In his dreams, he is back in his childhood home. He cannot recall the name of his village, but he remembers quite clearly the houses of timber and clay built amid the terraced mountains. The meat market with its buzzing cloud of flies and coppery smell of blood; the shrine to the Little Sisters, a crumbling pyramid festooned with prayer flags and flowers; the tea house, where the elders would sit and gossip and smoke and massage their gnarled hands.
He remembers the feel of his bed, rough linen over hay, and waking up just before sunrise, rays of crimson creeping over jagged peaks, the light catching the water in the paddies, the hillside gleaming like splintered glass.
His father stands behind him, hand on his young shoulder, looking down with him over the countryside.
Except...it can't be his father, not anymore, because his father is long in the ground, killed by goatkin raiders. He remembers that, remembers watching his father take an axe blow to the chest and fall from his horse. Remembers the blood bubbling from his father's mouth as he lay there in the churned mud, trying to tell his son something he never did manage to say.
Olms wonders who is standing behind him, then, as the grip on his shoulder tightens.
Delavan Olms' eyes slid open as the first light of dawn filtered in through the oily, ash-streaked windows of the inn. He glanced around, taking stock of his situation with the cool ease of a practiced drinker, even as a magnificent hangover blossomed like a barbed flower in his skull. The room was dim and narrow, just big enough for the bed, with a low and crooked ceiling mottled with fungus. Everything was covered in a thin layer of ash-dust, and it was already getting too warm in here.
He dragged himself upright.
He was dressed, which was a good start. His bed was empty, aside from him. He decided that was probably alright too. He had some vague memory that he'd made a pass at the barkeep, but his head hurt too much for him to remember how it had gone. Obviously, not well enough.
He staggered to his feet, boots hitting the warped floorboards with a heavy thud. Glanced once more at the bed. It was not
quite empty. The Sword lay unsheathed amid the grey blankets, glittering in the thin sunlight.
"Shit," he growled, scooping up the weapon and sheathing it in one smooth motion, "shit."
He lurched into the hall, hand on the crumbling wall for support, and dragged himself towards the room he thought he recalled the Drathan disappearing into at some point in the night, somewhere between rounds ten and fifteen. The wizard had gone upstairs
after Olms'd joined the game of Sashul's Bounty with some slavers all the way from Lake Ungol, but before that game descended into a hazy, half-hearted brawl.
He hit the door once, meaning to knock, but it swung open at his touch.
The Drathan was sitting cross-legged on the gnarled wood floor, shirtless, his pale skin all covered in those strange, vine-like tattoos. Black eyes were open and staring, small smirk on his thin lips.
"Morning," said Olms.
"Morning," said the Drathan, in his low, quiet voice.
"You about ready to get movin?"
"Oh yes," said the Drathan, turning to face Olms. There was silence for a long moment, then: "She'll be coming with us."
"She who?" said Olms, eyebrow arching. His pale-sky eyes wandered the wizard's dusty chambers, and fell onto the tangle of sheets in the bed, and the pretty, dark haired girl tangled up in them. The bar tender from the night previous, the half-Drathan.
"Gabul," said Olms.
"Olms," said Gabul, "I am taking her on as my student in the Art. She has promise."
"Convinced you of that, did she?"
"She did."
"Can't imagine how. Anyway, don't your kind take a sour view of their half-bloods?"
The wizard shrugged, "You ought to know- a Drathan is prejudiced only when prejudice suits him."
Olms pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "You know all the reasons this is a bad idea. Not only taking a woman on a journey like this. My experience, it gets tough to teach someone you're sleepin' with. And I ain't taught anyone any magic."
"In many respects," said Gabul, "this is a poor decision. Still, it is one I am making. Will this effect the conditions of your employment?"
Olms sighed. He didn't open his eyes, "No."
"Good."
"You get to likin' her, Gabul," said Olms, "And your brother finds out. Just another chink in the armor for him to use when he wants to."
Gabul smiled and stood, pulling on a shirt, "My brother is not interested in what we are about to undertake."
"Suppose he gets interested?"
The Drathan did not reply to that one, just continued getting dressed. The girl turned over in bed, pulling the sheets up to her neck. She looked from Gabul to Olms and back again.
She really is beautiful, thought Olms.
"Who's your brother?" she asked Gabul.
"The Archmagister Khalul," said the wizard.
