by Regina Watts
“Are you sure there isn’t somewhere better we can stay? I’ll pay for it from my own purse.”
“It’ll be fairly quick…and anyplace so ill-managed in appearance should be liable to have some empty rooms for us.”
With the inn located, we hitched our horses at the nearest (and most trustworthy-looking) paid stables, made our way back through the busy streets to the Mongoose, and soon enough interrupted the gaunt innkeeper in the middle of counting his money behind the bar.
“Welcome to the Mongoose,” he said without looking up from the coins he stacked. “What’ll it be for you?”
“Are you the friend of Erdwud of Soot? Sharp?”
He glanced up at me briefly from the coin sorting, his pale eyes then drawn away and, as was inevitable, to the elves with their heads covered. Sharp’s attention lowered coolly to his till again, his hand resuming its motion. “What’s it to you?”
Politely as I could manage, I set the sealed letter on the counter and slid it across to the weaselly man. “I was told you could provide us fair and discreet lodgings.”
Sniffing lightly, the man set down the remaining handful of his coins, wiggled his mustache, and tore open the letter without bothering to look too closely at the seal. He unfolded the vellum within, his eyes darting back and forth across the lines of text. I leaned against the counter, hands patiently at rest. He continued on. I had just caught myself wondering how versed he was in the task of reading when he folded the letter up again, tucked it into his apron and nodded in the direction of the women.
“You some kind of pimp?”
With a light, quite shocked laugh, I glanced back toward the women and found that, luckily, the durrow weren’t familiar with the term. Praise Weltyr! Branwen’s face, however, was bright red with hateful displeasure, and she narrowed her eyes at the man. A haughty scowl contorted her lovely features into something that exuded utter loathing.
“I will have you know that I am the descendant of Klexian nobility,” she told him coolly, earning little more than a brisk glance. “You’d ought not to make such crude presumptions about someone you have never met.”
“Twelve ounces of silver a night per room,” he said, adding, “and we don’t do food.”
With a scoff of outrage, Odile pushed back her hood to look the man in the eyes. “Twelve, without food! Erdwud gave us room and board for—”
But she stopped. The innkeeper had recoiled a step and looked at me with dark shock.
“Bloody durrow,” said the man. “Now I understand what that letter meant about safe haven. What’s your game? Slavers? Spies?”
His motions so quick I did not have time to draw Strife before he had reached beneath the bar, the innkeeper drew a dwarvish pistol and clicked back the hammer.
“Whatever it is you’re angling for, you’ll have to find it someplace other than Skythorn.”
THE TEMPLE OF WELTYR
I WAS BEGINNING to regret following Erdwud’s advice, but the experience of meeting Sharp was ultimately invaluable. It showed the durrow the importance of concealing their identities in surface cities, for instance. While Odile looked wide-eyed with shock, not so much at the gun as at the realization of what she had done by failing to think in a moment of irritation, I stepped between the innkeeper and the women with my hands patiently raised.
“Now, sir, there’s no need for any of that—I assure you, we’re not slavers or spies. I am a humble servant of Weltyr”—I gestured toward the tattoo upon my neck, and to Sharp’s credit his arm began to relax—“and these fine ladies are my companions in my mission to acquire a lost artifact for the Temple. However, since they cannot all stay as guests of the Temple, I thought it best we find an inn somewhere. Erdwud suggested here, but if it’s too much of a problem, we can look elsewhere.”
Sternly studying me, his eyes darting behind me a few more times, Sharp lowered his pistol all the way. “You ain’t under some curse, is you?”
“No, friend, nothing like that. We’re hoping we won’t be in Skythorn more than one night. These women have been a great boon in the task I perform on behalf of my Temple.”
Relaxing somewhat further, the man set the pistol down even if he did not put it away. It rested by the money he resumed counting, saying as he did, “Don’t believe in the gods. Believe in gold and silver and copper.”
