Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1 Read online

  But at this the elf leaped down from the bed and stamped her foot.

  “I tell you, man, I am NOT one of your sawdust-stuffed puppets!”

  But Master Franz was no longer listening to her. Instead he pulled open a narrow drawer where, each in a compartment all its own, lay tresses of hair, hair in all colors and shades from glowing red-gold to shadeless black.

  “Blue eyes,” he muttered to himself. “Not brown, then, nor this yellow. Yes, we shall use black.”

  The elf who had been leaning over the edge of the shelf in a most perilous manner drew a deep breath.

  “Why not?” she asked herself. “That old witch’s spell may have wiped the hair from my head, but wearing a wig I could still go to the ball tonight. Let him continue to believe me a doll until after he has done that for me.”

  So she allowed Master Franz to lift her down to his worktable, to measure and fit until she could stand it no longer, but wriggled out of his fingers to run and stare at herself in the mirror of a doll’s toilet set.

  “One of my best jobs, I think,” said Master Franz with some pride. “Now you are even prettier than Her Majesty up yonder.” He pointed to the doll queen seated haughtily on her throne on the very top shelf.

  “I should think that I am!” retorted the elf. “Prettier than a puppet, indeed! But I like your work very much, toymaker, so I shall make you a gift in return. What do you want most in the world?”

  “What do I want? This is a queer dream indeed. Well, I shall answer the truth to that. I wish for nothing that I do not now have in my two hands. I am very content with this shop and my work here. No, there is nothing at all for me to wish for,” laughed Master Franz.

  The elf frowned. “That is not a proper answer at all, man. But since you will not tell me, I shall choose for you. And now I must be off or I shall be late for the ball. Goodnight, toymaker, and see what you shall find on this table tomorrow!”

  With that she disappeared and Master Franz sat blinking. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. To be sure, there were two long black hairs caught in a drop of glue on the boards before him. But of course he had been dreaming.

  “Bed is the place for me. I’m too sleepy to be of use here.”

  He blew out his candles and went off to his bed.

  When he came into the shop the next morning something lay glittering in a patch of sunlight on the worktable. It was a snuffbox of gold with a quaint design of dancing elves scrolled around its edge.

  “Was I dreaming last night or not?” marveled Master Franz. He turned the box over. “But I’m no fine gentleman to be using snuff. I do not need this.” He dropped the snuffbox into one of the table drawers, and before the hour was past he had forgotten all about it.

  But the happy days in the Street of Carpenters did not last. One day the King’s trumpeters rode into the marketplace to proclaim war, and the men of Kammerstadt were called upon to serve in the army. Master Franz gave away the rest of the toys, laid aside his tools, and locked his shop, to put on a red coat and march away with the rest.

  One cold winter’s night he came home again. But there were no bright lights in the crooked-roofed houses to welcome him, only dark shadows and the driving cold of winter to bite through his worn coat and freeze the tears on his cheeks.

  Only in the baker’s shop was there the gleam of a candle. And Master Franz turned in there to spend his last coin for a bit of bread.

  “These are hard times for us now, Master Franz. The good days are gone from Kammerstadt,” the baker’s wife told him. “And if you are wise, you will try your fortune elsewhere. Here the King’s treasurer has sent tax gatherers to sweep up all our money, and no one has aught to spare for the buying of silly toys. A man must labor from daylight to candlelight for bare bread alone.”

  Franz went on to his shop. But all the magic which had once filled it was gone. Cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung from the empty shelves and he could hardly remember now how it had once looked. He crouched down beside the worktable with his aching head in his hands, and there he spent the night. In the morning he opened the drawers to look for his tools, but they had all been stolen long ago.

  However, as he pulled open the last drawer something within it rattled. And so again he found the snuffbox. Franz could hardly believe his good fortune. Such a trinket would certainly be worth a pocketful of gold to him now. But should he, dared he, offer it for sale in Kammerstadt? Who would believe that one as ragged and poor as he had come by it honestly? He might be thrown into prison if he showed it.

