The big man grunted as he rose, rubbing a hand over his lower back. “I can’t help it. Sometimes a man has to see what it looks like for men and women to make their coin off of pretendin’ to be somebody else. Shit, I know more than a few who do that often enough now, but the only coin they make is what they can sneak off their marks. Anyhow…” He turned, and froze as he took in Aaron and the others.
“Well shit,” he said, grinning, “Leomin and Aaron.” He barked a laugh and slapped first one and then the other on the shoulder with a big, meaty paw hard enough to nearly knock them from their stools. “By the gods, but I didn’t think I’d see you all again. And you’ve made some friends too, have ya?”
“Maybe better to call them people I haven’t got around to killing yet,” Aaron said, but he was smiling when he said it, and the tavern keep barked a laugh.
“Aye, that’ll do fine. Well,” he said, shaking first Darrell’s hand and then Wendell’s, “it’s a pleasure to meet ya both, I’m sure.” He turned back to Aaron. “And where’s that pretty thing you were in here with last time? Haven’t gone and fucked that up, have ya?”
Aaron snorted. “Not yet, surprisingly enough. She wasn’t able to make the trip this time.”
“Well, that’s too bad. The sight of her would have done much to lift an old man’s spirits and that’s a fact. Still…” He gave a shrug of his massive shoulders, leaning in close and speaking in a whisper, “probably better she didn’t come. Things in Baresh have been…well. It’s probably best she didn’t come.”
Aaron grunted, “That’s the second time I’ve heard something about that. What are you talking about? What’s been happening?”
A troubled look came over the tavern keeper’s face, and he glanced at the couple sitting in the corner. They were bent in conversation, and they didn’t appear to be the slightest bit interested in what Aaron or the others were saying, but Nathan shook his head. “Not here,” he said, “later. I’ll close early tonight, and we’ll hash it out. At least as much as there is to be hashed out anyway which, truth be told, ain’t much. But folks that talk too much about it seem to have a way of disappearin’, if you catch my meanin’.”
Aaron nodded, frowning and remembering the way he’d felt when he’d stared at the city from afar, the dark foreboding that had settled over him as soon as he’d entered its gates. “Alright,” he said, “later.”
***
Aaron and the others sat around one of the tables in the tavern’s common room while Nathan walked to the door and locked it. “Alright, Janum,” the tavern keeper said, “why don’t you go on upstairs and get some sleep. The way I understand it, you’ve got an early morning with swordmaster Lionel.”
“But Uncle,” Janum said, “I want to stay.”
Nathan patted the youth on the shoulder. “I know you do, boy, but you know as well as I that swordmaster Lionel doesn’t tolerate tardiness. Besides, you don’t need to hear what all we’ll be talkin’ about anyway.”
Janum frowned. “I’m not a child anymore, Uncle. I’m sixteen next month and nearly a man. It’s not like I don’t know what’s been going on in the city—people disappearing. That’s all everybody’s talkin’ about. Anyway, Fenn’s two months younger than me, and his dad talks to him about it.” His frown grew deeper still. “Fenn’s dad even lets him have some of his liquor sometimes, and you won’t even let me have an ale!”
The big tavern keeper grunted. “I’d ask if Fenn’s dad let him jump in front of horse carts for fun if you’d want to do that as well, but the gods know I’d be scared of what you’d say. Anyway, never mind what Fenn’s dad will and won’t let him do—that’s his business, not yours. As for being a man, well lad, a man has responsibilities and your responsibility just now is getting some rest and meeting Lionel tomorrow. And don’t you worry—there’ll be time enough for drinkin’ when you’re older, and jawing on about whatever suits you. Now go on and get some rest.”
The youth sighed, obviously defeated. “Goodnight, everyone.”
They all said goodnight and watched as the youth slunk up the stairs to his room. When he was gone, Nathan shook his head. “That boy’ll be the death of me, you wait and see.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, friend Nathan,” Leomin said, “the young Janum is much changed.”
Nathan gave a doubtful look, but it quickly turned into a smile. “Yeah, and I ‘spose I got you to thank for that.” He turned to Aaron. “And you, of course. Not much that’ll straighten a body out quicker than the fear of death.”
