Sandra woke up the next morning on a couch in the castle’s main hall. She yawned and sat up, still sore from the fight. The five men who’d attacked her were gone, carried down to the town below to be guarded by the locals. The man Sandra sent spinning down the stairs would also need medical care for his broken arm and leg.

“Ah, you’re awake.” It was Doctor Moratrayas, coming down the stairs with a tray of food. He looked rested and clean despite last night’s battle. Then again, he wasn’t the one who got tackled. Moratrayas set the tray down on the table and beckoned her to sit. “Breakfast is ready, and you will find a bathroom with a hot bath up the stairs, second door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“My apologies for not providing better sleeping arrangements. I wasn’t expecting visitors until spring and don’t have rooms prepared. I’d offer you the master bedroom, but it’s currently being used for storage.”

Curious, she asked, “Then where do you sleep?”

“On a cot in one of my labs. I find it best to stay close to my experiments in case they should get out of hand. If just one of my creations goes on a rampage, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Sandra found a veritable feast waiting for her. The tray contained pancakes, syrup, poached eggs, sugared plums and milk. “Thanks for having Igor get this ready for me.”

“Igor can’t boil water without setting something on fire. He is the first, last and only man I have ever met who could burn a hole in a cast iron frying pan. I prepared this.”

“You made this? Uh, thank you. You’re the first man I met who can cook.”

Moratrayas headed back upstairs. “I developed the skill out of self-preservation. Once you’ve tasted Igor’s griddlecakes, you’ll do anything to avoid eating them again. Leave the tray when you’re done and something will be along to pick it up later.”

After eating, Sandra headed for the bathroom. The bath was made from brass (wasn’t everything around here?) and filled with steaming water. She hadn’t had a chance to wash during her journey here, and the hot water felt especially good on her sore muscles. She also found something else the doctor had left for her.

Folded up alongside the bath was a set of clothes. The outfit included a white blouse, slacks, boots, gloves, hat, scarf and cloak, all lined with fur and expertly stitched. It was new, warm and fit like a glove. Given how patched and worn her own clothes were she gladly put on the new garments.

One of the tales she’d heard about Moratrayas was that he’d started life as a tailor. No one knew exactly how he went from such a humble beginning to become a mad scientist. He called himself doctor, but no university would admit to training him or granting him that lofty degree. One thing the stories agreed on was to go along with his self-imposed title or risk angering him. Even referring to his days as a tailor wasn’t healthy.

“Doctor!” a man called out in the main hall. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Sandra couldn’t say where she’d heard it before. She left the bathroom to see who was calling. She found a young man with blond hair and wearing winter clothes standing in the hall. Not far behind him a young, dark haired woman hung back by the door.

“We shouldn’t be here,” the girl said nervously as her eyes darted around the hall.

“I want to make sure she’s safe,” the man said. He was handsome and muscles bulged under his clothes. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Doctor!”

“Hello,” Sandra said. She walked over to the stairs. “The doctor is a bit busy.”

The man smiled and raced up the stairs, covering steps three at a time. He grabbed Sandra in a bear hug that lifted her feet off the floor. “You’re okay! That’s great! I thought you might be hurt.”

“Ah, bruised ribs!” she gasped. The man quickly set her down. “Ouch, yeah, I’m a bit beat up, but I’ll live. I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but would you mind telling me who you are?”

“We met outside town last night,” he explained.

It took her a second to put one and one together. “Wait, you’re Keith the werewolf?”

He smiled and looked down. “Yeah. This is what I look like most of the time. When I got back to town this morning, I heard the men who hit me attacked a woman, and I was worried something had happened to you. Oh hey, where are my manners? This is my best friend, Alicia.”

The girl looked thoroughly annoyed. Sandra’s guess was that Alicia would rather be Keith’s girlfriend than best friend, and really didn’t like him showing another woman this kind of attention. In an impressive feat of cluelessness, Keith didn’t notice Alicia’s discomfort.

“Hi,” Alicia said sourly. “Keith, she’s okay. Can we leave before the doctor shows up?”

Moratrayas came out of a door, backlit by bright green light. “Mr. Sunter, what’s the cause for this visit?”

“Hi, doc,” Keith said with a warm smile. “I just wanted to make sure your guest is all right. I hope you don’t mind Alicia and me checking up on her.”

