The Magic Of Krynn (14 page)

Tika said, “Can ale do all that?” She looked interest-ediy at the mug on her tray. “Otik,
what if I-”

“No.” “But it looks like so much-” “No. It looks like too much, that's what it does.” Otik

pulled her away from a line of dancing old men and women. “But if Loriel can-” “No, no,
and no. You're not Loriel.” Otik made a de-

cision. “Here's your cloak. Wear it. Here's mine; sleep in it. Find a place, go, and don't
come back to the Inn tonight.”

“But you can't manage without me.”

Otik gestured at the room now frenzied with activity. “I can't manage WITH you. Go.”

“But where will I sleep?”

“Anywhere. Outside. Someplace safe. Go, child.” He cleared her way to the door, pulling
her with one hand. As she stepped into the night, she said in a hurt voice,

“But why?” Otik stopped dead. "Well, we'll talk about that later. Go,

child. I'm sorry." He tried to kiss her good night. Tika, angry, ducked and

ran. “I want a place of my own!” she cried. Otik stared after her, then closed the door
and tried to get back to the fire.

The best he could do was edge to the bar. The dancers and fighters had split into smaller
but more boisterous groups, shouting

and singing to each other. Otik, unable even to feed the fire, watched helplessly as the
bodies became struggling silhouettes, the silhouettes coupled shadows, the shadows a noisy
dark. That night the inn was full of joyous and angry voices, but all he could see, by a
single candle held near the mirror, was his own face, alone.

The next morning Otik stepped dazedly over broken mugs and intertwined bodies. Most of the
benches lay on their sides, one completely turned over. It was like a battlefield, he
thought, but for the life of him he couldn't tell who won. There were bodies on bodies,
and clothing hung like banners over chairs, and out-flung arms and wayward legs sticking
from under the few pieces of upright furniture. Tankards lay on their sides everywhere,
and everywhere pieces of pottery rocked on the floor as people snored or groaned.

The fire was nearly out. Not even during the worst nights of Haggard Winter had that
happened. Otik put tinder on the last embers, blew them into flame, added splinters, and
laid the legs of a broken chair on.

He moved the skillet as quietly as possible, but inevitably the eggs sizzled in the
grease. Someone whimpered. Otik tactfully pulled the pan from the fire.

Instead he tiptoed around, gathering dented tankards, pottery shards, and a few stray
knives and daggers. A haggard young stranger grabbed his ankle and pleaded for water. When
Otik returned, the man was asleep, his arm wrapped protectively around the raven-tressed
Hillae. Instead of making him look protective, it made him seem even younger. She smiled
in her sleep and stroked his hair.

The steps thudded too loudly; someone was stamping up them. Otik heard more whimpers. The
front door boomed against the wall, and Tika, her hair pulled primly back, stepped through
and looked disapprovingly at the debris and tangled bodies. “Shall we clean up?” she said
too loudly.

Otik winced as the others cringed around her. “In a while. Would you go fetch water? We'll
need more than the cistern holds, I'm afraid.”

“If you really need it.” She slammed the inn door. The thump of her tread down the stairs
shook the floor.

“Can't we kill her?” Reger the trader groaned. His right arm was wrapped around both his
ears, and his head was cradled on the sleeping farmer's chest. A few weak voices croaked
encouragement.

“Even think that again,” Otik said quietly, “and I will bang two pots together.”

It was quiet after that.

Gradually the bodies disentwined. A few rose, shakily. Hillae approached the bar with
dignity and passed some coins. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Not the evening I'd
planned, but interesting enough, I suppose.”

“Not the evening I'd planned either,” Otik agreed. “Will you be all right then?”

“Tired.” She pulled her hair back over her shoulders. “It's time I was back home. I have a
bird, you know, and it needs feeding.”

“Oh, a caged bird, then.” Otik realized he wasn't at his sharpest. “Songbird?”

“Lovebird. The mate is dead. You know, I really ought to set it free.” She smiled
suddenly. “Good day.” She bent quietly over, kissed the cheek of her sleeping partner, and
walked silently and gracefully out.

Tika struggled back in, knocking buckets against the doorframe. A few patrons flinched,
but glared at Otik through red- rimmed eyes and said nothing.

He took the water from her. “Thank you. Now go tell Mikel Claymaker that I need fifty
mugs.” He passed her a handful of coins. “There's my earnest for the order.”

She stared at the money. Otik was as casual with his coin today as he was with his help.
“Shouldn't I stay here?” she said loudly. “You'll need someone to mop the floor-” She
stamped on it to shake the dust for emphasis.

'“This is how you can best help me,” he said softly. She looked puzzled, but nodded.

A body detached itself from the chair on which it had been draped like a homemade doll.
“Tika-”

“Loriel?” Tika couldn't believe it. “Your hair looks like a bird's nest.” She added, “Sea
bird. Sloppy one.”

“It does?” Loriel put a hand up, then dropped it. “No matter. Tika, the most exciting
thing. Patrig told me last night that he likes me. He said so again this morning.”

“Patrig?” Tika looked around. A pair of familiar boots stuck out from under the main
table, toes spread. “Loriel, he spoke this morning?”

“For a while. Then he fell back asleep.” Her eyes shone. “He sang so beautifully last
night-”

“I remember,” Tika said flatly. She couldn't imagine anyone admiring his singing, and
Loriel was musical. "Walk with me, and

tell me about it." They ran down the stairs together. After that, painfully, the patrons
gathered their belongings-in

some cases their clothes-and paid up. Some had to walk quite a distance to find
everything. Purses and buskins and jerkins lay throughout the room, and knapsacks hung
from all points and pegs- one, incredibly, from a loose side-peg in a ceiling cross- beam.
For a while Otik watched, attempting to prevent thievery. Eventually he gave up.

