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Welcome
Copyright © October 2014
John R. Patin
Minor edits made for this copy 7-7-2018
Previously published as part of the multi-author anthology: 'An Ode to Autumn', available from Amazon.com. Click here for your Kindle copy (free app available for any device).
“There’s a ship in the harbor,” the innkeeper’s wife declared excitedly from the balcony. “Looks like the storm has finally moved inland, so I opened up the rooms to air them out a bit after the last three days, and there it was! Strange lines. She looks to have taken some damage from the weather. At least one mast has snapped. Listing a bit too. They’ve a longboat putting in for shore. Could be they’ll be around a while if they need to repair storm damage, so we may have some customers. Did you light the lantern outside? It’ll be full dark by the time they get up here.”
“Bah. It’s lit, but it’s them damn lights out at the harbor entrance you ought to be concerned about,” her husband answered from behind his counter down on the common room floor, below her. “I said the new Lord should’na fixed ‘em. They’ll be bringing in all kinds of riffraff now.” The innkeeper stopped polishing glassware and looked across the empty common room at his only customer, who was reading an impressive tome at a table by the large fireplace, a steaming mug of tea beside the book. “Didn’t I say that you ought to tell that to your liege?”
Two striking green eyes peered up at him over the massive volume. “He’s not my Leige. Nobody is. I never swore to him. He’s my friend, that’s all. Besides, nobody tells Grindle anything.”
“Nobody tells you anything, either,” the innkeeper muttered to himself as he looked back down to attend to his glassware once more. A wet rag smacked him atop his balding head before ending up amid his clean glasses. He glowered up at his wife. Elaine had been a fine figure of a woman in her youth, and still was, he decided. A smile twitched his lips, but he kept it under control. “Look what you’ve done!” he squawked in mock outrage.
“The fishermen aren’t complaining about being able to find their way home. And what’s wrong with drawing in a few customers? Without those lights it’s almost impossible to spot the harbor entrance on this rocky coast.”
“That’s the whole point. The fishermen have made do without those towers functioning for a hundred years, and nothing respectable has sailed this coast in nearly as long. Not since before the wars. No trade, no ships.” At least none carrying anything other than trouble, he thought.
“Hiding from customers, a fine attitude for an innkeeper to have!” His wife rammed her fists into her ample hips and mock glared at him a moment before cocking her head to listen to something. “It’s raining again.” She swore an exasperated oath and disappeared into the room behind her. Windows and doors onto the inn’s upper veranda could soon be heard slamming.
Harold Quickhands let his smile broaden at last. Twenty-three years since he had brought his fiery redheaded wife to this water-soaked corner of the world to run the ‘Welcome Inn’ and she still had not come to accommodation with its weather patterns. It was simple enough; it rained. All the time.
About thirty minutes later the front door slammed open. Apparently it had taken the longboat crew that long to find their way through the maze of ruins that formed two-thirds of the town, to its still living core. Half a dozen rough-looking men crowded in out of the rain and wind of the latest squall line. Voices in the growing darkness behind them attested to more. Harold cocked his head. The words were indistinguishable, but their cadence was foreign. He used his wife’s wet missile to wipe at a spotless patch on the counter before him while he studied the newcomers. Like he’d been thinking - trouble.
The lot of them were fully armored, wearing plate cuirasses and fore- and aft-peaked helms, of a kind well designed to deflect an overhead blow, such as a mounted opponent might deliver. All of them were armed to the teeth, and none seemed in the market for ale or amusement. They stared around suspiciously, not a smile among them.
Their armor was unknown to him and their clothing might have seemed amusing in other circumstances, especially the dandy with the strange disk of ruffled fabric around his neck, lace hiding his wrists, and an elaborate plume on his helm, but they wore their strange armor like veterans, not dandies, and there was no amusement in their faces, not even the one with ruffles. Well, a bad boat ride can do that to people. He broke into his most obsequious tavern keeper’s smile.
