They were lucky to get the last table even though twenty souls and rising stood at the bar. Nerdraaage wondered aloud why anyone would stand and drink when they could sit and drink. His friends had all noticed this phenomenon in the old universe, but they could not explain it.
They were now in Hybernia proper, and the inn was mostly dwarves but with a fair amount of human travelers as well. The Keepers ate and drank and smoked and otherwise enjoyed the night as had become their custom. They worked hard in this world and faced great peril at times, and even though they enjoyed their new adventurous ways, they also liked to unwind with food and drink and leaf and good conversation. Tonight Ashlyn and Nerdraaage argued the finer points of dwarven culture: “Dwarves love farts,” she said.
“I think you love farts,” he countered.
“Listen,” she said. “They named the inn at Hammersmith A Farting Away.”
“It’s A Farthing Away.”
“Everyone called it A Farting Away.”
“That was just in the game.”
“It wasn’t just in the game,” she said. “And this inn wasn’t even in the game and it’s called House of Farts.”
“It’s called House of Hearts!”
“It sounds just like House of Farts!”
“House of Hearts doesn’t sound anything like House of Farts,” he said. “How can you say dwarves love farts?”
“Uh, because I have a nose.” As ridiculous as their argument was, it was the elf’s and dwarf’s earnestness that made Dangalf and Doppelganger think this was the funniest conversation they had ever heard.
The busty human serving wench told them the rooms were filling fast, so they asked her to reserve one for them. “With a window!” insisted Ashlyn.
The wench said she would make it up for them, and as she turned to leave, Doppelganger spun her back to face him. “I’ll help you,” he smiled.
“Yes, you look very helpful,” she said back to him in such a way that everyone at the table knew Doppelganger was going to get laid and no one had to say it.
“He’s going to get laid!” said Nerdraaage.
It wasn’t long before a cocky, human male, a hunter carrying a large tankard with some military markings on it, sat next to Ashlyn and chatted her up. She barely looked at him, and every time he asked her a question, she gave him a curt or sarcastic answer or just plain ignored him. Dangalf almost felt sorry for the man. He was coming at Ashlyn with every pickup line in the universe and a few he recognized from the old universe. He almost expected to hear him ask her, “What’s your bloodrune?”
Dangalf and Nerdraaage looked at each other and laughed quietly every time Ashlyn shot down one of the man’s clumsy come-ons. Dangalf was trying to think of a gentle way to tell the clueless Romeo to leave when Ashlyn stood and left the table under the clueless Romeo’s thick arm. Well at least Dangalf wasn’t alone. He still had Nerdraaage, and the more estranged he became from Doppelganger and Ashlyn, the more he liked Nerdraaage’s company. He raised his glass to Nerdraaage. They were alone together. “I’m going to go write a letter to my wife,” said Nerdraaage, and he left. Yes, Dangalf thought, I can always count on Nerdraaage!
And suddenly alone at his table, he became aware of the covetous eyes of what were now forty souls gathered around the large bar. Clearly some of those standing and drinking were of the school that preferred sitting and drinking. In what he felt was a complete lack of respect, three dwarves approached and sat at one end of Dangalf’s table with their backs turned to him. Dangalf went outside and sat on a bench. He angrily imagined that these pushy dwarves would never have dared to sit down at a table where Doppelganger was sitting alone. But the cold air was chilling his anger, and he wondered if Doppelganger was done with the wench because he was ready to climb into a warm bed.
He stood to leave when a mewling caught his attention. He looked around to find a black cat under a nearby bush. It did not seem scared but would not come out and mewled again. He retreated to the lost table and found that the dwarves had completely overtaken it but the Keepers’ plates were not yet removed. (Apparently Doppelganger was not finished with the wench.) He took a chunk of venison from the tray and went back to the bush.
Dangalf tore pieces of the meat and tossed it in the direction of the cat. The cat pounced on it and ate it quickly. Dangalf tossed the meat so as to lure the cat from under the bush and close to where he sat on his bench. He could see it wore a collar but was emaciated. When the meat was gone, the cat let Dangalf pet it and even began purring. Dangalf felt sorry for the wretched thing, but it did have a fur coat and he did not, so he eventually said good night.
