Wizards’ Worlds by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online

abstemious to a degree astounding among his fellows, though he did what he could
     to conceal that difference. He could loot, he could whore, he could kill—and he had—but
     always calculatingly.
    “I’m for bed,” he arose and reached for his bow, “the road this day was long—”
    Urre might not have heard him at all, his attention was fixed on the tray of tankards.
     Onsway nodded absently; he was watching Urre as he always did. But the mistress was
     alert to the hint of more profit.
    “Bed, good master? Three coins—and a fire on the hearth, too.”
    “Good enough.” He nodded, and she screeched for the pot boy, who came at a limping
     waddle, wiping his grimed hands on the black rags of an apron knotted about him.

    While the inn gave the impression of space below, on the second floor it was much
     more cramped. At least the room into which Trystan tramped was no more than a narrow
     slit of space with a single window covered by a shutter heavily barred. There was
     a litter of dried rushes on the floor and a rough bed frame, on which a pile of bedding
     lay as if tossed. The hearth fire promised did not exist. But a legged brazier with
     some glowing coals gave off a little heat, and a stool beside a warp-sided chest did
     service as a table. The pot boy set the candle down on that and was ready to scuttle
     away when Trystan, who had gone to the window, hailed him.
    “What manner of siege have you had here, boy? This shutter has been so long barred
     it is rusted tight.”
    The boy cringed back against the edge of the door, his slack mouth hanging open. He
     was an ugly lout, and looked half-witted into the bargain, Trystan thought. But surely
     there was something more than just stupidity in his face when he looked to the window—there
     was surely fear also.
    “Thhheee tooods—” His speech was thick. He had lifted his hands breast high, was clasping
     them so tightly together that his knuckles stood out as bony knobs.
    Trystan had heard the enemy called many things, but never toads, nor had he believed
     they had raided into Grimmerdale.
    “Toads?” He made a question of the word.
    The boy turned his head away so that he looked neither to the window nor at Trystan.
     It was very evident he planned escape. The man crossed the narrow room with effortless
     and noiseless strides, caught him by the shoulder.
    “What manner of toads?” He shook the boy slightly.
    “Toodss—Thhheee toods—” the boy seemed to think Trystan should know of what he spoke.
     “They—that sit ‘mong the Standing Stones—that what do men evil.” His voice, while
     thick, no longer sputtered so. “All men know the Toods o’ Grimmerdale!” Then, with
     a twist whichshowed he had long experience in escaping, he broke from Trystan’s hold and was gone.
     The man did not pursue him.
    Rather he stood frowning in the light of the single candle. Toads—and Grimmerdale—together
     they had a faintly familiar sound. Now he set memory to work. Toads and Grimmerdale—what
     did he know of either?
    The dale was of importance, more so now than in the days before the war when men favored
     a more southern route to the port. That highway had fallen almost at once into invader
     hands, and they had kept it forted and patroled. The answer had been this secondary
     road, which heretofore had been used mainly by shepherds and herdsmen. Three different
     trails from upcountry united at the western edge of Grimmerdale.
    However: had he not once heard of yet a fourth way, one which ran the ridges yet was
     mainly shunned, a very old way, antedating the coming of his own people? Now—he nodded
     as memory supplied answers. The Toads of Grimmerdale! One of the many stories about
     the remnants of those other people, or things, which had already mostly faded from
     this land, so that the coming of man did not dislodge them, for the land had been
     largely deserted before the first settlement ship arrived.
    Still there were places in