  It would be better to take the advice of the baker’s wife. If no one in Kammerstadt would now buy toys, there were other cities where his skill might again earn his living. He had no ties to keep him fast in these ruins of his old life.

  So, with the snuffbox safely hidden, Franz went out through the gates of Kammerstadt and followed the highway eastward to a new life.

  He wandered from city to city, village to village. And he did not sell the snuffbox, for it seemed to him that his luck had changed from the moment he had found it. Now he was able to find work, and for some weeks he was a carpenter’s helper. When he left that shop he had a new coat on his back, whole shoes on his feet, and a knapsack of supplies.

  But in all his wanderings he found no city or village in which he wished to settle, or where he thought that the toymaker’s craft would be truly welcomed.

  After many months he came through the pass in the Gorgen Mountains and looked down upon a green and smiling land below wherein was set a fair city of many towers.

  “Now I believe,” said Franz to the tumbled rocks about him,” that this is the place for which I have been searching all these weary days. Here lies the city where I wish to stay.”

  And he set off down the mountain road at a good pace. But the city was farther off than it had appeared from the pass. At nightfall he found himself still in the wilderness, so he built a fire and grubbed in his knapsack for any bits of food he might have overlooked. His fingers found only the snuffbox. He brought it out into the firelight, turning it over and over.

  “There is good gold in you,” he observed. “Mayhap it will buy me proper tools and a roof to use them under. But tonight I could almost wish that you would give me food and drink.”

  No sooner had those words passed his lips than the snuffbox squeezed between his fingers and flew open on the moss at his feet. Before he could pick it up, a square of cloth floated out to grow and grow and spread itself with smoking dishes fit for a king’s table.

  At first Franz was almost afraid to eat the mysterious feast. But his hunger was greater than his caution, and he ate and drank to the last crumb. When he had done, the cloth and the dishes shrank back into the snuffbox, which then snapped shut with a click. Franz picked it up and stowed it away in his money belt.

  “It would seem that I have an even greater treasure than I thought,” he mused. “Will it obey my every wish or only three? That is a point I must think about, for many such gifts in past legends have been limited that way. And if that is true, I must take care as to how I spend the two still remaining.”

  He began to dream of all a man might wish for: wealth, a throne, the hand of the loveliest princess in the world. But none of these seemed very real to Franz. He decided that he had lived too long by the skill of his hands to care for any of them.

  By noon of the next day he came to the gates of the city. But now its grim gray walls and the many angry-red and somber-black banners hanging over them did not seem inviting. The spiked gates were closed, and to enter he had to pass through a small postern and answer the many sharp questions of the sentries on duty there.

  Within, the city was no pleasanter. There were many merchants’ booths in the market, but the men who kept them had white, worried faces, and they all glanced back now and again over their shoulders as if an enemy might creep upon them. To Franz it was plain that this was a city where some terror ruled.

  He found an inn, but when he sat down and called for ale,
the little serving maid came reluctantly to bring it. As she put down his tankard she lingered a moment, scrubbing the table with her stained apron.

  “Get you gone, stranger,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  Her face was twisted with fear as she answered. “They will be after you. No stranger enters the gates that she does not hear of it. And with strangers she has her sport.”

  “And who is she?”

  “The Lady Carola, she whom the Princess Katha set over us in rule. Go quickly now, if you can, stranger. But perhaps it is already too late. And if that is so, no man or woman within these walls will raise a hand to aid you.”

  Franz sipped his ale. Fear he had known many times before, and never did it profit a man to turn his back upon it.

  Some minutes later a file of men-at-arms tramped into the inn and ordered him to come with them. So was Franz brought to the tall keep in the very heart of the city to meet the ruler of that place.

  She was neither young nor old, and he could not have said whether she had beauty or was plain. But in her face and her clutching hands there were both power and evil, and Franz straightway hated her as he had never known hatred before.

  “A strong man,” she said harshly. “Now if you but have wits to match your strength, it shall make our contest the more interesting for both of us.”

