Will Power

foul.”

Truer than you know, mate, I thought, spitting out more pond filth.

“It called itself Lothar. It is surely some devil from the waters beneath the mountains.”

“No,” I assured him. “That was just a bit of a joke. A sort of poem, you know. I was happy to see the tavern and. .” This no longer seemed plausible even to me, so I reverted to my previous tactic. “I’m a friend of that blond- haired chap. You know. . tall guy, pale, blond.” Since this brilliant description fit all four men I had glimpsed behind the door I added, “He’s got a spear with a kind of torch thing. . a light. And he killed a bear with it. You know. Whatsisname. Mr?. . Sorbet? Sor. . did? No. Sorrail. SORRAIL!”

There was a hesitant moment as the men exchanged glances. Clearly they recognized the name. That would keep my blood flowing internally for the moment. I grinned to myself, exultant, and then, unsure of what such a grin looked like through my new skin, scrapped it.

They watched me warily, then the young man leaned round the door. His glance was both cautious and menacing. “We’ll see about that, goblin,” he said, a remark which, if it hadn’t been accompanied with that just- give-me-an-excuse-to-kill-you kind of hatred, would have struck me as riotously funny. He drew a long knife from his belt, put the flat of the blade against my throat (causing a little pattering of dried clay at my feet) and said, “Get Sorrail.”

Someone inside moved away from the door. Then he caught hold of my arm and dragged me inside, never taking the pressure off the knife blade.

“He’s here?” I exclaimed with relief as I stumbled into the barroom.

“Silence, demon-vermin,” shouted the young man, pressing the knife a little harder. “You speak when you are spoken to and not before. Is that clear?”

I emitted a little trickle of bubbling filth from the corner of my mouth, along with a sound designed to show just how clear it was.

There were footsteps from the corridor outside, booted feet entering the room hastily. I tried to turn, but my captor demonstrated his dislike of this with the brilliant rhetorical strategy of pushing the blade against my windpipe till I coughed in nervous exasperation. The resulting spatter of brownish phlegm which caught him in the face might have ended my life right there and then if not for a familiar voice from my right.

“Yes, it’s him,” said Renthrette, bored and thoroughly disinterested. “A little dirtier than usual, but otherwise the same, I’m sure.”

“Renthrette! Thank God!” I exclaimed, pausing to rub my throat as the blade was withdrawn and pointedly wiped clean. I grinned widely and extended my hands to her, and to Sorrail, who was loitering at the door. His chiseled features were grave.

“Spare me,” she muttered, turning on her heel and striding back out. “And if you can tell where the slime finishes and you begin, get a bath.”

Sorrail eyed me cautiously for a moment and then followed her out. The rest returned to their seats by the fire and watched me suspiciously, in complete silence. A rank steam had begun to rise from my skin and clothes, touched with the scent of stagnant water, decayed plant life, and whatever other unspeakable slurry had collected in that pit. Though I had seriously doubted I would ever want to be immersed in fluid again, the bath was beginning to sound like a very good idea.

In fact, I didn’t have a bath. I had five. The first time I stepped into the copper tub the water instantly turned an opaque and foul-smelling brown almost identical to the pond I had been lying in. I didn’t even get to sit down. Tipping the sluggish water out of the window I saw that it was raining hard now. I clutched an old washcloth to my mud-caked loins and went downstairs. There I asked a startled maid to refill the tub and went to stand in the courtyard, letting the chill downpour beat the mud from my body. Some of it, at least.

A minute or two after the initial cold had worn off, it started to creep back over me and I decided to retreat to my hot bath. I removed a few strings of mossy pond weed, adjusted my makeshift loincloth for maximum coverage, and headed back inside, via the tavern’s sitting room. The same collection of faces turned from the fire to look me over.

Grimy and bedraggled as I was, I had expected laughter at best or more hostility at worst. Instead, I got a stunned silence and then a series of pattering apologies as they each got to their feet.

“I’m sorry, sir,” murmured the young man who had been so keen to examine my neck from the inside half an hour before. “You never can tell what might come in through that door, sir, we being so close to the mountains, and all. I seem to have made a terrible mistake. I’m so sorry. . ”

“Forget it,” I answered, echoing Renthrette from before while I tried to figure out what new strangeness this was.

“It was a terrible misjudgment of you, sir. . ” he went on.

“Not at all. Really,” I interrupted, trying to sound sincere and nonchalant at the same time-not easy when one is clad in nothing but a damp, strategically positioned washcloth. “Don’t give it another thought.”

He began again, his friends glum as whipped puppies in the background. Unable to bear any more of this bizarre exchange, I shook his hand and bolted for my bath, presenting my bare behind to them as I did so-though the realization of that last bit came after it was too late to do anything about it, so I just clambered back into my foaming kettle and considered drowning myself. Still, I thought, after a life like mine, why bother trying to salvage any personal dignity now? In this somewhat defeatist mood, I glanced hurriedly over all that had happened since that dinner in Stavis, thought better of it, and did my best to forget everything. Being warm and comfortable, if exhausted, for the first time in several days, I succeeded.

An hour or so later I woke, rolled out of the frigid water, dried myself absently, and tumbled into bed, where I remained till morning. I dreamed of Orgos and Mithos and then lay awake for at least an hour till sleep, mercifully, took me again.

It was still raining when I woke, and the chamber was positively icy. I blew a long breath, watched it billow across the room, and decided to stay where I was. I removed the dressing on my wrist and was amazed to find the wound almost completely closed. Sorrail and his people might be annoying, but they seemed to know something about medicine. An hour later, just when I was dropping off again, the door burst open and Renthrette, unannounced, strode in. The air temperature seemed to drop. I moved the covers on one side of the bed, smiled suggestively, and gave the mattress an inviting pat.

“Get up,” she said, “and spare me your suggestive remarks and all the usual garbage you spout. It should have become clear, even to one as insensitive, degenerate, and dull-witted as you that I will never-”

“I am not dull-witted.”

“-that I will never,” she continued pointedly, “be found in the same bed as you. I can barely stand being in the same room. The only way you would get me into bed with you is if I had been bound hand and foot. . ”

“Renthrette,” I said playfully, “I’d no idea. .”

“No, scratch that,” she said, “the only way is if I was already dead.”

“There I draw the line,” I said with mock indignation. “I have been accused of various fascinations in the past, but there is a limit. Rob the cradle, I might, but the grave? Never. And before you get indignant, robbing the cradle is a figure of speech. I have no interest in or sympathy for. .”

“Do you ever tire of hearing yourself talk?”

“Not often. I am both a good listener and a lively raconteur. For someone as self-centered as me, the combination is quite magical.”

“Just get up and save your witty banter for someone who doesn’t get nauseated by the sound of your voice,” she spat.

“Now you’re getting it,” I encouraged. “But next time. .”

I stopped suddenly. Something was odd. She had been spirited since she came in-confrontational, admittedly, but spirited nonetheless. Moreover, at that last little jibe there had been a flicker of a smile. I had various ways of