Outside, William looked up and saw a detachment of mounted draconians ride out of the
castle gate. The leader sent his men in a circular direction around the castle. Good,
thought William. That will buy some time. His thinking was calm and collected, he was
feeling no fear. His eyes swept ahead.
Then, the wedging timber must have given way, because troops came pouring out of the
tunnel. Seeing the flare of their torches, William and his group raced on until they came
to the water's edge. There, down by the shore, were a dozen oak-ribbed fishing boats with
Balifor oarsmen at the alert.
“Your plan?” asked a surprised William. “Not much of one,” replied the minotaur. One by
one, the boats were loaded and pushed off, until there
was a small flotilla of prisoners bobbing on the blue-black waves. The last boat was a
smaller one and into it climbed William, Sintk, and Harum El-Halop, who had been defending
the rear. But they were in no danger; they were out of earshot by the time the first
draconians stumbled to the shore.
A mile out to sea, the small vessels hesitated outside Port Balifor.
“You have a head-start on the patrol boats!” shouted William to Tom the tailor over the
crashing waves. “You can make a run for it and, with luck, live elsewhere long and happily
and free of chains!”
“What about you?” yelled Tom, cupping his hands.
William did not have to ask Sintk, who was already snoring under a cowhide, or Harum, who
was doing the rowing of four men. Drago was dead. They could slip into the harbor and
never be suspected.
“Port Balifor is our home!” he shouted into the wind. But he doubted if they heard him, as
the string of boats had already moved onward, to the west.
Harum and William let Sintk sleep until they had glided safely into the harbor. The
minotaur tied up the boat, and they scrambled to their feet at the end of a small
commercial pier. There was frantic activity, fireballs, and shouting from draconian ships
at the other end of the harbor, but their dock was practically deserted, and no one was
around to pay them any mind.
They slapped each other on the shoulders and Harum hurried away into the fog. Sintk and
William kept to the back lanes until the Pig and Whistle hove into view. Sintk continued
on to his cobbler's shop.
Inside his inn, William ripped off his mask and tossed the cloth onto a refuse barrel. He
hung the sword and scabbard on a wood peg on the wall. Breathing heavily from the night's
activities, William went behind the bar and poured himself a tall drink of dwarf spirits.
William came to with a snorting noise. He was sitting on the bartender's stool at his inn.
His head ached, and pain was beginning to move deep into his muscles. For an instant,
William thought he had caught a case of ague. His thick, short fingers opened and the coin
dropped on the bar. The metal was warm to his touch.
What a wonderful dream, he thought. He had been so brave. Sighing heavily, William decided
to retire for the night. He pocketed the coin and picked up an oil lamp with a low flame.
He yawned as he came around the bar.
Suddenly, a heavy pounding sounded on the front door of the Pig and Whistle. “Open up in
the name of the Highlord!” cried a guttural voice.
Shrugging, William headed for the door. Then he stopped, staring in horror.
On a refuse barrel lay a torn black mask ..
Love and ale Nick O'Donohoe
“An inn,” Otik puffed, “is blessed or cursed by its ale.” He set the barrow-handles down,
noting with approval that the cloth-covered wheel had not marred the lovingly polished Inn
floor. “The ale is blessed or cursed by its water and hops.”
Tika, staggering in from the kitchen, poured one of her two buckets into the immense
brewing tun as Otik pried the top free. “I know, I know. That's why I have to haul fresh
spring water up, a bucket at a time, instead of using rainwater from the cistern- which I
wouldn't need to pull up.” She showed him the rope-marks in her palms. At fifteen, she
lacked the patience for brewing.
“Better a bucket than a barrel.” Otik slapped the tun. “The innkeeper before me thought
cleaning a brewing tun each time was too much work. He just mixed the hops, malt, and
sugar into an alewort inside each keg, prying the lids up and recoopering without ever
cleaning.” He washed the spring water around the sides, checking for the tiniest dirt or
stain.
“Well, if we couldn't do that, couldn't we at least not haul the water up?”
“I've tried other ways myself. My very first batch with this tun I made down below, at the
foot of the tree.”
“Couldn't we do that?” Tika said wistfully. "We could just roll the empty kegs out the
garbage-drop with ropes tied to them so they wouldn't smash on the ground. We wouldn't
have to haul any
water at all, just pipe it to the foot of the tree.“ She automatically patted the living
vallenwood on which the bar was built. The people of Solace were more aware of growing
wood than any folk alive. ”Then when the ale was all aged and ready, we could fill the
kegs-" Her eyes went wide, and she put a hand to her mouth.
