The Smiling Stallion Inn

by Courtney Bowen

  “Your Lordship,” Mawen said, curtseying.

  “We are supposed to be raising logical, rational, reasonable children who are free to grow up big and strong and be independent individuals with minds of their own. But my daughter has lost her mind!” Lapo exclaimed.

  Jawen glared at her father.

  “‘The children of Za and Wan were born to be the inheritors of humanity’s woes and foibles,’ a proverb from The Legends of Arria, as I recall,” the baron said. “Calm down, Lapo. As I tried to explain to you before—”

  “You stopped me, Augwys, you stopped me! I could have stopped this!”

  “Lapo, address me as Baron Augwys or Your Lordship when we’re in public,” the baron chastised, glancing around. “Come on, Lapo, let’s go to your house; it’s closest.”

  Jawen glanced back in vain for any sign of Basha as she was forced to follow the rest of her family and the baron home. The Courtship Ritual had come to a screeching halt with Basha’s proposal, and no one else was in the mood to reconvene the event tonight. Torches were being relit from the bonfire, which would be doused.

  “Basha and Jawen—what will they think of next?” Rajar was saying.

  “Maybe they could have babies with ‘balnor’ stamped onto their foreheads,” Fence said.

  “Oh, you two, stop it,” Talia said before Jawen could speak. “It’s bad enough she got involved with Basha in the first place.”

  “Enough of this!” Jawen cried. “I’m tired of you all complaining about Basha and insulting me. Why can’t you be happy for me?” she asked. “Why can’t you be satisfied I found someone I love, who loves me in return, enough for him to offer me…” She stopped, unable to finish.

  “This is exactly the sort of thing I feared,” Lapo muttered. “You and that balnor.”

  “Enough! Don’t call him that!” Jawen said. “He’s not, you’ve no proof, and we’ve been through this all already! I don’t want to hear you calling him that in my presence. He’s going to be my husband.”

  “Dear, let it go,” Mawen said to Lapo, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “Oh, all right,” Lapo said to his wife. “But he’s still no good,” he said, turning to Jawen. “I still don’t trust him.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t have what it takes, even though he thinks he can get away with offering you Tau’s Cup.”

  “It was his choice,” Jawen muttered.

  “We didn’t know you were seeing Basha until late Havin, early Sna of last year,” Mawen said to her. “And by then, you had already broken up with him, or so it seemed. We thought that was the end of it.”

  Jawen was surprised her mother and father had even known this much about her relationship with Basha. They sounded so disappointed in her it broke her heart.

  Lapo sighed. “I thought something was up with you, Jawen, even earlier than that. You were sneaking around behind my back,” Lapo said. “But I was hoping it was with Hastin.”

  “We should have kept a closer eye on you, but we thought that it was best for you to make your own way and have fun while it lasted,” Mawen said. “We thought you and Hastin would get back together. For a while, it did seem you were dating him again, in Havin and Sna.”

  “But then Basha showed up at our front door, with flowers, no less!” Lapo exclaimed. “I thought you would’ve refused him and married Hastin.”

  “That’s not what I wanted,” Jawen said. “I love Basha with all my heart.”

  “So that’s it? This is how—”

  “Lapo, I hope you will forgive your daughter,” the baron said. “Hastin has already forgiven her, for the most part, and he has already moved on, I think. What we need to discuss now is where we do we go from here?”

  “You should have let me interfere,” Lapo said.

  “It’s tradition. The Courtship Ritual must proceed. Any interference would disturb the sanctity of the event. Any proposal, once started, can’t be stopped unless one of the two people involved stops it. And the engagement is in effect right after that. There is no way to break off a marriage proposal without a lot of hassle,” the baron added. “Should any person dispute an engagement, such as a young man who foolishly made a proposal on a drunken whim, or a young woman who wishes to break off her engagement because her future husband has beaten her, then a case would have to be made by the petitioning party for their marriage contract to become null and void before the marriage could take place.”

  Jawen listened carefully to what the baron had to say. She knew her father would be looking for a loophole in the baron’s words.

