The Onyx Throne Ch 66 67

Chapter 66

By the time they made it down to the inn's common room a couple of hours later, Lethelin had her game face on. Mitchell had finally managed to get her to accept that whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and there was no sense in worrying about it now. When he tried to explain the expression "no use crying over spilled milk" she had appreciated the idiom but liked hers better.

"The fish has already spotted the bait," she'd said as she finally agreed with his assessment.

"For now," she'd informed him in their preplanning session, "We're just trying to get a feel for the general mood of the people here. Try to listen in on any conversations about things outside of town. Traders move through here fairly often so we should get some good gossip. If anyone asks your opinion on something that you have no idea about, just say 'Daylight or darkness' and shrug."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that such things are beyond your understanding or care, and either Stollar will guide things in his wisdom or Denass will judge their souls after those involved die."

Short, sweet, and to the point. Mitchell liked it.

They arrived early enough to claim a table near the center, and one of the serving girls informed them that, while dinner and an ale were included in the price of their room, anything extra they would have to pay for. After that, they played the happy couple easily enough. Lethelin got a lot of greetings as word spread of how she'd gotten one over on poor Elgrin. She even had a couple of free ales sent to her and Mitchell. Bari had glared at her more than once as she went about her business, but most of her ire seemed to have been directed at her husband for being fool enough to gamble in the first place.

The takir had been removed from the spit some time before, and the fire was mostly just low coals. When their plates were brought out, Mitchell was a little surprised at the portions offered. The little inn they'd stayed at before crossing the mountains had given them much less food for the price, and the fare at the bathhouse, while enough to fill him up, had also been significantly less generous than what had just been set in front of him. After so long on trail rations, Mitchell knew he wouldn't be able to finish the whole thing. He felt bloated just looking at it.

The slab of meat that had been cut from the roasted takir was bigger than his hand and thicker besides. It had been topped by a brown gravy, and he saw various potato-like vegetables and mushrooms also covered in the same sauce, and some dark brown flatbread that reminded him of Indian naan. Looking around he saw that other people were taking the two-tined fork and the short stubby knife to carve off parts of the meat before rolling it in a slice of the flatbread. Lethelin had begun to do the same, so he followed along, doing his best to look like a native. The ale, once Mitchell took a taste, had a distinct apple flavor to it which he found pleasant.

As they ate, they listened. There were indeed a few traders in attendance, and Mitchell did his best to listen without trying to appear interested. If the plan had not been decided on beforehand, he never would have suspected Lethelin of a thing. She looked like she had tuned everyone out to eat, while he was sure his behavior was obvious. She assured him he was doing fine and told him to just relax and enjoy the atmosphere.

He did his best and tried to tune his ears to the various conversations around him. There were still words he didn't know peppered in the conversations, but he got the gist of most of it. One of the traders in particular -- a gnome of indeterminate age with a wild crop of white hair that looked as if it had never seen a brush -- had been in Lorivin a couple of weeks prior and was particularly upset about the long wait times to get past the city gates as things were being checked more carefully.

"In the queue for no less than four hours, was I! Four, says I!" the little gnome nearly screetched and Mitchell watched as his long pointy ears quivered in outrage. "A runner to my buyer I sent to see if he could move me up. Word came back that his ankles were up 'round his ears, were they! Everyone stopped and searched, they were!"

The gnome's odd way of speaking was straining Mitchell's understanding of Common grammar. Lethelin told him in hushed tones that he was probably from one of the northern gnomish enclaves. They tended to form their own communities rather than mix much with the population at large and they were a bit quirky.

"They talk funny up there."

"Sounds like they're checking everyone going into the city, though."

"Mmhmm," she murmured around a mouthful of roasted vegetables.

"Looking for us?"

"Pobawwy," she said.

Mitchell grinned at the assassin as she tried to talk with her mouth full.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full?"

"Uh-huh," she said as she swallowed. Then she stuffed some meat into her mouth while eyeing him with a smile. "Bu' I dinn' lifin' berwy well."

