Chapter Five

~Compiled by Alex~

When Rowena wakes the next morning, she dresses quietly and slips out of the cottage, briefly popping in on Faran in the stables before paying an early morning visit to her friend Gem. Gem brings out a heavy clothing chest which contains garments belonging to her deceased brother, and together the two women carry the chest back to Rowena's cottage. An awkward moment ensues when they discover Nick out of bed but dressed only in his underwear, and at Rowena's request, the young man dresses in his old clothes while the women wait outside. He takes a few extra minutes to touch up his make-up, while he has the chance. Once inside, Rowena sets about cooking some breakfast while Gem finds some suitable clothes for Nick. As he gets dressed, Nick innocently asks Gem what happened to her brother, and is filled with concern and sympathy to hear that the young man has passed on to the next life. Gem neglects to mention that it was Nikolai Rhodan who sent him there. However, when Gem rushes home to rescue a pie she has left in her oven, the rest of the story is filled in by Rowena, who tells Nick that Gem's entire family was murdered by the warlock. Nick is horrified, and finds himself cursing his own looks for their resemblence to the man whom everyone hates. When Gem returns, the trio sits down to breakfast, although the gypsy woman only sips at a glass of wine, and they discuss their plans for the day. Gem is considering going to the midsummer fair in Ashby, but Rowena counsels caution. They should at least wait to hear what Brother John has to say about their safety, she says. But before they get too much deeper into that conversation, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. The town's blacksmith, a bearded female dwarf by the name of Daisy Dragoncrusher, pops in to say hello and to take a peek at the Nikolai-look-alike whom she has heard about. Nick is as fascinated by the dwarf as he was by the elves and the faerie he'd met the day before, and very quickly gets himself into trouble by referring to them all as "creatures"...

Sebastian wakes on his tree branch to find Minuet curled up and sleeping with him, and for a moment he stays still, purring softly, unwilling to wake his friend. But Minuet wakes of her own accord and happily gets up to stretch her wings and let her companion start his day. Sebastian gives himself a cursory wash before his attention is drawn to the mice in the nearby grass. It is most definitely breakfast time. One mouse breaks away from the pack and Sebastian instinctively gives chase. He captures it just as it enters one of the buildings and, noticing that the room is inhabited by a dwarf, a half-elf and two humans, he settles down to break his fast with them. The building's occupants, however, are not so enamoured of this idea, and while Gem cringes and Daisy leaps screaming onto the bed, Rowena makes a move to shoo the intruder and his messy meal out of her home.

When Maeve gets out of bed in the morning, she is a little surprised to find Brother John sleeping on the floor outside the door to her room. She wakes him gently, smiling in amusement as the sleepy monk mistakes her for an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Within a few seconds, though, he is fully awake and clambering to his feet, apologising for being in her way. The pair have barely spoken a few words to eachother before Barbarella appears, requesting Maeve's help in tending to a friend of hers who has been injured in a disagreement with his wife. Maeve and John both follow the landlady down to the kitchen, where they find Charley the Minstrel huddled by the stove, still wearing Elspeth's nightgown. He has a cut on his cheek and a black eye, and looks thoroughly miserable. At his feet, two dogs are chewing happily on either end of a sausage, and Charley explains that when he came home wearing another woman's nightclothes, his wife beat him about the head before kicking him and his dogs out onto the street. Keeping her opinions to herself, Maeve sets about healing his injuries.

Waking early, Nicholas looks at the sleeping Bantam and begins to ponder the boy's familiarity to him. Gradually, memories begin to resurface, of a man who used to do things to make the other boy cry. He remembers a time when the man had tried to do the same to him, but his mother had rescued him and that was when she had taken him away to live in the forest with her. Bantam wakes up to find the younger boy looking at him, and he startles Nicholas out of his daydream by speaking to him. But when Nicholas doesn't reply, Bantam comes to realise that the boy has not uttered a single word since they met the day before. He asks Nicholas if he is able to speak, but the younger boy turns away, wishing that he was back home in his forest where all these hateful memories didn't assail him. But the gesture allows Bantam a good view of the back of his neck, where a star-shaped birthmark lies, and at last Bantam is certain that this is his long- lost brother. He throws his arms around Nicholas and hugs him tightly. At last he draws away and, forgetting that Nicholas doesn't speak, he asks what happened to their mother. Then, seeing the sadness in his brother's eyes, Bantam wonders if his questions are frightening the boy, so he lets the matter drop and suggests that they go downstairs to get something to eat. Nicholas agrees.

