by T. O. Munro
She spied a jar on the table by the fire inbetween the two winged chairs. She muttered a soft curse as she went to retrieve it. No job ever seemed finished these days, certainly not with Old Trajet taking to his bed so readily and rising so late. If Young Trajet were here he’d do his part, or at least shame his dad into fulfilling the job as well as the title of innkeeper.
She reached for the half full tankard but a thin hand shot out from the nearer winged chair and grabbed her wrist. “I’m not finished, Mistress Ailsa.”
“Goddess, prophet and Saint Morwena,” Aisla gasped, “but you gave me a shock there Mr Marcus, sitting so quiet and still.”
“I’m good at that,” the thin man with dark hair replied lifting the tankard to his lips.
Ailsa watched him take a deep draught. She wanted to say that the man had maybe had enough, save that Marcus was the only regular customer, the only resident customer and times were still hard in Salicia. It would be a week more at least before the garrison returned and the times of bounty and overflowing tap rooms could resume. In the meantime Mr Marcus’s half silver crown a night for a small room were most welcome, not to mention the ale and spirits he seemed to absorb with no visible dimming of his faculties.
Her reverie was broken by a sudden hammering at the door that made her jump and brought an amused smile to Marcus’s lips. “We’re closed,” Ailsa shouted, but the hammering just resumed with greater intensity. She walked over to the door and shouted through it again, “we’re closed.” The next sudden thumping was level with her head and she started in alarm.
“For the love of the Goddess, let them in woman,” Marcus said. He looked around the vacant tables, the room scarcely much emptier than it had been all day. “Sure you could do with the business.”
“Hold on,” Ailsa called as the thumping resumed. “I’m getting it.” She raised the bar and pulled open the door. Two sodden figures tumbled into the room. A short man followed by a tall girl. Ailsa gasped at the man’s deformed hand and then caught the angry red scar that soured the side of his head. She looked quckly away, hiding her revulsion by pretending she was looking at the man’s companion. A tall young girl with her arms folded inside her cloak. The deluge had plastered ropes of blond hair to her scalp and shoulders, but despite that she looked around the inside of the inn, brown eyes bright with fascination at the entirely ordinary surroundings.
“My apologies for troubling you at so late an hour, good mistress,” the man was saying, wringing water out of a corner of his cloak, one good hand and one bad hand twisting inefficiently against each other. “I had misjudged our bearings and we were somewhat lost. It was only with some difficulty that we argued our way through the night gate and got directions to your esteemed establishment.”
“You must have argued well,” Marcus said limping over to carry his tankard to the bar and, on the way, get a better look at the newcomers. “The night gate isn’t supposed to open for nobody save them on the governor’s business.”
“I’m a merchant,” the man replied. “I have a gift for haggling.”
Ailsa could not take her eyes off the man’s scars. By all that was holy he was missing an ear and all the hair that should have been near it. How could a man survive that kind of scalding?
“I fell asleep in my cups one night,” the man answered her curious stare. “Rolled in the hearth, didn’t wake up until the damage was done.”
“I didn’t ask no question, sir,” Ailsa insisted.
“But you wanted to,” the man replied without rancour.
Ailsa swallowed awkwardly and shrugged. “We baint be having many visitors these past few months. Every newcomer is somethink of an event, marked or not, begging your pardon for any offence.”
The scarred man nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I had thought it was quieter than I remember, quieter and more worried.”
“Well with the garrison gone overseas everybody’s been at their quicks’ ends.” Ailsa said. “Not knowing when they would be coming back, or even if they’d be coming back. We’ve been through a terrible time and all that while we was wondering if the Satrap would take the chance to attack while we got nothing but old men and wenches to defend the walls.” She sighed, “My man, Old Trajet, we call him that on account of how our son also be called Trajet so he’s Young Trajet and his da is Old Trajet.”
“Ingenious,” the scarred man complimented her. His eyes scanned the inn and then he stepped over to the bar, dripping water all the way.
