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And that's that. A bit old-fashioned, and I wouldn't give a copper for his spelling, but Carcroft sums it up pretty neatly. A hidden treasure in the swamp and a glowing, protective ghost with an axe. There-I think I just summed it up even more neatly, and my spelling's better too.

Though why this ghost was "most to be feared," I couldn't have told you. As far as I knew, he had never actually severed anyone in two with that big axe of his, and the Vast Swamp has more real horrors than you can shake a stick at Along with the lizard men, goblins, trolls, and grells that old

Carcroft mentioned, there are also dragons, measles, hydrae, beholders, and probably even the occasional tax-gatherer, so a simple axe-wielding ghost doesn't seem too daunting.

But you wouldn't have thought it from the reaction he got in Ghars once a few people started spotting him on the edge of the Vast Swamp after nightfall, his gaunt face glowing green, his ancient armor shining on his massive body, swinging his axe and coming toward them like the inexorable death that awaits us all, the death that had claimed him centuries ago.

And the death that claimed him again, this time wearing the grim face of murder.

2

But I'm getting ahead of myself, which is something that I'm apt to do. If my master Benelaius has told me once, he's told me a thousand times, "Jasper, put your mind and your thoughts in order, or the results will be ordure." And since he has given me permission to record his activities in this particular matter for posterity, I shouldn't jump about like a rabid feystag but should take matters as they came.

So, from the beginning.

My grandfather was born in a little log hut--

Well, perhaps not quite so far back a beginning, although knowing about my grandfather leads to why I became Benelaius's indentured servant. Old Grandpaw Hurthkin was a halfling, you see, one of those little people whose primary joy in life is taking advantage of humans. He took advantage of the human Guirath Moondock by running away with and marrying his daughter, a woman so small she seemed near halfling herself. The result of that union was my mother, a petite woman herself but with qualities more human than halfling. My father was human, so I am only one quarter halfling. And before you think of me as an eighthling, let me tell you that I have heard that old wheeze told by innumerable drunken wits in an infinitude of taverns. Spare me this time.

My possession of halfling blood was what led me to try to burgle the wizard Benelaius's house, and that sorry attempt was what got me…

Ah, but there I go again. An arrow-straight, nondivergent narrative, that's the ticket.

I and some of the other local lads were wondering about the old man who had just come to live on the outskirts of Ghars. He was more than an old man, really. I had heard that he was one of Cormyr's War Wizards who had for some reason chosen to retire to this unspeakably weary little town and environs. I couldn't have vouched for it myself. My knowledge of Cormyrean public servants was limited to King Azoun, Sarp Redbeard, and Ghars's own Mayor Tobald, who, as far as I could see, did nothing but chuckle at babies and pretty girls and cut ribbons to open the occasional new store.

I had only a rough idea of what the College of War Wizards did. I pictured them as patriarchal old duffs who, when Cormyr went to war with one of its neighbors, would rain down magical thunder and lightning on the heads of the enemy. And I pictured this retired codger as someone older than old, a creaky relic who had lost his magic and just sat around hoping to shift his bowels once a week.

So when my chums expressed their fear of this new neighbor, I was quick to scoff. "Afraid of an old geezer?" I said. "What a bunch of lily-flowers!"

"Lily-flowers are we?" said Cedric Buckenwing. "And I guess you'd be anxious to go and make this wizard's acquaintance, would you? You're that brave, are you, Jasper?"

I wasn't