Glazyre was in no fair mood. His head was pounding, and his stomach was an empty void that hadn't received food in days. That was the way of a thief. One day you could have everything; gold, a nice carriage, a dutiful servant. You could have all of this, and then the next day you could lose all of it and be as poor as a pauper once more. In his case he had lost the carriage and clothes betting, the gold whoring, and the servant quarreling. It was amazing really. Just two nights past he had all of this, plus a sexy woman seeming totally willing to take him into her bed. And look at him now.
He wandered the allies of Alans Bay, searching for an open window or drunken patron that could easily be relieved of his purse. Unfortunately he was finding none of these, and the dawn swiftly approached, robbing him of any opportunity to...rob. He had a silver penny and a couple of coppers, just enough to buy him a small breakfast, so he searched for a proper-looking inn with not too many scummy bottom feeders and not too many up nosed nobles, both of which Alans Bay had a vast number of.
He found just the right inn as the golden light of the sunrise crept across the sky, heralding a new day. The Inn was called The Dragon's Fire, bordering a wide boulevard and a vast plaza with a fountain in the middle. The inn was mostly empty, with only a small group of patrons. One man was dozing by the fire, another ravenously devouring a chicken leg. There was also a young woman, plain-faced and dressed in a simple white dress, looking like she was extremely confused and very lost.
He was inexplicably drawn to her. He told himself that it was because she seemed vulnerable and ripe for the conning, but it felt like something else. She had warmth to her, directly in odds with the cold block of ice that had become his heart. He shirked away the feeling and asked the innkeeper, standing behind a counter next to the door, when breakfast was going to be served. She looked at him with bags under her eyes and told him it would be another forty minutes. Glazyre decided he would wait, and took a seat across from the young woman after giving the last of his coin to the woman.
She looked at him curiously but he just ignored her, leaning back with his eyes closed. He hadn't slept in a good while, and wasn't foolish enough to rest on the streets. Gradually the common room began to fill as patrons came down from their rooms and took seats as they waited for their breakfast. He spotted a few travelers from Merr, red-haired like him, and some shepherd folk from up in the highlands, blue-eyed and fair-haired. The smells of bacon and eggs drifted from the kitchen, behind a swinging door on the opposite side of the room.
In due time the plates began to come out, and when he got his he dug in and devoured it, having no concern for table manners. The common room was very full now, and the tables were becoming crowded. That was when the trouble started. A Merrish merchant came down the stairs, dressed in fine robes of fine velvet and golden silk that didn't hide his enormous gut. He was swathed in golden jewelry and walked with a sort of smug grace, looking down his nose at the people eating and sneering at them. Two large mercenaries backed him with iron cudgels on their belts.
The fat merchant approached his table and gave him a self-important smirk.
"You seem to be sitting at my table, braggart." He said, in a laughably fake Elven accent.
"It seems to me that I was here first." Glazyre said, not ready to give up his seat to a chubby ball of fat and silk.
The merchant snorted and reached into the purse at his belt, dropping a silver mark on the table. "This should be to your approval. Now take your silver and go. Perhaps it will buy you some better clothes."
That was too much for Glazyre. Normally he would have taken the silver and gone but his pride was too injured after the woman from two nights before had abandoned him, and he had to keep whatever he had left. "I'll leave this table the day that you lose that blubber, which doesn't seem to be anytime soon. Get lost." Glazyre said.
The fat merchant glared at him, his face growing red. "I should have my men humble you, thrice-damned whoreson!" He shouted.
"I'll agree that my mother was a dirty whore, but I'll not agree that your livestock will humble me." He said.
The merchant looked at the two mercenaries and they approached him, cudgels drawn. With lightning fast speed Glazyre kicked the table at them, sending his breakfast flying and the men falling. He shot forward, drew a knife, grabbed the merchant from behind and pressed the sharp blade to the man's fat white jowls.
The inn had gone quiet as they watched the seen unfolding before them. A small trickle of crimson blood fell from the merchant's neck, and he screamed like a maiden and pissed himself. Glazyre edged his feet away from the yellow puddle at the man's feet. The mercenaries made to approach but he pressed the blade up higher and they stopped.
"Not one more step, or your fat employer will find himself roasting in the fires of hell." Glazyre said, as he backed toward the door. The merchant whimpered, tears falling down his cheeks. Suddenly some force seized his blade and threw it across the room, clanging against the wall. He felt himself being lifted and pushed back against the wall by some invisible aggressor, unable to move his limbs, as helpless as a newborn babe. The merchant stumbled forward to the protection of his mercenaries.
In the corner of the room he saw the white-dressed woman with her hands outstretched and her eyes focused on him. He didn't know how, but he knew that the force that held him immobile came from her. She was probably a wind mage, though she was curiously dressed for one such.
The force released him and he dropped to the floor stumbling. The merchant's mercenaries approached him with their cudgels drawn and he ran out the door and into the street, not ready to face the heavily muscled men with their clubs. He could hear the men chase him, but he was a swift runner and sprinted down the road, looking behind him for pursuit. He would later curse his recklessness. He ran straight into a city guard, stumbling to the cobbled ground. The fat merchant came puffing up with his men.
"That man tried to kill me! I demand that he be arrested!" The merchant screamed, his voice cracking like an adolescent boy. The merchant grabbed his arm.
"Tis true! I saw it with my own eyes!" The inn keep said as she stumbled out of "The Dragon's Fire" and pointed at him with an accusing finger. Curse the ugly bag! Glazyre thought, glaring at her. The young mage who had caused this all in the first place came out of the inn, looking at him curiously. Another city guard appeared from an adjoining street and helped the other drag him off to the jail, which turned out to be in a decrepit, fish-smelling part of the city.
