Beyond the Pale (21 page)

It took Travis a moment to realize that what he had at first mistaken for a pile of rags in the dim light was in fact an old woman. She slid a wooden bar across the door, then scuttled toward them. Bony arms and legs stuck out of the tatters that wrapped her shapeless body, like the limbs of a spider. She stared at the two with her one bulging eye.

“Welcome to Kelcior!” she said in a facetious croak.

Falken was obviously unimpressed. “So King Kel has been reduced to this? A single hag to guard his door? What happened to those famed warriors of his?”

“Bah!” the old woman said. “Warriors.” With a gnarled hand she gestured toward an alcove. Two men clad in greasy leather slumped within, snoring. “These ones drank themselves into a stupor by sundown—as usual.”

Falken’s eyes narrowed. “And I suppose they didn’t have any help in this matter from you, witch?”

A snaggle-toothed grin split her face. “ ’Tis not my fault if they don’t look at what’s floating in their ale before they quaff it!”

Falken shot Travis a look. “So are you going to take us to Kel or not?” the bard asked.

“Ah! Too important to hang about with the likes of Grisla, are we?” The witch affected a mocking bow. “Very well, Lord High-and-Mighty. Grisla will do as you bid, and with quivering pleasure. Come this way, come this way!”

The hag Grisla grabbed a smoking torch from the wall and led them down a murky corridor to a set of doors. A dull roar emanated from the other side.

The hag gestured to the doors. “Beyond is the great hall. The king is holding a feast tonight.”

“When
isn’t
Kel holding a feast?” Falken asked.

Grisla scratched at her matted hair. “I think there was a Melinsday morning two years ago when everyone decided to go on a picnic instead.”

Falken let out a groan. “Enough, witch! Back to the door with you.”

Venom perfused her words. “As you wish, Lord Irritability.”

Before she left them, the crone plucked at Travis’s sleeve with knobby fingers. “I have an eye for you, my lad!” She cackled and pressed something into his hand.

Travis looked down, then gagged. On his palm was a glistening eyeball. It lolled damply back and forth, staring up at him. With a yelp he dropped the eye, and it rolled away down the hall.

With a shriek, Grisla chased after the orb and groped for it with blind hands. At last her fingers closed on the loose eye. The witch stuck it back in its socket, grunted in satisfaction, then scuttled down the hallway.

Travis wiped his hand on his tunic. He felt vaguely ill. “How did she do that?”

Falken shook his head. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.” He motioned to the doors. “Shall we?”

Together the two pushed through into the space beyond.

Travis’s senses reeled, overwhelmed as they tried to take in the dizzying scene that greeted them. The great hall of Kelcior was a cavern of a room. High walls of stone rose to a ceiling crisscrossed by soot-blackened beams. Two lines of trestle tables ran the length of the room, perpendicular to the high table, which stood upon a dais at the head of the hall. Torches lined the walls, but their light barely cut through the haze of smoke that hung on the air. Travis took a breath
and nearly choked on a powerful reek—a mélange of burnt meat, spilt beer, sweat, and vomit.

King Kel’s feast was no formal affair. As many people stood on the tables as actually sat at them. Brawny men used swords to hack apart huge joints of roasted meat, while others drank out of rusted helmets. Serving wenches swaggered as they plunked down platters of food and deftly evaded large, groping hands. One warrior managed to grab a smudge-faced maiden and got a dagger through his hand as a reward. Children in patched tunics ran shrieking back and forth in some ruleless game, while wildmen—clad in rancid animal skins, their hair caked with blue mud—fought and snarled with mangy dogs for scraps under the tables.

Travis gave his companion a dubious look. “Are all your friends like this, Falken?”

The bard treated Travis to a withering glance, then wended his way through the throng. Travis followed close on his heels. They reached the steps below the high table.

A great bellow thundered over the roar of the feast. “Bring me another haunch of aurochs! Hold on there—better make that two. I’m feeling a bit peckish!”

Travis craned his neck and stared upward in awe. The largest man he had ever seen sat at the center of the high table. The man had the shoulders and chest of a grizzly bear, and his huge head was crowned by a shock of red hair that was surpassed in wildness only by the tangled bush of his beard. Eyebrows bristled like living things over the blue sparks of his eyes. A sizzling hunk of some dead beast was plunked before him. Kel displayed pointed teeth in a barbaric grin, then tore into the joint of meat with hands like paws.