“That's right.” Otik was pleased that she understood. “I made a batch at ground level,
then had nothing to carry it up in but fifty- weight kegs, up forty feet of stairs. Or I
could run down a hundred times with empty pitchers, filling the upstairs barrels.” He
rubbed his back automatically. “I tied safety ropes on the kegs and rolled them up, one at
a time. Took the yeast an extra month to settle, and I was in bed for three days with sore
muscles.”
“Poor Otik.” But Tika laughed. “I wish I'd seen it. Nothing exciting happens when we make
ale.”
“Shame on you, child.” He was teasing. “The autumn batch is always exciting. Today, a
shipment of hops from the Plains of Abanasinia will arrive. I'm the only innkeeper around
who sends far away for rich hops.”
“You're the only innkeeper around, in Solace.” But she added, “And you'd be the best
anyway, if there were a thousand.”
“Now, now.” Otik was pleased. He patted his belly. “It's a labor of love, and the Inn has
loved me back. Now fetch more water.”
As if in answer, there came a call from the kitchen. Otik said, “See? The cook has hauled
up more for you. That should make you happier.”
“I'm ecstatic. Thank Riga for me.” And she went.
Otik, carefully not thinking of the long day ahead, went through the necessary
preparations as though they were ritual. First he cleaned a ladle thoroughly and dried it
over the fire. While it cooled, he set a tallow candle into another ladle, centered in the
bowl so as not to drip, and lowered it into the brewing tun, checking the sides for cracks
and split seams. Ale leaking out was not so damaging as air leaking in. He did the same
with each of the kegs into which he would pour the fully made wort.
Finally he put down his candle and lowered the cooled, dry ladle into the spring water and
sipped, then drank deeply. “Ah.” Forty feet below, near the base of the tree that held and
shaped the Inn of the Last Home, spring water bubbled through lime rock. Some said the
lime rock went down many times farther than a man could dig, and the spring channeled
through it all. Otik was not a traveled man, but he knew in his heart that nowhere in the
world was there water as sweet and pure as this. Finding hops and malt
equal to it was difficult. As Tika struggled back with the buckets, she panted, "Otik?
I've never asked why you named the inn-?“ ”I didn't name it, child. The Inn of the Last
Home was named
by-“ ”Why the Last Home?“ ”I've never told you?" He glanced around, taking in every scar in
the wood, every gouge half-polished out of the age-darkened vallenwood. “When the people
of Solace built their homes in the trees, they had nowhere left to go. The Cataclysm left
no choices; starving marauders, crazed homeless folk, were destroying villages and
stealing everything they could. The folk of Solace knew that if they did not defend
themselves well, these trees would be their last home.”
“But they survived. Things returned to normal. They could have moved back to the ground.”
Otik lifted the barrow-handles. “Follow me.”
At the pantry he stopped. “The man who built this inn was Krale the Strong. They say he
could tuck a barrel of ale under his arm and climb up the tree itself, one-handed. For all
he knew, his inn would be in ruins in a year.” Otik tapped the store-room floor. “You've
been here a thousand times. Have you ever thought about this floor?”
Tika shrugged. “It's just stone.” Then it hit her. “A stone floor? But I thought the
fireplace-”
“Was the only stonework. So it is. This is a single stone, set in to keep the ale cool,
forty feet above the ground. Krale made a rope harness and hauled it up himself. Then he
chopped this chamber out of the living wood, and laid the floor. This was his people's
last home, and he built it to last forever.”
Otik stamped the floor. The edges were rounded, where the living wooden walls had flowed
over the stone, a nail's-breadth a year. “And when the danger was over and the folk of
Solace could go back to the ground, they didn't. These were their last homes. In all the
world, no place else can be home for them.” He finished, a little embarrassed at the
speech. “Or for me. Bring out more water, young lady.”
As they worked, Tika hummed. She had a sweet, soft voice, and Otik was glad when she
finally broke into full song. The ballad was a hill tune, melodic and plaintive; Tika,
with great enjoyment, sang it as sadly as she could.