Warren, asleep on the floor outside Nicholas & Bantam's room, wakes in time to hear the boys' conversation through the door. He is filled with happiness for their reunion, but decides not to intrude. He gets up, washes himself and heads downstairs to the dining area where he orders a cup of coffee. But before long he hears Maeve's voice coming from the kitchen and decides to go and look in on her. When he sees her bending over a bizarre-looking stranger, Warren mistakenly believes the stranger is a trouble-maker, and advances with his dagger drawn. "Are you bothering *my* lady?" he challenges Charley. Maeve throws herself protectively in front of the bard, and then indignantly responds to the warrior's reference to her as being "his". Barbarella and Brother John both attempt to keep the peace, but Maeve is furious and will not be pacified. Lysander, who has been grateful for the growing crowd of patrons in the tavern interrupting his lonely vigil, hears the ruckus in the kitchen and also goes to investigate. He asks Brother John if everything is alright, but an attack of nerves overtakes him as he waits for John's answer. Somehow he knows that this monk is the man he needs to speak to, to find the answers he's been seeking for so long about his heritage. But before John can respond, Warren's temper snaps once again and he begins shouting at Maeve in return. He has tried to be a "nice guy", but it seems to be getting him nowhere, so maybe he should just accept his evil Cuccurullo heritage and be done with it. Almost knocking John and Lysander over, he storms out of the kitchen and through the tavern, pausing only to toss a bag of coins at Bantam, and hurries out onto the street.

Pausing for a moment to recover from his shock at Warren's reaction, John eventually introduces himself and his companions to Lysander. Mustering his courage, Lysander asks the monk if he might speak to him privately and, assuming the man is looking for religious counsel, John agrees. He leads Lysander to the back room of the inn, pushing aside his concerns about getting to the Hidden Village for his promised meeting with Rowena. At John's prompting, Lysander begins his tale, telling of his search to find his true parents. He was raised by a woman who found him, abandoned as a baby, and together they lived in almost complete seclusion at the edge of a forest, until Lysander was old enough to set out on his quest to discover his roots. He has always had visions, he says, of a man and a woman whom he assumes to be his parents, but in the past five days, those visions have turned to nightmares of bloodshed and violence. He is becoming desperate to find answers. At first John is unsure of how he can help and why this man chose *him* as his confidant. But he asks Lysander if he has any clues at all as to his heritage, at which Lysander shows him a pendant which he was apparently wearing when his foster mother discovered him. It is a crest bearing a lion, a rose and a serpent. John examines the article, memorising its appearance, before handing it back. He promises to do whatever he can to help and to keep an ear out for news which might be of relevance, but in the meantime he suggests that Lysander go to the midsummer fair and try to think about something else for a while. Lysander agrees, and gives the monk his thanks.

Minuet has followed Sebastian on his hunting expedition, but she arrives at Rowena's cottage a minute or two behind him and storms in furiously, just as the cat slinks out with his meal. Demanding Rowena's immediate attention, she hurls an accusation at Nick, saying that she believes he placed a curse on her the previous night. "Don't fly into any spider webs," he had said to her, jokingly, but from the look of the sticky threads which now cover her entire body, that seems to be precisely what *has* happened. Nick reacts angrily to the accusation, but as Rowena the Peacemaker tries to placate both of them, he makes the fatal mistake of laughing at the faerie. "Believe me, you annoying little gnat," he snaps, "the day you get to be bigger than me, will be the day I fully repay you!" The taunt is too much for Minuet, whose dignity has already suffered from her careless accident. Impulsively, she flings a shrinking spell at the man, and then gloats over him as he sits in the centre of his chair, suddenly as small as she herself. "Would you like to apologise?" she asks sweetly, "Or should I tell the cat that his dessert is served?" Nick rants and curses at her for a moment, before Gemile picks him up, laughing, and holds him in the palm of her hand, asking Minuet if she thinks she could do the same thing to Nikolai Rhodan. Nick looks up at the gypsy pitifully, but at last he tells Minuet that he will apologise, if she will come closer so that he can do it properly. Minuet, whose simplicity tends to make her a sucker for this type of thing, does as he asks.

