The Spine of the World - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,27

and gnome, as the decorated coach made its way along the dirt lane. It came to a stop in front of Dohni Ganderlay's small house. An old man climbed out of the carriage door and ambled toward the house. Jaka's eyes narrowed slightly. Remembering suddenly that others might be watching him, he resumed his typically distant air. He was Jaka Sculi, after all, the fantasy lover of every young lady in Auckney, especially the woman who lived in the house where the lord's carriage had stopped. The notion that beautiful Meralda desired him was no small thing to the young man-though, of course, he couldn't let anyone else believe he cared.

"Dohni!" one of the other field workers, a crooked little gnome with a long and pointy nose, called. "Dohni Ganderlay, you've got guests!"

"Or mighten be they've figured you for the scoundrel you are!" another gnome cried out, and they all had a good laugh.

Except for Jaka, of course. Jaka wouldn't let them see him laugh.

Dohni Ganderlay walked over the ridge behind the peat field. He looked to those who yelled for some explanation, but they merely nodded their chins in the direction of his house. Dohni followed that movement, spotted the coach, and broke into a frantic run.

Jaka Sculi watched him run all the way home.

"You figuring to do some digging, boy?" came a question beside Jaka. When he turned to regard the toothless old man, the fool ran a hand through Jaka's curly brown hair.

The young man shook his head with disgust, noting the black peat encasing the old digger's fingers. He shook his head again and brushed his hair robustly, then slapped the man's hand away when it reached up to give another rub.

"Hee hee hee," the old man giggled. "Seems your little girlie's got a caller," he snickered.

"And an old one at that," remarked another, also more than willing to join in the play at Jaka's expense.

"But I'm thinking I might give the girl a try meself," the dirty old duffer at Jaka's side remarked. That drew a frown from Jaka, and so the old man only laughed all the harder at finally evoking some response from the boy.

Jaka turned his head slowly about, surveying the field and the workers, the few houses scattered on the mountainside, Castle Auck far in the distance, and the dark, cold waters beyond that. Those waters had brought him, his mother, and his uncle to this forlorn place only four years before. Jaka didn't know why they had come to Auckney-he had been quite content with his life in Luskan-except that it had something to do with his father, who used to beat his mother mercilessly. He suspected that they were running, either from the man or from the executioner. It seemed to be a typical tactic for the Sculi family, for they had done the same thing when Jaka was a toddler, fleeing from their ancestral home in the Blade Kingdoms all the way to Luskan. Certainly his father, a vicious man whom Jaka hardly knew, would search them out and kill his mother and her brother for running away. Or perhaps Jaka's father was already dead, left in his own blood by Rempini, Jaka's uncle.

Either way, it didn't matter to Jaka. All that he knew was that he was in this place, a dreadful, windy, cold, and barren fiefdom. Until recently, the only good thing about it all, in his view, was that the perpetual melancholy of the place enhanced his poetic nature. Even though he fancied himself quite the romantic hero, Jaka had passed his seventeenth birthday now, and had many times considered tagging along with one of the few merchants who happened through, going out into the wide world, back to Luskan perhaps, or even better, all the way to mighty Waterdeep. He planned to make his fortune there someday, somehow, and perhaps get all the way back to the Blade Kingdoms.

But those plans had been put on hold, for yet another positive aspect of Auckney had revealed itself to the young man.

Jaka could not deny the attraction he felt to a certain young Ganderlay girl.

Of course, he couldn't let her or anyone else know that, not until he was certain that she would give herself over to him fully.

*****

Hurrying past the coach, Dohni Ganderlay recognized the driver, a gray-bearded gnome he knew as Liam Woodgate. Liam smiled and nodded at him, which relaxed Dohni considerably, though he still kept his swift pace through the door. At