The Mage in the Iron Mask - Brian Thomsen [55]
The mage turned slightly to face Volo, and said, "And you are?"
Honor interrupted. "Eating!" he bellowed in a tone that could not be mistaken for anything but an order. "As you should be. There is plenty of time to exchange pleasantries with Chesslyn's young companion later. Besides that, it is impolite to talk with one's mouth full."
The blind swordmaster resumed the filling of his cheeks with delicacies from the table.
"Sor-" McKern began to say, but thought better of it when he felt Honor's sightless stare drilling an accusatory hole through him. Quickly, the mage began to partake of the feast.
Chesslyn and Volo exchanged glances again. Volo mouthed the words "Chesslyn's young companion?" to which the Harper agent replied with a suppressed giggle. Their silent exchange completed, both began to fill their plates, and, immediately afterwards, their mouths and stomachs.
The table was set with every manner of delicacy imaginable. Volo found it hard to believe that this was just an average meal at the table of Honor Fullstaff. In all his travels throughout Toril, he had never partaken of such a feast, and prior to this he had fancied himself an expert epicure. The plates were passed back and forth like cards at a gaming table, and Poins and Hal deftly retrieved, replaced, and refilled them with new contents as dispensed by the able hands of the dwarven cook Hotspur. Only once did a dish rest on the table for longer than a minute after it had been emptied of its contents while Hal and Poins fumbled with a particularly slippery soup tureen.
The host said, "Turnips," which were the contents of the empty bowl, and it was immediately refilled by the ever-ready Hotspur.
Volo was amazed at the sensory superiority of his host. Without the aid of sight he could still identify the contents of an empty bowl, perhaps by scent or by the sound it made when it hit the table or by the placement of the sound in relation to the other bowls on the table. The master traveler was awed, and now realized his folly in expecting that a swordsman such as Honor would have been forced into the atrophy of sedentary retirement by a mere inconvenience such as blindness.
The mage named McKern interrupted his masticating for a moment and asked, "Might I have a spot of wine, please?"
Honor stopped eating and cast his knife to the table, making a clang as it bounced off the side of the plate.
"I am appalled Mason! I will serve no wine before its time!" the host bellowed.
The servants and guests stiffened in silence. The host seemed honestly indignant and offended. Volo hoped that the swordmaster was not prone to violent outbursts over trivial matters such as this, as he had seen many age-demented warriors fall prey to in their declining years.
The master traveler's fears were unnecessary.
With all eyes upon him, Honor's stern visage stretched into the smile of a trickster, and a bold and boisterous laugh escaped from the venue that had formerly served as a way station for the delicacies of the table, on their way to the host's stomach.
"Ha, ha, ha," he roared, "but seriously Mason-only I get to call the great Mage McKern, revered senior Cloak of Mulmaster, by his first name-as I was saying, I have saved a marvelous after-dinner wine for dessert, and I have no desire to waste it on a palate that has already been plied by the pleasures of the fermented fluids of the grape."
The guests all joined in their host's levity with an unpracticed laugh in unison.
"Now," Honor ordered, "back to the matters at hand. Resume eating. Hopefully Mage McKern will not interrupt our gastronomic exercises and enjoyments again."
By the third course Volo realized that the only way to survive the opulent meal was to pick and nibble, rather than to fill one's plate and expect to empty it. Too bad Passepout isn't here, he thought. I bet he could give old Fullstaff a run for his money in the appetite arena.
A roar of thunder was heard outside, then a crash of lightning followed by another thunderous roar, and the sound of sheets of water