Dexter and Malford
About five months earlier...
Malford and Dexter laid low in town. They could smell the smoke from the burning temple of Galador, and Malford was full of dread wondering what had happened.
Dexter was extremely angry, but also somewhat contrite. Should he have done it? Should he have mindwiped Galiger? Well, he certainly had it coming!
But he found himself wondering, Is that how a Galadorian should act?
They kept their heads down for a few days. When they cautiously checked, sending an urchin to scout the docks, they found that the Twikwakikikak had sailed. Malford thought sadly, There goes my ship.
Ah, well. His career in piracy could have ended worse, with him walking a plank above a chud pot surrounded by sharks.
Dexter and Malford murdered another mage for his book of spells, but afterward both were filled with remorse enough that they agreed not to do it again. The two of them seemed to have swung in a new moral direction. A few days passed while they waited for a vessel to sail to the west; it seemed as likely a direction as any.
“Look,” Malford said, gesturing at the maps opened before him and Dexter in the inn they were renting a room from. “The Parrot Isles. They say there’s a dragon that lives there- Arnaud the Copper. That might be interesting.”
Aimlessly, Dex agreed. After all, he had no idea whatsoever of what to do.
“Besides,” Malford added, “from the Parrot Isles we can go to Forinthia or even to Dorhaus, if we want to head farther west.”
“What’s past there?” Dex pointed at the edge of the map.
“Who knows? That’s a far ways.”
***
It was from that last wizard that Dexter got his famous staff of combat. A few other trifles, as well, including an amulet that would let a caster change one of his spells for a protection from evil. Of course, neither of them could use it (Dexter being a psionicist and Malford an illusionist; abjuration, at the time, was forbidden to all such wizards), so Dex held it for sale.
The trip the two made to the Parrot Isles lasted most of a month, aboard a ship called the flying fish. Their time there was mostly spent in a fruitless attempt to spy on the dragon; Polly, Malford’s parrot, overflew the Dragon’s Isle but saw nothing worth noting. Disgruntled, Malford and Dexter decided to leave on the Flying Fish once it was finished in the isles (it was mostly taking on a cargo of wild kocho). But first, Malford knew of one thing perhaps worth taking from the Parrot Isles.
“There’s this tree,” he told Dexter. “It’s called the Tree of Rulva. It’s a palm tree, enshrined by the local tribesmen. The coconut milk grants fertility, and sometimes communion with Galador. It very rarely fruits, but rumor has it that there’s a coconut up there now!”
His plan was obvious. “There’s a guardian, but you can use your mind tricks to lure him away long enough for me to scramble up the tree, then I can get the coconut and we can escape!”
And indeed, it proved to be that easy. The man guarding the tree was not the brightest star in the firmament, and his deception is easily accomplished by Dexter’s telepathic powers. Then Malford clambered up the tree, cut loose the single coconut above, and slithered back down, escaping into the shadows.
Next Time: Remember Sheila the Confessor, the hot young lass that took Dexter’s confession for the Inquisition?