  “Our contest, Lady?”

  “Aye. Since the Princess Katha thought it wise to retire from the world, I have ruled this doltish city and its teeming fools. Contests of wit and will are my only amusement. Thus shall I set you three tasks, and if you cannot accomplish them—then you shall take your place among these!”

  At her gesture one of the guards swept back a curtain of tapestry, and Franz saw in the wall a row of niches. In each, except for one, was a man of stone.

  “Witch,” returned the toymaker, “the contest you propose is an old one. There are legends in my homeland of such. But in the fullness of time there was always the same end to them.”

  “And that?” she prompted him.

  “The witch lost.”

  She laughed. “If I lose, stranger, your reward shall be all the greater. But time is passing. I must set the first task before daylight is gone.

  “On the top of this keep there is an eagle’s nest which has been there this hundred years. And in that nest—so men say—is the crown of an earlier ruler of this land. I have a fancy to wear that crown. Fetch it down for me, stranger!”

  The guards marched Franz out into the courtyard.

  “You have two hours,” the captain told him sharply.

  The walls of the keep were smooth stone without even hold enough for a fingernail of one who would climb. Franz slipped his hand beneath his coat and brought out the snuffbox. Now, if never again, he needed its aid.

  “I wish for a way to climb the keep,” he said slowly.

  The box clicked open, and a thin golden vine hitched out of it. Up to the wall of the keep it crept and plastered itself against the stone, clinging as an ivy vine, growing steadily higher and higher. On this ladder Franz began to climb, not daring to look down. Up and up he followed the golden vine until at last, with aching arms, he pulled himself over the top and half tumbled, half jumped into a great mass of sticks and the bones of the eagles’ prey.

  Through this evil-smelling mess he combed until he found a circlet which flashed with jeweled fire. Then he trusted himself again to the vine. As he climbed down it, it shrank with his passing, so that when the stones of the courtyard were once more under his feet, the vine flowed back into the snuffbox.

  But the Lady Carola had no pleasure in the crown when he offered it to her. Instead, flames of anger danced in her eyes.

  “You are very clever, stranger!” Her voice was the hiss of a serpent. “Once you have won, but not twice, I think. Listen to the second task I set you:

  “In the stable stands a roan mare which it is my will to ride. But since the beast is mad and attacks all who would approach it, it has never been saddled. Bring it hither gentled, stranger, and I shall believe that you have powers greater than mine!”

  “So be it,” replied Franz calmly.

  Now Franz was city bred and knew but little of horses. However, it was plain to the most ignorant that the roan that the guards showed him was not only mad, but in its madness it was driven by a hate against all mankind. It reared and beat its hoofs against the wall, baring teeth at those who would come near it, restrained only by the heavy chains at its bridle.

  “Within the hour, fool,” laughed the captain, “we shall return to carry hence what is left of you.”

  “A most courteous act,” returned Franz quietly. He waited until they had left the stable before he brought out the snuffbox.

  “Give me now what will best master this demon,” he asked of it.

  Over the rim of the snuffbox fell a ball of rosy light which grew larger as it rolled across the floor until it lay quiet before the mare. The tall horse stood still, its eyes fixed upon the light. Franz ventured to lay a hand on a quivering flank. The horse did not move.

  So did it continue to stand statue-still while Franz, with many fumblings, saddled it. Then it allowed the toymaker to lead it out, while the ball rolled before them. Thus Franz brought the mare through the crowd of awestricken men into the great hall.

  At the sight of the mare, the Lady Carola shrank back in her seat. But the flames in her eyes grew, and her mouth was straight and grim.

  “Twice you have won, stranger!” Her voice arose in a harsh scream of rage. “But for you there shall be no third victory. Ten years upon ten years ago the Princess Katha went from among us, leaving this city in my hands. And no man knows whither she went. Bring her back to this high seat! That I ask of you now, little man who would match wits with me!”

