried down to the town below to be guarded by the locals. The man Sandra sent spinning down the stairs would also need medical care for his broken arm and leg.

“Ah, you’re awake.” It was Doctor Moratrayas, coming down the stairs with a tray of food. He looked rested and clean despite last night’s battle. Then again, he wasn’t the one who got tackled. Moratrayas set the tray down on the table and beckoned her to sit. “Breakfast is ready, and you will find a bathroom with a hot bath up the stairs, second door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“My apologies for not providing better sleeping arrangements. I wasn’t expecting visitors until spring and don’t have rooms prepared. I’d offer you the master bedroom, but it’s currently being used for storage.”

Curious, she asked, “Then where do you sleep?”

“On a cot in one of my labs. I find it best to stay close to my experiments in case they should get out of hand. If just one of my creations goes on a rampage, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Sandra found a veritable feast waiting for her. The tray contained pancakes, syrup, poached eggs, sugared plums and milk. “Thanks for having Igor get this ready for me.”

“Igor can’t boil water without setting something on fire. He is the first, last and only man I have ever met who could burn a hole in a cast iron frying pan. I prepared this.”

“You made this? Uh, thank you. You’re the first man I met who can cook.”

Moratrayas headed back upstairs. “I developed the skill out of self-preservation. Once you’ve tasted Igor’s griddlecakes, you’ll do anything to avoid eating them again. Leave the tray when you’re done and something will be along to pick it up later.”

After eating, Sandra headed for the bathroom. The bath was made from brass (wasn’t everything around here?) and filled with steaming water. She hadn’t had a chance to wash during her journey here, and the hot water felt especially good on her sore muscles. She also found something else the doctor had left for her.

Folded up alongside the bath was a set of clothes. The outfit included a white blouse, slacks, boots, gloves, hat, scarf and cloak, all lined with fur and expertly stitched. It was new, warm and fit like a glove. Given how patched and worn her own clothes were she gladly put on the new garments.

One of the tales she’d heard about Moratrayas was that he’d started life as a tailor. No one knew exactly how he went from such a humble beginning to become a mad scientist. He called himself doctor, but no university would admit to training him or granting him that lofty degree. One thing the stories agreed on was to go along with his self-imposed title or risk angering him. Even referring to his days as a tailor wasn’t healthy.

“Doctor!” a man called out in the main hall. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Sandra couldn’t say where she’d heard it before. She left the bathroom to see who was calling. She found a young man with blond hair and wearing winter clothes standing in the hall. Not far behind him a young, dark haired woman hung back by the door.

“We shouldn’t be here,” the girl said nervously as her eyes darted around the hall.

“I want to make sure she’s safe,” the man said. He was handsome and muscles bulged under his clothes. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Doctor!”

“Hello,” Sandra said. She walked over to the stairs. “The doctor is a bit busy.”

The man smiled and raced up the stairs, covering steps three at a time. He grabbed Sandra in a bear hug that lifted her feet off the floor. “You’re okay! That’s great! I thought you might be hurt.”

“Ah, bruised ribs!” she gasped. The man quickly set her down. “Ouch, yeah, I’m a bit beat up, but I’ll live. I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but would you mind telling me who you are?”

“We met outside town last night,” he explained.

It took her a second to put one and one together. “Wait, you’re Keith the werewolf?”

He smiled and looked down. “Yeah. This is what I look like most of the time. When I got back to town this morning, I heard the men who hit me attacked a woman, and I was worried something had happened to you. Oh hey, where are my manners? This is my best friend, Alicia.”

The girl looked thoroughly annoyed. Sandra’s guess was that Alicia would rather be Keith’s girlfriend than best friend, and really didn’t like him showing another woman this kind of attention. In an impressive feat of cluelessness, Keith didn’t notice Alicia’s discomfort.

“Hi,” Alicia said sourly. “Keith, she’s okay. Can we leave before the doctor shows up?”

Moratrayas came out of a door, backlit by bright green light. “Mr. Sunter, what’s the cause for this visit?”

“Hi, doc,” Keith said with a warm smile. “I just wanted to make sure your guest is all right. I hope you don’t mind Alicia and me checking up on her.”

“Not at all. Your concern for her wellbeing does you credit. Ms. Sower proved most capable in dealing with the men bothering her. I trust you’re well?”

Keith smiled. “Right as rain, doc. Those bums knocked me around a bit before they went after her, but I’m okay. Healing fast is the only good thing that came from becoming a werewolf.”

Moratrayas nodded. “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Sunter. I’m currently preparing for a trip, so I’d appreciate it if you and your friend could go back to town. Once I return you may stop by anytime you require assistance.”