They shared a laugh which caused her to spit up some of her food, and that only made them laugh harder. For a moment, Mitchell forgot about the mission and just enjoyed the company of the beautiful and deadly woman next to him. The second beautiful and deadly woman he had fallen in love with, in fact. Just what were the odds, he wondered.

"What are you thinking about?" Lethelin asked him after he was quiet for a bit.

"About how I've managed to attach myself to two of the most dangerous women in Awenor. Either you or Allora could kill me without breaking a sweat, but instead I get to do this..."

Mitchell leaned forward and planted a kiss on her lips, which she accepted eagerly. Her lips were warm and soft and tasted of the apple ale she'd just drank. He held it for a moment, and he felt their tongues touch just slightly before they broke apart. Lethelin had a touch of color in her cheeks, and Mitchell was feeling warmer, too.

"True, I could kill you without breaking a sweat, but then I wouldn't get to experience that tongue of yours myself."

Mitchell arched an eyebrow.

"Allora told you about that, did she?"

"Mmhmm," Lethelin said and licked some of the sauce off her fingers. "Among other things."

Mitchell had a moment where he debated being upset about that or not, but decided that it really didn't matter. He had assumed Allora would give her at least some details and really, what difference did it make if they shared things back and forth. They were sharing him, after all. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. What guy didn't like his partner bragging about him to other women. Mitchell certainly didn't mind.

"I had to almost drag it out of her, though," Lethelin added. "She was surprisingly shy about the whole thing."

"Anyway, back on topic," Mitchell said as Lethelin sucked another finger and gave him a devilish grin. "Are you worried about what he said? About being checked?"

Lethelin wobbled her head.

"We won't be going in the normal way, so it doesn't matter. If anything, that will make it easier since they will have so much attention focused on the city gates. And Lorivin is a big city, so they will be hard-pressed to manage even what they have already. People are going to complain and that makes everyone stressed and stressed people get sloppy, make mistakes, and are easily distracted."

"You sound very confident."

Lethelin nodded.

"I am. Didn't I mention I was one of the best?"

"I think it's come up."

"I'll get you and Little Miss Prissy Britches inside the city walls, don't worry. After that, it's up to you."

They toasted and settled back to continue their recon. Unfortunately, except for their luck with the gnomish trader, everything else was fairly mundane. There were some grumblings about the lack of rangers patrolling this section of the Shadow Glen and there had been some troll attacks in a town a few leagues further west inside the forest, as well as one story about a goblin tribe that attempted to lay siege to an entire village. It apparently failed in spectacular fashion, the young man said, when a civil war broke out among the goblins who then began slaughtering each other.

"They killed themselves almost to the last one!"

The story had attracted a fair bit of attention and that last bit caused a few people to chuckle audibly.

"Not even goblins are that stupid!" shouted one customer, waving the tale off.

"It's true!" said the man telling the story. "My cousin told me the whole thing! Had business with a farmer from Redfern. Said they were stuck behind the walls for three days while the goblins tried to scale the defenses!"

"Sure, sure, Brenin!" called one patron. "Just like that time giant scorpions appeared in the forest and saved you from the troll? Giant scorpions that only haunt the sands of Iletish!"

"Oh, or how about that time he said he was seduced by a Fey princess?" one woman called out.

"She wasn't a princess," Brenin tried to yell over the laughter. "She was just as beautiful as one. And the scorpion did save me! Old Lennig said they must have crossed the peaks looking for food! The troll was just tastier."

"I saw the girl he left with that night," another man said. "She weren't no Fey princess! Troll, maybe! Giant toad?"

"Living or dead?" a dwarf woman with coal-black hair worked into dreadlocks asked.

"Couldn't tell!"

Another big round of guffaws.

The ribbing of poor Brenin continued for a few more minutes before the man finally gave up and retreated back to his table to nurse his ale.

Mitchell laughed along with everyone else although he didn't try to join in with the jokes. He was surprised how comfortable he felt among the people here. He spotted at least four different races, backgrounds he couldn't even guess at, but everyone seemed to be getting along. Mitchell knew he couldn't take a single data point and extrapolate that to a whole population, but everywhere he'd seen so far had been a true melting pot in a way that the US and its myth of multiculturalism could only dream of. Anytime there had been more than a handful of people together, there were different species interacting and getting along. Here proved no different. Dwarf interacted with elf interacted with gnome interacted with hafling interacted with human.