  For the last time Franz touched the snuffbox and muttered his wish. But nothing happened. And he knew, with a sinking heart, that three wishes only had that box held, and he had used them all. As he stood there defenseless, the Lady Carola laughed.

  “So do I win! Seize him, guards!”

  But Franz was desperate, and he turned to the nearest man-at-arms, snatching the spear from his hands. He hurled it swiftly, not at any who moved upon him, but at that ball of light which held the wild horse captive.

  There was the tinkling of breaking crystal, and fast upon it came the scream of the mare released from the thrall the ball had laid upon her, ready to turn on them all. The Lady Carola cowered in the high seat.

  “No!” she screamed. “Be as you were! Be as you were!”

  And the mare was gone. In its place stood a girl with a banner of red-gold hair flying about her shoulders and a high, proud look about her such as a queen might wear.

  “At last!” Her voice carried through the hall. “At last your spell is broken, Carola, and we two come to an accounting!”

  To that the Lady Carola made no answer. She crouched, babbling; nor did she ever again speak a word of sense. Thus did the Princess Katha return to her city. And with her coming, the dark cloud which had held its towers in thrall was whirled away and the sun shone brightly once more in its streets and squares.

  To Franz, the Princess Katha offered a place at court and what honors it was in her power to bestow. But he returned a straight and honest answer.

  “Liege Lady, in my hands is my fortune. I want only to be left to use my skill as best I may.”

  So did there appear in that city a toy shop. And, since peace and plenty were there also, Franz indeed found the home of his dreams. By the princess’ will he served upon her council, and it was often noted that when a matter of import was to be decided, Master Franz fingered a golden snuffbox until he gave his word upon the matter. It was his luck, he sometimes said.

  Ully the Piper

  High Sorcery (1970) ACE, Fantasy Stories (2003) Kingfisher

  The dales of High Hallack are many and some are even forgotten, save by those who live in them. During the great war with the invad
ers from overseas, when the lords of the dales and their armsmen fought, skulked, prospered, or sank in defeat, there were small places left to a kind of slumber, overlooked by warriors. There, life went on as it always had, the dalesmen content in their islands of safety, letting the rest of the world roar on as it would.

  In such a dale lay Coomb Brackett, a straggle of houses and farms with no right to the title of village, though so the indwellers called it. So tall were the ridges guarding it that few but the wild shepherds of the crags knew what lay beyond them, and many of their tales were discounted by the dalesmen. But there were also ill legends about those heights that had come down from the elder days when humankind first pushed this far north and west. For men were not the first to settle here, though story said that their predecessors had worn the outward seeming of men for convenience, their real aspect being such that no dalesman would care to look upon them by morn light.

  While those elder ones had withdrawn, seeking a refuge in the Beyond Wilderness, yet at times they returned on strange pilgrimages. Did not the dalesmen keep certain feast days—or nights—when they took offerings up to rocks which bore queer markings that had not been chiseled there by wind and weather? The reason for those offerings no man now living could tell, but that luck followed their giving was an established fact.

  But the dale was good enough for the men of Coomb Brackett. Its fields were rich, a shallow river winding through them. Orchards of fruit flourished, and small woodland copses held nut trees, which also bore crops in season. Fat sheep fed placidly in the uplands, cattle ambled to the river to drink and went then to graze once more. Men sowed in spring, harvested in early autumn, and lay snug in their homesteads in winter. As they often said to one another, who wanted more in this life?

  They were as plump as their cattle and almost as slow moving at times. There was little to plague them, for even the Lord of Fartherdale, to whom they owed loyalty, had not sent his tithemen for a tale of years. There was a rumor that the lord was dead in the far-off war. Some of the prudent put aside a folding of woolen or a bolting of linen, well sprinkled with herbs to keep it fresh, against the day when the tithes might be asked again. But for the most part they spun their flax and wool, wove it into stout cloth for their own backs, ate their beef and mutton, drank ale brewed from their barley and wine from their fruit, and thought that trouble was something which struck at others far beyond their protecting heights.