By the second verse she had dropped her scrub-rag and shut her eyes, oblivious to Otik. He
listened qui etly, knowing that if she
remembered his presence, she would blush and fall silent. Lately, Tika had become awkward
and shy around men-a bad trait for a barmaid, but at her age, quite natural. He kept
patient, knowing how soon that shyness would end. Tika sang:
THE TREE BY MY DOOR I'VE WATCHED TURN BEFORE AND I'VE WATCHED AS IT'S BRANCHED OUT AND
GROWN; WHEN IT TURNS NEXT YEAR, WILL I STILL BE HERE, AND WILL I BE HERE ALONE?
WHEN MY LOVE WAS THERE, BIRDS SANG IN THE AIR, AND THEY SOARED LIKE THE DREAMS THAT WE
HAD; NOW HE'S OFF TO WAR, THEY SING LIKE BEFORE, BUT ALL OF THEIR SONGS ARE SAD.
MY GOOD FRIENDS, I KNOW, WILL MARRY AND GO, AND FAREWELL WITH A KISS AND A TEAR, WITH
LOVERS TO TELL, AND CHILDREN AS WELL, WHILE I WAIT ANOTHER YEAR.
THEIR FUTURES ARE BRIGHT, THEY SING DAY AND NIGHT, AND I'M HAPPY TO THINK THEM SO GLAD . .
. THE BIRDS THAT I SEE STILL SING BACK TO ME, BUT ALL OF THEIR SONGS ARE SAD.
Otik enjoyed the tune without recognizing it. He watched Tika, her eyes shut and her arms
waving in the air as she sang, and he thought with a sudden ache, “She's old enough for
her own place.”
Tika had lived with him for a long time; she was as close to a daughter as he would ever
have. Before that, for many years, he had lived alone happily. Now he could not imagine
how he had stood it.
Finally she finished, and he said, “Nicely sung. What was that?”
“That?” She blushed. "Oh, the song. It's called The Song of
Elen Waiting.' I heard it last night.“ ”I remember." The singer had been all of
twenty-three, most of
his listeners fifteen. He had curly dark hair and deep blue eyes, and by his second song
half the girls of Solace were around him. “Some young man sang it, didn't he?”
“You're teasing me.” Tika scowled, even when Otik smiled and shook his head. “You don't
take me seriously.”
“Oh, but I do, I do. This young man that sang-”
“Rian.” She said it softly, and the scowl went. “He wasn't so young. Do you know, he had
seven gray hairs?”
“Really? Seven, exactly?”
She didn't notice the tease, but nodded vigorously, her own hair bouncing off her
shoulders. “Exactly. He let three of us count them after he was done singing, and we all
came up with the same number.”
“Nice of him to let you.”
“Oh, I think he liked it,” Tika said innocently. Then she frowned. “Especially when Loriel
did it.”
“Which one was Loriel?” There'd been a lot of them. After Rian had sung, the young women
had walked around the Inn with their heads high, thinking noble thoughts, to Otik's vast
amusement. One young man, a red-haired, spindly local with wide eyes, sat in the corner
afterward determinedly mouthing lyrics to himself. His friends had seemed afraid he might
sing.
Tika scrubbed fiercely at one of the barrels, tipping it. Otik steadied it for her as she
said casually, “Loriel? Oh, you know. Turned-up nose, too many freckles, shows her teeth
when she laughs-it's a shame they're not straight-and she's the one with all that hair,
you know, the yellow stuff?”
“Oh, is she the one with all that pretty blonde hair?” She was around a lot lately. She
laughed too often for Otik's taste, but the boys her age seemed to like it. She also had a
habit of spinning away from people so that her hair flew straight out and settled back.
Otik had twice caught Tika practicing it.
“Do you think it's pretty, then?” Tika tried to look surprised. “That's nice. Poor thing,
she'd be pleased.” Scrub, scrub.
She began to daub her eyes. “Oh, Otik! He liked HER and not me.”
“There now.” Otik put an arm around her, thinking (not for the first time) that if he'd
only found a wife, there'd be someone more sensitive to help the poor girl. He barely knew
Tika's friends. “There, now. It's not like he's your own true love, just an older lad with
a good voice. You don't want him.”
Tika laughed and wiped her eyes on her arm. “That's true. But Loriel's supposed to be my
friend- what does he see in HERI”
“Ah.” Now he understood. “Well, she's older than you.” “Only a little. A year isn't so
much.” She sniffed. “Don't cry again.” He added, to get a smile from her, "You'll
salt the ale.“ It almost worked. ”You must be patient, like that woman in the song. How
did it go again?"