  The baron continued, “Sometimes an agreement can be reached between the two parties involved on whether or not to proceed with the marriage, if such an engagement dispute arises. But usually this would be decided at the courthouse if I were available to preside or by the town council if there was a lot of argument involved.”

  “Well, what about now?” Lapo asked. “There is no marriage contract arranged between them, not yet. The marriage contract is arranged by the families, or by the town if there is no one else to help them, and I’m not going to sign any paper that has my daughter’s name and Basha’s name on it!”

  “The marriage contract…well.” The baron paused. “Any engagement properly made is almost as difficult to get out of as marriage. But it can be done, especially with an engagement that has not been officially sanctioned.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jawen said. “It’s sanctioned; it’s official. Everyone in town saw it. And Basha, he swore, didn’t he? He swore by Tau! The greatest god of them all!” Jawen gasped. “He swore by Tau that he’d give me the Cup, and we would be married. And I accepted him! That’s sacred!”

  “Tau’s Cup,” Lapo said, muttering to himself as they reached his home. “Tau’s Cup, is it real?” he asked the baron.

  “It’s real if you believe in it, I should think,” the baron said as they entered the home of the merchant. “And we shouldn’t take Basha’s oath lightly, not with everyone else in town witnessing it. We must think things through.”

  The merchant’s youngest children raced on ahead to their bedrooms, herded by their mother. Jawen lingered, though, listening to the clock tick.

  “We ought to call a town council meeting,” Lapo said.

  “Good idea, Lapo, we can start that in the morning,” the baron said. “I ought to go home, though. Hastin is probably waiting up for me, and I’d like to have a word with him. Maybe if he’d been more adamant, I could call Jawen my future daughter-in-law tonight.”

  “And I’d have called Hastin my future son-in-law tonight,” Lapo said. “What happened, Your Lordship? Where’d we go wrong?”

  “Please, call me Augwys now,” the baron said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, I suppose—”

  “Hello,” Jawen said, hoping to join in the conversation.

  “There you have it,” Baron Augwys said, nodding at the girl. “I hope you aren’t too depressed by these circumstances, Lapo, though they are deplorable,” he said.

  “No, Baron Augwys. I hope everything will turn out well in the end. What about Oaka and Sisila? Are you agreeable to their pairing?”

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, Jawen thought.

  Baron Augwys sighed. “I had resigned myself to the possibility long before tonight. At least my daughter was proposed to by Geda’s trueborn son, though that isn’t much of an improvement. Still, she has operating the inn to look forward to,” he said.

  Jawen groaned. “I can’t stand this much longer,” she said. The two men were practically in bed with each other, the schemers. The baron had been the man her father had been talking to on the night she’d first heard the words “balnor boy” uttered by him. It was, in a way, not surprising the baron would be involved in this matter.

  “Go to bed, Jawen!” Lapo exclaimed. “I’ll speak to you later.”

  Jawen turned and walked down the long hallway, but then she paused and glanced back as her father and the baron entered her father’s study. She wai
ted a moment and then went back, quietly walking up to the door as the clock chimed one in the morning. It had been a while since she’d eavesdropped like this. She licked her lips, and brushing her hair back, pressed her ear against the door.

  “What more did you want to talk to me about, Lapo?” she heard the baron say. “I really must be getting home.”

  “The Cup, is it real?” Lapo asked. “Is it something physical or metaphorical?”

  “I don’t know; I haven’t got a clue. The Cup hasn’t been seen for well over two thousand years. The stories all say it’s in Coe Pidaria.”

  “Which is on the other side of the Wastelands, Doomba’s territory, if it exists,” Lapo said. “It might be just a gold goblet, not the real Tau’s Cup that the god used to create humans.”

  Jawen gasped as she’d not realized…she’d forgotten Tau’s Cup was in Coe Pidaria, far from Coe Baba, and too close to Doomba.

  “What’s your point?” the baron asked.

