Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles Book 2) (25 page)

“Greetings to House Meer,” I said.

Next to me Robart had a deeply pleased look on his face. He was the only Marshall who’d come to meet them. Two of his knights waited nearby, their faces grim, looking like they were ready to repel an attack at a moment’s notice. Apparently, Lord Robart’s affinity for House Meer wasn’t shared by those under his command.

The oldest knight opened his mouth. The biggest of the three, his mane of jet black hair streaked with grey, was clearly the leader. It was strange to think that in a few decades, Arland would look like that.

“Greetings, Innkeeper,” he said, his voice a deep growl.

“Lord Beneger,” Robart said.

“Lord Robart,” the leader answered.

No standard, no display, no ceremony. The vampires thrived on ceremony. The House Meer was here, but they were making it clear they weren’t visiting in an official capacity. I had only seen vampire delegations do this four times, and every single time it was done so the House could deny it sanctioned the actions of its members.

“Follow me.” I led them through the back of the house to the balcony overlooking the festival grounds. Arland, Lady Isur, and the rest of their vampires occupied the far right side of the balcony, House Vorga the middle, and the Nuan Cee’s clan took up the far left.

Below us the otrokari were checking piles of wood. They had arranged the logs I provided into a circular bonfire at the south end of the circle created by my stream and made four smaller piles along the water. The bark on some of the logs was red and purple. They must’ve brought some of their own wood.

The scarred knight from House Meer looked down on them, and spat on the balcony. “Blasphemy.”

He spat on my inn.

I smiled as sweetly as I could. “Next time you choose to spit, my lord, the stones under your feet will part.”

The scarred knight glared at me.

“We are guests here, Uriel,” Lord Berenger said. “My apologies, Innkeeper.”

Apologies or not, the next time Lord Uriel decided to hack some phlegm, he would regret it.

The otrokari formed a ring around the festival grounds. While we spoke, the night had snuck in on soft fox paws, turning the far east sky a deep beautiful purple. Twilight claimed the clearing, the light of the sunset diluted by encroaching darkness. Shadows deepened and grew treacherous, the wind died down, and the first hint of the stars studded the sky.

The otrokari shaman stepped into the circle drawn by my stream, entering from the north. He wore only a long, layered leather kilt. Strange symbols drawn in pale green and white marked his exposed torso. His hair streamed loose about his face. Some strands were braided with a leather cord, decorated with bone and wooden beads.

Fire burst in the two piles on his left and right all on its own. He kept walking, the lines of his muscular but lean body oddly beautiful. The fire jumped to the other two piles, then to the bonfire. An insistent drum beat sounded, growing more and more urgent, as the three otrokari on the edge began to play big bloated drums. A wild eerie melody of pipes that hadn’t come from any wood or grass born on Earth issued a challenge, the simplest kind of music brought to life by a sentient being’s breath. The shaman turned his head, his long dark hair flying, spun like a dervish, and began to dance.

The otrokari clapped as one, picking up the rhythm of the drums. The shaman whirled and twisted, his movements born from the grace and speed of a hunter closing on its prey, wild and strangely primal, as if every layer of civilization had been ripped away from him and what remained was a creature, fruit of the planet that birthed it, as timeless as life itself. It was impossible to look away.

The otrokari began to sing, a simple exuberant melody. I couldn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear.
I live. I survived. I’m here.

Breath caught in my chest. I realized with absolute clarity that one day I was going to die. I would no longer be here. All of the things I wanted, all my thoughts, all my worries – all of it would be gone with me, lost forever. There were so many things I wanted to do. So much I still wanted to see. I had to hold on to it. I had to hold to every short second of life. Every breath was a gift, gone forever to the cold stars the moment I exhaled.

I wanted to cry.

The symbols on shaman’s body glowed, weak at first, than brighter and brighter. The flames of the fires turned pale yellow, then olive, then a bright emerald green, matching the radiance of the shaman’s markings. The wood no longer fueled it; the blaze raged on its own.

