A Prophecy Forgotten
Chapter Ten: The Treetop Inn

The Treetop Inn had been the most popular meeting place in the City of Ezzer for five centuries. It was located in the top of one of the tallest trees in the city, and it was one of the only buildings left from the days of Edenian when Ezzer was king. The vast tavern’s only light came from a few glow torches and patches of sunlight that poured through its multicolored crystal windows. It had plump, cushy booths for quiet conversations, immense round tables with soft perching stools for lively parties, and the best honeywine and finest service in all Elysia. The latter was due to Maurice, the Treetop’s owner and Elysia’s best bartender. The bald bartender sported the large, meaty frame of a heavyweight grappler, a smile that almost touched his ears, and brown eyes that twinkled more than a garden full of fireflies. Maurice had a way of making total strangers feel welcome, and cherubians loved it.

Today, Maurice’s smile only stretched to the edges of his cheeks, and his eyes sparkled less than normal as he threw down two mugs full of honeywine and some fried mushrooms to a few of his patrons. He was shorthanded, and he had just finished an exhausting conversation with the sprite who provided most of his honeywine.

Honeywine—once called ambrosia by the ancient Greeks—was sweeter than honey, almost as light as a fine morning mist, and went down smooth with a slight tingle. Cherubians could never drink enough of it. Sprites, and only sprites, can make honeywine. Most cherubians—even tavern owners—found them a nuisance, but Maurice took the time to listen to their silly stories and incessant prattle. The sprites rewarded his patience and friendship with the best of their product, which was why the Treetop sold the best honeywine in all Elysia.

As Maurice hurried to fill another order, he heard the door to his inn burst open and slam shut. He sighed as he felt a blast of cold air from outside. The old bartender could tell a cherubian’s personality just by listening to him open the door.

A slow opening door meant a shy one who might be peeking in to see if everything was all right before he entered. A door that opened and shut quietly meant a sneak. (That or it was one of his boys late for work trying to fly in unawares.) A door that opened and stayed open for a while meant a nice one who was holding it open for someone else. Maurice always paid special attention to those patrons because they usually tipped the best. A door that opened quickly and immediately swung shut meant a soldier; they opened the door with confidence.

This door opened and shut with a particular egotistical confidence that Maurice preferred not to deal with. A glance at the door confirmed his guess. It was Captain Picante, the overbearing, self-centered, LAF soldier with dark, greasy hair. Picante was promoted to captain six moons ago and took great pains to make sure everyone knew about it. The captain was a frequent customer who drank a lot and tipped well. Picante was also in much better shape than Maurice (who had gained quite a few pounds since his own military days), and Maurice knew enough not to anger someone like that. He kept his thoughts to himself, as well as the choice words that often flew through his head when Picante arrived.

Picante stormed through the tavern to a table near the fireplace in the back corner, sat down, and motioned to Maurice to bring him his usual. He took his knife out of its sheath and started spinning it around on its point on the table.

“He’d better not put a mark in my new table,” grumbled Maurice as he grabbed a mug and filled it with pale lager.

Picante looked as though he half-wished someone would decide to start some trouble just to give him an excuse to use his knife. Maurice was all too glad that he had chosen the back table far away from the regular customers. If Maurice had to venture a guess, he would say the captain’s poor spirits were the result of receiving an assignment he thought was beneath him. Maurice dropped a mug of fresh honeywine on the table next to Picante’s knife, which was beginning to wobble like a drunken sprite trying to dance the jelly-jig.

“Looks like you’ll be wanting more of these before the night is over, Captain,” he said.

Picante kept his eye on the spinning blade as he took a swig of honeywine and signaled to Maurice to bring him three more.

“I’ll bring ‘em right up for ya,” Maurice said. He returned to the bar and frowned as he grabbed more mugs. Picante could put down the lager with the best of them, but he rarely started out with four whole mugs. He would probably order four more, and drink up to sixteen in an hour, and then—well, then who knew what might happen.

Maurice remembered the last time the captain started out with four mugs. That was the night Picante started a fight with the good major. He ordered four mugs to start and had twenty of them emptied in an hour. Then, for no apparent reason, he walked right up to Major Davian, socked him one square in the jaw, and started a brawl that the Treetop had not seen in over a century—the reason Maurice had to purchase so many new tables.

Usually a move like that would get a poor lad killed then and there, but Picante caught the major in rare spirits. Instead of taking him out immediately, Davian toyed with him for a while and let the captain think he had a chance, the way a cat plays with a mouse before it pounces. Davian would have let Picante fly out of the tavern in nearly one piece, but Picante made the mistake of insulting and shoving one of Davian’s men.

Now Maurice never considered himself bright, but even he knew that picking a fight with Davian, Seraph Zephor’s right hand soldier, was downright foolish. But picking a fight with Major Davian’s men while Davian was in the vicinity? That was practically suicide. The slur was nothing too personal, but the shove was enough the make Davian stop fooling around. He took Picante out in two moves flat, and the captain was lucky he flew out of the Treetop alive.

