Cael struck the surface of the pool with his staff. The strange liquid, thicker than water yet thinner than oil, writhed like something alive. When it finally grew still, the image was gone, the Tower was no more. The two thieves backed away until the dead grass hid the pool from their eyes.
“Let us leave this place,” Cael said with a shudder.
Chapter Twenty-Three
This way. In here,” Alynthia whispered urgently as Cael hurried up the rickety stairs. She stood at the stair’s top, just beside a door and beneath a hanging sign painted with a large spreading tree. Below them, booted feet marched heavily down an alley slick with offal. Swords clanged against armored thighs, and spears clashed hollowly on shields as a patrol of Knights of Neraka passed almost beneath their feet.
“Where are we?” Cael asked as Alynthia swung open the door. A wave of light, noise, and heat, and a greasy odor of fried potatoes struck him full in the face. Just to the right of the door, a long bar stretched curvingly away into smoky shadows. Behind it stood a huge man with unshaven jowls and a great belly stretching his beer-stained apron. He looked at the two of them expectantly but said nothing as he pulled a pint and slid it down the bar to one of his customers.
“The Solace Inn,” Alynthia answered. They stepped inside. The door, hanging on titled hinges, banged shut behind them. “One of ours. We’ll be safe here.”
The common room of the inn was large and bean-shaped, wrapping around an irregularly curved wall painted to resemble the trunk of a massive tree. The beams of the roof were likewise made to look like tree limbs. About two-thirds of the way back into the room, a large stone fireplace crackled with flame, making the warm, early summer night even-more stifling, but it proved. a welcome sight to two adventurers who had just come through the Shoikan Grove. Directly across from the fireplace, a long narrow table was shoved almost up against the curved wall. It left a wide empty space in the center of the room.
“Some people call this place the Inn of the Next to the Last Home,” Alynthia said with a laugh as she slid into one of the six chairs surrounding the long table.
“Why is that?” Cael asked with perfect seriousness. He dropped into the chair beside her.
“I assumed you would know.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because… your father…”
“Oh, that,” he said offhandedly. “I have only once visited the village he frequented, and that long ago. Is there a waitress?” He glanced around as he pounded the table with his fist.
The inn was uncommonly empty this evening. A few customers huddled over their drinks at the bar, while a pair of dwarves sat at a table near the door and spoke in muted whispers, and an old man in a battered hat snored in one of the chairs by the fireplace. Cael again rapped his knuckles against their table and shouted for wine.
Behind the bar, a pair of doors swung open, emitting a great fat slug of a woman. She crept around the bar and slowly approached their table. Her hair, once red as a bonfire, was shot through with silvery gray locks, while her huge freckled bosom hung half out of her frowzy dress. She smiled wantonly at the elf as she neared, revealing mossy brown teeth.
“Wine for me and my friend,” Alynthia said to the woman. “We’ll pay with circles of steel.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, madam,” the woman said, bowing a hasty retreat to the kitchen.
“What was that?” Cael asked.
“They call her Big Tika. By paying with ‘circles of steel,’ I informed her that we are of the Guild.”
“But I thought-” Cael began, before a warning glance from Alynthia silenced him. The innkeeper approached, a pair of brown crockery mugs dangling from his fist. He clapped them onto the table, then drew a bottle from his apron and filled the cups to the brim with a thick yellow fluid.
“Best of the house, Captains,” he said proudly.
“I am sure,” Cael said uncertainly as he eyed his cup. He raised it to his lips, sniffed, sipped, winced, and set the cup on the table. Alynthia took a long draught of hers and sighed.
“It is good, no?” the innkeeper asked.
“Very,” Alynthia said. “Now leave us.”
“Yes, Captain.” The man bowed his way to the kitchen.
“What irks me,” Alynthia said while thoughtfully staring into her cup, “is that we’re still in the Old City. We can’t pass the gates, not tonight, so we’re stuck here, unless you care to hazard another journey through the sewers. They’ll be full of Knights and city guards.”
“Not particularly,” Cael answered. “Where would we go? Back to the Guild so that my sentence can be executed?”
Alynthia shook her head, then took another long draught of her wine. She set the cup down with a clunk and scrubbed her lips with the back of her hand. “I take full responsibility for our failure,” she said. “They cannot blame you. Oros will give us another chance.”
“What of Mulciber?”
“She is not unreasonable. No, the only reason she would order your death is if you tried to escape or if you betrayed us.”
“You keep calling Mulciber ‘she’. Why is that?” Cael asked. “The voice I heard that morning when I was judged was neither male nor female, and I can find no one who has ever seen her. Have you?”
“Yes…” Alynthia said hesitantly. “At least, I have been in her presence, seen her form shrouded in robes. But it was dark. Only Oros has actually seen her face to face, and he won’t describe her except to say that she is female. He cannot speak of their first meeting without a shudder.”
“All the more reason to fear for my life,” Cael grumbled. “You don’t even know if she is human, elf, or dwarf. She might be a monster or a creature from the Abyss.”
“You have nothing to fear,” Alynthia said with a smile as she placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Cael laughed.
Her smile faded. “I thought you might,” she said indignantly.
“I am sorry,” Cael chuckled. “I just keep thinking of that night at the home of Gaeord uth Wotan, when I stole the dragonflower pollen from your bodice. You wanted to kill me. Now you want me to trust you. I learned a long time ago, before you were born, to trust no one.”
Slowly, her smile returned. She propped her elbow on the table and set her chin thoughtfully on her fist, eyeing the elf with something akin to curiosity. “When and where were you born?” she asked rather dreamily.
“I don’t know the whole story,” Cael answered evasively. “I never asked my mother and she was reluctant to talk about it. As for when I was born and how old I am, time has little meaning for me. Humans’ lives burn so swiftly, it is a wonder to me how they accomplish so many great things, and so many terrible things. Elves live their lives slowly and are not in the same hurry to accomplish or destroy.”
“Were you born before the Chaos War, or even the War of the Lance?” she asked.
“My first memory was of my mother standing by the sea, gazing at the horizon. A storm was blowing up, and the sea was gray as iron. She looked sad, because she had just received some news. She said to me, ‘The humans are at war again.’ I assume she meant the war in which Palanthas was attacked by the Blue Lady’s army, about seventy-seven years ago.”
Alynthia’s smile widened, her dark eyes sparkled. “The things you must have seen. I would love for you to tell me about them some time.”
A bang at the inn’s entrance startled them. “Perhaps another time,” Cael muttered as he rose from his chair.
Sir Arach Jannon stood at the bar, speaking to the innkeeper. Two of his fingers were splinted and his whole hand was swathed in a large linen mitten. He shook a finger of his good hand in the face of the innkeeper, who eyed the offending digit as if he wished to clamp his teeth upon it. Behind the gray-robed Thorn Knight, a pair of Knights of the Lily yawned and leaned on their spears.