“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome! Come on in out of the rain and avail yourselves of the hospitality of the only inn for a hundred leagues. What can I do for you?”
The men spread out wordlessly as they moved into the common room. No weapons were drawn, but their attitude spoke volumes about their experience with them and their willingness to use them. The innkeeper was all too familiar with such men. His insincere smile broadened. Wiping the counter more vigorously, he asked; “Hard voyage? We have some carpenters in town if you need help with repairs. Can I direct you to them?” The sooner these ‘customers’ were gone, the better.
Before he could blink, a poniard stabbed down between his fingers, pinning the rag to the countertop. He winced. So much for the counter’s polished finish.
The man holding the dagger stared at him with black eyes. It was the dandy with all the ruffles. The innkeeper stared back, fascinated by the stranger’s pointed beard.
“The storm drove us ashore,” announced Ruffles. “Where are we?”
“This is the Welcome Inn, like it says on the sign outside. Or did some Imp steal the lantern again?”
The man looked confused, then angry.
“I meant what land are we in?”
“Oh, why, you are in the Kingdom of Drear; specifically, this is the town… well, hamlet, these days… of Drizzle Downs, Fenland county. We’re the county seat.” He frowned. “…Sort of. I think.” He looked over to his studious customer, still sitting quietly at the table near the hearth. “Fae, we are the county seat, aren’t we?”
Those green eyes looked at him again. “Don’t call me that! It’s Fael, Fae-el! Goddess! How many times do I have to tell you! And yeah, I guess so, since the only other real town in this butt end of nowhere is Lostmire, when you can find it. Besides, this is where the… where Grindle is, though the king has yet to officially acknowledge him as Count. Not that Grindle cares. He’s here, the King isn’t. That’s all that matters.”
Captain Hernan De Sousa frowned. The speaker’s raven black pageboy cut framed an elfin face with a narrow jaw and mesmerizing green eyes with a cast to them that imparted an otherworldly appearance. Altogether, the effect was attractive, if disturbing in more than one way. Then he realized the ‘boy’ was a girl, a slim young woman actually, as she put down the tome she had been hiding behind and revealed a modest cleavage. He let out a small sigh of relief. He’d begun to think he might have been at sea too long, but it was more than that…
He heard gasps from several of the others as she stood up and walked over. Her attire was scandalous. Dressed in a black leather vest over a forest green blouse of shimmery silk and black leather pants of all things, no wonder he had taken her for a boy. At least until she stood up.
Though the pants hung loosely over her legs, giving her freedom of movement, they hugged her hips and buttocks daringly. Her short vest embraced her torso like a lover, leaving her narrow waist exposed in a way that left no doubt as to her sex. The faceted emerald in her navel perfectly complimented her eyes. Her movement was sylphlike as she crossed the room, drawing every man’s eye. Scandalous!
As she reached him, she looked De Sousa and his men over with an appraising eye of her own that he did not expect from a woman. It was the sort of look one warrior gave another. He finally noted she wore a short sword on her right hip, a slim gladius, perhaps. An eyebrow went up as he noticed the jeweled hilt of a dagger standing above the collar of her blouse, behind her neck.
Suddenly paying more attention to her accoutrements than her sex, he realized several black throwing knives dangled inverted from sheathes sewn into her vest, and that the woman’s sleeves were loose, like his own, but not gathered at the wrist. He’d known his share of knife aficionados and wondered what further armament those voluminous, unruffled sleeves might conceal. There was a deadly grace and very little of lace about this strange woman. He didn’t even realize he’d taken a half step back as she approached him.
“You are fortunate,” she said. “This is the only safe harbor in a hundred leagues either direction. Lots of ships wreck along this coast.”
“Well, actually, north of here there’s harbors closer than that; Loria, Sil, and Tir Na N...” the innkeeper started to say.