Truthfully, “flew” out was a poor choice of words. “Limped out,” maybe. No, “crawled out” was probably the best term, Maurice decided. Unfortunately the poor fool was too drunk to remember how he got the sprained wing and two black eyes and apparently learned absolutely nothing from the incident. Picante continued being just as arrogant and foolish as always, and from the looks of it Maurice thought he might do something foolish again today. He figured he had better keep a close eye on the captain.

Maurice rounded up three more mugs and walked them to the back corner table where Picante continued his love affair with his knife. Just as Maurice set the mugs down, he heard a low, raspy voice behind him that made him shiver.

“If you spin it long enough, it might decide to dance for you.”

The voice belonged to one of Maurice’s newest, least favorite patrons: a gnome called Gimp dressed in a burgundy cloak, vest, and knickers with a twisted foot. No one knew Gimp’s real name.

Gimp had begun frequenting the Treetop about five moons ago, coming in for three or four days and talking intimately with a few soldiers—usually at night, and always in the back corner of the tavern. Maurice never knew what they discussed because they always stopped talking when he came around to give them their orders, but their conversations always ended with money changing hands in some form or another. They acted like someone won a bet, but Maurice suspected something else was up. He wondered if the imp might be a spy for Elysia—an illegal spy, for the trade embargoes forbade employing the neutrals as spies. Spy or no, the twisted imp never tipped, and he always gave Maurice the shivers.

As Maurice waited on other tables, he kept his eye on Picante and Gimp, who were involved in a deep conversation—a conversation that stopped when Maurice brought their brew and resumed when he left. Their secrecy made Maurice all the more suspicious. He feigned interest in wiping tables as he watched Picante and Gimp out of the corner of his eye. What he saw made him shiver more than Gimp’s beady eyes.

Gimp threw a small sack of coins on the table. Picante shook his head, and Gimp added another. Picante glanced around the tavern as he pocketed the coins. The gnome passed him an envelope with a sneer, stood up, and limped out of the tavern. Picante read the contents and threw both the envelope and the letter into the fireplace.

Maurice practically rubbed the polish off one of his poor new tables. “What kind of business are you doin’ in my Treetop, Captain?” he muttered. He had taken great pains to build the Treetop’s reputation, and he refused to tolerate anything illegal taking place in his tavern.

•

Night fell before Davian and his unit found a suitable campsite. They finally discovered a secluded spot between a few huge boulders next to a good stream, which indicated that they had traveled much closer to northern Morvenia—closer to the end of their mission. That filled Davian with both delight and remorse. As much as he hated the Morvenian wilderness with the bugs, the stench, and the filth, he loved being on assignment—especially when the streams were clean and pure and when winter’s chill scared away most of the bugs. He took a large swig of water from his canteen and eyed the others as he unpacked. Josephi was finishing up the day’s mapping; Snead was making arrows; and Marcus was practicing with his swords. Eric was perching just beneath the tallest boulder as the lookout.

“I wonder,” said Snead as he tied a crystal tip to a brand new shaft. “Poisonwood hurts us, right? But not the scabs. That’s why they can shoot it. Melts right through our skin, but it doesn’t do a thing to theirs.” He turned back to his arrow in deep thought.

“Go on,” said Eric after a long pause. Having to watch the horizon for mornachts made it hard for him to follow the conversation.

“Well, maybe something grows in Elysia that would hurt the scabs the way poisonwood hurts us. Maybe a flower. Something that smells sweet. Maybe we could rub some primrose sap on our arrows to find out if it burns through them.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Eric.

“Better than these crystal tips anyway,” continued Snead. “Wouldn’t kill them automatically with light pulses. Make them suffer a bit, just like poisonwood does to us.”

Marcus stopped his sword practice and took off his helmet to wipe the sweat off his head. “If so, it’ll take them longer to explode. That would get too confusing.”

“It would mess with your timing, you mean,” said Eric.

“Definitely.” Marcus replaced his helmet and resumed his practice. “We’d be ducking behind boulders before we needed to, and we wouldn’t be able to use them as bombs because they’d be too busy suffering. Give me a freshly killed scab, and I’ll give you five more. A suffering scab gets me nothing but an annoying screech in my ears.”

Snead said, “It would give me a big smile. What do you think, Major?”

“When you focus on making your enemies suffer, you’re not focusing on winning the battle,” Davian said. “Too many of our soldiers are still fighting because some scab decided to try to make them suffer instead of trying to win the battle. I want you to focus on winning the battle, Snead.”

“Yeah, that too,” said Marcus, pointing at Davian.

Eric laughed. “Do you ever have an answer that doesn’t sound like it came out of a military manual, Davian?”

“I do for non-military questions,” Davian said with a smile. He pulled out his mat and started to unroll it, but stopped and put his hand in on the knife in his boot. A few bushes in the woods behind him rustled, yet the wind had died. After another rustle, Davian whipped around and threw his knife at a form that crouched near a boulder about ten yards away.

The knife hit the intruder’s chest with a “clang”.

To Be Continued in A Prophecy Forgotten

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Copyright © 2006 M. B. Weston. All rights reserved.
Revised: 02/06/09