Shadows rose among the otrokari, translucent silhouettes without features, silent and standing still.

The shaman twisted, bending backward, his supple body nearly parallel to the ground, and suddenly a simple wooden staff was in his hand. He spun the staff, turning it into a blur, planted it into the ground, and clawed at the sky with his free hand. The glowing coals from the bonfire rolled to him, forming a narrow scorching path to the blaze.

The shaman froze, poised on his toes, leaning back slightly, rigid, every muscle on his body tight, like a genius ballet dancer frozen in a moment just before the leap. His eyes glowed with deep purple, otherworldly, as if the distant planet itself stared through him. He held out his left arm to the side.

The Khanum emerged from the shadows and came to stand next to him. She wore a simple tunic. Her feet were bare. The shaman’s hand clamped her shoulder.

A wave of translucent purple dashed through the green light of the coal path. A shadow appeared in the heart of the bonfire.

The Khanum stepped onto the coal path and walked quickly to the blaze. With every step, the shadow became clearer. Arms formed, the lines of the shoulders and the neck streamlined, hair sprouted, and features formed in the oval of the face. A young otrokari man stood in the flames. He looked like Dagorkun.

They were so close now, she could almost touch him. The Khanum stood still on the coals, one hand raised, as if trying to touch her dead son. Her bare feet burned, but still she refused to move.

Dagorkun moved in from the side and took his mother by her hand. The shadow in the fire nodded to his brother. Dagorkun nodded back and gently led the Khanum away, back to the others. The shadow melted into the light.

I realized I was crying.

Another otrokar stepped to the shaman. A second wave of purple, a second shadow, another trip down the coal path. A woman this time, older, wearing the otrokar armor.

One by one the otrokari came, each finding another loved one in the fire. Dead wives, dead husbands, fallen parents, children taken before their time… Some only stayed for a brief glance, but most lingered, enduring the pain for a chance to see someone they lost one more time.

Finally the last otrokar stepped aside, letting the ghost of her past fade into the light. The shaman moved, his staff drawing a complicated pattern in the air. An otrokar woman began to sing, her voice soft, but rising, a challenge to the stars above us.

The shaman thrust his staff into the ground and opened his arms.

The fires turned white. Tiny sparks swirled within them like ghostly fireflies.

The woman’s voice rose, stronger and stronger, her song holding the darkness at bay like a shield.

Fear not the darkness

Fear not the night

You are not forsaken

We remember you

The fire exploded. Thousands of white sparks floated through the air, swirling, drifting among the otrokari. The shaman held out his hand, letting the glowing dots brush against his skin, and smiled.

The myriad of glowing lights floated up, pulled to the sky by some invisible current, and rose high, toward the greater universe beyond.

Four long tables stood in the main ballroom, arranged into a rough letter m: one table across for the Arbitrator, the heads of the delegations, and special guests which included Caldenia and Sophie, and three longwise, with about twenty-five feet of space between each to make sure nobody happened to trip and accidentally fall into a slaughter. We put the otrokari on the left, the Nuan Clan in the middle, and the Holy Anocracy on the right. I took a position to the left of the main table. I was starving, but food was out of the question. I had asked Orro to save me a plate, because this banquet would require my complete attention. The tension in the air was so thick, you could cut it with a knife and serve it with honey for dessert.

The three delegations took their places, with the leaders arranged at the main table on both sides of George, who sat in the middle. One seat, next to Nuan Cee, remained empty. Cookie’s seat at the Merchants table was orphaned, too. Nuan Cee had sent him to wait in the field in the back for his guest. I still hadn’t found the emerald. With everything that happened, the search for the blur-thief had been pushed aside. I would get on that tonight.

George rose in the center of the main table. “I was going to make a long inspiring speech, but everyone is clearly hungry. I have visited the kitchen and the chef has outdone himself, and I have very little willpower left after all of these strenuous negotiations.. Thank you for being here. Let’s eat.”