“Sure thing,” Keith said. He ran down the stairs and took Alicia by the hand. Before leaving, he turned to Sandra and said, “Sorry about those guys bothering you. That stuff usually doesn’t happen around here.”

“It’s okay,” Sandra said, and waved to Keith and Alicia as they left. Once they were gone, she said, “Nice man. Pity he’s as dense as a block of marble.”

Moratrayas closed the door behind him and walked up to Sandra. “He’s blessed in other ways. Whatever his failings, he is loyal and compassionate, traits not to be despised.”

“I know. I’m sorry, that was petty of me.”

“Perhaps, but it was also accurate. Alicia is one of three young women trying to attract his attention, and he has misinterpreted all of them.”

Sandra laughed. “Three?”

“Sad but true. I’ve granted him limited access to my castle so I can provide help dealing with his condition. I may have to sit him down and explain a few other things to him.” Moratrayas glanced at Sandra and nodded in approval. “I see my replacement garments please you.”

“Yeah, they fit fine.”

“Good.” He headed down the hallway without another word.

Sandra hurried to catch up with him. “I’m not trying to be pushy, but when can we leave?”

Moratrayas walked down the hallway and stepped around a large brass and obsidian hedgehog scrubbing the floor. He opened a door and was bathed in green light pouring from the door. “I need at least two days to pack supplies and weapons.”

The answer surprised and disappointed her. Any delay was too long. “Two days? How much are you bringing?”

Sandra followed him into the room and gasped in amazement at the bizarre and chaotic sight. Moratrayas walked in ahead of her and replied, “I intend to bring as many weapons as my barge will carry.”

What had once been a storeroom for the castle had been converted into a laboratory of awe-inspiring proportions. The huge room was divided into two sections, the first heavy with tools and parts for his bizarre creations. Saws, vices, hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, bolt cutters and an assortment of other instruments hung off the walls. There were reams of paper scattered across the room, with every inch covered in writing and diagrams. Workbenches were buried under partially completed creatures of brass, obsidian and glass, some creations as small as mice and others as big as horses. More of the things hung from the ceiling by ropes, partially completed with their innards exposed. The mechanical carcasses reminded Sandra of a butcher shop.

The second half of the room contained a river barge seventy feet long, twenty feet wide and clad in iron plates. It rested in a pool of shallow water with steel doors on the wall at the front of the barge. The barge had a cluster of brass tubes near the back end and no oars or sails. It was loaded down with bundles, boxes and casks, and a tarp covered something enormous that filled the back of the vessel.

“Wow.” Sandra was too stunned by the sight to say more.

“Yes, I’m afraid the place is a bit of a mess,” Moratrayas said as he walked under a ten legged creation dangling from the ceiling by ropes and pulleys. “One of the reasons I wanted to attract other men and women of science was to assist me. I have to leave many projects unfinished because problems arise that require my attention.”

Sandra studied the disassembled creation hanging in front of her. It looked like a giant crab, five feet across with heavy armor plates and larger versions of the pincers that had attacked her on the stairs. The exposed interior sported wires, pulleys, gears and tubing made from brass or glass. Empty glass cylinders connected to those tubes. Obsidian plates and spheres were linked into the crab for a purpose Sandra couldn’t even guess at.

“Are your monsters alive?” she asked.

Moratrayas picked through the clutter on the nearest workbench. “I call my creations clockworks. To answer your question, I’m not sure.”

“But you make them. If you don’t know, who does?”

Annoyed, he replied, “Just because I don’t know now doesn’t mean I’ll never know.” He saw her cringe at his tone. Grumbling, he said, “It is a complicated matter, and with all that’s been going on around here it’s one I haven’t had time to adequately research.”

Moratrayas picked up a clockwork centipede three feet long with a score of segmented legs. “When I started this work, I would have told you they weren’t alive, that they were constructs that obeyed orders and nothing more. But in the last year I’ve noticed them display behavior I never built into them. Some are more aggressive than I intended. Others have shown rudimentary cunning. A few have proven willful and mildly disobedient. One of them arranges flowers. I don’t know why they do this, nor do I know how to prevent it or enhance it.”

“Maybe they have souls, like purple puppet people,” she suggested.

Moratrayas set the clockwork down. “They are nothing like puppet people. Puppet people are built with magic. My clockworks are the result of science, of research and hard work, not mumbled words and questionable incantations. But to answer your question, I don’t know if they have souls. I haven’t had a chance to ask a holy man.”

Sandra heard something crawling through the nearest pile of parts. She backed away as the sound inched closer. Moratrayas frowned before he marched over and pointed a finger at the unseen being.

“You have a job to do, Irving, and it’s not here. Kindly return to work and leave the young lady be.” Whatever lay beneath the debris and parts made a whimpering sound as it tunneled away. “I apologize. I receive so few visitors that my creations, especially Irving, grow curious when one arrives. I told him to stay out of sight when not needed, which he technically did. Honestly, some days they act like children.”

