The Arkanist

The Night's Inn

         “We had just saw your light from the Ashwood,” Aera said truthfully. I have to lie… Her mother had always slapper her when she lied. “We had escaped Ahhid that night when it burned, as peasants of the land, and fled into those dark forests. We seek only shelter, and warmth, for we have been out in the Darkness for many a while. Please, let us enter. My brother is going to die if he doesn’t receive aid.”

         “Troubles have seemed to burden you, young girl,” said the man. “Come in, and we shall get you sorted about beside the warmth of our hearth.”

         Aera heard a jingle of iron as the man shut the slid and twisted at the lock, the door creaking like the Ashwood did during the night. A chill twisted Aera’s stomach as she remembered those nights. Hard and cruel they were, everlasting they seemed, but she couldn’t forget them, no matter how hard she tried. It had embedded into her brain, her bones, and with every gust of wind, her raw bones rattled with the chill that ran through her porous skin like spears of ice.

         The door clattered upon the wooden back wall, and the winds swept into The Night’s Inn, the torches and candles bowing and shivering from the cold. Aera led Aeron in, and the doorkeeper shut the front door, banded with iron locks with a clap. “Damn this cold,” he cursed under his breath, shuffling toward them. Aeron’s eyes flashed a pale white in the candlelight, and his knees began to buckle underneath his heavy furs. Aera steadied him, the old doorkeeper turning back on them as he took to the stairs.

         “I’ll be taking him up to Old Baely, the nurse,” rasped the man. “She’ll sort him out right, reckon he’ll be better by the morn, whenever we may find it in all the blackness outside.” He cursed again. “She always finds a way.”

         Aera nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

         “No sir am I,” the doorkeeper said, grumbling. “Only a doorkeeper, mind you.”

         Aera ushered Aeron along the creaking floorboards, until the doorkeeper took him in hand and began to escort him up the rickety stairs, each one moaning in agony as they laid their weight upon them. She followed close behind. “No need for you to be coming with,” said the man. “Best not a good idea to be with him when Old Baely is working. Quite nasty business hers, my own stomach can’t sustain her methods. They work though, have no doubt, even if I can’t explain them.”

         “But, please, I must be with him.” Aera pulled on his heavy sable cloaks. “He’s my brother, I’m his guardian, I’m supposed to protect him.”

         “And you have,” said the man, caressing her cheek. “You will be able to see him in the morn, once he is healed. I promise you that much. You have done your part in his safety, you protected him from the Ashwood, but you cannot protect him from his own body. That much is left for Old Bealy. Trust me, little girl, he will be fine.”

         Aera stepped off the stairs, and the man led Aeron up into the second floor, where the darkness of the night spilled through the curtained windows so that the balls of candlelight oozed out over the walls. Behind her, The Night’s Inn was rather dreary in the late hours of the night. It was large, with four great wooden pillars carved eloquently into the wood with curling horns curving off the bases. Bolstered on each side of the pillars, fingers of wax danced with white flame. In the back of the inn, a grand hearth roared with life, red as rubies, the embers fluttering into the hall like bees, the air thick with warmth and incense. The ruddy glow soaked the inn, and made the air balmy, and tinted the wood slightly red, with shadows prancing across the light.

         Old wooden tabled adorned the muddy paneled floor, some laden with drooping candles and others with rotten food, half eaten. The chairs laid strewn across the floor like the ruins of a keep, some resting on their sides, while others had legs missing and wine and mead staining the seats. Nobody sat in the seats on the floor, save for one man, cloaked in grey woolen robes with a mane of red and hair of gold. He kept his head down as he abandoned his half-eaten food on the table, tucking his grimy, burnt hands away under the cloths. The man brushed past Aera, and creaked away up the winding stairs to the rooms on the second floor.