“Well, Old Trajet he’s bitten his fingers to the bone with the fretting about which way’s going to be up when the dust finally settles, takes to his bed right early of a night. I think he might be sickening for something.”
“Only for liquor,” Marcus grunted. “I see how he takes a bottle with him whenever he goes up.
“Well you’re a fine one to talk Mr Marcus,” Ailsa snapped in instinctive defence of her husband’s uncertain character. “It’s a dry night when you down less than two bottles yourself and to no social purpose barring your own amusment.”
“I can hold my drink,” Marcus replied. “And it’s medicinal, Ailsa, it’s for easing some painful memories.”
The stranger looked at him sharply. “Do you find it works?”
“Not well enough,” Marcus replied dourly.
“Well it has been a time of worry right enough, small wonder Old Trajet has been so stuck on liquid solace when Young Trajet was out risking life and limb near enough four hundred leagues over the sea,” Ailsa dabbed at the counter, wiping some of the dirt back on from the cloth.
“I keep noticing you speak in the past tense, Mistress Ailsa.” The scarred man said, choosing his words with careful deliberation. “Does that mean your time of worry is at an end?”
She looked at him queerly. “You baint from round here are you sir, though I can’t hear no accent in your voice.”
“I’ve been away travelling, for a long time, with my niece.”
The girl was wandering around the room with an air of insatiable curiosity. Marcus was watching her carefully. She stuck out her tongue at him. He blinked.
“You mean you ‘aint heard a word about the goings on in the Petred Isle.”
“A bad business,” Marcus growled.
“So you keep saying Marcus and then you never say more, so if you baint got anything beyond your tut tutting and sip sipping to contribute I’ll thank you to keep your trap shut and let them as know what’s what tell the tale.”
“You’ve been there to the Petred Isle?” the scarred man asked.
“No but near enough as good as, I’ve had letters from my boy Young Trajet. He writes real good, time was he was going to be a priest. But then he took the governor’s penny and joined the garrison. Never expected that to take him overseas though.”
The visitor leaned idly on the bar, drumming his three fingers against the half-polished wood in a most disconcerting way. “And what does your brave soldier son tell you in his letters of the Petred Isle?”
“Well you heard tell there was a dreadful evil let loose. Orcs aplenty, all the great castles of the land taken and worse.” She dropped her voice and leant in to confide in a way that was somehow still less discreet than a hail across a street in broad daylight. “I’d never have believed it save that young Trajet wrote he’d seen them with his own eyes.” She ran her tongue over her lips savouring the awful details in her tale. “Yes the unrested dead was stalking the land, bodies kept walking and made to kill long after their owners had lost all use for them.”
“That’s hard to credit.” There was belief in the man’s eyes, if not his words.
“There’s worse monsters than orcs and the undead,” Marcus shivered and again the blond girl stuck out her tongue at him with a puzzled frown upon her brow.
“Well it were all true and young Trajet and his brigade they was in a battle, a great battle against the enemy. They’re calling it Gogoument after the name of some manor house that was next to the battle field.”<
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“What happened?”
“The enemy was defeated,” Ailsa played a trump of gossip with great pleasure. “And the Dark Lord, he was destroyed.”
“Maelgrum, destroyed?”
“Yes that was the feller,” Ailsa hastily concurred raising her voice in her anxiety not to bear any interruption to her story telling. “And he’s not coming back. They had the victory, this young slip of a girl that they say is queen now, though rightly I baint never heard of her before a few month back and who knows what happened to old King Gregor and his two fine sons, but anyways this slip of a girl come out of Undersalve and turns out she’s the heir and everything. All done right proper or so young Trajet says in his letters, but it’s a rum business if you ask me.”
The girl hissed some murmur of warning at the scarred stranger as Marcus frowned. “Forgive me sir, but how come you knew the Dark Lord’s name was Maelgrum?” Marcus kept his gaze as level as his voice, though there was a weight behind his light words.