“I said safe harbors.” Fael cut him off with a harsh edge to her voice. “Those cities are dead… Dead and lost, and what dwells in them now is… unfriendly.” Her face had momentarily turned hard and even whiter than usual, as though carved from polished alabaster. In that moment her otherworldly appearance was enhanced, both chilling and enthralling the men around her. As though emerging from a trance, she seemed to shake the moment off, actually tossing her head to do so. De Sousa noted her earrings for the first time. They were small jade daggers. Charming.
“No human ship puts into those harbors and weighs anchor again. None have even tried in decades. You were lucky, finding us first,” she finished.
“We saw your harbor’s light towers. Remarkable. Such brilliance, and the alternating colors! In the growing gloom, we would have missed the entrance otherwise.”
“Yes, we’re quite proud of them.” Harold tossed a glance up to the balcony to make sure Elaine wasn’t in earshot. “A thousand years old, they’re said to be. Built at the height of the Empire, back when there was trade to be done in this port. They’ve just been re-lit. When the wars began, the wizard Nin shut them down. Like Fael said, you got lucky. This is an inhospitable coast otherwise.”
“Wizard?” The question came from a waterlogged man in a brown robe who had just come in. The first not bearing any weapons, he nonetheless bore the most suspicious expression of them all as he threw back the cowl over his tonsured head. He gave Fael a single glance of undisguised disapproval before turning to De Sousa. “Captain, haven’t we got more important things on our plate right now?” He glanced again at the girl. “And what was that about human ships, as though there were any other sort?”
De Sousa nodded. He had caught that curious statement also.
The innkeeper looked at the newcomers oddly. “Of course,” he answered slowly, wondering at the queries and which he ought to answer first. “Nin was a wizard of great power. He ruled the Fenlands and a good part of Drear beyond for over a century from Shadowgard, that black citadel overlooking the town and harbor. You must have noticed it. Up on the bluff?”
Indeed, they had, but it showed no lights and appeared partly in ruin, like this whole town.
“Ruled?” De Sousa pressed.
“Oh, he’s dead now,” the suddenly garrulous innkeeper reassured. “We think.” He looked at Fael. “Right?”
Fael made a face. “Grindle thinks so. The last he saw of him, Nin had barred himself in the North Tower and was making for his workshop. If he had made it to the top it would have been all over for the rest of us, so Grindle brought the whole tower down. What a loss. Much of Nin’s library was up there. We’ve been digging out what we can salvage ever since, but so far there has been no sign of Nin. There is still a lot of rubble to move. We’ll find him eventually. Had he survived, I think we would know by now. Nin wasn’t a very forgiving type.”
“A wizard,” the brownrobe stated flatly. “And this thing about ‘human’ ships?”
“Well, of course…” Harold stopped as he felt cool, slim fingers on his wrist. Fael effortlessly directed his hand away from the dagger pinning the rag to the countertop.
“Harold, before embarking on the long, sad history of these benighted lands, perhaps we ought to finish our introductions and hear something of our guests?” As she spoke, she gently pulled on the rag, letting the sharp blade slit it, and studied the grain of the exposed counter before carefully working the poniard free. “Nokwood,’” she mused. “So beautiful. A sad thing to mar it so.” Idly, she soothed the wounded wood with her index finger as she looked at De Sousa. “You never finished telling us where you came from - Captain.”
De Sousa was nonplussed. This slight woman intimidated him. Surrounded by armed strangers, she was unnaturally calm as she awaited his reply.
“Why, from Spain, of course!” he blurted to fill the silence. “We were on our way to the New World when we were caught in that ungodly storm! It drove us for days. What became of our consorts, I have no idea. I fear we may never see them again.”
“That is very possible,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “You are a long way from home.”
“What do you mean?” asked Harold, looking from the stranger to Fael. “Where is this ‘Spain’? I’ve never heard of the place.”
“Never… but you are speaking perfect Castilian Spanish!” one of the other men blurted. De Sousa just continued to stare at Fael. She looked down. Something told him he didn’t want to, but his own eyes followed hers down to her hand. Her finger had stopped its little circling motion.