Moratrayas marched over to his barge. “The army that attacked your town was three or four hundred strong, a potent force to contend with. We may assume they left behind more men to guard their home base. When we reach Stone Heart and the source of your problems, we will face an army of at least a thousand strong, maybe more.”

A two-foot tall upside down terracotta pot slowly slid out from behind a workbench and scooted closer to Sandra. Sounding annoyed, Moratrayas said, “Irving, you’re not fooling anyone.”

Sandra followed Moratrayas as the pot scooted off. It was hard for her to keep from stepping onto the piles of spare parts that filled the floor like they did the workbenches. Pointing to the barge, she asked, “How many of your clockworks can you carry on that?”

“Less than I’d like. There is room for no more than twenty clockworks in addition to Gertrude, my latest masterpiece. They are a force equal to five times their number.”

Twenty times five…hmm. “One hundred against one thousand isn’t very good odds.”

Moratrayas climbed onto the barge and dug through the tall stacks of supplies already loaded. “Where did Igor put my spare cane? You’re right about our chances, Ms. Sower. But one hundred men, or their equivalent, used at the right time and in the right location can work wonders. Force alone won’t be enough to free your friends and family. We will have to use stealth, intelligence and careful planning.”

Something bumped into Sandra’s ankle. She looked down to find a small clockwork shaped like a monkey. Only a foot tall, it gazed up at her with a head that was mostly a smooth obsidian sphere. It held up a small bouquet of tiny white flowers.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and accepted the gift.

Moratrayas glanced up and scowled at the small clockwork. “We’ve talked about this, Clyde!” The monkey clockwork scurried under a workbench, squealing as it fled. “I built him to fetch my tools, and what does he do? Where did he even find flowers this time of year?”

“They’re pretty,” Sandra said, and tucked the flowers behind her ear.

Up above them, Sandra heard laughter and a voice say, “Hey, the doc made himself a girlfriend.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “Goblins.”

Sure enough, five goblins were climbing around the rafters above the workshop. Goblins were smelly, dirty and thoroughly annoying creatures. The tallest of them was four feet high and roughly man shaped, and all five had exaggerated features. One had gangly arms, another a large nose and a third looked like nothing more than a huge wad of hair with arms and legs stuck on. The fourth had a toothy grin, and the last goblin had what looked like tiny, ineffectual wings sprouting from his back. They were unarmed and dressed in cheap leather clothes.

Goblins had a deserved reputation for being messy, rude and playing nasty pranks on people. They could be found everywhere, and even a town as isolated and small as Sun Valley had a few hanging around. Goblins could get into any building if they put their tiny little minds to it. Thankfully they only did real damage when they were angry, a rare event indeed.

“That will be quite enough of that,” Moratrayas told them. “Ms. Sower is a guest and will be treated respectfully.”

“Ha!” a goblin snorted. “That would be a first.”

“Is it a good idea to let them in here?” Sandra asked. “They could steal your tools or break your clockworks.”

The furry goblin stood up straight as an arrow and indignantly replied, “Madam, I resent the implication that we might desecrate this place of chaos!”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Goblins delight in trouble,” Moratrayas explained while he climbed off the barge. “Most of the time they generate chaos and confusion themselves, but if they find someone who seeks to upset the status quo, they either assist or sit back and watch. They cause me no trouble and I return the favor.”

“Yeah, what he said,” the gangly goblin agreed.

The furry goblin nodded. “We figure all we have to do is sit back and wait. Give the doc a few more years and he’ll cause more confusion than we can handle. He’s our hero!”

“And we like the guy with the hunch,” the large nosed goblin added. “He’s an honorary goblin.”

The furry goblin pointed at Sandra. “You we’re indifferent to. Can you do tricks like the doc?”

“Pull a hat out of a rabbit!” another goblin shouted.

“The goblins and I coexist as well as can be expected,” Moratrayas said. He frowned and added, “Although they may be setting a poor example for my creations. The clockworks used to be well behaved.”

“We didn’t do nothing,” the furry goblin replied. He frowned and added, “Okay, there was that one time, but we were hitting the cheddar hard that day.”

Sandra shook her head and directed her attention back to the barge. “I know we would get there faster by water, but maybe it’s worth it to go by land. You could bring more of your clockworks that way.”

“That’s not an option.” Moratrayas rummaged through a pile of parts until he picked up a glass vial filled with glowing green liquid. “This is the fuel my clockworks require. I can only create a finite amount of it at this time, yet another reason why I sought helpers and colleagues. There’s enough on hand to fuel my barge, for emergencies here in Refuge and for powering no more than twenty clockworks for fifteen days. We’d run out of fuel long before reaching the enemy if we went by land.”