“Not at all. Your concern for her wellbeing does you credit. Ms. Sower proved most capable in dealing with the men bothering her. I trust you’re well?”

Keith smiled. “Right as rain, doc. Those bums knocked me around a bit before they went after her, but I’m okay. Healing fast is the only good thing that came from becoming a werewolf.”

Moratrayas nodded. “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Sunter. I’m currently preparing for a trip, so I’d appreciate it if you and your friend could go back to town. Once I return you may stop by anytime you require assistance.”

“Sure thing,” Keith said. He ran down the stairs and took Alicia by the hand. Before leaving, he turned to Sandra and said, “Sorry about those guys bothering you. That stuff usually doesn’t happen around here.”

“It’s okay,” Sandra said, and waved to Keith and Alicia as they left. Once they were gone, she said, “Nice man. Pity he’s as dense as a block of marble.”

Moratrayas closed the door behind him and walked up to Sandra. “He’s blessed in other ways. Whatever his failings, he is loyal and compassionate, traits not to be despised.”

“I know. I’m sorry, that was petty of me.”

“Perhaps, but it was also accurate. Alicia is one of three young women trying to attract his attention, and he has misinterpreted all of them.”

Sandra laughed. “Three?”

“Sad but true. I’ve granted him limited access to my castle so I can provide help dealing with his condition. I may have to sit him down and explain a few other things to him.” Moratrayas glanced at Sandra and nodded in approval. “I see my replacement garments please you.”

“Yeah, they fit fine.”

“Good.” He headed down the hallway without another word.

Sandra hurried to catch up with him. “I’m not trying to be pushy, but when can we leave?”

Moratrayas walked down the hallway and stepped around a large brass and obsidian hedgehog scrubbing the floor. He opened a door and was bathed in green light pouring from the door. “I need at least two days to pack supplies and weapons.”

The answer surprised and disappointed her. Any delay was too long. “Two days? How much are you bringing?”

Sandra followed him into the room and gasped in amazement at the bizarre and chaotic sight. Moratrayas walked in ahead of her and replied, “I intend to bring as many weapons as my barge will carry.”

What had once been a storeroom for the castle had been converted into a laboratory of awe-inspiring proportions. The huge room was divided into two sections, the first heavy with tools and parts for his bizarre creations. Saws, vices, hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, bolt cutters and an assortment of other instruments hung off the walls. There were reams of paper scattered across the room, with every inch covered in writing and diagrams. Workbenches were buried under partially completed creatures of brass, obsidian and glass, some creations as small as mice and others as big as horses. More of the things hung from the ceiling by ropes, partially completed with their innards exposed. The mechanical carcasses reminded Sandra of a butcher shop.

The second half of the room contained a river barge seventy feet long, twenty feet wide and clad in iron plates. It rested in a pool of shallow water with steel doors on the wall at the front of the barge. The barge had a cluster of brass tubes near the back end and no oars or sails. It was loaded down with bundles, boxes and casks, and a tarp covered something enormous that filled the back of the vessel.

“Wow.” Sandra was too stunned by the sight to say more.

“Yes, I’m afraid the place is a bit of a mess,” Moratrayas said as he walked under a ten legged creation dangling from the ceiling by ropes and pulleys. “One of the reasons I wanted to attract other men and women of science was to assist me. I have to leave many projects unfinished because problems arise that require my attention.”

Sandra studied the disassembled creation hanging in front of her. It looked like a giant crab, five feet across with heavy armor plates and larger versions of the pincers that had attacked her on the stairs. The exposed interior sported wires, pulleys, gears and tubing made from brass or glass. Empty glass cylinders connected to those tubes. Obsidian plates and spheres were linked into the crab for a purpose Sandra couldn’t even guess at.

“Are your monsters alive?” she asked.

Moratrayas picked through the clutter on the nearest workbench. “I call my creations clockworks. To answer your question, I’m not sure.”

“But you make them. If you don’t know, who does?”

Annoyed, he replied, “Just because I don’t know now doesn’t mean I’ll never know.” He saw her cringe at his tone. Grumbling, he said, “It is a complicated matter, and with all that’s been going on around here it’s one I haven’t had time to adequately research.”

