Free Kender, Gully Dwarves, Gnomes by Various Page B

The chamber had been ransacked, and the stench of rotten flesh nearly sickened him.
     Packages of food from his own store were broken and scattered everywhere. A fine layer of
     flour had settled throughout the antechamber, lending an eerie white cast to everything in
     the room.
    Martin lit a lamp he found on a small table. Its light shone through the haze of flour
     which he had disturbed when he entered. At the rear of the room, he saw another shattered
     door leading into a pitch-black tunnel. Whatever force had blasted the heavy timbers of
     those doors was more than a mere battering ram. In fact, the inner door appeared to have
     been blown completely off its hinges.
    The merchant was just starting toward the tunnel when his feet stumbled over something
     soft beside the table. He held the lamp closer and realized that it was the old dwarf's
     tattered woolen cloak. It was draped over something much firmer, something which was the
     obvious source of the stench in the small chamber. Martin lifted a corner of the filthy
     rag just enough to verify what he suspected. The old hermit's rotting body was lying
     inside some kind of mystical diagram with its bloated face staring vacantly at the
     ceiling. The head and chest were riddled with sharp splinters from the outer door, and the
     back of the scalp was badly gashed and bruised.
    “What did they do to you, old friend? Where's your fine sorcerer's robe now?” Martin
     mumbled sourly, a few tears moistening his blue eyes. Despite Lodston's crankiness, the
     merchant knew that he'd miss the dwarfs trips to Digfel. “You were playing with fire when
     you let that elven wizard teach you magic!” he scolded the silent corpse.
    Martin shook his head and turned away from Lodston's body. Being a practical man, he found
     an empty flour sack and began to rummage through the rubble, looking for anything of value
     which he might resell in his store. He found a metal cup and spoon in a scorched comer, as
     well as several half-finished golden figurines and a bit of cheap tobacco he could soak in
     wine to disguise its harshness. In the lamplight, he could see footprints where the
     searchers from Qualinesti had tracked flour into the mine. Just inside
    the mine passage, he could see a sturdy little chest lying empty on its side.
    Whatever might have been in that box, magic or otherwise, belongs to the dark elf or his
     friends now, Martin thought grimly. Just as he was leaving, he noticed the light from the
     doorway glinting on something under the table, something made of metal and glass.
    “Aha! The famous healing spectacles, I'll wager,” Martin muttered. He wiped them free of
     flour and gore from the bloody floor, then balanced them on his nose. The thick lenses
     distorted his vision so badly that his head began to hurt almost instantly.
    Humph! I don't know anybody in Digfel with eyesight bad enough for these glasses. What a
     waste of good workmanship! he thought. Still, some traveler might have a need for them.
     Martin frowned and removed the glasses, sticking them impulsively into one of his trouser
     pockets. Then he turned toward the failing sunlight outside Lodston's shattered door.
    The Storyteller By Barbara Siegel & Scott Siegel
    Spinner Kenro, you're under arrest!" announced the dragonarmy officer, the point of his
     blade at my throat.
    I swallowed hard, hoping my bobbing adam's apple wouldn't be sliced by the edge of his
     sword. Struggling to keep my voice from quivering, I said, “I haven't broken any laws. On
     what charge are you arresting me?”
    The officer, a human, his face a mottled mass of burn scars surrounding dead, gray eyes,
     growled, “You were warned, Kenro, to stop telling your stories. The Highlord doesn't give
     second chances.”
    I was standing near the fireplace in the main room of the Paw's Mark Inn. I had just
     finished telling one of my tales to the assembled audience. How strange it was to see