“Oh.” Sandra ran her fingers over a disassembled clockwork man. This wasn’t working out as well as she’d hoped. Still, she had Moratrayas’ promise to help. She also had another reason to be hopeful.

Sandra had come to get aid from Doctor Moratrayas, but ten other women from Sun Valley were on similar trips. Jennet Foster went to find the hero Julius Craton and get his help. Another woman was looking for the dwarf warrior Tibolt Broadbeard. Women from Sun Valley also went in search of the wizard Elmore, a holy man who called himself Servant, a friendly minotaur named Herd Leader, and five other notable men and women. The eleven had the power to help their town and at least some inclination to do so. Maybe they wouldn’t all come, but the hope was that at least half of them would show up. Moratrayas was coming with only Igor and twenty clockworks, but that plus a few of the others should be enough to save Sun Valley.

“Did you see my extra cane?” Moratrayas quizzed the goblins.

The furry goblin shook his head. “Nope. Igor has been bringing in armfuls of stuff every few minutes, but no cane.”

Moratrayas glanced over the messy lab. “I’d hire a maid to keep the castle organized if the last one hadn’t run off screaming into the night. I told her to stay away from those gears. What happened to her skirt was her fault and no one else’s. Help me look for my cane.”

Sandra looked through the piles of brass refuse and partially built clockworks, keeping an eye out for gears or anything else moving in the mess. She was a little worried that by getting Moratrayas’ help she had a tiger by the tail. He was powerful, but also unpredictable. Between his volatile personality and his bizarre clockworks that had minds of their own, it was only too easy to imagine him making a bad situation worse.

“Will it take long to get to Sun Valley?” she asked.

“Four days, five at the most,” he replied. “It took some time to find your town on a map. We’ll have to travel through five kingdoms to reach it. Calling them kingdoms is an exaggeration when the largest of them has ten thousand people.”

“That many?” she asked in surprise. Sun Valley’s population had never been above nine hundred.

Moratrayas dug through another workbench piled high with parts. “That’s not a lot of people, Ms. Sower. Kingdoms outside the Raushtad Mountains routinely have populations between fifty thousand and half a million. Of course they have more arable land than we do to support so many citizens.”

“Half a million people?” It boggled Sandra’s mind just to think about it. “A person couldn’t possibly remember so many names. How would they know which people are trustworthy, or who they could count on in an emergency? How do so many people get along without fighting?”

“Generally they trust only family, friends and immediate neighbors,” he explained. “Everyone else is a stranger to them. As for fighting, there are plenty of conflicts between both people and nations. I’m told that at Battle Island the population actually bets on wars.”

Moratrayas dug through another workbench and came up with a map of the Raushtad Mountains. He held it up, and Sandra marveled at its complexity. Running north to south in a broad strip, the mountains were carved up into dozens of small kingdoms centered around valleys with fertile soil. Along the edges of the map were scores of independent towns, each one too poor, too small or too hard to reach for a king to bother conquering them. Sun Valley was all three.

“I expect little trouble on our journey,” he said. “I’ve traveled through the Raushtad before and everyone’s heard of me. I’ve helped some of these kingdoms, which will ease our passage. The rest know my reputation and should give us no trouble. My only concerns are monsters and an ambush by the army that attacked your town.”

“How would they know to ambush us?”

Moratrayas set the map down and continued looking for his cane. “Five of them chased you through the mountains in the dead of winter. They followed you or they deduced where you were headed. Either way, when those men don’t come back in a reasonable amount of time, the enemy will assume they were defeated and lay a trap for us.”

Sandra leaned on a workbench, careful not to upset the rubbish covering it. “How long do we have before that happens?”

Moratrayas shrugged. “It took them three weeks to get here following you. If they don’t return in another three weeks, we can expect the enemy to either send out more men or prepare for an attack on their home base. With luck we’ll defeat them and have your townspeople and sunstone back before then.”

The furry goblin asked, “How did hot stuff get a sunstone?”

“Obnoxiously put, but a valid question nonetheless,” Moratrayas said. “Sunstones are valued at anywhere from five to twenty-five thousand gold coins depending on quality, size and how much light they produce. How did a town as small as Sun Valley acquire one?”

Sandra sat down on a chair, one of the only things not covered in lab equipment, and told them her town’s history. “We didn’t always have it. Five generations ago my great, great, great grandfather left the valley to earn his fortune. Lots of men did back then. We couldn’t support many people since there wasn’t much farmland and summers are so short. Everybody figured he’d be gone for good like all the ones that left before him.”

