Chapter 9 The Pour House #2
Hardin’s mind cleared enough to see the truth that had been there all along.
Her capture hadn’t been a capture at all; it was a homecoming.
These Northern brutes weren’t her captors but her escort, and the beautiful, vulnerable girl he’d met on the ship was merely a role she’d played to perfection.
A role she’d been forced into, bound by a curse, fueled by the illegal use of magic contained in her pendant.
Just like the curse that held his hometown captive.
“I... I don’t—”
The words died in his throat as reality splintered around him.
“Don’t speak. Stay down until I’m gone.” Her voice held genuine urgency now.
“Trust me, if you try to rescue me again, they will kill you. Please don’t follow me.
” Something defiant stirred in her eyes.
“Go to the Pour House at the crossroads near the northeast edge of Stormwatch. Ask after Cheyanne. She can get you home safely and keep Monsanto’s thugs from finding you.
” The ruby around her neck flared. “I’m sorry, Hardin.
I hope you find what you’re looking for. ”
Then she was gone, leaving behind only the ghost of her warmth. Hardin lay there, each breath a reminder of his shattered illusions.
“Wait,” he called into the void. But the word fell into silence, as meaningless as his attempts to save her.
Hardin lay there, questioning how she had played him. But she genuinely seemed surprised when the orc came for her. Something about her task had changed. Was the Northern wizard, the magus, who held power over her able to sense Sasja’s actions the whole time?
A cry rang out from somewhere in the street near the alley and Hardin’s mind cleared.
“My money!” he nearly shouted as he re-focused on why he’d been sent to Lamar. This was the very reason, to free his people of a curse keeping his family and loved ones trapped there, toiling in the caves in search for something these Northern magi wanted.
The lute against his back was undamaged, miraculously, a small mercy in a world that had revealed itself to be far more complex and crueler than he’d prepared for.
The other two-thirds of his fortune was secure within the wooden instrument, but that wouldn’t be enough to afford the help he needed.
With teeth gritted against both physical and emotional pain, Hardin forced himself to stand.
Each movement was a negotiation with his battered body.
Stubborn as the mountains of Doran, Hardin couldn’t let the orcs simply vanish with everything. He pushed open the door through which the orcs had disappeared, determined to recover any of the things he’d lost.
“Give me back my mon—”
He blinked in confusion. The storage room before him was barely larger than a ship’s cabin. The space could scarcely hold two orcs, let alone eight and the woman who had rewritten his understanding of truth with a single kiss.
“What?” The question addressing the empty room escaped his lips despite the fact that there was no one present to answer him.
Beyond the room’s far wall, no more than ten feet distant, a yellow light seeped through cracks in a wooden door.
The latch moved with deliberate patience, and as it swung inward, Hardin found himself face-to-face with a dwarf whose appearance seemed both perfectly ordinary and utterly impossible in its timing.
The elderly dwarf’s lantern illuminated a worn carpenter’s hammer in the dwarf’s other hand.
“Get outta here, ya hoodlum,” the dwarf growled, his furry brows drawn together.
Hardin retreated through the doorway, his mind a battlefield of competing realities. The gang of orcs had vanished, leaving behind only dust-laden shelves and the lonely sentinels of half-burned candles.
“I said, get, or I’ll raise cane, youngster,” the dwarf threatened.
Stiffly, Hardin backed into the alley, keeping one eye on the hammer in the dwarf’s hand. Each step sent waves of pain through his body, though the real torment went deeper.
“Where the ash did they go?” The question emerged as barely more than a whisper.
The answer came as the realization raised the hairs on his neck. Something was watching him, something that existed in the cracks between his known world and the reality Sasja had exposed.
An orange light flickered into existence behind him. “No,” he said closing his eyes and fleeing into the street. His heel caught on a raised cobblestone and he found himself sprawling across a wooden cart.
“Hey, watch it,” snapped a woman whose weathered face twisted into a scowl as she swatted at him with a leather-bound book. Her crooked nose, spotted and pitted from years of hard drinking, seemed to shift slightly when he wasn’t looking directly at it.
“Sorry,” Hardin mumbled. The vendor’s face transformed as he examined her more closely.
“Are you okay, lad? Someone rob you?”
The spark showered to life above her head, swirling with terrible purpose as it began to form into a small flaming woman.
“No,” Hardin choked out, squeezing his eyes shut against the impending horror.
He fled back into the alley where he’d been beaten, where at least the pain had been honest and straightforward.
