Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [2]
Over the bar hung a two-handed broadax, old but proud, well-oiled, and kept sharp. Gorstag had borne it in far-off lands in days long gone and adventures he would not speak of. When there was trouble, Shandril remembered, he could still toss it from hand to hand like a dagger and whirl it about as though it weighed nothing. Whenever Shandril asked him about his adventures, the old innkeeper only laughed and shook his head. But often in the mornings, when Shandril crept down the stairs to start the kitchen fires, she would stop and look at the axe and imagine it in Gorstag's hands on sun-drenched battlefields far away, or amid icy rock crags where trolls lurked, or in dark caverns where unseen horrors dwelt. It had been places, that axe.
The bar itself was surrounded by a small, gleaming forest of bottles of all sizes and hues, kept carefully dusted by Gorstag. Some came from lands very far away, and others from Highmoon, not half a mile off.
Below these were the casks, gray with age, which the men filled from smaller traveling kegs at the upper bungs, kept sealed with wax and emptied by means of brass taps. Gorstag was very proud of those taps, since they had come all the way from fabled Water-deep.
Above the bottles, just over the axe, there was a silver crescent moon, tilted to the left just as it was on the creaking signboard outside the front door: The Rising Moon itself. Long ago, a traveling wizard had cast a spell on the silver crescent, and it never tarnished. The house was a good inn, plain but cozy, its host well respected, even generous, and Highmoon was a beautiful place.
But to Shandril, it seemed more and more to be a prison. Every day she walked the same boards and did the same things. Only the people changed. The travelers, with their unusual clothing and differing skins and voices, brought with them the idle chatter, faint smells, and excitement of far places and exciting deeds. Even when they came in, dusty and weary from the road, snappish or sleepy, they had at least been somewhere and seen things, and Shandril envied them so much that sometimes she thought her heart would burst right out of her chest.
Every night folk came to the taproom to smoke long pipes and drink Gorstag's good ate and listen to the gossip of the Realms from other travelers. Shandril liked best those times when the grizzled old men of the dale who had themselves fought or gone adventuring in their younger days told of their feats, and of the legendary deeds of even older heroes. If only she were a man, strong enough to wear coat-of-plate and swing a blade, to set foes staggering back with the force of her blows! She was quick enough, she knew, and judged herself fairly strong.
But she was not strong like these great oxen of men who lumbered, ruddy-faced, into the inn to growl their wants at Gorstag. Even the long-retired veterans of Highmoon, some nodding and shrunken with age, others scarred or maimed in ancient frays, seemed like old wolves-stiff, perhaps, slower and harder of hearing, certainly, but wolves nonetheless.
Shandril suspected that if ever she looked in the house of any of these old men of Highmoon, an old blade or mace would be hanging in a place of honor like Gorstag's axe. If ever she got to see any of the other houses in Highmoon, it would be a wondrous thing, she reflected sourly.
She sighed, her scalded hands still smarting. She dared not smear goose-grease on them before getting the herbs, or Korvan would fly into a rage. His aim with kitchen utensils was too good for her health, Shandril knew. Smiling ruefully, she took the basket and knife from behind the kitchen door and went out into the green stillness of the inn garden. She knew by now what to cut, and how much to bring, and what was fit to use and