Chapter Fourteen Beer, Bread, and Cheese
Chapter Fourteen
Beer, Bread, and Cheese
Where Saeldian Saves Kell from an Awkward Denial
Shuahn made them run back to her cottage as fast as they could, slamming the door shut behind them before rushing to the parlor and the relentless waiting hourglass.
She collapsed on her mushroom-clump sofa when she saw they’d made it back inside with only a few dozen grains left to fall.
Saeldian watched the last one drop and swayed against a wave of drowsiness that threatened to knock them down, but as the pile of sand settled, the fog cleared.
“You barely made it back in time. You don’t know how lucky you are. I nearly left you both.”
“What would have happened if we hadn’t made it?” Kell asked.
“Dear boy, I am quite exhausted. Find your way back to your rooms,” Shuahn said, not rising from her mossy couch. “It’ll be a long walk tomorrow, so be ready.”
That wasn’t an answer, and Saeldian didn’t want to find their way back to their rooms. They didn’t want to dream again.
Didn’t want to be alone. Didn’t want to think.
But Kell ushered them out of Shuahn’s cottage and halted just outside, looking like he had a hundred questions he would never dare ask.
He had been so eager to push Saeldian into this dream trial.
Gleeful, even. But Kell looked like he had paid more of a price than he expected, and the cost wasn’t just measured in gold.
Whatever Kell had faced when he picked up the leather ball he had chased to the center of the maze, it had taken the ground beneath his feet.
He didn’t look certain anymore. He didn’t simmer when he looked at them either.
What had taken him so long to snap out of it back there?
Kell had jumped at the chance to force Saeldian to face something in their life, as if they never spared a thought for anything they did or how it affected anyone—as if Saeldian just ran around betraying people left and right! Confidence games aside, of course.
But if Kell wanted Saeldian to realize how they hurt people, he didn’t need to force-march them into a dream-maze to face the truth of their actions. He’d already pushed them to understand that back in Waterdeep. The maze didn’t have anything to show them that they hadn’t already suspected.
Whatever you offer, you can never have it again.
Making it to the center of the maze felt like the kind of dream where you knew what was going to happen, but there was no way to stop it.
Saeldian went to the center, picked up their ball, and understood the choice their vision offered.
They dropped the ball back into the bowl before five minutes had passed.
Once back in the maze, they’d touched their amulet again, but it still felt oddly absent.
It had felt vividly real in the vision, though. Saeldian kept rubbing its odd nothingness and waited while Kell took nearly all the time they had.
“I have no idea what one does after a magical ordeal,” Kell finally said. “Do you?”
“Is small talk something we do now?”
“Come on. We said truce.”
“I’m not jousting,” Saeldian said. “I just thought you’d rather stick to business.”
“Is that what you want?”
The wood around them was dark enough that the little mushrooms growing among the fallen boughs and wide ferns glowed in the dark. “I would eat.”
“What?”
“After a magical ordeal. I would eat. Oat cookies, the first time. It was what I had in my pockets. Osalor had wine.”
“So after your pact, you ate cookies?”
“One cookie. We shared it. And three sips of wine. Osalor said that it would be much nicer to drink when I was old enough to like more flavors.”
Saeldian had stolen that cookie knowing they’d pay the price later. But after they met Osalor, it hadn’t cost them a thing, not after a little trick had fixed it.
“Because you were a child.” Kell sounded like he’d never realized it. “You became a warlock when you were—how old? Could you even read your contract?”
Saeldian snorted. “You’ve been reading too many books. Fiend patrons like written documents, signed in blood, all that detail. That’s how they get you.”
“How old were you, though?”
Too young, but it didn’t matter. “I’d been bound eight years when you met me.”
“That bastard.”
“Don’t you dare,” Saeldian said. “He saved me with that pact. You were a beloved child. I wasn’t. Power kept me safe.”
“But if you don’t have a contract, how does it work?”
The mushrooms wouldn’t grow where they would be trampled, which made them the perfect guide back to the floating lights that glowed like fireflies. “You know what fey bargains are, Kell. Don’t make me treat you like a dullard.”
“So he gave you power. And you gave him…what?”
I don’t want to ask for something it would hurt you to give.
They walked five more steps before Kell said, “You can’t tell me. I don’t know why I asked. Sorry.”
“You like to know things.”
“That’s true, but—does it hurt you? When someone wants information you can’t give them, I mean.”
It was strange how easy it was to talk to Kell, even about a subject Saeldian had to talk around. No. It was strange how easily Kell talked to them now, after hating them until they were in the dream.