Not the sign of the fire fae, he pleaded silently, pressing his eyes closed so tight that small white lights blossomed. He froze in place, willing the ambassador of the night court away, praying it wouldn’t appear to herald his death. But some truths cannot be denied.
The scream he’d heard just after the Northern orcs’ disappearance revealed itself with terrible understanding.
They hadn’t simply vanished through a hidden passage.
The magus the orcs mentioned had used forbidden magic.
Illegal, immoral, dark magic at the cost of an innocent life.
One powerful enough to transport eight full-grown orcs and Sasja to another location.
From the street beyond, the first cries for help rose like a lit funeral pyre.
Hardin’s heart clenched, knowing with terrible certainty what those people were finding.
Since Sasja had paid the orcs with a third of his community’s savings, his life was spared.
The spell that created the portal picked another at random, heralding the fire fae and death.
“Someone get help!” The shout echoed off the surrounding walls. Hardin knew with certainty that nothing could help them now. The evil magic had claimed the life of whoever had fallen victim to the magus’ power.
Warning bells tolled from Storm Keep, a signal triggered no doubt by the wards protecting the city. Illegal magic had been used. Armored soldiers, Knights, and perhaps a Paragon would be investigating shortly.
Hardin stumbled through the alley. There the burlap sack rested, and something hit him.
He wondered why Sasja, someone being forced into operating by a Northern magus’ curse, would steal them for him?
Perhaps it was a symbol of freedom, an attempt for her to do something for someone else without being commanded under pain of extreme retribution.
In that moment, he decided to keep them and collected the stolen clothes.
They were an anchor to a world that was revealing itself to be anything but ordinary.
He ventured out into the city, keeping his head low when he passed guards rushing toward the streets near the port as he continued toward the northeast edge of Stormwatch.
The thick stone walls of Storm Keep rose in the near distance, imposing, yet somehow less substantial now that he had witnessed the careless act of dark magic.
Is there still enough to hire a hero from Storm Keep? he wondered.
The coin secured within his lute remained. A third of his fortune was now lost to Northern hands. The stolen clothes were poor compensation, but sentimental now that he was beginning to understand Sasja’s position. Even if he sold them, they wouldn’t come close to making up the difference.
Hardin decided his goal had not changed. When he left home, finding someone to lift a curse had seemed a straightforward quest. Now, he understood that straightforward paths existed only in children’s tales.
The first moon crested over the horizon. Its light fell on Hardin as he neared the crossroads at the edge of the city. Astral City called to him, its promise of dragonriders and heroes still resonating despite the change in his funds.
When he finally reached the intersection, he read the sign on the building painted in white letters: The Pour House Inn and Caravan. Sasja’s voice echoed in the chambers of his memory. “Ask after Cheyanne. She can help you more than I ever could.”
He pulled open the door that led to a lobby. Upholstered leather chairs with sunken seats were arranged around a small table. They looked worn but to Hardin they appeared warm and inviting. Several books lay open on the table. Their pages ruffled slightly though no breeze stirred the air.
The stillness in the lobby was disrupted by a rustling from behind the desk.
A young woman materialized from behind the counter, rising with the silence of a ghost. Her skin was a few shades lighter than Hardin’s own, her height two inches more than his.
She was built like a weapon, strong, athletic, but with surprisingly feminine features and a beauty that rivaled Sasja’s.
The angles of her face were sharp, almost elf-like, though her ears were round like a human.
Her oval green eyes burned with an intelligence that seemed to pierce the veil between ordinary and extraordinary.
Their gaze fell on him from beneath a wild mane of umber hair that defied both gravity and convention.
Like her hair, the woman’s clothes told a story opposite her beauty and composure.
She wore rags that might have been borrowed from a destitute farmer, all stained and torn.
The pack on her back was of a quality to rival Monsanto’s leatherwork, its fullness hinting at secrets.
The weapons she wore, two daggers, were arranged with careful precision, and suggested she was more than ready to defend herself.
“Have any rooms available?” he ventured, leaning against the counter as much for support as casual affect. “Preferably single bed,” he added.
“Sorry, can’t help you,” she replied, continuing her search through a drawer.
“What?”
“I said I can’t help you with that,” she repeated.
“Don’t you have any vacancies?”
“I don’t work here. I just arrived. I’m looking for a room key.”
“Are you Cheyanne?”
“No, they call me Lark.”
“Lark?”
“That’s right, like this necklace,” she said, revealing her clavicle where the golden pendant rested.
“I see,” he managed, allowing his gaze to drift to the golden lark that clung there. “I’m Hardin Morningstar.”