“Ah, right. Yes, and what a fine chest it is. And may I ask: what do you carry in it?”
“Everything.”
And that was that.
“We’ll make the best of it,” Braiden whispered to Augustin. “It’s not a bad situation, really. This still means that we’re absolved of the dozens of debts your grandmother threatened us with.”
Augustin glanced over his shoulder, making it far too obvious that they were talking about Elder Bahul in particular. If the elder reacted, Braiden couldn’t see enough of his face to tell.
“The trouble is, I’m not sure I can manage a fleetfoot spell for all five of us.” He scratched the back of his head. “In fact, you might say I was bragging a bit when I offered outside theentrance. Three pairs of feet is doable. Four is a stretch. Five would knock me right into a stupor.”
“Want to walk faster?” Elder Bahul called from the back of the line.
Braiden stiffened. “Sorry?” he asked, forcing a casual friendliness to his voice, unsure if the elder was responding to their very noisy whispering or asking out of thin air.
“Do you want to walk faster?” Bahul repeated. “These upper levels are well explored. We can go deeper, faster. I happen to have a concoction that can help.”
Augustin leaned in even closer to whisper. “That’s the most words he’s ever spoken to us. We should take him up on his offer.”
“And what a fine offer it is!” Elder Bahul boomed, suddenly revivified.
Braiden and the others stopped in their tracks in shock, the elder’s tone so electric, so — charismatic. When they turned to face him, Elder Bahul’s chest was no longer strapped to his back, but placed on the ground, its lid opened wide to reveal a fine assortment of goods.
Because it wasn’t simply a chest, after all, but a bizarre sort of cabinet, compartments of various sizes built into both the lid and the body holding vials, trinkets, and scrolls of all sorts, charms and talismans hanging from hooks screwed firmly into the lid.
Everything seemed to sparkle somehow, even things that weren’t supposed to be shiny, the bits of coral, the pieces of parchment. Braiden poked a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. Was there calliope music coming from somewhere, too?
“And here it is!” Elder Bahul announced, stretching out his hand with all the bravado of a professional magician. That jar simply had no business looking so shiny and tempting in hisgrasp, but there it was, as big as a beer mug, a gleaming vessel in bluish-green glass.
“Smear this on your feet and your speed can’t be beat, whether meant for a hike or expeditious retreat.”
A former smuggler, now an elder, and a traveling merchant, too? Braiden blinked hard, trying his best not to show his shock. He could barely see Bahul’s eyes past the snowy bushiness of his eyebrows, but he knew that they were twinkling, as radiant as stars.
Whowasthis man? Was the dungeon now full of doppelgängers, or ghosts? Gods, had something wicked possessed the elder in all the five minutes they had their backs turned? Elder Orora would never let them hear the end of it.
“And all for the low, low price of — ”
The number went in Braiden’s left ear and out the right, barely leaving traces of its ridiculousness as it squeezed through his brain.
Why had he ever expected this to go so easy? If Elder Orora wasn’t wringing every last gold coin out of them, Elder Bahul would. He was still an elder of Weathervale, after all, one of the villains who called the Lighthouse their secret lair. Out of the frying pan and straight into the hellish, flaming pit.
“We’ll take it,” Braiden groaned in surrender. “We have to. It’s for Bones’s sake.”
Elder Bahul’s shoulders slumped, the lightning receding from his posture, as if sucked away by sheer contact with the ground. He clicked his fingers and the chest snapped shut.
“All sales are final,” he droned, back to the boring old Bahul. “Here. Pass it around.”
With a single deft twist of his hand, he opened the jar and scooped out a quantity of yellowish gunk to smear on the soles of his boots.
“What just happened?” Elyssandra hissed as Warren looked bemusedly from his handful of ointment to the bottom of his feet.
“I don’t know,” Braiden hissed back. “Just go with it.”
“I’ll put it on your tab,” Elder Bahul said, fully lodged back into his normal catatonic state. “Flutterbutter don’t come cheap.”
“Much appreciated,” Braiden said, hoping he didn’t sound too sarcastic. Flutterbutter? Honestly.
He scooped up half a handful of the stuff with his fingers, grimacing at the oily, oddly familiar texture of the ointment. He wrinkled his nose as if that might help him avoid its smell, but it wafted up to him even as he smeared it onto the soles of his shoes.