Dangalf entered the House of Hearts and went upstairs to the rooms and wondered which was theirs when suddenly the serving wench was expelled from one of the rooms still undressed. That must be it, he thought. She saw him and pulled her dress over her front, which provided her no cover as she ran down the hall from Dangalf. Dangalf knocked on the door, and Doppelganger answered it. “What just happened?” he asked on entering.
“Oh, I was done with her,” said Doppelganger.
“Doesn’t look like she was done.”
“When I’m done, I’m done,” said Doppelganger, lying down on the floor. There were only two beds, and Doppelganger had used one, but now he was lying on the floor, which better accommodated his size.
“I see,” said Dangalf, not seeing at all, but then he was tired. He got into the unmussed bed. Doppelganger had been getting coarser ever since their arrival in this world but for a brief respite when he was with Princess Dymphna. Dangalf wondered if his sudden burst of misogyny wasn’t Doppelganger’s way of dealing with what he felt was her rejection of him. Or maybe that was just the Red School way. Hadn’t that dragoon found it appropriate to take Ashlyn as a prize in a contest? The brutes of this world didn’t seem to suffer a lack of female company.
Nerdraaage came in next. He undressed and got into the used bed. He had just lain down when he shot back up, crying out. He rearranged the bedding violently before lying back down. Dangalf smiled to himself as he blew out the bedside lamp. He may not have gotten laid, but at least he wasn’t sleeping in someone else’s wet spot.
And so Dangalf began his slumber to be followed by hopefully another three hours of sleep. He found this was the optimum amount of sleep under ordinary circumstances. Weyd had impressed upon him that slumber meant a hyperwakefulness of the mind, and it was important to also sleep and grant the mind its down time to dream and otherwise unwind. He put himself in his virtual library and took down a handsome new grimoire, Ozymandias’s Instantaneous Relocation of Living Beings by Well and Other Water-Based Mediums. He cracked it open in his favorite leather chair. Yes, the archmage was discussing spells well beyond Dangalf’s rank, but what harm could there be in reading ahead?
After an hour or so, Branan, the velvet-loving dwarf, entered quietly from the door Dangalf had created for his repair dwarves and sat down at a desk to eat his lunch. “Don’t mind me,” he said. Dangalf smiled and continued with his reading. About fifteen minutes later, another knock came at the front door. “Now who do you suppose that is?” asked Branan.
“I have a bad feeling,” answered Dangalf. He rose and went to the door and opened the peephole carefully only to see Ashlyn smiling on the steps.
“May I come in?” she asked.
“Of course, of course!” said Dangalf opening the door.
“How is this possible?”
“It’s that druidic mind connection I told you about,” she answered as she entered. “This is my first time trying it. Hello,” she said upon seeing the dwarf.’
“This is Branan,” said Dangalf. “From the crew I told you about that repairs my body during slumber. Branan, this is my friend Ashlyn.”
“Hello.”
“And where is the rest of the crew?” she asked.
“Having lunch in the colon,” said Branan.
“You don’t eat with them?”
“Per
haps you did not hear me,” said Branan. “They are having lunch in the colon.”
“Branan is a little more…particular than the others in his crew,” explained Dangalf.
“This is so amazing,” gushed Ashlyn. “It’s like he’s real.”
“And what do you mean by that?” demanded Branan.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just very impressed with your personality and how you look and the fact that we can converse like this when in reality you’re just a figment of Dangalf’s imagination.”
“And of whose imagination are you a figment?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Ashlyn.
“She misspoke, Branan,” interjected Dangalf.
“Aye, I should leave. It will take the rest of my lunch to get back to the colon. At least it’s all downhill.”
“Nice meeting—” Ashlyn managed before the door closed. “You. Well, he was a little aggressive.”
“Oh, he’s a good sort once you get to know him.”