Moratrayas picked up a clockwork centipede three feet long with a score of segmented legs. “When I started this work, I would have told you they weren’t alive, that they were constructs that obeyed orders and nothing more. But in the last year I’ve noticed them display behavior I never built into them. Some are more aggressive than I intended. Others have shown rudimentary cunning. A few have proven willful and mildly disobedient. One of them arranges flowers. I don’t know why they do this, nor do I know how to prevent it or enhance it.”

“Maybe they have souls, like purple puppet people,” she suggested.

Moratrayas set the clockwork down. “They are nothing like puppet people. Puppet people are built with magic. My clockworks are the result of science, of research and hard work, not mumbled words and questionable incantations. But to answer your question, I don’t know if they have souls. I haven’t had a chance to ask a holy man.”

Sandra heard something crawling through the nearest pile of parts. She backed away as the sound inched closer. Moratrayas frowned before he marched over and pointed a finger at the unseen being.

“You have a job to do, Irving, and it’s not here. Kindly return to work and leave the young lady be.” Whatever lay beneath the debris and parts made a whimpering sound as it tunneled away. “I apologize. I receive so few visitors that my creations, especially Irving, grow curious when one arrives. I told him to stay out of sight when not needed, which he technically did. Honestly, some days they act like children.”

Moratrayas marched over to his barge. “The army that attacked your town was three or four hundred strong, a potent force to contend with. We may assume they left behind more men to guard their home base. When we reach Stone Heart and the source of your problems, we will face an army of at least a thousand strong, maybe more.”

A two-foot tall upside down terracotta pot slowly slid out from behind a workbench and scooted closer to Sandra. Sounding annoyed, Moratrayas said, “Irving, you’re not fooling anyone.”

Sandra followed Moratrayas as the pot scooted off. It was hard for her to keep from stepping onto the piles of spare parts that filled the floor like they did the workbenches. Pointing to the barge, she asked, “How many of your clockworks can you carry on that?”

“Less than I’d like. There is room for no more than twenty clockworks in addition to Gertrude, my latest masterpiece. They are a force equal to five times their number.”

Twenty times five…hmm. “One hundred against one thousand isn’t very good odds.”

Moratrayas climbed onto the barge and dug through the tall stacks of supplies already loaded. “Where did Igor put my spare cane? You’re right about our chances, Ms. Sower. But one hundred men, or their equivalent, used at the right time and in the right location can work wonders. Force alone won’t be enough to free your friends and family. We will have to use stealth, intelligence and careful planning.”

Something bumped into Sandra’s ankle. She looked down to find a small clockwork shaped like a monkey. Only a foot tall, it gazed up at her with a head that was mostly a smooth obsidian sphere. It held up a small bouquet of tiny white flowers.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and accepted the gift.

Moratrayas glanced up and scowled at the small clockwork. “We’ve talked about this, Clyde!” The monkey clockwork scurried under a workbench, squealing as it fled. “I built him to fetch my tools, and what does he do? Where did he even find flowers this time of year?”

“They’re pretty,” Sandra said, and tucked the flowers behind her ear.

Up above them, Sandra heard laughter and a voice say, “Hey, the doc made himself a girlfriend.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “Goblins.”

Sure enough, five goblins were climbing around the rafters above the workshop. Goblins were smelly, dirty and thoroughly annoying creatures. The tallest of them was four feet high and roughly man shaped, and all five had exaggerated features. One had gangly arms, another a large nose and a third looked like nothing more than a huge wad of hair with arms and legs stuck on. The fourth had a toothy grin, and the last goblin had what looked like tiny, ineffectual wings sprouting from his back. They were unarmed and dressed in cheap leather clothes.

Goblins had a deserved reputation for being messy, rude and playing nasty pranks on people. They could be found everywhere, and even a town as isolated and small as Sun Valley had a few hanging around. Goblins could get into any building if they put their tiny little minds to it. Thankfully they only did real damage when they were angry, a rare event indeed.

“That will be quite enough of that,” Moratrayas told them. “Ms. Sower is a guest and will be treated respectfully.”

“Ha!” a goblin snorted. “That would be a first.”

“Is it a good idea to let them in here?” Sandra asked. “They could steal your tools or break your clockworks.”