She drew her hand away. The hole in the wood was gone as if it had never been. He hardly heard the rest of the argument. Such a little thing, but he knew his world had just turned turvy.
“No, I am not speaking Casti… whatever you said. You are speaking perfect Heltongue!” Harold was protesting. “And I have NO idea where this ‘Spain’ is!”
“I have,” Fael supplied. “It isn’t around here. They’ve come ‘through’. The storm brought them. It happens sometimes at this time of year when things are just right. Nobody really celebrates the harvest festival in the Fens, so I had forgotten. But this is Sowin, the time of crossings. It’s something of the old magic, left from before the Empire fell.”
“All Hallow’s Eve!” the priest whispered, clutching a string of prayer beads.
“If that is what you call it.”
“’Through?’” De Sousa finally got out. He repeated the odd emphasis she’d given the word. With every moment of this strange conversation, the questions piled up rather than being resolved. More casually than he felt, he slid his hand over the spot his dagger had damaged. Rather, the spot that was not damaged. He did not want the others to notice, especially not the priest. Things were getting out of hand as they were. He also noted the woman had not returned his poniard. Somehow, it had ended up through a loop on her hip, opposite the gladius.
“’Through,’” De Sousa repeated, more assertively, trying to regain control of the conversation, even when he was no longer sure he wanted the answers.
He stood a head taller than the girl, but when she looked up at him, there was pity on her face. “There are many realms besides those you are familiar with, Captain; entire worlds, some only a step away from your reality, for those with the knowledge. Once there was commerce between them. Portals were opened and people and goods passed between. It is said to have been one of the many wonders of the ancient Empire, but that knowledge was lost, along with so much else when the Empire fell. Some remnant of that power still exists, operating randomly, and most often on and around Sowin. Storms seem to enhance it. Your storm was particularly impressive. At some time during it, your vessel passed through one of those random portals and ended up here. And no, it is very unlikely you will ever be able to return. Unless…” Her head turned and she seemed to study an empty space high on the wall. “No,” she turned back to him. “The way is closed.”
De Sousa stood frozen at that flat declaration. Some of his men were muttering. The Captain ignored them. The girl had not been looking at the wall, he realized, but beyond it, in the direction of the ruined citadel. Behind him the muttering continued, breaking him out of his muse. “Nonsense!” said someone, and; “What does a girl know?” drifted out of the group of men.
Harold bridled. “This girl lives here, stranger, not to mention being…”
“STOP!”
Everyone stared at Fael, who had shouted, though she was looking, not at Harold, but across the room to where the priest had wandered over to the fire and had been about to pick up the massive volume she had been reading.
“Don’t touch that.”
The friar stiffened. “No slip of a girl, especially a wench such as yourself,” he retorted with indignation, “gives orders to the Holy Inquisition!”
“Never heard of it. Just don’t touch the book.”
“This book bears fell markings. I suspect deviltry.”
“Well, of course! Devils, demons, they go by all sorts of names. That book is all about them. What else would you expect from Nin’s library? So don’t touch it.”
The friar sneered and reached to open the book.
WHAM!
When De Sousa had blinked away the effects of the bright light that had filled the inn’s common room, he saw Friar Dominic lying against the far wall, holding his hand. It appeared burned. He thought at first the fire in the hearth must have exploded somehow, as though someone had tossed a powder horn into it, but it was the table that was on fire. Then, despite the sudden new warmth in the room, a chill ran down his back as the fire stepped away from the table, leaving it and the book unmarred! It was a creature of fire, and it was advancing on the priest.
He straightened, and would have drawn his sword, though what good it might do against that, he had no idea, but his arm was held fast. He looked down. Fael’s hand was on his wrist, locking his hand to the countertop. “No,” she said. “It is a guardian. Attack and it will respond.”