They all had an easy way about them. A good-natured sense of community that he had never really felt before with groups of his own people.

"What are you grinning about," Lethelin asked him.

"It's a little hard to explain but..." he struggled to put it into words. "Everyone just sort of... gets along. How many universes are represented here, yet they're like one big blended family."

Lethelin wasn't sure what to do with that.

"Why would what universe someone comes from change how they treat others?"

How to explain thousands of years of tribalism on Earth? He decided not to try. It would just spoil the mood.

"It's just surprising, that's all."

"People fight all the time, obviously, but whether they're dwarf or human has nothing to do with it. We were all slaves here once, all of our ancestors brought here against our will."

Mitchell nodded that he understood but he still had trouble believing it was really that simple.

The good mood continued among the patrons for another hour or so. Lethelin got asked to play more rounds of Iva from people who were having trouble believing the story, but she politely declined. Mitchell got questioned a few times as he was known to be with the beautiful human girl who had so thoroughly whipped Elgrin and he got to hear a few tales about their lives in the Shadow Glen. He even got to use his new expression a few times.

"But," a human woman named Tisha said as she bemoaned the high price of goods over the last several months, "Those jivi fuckers they got running things up in Lorivin have really shat in the dragon's mouth if you ask me. It's going to lead to a riot and then they'll be sorry. Be like nest of skitterbacks in a temple! Don't you think?"

Mitchell nodded as if the woman had said something wise. Then he shrugged and gave his best "whaddya gonna do" face and said "Daylight or darkness, Tisha. Daylight or darkness."

"Ha! Stollar's own truth, that is! Daylight or darkness. But just between you, me, and the fairies, I'm hoping they meet the darkness sooner rather than later."

Mitchell nodded, and then touched his ear before touching the rim of her cup and she did the same. He'd discovered quickly that that was how they toasted here. He was basically saying, "I'll drink to that."

When he glanced at Lethelin, who was talking to Tisha's wife about Iva strategies, she gave him a sly nod of approval.

"Keldin!" Tisha suddenly called over to the bar, getting the attention of a dwarf woman with tawny red hair that flowed elegantly down her back. "Come meet our new friends!"

Keldin finished up her conversation with a gnome she'd been talking to and strode over to their table.

Mitchell couldn't yet decide how he felt about dwarven women. They were as squat as the men were, and thickly muscled. While they're features were definitely female, the word that kept coming up as he tried to describe the ones he'd seen so far was "handsome". They didn't have the elegant attractiveness of Allora or most of the other elves he'd seen, nor the lithe, dangerous beauty of someone like Lethelin, but they still managed to look feminine enough even with their wide jaws and flat noses. And they were large-breasted and broad-hipped, every one of them. He could certainly appreciate that.

"This is our other wife, Keldin. We live over in Wildespell. Just passing through tonight on our way to Onyxford."

"Oh, interesting," Mitchell said.

"Aye," Keldin said. "My cousin's just had a baby. It's a ten-day on the road, but the little hellion was named after me, so figure I owe it to Thela to go meet my namesake."

"Have a seat," Mitchell said, indicating the last open chair.

The more they talked, the more Mitchell started to fall in love with the people here. He felt a sort of resonance in his chest and knew it was Awen touching his mind.

"They are a wonderful people," she said, her voice warm and soothing. "I am glad you could see this side of them before the fighting begins."

Mitchell agreed.

A short time later, an elfin woman stepped up to the little stage in front of the hearth at the far end of the common room and began to play an instrument that looked like a strange blend of a hand-held harp and a guitar.

It had what almost looked like a fret board about two feet long, but it appeared it was there for support rather than for fretting notes. A bow-like piece of thinner wood was attached to the end of the neck about where tuners would be on a guitar and it curved down at a gentle angle to meet the body of the instrument. The body itself was an elongated oval with an equally elongated sound hole through the center which the strings passed over before reaching a bridge where they were secured to a body made of a dark-red colored wood with faint tan accents running through it.