“There’s a god for those, too,” I assured him, earning a brisk glance back up and a hefty sigh.
“Seven silver pieces a night a room,” he said. “My best offer. You won’t find nowhere more discreet in the whole of the manufacturing district.”
And that is the story of how we ended up once again divided across two rooms, albeit ones that were of far lesser quality than the pair at The Weeping Willow. Indra and Odile careened over from theirs, having locked their equipment safely within and divested themselves of their cloaks.
“What a price!” Odile pressed her hand to her forehead, grimacing. “And what a fool I was. You just don’t think about your body language in the heat of the moment.”
“These things happen, Odile.” I patted her sympathetically upon the shoulder and chuckled as she slunk past me to throw herself upon the bed where Valeria and Branwen already reclined. “We’ll make our business here as quick as possible to avoid incurring another fee, then we’ll get onto the task of searching for Roserpine’s ring. It’s all a mater of talking to the priests, so I’d ought to go now.”
“We’ll stay here and rest,” agreed Branwen.
“And guard our equipment,” muttered Odile, glancing at the wall as though through it. “This place isn’t nearly as nice as the one in Soot.”
True enough. The Mongoose was dirty, our room’s bed was barely made, and I was quite certain I heard a rat scrambling through the wall. Nevertheless, it was good to have a place where, no matter the personal distaste of the innkeeper, we were with someone for whom our privacy was their best interest—if only to save a friendship with Erdwud.
“Gather your strength,” I told them all on my way out the door. “But remain alert in case something happens or I return for your assistance in hunting the traitors.”
On my way out, Sharp’s eyes burned into the back of my skull. I ignored him, interested in only one thing at just that moment: retrieving the Scepter of Weltyr.
Though, I do confess…free for the moment of the women I adored, who took so much of my attention because I loved their company, I was at last fully able to steep my senses in what it meant to have returned to Skythorn. Even considering how ardent I was in my beliefs concerning that great god of Light, I was still perpetually amazed by the things he did for me: by the sorrows he allowed me to evade, and the trials he permitted me to conquer, and the women who emerged from the world before me like flowers in the meadow of life. And, to top it all off, I had been permitted this chance to return to my home.
How full the city was that day! How long it seemed to take me, that march down the slope to the center of the northernmost district and the Temple situated there. However, unlike the pattern of El’ryh, as I drew closer to the eponymous structure of Skythorn the traffic began to lighten. Soon it had evaporated altogether. Centers of all forms of commerce were scattered around the many quarters of the city. Those citizens who had any brand of wealth at all tended to live as close as they could to the central structure—not just out of religious belief, but out of a general sense of security.
Areas near the Temple were kept free of loiterers and well-patrolled by guards. As one traversed these quieter neighborhoods, one found all manner of stylish gardens and splendid homes. When there was no room for a garden, there was almost always a window box—but more than likely many such structures had rooftop gardens, or their own small plot in a back yard. Birds twittered with pleasure and, with evening’s approach, the air had begun to cool. I felt a great yearning pain for the days when I was a young man, barely even a trainee, and these streets had not yet been laden with any nostalgic sentiment because they were s
imply the world to me. Now the Temple and the area around it was only the orientation point—the center of a great circle of reality that I had already come to find was more infinitely varied and wildly rewarding than I ever could have anticipated.
Where would my children, Weltyr willing, call the center of the world? With so many women in my intimate company, I could not help but turn my thoughts to these matters as I never before had. It was entirely possible I had left a few heiresses behind in El’ryh—I was still not certain of the mechanics that permitted the durrow species to be a race of only females, and that permitted them to still seem so purely durrow despite being begot by typically human fathers. Still, if any daughters of mine remained in the Nightlands, I considered that they may well go on to live there for the sum total of their lives. I would never know them.