As befit a king—even a petty king—sitting with Kel at the high table were the most important members of his court. That is, the burliest warriors, the most buxom wenches, and the wildest-looking wildmen. Once, years ago, while in an unfamiliar city, Travis had accidentally stepped into a rough and seedy biker bar. Harrowing as that experience had been, that bar had had nothing on this place. If he turned and left now, would he have a chance of getting to the door before getting a sword in the gut?

“Don’t even think of running,” Falken said under his
breath. “They can sense fear.” With that, the bard ascended the first step of the dais.

“Greetings, Kel, King of Kelcior!” Falken spoke in a resounding voice.

The king looked up, and his blue eyes widened into circles. The joint of meat slipped from his hand and fell to the table. As if that were a cue, the entire great hall went silent. Warriors froze in mid-brawl, wenches gripped serving trays with white-knuckled hands, and wildmen cowered beneath tables, where they whimpered along with the frightened hounds.

“Falken Blackhand!” King Kel’s voice was a growl. “I had not expected to see your bleak face in my hall again. At least, not so soon after the last time. Have you come to bring me another disaster? We’ve only barely finished burying the bodies after the last one, you know.”

Falken raised a hand to his heart in a gesture of feigned surprise. “So the north guard tower did fall, then?”

King Kel shoved back his chair and stomped around the high table to tower over Falken. “Aye, it fell! Just as you said it would, and mere hours after you disappeared without begging proper leave from my kingdom, you scoundrel. Killed my best hunting dog when it went.” Kel wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Oh, and a few dozen members of my court as well.”

“I warned you the tower’s foundation was weak.”

Kel grunted in suspicion. “Aye, you did at that, Falken Blackhand. It seems you’re always warning of disaster, and it seems you’re always right.” He glowered at the bard. “A man might start to wonder if dark happenings follow you, or if, just maybe, you have a hand in making your warnings come to pass.”

At this accusation a hiss ran around the great hall. Kel wasn’t the only one with this idea.

Falken held out his arms, begged for silence, and somehow received it. “It is true I have often warned you against impending
trouble, Your Majesty. And if you heeded my warnings, it might be little ill would come of them. Be that as it may, I am saddened you have forgotten all the other admonitions of Falken Blackhand—the ones that have brought good rather than ill.”

Falken paced on the dais. His voice rose, as if this were a performance of some sort. Travis held his breath. Perhaps it was at that, a performance which, if not compelling enough, could cost them their heads.

“Who told you where in the lake to search for lost treasures of Tarras?” Falken asked. “Who told where to mine salt, when you had no salt for your table? And who sang to you the entire
Lay of Boradis
for three days without pause or rest, just so you could hear over and over the verse in which the dragon eats the army?”

The king’s eyes sparkled. “I love that part!”

Falken fixed Kel with a sharp look. “Who did these things?”

The king heaved his massive chest in a sigh. “You did, Falken.”

Falken crossed his arms and nodded.

Kel scratched his furry chin in thought, then snapped his thick fingers. “I know! I’ll ask my advisor what I should do.”

Falken’s brow furrowed. “Your advisor?”

The king’s bellow rang out over the great hall. “Where’s my witch? Somebody bring me my witch!”

“I’m right here, Your Boisterousness.” A spidery form scurried onto the dais.

Falken raised a single eyebrow at the hag. “You’re his advisor, too? If you don’t mind my saying, you seem to get around.”

Grisla shrugged her bony shoulders. “A witch’s work is never done.”

King Kel looked to the hag. “What should we do with them, witch?”

She reached into the mass of rags that covered her body and drew out a handful of thin, yellow objects. Only when she cast them upon the steps did Travis realize they were bones. Grisla hunkered down to study the pattern made by the fallen bones.

“Humph!” she said. Then, “Hmm.” At last she concluded with a harsh “Hah!”

Kel clasped a big hand to his chest. “What is it, witch?”

Grisla looked up and fixed Falken and Travis with her one bulging eye. Travis’s heart fluttered.

“The oracle bones speak clearly,” Grisla said. “These two come on dark business.”

The king let out a snort. “I hardly need your charms to tell me that, hag.”