She picked up a polished obsidian sphere and held it up for the others to see. “Twenty years later he came back with a wife, three children, the sunstone and more scars than a man should have and still live. The sunstone was four inches across and glowed like the noon sun. He wouldn’t say where he got it, just that it was for everyone in the valley and nobody would have to leave home if they didn’t want to.”

“You used its light in place of the sun to grow crops?” Moratrayas asked.

She nodded and set down the sphere. “My ancestors built a stone tower and set the sunstone in it. We covered the sunstone with an iron pot and old drapes at night or when we had visitors. But when no outsiders were around, we uncovered the sunstone and it poured out light. It extended the growing season by four weeks, enough time to guarantee a good harvest every year. We don’t get much surplus, but no one goes hungry.”

Moratrayas scribbled figures on a scrap of paper. “A stone capable of producing that much light must be worth a fortune.”

“Money doesn’t matter,” she said. Sandra looked down and tried to hold back her tears. “We’ve lost our men, the sunstone and most of our stored food. Everyone left in Sun Valley will either starve or leave home for another kingdom. There’s not a lot of honest work for widows and single women. We’d have to beg.”

“And people say we’re scum,” the furry goblin said.

The gangly goblin nodded vigorously. “We don’t do stuff like that to people. Shave their cats, sure, but that’s it.”

Moratrayas walked over to Sandra and gently lifted her head. “I know what it’s like to lose everything. That won’t happen to you and your loved ones. You’ll get them back and have the peaceful life you deserve.”

High above, the goblins giggled and made kissing noises. Without looking up, Moratrayas said, “Another sound out of any of you and there will be violence.”

Before Sandra could thank Moratrayas or throw something at the goblins, Igor stumbled into the room burdened down by a mountain of packages. “Almost done packing fuel for the clockworks.”

Moratrayas took one of the packages from him and carried it to the barge. “Igor, have you seen my spare cane?”

“You left it in the master bedroom under a pile of dirty socks and the latest issue of Mad Scientists Quarterly, the one with the flying clockwork design.” Igor set his load down in the barge and headed back for more.

“The publisher needs to change the title of that magazine,” Moratrayas complained. “It’s feeding people’s stereotypes.”

Sandra got up and followed Igor. “Is there anything I can do to help? I feel like a fifth wheel sitting around here.”

Igor smiled and pointed outside the lab. “Sure! I’ve got stacks of boxes in the main hall. Loading them will go a lot faster with help. And don’t worry, nothing bites unless you turn it on.”

“That’s…mildly comforting,” Sandra said. She followed Igor to the door, but froze in her tracks when a half completed clockwork man hanging from the ceiling waved at her. Her face turned a shade paler and she backed away. “Is that normal?”

“Normal is a relative term around here,” Igor told her.

“Normal is also overrated,” Moratrayas said. “Extraordinary is a far superior goal.”

Looking a bit ill, Sandra waved back to the clockwork and left the lab. Igor was right behind her, but Moratrayas grabbed his arm before he followed her out.
“Igor, how much food and money have you packed for the trip?”

Igor looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see, I’ve set aside enough to last us months and forty silver pieces for incidentals. You know, bribes, kickbacks, graft, campaign contributions. ”

“Triple the food supplies and cash.”

Igor didn’t question his master, just smiled and nodded. “Right, be a bit of a squeeze getting it all in, but we’ll manage. Being in close quarters with a pretty young thing is no hardship, right?”

“Don’t start,” Moratrayas said sharply. “I’ve already had enough grief from the goblins on that account.”

“Perceptive little things, aren’t they?” he said, and ducked out of the lab before Moratrayas could argue with him.

Once they were gone, Moratrayas gazed at the map of the Raushtad Mountains. “Four or five days to reach Sun Valley. Another two days will take us to the land of my birth and source of this problem.”

“Spooky,” a goblin said. “You scared to go?”

“I am mildly apprehensive. It’s said you can never go home. In my case going home is easy. Getting out alive will be the hard part.”


With Sandra’s help the armored barge was loaded in a day and a half. The sturdy little vessel reminded Sandra of the heavily loaded merchant barges that occasionally came into Sun Valley to trade. She was surprised it could still float burdened down with so many packages, kegs, casks, boxes and coffers, and she wondered if it could move carrying so much weight.

Once it was loaded, Igor turned a wheel by the steel doors in the lab, opening them to reveal a small lake connected to a wide river. It was a clear day and sunlight warmed the chill air. They boarded the barge and took it out onto the river. An engine in the back of the barge made a puttering sound and glowed green, propelling them forward in place of oars or sails.

The goblins waved goodbye from the nearest tower. “Show them who’s boss, doc!”

“We’ll keep the castle free of rats while you’re gone!” the furry goblin said. “Mmm, sweet, sweet rats.”