Reger the Trader slapped the bar with a snake-embossed foreign coin and said, “This will
cover my lodgings, and could I buy a marketing supply of that ale? In this weather it
would keep for the road-”

Otik bit the coin and rejected it, dropping it with a dull clank. “Not for sale.”

“Oh. Yes, well-” Reger fumbled for real money. “If you change your mind, I'll be back.
There.” He counted the change, then added a copper. “And give breakfast to my friend
there. He may not feel too well.” He gestured at Farmer Mort, who had a huge lump behind
his right ear.

“I see that. Good day, sir.” Otik watched with approval as Reger took the stairs lightly
and quickly. On instinct, as when a kender left, he checked the spoons. Some were missing.

Patrig woke healthy and whole, as the young will, and left singing-badly. He asked after
Loriel on his way out. Kugel the Elder and his wife tiptoed out bickering, hand in hand.
They turned in the door and frowned disapprovingly at the other couples.

The couple that had fought, or whatever, under the tables, left separately. A man whom
Otik had barely noticed the night before paid for a room-“so that my friend can sleep if
she wishes.” When Otik asked when his friend wished to wake up, he blushed and said, “Oh,
don't wake her. Not for half a day. Longer, in fact.” Otik noticed, as innkeepers will,
the circular groove on the man's third finger, where he usually wore a ring.

The rest were sitting up, looking around embar-rassedly, testing their heads and tongues.
Otik stepped to the center of the common room and said diffidently, “If the company
believes it is ready for breakfast-” he looked through the stained glass to the long-risen
sun-“or early lunch-” He nodded at the murmur of assent and

put the skillet of eggs back on the fire. At the kitchen door he called to Riga the cook
for potatoes, but not too loudly.

By mid-moming he had assessed the night's damage and its

profit. After re-hammering the tankards and replacing the mugs, he would still have the
greatest profit he had ever made from one night, and not half the lodgings paid up yet. He
lifted the pile of coins. It took two hands, and shone in the light from a broken rose
windowpane.

All the same, when the man with the eye-patch croaked that he wanted a farewell mug “to
guard against road dust,” Otik laid hands on the final keg and said firmly, “No, sir. I
will never sell this ale full strength again.” He added, “You may have a mug of the
regular stock.”

The man grunted. “All right. Not that I blame you. But it's a shame and a crime, if you
intend to water that batch. How can you water ale and not kill the flavor?”

He drained the mug and staggered out. Otik marveled that such a seasoned drinker didn't
know the secret of watering ale. You watered ale with ale, of course.

He looked back at his last cask of the only magical brew he had ever made and, gods
willing, the only batch he ever would make.

He took his corkscrew in one hand and the pitcher in the other, and he carried the funnel
looped by the handle over his belt. Each cask, one by one, he un-stoppered, tapped a pint
to make room, and poured in a pint of the new ale. It took most of the morning, and almost
all of his last fresh cask.

When he finished at midday, every last barrel was forty or fifty parts ale to one part
liquid love, and he had one-half pint of the new ale left. He was sweating, and his biceps
ached from drawing stoppers and pounding them back. He slumped on the stool back of the
bar and turned around to look at the casks.

The store-room was floor to ceiling with barrels. For as long as the barrels lasted, the
Inn of the Last Home would hardly have a fight, or a grudge, or a broken heart.

Otik smiled, but he was too tired to maintain it. He wiped his hands on the bar-rag and
said hoarsely, “I could use a drink.”

The last half-pint sat on the bar, droplets coursing down its sides. Circular ripples
pulsed across it as the wind moved the tree branches below the floor.

He could offer it to any woman in the world, and she would love him. He could have a
goddess, or a young girl, or a plump helpmate his own age who would steal the covers and
tease him about his weight and mull cider for him on the cold late nights. All these
years, and he had barely had time to feel lonely.

All these years. Otik looked around the Inn of the Last Home. He had grown

up polishing this bar and scrubbing that uneven, age-smoothed floor. Most of the folk here
were friends, and strangers whom he tried to make welcome. He heard the echo of himself
saying to Tika, “In all the world no place else can ever be home for them.”

He smiled around at the wood, at the stained glass, at the friends he had, and at the
friends he hadn't met yet. He raised his glass. “Your health, ladies and gentlemen.”

He drank it in one pull.

Wayward Children Richard A. Knaak

“A fool's errand, that's what this is!”

Though the words were little more than a hiss, B'rak heard them all too well. He also
agreed with them, but it was not his place to say so-especially as he was captain of this
patrol.

Others heard the complaint as well. “If you cannot keep your warriors in line, captain, I
will be glad to do so for you!”

B'rak hissed angrily at the tall figure wrapped in black cloth. If there was one point on
which B'rak agreed with humans, it was that magic-users were not to be trusted, much less
liked. But he had no choice:

they were assigned to all patrols. He unfurled his wings to emphasize his displeasure at
having a mage along on this scouting mission. His metallic silver skin glistened in the
light as he pointed a talon at the other.

“The Dragon Highlord commanded that you accompany us, Vergrim, not that you lead us. I
will deal with my men as I see fit.”

Vergrim's answering smile made even draconians uneasy. Nevertheless, he nodded acceptance
of B'rak's words and turned his attention back to the wilderness around them.