The furry goblin stood up straight as an arrow and indignantly replied, “Madam, I resent the implication that we might desecrate this place of chaos!”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Goblins delight in trouble,” Moratrayas explained while he climbed off the barge. “Most of the time they generate chaos and confusion themselves, but if they find someone who seeks to upset the status quo, they either assist or sit back and watch. They cause me no trouble and I return the favor.”

“Yeah, what he said,” the gangly goblin agreed.

The furry goblin nodded. “We figure all we have to do is sit back and wait. Give the doc a few more years and he’ll cause more confusion than we can handle. He’s our hero!”

“And we like the guy with the hunch,” the large nosed goblin added. “He’s an honorary goblin.”

The furry goblin pointed at Sandra. “You we’re indifferent to. Can you do tricks like the doc?”

“Pull a hat out of a rabbit!” another goblin shouted.

“The goblins and I coexist as well as can be expected,” Moratrayas said. He frowned and added, “Although they may be setting a poor example for my creations. The clockworks used to be well behaved.”

“We didn’t do nothing,” the furry goblin replied. He frowned and added, “Okay, there was that one time, but we were hitting the cheddar hard that day.”

Sandra shook her head and directed her attention back to the barge. “I know we would get there faster by water, but maybe it’s worth it to go by land. You could bring more of your clockworks that way.”

“That’s not an option.” Moratrayas rummaged through a pile of parts until he picked up a glass vial filled with glowing green liquid. “This is the fuel my clockworks require. I can only create a finite amount of it at this time, yet another reason why I sought helpers and colleagues. There’s enough on hand to fuel my barge, for emergencies here in Refuge and for powering no more than twenty clockworks for fifteen days. We’d run out of fuel long before reaching the enemy if we went by land.”

“Oh.” Sandra ran her fingers over a disassembled clockwork man. This wasn’t working out as well as she’d hoped. Still, she had Moratrayas’ promise to help. She also had another reason to be hopeful.

Sandra had come to get aid from Doctor Moratrayas, but ten other women from Sun Valley were on similar trips. Jennet Foster went to find the hero Julius Craton and get his help. Another woman was looking for the dwarf warrior Tibolt Broadbeard. Women from Sun Valley also went in search of the wizard Elmore, a holy man who called himself Servant, a friendly minotaur named Herd Leader, and five other notable men and women. The eleven had the power to help their town and at least some inclination to do so. Maybe they wouldn’t all come, but the hope was that at least half of them would show up. Moratrayas was coming with only Igor and twenty clockworks, but that plus a few of the others should be enough to save Sun Valley.

“Did you see my extra cane?” Moratrayas quizzed the goblins.

The furry goblin shook his head. “Nope. Igor has been bringing in armfuls of stuff every few minutes, but no cane.”

Moratrayas glanced over the messy lab. “I’d hire a maid to keep the castle organized if the last one hadn’t run off screaming into the night. I told her to stay away from those gears. What happened to her skirt was her fault and no one else’s. Help me look for my cane.”

Sandra looked through the piles of brass refuse and partially built clockworks, keeping an eye out for gears or anything else moving in the mess. She was a little worried that by getting Moratrayas’ help she had a tiger by the tail. He was powerful, but also unpredictable. Between his volatile personality and his bizarre clockworks that had minds of their own, it was only too easy to imagine him making a bad situation worse.

“Will it take long to get to Sun Valley?” she asked.

“Four days, five at the most,” he replied. “It took some time to find your town on a map. We’ll have to travel through five kingdoms to reach it. Calling them kingdoms is an exaggeration when the largest of them has ten thousand people.”

“That many?” she asked in surprise. Sun Valley’s population had never been above nine hundred.

Moratrayas dug through another workbench piled high with parts. “That’s not a lot of people, Ms. Sower. Kingdoms outside the Raushtad Mountains routinely have populations between fifty thousand and half a million. Of course they have more arable land than we do to support so many citizens.”

“Half a million people?” It boggled Sandra’s mind just to think about it. “A person couldn’t possibly remember so many names. How would they know which people are trustworthy, or who they could count on in an emergency? How do so many people get along without fighting?”

