“First rule of adventuring,” Darnak answered, voice muffled as he chewed his bread. “Never drink from strange fountains. Half the time it’ll turn you to stone, or shrink you to the size of a roach, or kill you on the spot.”

“I imagine you would more likely suffer the same fate as those wretched corpses,” Barius said. “Worry not, goblin. You can rest assured I would strike you dead at the first sign of such a transformation, rather than permit you to suffer such horrors.”

He took a small sip from his waterskin. “ ’Ware the dragons themselves as well, lest they come to life and tear out your throat when you turn your back.”

Darnak laughed. “Getting a mite paranoid, aren’t you?”

“Cautious, friend dwarf,” Barius corrected. “In a place such as this, who knows what magic lurks in seemingly innocent things.”

That did it. Jig was tired of magic. Dead people coming through vanishing walls, giant bats, floating bridges, Ryslind talking with two voices, Darnak talking to his hammer, it was enough to make a goblin mad. How was he, with no more than a short sword and his wits, to deal with all this magic?

He would have to get some magic of his own. That was the goblin way. If your enemy had a knife, you got a sword. If he had two friends, you brought twelve. From what Jig had learned about magic, he had two choices. He could try to be like the wizard or the dwarf. Both of them had magic of a sort. Jig only had to figure out which kind of magic he wanted on his side.

Tough choice. Learn to talk to the gods, or become a freak of a man with tattoos and robes, fighting a losing battle with his own mind. Jig’s bald head, courtesy of Smudge, already gave him more in common with the wizard than he liked. He left the fountain and went to sit with Darnak. Better the lesser of two oddities.

“Tell me of the gods,” Jig said. A simple enough request, or so he thought. Barius cringed and moved to the other side of the room. Riana followed a few minutes later. Even Ryslind walked away until he had positioned the fountain between himself and the dwarf.

For it turned out that Darnak considered himself a bit of a historian, as well as an expert on the gods. A huge grin split his face. He finished off another wineskin and launched into a detailed saga, starting with the creation of the universe. Jig tried to listen, he truly did. But after a few minutes, he found himself wondering if Ryslind’s brand of magic was really as bad as it looked.