Spellfire

“None,” Gorstag rumbled. “Through there, on the left. Korvan’s the name.”

“My thanks,” the dusky-ski

The stranger was suddenly at Korvan’s elbow. “What news have you for the followers?” a silky voice said in Korvan’s ear. The cook froze. He then turned from a pan of mushrooms sizzling in bacon fat and reached for the bowl of chopped onions, his long cook’s knife still in one hand. He nodded briefly as his eyes met the merchant’s.

“Well met,” he muttered, as he turned back to the pan and dumped the onions in, tossing them lightly with his knife. “Little news, but important. A herder saw a girl who used to work for me here, a little nothing named Shandril who ran off a few tendays back, in the Thunder Peaks with the Knights of Myth Dra

“There will be, indeed. Sir Cook, if you do the boar just so,” the merchant replied smoothly. Korvan, looking up with knife in hand, saw Lureene gliding into the kitchen behind him. He glared at her.

“What keeps you, girl?” he growled. “Can’t you seduce patrons as fast as you used to? I’ll be needing butter and parsley for those carrots, and I need the fowl-spit turned now, not on the morrow!”

“Turn it, then,” Lureene said crisply, “with whatever part of you first comes to hand.” She swept warming rolls from the shelf above the stew cauldrons into a basket and was gone with an angry twitch of her behind.

The merchant chuckled. “Well, I’ll not keep you. Domestic bliss, indeed. My thanks, Korvan. Is there anything more?”

“They all went off northward, the herder said, from where he saw them, near the Sember. Nothing more.” The onions sizzled with sudden force, and Korvan stirred them energetically to keep them from sticking.

“Well done, and well met, until next time,” the silky voice replied, and when Korvan turned to reply, the merchant was gone. On the counter beside Korvan were three gleaming red gems, laid in a neat triangle. The cook’s eyes bulged. Spinels! A hundred pieces of gold each, easily, and there were three! Gods above! Korvan snatched them in one meaty fist and then stood, eyes narrowed in suspicion. What if this was some trick? He’d best not be caught with them about the kitchen.

The kitchen door banged. Outside, Korvan glared all around until he was satisfied that no one watched. With a grunt, he put his shoulder to the waterbarrel just outside the back door. Ignoring the water slopping down the far side, he tipped it so that he could lay the gems, and a dead leaf to cover them, in a hollow beneath the barrel’s base. Carefully he lowered the barrel again and straightened up with a grunt to look about again for spying eyes. Finding none, he rushed back into the kitchen again where the smell of burning onions greeted him.

“Gods blast us!” he spat angrily as he raced across the kitchen. Lureene stuck her head in at the door from the hall that led to the taproom and gri

“Something burning?” she inquired sweetly, and withdrew her face just before the knife he hurled flashed through the doorway where her smile had been, and clattered off the far wall.

Korvan was still snarling when Gorstag found the knife, minutes later. “How many times have I told you not to throw things?” the i

Lureene, seeing his face as he went behind the bar to draw ale, sighed. He smiled all too seldom, now, since Shandril had run off. Perhaps the tales in Highmoon all these years had been true: Shandril was Gorstag’s daughter. He had brought her with him as a babe when he bought the i

Lureene remembered the hard-working, dreamy little girl snuggling down on the straw the other side of the clothes-chest, and wondered where she was now. Not so little, anymore, either…

“Ho, my pretty statue!” the carpenter Ulsinar called across the taproom. “Wine! Wine for a man whose throat is raw with thirst and calling after you! It is the gods who gave us drink-will you keep me from my poor share of it?”

Lureene chuckled and reached for the decanter she knew Ulsinar favored. “It is patience the gods gave us, to cope when drink is not at hand,” she returned in jest. “Would you neglect the one in your haste to overindulge in the other?” Other regulars nearby roared or nodded their approval

“A little patience!” one called. “A good motto for an overworked i

“I like it!” another said. “111 wait with good will-and a full glass, if one is to be had-for Korvan’s stuffed deer, or his roast boar!”

“Oh, aye!” another agreed. “He even makes the greens taste worth the eating!”

He fell silent, suddenly, as his wife turned a cold face upon him and inquired, “And I do not?”

Ulsinar (and not a few other men) laughed. “Let’s see you wriggle, Pardus! You’re truly in the wallow this time!”

“Wallow! Wallow!” others called enthusiastically. The wife turned an even stonier face upon them all.

“Do you ridicule my man?” she inquired. “Would you all like your teeth removed, all at once and soon?”

The roars died away. There were chuckles here and there. Gorstag strode over. “Now, Yantra,” he said with a perfectly straight face, “I can’t have this sort of trouble in The Rising Moon. Before I serve all these rude men who have insulted you and your lord, will you have the deer or the boar?”

“The boar;’ Yantra replied, mollified. “A half-portion for my husband.” Gorstag stared quickly around to quell the roars of mirth. The i

“Why, Pardus “ Gorstag said, as if suddenly recalling something. “There’s a man left word here for any who makes saddles of quality that he’d like a single piece, but a good one, for his favorite steed. I took the liberty of recommending you, but did not presume to promise times or prices. He’s from Selgaunt and probably well on his way back there by now. Hell call by again in a few days, on his way out from Ordulin to Cormyr. Will you talk with me, in the back, over what I should tell him?” He winked again, only for an instant.

“Oh, aye,” Pardus said, understanding. There was no Sembian saddle-coveter, but he would get his half-portion of boar out here, in the taproom, and as much deer as he wanted in the back, with Gorstag standing watchful guard, a little later. He smiled. Good old Gorstag, he thought, raising his flagon to the i

Late that night, when all at last were abed, and the taproom was red and dim in the light of the dying fire, Gorstag sat alone. He raised the heavy tankard and took another fiery swallow of dark, smoky-flavored wildroot stout. What had become of Shandril? He was sick at heart at the thought of her lying dead somewhere, or raped and robbed and left to starve by the roadside… or worse, lying in her own sweat and muck in slave-chains, in the creaking, rat-infested hold of some southern slave-trader wallowing across the I