Murder in Cormyr by Chet Williamson Page A

world’s comin’ to.” “Aye. Don’t know.” “So how’s the barley?”
    It could go on like that for hours. At least I had one stroke of luck, if you can call it that. I learned that Farmer Bortas, one of those who Shortshanks told me had seen Dovo’s fake ghost, was sitting in the corner with two other rude tillers of the soil. I went over and introduced myself as Benelaius’s servant. His crinkly old eyes lit up.
    “Benelaius’s lad, are ye? Sure and it’s good to have a wizard in our midst, a fine gentleman like that, though I never met ‘im mysel’. You met ‘im, Rob? Will?”
    Rob and Will clutched their pipes firmly in their jaws and shook their heads. “Don’t cotton to wizards mysel’,” Will stated out of a corner of his mouth. “Seems unnatural, like.”
    “Aye,” agreed Rob.
    I figured the only way to get into all of their good graces was to buy them drinks, so I made the offer and they accepted, ordering a pitcher of Shadowdark ale, the most pricey beverage the Swamp Rat served.
    “Thankee, young man,” Farmer Bortas said heartily, but the two others merely nodded their thanks, apparently not “cottonin’” to wizards’ servants either.
    “So I understand,” I said, getting to it, “that you saw this phony ghost that this fellow who got killed was playing?”
    A cloud gathered on Bortas’s face. “Aye, I saw it all right—or I saw him, the cheap faker! Scared me and my good wife out of a week’s sleep, it did. She still wakes up screamin’, ‘0, ‘tis the ghost, ‘tis the ghost!’ and I has to tell her no, it ain’t the ghost, he’s back in the swamp. Now I guess I’ll be tellin’ her there weren’t no ghost to begin with.”
    “What was he—this Dovo chap—doing when you saw him?” I asked.
    “Hauntin’. My wife seen ‘im first. She grabs me by the arm and says real sharp, ‘Look!’ and I look and there he is. T’was about a quarter mile west of here, where the road curves down closest to the swamp. His face is all green and glowin’ and he starts moanin’ and walks toward us slow like, swingin’ his axe back and forth. Fair gave me the willies, it did. How’s I to know it wasn’t real? So’s I put the whip to old Ned and we tuck off down the road and didn’t slow down till we gets here. We runs inside and tells ‘em all what I seen, and a whole bunch of us goes back to where I seen it—Rob ‘n Will, you was both there, wasn’t you?”
    “Aye,” said Rob and Will in unison.
    “But there weren’t nothin’ there. Not a blessed thing. Like that man just sunk into the very earth.”
    “You searched around then?”
    “Oh aye, we searched—just to the edge of the swamp, mind. It took enough gumption just fer us to go that near the swamp at night. But we found nary a thing.”
    “Was he carrying anything other than the axe?” I asked, remembering the pieces of broken lantern glass.
    “He could’ve had an oliphant in his other hand for all I knew. I just saw that axe a-swingin’, and that was enough for me and the missus.”
    “But nothing else… glowing?”
    “Just his face. Like a corpse it was.” He shook his head with a mixture of disgust and regret “And like a corpse he is now, sure enough. Met up with someone who played a trick right back on ‘im, rest his soul.” Then he beamed at me again. “But lookin’ at the bright side, we got no ghost spookin’ around anymore.” A similar sentiment, I thought, to Shortshanks’s.
    The conversation changed to farming then, but I noticed that Grodoveth and Tobald were standing up, Tobald brushing crumbs off his shirtfront. I strained to hear what they were saying over Farmer Bortas’s droning about oats, and caught Grodoveth saying,”.., too tired to ride back. I’ll just spend the night here.”
    And Tobald replied, “Well, I’ve got to get up early and help Barthelm. Are you sure? I hate riding back alone–-“
    Then Bortas said something, but I just managed to catch Grodoveth’s