And for the children I would someday know, whom I would call my own? I was somehow not quite sure where they would see their realities as being rooted. When I was a boy, I had taken it for granted that I would fall in love with a woman from Skythorn and raise my family there. That no longer seemed realistic. Perhaps it was a certain concern that was brought to the forefront of my mind by our troubled interaction with the inn keeper. Whatever the reason, the question plaguing me was: Where could a durrow live on the surface without fear of persecution?
After a certain point I became so consumed by this question that I barely noticed I approached the Temple until I passed through its open gate. Suddenly I blinked awake upon the stone path that spiraled over the lawns. It had not been the gate that stirred my awareness, though, nor the proximity of the holy house itself—rather, it was the splendid woman who swept the walk, long waves of chestnut hair hanging around her face while she minded her work.
No face was required to place her in a crowd. The pattern of her body was unmistakable, and the patchouli scent of her flesh on the wind overcame me with joy. Even the blue cloak hanging from her shoulders seemed somehow well-suited to her, though I had no specific memories of her wearing such a garment. I simply knew her ways, and recognized her at the glimpse from the farthest distance.
Elishta-bet!
I had expected to see at least one or two fellow orphans from the old days, but Elishta and I had been thick as thieves until she was sent off to a convent as was the custom with unmarried, unadopted young ladies who fell into Weltyr’s service but showed no interest in the more dynamic clerical activities of serving as paladin.
“Elishta!”
Invested in her work as she was, Elishta didn’t recognize my voice. Perhaps she was not expecting me back so soon, or even at all. Her head lifted from her sweeping and she looked past me before looking at me. Eyes widening, she very nearly dropped the broom—certainly she looked twice at it in her hands, as if wondering what she was doing sweeping walking paths when I had returned to Skythorn. Leaning it against the nearby column, Elishta emerged from the breezeway around the quiet Temple entrance and threw her arms about my neck.
“Rorke,” she exclaimed, her face aglow with joy, “oh, Rorke! Welcome home!”
“Elishta! What a welcome face! Perhaps this visit will go smoothly after all.”
That joyful expression fell as she leaned back upon her heels. “Only a visit? You mean you’re not staying?”
“My quest isn’t over,” I told my old friend, taking her hands in mine while admiring the disappointed contortions of her coppery face. “I’ve come back to ask Father Fortisto to help me find two vagabonds…they may have information on the location of the Scepter.”
Her hazel eyes quite wide at that, Elishta said, “Really! You’re on its track? When you wrote me about embarking on your quest, I thought for sure—well, I thought at least you would be side-tracked by some pretty lady and settle down a hundred leagues from here.”
Thinking of all the pretty ladies waiting for me at the Mongoose who were, so far as I could tell, not particularly interested in conventional forms of settling down, I couldn’t help but laugh at Elishta’s concern.
“Of course not, Eli…you know that my heart is Weltyr’s before anything or anyone’s. That reminds me”—I touched her elbow and her whole body tensed as though she needed to brace herself against my touch for reasons I didn’t understand—“just what are you doing back from the convent?”
“Oh—well…”
Blushing, Elishta wrung her hands and glanced bashfully to the side.
“It’s nothing, really. I just—I’m not very suited to the nunnery, I think. You know how my imagination is! My head in the clouds all the time. I just can’t live so rigidly. You and I didn’t even get up so early when we were children!”
“Contemplation takes a long time…but it also takes a willing heart. There’s no sense in forcing a woman into the convent if she can’t take to its ways.”
Nodding, Elishta told me, “Father Fortisto’s been very kind, though…he let me come back here to work and says I’m welcome to teach when I feel the urge.”
“Now, that does sound a mite more pleasant than spending the rest of your life in a convent! Will you tell me, Elishta, where Father Fortisto is at the moment?”
“I suppose he’s in the rectory hall…let me walk there with you, Rorke.” The suggestion uttered from her lips like a sort of plea. As her hand landed upon mine, her complex eyes searched my face. “I’ve missed you. How worried I’ve been!”