“The priest…”
A corner of her mouth twitched. “He was interested in deviltry and demons. Well, now he’s got one to study up close.”
De Sousa struggled briefly to reach his weapon, but her hand was like a vice. He could not move his, and a numbness was creeping up his arm. She cocked her head curiously.
“I do not like him, neither do you, I think. You would die trying to save him?”
“He is under my protection.”
Fael made a face. “Men. Oh, very well. Incindus!”
The creature of fire was close enough to the Dominican that his damp robes were beginning to steam. The demon stopped in its tracks and turned toward them. De Sousa’s chill deepened as he stared into two pits of even brighter flame. Fael calmly walked over to it and pointed to the book. “Return to your duties,” she ordered quietly but sternly, as though talking to an errant puppy.
The thing towered over her, charring the beams overhead, then nodded almost imperceptibly and, with one last hungry seeming glance at the cowering friar, took a step toward the book before disappearing.
“Told you,” Fael admonished Friar Dominic mildly. “Nin was not one to tolerate people messing with his stuff, especially his books. Let me see that hand. I have some healing ability, if it is not too bad.”
The friar just slid away from her as if she were the demon itself. Fael shrugged, and walked back to her place at the counter.
“Suit yourself,” she said over her shoulder, “but that is going to hurt in the morning.” She rested a casual elbow on the counter and shook her head, the tips of the little jade daggers swinging just above her shoulders. “I told him,” she repeated. “Some people just have to learn things the hard way.”
The Captain of Conquistadores looked at her strangely. “But you were reading that book. I saw you. And what you just did… that was…”
Fael shrugged. “I had permission.” She grimaced at his expression and glanced at Harold, who was beginning to look worried. The other men had started to back away from her. “Well, how much research do you think Nin would have gotten done if every time he sent an apprentice down to the library to fetch a book, they got blown up or incinerated?”
The friar was shakily trying to stand and not being too successful. He raised a trembling, still smoking hand.
“Witch!” he accused. “Seize her!”
‘Mierda’ thought De Sousa, finally pulling his hand away from the countertop, flexing numb fingers. A missing hole in the woodwork hardly seemed important anymore, anyway. Too bad. He’d even been thinking of asking her if she’d had dinner yet. He stepped back as swords were drawn and his men advanced. The Inquisition was not to be disobeyed.
The girl too, stepped back, her lips pressed into a hard, straight line. Harold Quickhands embraced a double armload of glassware off the countertop and dove out of sight.
With an almost careless motion, Fael simply waved her hand, sweeping her arm as if drawing aside a curtain.
…And a wind from nowhere knocked them all back to the doorway. De Sousa thought for a moment he was back on the deck of the San Valero in the worst of the storm. Then it was gone – like that. The black-clad girl was the only one in the room still standing. Apprentice, he thought giddily as he rolled onto his hands and knees. Right. A sorcerer's apprentice!
And he’d been worried about her knives!
She pulled one of those from her vest and held it out in her open hand, palm up.
THWACK!
The flat black knife jutted almost hilt deep from the doorframe just above the jumble of fallen soldiers. De Sousa hadn’t even seen it leave her hand. The heavy frame was split, he noted weakly.
“Anybody who stands up with a weapon in their hand is going back down – for good!” she announced, and drew another knife.
His men all looked at him, a bit wide-eyed, but game. They were good men, and maybe they could take her in a rush, but… they were good men. His men, not the Inquisition’s to waste. He’d already lost enough of them to the storm. Enough.
He spread his hand in a placating gesture. “Sheathe your weapons - before you get up!” Friar Dominic opened his mouth to protest and the Captain silenced him with a single warning finger. Somehow, he didn’t think the authority of the Holy Inquisition carried much weight in this place.