What did he see in there? Saeldian had stood and waited for him to drop his ball next to theirs for so long, they’d barely made it back to Shuahn. She had called a warning, and Kell hadn’t moved an inch, like he hadn’t heard the call.
Saeldian could have turned around and walked out of the maze.
The exit had opened behind them. But they waited, even when Shuahn waved her arms trying to urge them to come out.
It didn’t even occur to them to wonder what would have happened if they were still in the maze when the last grain of sand fell. They just waited for Kell to let go.
Why don’t you give me the thing that hurts you the most?
“It doesn’t hurt me,” Saeldian said. “I just can’t answer.”
“All right,” Kell said. “Come this way.”
He headed toward the lights floating above the door to the cookhouse.
Saeldian followed him, looking for anyone who might see them sneaking around. “What are you doing?”
The door opened at his touch.
“We shouldn’t be here.”
“The door wouldn’t open if I wasn’t welcome.”
“Right. The Village That Chooses Its Own. So the way you know is if the cookhouse lets you in for a midnight snack?”
“One of the ways.”
The warm room smelled like rising bread. Kell walked in like he owned the place and pulled a bottle out of a hatch. Saeldian stepped just over the threshold and waited for a magic mouth to tell them to leave, but nothing happened.
“Guest privileges,” Saeldian muttered. “A relief.”
“None of that. Sit.” Kell gestured toward the table. “After a magical ordeal, you’re supposed to eat. You said so.”
The bottle held dark malty beer. Kell found a bread heel in a box, a clay jar with butter in it, and a bit of cheese wrapped in a wax cloth.
“It isn’t much,” he said.
“I had half a cookie the first time I passed a magical test, remember?” Saeldian said. “This is a feast.”
Kell drank straight from the neck and pushed the bottle toward Saeldian. “Good enough.”
“So, all this.” Saeldian waved the bottle in the direction of the bread and cheese. “Does this mean that we’re friends now or something?”
Kell smiled. “No.”
“Fair,” Saeldian said. “That might have been a little too weird.”
They rinsed out the bottle and swept up the crumbs before they left.
Kell didn’t remember what he dreamed, but he woke up reaching for something too far to grasp.
His fingertips tingled as if they held the memory of it as he stared at his reflection and scraped away his beard hairs.
When he made it to the Brewmistress’s hut, Lorzok was already there.
Dad was too. Kell dropped his pack onto the ground so he could bend over and give his father a hug.
“I’m glad you’re not too old to hug your dad,” Terandis said.
Kell dropped to sit on a stump beside his father. “I will never be too old. What brings you here?”
“I thought I’d see you off. Hearthaven’s Repose is…distant, if that’s a meaningful word here.”
“Do you know it?”
“I know of it,” Terandis said. “I know enough about it. It’s where you go to heal your grieving heart, or to bind yourself to another in a marriage that can’t be ended. What are you returning?”
“That’s the odd part. I don’t think it’s valuable or even powerful, not really. It’s a spell gem, but all it does is bring you to the memory of the first time you kissed your true love.”
“That memory can be worth more than anything in the world, if that’s all you have left of them,” Terandis said, and looked over Kell’s shoulder.
Giggling. Jubilee, packed up and ready to go, escorted by Verandil, who was still in yesterday’s clothes. Verandil gave them a cheerful wave before he wrapped Jubilee in the kind of kiss meant to draw someone back to his side. She swayed a little bit when he let her go.
Terandis spared an amused smile before he went on. “Shuahn can get you there, but it’s away from Eightbridge, not toward. You’ll be going through the truewild again, but by Shuahn’s paths.”
Jubilee dropped her pack next to Kell’s and bent to give Terandis a hug. “By Shuahn’s paths? What does that mean?”
“Shuahn is unseelie. Her magic is of the shadows and darkness. It embraces pain and fear.”
Jubilee looked shocked. “But she doesn’t seem evil.”
Lorzok patted Jubilee’s shoulder. “She’s not, dawn child. She doesn’t inflict pain and fear to make her magic happen, or anything like that. She meets them where they are and accepts them as part of life. There’s power there, as well as healing.”
“Well said, Oakwarden.” Terandis nodded and continued the tale. “Shuahn will travel through the shadowed parts of the wild, where there is much to take you unawares.”
“Are you delivering my lecture for me, Terandis?”
Shuahn arrived with a thump of her staff. She wore green in many shades, with amulets and charms pinned to her robes and a tall headdress of moss and mushrooms. “Do you want me to take you into the dark, where you will know the mystery and become my apprentice?”