The barge went down the river and stopped by a dock, where twenty men waited patiently for their arrival. Moratrayas stepped onto the dock and stood before the men.

“Doctor,” a well-dressed man said formally, and took off his hat.

“Ah, Mayor Blues.” Moratrayas shook his hand and nodded to the other men. “Igor and I will be leaving for a while. I trust you and the other leading citizens of Refuge will maintain order in our absence.”

“Of course, doctor.”

“I shut down my experiments and expect no emergencies, but if one arises I grant you permission to activate the clockworks in town. They will obey your orders in lieu of my own. Use them wisely.”

“We will. Thank you, sir.”

Moratrayas tapped his cane on his palm. “Now, as to the five men who made the colossally poor choice of angering me. Hold them prisoner for another five days and then release them unarmed outside the valley. By then they shouldn’t have enough time to interfere with my mission, and carrying their wounded colleague should slow them further.”

“You don’t want them executed?” Mayor Blues asked.

“I find it best not to kill my enemies. The smart ones eventually come around to my way of thinking, and the stupid ones do the job for me.” Before he returned to the barge, Moratrayas said, “And if another candidate should come while I’m gone…”

“We will house and feed him until you return.”

He nodded. “Good man.”

With that they set out, leaving Refuge and its people far behind. The barge made good time down the river carrying Igor, Sandra, Moratrayas, twenty clockworks and Gertrude the giant clockwork covered by a tarp on the back of the barge. Sandra didn’t believe they would be strong enough to save Sun Valley alone, but if a few other heroes and wizards came then her people had a chance.

If you have enjoyed this story, the full novel is available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Moratrayas-...

It was official policy of the Monster Employment Agency that all members must ride black horses while on the job. If for some reason you were too heavy to ride a horse without breaking its back in multiple places, like Gus, you could ride a wagon painted black. With fake skulls on it, which were also painted black. And the horses pulling it had to be black. Basically, you had to appear so terrifying that enemies wet themselves at the sight of you and clients would pay on time.

That was a bit of a problem for Gus. While he was by most definitions a monster, and was taller and heavier than most men, he didn’t look intimidating. Well, most of the time. His cursed plate armor was rusty, discolored, scratched and dented. Broken lengths of rusty chains dangled off his armor at odd places. His tattered cape was so dirty it was hard to tell if it was red, gray or black. Gus had no weapons, and in truth had never needed one. He looked horribly out of place riding his black wagon pulled by matching black mares. A passerby could be forgiven for thinking some terrible mistake had been made for Gus to have such menacing transportation.

The forest he was traveling through was dark and dreary enough for the wagon and mares to fit in perfectly. Clearly no one had been managing it for many years. Usually lumberjacks would thin a forest, but these trees grew in a dense mass, allowing little light to reach the soil heavy with rotting leaves and fallen branches. Places like this were rare and highly prized by those who desire solitude, and lonely roads running through the woods were closely watched. That could make his journey difficult.

“Good evening, sir,” a snide voice called out. Gus spotted eight swordsmen in leather armor at the edge of the road. They were dirty, hadn’t shaved in a while and had about twenty teeth between the lot of them. Their spokesman smirked and waved his sword at Gus’ wagon. “A nice ride, sir. Makes me wonder how a man of such limited means acquired it.”

Gus let the wagon slow to a stop in front of the swordsmen. “I was issued it last week.”

“Issued it? Well, someone has more money than sense. I think…are your chains rattling?”

“They are.” It was a slow rattle, chick-chick-chick.

There was a short pause. “Are you one of those horrible monsters of the night that don’t look like much until you get angry and then everybody dies?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“There are clues,” the swordsman admitted. “You, ah, mind if we wander off and do something else? Anything else except dying?”

Gus took a letter from the wagon and checked it. “Let me see. You’re not why I came, so there’s no need for this road to get painted red. Off you go.”

The swordsman bowed slightly before he and his fellows ran away as fast as hares chased by hounds. Gus’ chains stopped rattling and he rode on. Third time today that had happened. The authorities really had to start patrolling these roads even if nearby towns didn’t generate much tax revenue. A quick glance showed this was potentially a rich source of timber, and with current market prices that would—

Gus shook his head. That was the old him talking, before he found his armor. No room for that kind of thinking these days. Like it or not he was a monster, and a gainfully employed one at that. Time to get to work and start billing.

“Lot of barking for no bite,” Gus said as he continued on his way. Most bandits were like that. There was a lot of that in his job. Prove you’re willing to fight back and most enemies decide they have better things to do. The other extreme was just as bad, men with no idea what they were doing yet ready to fight to their last breath. It took a lot of effort to scare them off without hurting them too badly. Dead men were bad for business, encouraging others to avenge them or die (messily) trying. Trained, professional, heavily armed enemies were thankfully rare and usually open to talking.