They threw him in a cell with rusted iron bars and straw that smelled of piss and was most definitely full of lice, and plague carrying lice if the luck he was having this day held. And so it was that he found himself sitting against the rock wall, cursing everyone that ever did him wrong. His parents, the irascible woman from the ball, the fat merchant and his two sellswords, the plain-faced mage that made his escape impossible, the dead-eyed city guard that he had run into. Damn the all to the deepest, most fiery hell!
* * *
Aine's attempt to question people walking the streets about where the city jail was proved fruitless. Some would curse her with some profane title; Most would simply ignore her as if she were no more than a bug. People here are so disagreeable. Aine thought, wishing that she could be back home where people actually cared. Aine found herself wondering if anyone here had read the psalms of the Three in their entire life. Eventually she found a helpful city guard that showed her the way, but even when he did it was only because it was his duty, not out of the kindness of his heart.
She sought the prison in search of the man she had encountered in the inn. She remembered watching in horror as the blood began to run from the merchant's neck where the knife was held, ready to take his life with the flick of a wrist. He was innocent, so it was her duty to save him. And that was why she used her magic to push the tall, slender knife-wielder against the wall and out of striking distance.
She didn't know just why she was going out of her way to find this man. She just had a feeling about him, something that drew her toward him. Perhaps he had a part to play yet in her destiny and that of the world. The Goddesses gave messages to those who were faithful. They didn't come as words. They came in the form of a warming in the bosom, or a shivering of the body. She felt both as she asked the guard in the front room of the prison if she could see the knife-wielder. She gave him a broad description; red haired, green eyed, tall and slender.
The guard led her to a fowl smelling cell in the basement, where she found the knife-wielder curled up in a corner on the other side of the rusty iron bars. "You have five minutes." The guard told her curtly, leaving her at the cell.
"Have you come here to mock me?" The knife-wielder asked hoarsely, glaring at her under his eyebrows.
"Of course not." She said. She couldn't tell him why she actually did come because she didn't truly know.
A long pause came. She didn't know what to say, she had come here based on feelings alone. Finally the knife-wielder spoke; "I could have escaped if it weren't for you. I was three feet away from the door."
"I couldn't let you hurt that man." She said.
"I had no intention of hurting him! He was a fat, blathering fool with too high a view of himself. It would be an insult for me to kill one such as him. Even thieves have honor!" He shouted with great anger.
"I could not read your true intentions, only the Goddesses can judge what one feels or thinks. I just didn't want to take the chance of someone's blood being spilled." She said.
The knife-wielder laughed and then said bitterly, "Ignorant fool! They will take my head at dawn and with it profuse amount of my blood. So much for that!"
"But your crime does not merit an execution. How could that be?" Aine replied.
"You really don't know anything, do you?" He sat up and walked to the bars, "I'll wager that your precious merchant is friends with the City's Magistrate. One offhand whisper in the ear and I could have been beheaded for stealing bread, or pissing on the promenade! Pride is why I will die tomorrow, foolish girl."
Aine found that hard to believe. How could a world created by the Goddesses be so unjust? She found herself believing him, however. There was something about his demeanor that told of experience, like all traces of the naivety that he once might have had were now gone. I am naive. Aine realized. She was just as foolish and dumb as the man said. How could she expect to find the Tear Stone with in a world so strange and unfamiliar to her?
Then she knew why she had been drawn here. The Goddesses knew this about her, knew that she would need help to find Nayru's Tear. And so they had sent her this man.
"If I release you will you help me?" She asked.
The man looked at her as if she were a brainless twit. "How could you possibly get me out of here? That guard won't let me out if you tell him that the Goddesses will damn him to eternal damnation if he doesn't!"
"Answer my question. Will you help me?" She asked again, simultaneously drawing on the magic within her.
"Yes, but I don't see how you can possibly--" Aine sent a gust of wind at the door, and it slammed off its hinges and clattered to the floor.
The man stepped back, awe-struck. From upstairs came the guard's shout, and she could hear him running down the stairs toward the cell. "Come, quickly!" She shouted with a motion of her hand. He did so, hiding on one side of the door as she hid on the other.
The guard came running through the doorway and slammed right into a wall of wind. It threw him back and he crashed against the wall, slumping to the ground. He was knocked cold, but Aine hoped that she had done no more damage than that. They both rushed out the door and Aine ran up the stairs but halted as the man stopped and checked the guard.
"What are you doing! We must make haste!" She shouted. Her heart was beating furiously.
"One moment." He said, with a cool calm tone. He found what he was searching, a leather belt with an array of sharp-looking throwing knives, and they were on their way. Two more guards at the top of the stairs confronted them. She was able to bind one with her magic, but the other squeezed passed and raced toward the knife-wielder with sword raised.
Not wanting either the knife-wielder or the guard to be killed she slipped her leg out in front of him and sent him tumbling down the stairs. The knife-wielder was able to jump up before the guard bowled into his legs, showing amazing agility and speed. He would be a worthy Kiatan warrior. Aine thought.
With the two guards dispatched they made their way into the streets and disappeared into the maze of streets that was Alans Bay. They ran for a long time, the knife-wielder leading until he finally deemed it safe for them to stop and catch their breath.
"We will need to find disguises and leave this city as soon as possible. To where is up to you. You still haven't told me why you need my help." The knife-wielder said as he leaned up against a wall and caught his breath.
"I am in search of a certain stone. When we find it I will consider your debt paid." Aine replied, breathing hard. "My name is Aine." She said, holding out her hand.
The knife-wielder looked at her hand but did not take it. "My name is Glazyre. Let us move on."
Aine began to walk away, heading northward toward the city gate. Glazyre stopped her.
"You have given me my life and for that I am forever grateful. Thank you."