As soon as the faerie is within his reach, Nick makes a grab for her lower lip, pulling it out and letting it snap back the way she had done to him the night before. Then he grabs a handful of the spider webs which still cling to her tiny body, and ties them in a bow on her head, all the while apologising for what he is doing. As a startled and squealing Minuet attempts to flee to safety, he reaches out and gives her wings a good tweak, before settling down in Gem's palm and grinning smugly. Minuet collapses on the tabletop and begins to cry, hiding her face as best she can. Not only is the assault to her dignity more than she can bear, but her wings are hurting horribly and she doesn't think she can fly. Sebastian, hearing the fearful cries of his friend, leaps through the window onto the tabletop and curls protectively about the sobbing faerie, aiming a threatening claw at her tormentor. Gem, too, frowns at Nick. "You should not have touched her wings," she tells him sternly. Daisy, on the other hand, is highly amused by the whole show, but Rowena's disapproval of her laughter sends her stomping out of the cottage and back to her smithy. At last, realising that she is defeated and just wanting everything to be over, Minuet restores Nick to his original size and then huddles close to Sebastian for comfort.

As Maeve finishes up her work on the injured bard, Charley comments on how much his three-legged dog Clover seems to like her. She agrees that she is very fond of animals herself and so, seeing an opportunity, Charley asks her if she would mind looking after the dogs for him while he goes back to the castle for his clothes. Maeve not only accepts the responsibility, but she offers Charley a long cloak which used to belong to her brother, so that the minstrel might conceal the nightdress he's wearing while he walks through town toward the castle. Speechless with gratitude, he wraps himself in the cloak and admonishes the dogs to behave themselves before leaving the inn and returning to the castle.

Requiring very little in the way of sleep, Simon is up and about early, breaking his fast in the dining hall with Audra's other empolyees before wandering out into the courtyard. He is unsure as to whether he should commence his reconnaissance of the town immediately, or whether he should await the Countess's instructions, but he soon finds his answer in the form of Stewart the Steward, who berates him for loitering and shoos him out of the castle to begin earning his keep. On his way out, Simon notices Vanya in the distance - Vanya has also risen early, bathed, and ventured out to explore the town. But he loses sight of her when she rushes off to investigate the source of a sudden and delightful scent on the breeze. Shrugging, although he secretly hopes to catch up with her eventually, Simon turns his attention to the work he's supposed to be doing for Audra, scanning the minds of the townsfolk for mention of the renegade Rowena. Vanya, meanwhile, comes across a glass-blower's stall and stops to examine the coloured glass bottles that she loves so much. She is unaware that she has attracted someone else's attention, too...

The Flame, walking about town with the intent of finding her beloved Warren or the hateful Maeve, finds herself suddenly very taken with the innocent young woman standing a few paces away. Carefully probing the girl's mind, she makes her way over to the stall and, sensing Vanya's delight in objects of painted glass, she offers to purchase a red glass pendant in the shape of a heart for the girl. Uncertain at first, Vanya is quickly won over by the pretty bauble and the Flame's honeyed words. After several minutes' conversation, both women are surprised at their own delight in the idea of friendship. It's a concept with which neither of them is very familiar, but which both find unmistakably intriguing. They are about to embark on a shopping spree together when they are interrupted by Simon. He re-introduces himself to Vanya and then finds that he must prompt her for an introduction to her tall, shapely, red-haired companion. The electricity between Simon and the Flame as they shake hands is almost palpable, and Vanya does not fail to notice it. Her heart sinks as the Flame invites Simon to accompany them. The telepath picks up on Vanya's sense of exclusion and attempts to make amends, purchasing for her a lovely blue silk scarf to match her dress, and yet he cannot ignore the sexual overtures being offered him by the Flame. The trio has just reached a delicate equilibrium in their attentions to eachother, when the Flame is suddenly distracted. Warren is nearby. She can feel him.

