Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide

• Prologue •

The Dragon’s Bard’s
Most Sincere Overture

I know what you’re thinking! You’ve never seen a dragon at all—let alone any Dragonking named Khrag. You’d be right, friend, and it’s my calling day and night to see to it that you
don’t!
Now, you can discern with your own eyes that I’m no dragon slayer, but I keep old Khrag from burning down your door and savaging your town more surely than any knight who ever tilted a lance!

How? Why, good friend, I’m Edvard the Just! You’ve no doubt heard of me . . .

No?

But surely you’ve heard of the renowned Dragon’s Bard, purveyor of peace—the Minstrel of Mystery who wanders the land in search of places, people, and their tales. The tales that save all innocents from the dragon’s wrath.

That old and terrible monster Khrag, king of dragonkind, lies atop his hoard of inestimable wealth in a cavern deep among the roots of Mount Okalan, the accumulated treasure of a hundred wars beneath his deadly, ancient claws. It is as desirable a place as any dragon might long for all his long days, but dragons are creatures of adventure. Khrag lives for the stories told of the sunlit world so far above him and grows restless and angry when he is bored. But so long as his curiosity is satisfied, he’ll rest at his ease in his dark home deep in the ground.

I chanced upon Khrag quite by odd circumstance. The humorless brothers of a discomfited young lady took umbrage at finding her name prominently featured in a fictional story of rejected love, and they unthinkingly threw me into the lair of the Dragonking. Khrag was then and remains an imposing creature who, upon my rushed acquaintance, was quite prepared to eat me at once. As he raised his razor-toothed head to strike, I said to him—for dragonkind all understand the language of men—I said:

“It is entirely too bad to come to so quick an ending, for this would have made an excellent story.”

I stood humbly before the dragon, believing that I had told my final tale.

Yet the dragon—to my amazement and yours, too, I see—did
not
eat me! Instead he sat me down before him, surrounded by the gold of unnumbered kingdoms, and asked me, his great eyes gleaming, “You have stories? Perhaps I shall eat you later . . .”

Khrag hungered for stories, and I began immediately to tell him all the tales I knew. I told him all the great tales—those same epics and sagas you yourself have known since your youth. Tales of the House of Eldris—how Aubrey and his companions rallied the shattered and dispirited army of Duke Jonas the Unyielding in the Great Epic War and led them against the Nightmarch Warriors of Xander the Shadowmancer. Khrag became annoyed, and there is nothing more dangerous than an annoyed dragon. The tales were old to him. Indeed, Khrag had participated in many of these tales himself and was, I must tell you, frankly bored to dragon-tears with the same old legends of the great and powerful. So I switched at once to the tales from places of which no one has heard and of creatures whose stories are sung and praised only around small fires. Day and night were uncounted in the cavern, for my knowledge of stories is voluminous.

At last my tales ran dry. By this time I was haggard, thin, and quite worn out. I gazed up at the dragon with horrible expectation.

The dragon blew a puff of smoke from his left nostril, then spoke. “Good story—but now you have grown too gaunt, and eating you is no longer appealing to me. I think I shall find a nice village to terrorize with flame, burn to the ground, and utterly destroy.”

Now, I did feel significant relief at not being eaten on the spot, and the inclination of any lesser man would have been to flee at once. I nearly gave in to such an impulse when a thought came to me: What of those villages, towns, ports, and cities? What of the women and children who lived their lives peacefully, not knowing that this Dragonking was planning to sweep all that they held dear away from them forever?

What a fine story
that
would make!

But, no! My great heart swelled within me and courage took hold in my breast.

“Mighty Khrag,” I said, “there are many more stories across the land surrounding your lair. If you savage the countryside, they will be lost to you—to everyone. They are growing like unseen sweet truffles all around. All you need is someone to sniff them out for you. But if you go stomping about the world, you might ruin many quests and spoil their stories.”

“I want more stories!” The dragon’s great, greedy tongue flicked across his massive jowls as his eyes gleamed nearly as golden as his belly. Khrag reached forward, hooking one talon through my coat, and drew me closer as he growled, “You bag of bones! I’ll leave your precious villages alone if only you come back every midsummer with your skinny carcass, a bag of truffles, and a head full of stories.”

So it is that now I travel the face of our land, going from village to town, experiencing the lives, sights, and sounds of each place so that I might take them back to Khrag and . . .

I beg your pardon? Who? Oh,
that!
That is my apprentice, Abel. He is not terribly promising as a bard, but he is a faithful scribe—his ability to write and bind books is proving a somewhat useful addition to my already celebrated skills.

Oh, so you
read?
But of course you do! I knew at once that you were of that learned and educated class that has been trained in the art. Then perhaps I might interest you in this volume of mine, a true and accurate portrait of a village that might amuse you. You may have occasion to visit this charming locale, and such a book would serve you well, for it would acquaint you not only with the hamlet itself but with the inhabitants who live there. You would know where best to dine; where you might take your lodgings; the important eccentricities of the town’s broken wishing well; the peculiar customs regarding gnomes, pixies, and haunts; and whom you might trust there, should occasion arise.

And the citizens of that village! This book will acquaint you well with them all: Tomas Melthalion and his tragic confrontation with the Highwayman Dirk Gallowglass over his daughter, Evangeline; the dwarven blacksmith Beulandreus Dudgeon, whose arts extend beyond iron and anvil; Jep Walters and the haunted adventures of the Black Guild Brotherhood; the gentle farmer Aren Bennis, whose past is a mystery; my good friend Jarod Klum, whose love will drive him to desperately glorious deeds; and, of course, Caprice Morgan, who keeps the wishing well supplied along with her two sisters. Indeed, Khrag himself said just before he fell into a satisfied sleep that he felt he knew them so well as to make the collection on the whole a treasure of inestimable worth.

And I have many such volumes now of different places where I have traveled, which may be made available to you at a price so trivial as to . . .

My pardon! The name of this town? But of course, you may read it plainly for yourself on the cover. Upside down? Really? Allow me, then . . .

It’s called Eventide.

Chasing One’s Own Tale

Chasing One’s Own Tale

Wherein Jarod Klum meets unlikely confederates who threaten to help him win his true love . . . even if that means turning him into a hero.

• Chapter 1 •

The Innkeeper’s Glorious Service

Accounts apprentice Jarod Klum sat at his desk in the dim,
chill confines of the countinghouse and dreamed up plans for his escape.

It was not just from the countinghouse itself that he wished for his release, although he did think it appropriate that the countinghouse doubled as Eventide’s village lockup. Jarod considered himself a prisoner of his circumstances, held in the shackles of his trade, bound by the chains of his family traditions, and enslaved by fate. Here at this wooden desk and tall stool he spent his days learning the trade of counting other people’s wealth, sitting among scrolls and ledgers as dusty and quiet as his own life.