*
Captain De Sousa and Fael were sitting at her table by the great hearth, his men at a couple of tables by the door. As others came in they were instructed to just sit down and have a beer. Friar Dominic sat alone in a corner, nursing his hand and looking disgruntled. He had vehemently refused Fael’s second offer to heal it, calling her names that the woman only blinked at when the conquistador had expected her to turn him into either a charred matchstick or a bloody pincushion. De Sousa sighed. There were more of his ilk yet aboard the San Valero, and soldiers to follow them. Trouble for another day.
He took a sip of the beer. It was good. Before the first of them had regained their feet, Fael had rapped on the countertop, summoning the barkeep back into view. “A round of suds for all, Harold. Lord Grindle is buying.” And like that, peace had been restored, if an uneasy one. He stared at the innocent face she presented to him and tried to remember all the questions that had been raised.
“The language we are speaking? Yours, not ours? How can that be?”
“It must be the towers. Grindle must have activated more than the lights. There probably was a trade spell that you tripped when you sailed between the towers and into the harbor. I’d heard of such, but no one has seen it in a long time. I suspect that if you intend to leave Drizzle Downs you will need to learn Heltongue. It is what everybody south of the mountains uses.”
“And North?”
“You don’t want to go that way. Norlings are not much in the way of conversationalists. All they talk about is food, fresh meat in particular.”
“Somehow, I think that leads us to the subject of ‘human’ ships as opposed to…?”
“Oh, no. The Norlings aren’t human, but they don’t care much for ships except as conveyances to bring them food. But there are other, civilized races, that sail the seas of this world, though you see little of them in these parts anymore. There used to be cities north of here, as Harold said, but no more. They are gone now. The people who used to live in them are gone too.”
Her face took on that still, alabaster pose again, and she simply stopped, her mind elsewhere. Almost a minute passed before she raised a hand and almost shyly, swept back her hair on one side. De Sousa sucked in air. The jade earring was long enough to kill with, but what it hung from was an ear that looked more like it belonged on a lynx, the way it narrowed to a point at the top. “Myself, I’m a bit of a mongrel. At least that’s what some people have called me.”
He let his breath out in a hiss as he glanced quickly across the room. “Do not let Friar Dominic see those! He will call you worse than he has.” He sat back for a minute and watched her watch him before asking. “Those… people who called you mongrel, do they still live?”
She answered with the most charming, yet chilling, smile. Nothing more.
*
For a wonder, it wasn’t raining the next morning as they stood on the crumbling quay of Drizzle Downs. The longboat had joined several smaller ones and some local fishing smacks that were towing the listing galleon in to tie up at the town’s one intact pier of any size. De Souza looked around.
“This town has seen better times,” he remarked. He pointed partway around the curve of the harbor. “There is, or was, a fort over there. One of my men says at least one barracks remains intact within its walls. We will set up our camp there. No matter what shape it is in, it has to be better than one more night on the San Valero. What happened to the garrison?”
Fael shrugged. “They were Nin’s. Most of them are still there.” Her face had that set, emotionless look again.
“Anybody you knew?”
She did not answer for so long that he thought she was not going to. When it came, it was just;
“Some.”
He decided to change the subject. He looked up at the ‘citadel’ overlooking the town and its harbor from atop a bluff. Like the town, it was partly a ruin.
“Your Lord Grindle. I would have expected him to show more interest in a shipload of foreign troops disembarking in his town. Will we be seeing him?”
Fael was wearing a fur cape against the morning chill and tucked it in around her as she followed his gaze. She seemed to be seeing the fortress for the first time. “Goddess knows. He’s entertaining an emissary from… elsewhere. We may not see him for a while. Any questions, ask me.”
“All right. Who is this goddess you mention?”
She raised an eyebrow, as if that was one question she had not expected. “You asked what land this was, and Harold gave you names of towns and kingdoms, but this land always was, and may still be, the domain of the goddess Hel. It is said the Empire fell when her guiding hand was no longer felt. No one knows what happened, and no one has heard from the goddess in a very long time. Few visit her remaining temples, but the land still retains her name.” Fael’s smile was frightening.
“Welcome to Hel.”