The Heavenly Host

For some reason, Tom referred to it as the “skybox treatment.” Rupert looked up, trying to spot the balcony they would be using. There were an awful lot of these skyboxes. It was actually nice to see them clearly again. Tom had been able to part the rain around the mouth of the volcano so that the arena was dry. Or mostly dry; there were water troughs from up high that funneled excess water down to the lava below. Since it was still raining just outside the volcano mouth, there was quite a bit of steam and soot coming up from the volcano.

That soot was kind of a pain. It coated everything near the arena. At least the dining halls were soot free; he really did not want his food covered in soot tomorrow. Actually, outside the immediate area of the volcano, the soot disappeared. That seemed odd. He wondered if there was something in the system that was absorbing it. Actually, the dust level had been going down steadily lately. When they had first arrived, all the furniture had been very dusty in his room. It was less dusty now, yet not like someone had dusted. There was just less of it. Very odd.

∼

Fierd was low on the horizon as Hilda and Stevos managed to get Teragdor back to the inn and into one of the small beds. The priest, barely awake as it was, began snoring as soon as they had him on the bed.

Hilda chuckled; Stevos looked at her. “I can see that he has been observing his priestly vows of moderation.” She laughed. “Orcs are all known, or so I’m told, to be able to hold prodigious amounts of alcohol. Our young priest here could barely hold as much as a Rod member.”

Stevos shook his head. “I don’t understand how you so easily drank the wargtowners under the table. Every time I went to the trenches to relieve myself, I had to surreptitiously do a cleansing ritual to stay even close to sober!”

“Ah, youth!” Hilda said with a laugh. “First, aside from being much older and more experienced, I also have a lot more mass! I cannot stress how much that helps. Plus, over the years, and particularly lately, I’ve gotten very adept at doing cleansing rituals under the table, so to speak. My principal mission right now unfortunately involves my drinking prodigious amounts of very expensive wine.” Hilda feigned dismay.

“And here I’m getting second-rate glargh!” Stevos said, laughing.

“Well, one nice thing is that even though buying enough glargh to drink everyone in town under the table while they revealed their secrets was quite expensive, it actually doesn’t come very close to my worst tabs in Freehold.”

“And no one objects?” Stevos asked.

Hilda shrugged. “It’s a bureaucracy, and it takes quite some time for the forms to make it through the system. Fortunately, we’ve been getting exceptional results, so... no complaints so far.”

“Nice work if you can get it.” Stevos shook his head.

Hilda shrugged again. “It is a nice change. However, it is a lot more fieldwork and pretending to be someone you are not. Here we were able to tell Teragdor the truth. In Freehold, I am almost in enemy territory. I cannot reveal myself to the Church or Rod outside the city, or to the wizards inside. If I did, they’d all go silent and cagey.”

Hilda looked down at Taragdor. “He really did seem to enjoy himself; I imagine he doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to socialize with his father’s people.”

Stevos nodded. “That is my understanding.”

“I have to return to Freehold for a few hours, and then we have another late-night meeting,” Hilda said. “Can you watch over him, work to ease his glarghvost, I think they called it?”

Stevos grinned and nodded. “That is what it is called. I like that name.”

Hilda gave an amused frown. “I like the name better than the beverage.” She shook her head. “Don’t fully cleanse him, just take the edge off. Part of an experience like this is the next morning. It makes the event more memorable.”

Stevos laughed. “I think you really must be an alcohol professional!”

“If only...” Hilda laughed.

∼

“Well, it’s been nice to be back on solid ground for the day,” Jenn noted to Gastropé in the banquet room of the inn that Seamach had arranged for. She plucked a strawberry from the buffet table with her little wooden stick. Much to her surprise, she had found she really enjoyed strawberries with the funny bubbly wine they had at the inn.

“It is, but I am not in a hurry to settle down here,” Gastropé told her.

Jenn chuckled. “Fortunately for you, I suppose, I don’t think either of us will be having an opportunity to ‘settle down’ for quite some time.”

“Did you have a good day?” Maelen asked, coming up to them.

“It was a bit of an eye opener,” Gastropé said. Maelen raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“There are actually orc shopkeepers here?” Jenn said.

Maelen moved his eyes around a bit in puzzlement. “And?”

“Did you know that orcs could be merchants?” Gastropé asked.

Again, Maelen looked puzzled. “Why couldn’t they? I am not aware of any place with laws against it. Although given so many prejudices out there, there might be somewhere.”