Aaron cleared his throat as Darrell turned to him. “You threatened to kill the boy?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t give him too much grief about it,” the tavern keeper said, grinning, “I must have threatened him a thousand times myself, though he never seemed to care one way or the other. Anyhow, I got to admit that I’m surprised to see you all back so soon. And with companions as well. Come for the tournament, have ya?”
Aaron frowned, glancing at the others who shared his confusion. “Tournament?”
“Aye,” Nathan said, “King Belgarin means to have a tournament the likes of which Telrear has never seen—or so the city criers assure me every time I so much as step outside the damned tavern. Surely, you must have heard them when you were comin’ through the city.”
Aaron shook his head slowly. The criers might have been there, but he’d been too distracted by his own thoughts to notice. A tournament. Only a couple of months ago, Belgarin was set on conquering the entire country, and now suddenly he was relaxing and holding tournaments? It didn’t make any sense. Had Grinner or Hale been here, the crime lords would have probably claimed it was proof that the royal prince had given up his quest to rule all of Telrear, and Aaron would have been forced to admit that it was a very strange thing to do for a man bent on conquering the country. Still, he didn’t like it.
“A tournament?” Darrell asked. “Something’s not right about this.”
Wendell took a long drink of his ale, emptying the mug. He smacked his lips loudly and glanced at the others. “I ain’t no genius, the gods know,” he said, “but it seems to me that it’s a little more than somethin’ bein’ not right. If I drink more than’s good for me of a night, sometimes I put my left boot on my right foot and my right boot on my left foot the next mornin’. Spend some time stumblin’ around before I figure out what’s the matter.” He nodded at that as if he’d made some grand pronouncement, but the others just stared at him.
Leomin blinked. “Sir Wendell, I am one who prides himself on hearing what is not spoken and seeing what is not there, but even I must admit as to some confusion about what you’re trying to say.”
He glanced to Aaron who only shrugged, grinning at the pleasure of seeing the Parnen being the one confused by another’s speech for once. “Couldn’t make any sense of it myself.”
“Well, it’s all pretty obvious, ain’t it?” the sergeant asked. When they all just kept staring at him, he cleared his throat. “Alright, so it’s like this. When I was a kid—nine or ten, no more than that—I used to try to sneak some of my parents’ wine. They kept the few bottles they had locked up, you understand. Only brought ‘em out for special occasions—marriages, or births or…well, I guess that was about all the special occasions we had. It was a small village, as I’ve told you. But my father wouldn’t ever let me have any of the wine no matter how much I begged, tellin’ me I was too young. But so far as I was concerned, I was nearly a man grown—not so unlike your Janum,” he said, nodding his head to Nathan.
Wendell laughed as he remembered. “I reckon me and my friends must have tried to sneak one of those bottles a dozen times or more, but we never could get the lock my parents kept on the cellar open no matter how hard we tried. But every chance we got when my parents were away, we’d set to it, real careful, you understand, so that my parents wouldn’t notice that the lock had been tampered with. Yeah,” he said, grinning, “we figured ourselves clever, just a bunch of sneak thieves that were goin’ to become
men. Just as soon as we got into that cellar, anyhow.”
He glanced around at the others and shrugged self-consciously. “Seems a bit foolish now, lookin’ back.”
“Just a bit?” Aaron asked.
The sergeant grinned and went on. “Anyhow, I reckon my ma and pa must have known somethin’ was goin’ on, and one day my friends and I came home from workin’ the fields to find a full bottle of wine settin’ on the table just as pretty as you please, and both my parents not due back for an hour or more. Well, we all figured this was our chance, and I guess we were just about as excited as could be. Excited enough that, when we opened the bottle, we didn’t even take much note of the smell. Sure it stunk, and why not? That was the part of it got you drunk, we figured. If we hadn’t been quite so excited, I suppose we might have noticed that the wine smelled like somethin’ that had gone over and in a bad way. Which, of course, was exactly what it was.
