The Tangle Box

Questor Thews and Abernathy stood together on the parapets of Sterling Silver and looked out across the lake that surrounded the castle island to the throngs of people streaming onto the grasslands. They had been coming all day, tens growing to hundreds, hundreds to thousands. Most had come from the Greensward, though there was a scattering of Trolls from the Melchor, wights from the barren wastelands east, and villagers and farmers from some dozen or so small communities directly north and south. They came as if vagabonds, bearing no food or blankets or even the most rudimentary implements for fire-making. They seemed not to care. Men, women, and children, some with old plow horses and mules, some with a ragtag following of dogs and cats, they had trekked their way here from wherever, as diverse a gathering as ever there was. Now they milled about across the lake from the castle and stared over at it as if hoping someone might invite them in for a good meal.

It was not food they sought, however. What each of them craved, what every single one of them had come to obtain, what all of them were determined to have at any cost, was a mind’s eye crystal.

“Look at them,” Abernathy muttered, then shook his head so that his dog ears flapped gently. “This is truly dreadful.”

“Worse than what we had anticipated, I’m afraid,” Questor Thews agreed solemnly.

They had been anticipating some sort of trouble ever since Abernathy and Bunion had returned from Rhyndweir with the story of the black-cloaked stranger and Horris Kew. A vast stash of mind’s eye crystals awaited them at Sterling Silver, the stranger had insisted. It was there for the taking. Abernathy had dutifully reported every last word to Questor Thews, and so they had braced themselves. But it was Kallendbor and the other Lords of the Greensward they had expected to face, appearing with their armies to exact an accounting, marching up to the gates to force an entry. Instead they found themselves confronted by thousands of farmers and tradesmen and their families, simple people who bore no weapons and wore no armor, all of them hungry and tired and misguided, all of them standing about like cattle waiting for someone to lead them to the barn.

Well, the barn was back the way they had come, of course, but none of them wanted to hear that. They didn’t want to hear anything that didn’t involve the words “mind’s eye crystals” and that was the sad but inescapable fact of the matter.

They certainly weren’t listening to anything Questor Thews or Abernathy had to tell them. When the first of them had arrived, quite early that morning, they had come onto the bridge that linked the island with the mainland. The portcullis had been lowered during the night, so they halted at the gates and shouted up for Ben Holiday to come down. Questor Thews had appeared on the ramparts and shouted back that the King was absent at the moment—what did they want? Mind’s eye crystals, they declared vehemently, one for each of them. Well, there weren’t any to be had, Questor had replied. They called him a liar and a few other names, and started making disparaging remarks about his lineage. Abernathy had appeared beside his friend, still feeling very responsible for the whole mess, and assured the people massed on the bridge—the number growing even as they argued—that Questor Thews was telling the truth, that there were no mind’s eye crystals inside the castle. That didn’t fly with anyone. The threats and name-calling continued. The mob grew larger.

Finally Questor sent a squad of King’s soldiers out to move the people back off the bridge and to set up a picket line on the far side of the lake. Amid much pushing and shoving, the soldiers cleared the bridge, but no one turned about and started for home as the Court Wizard had hoped. Instead they held their ground just beyond the picket line and waited for something to happen. Nothing did, of course. Questor wasn’t entirely sure what they thought might In any event, the number of people swelled into the thousands by midday, all crammed down off the high plains and surrounding hills onto the lower grasslands fronting the castle. The summer heat worsened on a day that was gloriously clear and cloudless, and tempers grew short

Then someone on one side of the picket line said something and someone on the other side said something else, and as quick as that the mob rushed the line, overpowered the soldiers, and threw them into the lake. Then they charged across the bridge for the castle gates.

This might have been the start of real trouble except that Questor was still standing out on the battlements with Abernathy trying to decide what else he could do. When he saw the mob rush the castle, he pushed up the sleeves of his old gray robe and called on his magic. This was a precipitous act if ever there was one, since Questor’s conjuring never worked well when rushed (or even when it wasn’t, for that matter), but no one was really thinking too clearly by now. He meant to send a bolt of lightning flashing down into their midst, something to scatter them or to fling them into the waters of the lake. Instead, he sent down the equivalent of several gallons of oil—not the flaming kind, the plain old greasy kind—right into the foremost of those leading the charge. The oil splashed down across the wooden surface of the bridge and the entire leading edge of the mob went down in an oily tangle of arms and legs. Those following stumbled over their fellows while trying to slow themselves or break past, and they went down, too. In seconds, the entire bridge was awash in oil-slicked bodies.