  “The point is,” Lapo said, continuing, “I’d like to establish whether or not it’s metaphorical or physical. I know the boys sometimes promise girls the moon and the stars as a part of the Courtship Ritual, but really, the boys are not expected to go up there and bring down the moon and the stars. Would we expect Basha to go on this trip and retrieve Tau’s Cup himself, bring it back here like a quest for my daughter’s hand in marriage?”

  Jawen held her breath and continued listening.

  “Well, that’s something to consider, but I thought you, of all people, would be satisfied knowing that Basha would be gone, possibly never to come back, if he went on this quest for Tau’s Cup.”

  This is a nightmare, Jawen thought.

  “If he goes, he’s gone, and if he doesn’t, will that break his oath? That’s one thing I’d like to know—whether or not he’ll meet his promise to my daughter. I’m not entirely heartless, though; I don’t want to see my daughter heartbroken. If there is some way of breaking off this engagement without harming my daughter’s life, or the boy’s, then I’d be satisfied.”

  “Yes, indeed, I suppose. But it’s getting rather late, and I must retire. Good night, Lapo.”

  “Good night, Augwys,” Lapo said, and Jawen quickly retreated back down the hallway once more. She was terrified what might happen to Basha if he went on this journey and what might happen to them as a couple if he didn’t go. Tears swelled in her eyes and she cried as if she’d lost him already.

  * * * *

  Nisa groaned as she walked into the house she shared with her mother, Brigga. It was a small cottage located in the neighborhood of mill workers. She’d been cleaning up the common room along with the other serving girls, as Habala and Geda happily counted the evening’s profits. When Basha and Oaka had come tromping in, Oaka had left Basha to tell his story.

  Nisa closed her eyes, remembering how the faces of Geda and Habala had fallen faster than she’d ever thought possible, and how she thought she might have to tend to a fainting Habala.

  Nisa lowered her head and fought back tears. So far, her mission had succeeded, but it would hurt so many to get Basha on his way. He wasn’t ready yet to go, but that time was upon him now and hopefully he would succeed with her help. She wept silently.

  “Nisa, is that you?” Brigga called, and she stopped. It was time to face her mother.

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said, wiping off her eyes and going around the corner into the kitchen. “I have to speak to you about another matter I’ve to deal with Basha.” She sighed, shaking her head. What a way to talk about this like it was just a routine assignment.

  * * * *

  Several hours earlier

  “Nisa, what’s wrong? What happened to you?” her father said as she strode past his table just before the Courtship Ritual. She stopped and sat down next to him, though at an opposite table. This was cutting it close, but she supposed she’d time to talk.

  “I’m fine, I got a scratch; it’s nothing,” Nisa said in a low voice so that others wouldn’t hear them. She leaned toward him. “Got into a fight. Morton and I were in the kitchen when I spotted someone tampering with the soup. I went after him, and he charged at me—wouldn’t say anything about what he was doing here. I knew he wouldn’t cooperate, no matter what we did, and he recognized me. He knew who I was. I had to destroy him before it was too late.”

  “Nisa, you could have been killed,” her father said. “Was there no way to spare him before—”

  “Didn’t you hear me? There was no other way. We couldn’t control him,” she said, turning her head slightly. “He was…Do you remember what happened the last time we let a few of them live to trap the others?” She shook her head. “I’m not letting that happen again,” she said, facing forward once more.

  “We couldn’t foresee what would happen,” her father said. “There was no way we could have controlled…” He shook his head. “We can’t blame ourselves,” he said, realizing what he’d just said.

  “In any case,” Nisa said, deciding not to call him out on his exposed hypocrisy, “you might think he’d have valuable information, be an asset to us in some way, but I think not. I think he was just turned, or he was just getting into the organization, and yet he was so indoctrinated he was crazy.” She looked around. “The way he acted…he wouldn’t have cracked for us, at least not deliberately, and he wouldn’t have had much to share. They wouldn’t have told him much of their plans, except for what he needed to know for his mission.” She paused. “They probably knew he’d be caught or killed.”

