The Unlikely Ones by Mary Brown

This is another from the freebie table. It is a little more recent than the Silverberg - 1986, the Silverberg was 1979, but I had never even heard of Ms. Brown. Do you realize how awkward it is to google someone named Mary Brown? I did manage to find her. She has written quite a number of books, none of which I had ever read.

Given the quantity of fantasy fiction that I have read over the years, I considered this a little ominous, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Again some fairly quirky characters and interesting twists on the fantasy quest.

We have a heroine this time who is trapped by a wicked witch. The girl is hunched and twisted and so ugly that she must wear a mask when the witch sends her to the village on errands. She is called Thing. She has as companions a crow, a toad, a goldfish, and a kitten. All five of them are imprisoned by the witch for reasons that become clear eventually. The witch has imbedded in each of them a "pebble" which cripples them and causes great pain. Again, no great mystery. If one has read the prologue - and no experienced reader of fantasy would dare skip the prologue - it is easy to guess that the jewels stolen from the dragon are the pebbles which torture our oddly assorted little group.

When the witch is killed, they set off together lest the villagers kill them as well as the witch. They pick up a knight with rusty armor (the result of a curse) and a unicorn who has lost his horn and together they encounter the Ancient - a Merlin/Gandalf character - who sets them on their path to return the "pebbles" to their owner and recover their lives which have literally been on hold since they were kidnapped by the witch.

I will have to find some more of her stuff.