Leaving her broom behind, we made our way into the anteroom just within the main entrance. “Worried? Now, whatever for?”
“The thought of you traveling abroad, looking for that relic with nobody to help you but whatever mercenaries the Temple let you hire—it sounded to me like a wild goose chase, and dangerous.”
“Dangerous, perhaps, but all in the name of the All-Father.”
Our voices softened to see the chapel doors were open. Carefully walking upon the carpet rather than the metal floor beneath to keep our sound down, we glanced within at the trio of priests who planned services near the back of the pews. The warm scent of incense embraced me as a son while the soft murmuring of the old men filled the dimly lit, richly-ornamented space like the sound of a brook.
One of them, seeing my tattoo peering from beneath the plates of my armor, nodded at me with great respect. I felt a boyish flutter to remember that, by all appearances, I was a fully ordained and consecrated Paladin of Weltyr—a member of the Order, rather than a mere initiate. We continued beyond the doors and I resumed to her, “At any rate, I haven’t been alone. I’ve joined with a handful of fellow travelers. With them at my side, I’d venture a guess that I’m a fair bit safer than most sent on quests for the Temple.”
“Servants of Weltyr, these travelers?”
“No,” I admitted to her, bending and lowering my voice all the more. “Heathen worshipers of Roserpine, and one of Anroa—but I believe Weltyr desires I should work with them, so work with them, I do.”
Though Elishta-bet appeared somewhat scandalized, it was only in the way of those who delighted in scandal. ““Roserpine!” I’ve never heard of that one.”
“She’s a goddess of darkness, among other things. So far as I can tell, all durrow in the Nightlands are taught to praise her above the Bright God…but one can’t rightly blame them, given they cannot see the sun and therefore don’t have any means or incentive by which to contemplate its mysteries.”
“How sad!”
“Perhaps, yes, perhaps it is…but I have no doubt that, should Weltyr wish to present himself and the knowledge of his salvation to the durrow, he would find a way. It’s their slave trade that keeps them from his favor, I would think, but such speculations aren’t my place.”
“Nor any man’s,” agreed Elishta, mounting the stairs that curled through the heights of the Temple. “As you said…when the time has come for them, surely their priests will be made ready for the knowledge.”
“Priestesses, actually.” She glanced over, and I explained, “They have only priestesses, Roserpine’s people—the durrow a
re an exclusively female race.”
How Elishta’s eyes widened! She put together one or two things a mite more quickly than I would have liked. Her face redder by the second, my old friend stuttered, “O—oh! Oh! Goodness! All of them?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my eyebrows, unable to help the glint in my eye, “every last one.”
“Oh,” repeated Elishta. Scrutinizing me more closely now, she said, “So that means your companions—”
“Are women, yes.”
“I—I see. I see.”
Laughing, I jostled my old friend by the shoulders. “Come now! Surely you aren’t jealous, Elishta.”
“Of course not,” Elishta hastened to answer, her gaze averted, her blushing face nonetheless gravely sad.
All at once Elishta gave me pause in a way she never truly had before. Was I reading into my oldest friend’s concern for me? Making some embarrassing misinterpretation of her tone?
Or was there something more than a yearning for friendship behind those downcast eyes?
“Elishta—”
A delighted bellow from the landing above interrupted us.
“Rorke Burningsoul!”
My gaze was drawn to Father Fortisto, a ragged and moth-eaten but kindly old man who for the last four or so years had adopted a way of quivering when excited by some activity or bit of news. Looking between myself and his feet, he waved a trembling hand and eventually rested it upon the rail of the spiraling metal staircase. “Weltyr’s eye, how blessed I am to see you again!”
“Not near so blessed as I am,” I said, adding, “wait there, please,” as I turned to Elishta. “My task here is urgent, and I may not be able to linger long once Fortisto has divined for me. Is there a way, perhaps, that you could meet me at the inn where we stay? Ah—but the neighborhood forbids it, so perhaps—”