“Generally they trust only family, friends and immediate neighbors,” he explained. “Everyone else is a stranger to them. As for fighting, there are plenty of conflicts between both people and nations. I’m told that at Battle Island the population actually bets on wars.”

Moratrayas dug through another workbench and came up with a map of the Raushtad Mountains. He held it up, and Sandra marveled at its complexity. Running north to south in a broad strip, the mountains were carved up into dozens of small kingdoms centered around valleys with fertile soil. Along the edges of the map were scores of independent towns, each one too poor, too small or too hard to reach for a king to bother conquering them. Sun Valley was all three.

“I expect little trouble on our journey,” he said. “I’ve traveled through the Raushtad before and everyone’s heard of me. I’ve helped some of these kingdoms, which will ease our passage. The rest know my reputation and should give us no trouble. My only concerns are monsters and an ambush by the army that attacked your town.”

“How would they know to ambush us?”

Moratrayas set the map down and continued looking for his cane. “Five of them chased you through the mountains in the dead of winter. They followed you or they deduced where you were headed. Either way, when those men don’t come back in a reasonable amount of time, the enemy will assume they were defeated and lay a trap for us.”

Sandra leaned on a workbench, careful not to upset the rubbish covering it. “How long do we have before that happens?”

Moratrayas shrugged. “It took them three weeks to get here following you. If they don’t return in another three weeks, we can expect the enemy to either send out more men or prepare for an attack on their home base. With luck we’ll defeat them and have your townspeople and sunstone back before then.”

The furry goblin asked, “How did hot stuff get a sunstone?”

“Obnoxiously put, but a valid question nonetheless,” Moratrayas said. “Sunstones are valued at anywhere from five to twenty-five thousand gold coins depending on quality, size and how much light they produce. How did a town as small as Sun Valley acquire one?”

Sandra sat down on a chair, one of the only things not covered in lab equipment, and told them her town’s history. “We didn’t always have it. Five generations ago my great, great, great grandfather left the valley to earn his fortune. Lots of men did back then. We couldn’t support many people since there wasn’t much farmland and summers are so short. Everybody figured he’d be gone for good like all the ones that left before him.”

She picked up a polished obsidian sphere and held it up for the others to see. “Twenty years later he came back with a wife, three children, the sunstone and more scars than a man should have and still live. The sunstone was four inches across and glowed like the noon sun. He wouldn’t say where he got it, just that it was for everyone in the valley and nobody would have to leave home if they didn’t want to.”

“You used its light in place of the sun to grow crops?” Moratrayas asked.

She nodded and set down the sphere. “My ancestors built a stone tower and set the sunstone in it. We covered the sunstone with an iron pot and old drapes at night or when we had visitors. But when no outsiders were around, we uncovered the sunstone and it poured out light. It extended the growing season by four weeks, enough time to guarantee a good harvest every year. We don’t get much surplus, but no one goes hungry.”

Moratrayas scribbled figures on a scrap of paper. “A stone capable of producing that much light must be worth a fortune.”

“Money doesn’t matter,” she said. Sandra looked down and tried to hold back her tears. “We’ve lost our men, the sunstone and most of our stored food. Everyone left in Sun Valley will either starve or leave home for another kingdom. There’s not a lot of honest work for widows and single women. We’d have to beg.”

“And people say we’re scum,” the furry goblin said.

The gangly goblin nodded vigorously. “We don’t do stuff like that to people. Shave their cats, sure, but that’s it.”

Moratrayas walked over to Sandra and gently lifted her head. “I know what it’s like to lose everything. That won’t happen to you and your loved ones. You’ll get them back and have the peaceful life you deserve.”

High above, the goblins giggled and made kissing noises. Without looking up, Moratrayas said, “Another sound out of any of you and there will be violence.”

Before Sandra could thank Moratrayas or throw something at the goblins, Igor stumbled into the room burdened down by a mountain of packages. “Almost done packing fuel for the clockworks.”

Moratrayas took one of the packages from him and carried it to the barge. “Igor, have you seen my spare cane?”

“You left it in the master bedroom under a pile of dirty socks and the latest issue of Mad Scientists Quarterly, the one with the flying clockwork design.” Igor set his load down in the barge and headed back for more.

“The publisher needs to change the title of that magazine,” Moratrayas complained. “It’s feeding people’s stereotypes.”