“You see, my pa was the type of man believed that harsh lessons are the ones that take the best. So when he realized we’d been at the cellar lock, he decided one was due and filled up a whole wine bottle with spoiled goat’s milk.”
The other men at the table winced at that, and Wendell nodded. “Yeah. See, my friends and I, we’d been around goats and cows all our lives. Growin’ up on a farm and woodland village you can’t avoid it. But we were so excited at the thought of havin’ some of that grown up wine that we didn’t even take notice of a smell we’d known since before we could walk. ‘Course, there’s also the fact that my pa took it in his mind to add some crushed up peppers to the milk. For flavor, he told me later.”
“Forgive me, Sir Wendell,” Leomin said, “but I’m still not sure—”
“Ain’t no sirs in my family, Leomin,” the sergeant said. “Anyhow, the fact is that when I took the first sip of that ‘wine’ I knew somethin’ was off. I’d never had wine before—never had spoiled goat’s milk with peppers crushed up in it neither, mind—but I knew the moment that foul liquid touched my tongue that it wasn’t right. My friends, they knew it, too.”
Nathan, the barkeep, barked a laugh. “Aye, children can be foolish.”
Wendell grinned. “That ain’t what’s foolish. What’s foolish is we finished the whole damned bottle. I don’t rightly recall if any of us got drunk, but I can tell you for a certainty that we all got sick. We spent the next day pukin’ our guts out and sweatin’ like somebody’s just said they’s executions to be had, and your name’s first on the list.”
“Wendell,” Darrell said, smiling, “I still can’t see how this is—”
Wendell held up a hand, forestalling the swordmaster. “Point is, we’d never had wine before, wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it tasted like. The smell, maybe, for more than one of my parents’ celebrations ended with folks spillin’ wine and sometimes their dinners along with ‘em, but not the taste. But we knew it for wrong when we tried it, just like we know this tournament for wrong. You ask yourself how wine could taste like that when so many folks are willin’ to spend their last coin just for a sip of it. It can’t, that’s all. Now, you ask yourself why a man, a prince, who is known for being one mean son of a bitch, can bring himself to not just give it all up but to have a damned tournament. As if they was somethin’ worth celebratin’ in getting his army’s ass kicked until it fled like a mongrel with its tail between its legs. He can’t, that’s all.”
Aaron frowned. “What are you trying to say, Wendell?”
Just then, there was a knock at the door, but Nathan waved a meaty hand. “Leave it. We’re closed, and they’ll get the idea soon enough.”
The knock came again, and Leomin smiled, “It seems to me that just such a one as you spoke of, dear Wendell—the man prepared to give up his last coin for a taste of wine or ale—stands outside in the night even now, knocking and mulling over his options.”
“What did you mean,” Aaron said, “that he can’t be the same man?” A dark, terrible idea had taken root in his mind, a possibility that he didn’t wish even to contemplate. Boyce Kevlane was a man capable of changing his appearance in a moment’s notice—Aaron had seen him do it. Had he somehow…taken control from Belgarin? But no. It didn’t make any sense. Belgarin had wanted to take over all of Telrear, had set himself against Aaron and his allies. If anything, the ancient wizard would have been thrilled with the man’s ambitions.
Wendell shrugged. “Not sure what I mean, General, to tell you the truth. All I know is peppered, spoiled goat’s milk ain’t wine, and there ain’t no amount of wishin’ will make it so. Maybe the prince has been forced into a peace, somehow.”
Leomin nodded slowly. “Or, perhaps, there is another possibility.” They all turned to look at him then, and the Parnen gave a shrug of his own. “If Prince Belgarin has truly lost the urge for battle, if he has come to a place where he is prepared to give up a war he’s fought for nearly half his life, then he is certainly not the same man as he was even half a year ago.”
Aaron grunted. “I’m fairly sure that’s what this ugly dog was just going on about.” He nodded his head at Wendell, who grinned in response.