“I’m not finished! Dark as their business is, it does not concern us.” Grisla gazed again at the bones, and her face pursed into a frown. “Yet it does not
not
concern us.”

“That’s conveniently vague,” Falken said.

Grisla snorted. “I don’t make the oracles, I just read what they say.” The hag gathered up the bones and tucked them away among her rags.

King Kel mulled over this new information. He scratched his head and made his wild red hair even wilder. Then he nodded. “I have made my decision.” He towered over Falken and Travis. “I will not grant you the hospitality of my hall, Falken Blackhand.”

Travis shot Falken a look of open alarm. The bard started to protest but was silenced as Kel raised a meaty hand.

“However,” the king went on, “I
will
allow you to earn it.”

At this Falken’s grim expression was replaced by a broad smile, and Travis let out a breath of relief.

“I will be only too happy to earn my keep with my lute, Your Majesty,” the bard said. “And, if it would please the court, I might even sing the
Lay of Boradis
a time or two.”

A toothy grin split Kel’s face. “By Jorus, I never could stay mad at you, Falken!” He grabbed the bard and crushed him in a bear hug. The great hall erupted into merriment once again.

“I can’t play if you break me,” the bard said in a muffled voice.

Kel dropped Falken to the dais. The bard staggered and might have fallen save for Travis’s steadying arm. The king returned to the high table and called to his servants. Two stools were set upon the steps before the high table, one each for Falken and Travis. The only chair in the entire great hall
belonged to the king—everyone else sat on benches. A wench thrust a foaming tankard into Travis’s hand. Thirsty, he took a deep draught and immediately started choking. The gritty liquid in the tankard was neither Budweiser nor oatmeal but something in between.

“Don’t just sit there sputtering, Travis,” Falken said. “Unwrap my lute and hand it to me.”

Travis managed to catch his breath. “But the pack’s right by you. Can’t you get it yourself?”

“I could,” Falken said. “But it’s an apprentice’s job to serve his bard. Unless, of course, you don’t wish to pose as my apprentice, and would prefer to find your own way to earn King Kel’s hospitality. I’m sure the drunken warriors over there could use someone to hold up their knife-throwing target.”

Travis hurriedly reached into the pack and retrieved the bard’s lute.

The feast resumed, and Falken strummed his lute and sang of ancient battles, proud kings, and fey treasures. Travis was content to sit quietly on his stool and sip his beer. It wasn’t so bad once he learned to filter it through his teeth. He listened to the bard’s songs and let his gaze drift over the great hall. In one corner of the hall he noticed two people—a man and a woman—who did not seem to fit in with the rest of the barbaric revelers. The woman was beautiful, her hair black, her skin coppery, her amber eyes striking. She wore a midnight-blue kirtle trimmed with silver. Her companion was a big, rangy, fair-haired man. He appeared to be a knight of some sort, for he wore a heavy-looking shirt of chain mail, and a helm rested on the table before him. The knight watched the merriment in the hall with an expression of amusement, while the woman’s gaze was turned inward, as if she gazed upon some secret place.

Falken handed Travis the lute, and his attention was turned away from the two strangers. It was time for a break. Kel called out in his thundering voice for food to be brought for the bard and his apprentice. Each was handed a hunk of meat on a slice of hard bread, which Falken called a
trencher
. Travis was ravenous. Not caring what animal it might have come from, he took a bite of the meat and chewed. And
chewed. And chewed. It was more gristle than flesh. He managed to swallow, although just barely.

He snapped his head up at a low growl. A hunting dog stood before him, muzzle pulled back in a snarl. Travis decided it wasn’t worth losing a hand over and tossed the rest of the unidentifiable meat to the dog. He settled for gnawing on the trencher, which, while stale, was somewhat edible.

Another call went out from the high table and was quickly picked up by others.

“Bring on the play! Where is Trifkin Mossberry? Bring on the play!”

“We had better get out of the way,” Falken said to Travis.

They grabbed their stools and retreated to one side of the dais. A curtain behind the high table parted, and a diminutive figure popped out. The small man leaped onto the table, performed a capering dance in which several tankards and bowls were upset, then launched himself into a handspring and landed nimbly on the steps of the dais. A great whoop went up from the crowd at this entertainment.