A polite chirp interrupted his ruminations. Teldin glanced down as small, feathered hands placed a dinner platter before him. He nodded his thanks to the serving wench, a penguinlike creature known as a dohwar, then he attacked his meal without giving the servant a second thought. A year earlier Teldin would have gaped at the dohwar like a farm lad at a two-headed calf, but he’d grown accustomed to encountering peculiar creatures on his travels. He was therefore startled by the involuntary shiver that ran down his spine when his gaze happened to settle on one of the tavern’s other patrons.
The robed figure of a tall humanoid male paused just inside the front door. His face was deeply shadowed by the cowl of his brown cloak, but Teldin noted that the face was thin and angular and dominated by a pair of slanted, distinctively elven eyes. One side of the cowl had been pushed back slightly to display a pointed ear. To all appearances, the newcomer was an elf, but it struck Teldin that something was not quite right. The robed figure began to make his way slowly back toward the bar. He moved with elven grace, but there was something foreign and somehow
brittle
about his movements. It occurred to Teldin that the creature was not quite what he seemed to be: he was
elflike
but not elven.
There was a certainty to this notion that startled Teldin. He had the oddest sensation that he’d caught a glimpse behind appearances to the elven creature’s true nature. Where had that perception come from? he wondered briefly. Was it yet another power of the cloak?
At that moment a very drunken human challenged the newcomer to a knife-throwing contest. Weaving unsteadily, the man thrust his face into the deep folds of the cowl, a show of belligerence apparently calculated to either intimidate his opponent or overcome him with fumes. As Teldin watched, the drunk recoiled in horror. Pale and shaken, he backed away, sputtering apologies. Whatever the creature was, it was dangerous, Teldin concluded. In his opinion, elves were bad enough. Any variation on the species created possibilities he did not care to contemplate.
A hard-muscled female adventurer at the table next to Teldin’s let out an oath, one colorful enough to distract him momentarily from the mysterious elven creature. He followed the line of her gaze, and his jaw dropped. Hovering in the doorway like an obscenely large eyeball was one of the most feared monsters in all of wildspace: a beholder.
Teldin had heard a score of horror stories about beholders, and he’d seen one stuffed and mounted as a trophy. From time to time, he had wondered whether he might have to face such a creature in battle, but he’d never dreamed he might bump into one in such a cozy, innocuous setting. So intent was he on this new threat that he barely noticed the elven creature leave by the side door.
The beholder, levitating about four feet above the floor, floated into the tavern, leaving a spreading wake of silence behind it. As the monster glided the length of the room, firelight glistened on the brainlike folds and crevices of its circular body, and its ten eyestalks turned this way and that as it took in the local color. It made its way to a corner table and came to a stop, hovering in the air over one of the chairs.
Speaking flawless Common, it issued instructions to the suddenly servile tavern keeper. Within moments a terrified serving girl appeared, bearing a bowl of raw meat, which she tossed piece by piece into the beholder’s fanged maw. As it chewed, the beast occasionally blinked the one large eye that was located on its spherical body.
“Bless me, Trivit, I believe that’s a beholder. By the Dark Spider, he is a homely fellow,” piped an ingenuous voice. The remark carried to the corners of the tavern, and, although the beholder did not appear to take offense, every other patron in the room began to eye the exits.
Teldin’s hand strayed to the clasp of his cloak, a habit he’d developed in moments of impending crisis. Out of the corner of his eye he cast a glance at the imprudent speaker. Surprise made him turn his head and stare openly.
Two green dracons stood at the mug-littered bar, observing the beholder with open-mouthed fascination. The reptilian equivalent of a centaur, each dracon boasted a dragon’s neck and head, an upright torso with heavily muscled arms ending in clawed hands, and the thick four-legged body and powerful tail of a brontosaur. One of these two beasts had the pale green hide of a tree lizard, and its torso was covered by a shirt of fine chain mail. The other’s skin was a mottled moss green, and its armor was fashioned of leather elaborately painted with a swirling pattern of lavenders and deep rose. A chunk of rose quartz hung on a chain around his neck, and an ornamental silver axe was displayed in a shoulder strap! Their open, innocent curiosity indicated that they knew nothing of a beholder’s fearsome reputation, and they just as obviously were too ale-soaked to recognize the tension that filled the taproom. Dracons were big, and they were tough, and these two were heavily armed, but they still were no match for a beholder. Someone ought to tell them that, Teldin mused as he took a quick sip of ale. Someone
else.