“Yes,” Leomin said, nodding slowly, “but people are fickle things, Mr. Envelar. I think that you are in a place to know that better than most. A man’s emotions—his wants, his desires might change, but only if a great change is first worked within him. Or on him. It seems to me that either Wendell is right, and somehow someone is forcing Belgarin to peace against his will, or that some event has taken place, some catalyst to create in Belgarin a new man with his own wants, his own desires.
“People can change, after all, though in my experience, it is a rare enough thing and it is rarer still for it to be a change for the better. You might meet a man from one day to the next, and though his outward appearance might be the same, it is only the mask he wears, only the window through which the world views him. This window is small and fogged over, and even a close study of it will reveal very little about the room behind it. Some vague shadows, some hinted outlines, but little more than that. Whatever else has happened, it is safe to say that the Prince Belgarin we once knew of is no more. In his place there is another prince, one who cares little for the ambitions of the old.”
Aaron considered that then shook his head slowly. “No, that doesn’t feel right. There’s something here, Leomin. In this city. If Belgarin suddenly decided to become a priest, burning candles instead of villages, then why are all of his people walking around terrified, grown men too scared to venture out at night?”
Leomin frowned. “I have heard nothing of such things, Mr. Envelar.” They all turned to Nathan, and the barkeep grunted.
“Yeah, I ‘spose now’s as good a time as any to jaw it out, but I’ll warn ya that I don’t know much, and what I do know I don’t know for certain.”
“There are no certainties, friend Nathan,” Leomin said, “except, at least, that nothing is certain. Now, certainly, proceed.”
Aaron sighed, but the innkeeper was nodding as if the Parnen had just said something profound. “Alright,” he said. “Well, there’s been some…disappearances lately.”
Aaron grunted. “I grew up in a part of the city very much like here, Nathan, and I know enough to know that any place where people are desperate and poor will always have its disappearances.”
The barkeep nodded grudgingly at that. “You’re right, of course. But this here’s different. Lots more folks than is normal have been vanishin’ as if they never were. And not just from the poor district, neither. Why I’ve heard of at least a dozen cases of wealthy merchants and nobles up and disappearin’. Men of power and station. Men with enough gold to hire a dozen bodyguards, if that’s what was needed. Men with pretty, trophy wives and big gaudy mansions.
“Sure, folks disappear, Aaron, but it’s most always the ones that nobody misses when they’re gone, the ones that don’t leave hardly anythin’ behind ‘em. These men that are disappearin’ now, lots of them got roots, you understand? Roots o
f gold, and connections that normally serve as a shield for the noble born and wealthy, but they’re being snatched up and taken just the same. Right along with the rest.”
Another knock sounded at the door, and Wendell and Leomin both jumped—the sergeant falling out of his chair, while the Parnen let out a squeak and brought both hands to his mouth like a child caught saying a bad word.
“Bastard’s persistent, I’ll give him that,” the sergeant said as he climbed off the floor and sat down again, pointedly avoiding the grins of Darrell and Aaron.
“We’re closed!” Nathan yelled, and they all waited a moment until the knocking finally stopped.
Aaron frowned at the door for a few moments before turning back to Nathan. “You’re saying all of these people are being taken, but who’s taking them?
The barkeep shook his head. “Nobody knows.”
Aaron met the man’s eyes. “Nobody knows. You mean to tell me that there aren’t any rumors?”
“Oh, sure,” the big man said, shifting uncomfortably, “plenty of rumors. There’s talk that it’s followers of the Death God needing people for their sacrifices. Others think there’s a killer that has come to the city.” He barked a laugh. “That’s nobles mostly. The bastards seem too dumb to realize there’s plenty enough killers here already. Shit, I know a dozen of them, some of them even pretty nice. Well,” he grunted, “just so long as you don’t piss them off.”
Aaron frowned, considering the man’s words. Darrell turned to him. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure,” the sellsword said, “but I don’t like it.”
The tavern keeper snorted. “What’s to like? Folks disappearing off the streets like chickens when a wolf gets in the hen house, war with Isalla and Cardayum and the gods alone know who else, and these cloaked figures people keep talking about. Shit, much more, and I might think about mov—”
“Cloaked figures?” Aaron interrupted, leaning forward in his chair. “What are you talking about?”
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