“The lady must have mentioned it.”
“She didn’t.”
“Maybe I did, Mr Marcus, sure I must have,” Ailsa bristled. “Now let me tell the tale, we are just coming to the best bit. See my young Trajet he was there in the thick of this battle of Gogoument and he was fighting orcs and zombies and everything. Even wizards, by all that’s holy and they was so outnumbered but they won.”
“By themselves they defeated Mael… the Dark Lord’s army all by themselves?” the scarred man was shaking his head.
Ailsa frowned. “There was some elves came along right at the end, some of them dodgy folk, tree huggers from the Silverwood, but by then young Trajet and his boys had been fighting all day and the battle was as good as won.”
“And the enemy is gone, totally gone.” The stranger slid onto a stool, trembling slightly.
“The queen laid him low with some purty trick, there was a big fire on the hill and he was turned all to white ash. She told ‘em all he was gone and he weren’t coming back.”
“She must be a truly remarkable lady,” the man’s voice was almost too soft to hear and he shook his head sadly.
“An odd lady, if you ask me,” she said and went on even though he studiously hadn’t asked her. “Lots of funny goings on after the battle. I tell you things they are a changing. I’m right glad that the garrison is coming back here, where we know how to keep the salved laws, though saying that it probably won’t last long until this young girl of a queen starts spreading her modern ways of thinking across the seas.”
“Why, what’s she done?”
“Well there’s three things mainly.”
“Three?” after a moment’s patient silence the stranger gave her the prompt she craved. “Do go on.”
“Well first there was the wedding.”
“Wedding?”
“She married her first minister, Seneschal Kimbolt.”
“Kimbolt? Kimbolt lives.” The scarred man hissed the question and then quickly looked around for the girl. She was sitting by the fire struggling with her cloak which seemed to have acquired a life of its own.
“Not just lives, he’s king now. Well prince consort I think they call it and young Trajet says he weren’t much more than a guard captain. He’s a good soldier ‘n all, spared a few words for young Trajet before and after the battle, but he weren’t born in a bed any grander than the straw matress I pushed young Trajet out on.”
“Marrying upwards? That’s no bad thing.”
“But that’s not the half of it, there’s marrying and there’s marrying in haste and then there’s what she did.”
“What did she do?” The stranger obliged.
“Why she married him there right there on the battle field, with the dead not yet buried and the sun barely set on young Trajet’s great victory and she calls over a priest and she makes him marry them there and then. No fancy dresses, no wedding announcements, no big ceremony. The pair of them just stood in their battle gear, splattered with blood and poor father Novus trying to make like it were spring in the church.”
She leant in and tapped her nose knowingly. “A rush like that, fine lady and great victory or not, there’s only one reason for such haste you mark my words. Come midwinter’s day if there ain’t a royal baby to celebrate you can come in here and drink yourself under the table for free, there’s Ailsa Trajetson’s word on it.”
“She had, according to your er … young Trajet just defeated the greatest evil the world has ever known,” the stranger chided. “I think she might be entitled to a little relaxation of the normal proprieties.”
“I’m not discounting her or nothing, sir,” Ailsa hastily scrubbed up her compassionate credentials. “I think it’s all to the good when people try to do the right thing by their mistakes. But the way I sees it, if she weren’t a queen and him a commoner, she’d be on her way to a one of them maudlin nunneries for the fallen.”
“You said there were three things, Mistress Ailsa. I fear if you do not tell your tale quickly my curiosity might not outlast my exhaustion.”
“Well you have heard how there were no prince of Undersalve, not after Bledrag field. Well, that whole province it’s been reconquered, some rebel they call the General, he made peace with the nomads and drove the orcs out and now it’s part of the Salved Kingdom again. And you never know what that new queen has done.” Again the innkeeper’s wife dropped her voice into another resounding stage whisper. “She’s gone and made this General into the new Prince of the province. Kaylan his name is, Kaylan ap Stonhelm they call him, now ain’t that a funny kind of a name for a prince.”
