In which Our Protagonist heralds a warning, learns that some discoveries are best left undiscovered, and resolves to trust in his own instincts and abilities as opposed to those of greater powers.

They can make me come back, but they can't make me stay, thought Toede, guiding the horse back toward the forest of stone. By "they" he meant the gods, or the shadowing, shadowy beings, or whatever perverse creations were responsible for acts of fate and luck. A short mental list of true gods failed to reveal any whose personal province might be making his life miserable, but Toede felt there had to be one or two who were gripping their sides, trying to keep their intestines from bursting loose from the elation they felt at his ordeal.

It was nearly midnight. More than enough time to alert the camp and convince them to start running and running hard in the face of an imminent gnollish invasion. Unless the gnolls were willing to engage the scholars in a penmanship contest, there was little chance the humans would last more than fifteen minutes.

He had ridden this far, Toede thought, it would be a shame not to inspire just a little panic and fear among them. Toede dismounted and sighed, trying to decide who he would most like to shock into apoplexy first. The magical light source that Bunniswot kept for his all-night sessions shone brightly and steadily, and Toede spotted a solitary shadow moving against the tent wall. "Might as well discomfort the awake first," said Toede. Of course, awake or asleep, Bunniswot likely would have been one of the first people Toede would have brought the bad news to, anyway, just to enjoy the human's reaction.

Toede rapped on the tent wall, and the figure started. Toede was disappointed only in that he had hoped the young scholar would plaster himself against the opposite tent wall in shock.

The shadow moved quickly around the tent. "What?" shouted Bunniswot.

"No time for that/' snarled Toede, pushing aside the tent flap and entering. "We have to evacuate the area at… once." Toede, smirking, strode into the scholar's small tent. Every flat surface and several tilted ones were piled high with paper, rubbings, scrolls, books, and thin metal plates. A strong, steady light was provided by a glowing metal ball set into an iron holder, the entire assemblage mounted on a small cherrywood box.

The cause for the smirk was the scholar's appearance. Bunniswot had a random collage of paper clutched to his bare, hairless chest. He was dressed in pajama trousers with a drawstring top and a long, open-fronted robe. The robe was hand-made, with patches in the shapes of holy symbols and magical formula crudely stitched to it. But the real source of amusement was the scholar's footwear. Each close-fitting slipper had a pair of protruding eyes jutting from the front, as if the scholar had slipped a pair of rabid beavers over his feet.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" shouted Bunniswot softly, in the tone and volume of a man in the mood for arguing but unwilling to wake the neighbors. He stomped his foot for emphasis. Toede noticed the eyes on his slippers were clear little half-shells, with black marbles set inside, and they wiggled as he stomped.

Toede tried unsuccessfully to stifle the image of Bunniswot running from the gnolls, his little foot-eyeballs spinning. Instead he said, "Scholar, you and your party are on grounds that are sacred to a tribe of gnolls. They are massing for a major attack shortly after sunrise." Unless they get bored and kill Groag early, he added silently. "Your cook and I were ambushed, and I barely escaped with my life. It is imperative that you and the others leave this place as soon as is humanly possible."

Bunniswot grimaced and collapsed onto his folding chair, much like a man who had just had his shin tendons severed. The papers fell from his hands, cascading onto the ground. He raised a delicate hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes tightly.

"But our scouts said that there were no gnolls around here," the scholar said weakly. "Kender, yes, a necromancer, yes, but no gnolls."

"Next time make sure to check the swamp," said Toede, walking up to a pile of papers lying on top of a leather trunk. "I'll go wake the others, then I'll ride to Flotsam for help. You probably won't be able to load up this mess, and it would slow you down, anyway. If you want to save your work, you should put the most important material in a trunk and bury it, then come back later." And if you're like most scholars, thought Toede with a malicious grin, you'll still be organizing your piles of notes when the gnolls come crashing down on the last few moments of your life.

Instead, Bunniswot responded, "Perhaps it's better this way. Everything here will be trampled if we're attacked. If we're lucky, they'll burn the entire lot of it." Then he gave out a brittle cry, put his head in his hands, and began to sob.

Toede did not fancy himself an expert on human behavior beyond the standard buttons he could push to get his way: fear, terror, greed, threats, greed, fear, and greed. But it struck him that this was odd behavior for a man whose life's work was in the direct path of a gnoll invasion.

Perhaps the ogres had dark secrets that no living mortal should know. That was worth investigating. Toede glanced at the papers he had been clearing. The scholar's handwriting was crabbed but readable in the pale light of the tent.

"I didst come unto her skyclad and unshorn, seeking the teachings of the flesh, wearing nought but my finger cymbals and the night air," Toede intoned. Eyebrow raised, he looked at Bunniswot. The scholar just shook his head and returned to sobbing.

Toede picked up another piece of foolscap. "We danced among the water lilies that evening, Angelhair and I, and dined upon each other's fleshly pleasures."

A third. "… and we were joined in our revels in the pavilions by two others, fair of face and unmarred of beauty, their eyes as bright and comely as the pale full moon…"

Bunniswot sighed deeply. "Stop," he pleaded. "I'm so ashamed."

"This is your secret?" smirked Toede. "That you toil through the night writing naughty poetry? A minor sin at best, punishable by brief immersion in white-hot magma. Nothing to lose your grip over. The gnolls can't even read."

"You don't understand." Bunniswot, tears in his eyes, looked up. "It's all like that. All of it." He gestured around the tent walls.

Toede realized that the scholar meant the forest of stone beyond. "You mean the pillars," he said, now smiling broadly.

"Yes, the bloody pillars," cursed Bunniswot. "I've deciphered forty of them now."

"And they're all…" prompted Toede.

"This!" He picked up a packet and threw it against the far wall. The pages fluttered like pigeons landing in the square. "Love poems! Trysts! Revels! Rendezvous! Smut!"

"That's really, really interesting," said Toede, edging

toward the tent entrance. "And perhaps we can discuss it later, say, after you hurry up and save your life."

Bunniswot ignored him. "I put Renders up for this exploration, did you know that? I found references to this place in preCataclysmic texts, stressing its age, its beauty, its mysterious origins. There was supposed to have been a great battle here, where the local inhabitants, my ur-ogres, battled and caged a creature of the Abyss. I expected a lost city, a temple, or at least a monument. Something to justify the time and effort. Something worth publishing."

Toede thought for a moment, then said, "Perhaps later you could spruce it up a bit, clean up the smut. Sort of a vulgate version, for the masses."

"This is the cleaned up version," said the scholar, seeming ready to collapse again. "Even the vulgate is vulgar," he sighed.