Everyone applauded and stomped in approval. The tables sank into the floor and reappeared, bearing a variety of starters. Orro stepped through the doorway.

“First course,” he announced. “Spicy tuna tartare in a cone of miso encrusted bacon, spring vegetables in a cucumber wrap, and vine-ripened tomatoes with basil and mozzarella.”

He stepped back. I glanced at the table. He had twisted bacon into tiny cornucopias, the cucumber wraps looked like delicate blossoms filled with bright paper-thin slices of something red and green, and the vine ripe tomatoes were sliced into wedges, stuffed with basil and mozzarella and drizzled with something that smelled tangy and delicious. My mouth watered. The delegates fell on the delicate starters like starved wolves onto a lame deer. The food was disappearing at an alarming rate.

The magic tugged on me. Someone had just landed in the back field. Nuan Cee’s guest finally arrived. I reached out with my magic and sensed Cookie and him moving toward the house.

The tables sank down. We were going much faster than expected, but the guests were devouring the food. A moment passed and the dining tables reappeared, filled with more dishes.

“Pasta course,” Orro announced. “Agnolotti with fennel, goat cheese and orange.”

The fennel cost me an arm and a leg and so did the cheese, but Orro refused to compromise on the pasta course. It had to have fennel, it had to have the expensive cheese, and that was that. Well, at least if they filled up on pasta, it would make them full and happy and less prone to casual murder.

At the vampire table, the three new comers with Lord Beneger at the lead, had barely touched the food, wrapped in their hostility like it was a winter cloak. On the otrokari side, Dagorkun, a smaller female on his left, and a huge hulking mountain of an otrokari male on his right, were watching Beneger very carefully, keeping their food intake light.

There would be trouble. I could feel it.

I just had to keep them from attacking until the main course. Orro had made pan-seared chicken. I had no idea what he had done to it, but the smell alone stopped you in your tracks. I had happened to walk into the kitchen to check on things just before the banquet and I couldn’t recall ever having such intense reaction to the cooked chicken before in my entire life. Orro was a wizard. Finding the ingredients that didn’t set off digestive alarms in five different species would’ve driven me crazy. He not only managed that, but turned what he found into culinary masterpieces. Too bad he would leave after the summit. I would miss him and I wasn’t sure what I regretted loosing more, his great food or his dramatic pronouncements.

“Main course! Pan-seared chicken with golden potatoes.”

Beneger surrendered to his fate and attacked the chicken. At the far end of the table Caldenia put an entire drumstick in her mouth and pulled it out, the bones completely clean. Sophie, wearing a lovely seafoam gown, watched her in morbid fascination.

The smell was too much. If I didn’t get some of this chicken, it would be a crime.

Cookie and Nuan Cee’s guest reached the back door. I opened it for them and made sure they had a straight shot to the ballroom. At my feet Beast sat up. Apparently the new intruder smelled odd.

“Easy,” I murmured.

Beast wagged her tail.

Cookie appeared in the doorway and scampered in, adorably fluffy. The creature behind him was anything but. Seven feet tall, he wore armor, but not the rigid high-tech metal of the holy knights. No, this armor was made with maximum flexibility in mind. Obsidian black, it coated him, mirroring the muscles of his body, thickening slightly to reinforce the neck and shield the outside of the arms and the chest. At first glance it looked woven, like high-tech fabric, but when he moved, the light rippled on it, fracturing into thousands of tiny scales shimmering with green. It sheathed him completely, flowing seamlessly into clawed gauntlets on his huge hands and angling into semblance of boots on his feet. A charcoal-grey half-tabard half-robe draped the armor, embroidered with a rich green pattern. The tabard left his arms free, narrowed at the waist, where it was caught by a decorative cloth belt, and flowed down, split over his legs, so a single long piece hung down in front while the rest of the fabric obscured his sides and back, falling to above his ankles, its hem tattered and frayed. The tabard came with a hood that rested on the newcomer’s head. I looked into it.