“Not a bad name for a dwarf though,” Marcus observed with a grim smile at an account he had heard before. “Or a thief, and I’ve known a few of them some mighty falls are followed by great rises.” He winced. “And some aren’t, mind, some are just falls.”
“Well he’s certainly a friend to dwarves, but there are, like Mr Marcus is hinting, these rumours that he had a dark past and as for his companion.” Ailsa raised her hands in a ‘don’t get me started’ gesture before getting started. “He’s always seen with this white haired old lady, Trajet heard talk she was his mother, she always walks with a stick, but Trajet found out the truth.”
She bent low to whisper the awful truth. “It’s sorcery, she’s a sorceress, or that’s what’s aged and twisted her, some tragic accident of magic.” She stopped herself short looking at the stranger’s scarred face and disfigured hand. “Leastways that’s what them as is in the know reckon must have done it. Weren’t no natural aging.”
The stranger covered his maimed hand with his good one and observed with equanimity. “But she can’t be a sorceress. Sorcery is illegal, she’d be sent beyond the barrier.”
She pounced as though it were her own design that had led the stranger to the pinnacle of her story. “And there’s the thing, the third thing. Hasn’t this young queen just gone and done away with old Thren the Eighth’s laws. She’s repealed them all. Magic is legal now for the salved people. She’s gone on about how old Thren made a mistake, how the Salved Kingdom prospered for five hundred years using magic, built an empire even, and the insanity of one madman should not condemn or constrain a nation.”
“So sorcerers do not now face punishment or exile in the Salved Kingdom?” His voice was faint and the eye on the injured side of his face seemed to be troubling him. The eye on the other side was looking rheumy too.
Ailsa shook her head. “There is no exile no more. She’s having a prison built at Padanus, it’s for any of them as served the Dark Lord and have unpaid sins still to account for. Young Trajet says it’s going to be a dreadful waste of money. There’s only the one prisoner at the moment a little fellow, used to be a librarian.”
“Haselrig?”
“That’s it.”
“You are remarkably well informed on names for someone who has spent some years away from the dealings of the salved,” Marcus eyed him carefully.
“And you
are remarkably perspicacious for someone who should surely be drunk into insensibility.”
Marcus smiled. “You’ll find I can hold my drink.”
“And you’ll find I can hold my secrets.”
“Eek, what’s that,” Ailsa’s cry broke both men from their steady duel of gaze and wit.
A fat green lizard had crept out of the girl’s cloak as she slept and perched now on her shoulder flicking a long globular tongue out at Ailsa. The innkeeper’s wife trembled flicking her dirty rag towards the creature. “Get it out.”
The girl stirred and gathered the unprotesting animal in her arms. She stuck out her tongue at Ailsa, with a frown. “Don’t be afraid. His name’s Bob.”
“We don’t allow no pets in here,” she held the stained cloth out infront of her. “It baint hi-jennic.”
The stranger pulled out a heavy purse that showed a glint of gold as he tossed three silver crowns upon the counter. “Bob is very clean,” he insisted. “Cleaner than I am at this moment and he can pay well for his room. It will only be for the one night. We’re not stopping long, I have some old haunts to explore in the Eastern Lands.”
Ailsa scooped up the coins. “Well, if it’s just for the one night,” she said.
“That’s a heavy purse for an old cripple and a young girl to be carrying around, begging your pardon sir,” Marcus said. “But these are grim times, stray beyond the gates of Salicia and you’ll find naught but dark roads. The Satrap don’t look too kindly on them as come out of this city – still thinks of them as invaders. There’d be a queue of people waiting to stop and search you and some would be inclined to take more than your gold.” He withered a little beneath the stranger’s glare. “You might want to take on some protection.”
“Don’t be deceived by my appearance, sir. I am not entirely helpless.”
“Every man has to sleep sometime, does no harm to have a bit of extra protection.”
The stranger nodded. “And are you offering yourself up for this post.”