The woman was striking as well. She had long auburn hair and yellow-gold eyes. Her body was tall and willowy and she wore a simple red sleeveless dress that exposed graceful limbs that ended in surgeon's fingers. She sat in a chair and placed the device across her body, resting it between her legs the way a classical guitarist might on Earth. She also wore a krisa on her brow with two stones in it.

She began plucking the strings and tuning and in a few moments the crowd had quieted down and everyone oriented themselves to the stage and waited expectantly.

Then, without preamble, one of her stones began to glimmer noticeably in the inn's warm light, and she began to sing. Without warning, Mitchell found himself being carried away.

Her voice latched onto his mind and he started to see things flickering at the edges of his vision. The language she sang in was not Common but something else. Something melodic and ancient. The words were a lover's hands caressing his skin, the chords were memories of first kisses. He had never experienced anything like it in his life.

Around him the bar began to fade, and instead he saw two young lovers, a human woman, maybe only seventeen or eighteen years and a man whose race and age he couldn't quite determine. He appeared young at first glance, and elf-like but then he appeared ancient in the next moment, despite there not being a single wrinkle on his flawless golden-hued skin. His eyes were also emitting a golden light that bathed the woman in gentle radiance.

The woman in the vision was herself almost ethereally beautiful as well -- eyes the golden-brown hue of pure honey and skin like fresh cream. Her hair was a strawberry blond that put Mitchell in mind of August sunsets over golden prairies. Their figures went from sharp and vivid to hazy as the words of the song passed through his consciousness. They were dancing on a field of stars, her simple farmer's dress more elegant on her than any royal wedding gown and the man in simple white slacks cinched with a golden rope and a loose-fitting golden shirt.

Hand in hand, eyes only for each other, the cosmos became their ballroom. The melody rang in Mitchell's ears, and they moved in time to the slow rhythm that the singer was striking on the body of the guitar as she worked the strings. The couple pirouetted through planetary orbits and swirled technicolor nebulae around their feet as they glided through the heavens.

Mitchell could feel his heartbeat quicken as the song reached a crescendo. The couple in his vision began to dance more passionately now, their eyes devouring each other as their bodies grew closer. Hands started to roam and clutch hungrily and the surrounding universe began to swirl as if they were a black hole around which all began to rotate.

As the song reached the final note, the singer's beautiful soprano voice hit a fermata and held it for an impossibly long time. In his mind's eye, Mitchell watched as the two lovers finally kissed and then their bodies went supernova and exploded into a dazzling rush of luminescent comets that resolved into tiny little motes of light that then became fireflies zipping over a field of grain. In the distance across the field, Mitchell could see a simple farmhouse with a single candle burning in the window and in the sky above, two moons, one silvery and one golden.

Then the song ended and Mitchell was gasping and felt dizzy. His vision cleared and he was once again in the common room of the inn. Mitchell rubbed his eyes and looked around, almost feeling like this wasn't the real world he was now sitting in. The real world was up in the heavens with the dancing couple. Mitchell fought to process his thoughts and around him he saw others with smiles on their faces, a few had tears, but no one seemed to be suffering the same effects as he was.

"She's pretty good," Lethelin said over the sound of clapping that was building in the inn. "Academy trained, no doubt. Wonder what she's doing all the way out in the back country."

Then she saw Mitchell, trembling and sweating in his seat and a look of concern replaced her appreciative smile.

"Mitchell, what's wrong?"

"What...?" He looked at her and struggled to focus. "What just happened? Did everyone see that?"

Lethelin looked confused, but to her credit, it only lasted a moment.

"Oh, balls," she said, then her voice dropped to a near whisper. "This is your first time experiencing a music mage! I'm sorry, Mitchell, I didn't think."

"A music mage?"

The crowd was settling down and there were calls for more songs, but the singer said she needed to rest, and she would be back at the top of the next hour. She was applauded again as she left the stage, and she bowed politely. Several patrons went up to the stage and dropped coins or gemstones into the small box near the edge.