Trees thinned along the road until Gus entered cropland bathed in warm sunshine. This was normally a bad move for a monster, as there would be lots of people and no cover to hide in when torch wielding mobs showed up. Fortunately, this wasn’t a concern. Farmers who saw him as they worked in the fields waved enthusiastically. Two men cheered. Confident of a good reception Gus rode on until he saw a small walled city along a river.

Gus checked his letter. This was the city of Lemet, population twelve thousand, give or take a few hundred. Major exports included food, timber, rope, pottery and horse head bookends. No military presence, as it was far from hostile borders and not given to rebelling. Tax revenue was modest and mostly came in the form of goods rather than coins. The local duke gave the city no thought when there were many problems to deal with and larger, more prosperous communities to squeeze for money.

These people were his new employers.

Gus reached the city gate to find cheering crowds gathering. A few enterprising people even hung brightly colored banners. It was more than Gus had expected, but his instructions clearly stated he was to go through the main gate in broad daylight, not sneak in at night like usual. Residents were well fed and reasonably prosperous. No silk and furs, but their clothes were in good condition without tears or holes. That was rare these days.

“Sir, this way,” a spearman said. He guided Gus to a wood podium in the city plaza. A small band played loud and not particularly good music, but they were trying. Rudolf Praise, mayor of Lemet, stood on the podium, his yellow clothes and gold key of office hanging from his neck making him stand out from the crowd of thousands. People got out of Gus’ way as he rode up to the podium and stopped.

“Mayor Praise, I—” Gus began before a tuba player drown him out.

“What?” Praise yelled.

“I hope you haven’t waited long!”

“Hold on, I can’t hear you! Jesse, kill the music. I know the song isn’t finished, but he’s here and we—stop playing!”

The music died down and the crowd’s wild cheering stopped. Gus stood up so the crowd could get a better look at him. His appearance usually didn’t inspire anyone, but they seemed satisfied. A few women waved. Gus said, “Mayor Praise, I hope I haven’t made you wait long.”

“For you we would have waited all day and tomorrow, too.” Citizens nodded at the mayor’s words.

Gus checked his letter again. “The Monster Employment Agency was pleased with your offer and sent me to handle your city’s problem. Rest assured that whatever troubles you won’t do so for much longer. Umm, what is troubling you?”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t say much in the letter. I worried the authorities might get hold of it before it reached you. If they did, I could say I needed bandits hunted. Have you seen our bandits? Worse than rats.”

“Tell him!” a man in the crowd yelled.

“You don’t want to do this in private?” Gus asked.

“No!” the crowd yelled together.

“It’s not a secret,” Mayor Praise told Gus. “Matter of fact, it was a council of leading citizens who came up with the idea of hiring you.”

“Then what’s going on here?” Gus asked. “You all look happy and healthy with no need of aid.”

The mayor nodded. “We’re happy, but not for long. Our duke says the region isn’t safe, which is kind of true, and we need protection. He’s about to send troops to our city. The real story is he’s having trouble feeding and paying his men. Sending a hundred soldiers here means we have to do it for him out of our own pockets. I’ve heard from other mayors who got ‘protection’. All those soldiers do is eat, push around citizens and, ahem, take an interest in our women.”

“Take an interest?” Gus asked.

Mayor Praise looked queasy. “By law we have to provide them twenty unmarried women to act as serving girls, cooks and, uh, companions. Nudge nudge wink wink.”

That did it. The crowd screamed and backed away as Gus’ blood boiled and he took his true form. Rust shook off to reveal his black and electric blue full plate armor. Fingers on his gauntlets ended in barbed claws. Tattered rags turned into a silk cape of royal purple. Chains dangling off him extended until they were twenty feet long and had scythe blades at the ends. Those chains waved about like lethal serpents, promising violence to anyone foolish enough to approach. Every inch of his armor and chains was covered in intricate etchings showing dragons breathing fire.

“Deep breaths,” Gus whispered to himself. “You’re in control. Murder won’t solve anything.”

Slowly his cursed armor returned to its dilapidated state. The scythes and most of the chains crumbled away, his cape became rags, and rust spread across steel until he once more looked pathetic and weak. “Sorry, I do that sometimes. Go on.”

The crowd relaxed now that Gus was back to normal. Mayor praise gulped and said, “Yes, well, we tried getting around that part. There were three hundred weddings in the last two weeks, so there are only eight unmarried women in the city.”

“Seven!” a woman in a white dress yelled.

“Woo who!”

“Good for you, Maggie,” the mayor said.

“Three hundred weddings in two weeks,” Gus said in awe. “That must have been a logistical nightmare.”