Having noticed Nicholas and Bantam in the dining area when Warren stormed out, Maeve asks Xanax to fix them something to eat. The barmaid does as she's asked, and although Bantam is still wary of placing his trust in anyone, he decides that if the food came from the woman who had healed Nicholas last night, then it is probably okay to eat. He and Nicholas tuck in. Nicholas finishes his meal quite quickly, but Bantam is only half way through his when he begins to feel sick. Convinced that the food was poisoned afterall, he suggests to his brother that they leave the inn as quickly as possible. They wait just long enough for Bantam to empty the contents of his stomach in the outhouse, before heading back into the safety of the forest.

Early in the morning, Andy is dreaming. He is at a party, in a castle which he owns, and all the guests are there to see him... but he has forgotten to put any clothes on. When he finally makes his naked escape, he takes refuge in a room which is piled almost to the ceiling with unimaginable riches, but there is a small porcelain statue in danger of being crushed by the piles of treasure. He moves to rescue it, but he trips, and starts falling... And then he wakes. He is in the room he shares with Ninnocha at the Rum Runner Inn. After taking a moment to gaze lustfully at the sleeping woman, Andy retires to the washroom to groom himself and leave his road- soiled clothes for laundering, and then he sets off for the Seventh Stranger, where the food is always better, to procure some breakfast for himself and his companion. He waits at the bar, while Xanax - after a feeble attempt at flirting with her old acquaintance - ducks into the kitchen to prepare a couple of take-out meals. While he waits, he listens with interest to the argument between Maeve and Warren behind the kitchen door. He feels uneasy, however, when he hears Brother John's voice coming from the same room. Ninnocha is still hoping to find the monk in Ashby, believing that he will be able to help her somehow, but Andy is determined to keep them apart. He pays for the breakfast and, liberating a couple of roses from an overcrowded bucket in a florist's stall on the way, he returns to the Rum Runner. Ninnocha, having carefully washed and dressed and applied a little black powder to the rims of her eyes, is waiting for him.

Nikolai and Audra make a very slow start to their day. The festive sounds of the town and the midsummer fair are beginning to drift in through the window, and neither of the two rulers is enjoying the evidence of the people being happy. It irritates them both, and they spend a few moments mulling over the possibilities of smothering this horrid frivolity. But at last they rise and bathe, and begin to talk about other things such as ensuring Simon's loyalty. Once they have dressed, they part company for a while - Nikolai returns to his own rooms to retrieve his cloak and check on Vanya, while Audra sits down to breakfast and a discussion of the day's events with the Steward. She is not overly impressed to hear that Simon has already left the castle, and is even less impressed with the idea of having to preside over the day's festivities in the town. Stewart's relief at being dismissed from her presence quickly turns to fear when he encounters Nikolai in the corridor, and is forced to inform the warlock that his young consort has ventured out into the town on her own. Despite his disturbance at this news, Nikolai lets the steward go and proceeds to join Audra at breakfast. He declines her offer to send someone after Vanya, and after pushing his food around on his plate for a while, announces that he will join her in her distasteful duty amongst the townsfolk, and that he is ready to leave whenever she wishes.

Charley the Minstrel, meanwhile, has returned to the castle clad in the cloak Maeve had given him, and he barges into Elspeth's room before she has a chance to object. "You've gone too far this time," he tells her. There is a fine line between foolery and danger, and he doesn't appreciate her fooling around with his chances on that danger line. His anger is quickly dispelled, however, by Elspeth's concern for him and the injuries he has suffered at the hands of his wife. She tells him that there must come a time when he will stand up for himself and stop allowing his wife to treat him that way. "I'll cross that bridge when I find it," he tells her. "There'll be another day to make my stand." As he dresses in his previous day's clothes, he proceeds to tell her the story of how he and the dogs went to the Seventh Stranger for refuge, and of the remarkable healer who tended to his injuries and took care of the dogs. "She didn't charge me a penny for her services, and she gave me this cloak which used to belong to her brother," he says, "and *now*... she's watching over Lucky and Clover... isn't that bizarre...?"

<< Back to the Introduction <<Chapter One <<Chapter Two <<Chapter Three <<Chapter Four Chapter Five >> Chapter Six
>>Chapter Seven >>Chapter Eight >>Chapter Nine >>Chapter Ten >>Chapter Eleven >>Chapter Twelve >>Chapter Thirteen
>>Chapter Fourteen >>Chapter Fifteen >>Chapter Sixteen >>Chapter Seventeen
>>Chapter Eighteen >>Chapter Nineteen >>Chapter Twenty

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