“I’m reminded of a jest, of the sort that makes the rounds of the washroom after a kickball tournament,” chirped the pale green dracon. He giggled briefly. “For that matter, I’m reminded of the
kickball.”
“A ribald jest! Oh, splendid.” The darker dracon – who somehow reminded Teldin of an effete, adolescent human – clasped his mottled green hands in anticipation. “I’m fond of such. Say on, do.”
The pale green dracon cleared his throat with much ceremony before reciting, “How does a beholder, er, shall we say, reproduce?”
His friend cast a smirk at the hideous, still-dining monster and shifted his huge shoulders in a delicate shrug. “With all eleven eyes shut, I’d warrant.”
The would-be jester’s visage twisted in disappointment. “You heard it already,” he accused.
“I most certainly did not,” huffed his friend, one clawed hand clutching at his pink jewel in exaggerated, fussy outrage.
“But you must have.”
“Upon my word, no.”
“You did.”
“Did not.”
“Did.”
“Did
not.”
The dracons began to shove at each other like two boys in a schoolyard fight. Giving a longing glance at his half-full mug of ale, Teldin tossed back the rest of his sagecoarse and rose to leave the tavern. In his opinion, things could get only worse.
As Teldin edged toward the side door, a troop of aperusa burst into the inn, flowing around him in a whirl of sound and color. Laughing and chattering with boisterous humor, the wildspace gypsies immediately took over the taproom. To Teldin’s surprise, not one of the aperusa spared the beholder so much as a glance. Obviously the gypsies were hardier souls than he’d been led to believe.
The tavern’s patrons seemed relieved by the distraction, and they welcomed the gypsy invasion with what Teldin considered an unwarranted degree of enthusiasm. What he had seen of aperusa so far, he hadn’t particularly liked.
One of the gypsy women brushed past Teldin, deliberately too close. She cast a sidelong, provocative look at him through lowered lashes, then stopped abruptly. Her feigned interest turned into wide-eyed speculation, and she reached up to trace Teldin’s jawline with a slender, bronzed hand, crooning an aperusa phrase that the cloak didn’t bother to translate. Her tone made the effort unnecessary, and to his chagrin Teldin felt his cheeks flaming. He was accustomed to feminine attention – his rugged good looks had attracted the glances of farmers’ daughters since he was a lad – but the boldly appraising look in the aperusa woman’s black eyes made him feel uncomfortably like a mackerel in a fish market.
Teldin murmured something that he hoped would grant him a polite escape, and he began to back away. The woman pouted and claimed his arm with a surprisingly strong grip.
Why you go,
nyeskataska?”
she purred in a brown-velvet contralto. Although there was no reason why he should, Teldin knew the aperusa’s endearment roughly meant “one whose eyes are fine blue topaz.” He had yet to figure out a pattern to his cloak’s capricious translations.
With her free hand, the aperusa made a sweeping gesture hat started with herself and encompassed the taproom. “Look,
nyeskataska,
here there is much to enjoy.” Her liquid black eyes challenged him as she drew him firmly into the room.
Extricating himself without a scene would not be easy, Fighting down a wave of frustration, Teldin allowed the woman to lead him deeper into the tavern. From what he’d heard of the aperusa’s fickle nature, he supposed this one would lose interest in him as soon as she saw a man who appeared wealthier. That, Teldin noted wryly, shouldn’t take long. And what would it hurt to spend a few minutes in the company of a beautiful woman?
Beautiful she certainly was, as ripe and full of promise as an autumn morning. Her tight-laced dress was the color of pumpkins, and the sachet pendant that nestled in her cleavage gave off an earthy, spicy aroma. Even her dark, braided hair had an auburn sheen that reminded Teldin of harvest trees viewed by moonlight. Well, he thought, what harm could come of a few more minutes?
As the gypsy woman elbowed a path for them through the tavern, Teldin marveled at the instant carnival atmosphere the aperusa troop had created. Some of the gypsies played wildly infectious music; others shoved tables aside and enticed the inn’s patrons to join in the dance. Teldin counted four card games, three fortune-tellers, and several boisterous games of skill. His lovely captor edged past three human mercenaries and an aperusa man embroiled in a dart contest, pulling Teldin toward a small table near the bar.