Sandra got up and followed Igor. “Is there anything I can do to help? I feel like a fifth wheel sitting around here.”

Igor smiled and pointed outside the lab. “Sure! I’ve got stacks of boxes in the main hall. Loading them will go a lot faster with help. And don’t worry, nothing bites unless you turn it on.”

“That’s…mildly comforting,” Sandra said. She followed Igor to the door, but froze in her tracks when a half completed clockwork man hanging from the ceiling waved at her. Her face turned a shade paler and she backed away. “Is that normal?”

“Normal is a relative term around here,” Igor told her.

“Normal is also overrated,” Moratrayas said. “Extraordinary is a far superior goal.”

Looking a bit ill, Sandra waved back to the clockwork and left the lab. Igor was right behind her, but Moratrayas grabbed his arm before he followed her out.
“Igor, how much food and money have you packed for the trip?”

Igor looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see, I’ve set aside enough to last us months and forty silver pieces for incidentals. You know, bribes, kickbacks, graft, campaign contributions. ”

“Triple the food supplies and cash.”

Igor didn’t question his master, just smiled and nodded. “Right, be a bit of a squeeze getting it all in, but we’ll manage. Being in close quarters with a pretty young thing is no hardship, right?”

“Don’t start,” Moratrayas said sharply. “I’ve already had enough grief from the goblins on that account.”

“Perceptive little things, aren’t they?” he said, and ducked out of the lab before Moratrayas could argue with him.

Once they were gone, Moratrayas gazed at the map of the Raushtad Mountains. “Four or five days to reach Sun Valley. Another two days will take us to the land of my birth and source of this problem.”

“Spooky,” a goblin said. “You scared to go?”

“I am mildly apprehensive. It’s said you can never go home. In my case going home is easy. Getting out alive will be the hard part.”


With Sandra’s help the armored barge was loaded in a day and a half. The sturdy little vessel reminded Sandra of the heavily loaded merchant barges that occasionally came into Sun Valley to trade. She was surprised it could still float burdened down with so many packages, kegs, casks, boxes and coffers, and she wondered if it could move carrying so much weight.

Once it was loaded, Igor turned a wheel by the steel doors in the lab, opening them to reveal a small lake connected to a wide river. It was a clear day and sunlight warmed the chill air. They boarded the barge and took it out onto the river. An engine in the back of the barge made a puttering sound and glowed green, propelling them forward in place of oars or sails.

The goblins waved goodbye from the nearest tower. “Show them who’s boss, doc!”

“We’ll keep the castle free of rats while you’re gone!” the furry goblin said. “Mmm, sweet, sweet rats.”

The barge went down the river and stopped by a dock, where twenty men waited patiently for their arrival. Moratrayas stepped onto the dock and stood before the men.

“Doctor,” a well-dressed man said formally, and took off his hat.

“Ah, Mayor Blues.” Moratrayas shook his hand and nodded to the other men. “Igor and I will be leaving for a while. I trust you and the other leading citizens of Refuge will maintain order in our absence.”

“Of course, doctor.”

“I shut down my experiments and expect no emergencies, but if one arises I grant you permission to activate the clockworks in town. They will obey your orders in lieu of my own. Use them wisely.”

“We will. Thank you, sir.”

Moratrayas tapped his cane on his palm. “Now, as to the five men who made the colossally poor choice of angering me. Hold them prisoner for another five days and then release them unarmed outside the valley. By then they shouldn’t have enough time to interfere with my mission, and carrying their wounded colleague should slow them further.”

“You don’t want them executed?” Mayor Blues asked.

“I find it best not to kill my enemies. The smart ones eventually come around to my way of thinking, and the stupid ones do the job for me.” Before he returned to the barge, Moratrayas said, “And if another candidate should come while I’m gone…”

“We will house and feed him until you return.”

He nodded. “Good man.”

With that they set out, leaving Refuge and its people far behind. The barge made good time down the river carrying Igor, Sandra, Moratrayas, twenty clockworks and Gertrude the giant clockwork covered by a tarp on the back of the barge. Sandra didn’t believe they would be strong enough to save Sun Valley alone, but if a few other heroes and wizards came then her people had a chance.

If you have enjoyed this story, the full novel is available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Moratrayas-...