“But he’s you. Was he voicing some anger you have toward me?”
“No, I’m not angry. But I am a little surprised. So you can just enter my slumber like this?”
“Druids don’t do that without permission. That would be black magic. Speaking of which, you might want to think about bars on those windows.”
“That’s a good idea. But not bars. They don’t fit the motif. Maybe some sturdy shutters.” Dangalf studied his large, beautiful windows for a moment but turned back to his guest. “There will be time for that later. So tell me, where are you now?”
“I am slumbering on the floor just next to your bed.” And the unease between them soon lifted and they talked and laughed. And Dangalf forgot all about her leaving him for the Red School lothario. (Hm, perhaps Branan was voicing Dangalf’s anger.) And Dangalf gave her the deluxe tour, which was pretty easy as there was just the one room. He didn’t eat during slumber, so there was no need for a kitchen. (He didn’t know where the dwarf repairmen got their lunches. Some inn in a dwarven town down the road just beyond his imagination, he imagined.) There were no grounds to show Ashlyn as he hadn’t bothered with landscaping beyond what he could see out of his windows. Weyd had warned him not to let obsessive designing and building of his imaginary library distract him from the primary reason for slumber. “It is a grave threat to apprentice mages, getting lost in your mind,” Weyd had warned.
“Losing your mind?” Dangalf had asked.
“No. Getting lost in your mind. Being seduced by the limitless boundaries of your imagination and losing touch with the real world. Ignoring even the basic requirements for self-preservation. It is the second most common accidental death for apprentice mages.”
Dangalf nodded, but another question came to him, “What is the first most common cause of accidental death?”
“Spontaneous combustion.”
Ashlyn declined a visit to his colon to see the dwarves at work, so they sat next to each other laughing and talking like they did those first weeks in this world. Their literal meeting of the minds was very recuperative and restored them to the simpatico they had developed in Hempshire. And even though Ashlyn was distracting him from study, he was sorry to see her go when she finally left. She left by the front door, both of them agreeing that it was more symmetrical than her just disappearing from the library like a light switching off.
During breakfast the next morning, Ashlyn noticed Dangalf pocketing some sausage as they prepared to leave. “I fed this cat last night, and I’m going to see if he’s still around before we leave.” The cat was under its same bush and came out expectantly even before Dangalf showed it the food. It ate hungrily, and Dangalf patted it. In the daylight he could see soot lifting off of the cat and saw that it was not black but tortoiseshell. Dangalf said good-bye to the cat, but it was not to be. The cat followed closely behind Dangalf, more like a dog than a cat it seemed, as they headed down the road.
“Looks like you have a pet,” said Nerdraaage.
“A familiar,” said Ashlyn. “Mages don’t have pets.”
“Maybe I should name him,” said Dangalf.
“Her,” said Ashlyn.
“You should name that cat Dirty because he’s so dirty,” said Nerdraaage.
“Dusty,” said Dangalf. “She’s dusty not dirty.”
“Come on, Dusty,” said Ashlyn to the cat.
“No,” said Dangalf. “I said she is dusty, literally.”
Nerdraaage took out some venison jerky and kneeled down. “Com’ere, Dusty!” he said, and she ran over to him.
“I’m not naming my familiar Dusty,” said Dangalf.
“Come on, Dusty,” Doppelganger joined in. “We’re going to Bran Keep!”
They walked not south on the well-traveled road that would eventually lead to Bran Keep but west to the River Gorm. There they sought out the large flatboats that sailed down the swift river toward Bran Keep. These boats were large and built without luxury, for when the journey ended near Gorm Falls, the boats would be broken apart, and the human crew would travel for days back to their starting point and build a new flatboat once again for the southern journey.
They found one large flatboat readying for the journey downriver. It was about fifty feet long and flat, as the name would indicate, but for a shelter in the shape of a triangle at the middle of the deck.
