Adventures in Sigil - IC - Part III [4E]

[Haberdashery]

The rain had been pelting so heavily that night. The thick, angry clouds above had blotted out the moon and the stars, and all around the little round hut the clearing was curtained by deluge. The little hut had a ramshackle fence thrown up around it, and though it was threadbare and shabby, it turned away all that came far too close. The heads mounted atop it saw to that. As the wind howled, and the wind shrieked, the gate that had always so meticulously kept itself shut clanked with every shudder. Someone had thrown it wide, and now it filled the clearing around the hut with the sound of forlorn metal.

The hut was perched high above the flooding ground, marshy and soupy as it was becoming; the brown earth had turned to eddies and murky pools, covered and crisscrossed by swelling three-toed prints. Two stilts kept the hut safe, standing it tall and erect and stable; the rain made it so hard to see them, and the eyes played tricks in the shadows of the little house. They almost looked like bird feet.

It was quiet save for the screaming wind and endless beads of dropping water and the shuddering bang of the dilapidated gate; the hut was still and dead, not even a single tongue of smoke licked its tall chimney. Just a heavy shell, sodden with water.

Light blazed in the clearing, pale and bone-white, as a sliver of lightning split the sky. The clouds bellowed in pain a moment later, cracking their cheeks and splitting their underbellies. When the thunder had died, and the sky resumed its inky hue, the door of the hut suddenly shook and rattled.

Thump-thump, the door echoed. Thump-thump, the noise came again.

The noise brought only silence with it, choked and heavy.

Thump-thump. The shadows in the house thickened.

Thump-thump. It loomed up taller; the shape of it blotting out the sky and covering all of the clearing.

Thump-thump.

The night was split with the tiny sound of yawning iron. The door glided open just a crack, the tiniest of cracks; the world inside of smoke and darkness and strange perfumed smells. It was quiet again, only the rain and the wind and the gate.

"Little Grandmother." A voice spoke, thick and heavy and broken.

"Little Grandmother," it repeated, "The fool is ready to see."

The door opened wide on silent hinges, and the mouth of the house yawned into utter blackness.

---

The goliath had changed; it was evident when he finally returned to Sigil some scant few days ago. He had seemingly dropped off the face of the Feywild after the Court of Stars. That night the companions slept restlessly, but the following morning the bed that had housed the great goliath was empty, his things were gone, and all that remained was a small note, written in a clumsy scrawl.

"There are things I must see.

--The Shepherd"

Whatever he had seen, Shep had said nothing of them. When he finally returned, he hardly looked himself anymore; dark circles swam under his eyes, heavy with lack of sleep, giving him a sickly pallor. How a rock could possibly look pallid was beyond anyone, yet Shep displayed it plainly. No longer did he carry his great, gnarled crook; the beloved tool he had carried with him from the moment he stepped into Lord Rex's study. Most startling of all, perhaps, was the fact that Shep had shaved. That dignifying, coarse beard of salt and pepper, that which he used to stroke whenever he found himself lost in thought, had been cut from his chin. His face was truly a rock slab now, with a heavy, chiseled chin and flat crevice of a mouth.

He sat very quietly now, nursing a cup of slowly cooling tea; Shep had become quieter than normal in his return. He had smiled a broad, tired smile when he first laid eyes on his companions in the Inn of the Lady's Favor, and he was quick to ruffle Pavick's hair as he so often did. But Shep had said very little since, and he had winced when he was called "The Shepherd." One thing was certain about the goliath who came back, the goliath who said little and nothing about where he had been; he was only Shep now. Nothing more.