“It was tricky, and it didn’t help,” the mayor replied. “The duke heard and said we still had to send twenty women married or not. He also sent the bill for one month of ‘protection’. It comes out to three hundred guilders a month in cash and supplies, and the soldiers can demand more in an emergency.”

“Who decides what’s an emergency?” Gus asked.

“The duke or the officer commanding the soldiers,” the mayor replied. “I don’t have a say in the matter.”

“Typical,” Gus muttered. It was poor decisions like this that ruined a kingdom’s economy. Why they didn’t have qualified accountants on every king’s staff was…not something Gus should be worrying about anymore. “I can deal with those men, but it will take time.”

“What?” The mayor’s puzzled expression quickly turned to fear. “No, wait, we don’t want them dead, or even kicked in the shin! If that happened the duke would send more with a bigger bill for us to pay. We just need you to be scary.”

“I think he can do that,” a man in the crowd said. Others nodded.

Gus was about to clarify that he meant drive off the soldiers, not kill them, but before he could Mayor Praise pointed at a distant hill or possibly a small mountain. There were the ruins of a castle at the top. It was in fair shape, with undamaged walls and mostly intact roofs on the towers and keep.

“That’s Castle Wolf Fang. It was abandoned after the No Battles War. See, the king of the time decided to catch his enemies by surprise by marching an army through Miasma Swamp and hitting them before they were ready. It saved three weeks off his travel time and half his men caught bone break fever. Surviving men took shelter in Castle Wolf Fang, where they spread it to the garrison. The few who survived fled and surrendered to an enemy army, spreading the fever again. Long story short, the war ended with heavy losses on both sides and not a single battle fought, and nobody’s lived in Wolf’s Fang ever since. We’d like you to move in.”

“To what end?”

“The king’s soldiers are really good at not fighting,” the mayor said. Gus tilted his head to one side, and the mayor went on. “They swagger around with their armor and weapons, telling people to do what they’re told or bad things could happen. But if there’s a real fight, one they might lose, they do a tactical retreat, which is running away without being executed for cowardice.”

“That fits with my experience with armies.” Gus had seen armies go months without pay and weeks without food until they stole and ate everything in sight. While that was mostly poor logistics and leadership, there were a lot of soldiers who spent their entire careers looking impressive without ever fighting an armed man. Normally that was a good thing, but when they needed to fight they didn’t, sneaking off unless they were sure of an overwhelming victory.

“Once I tell them about the terrible monster living nearby, they won’t want to come here because they’d be expected to fight you, or risk you coming into the city after them,” the mayor continued. “That’s dangerous. Plus the king stopped offering bounties years ago after soldiers made up phony monsters to ‘kill’ for gold. And if we say you have no treasure to take there’s no reason to fight you. They’ll find an excuse to be quartered somewhere else and we won’t get stuck paying them and getting pushed around.”

“Exactly how long do you want me to do this?” Gus asked.

“A couple years at least. We’ll pay you by the month and you don’t have to do anything besides make an appearance when outsiders show up as proof you live here. And there are bonuses.”

Gus perked up. “Bonuses?”

Mayor Praise handed Gus papers detailing his payments. “There are minor threats in the area who agreed to swear loyalty to you. They’re mostly pests looking for protection. We’ll pay you a monthly fee for each one that signs up with you, because then we won’t have to deal with anymore. Plus there are women of questionable morals in the area happy to partner with a powerful monster.”

Gus paged through the papers. “Quite a few such women.”

“It’s embarrassing, I know, but I’m told it’s like that wherever you go.”

Gus kept paging. “Not anywhere I’ve been. You know I charge by the month, right? My fee is going to be staggering if I stay here for years.”

“Not compared to the soldiers.” Mayor Praise handed Gus a balance sheet showing the price for housing and paying a hundred soldiers versus hiring one monster. As a former certified public accountant, Gus appreciated how much detail the mayor had gone to. Gus’ fee for three years of service was high, and nowhere near what quartering a hundred soldiers for the same time was.

“Do you want me to do anything else for this money? Hunt bandits, kill wolves, entertain at children’s parties?”

Mayor Praise shrugged. “If you want to, but what we really need is a big scary monster in residence. I know of two other cities with their own monsters, and they’re as happy as can be. I understand it even improves tourism.”

“What if adventurers wander into town?”
“We’ll tell them you have a tragic backstory and pay them to hunt bandits. So, do we have a deal?”

Gus looked at the hopeful faces of thousands of Lemet’s people, men and women who’d decided having a monster was a good thing. Gus was wanted here. Nobody had wanted him around even when he’d been fully human. It felt…good. He looked up at the ruins of Castle Wolf Fang, which honestly just needed light repairs and a fresh coat of paint. It was rent free, too.

“Mayor, you’ve got yourself a monster.”