Dusty seemed apprehensive about getting on the flatboat, but Dangalf carried her aboard, and she looked about curiously. She trotted into the boat’s shelter and jumped up into a large sandbox. “That’s not for you!” hissed one of the sailors, and Dusty ran from the sandbox just as he dumped firewood on top of it. She didn’t stop running until she reached the reclining Dangalf, and she burrowed her way into one of his large robe pockets.
Dangalf, when he handed over his ten-crown fare, now with some gold coins of his own in reserve, felt as though he was cheating the sailors for their hard work. He knew the crew would spend two days sailing south, weeks walking back, and then, well he had no idea how much time it would take them to build another flatboat. But the sailors set their own prices, and there were multiple flatboats to choose from, so who was he to argue with the free market? Besides, in their quest browsing, they had seen how much even a journeyman mariner—jacks they were called—could earn on one voyage to Oceania if they were dissatisfied with their river work. And then, as they waited and waited, he realized that they weren’t about to set off until the boat was full of paying passengers and cargo so the crew was probably doing all right for their investment in time.
There were no dwarves among the passengers, which was odd since they were in dwarven lands going to the dwarven capital, but understandable due to dwarven water intolerance. But dwarves did deliver most of the cargo that filled the flatboat. There were even horses, three of them, that were loaded inside the shelter. Perhaps the sailors rode these horses back to speed their return to the headwaters.
Soon a dozen more people were aboard, and the crew of three sailors must have made their quota because they gave a final call, jumped onboard themselves, and cut loose. The current took the boat with such a force that the Keepers found themselves nearly tipping over even as they sat. Dangalf had read about this river and now told the other Keepers about it over the roar of the water. It was crafted by the dwarves to be the fastest river in this world. More miraculous was that the Dwarves had carved out or built up the land around the river over the millennia so that it actually flowed the opposite direction from how it began. This testament to their craftsmanship was recorded when they named it the River Gorm, or the blue river, not because of the color of the water—in fact, the water churned white wherever you looked—but in honor of their great racial school. And now the Keepers were racing toward the Great Wonder of Bran Keep on the Great Wonder of River Gorm.
Nerdraaage had fortified himself with liquor to make this waterborne journey, and he was the first to fall asleep. Dangalf could have slept too, but he was enjoying the ride—a
great flume ride it would be in the other world if amusement parks were four hundred leagues long and there were no lawyers.
The sailors would rise occasionally at a bend in the river and stand at the ready with great wooden poles, but from what Dangalf could see, they did little more than dip their poles in the raging waters. He knew the river was constructed by the dwarves to be able to transport cargo without any crew. But he supposed any cargo that included passengers would also require a crew to counter the unpredictability of sapiens.
Ashlyn sat motionless with a look of discomfort on her face and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. It wasn’t long before the sailors started chatting her up. “We don’t get many elves on the Gorm,” said the sailor whom Dangalf hated the most and who was also the best looking of the sailors. She glared at him impassively, but he was not one to be dissuaded. “Not feeling well?” The handsome sailor convinced Ashlyn to follow him and had her hold his pole, while he held her, around one of the bends because, he said, “It feels better to steer the boat than to have the boat steer you.” It wasn’t long before they were sitting next to each other and running their toes through the water. All three sailors vied for Ashlyn’s attention, and the handsome sailor, Billy he said, was repeatedly frustrated by the senior sailor, who found a multitude of odd jobs for Billy just when it seemed he was getting somewhere with Ashlyn. Dangalf liked the senior sailor, and not just because he was the ugliest of the sailors. As the sun went down, the senior sailor had Billy light a fire in the sandbox. Dangalf found a spot under the shelter, and all the Keepers slept close to each other and the fire.
The next day was more of the same: water rushing through high rock walls topped by evergreen trees. For those who were not asleep, the sailors drew their attention to a formidable dwarven fortress, and the sailors waved to the lookouts as they passed. The sailors explained that the fortress contained a lever that if released would send tons of earth and rock into the river and send the rushing waters over a nearby cliff. It was designed to prevent enemies from using the Gorm to launch their own attack on Bran Keep.
Cronica Acadia Page 35
