“Tizzy?” Damien asked, puzzled. “What is he doing in a kitchen?”
“Baking cookies!” Rupert said.
“That will be nice for dessert!” Vaselle beamed, feeling a little better being in a large room where there were lots of people to see if Schwarzenfürze tried to eat him.
“I would probably advise going easy on the cookies,” Antefalken said.
“Are they rich?” Vaselle asked.
“Not exactly, but having smelled his pipe, I am betting he is using a special form of butter,” the bard said.
“An extra-sweet and rich form, I bet!” Vaselle rubbed his hands together.
“Yeah, something like that,” Antefalken nodded.
Vaselle let out a loud yelp as he felt something wet rubbing against his arm.
Vaselle, Antefalken and Damien looked over to see Schwarzenfürze pull her tongue back into her mouth from licking Vaselle’s hand and arm. The D’Warg looked at Vaselle and then opened her mouth wide and ran her tongue almost lovingly over her lips and teeth before snapping them shut. She gave the wizard a creepy look, then turned and walked away.
Antefalken looked at Damien. “See? You doubted me?”
Tal Gor smiled. “See! Schwarzenfürze is not as unsocial as everyone thinks!”
Ragala-nargoloth chuckled, as did Beya Fei Geist. Farsooth GoreTusk just grinned at the D’Warg’s game. The orcs were all very familiar with wargs’ sense of humor, and a D’Warg’s was no different.
Rupert pulled at his collar as he stood on the platform behind his father. He had gotten out of the habit of wearing any clothes here in the Abyss; in fact, had never worn clothes in his true form. So it felt really strange. He was wearing a sleeveless gold embroidered black tunic that was open at the back, except at the collar, and then a button below his wings. He then had similar knee-length black pants on.
He, along with Zelda, Fer-Rog, the commanders and most senior D’Orcs, were all on the platform for the initial ceremony. There was a D’Orc orchestra, or a D’Orchestra, he guessed. Okay, it was like twelve D’Orcs, but that was more musicians than he had ever seen in one place before.
Each commander had given a speech about what a great opportunity this was, and how they had never expected to see this day. It was all quite inspirational and rather emotional, but after the first two or three? Rupert rolled his eyes at the latest one. Zelda would also give a speech, as would Tom.
After that, Rupert was to swear fealty, which seemed like an odd thing to do to one’s father. But that did sort of sound like the story books, he guessed. Then Zelda and Fer-Rog would swear, followed by all the commanders. After that, Vaselle and the shamans were going to repeat their oaths. Talarius had agreed to swear to abide by the Rules of Hostage or something like that, and the rest of the entourage were encouraged to declare loyalty or friendship, but not required to swear fealty.
Tizzy, though, had a group of demons that he had hauled in for his baking that were going to swear. Apparently, they were all planning on taking up residence here. Rupert grinned at the thought of Tizzy’s drinking buddies living here. That should be fun if they were all like Boggy. He wondered if Tizzy would swear? The octopod had been telling his demon friends that he was Tom’s Lord High Muckety Muck, so Rupert would think someone with that prestigious of a title would have to swear allegiance. He was not really sure what a Lord High Muckety Muck did, but presumably Tizzy knew.
In any event, after that there would be the first short break as the staff that needed to be rotated for duty, or whose detachment wasn’t going to be swearing in for a while, would be excused. At that point, Rupert, Fer-Rog, Talarius and the guests would be free to go. He figured most would go up to the mortal suite, where snacks would be set out for them. True, none of them would need to eat in the Abyss, but most were in the habit, so Tom felt it only polite to have food and wine.
For some reason, Tom referred to it as the “skybox treatment.” Rupert looked up, trying to spot the balcony they would be using. There were an awful lot of these skyboxes. It was actually nice to see them clearly again. Tom had been able to part the rain around the mouth of the volcano so that the arena was dry. Or mostly dry; there were water troughs from up high that funneled excess water down to the lava below. Since it was still raining just outside the volcano mouth, there was quite a bit of steam and soot coming up from the volcano.
That soot was kind of a pain. It coated everything near the arena. At least the dining halls were soot free; he really did not want his food covered in soot tomorrow. Actually, outside the immediate area of the volcano, the soot disappeared. That seemed odd. He wondered if there was something in the system that was absorbing it. Actually, the dust level had been going down steadily lately. When they had first arrived, all the furniture had been very dusty in his room. It was less dusty now, yet not like someone had dusted. There was just less of it. Very odd.
Fierd was low on the horizon as Hilda and Stevos managed to get Teragdor back to the inn and into one of the small beds. The priest, barely awake as it was, began snoring as soon as they had him on the bed.
Hilda chuckled; Stevos looked at her. “I can see that he has been observing his priestly vows of moderation.” She laughed. “Orcs are all known, or so I’m told, to be able to hold prodigious amounts of alcohol. Our young priest here could barely hold as much as a Rod member.”
Stevos shook his head. “I don’t understand how you so easily drank the wargtowners under the table. Every time I went to the trenches to relieve myself, I had to surreptitiously do a cleansing ritual to stay even close to sober!”
“Ah, youth!” Hilda said with a laugh. “First, aside from being much older and more experienced, I also have a lot more mass! I cannot stress how much that helps. Plus, over the years, and particularly lately, I’ve gotten very adept at doing cleansing rituals under the table, so to speak. My principal mission right now unfortunately involves my drinking prodigious amounts of very expensive wine.” Hilda feigned dismay.
“And here I’m getting second-rate glargh!” Stevos said, laughing.
“Well, one nice thing is that even though buying enough glargh to drink everyone in town under the table while they revealed their secrets was quite expensive, it actually doesn’t come very close to my worst tabs in Freehold.”
“And no one objects?” Stevos asked.
Hilda shrugged. “It’s a bureaucracy, and it takes quite some time for the forms to make it through the system. Fortunately, we’ve been getting exceptional results, so... no complaints so far.”
“Nice work if you can get it.” Stevos shook his head.
Hilda shrugged again. “It is a nice change. However, it is a lot more fieldwork and pretending to be someone you are not. Here we were able to tell Teragdor the truth. In Freehold, I am almost in enemy territory. I cannot reveal myself to the Church or Rod outside the city, or to the wizards inside. If I did, they’d all go silent and cagey.”
Hilda looked down at Taragdor. “He really did seem to enjoy himself; I imagine he doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to socialize with his father’s people.”
Stevos nodded. “That is my understanding.”
“I have to return to Freehold for a few hours, and then we have another late-night meeting,” Hilda said. “Can you watch over him, work to ease his glarghvost, I think they called it?”
Stevos grinned and nodded. “That is what it is called. I like that name.”
Hilda gave an amused frown. “I like the name better than the beverage.” She shook her head. “Don’t fully cleanse him, just take the edge off. Part of an experience like this is the next morning. It makes the event more memorable.”