Presiding at the table was a stunning woman with an untamed mop of glossy black hair and a dress of vivid purple silk. Her customer was a gray-bearded, gray-clad dwarf who perched stiffly on the edge of his chair and firmly anchored his sack of coins beneath his boots. A small knot of people had gathered around the table, awed by the dexterity of the gypsy woman’s flashing hands as she flicked the cards into an intricate pattern on the table.
The game was not one Teldin recognized; he’d never been one for gambling. Still, he found the gypsy’s skill and the whimsically painted cards intriguing. Teldin became so absorbed in the card game that it was several minutes before he realized he was alone. He glanced around the crowded taproom, and a flash of orange caught his eye. “His” gypsy was on the other side of the tavern, luring a clearly besotted sailor toward one of the fortune-tellers. A small, self-deprecating smile twitched Teldin’s lips. So that was her game.
A discordant note in the happy cacophony drew Teldin’s attention back to the card table. The card-playing dwarf punctuated his stream of innovative curses by throwing his losing hand down on the table.
“I say you cheat,” he growled through his beard. He thumped the table with both hands for emphasis. “And, by Reorx, I’ll prove it.”
One stubby-fingered hand shot forward. With surprising speed and delicacy, the dwarf picked a card from the front of the gypsy woman’s purple blouse. He held it aloft. “See? Always a paladin, whenever she needs one,” he said triumphantly. The crowd around the table began an ominous mutter.
Not put out in the slightest, the gypsy smiled and playfully touched a fingertip to the dwarfs bulbous nose. “Card game is over,” she admitted with a little shrug. She reclaimed the Red Paladin card from the indignant dwarf and openly tucked it back into her blouse, then she leaned suggestively closer to the rugged, little man. “But much, much more I have where you found that one, hmmm?”
The dwarf responded to her purred invitation with a snort and a ready axe. “You could be packing a whole deck in your drawers, woman, for all I’d care,” he said as he rose to his feet. Shaking his axe, he roared, “Now give me back my coins!”
At the mention of money, blades flashed as several aperusa men formed a semicircle behind the seductress.
“Nine Hells!”
The exclamation came from the other side of the tavern. Teldin looked over to see a large, red-bearded human wearing an outraged expression as he frantically patted himself down. “Damned if someone didn’t pick me clean!”
“Me, too!”
“Hey, where’s my bag?”
As the indignant chorus rose, several aperusa women melted into the night as silently as brightly colored shadows. Seeing this, Teldin understood. The women had taken the opportunity handed them by the dwarf’s outburst to quietly work the room. His hand dropped to his own belt. Reassured that his coin bag was still full and that the medallion’s bag was in place, Teldin eased away from the gypsy’s card table. The gods knew, he drew more than enough attention by virtue of his cloak without putting himself in the center of a senseless tavern battle.
The storm definitely was brewing. Insults and accusations flew like hailstones, quickly followed by thrown fists. Within the span of two score heartbeats the fight engulfed the tavern.
As he carefully edged toward the back door, Teldin noticed the beholder now floating high above its chair. One of its eyestalks slowly rose, somehow giving Teldin the impression of a crossbow being notched and aimed.
Teldin flashed a look over his shoulder. Sure enough, the impertinent dracons stood directly behind him, watching the battle with stupid, tipsy smiles curving their reptilian mouths. Two things simultaneously occurred to Teldin: the beholder probably did not have much of a sense of humor, and he himself was standing in the line of fire.
An enormous aperusa man near Teldin apparently came to the same conclusion. With a shriek, the gypsy launched himself into the air and away from danger. His precipitous lunge caught Teldin and sent him sprawling under a nearby table. Slightly dazed, Teldin shook his head and started to crawl out from under the tablecloth.
“No! Not to go yet,” hissed a bass whisper. Teldin started. Somehow the huge aperusa also had taken refuge under the table and was crouched on all fours behind him. After motioning for Teldin to stay put, the gypsy thrust two fingers under his black mustache and blew. A shrill whistle cut through the clamor of the fight.