  “I suppose that’s all I needed to know,” her father said after a moment’s pause. “You better hurry up and get in position, or else we’ll miss this chance.”

  “Do you suppose it’ll work?” Nisa asked, turning to him.

  “I believe we’ll have a result one way or another. Let’s hope it’s a favorable one,” her father said before she left to disrupt Basha’s search for Jawen.

  Nisa remembered what her father had told her the one time he’d shown her the chair Old Man sat in during story time. He’d brought her forward as a little girl and pointed out the exquisite detailing carved into the relic. The chair was actually an ancient throne, if he were to be believed, which had embraced many rulers in the past when the forest was young. The power of the seat and those who sat upon it was shown by the care and craftsmanship that had gone into its construction. It was supposed to showcase the might of humanity over even the most magical creatures. Nisa didn’t believe it was possible for any human to have been so powerful as to rule all of these creatures, but she did admire the craftsmanship nonetheless.

  Vulpines, also known as kitsune, curled up in slumber on the seat of the throne with their long tails wrapped about them, and shifted into men, women, or foxes, depending on how you looked at them. If you tilted the chair over to look at the underside of the seat, you’d find a warren of gnomes digging and crawling underground. Fishtail legs rested upon the floor as mermen and merwomen, poised like the figureheads of a ship, supported the chair. A centaur stood strident as the left armrest, and a unicorn lowered its head to graze as the right armrest. Lions, tigers, and leopards—clawed paws raised and teeth bared—were etched into the front of the chair back, and on the opposite side, a forest scene contained all of the same animals built into the chair. Griffins flanked its head, and sea serpents and dragons carved along its edges mingled with all the rest.

  Only the Fay seemed to be missing. But her father told her, “The Fay are invisible, but they are there if you look closely.” He pointed to a tree in the forest scene. “You might see a Fay’s face or body there,” he said, but she couldn’t find it no matter how hard she looked, and she was good at spying things.

  Nisa had never seen any of these animals in real life because they no longer existed, wiped out during the Dark Age. No one knew exactly when the last of these creatures had vanished. Some said as much as two thousand years ago, and others said as recently as two hundred years ago. Reports of such animal
sightings were still happening as recently as two hundred years ago, of a unicorn fleeing through the forest or of a gnome disappearing underground, but they couldn’t be verified.

  These rare sightings may have been the last holdouts of their species. Over the centuries since the start of the Dark Ages, the warfare between humanity and Doomba’s Servants—who occasionally came up from the south to try to conquer Arria—prevailed in the human consciousness. Try as they might, the Servants, who used brutish and gruesome tactics, couldn’t annihilate the humans who fought to defend themselves, but the humans couldn’t win the eternal war. They won only minor conflicts. Any attempts to utterly defeat Doomba failed.

  Marvola the Magnificent, as the second king of Arria and Corr’s heir, established the city of Coe Kiki, and he and his descendants tried to regain control over all of Arria. Meanwhile, Doomba tried to undermine their power with puppet kings who would claim the land and follow his orders. Marvola’s descendants were able to defeat the puppet kings and prove they were the true rulers of Arria. Then Doomba attempted to destroy the land by poisoning it, but his efforts went only so far as the portion that would be called the Wastelands. Finally Doomba resorted to using the other nations of Salarria to invade Arria. Though it was greatly pounded and reduced by the War of Eight Lands, Arria managed to regain control of its territory and then tried to conquer all the other countries. They nearly succeeded in creating an empire that would rival what Corrica had before that empire too was reduced to the original country of Arria.

  In the midst of the first fifteen hundred years of the Dark Ages the great creatures were decimated either by humans or by Servants, most likely both—inadvertent casualties of warfare and hunting. As they tried to survive, humans forgot about helping the creatures who had once been their allies. Knowledge and learning were thrown out the window when survival was at stake. The loss of the Fay and the wisest human practitioners set back magic for hundreds of years, and the Old Language, either spoken by the original inhabitants of Salarria or the Corricans when they first arrived, was dropped by the wayside as well with the rise of the Common Language.