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There was a reason why the inn was the only place in Candlekeep alcohol was allowed. It was not permitted to the Readers in the tower cloister, nor to the Watchers in their barracks, nor to the priests in their temple. Winthrop alone administered libation to the thirsty of Candlekeep. The first time Gorion visited the Keep, he had thought it a silly rule. Time and experience had, of course, taught him the truth.
The wind was up that evening, and the sky was bright with pinprick stars, sparkling in the vivid clarity of the winter night. The biting cold had not kept travelers from the great library, though – three separate groups of scholars had arrived in just the last two days. One consisted of a master alchemist and his four brightest apprentices, there to make a study of some gnomish texts. Gorion was keeping an eye on them, because not a one of those apprentices were older than twenty-one, and he had recently discovered that the older his foster daughter got, the less he liked young men. He’d been one once. He knew how they thought.
Perverts, the lot of them.
The other two sets of scholars were both interested in Netherese lore. One was from Waterdeep, the other all the way from the Dalelands. Gorion enjoyed visits from these far-flung travelers. He did not frequently miss the wider world, but fifteen years was a long time, and reminding himself that she was worth it didn’t always help. So he listened avidly as the visitors talked over their drinks.
A shadow fell across the table. “If I asked politely,” said a familiar voice, “do you think Winthrop might be willing to part with another of those delightful toddies for me?” Gorion rose to greet Firebead Elvenhair and watched as the elderly half-elf seated himself with a sigh.
“When did you arrive, old friend? You look half-frozen.”
“About an hour ago, and I am. Tethtoril waylaid me at the gate, all afire to show me the book the Dalelands lot brought with them, and there are glaciers warmer than that man’s chambers.” Gorion grinned at his old friend, and fetched a hot toddy from Winthrop, whose heavy-jowled face was alight with the special glow of a barman presiding over a full house. Firebead sipped his drink with a sigh that sounded remarkably like a melting icicle before asking, “And where is your young lady this evening?”
Just as he was about to respond, the Dalelands scholars took up a drinking song about the glories of Sembian ale. They weren’t half bad. They even sang harmony.
It was a question Maera already knew the answer to, but she felt compelled to ask anyway. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Im?”
Imoen rolled her eyes, somehow managing to condescend up towards her taller friend. “Mae, there are a TON of people out there tonight. Puffguts is gonna be too busy to come back here. And it’s not he’s gonna miss it anyway.”
Maera eyed the small cask on the floor between them. “Do we have a tap?”
“Do we have a tap,” Imoen scoffed. With a flourish, the item in question emerged from the pocket of her apron. “Have I ever let you down?”
“Do you want an honest answer, or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?”
“Hey! Be nice to me. I am the gateway to the booze.”
“Have you heard from Khalid and Jaheira lately?” Gorion had to raise his voice to be heard over the Waterdeep scholars, who had been inspired by their counterparts to break into song themselves. Their song of choice was “The Silverymoon Lasses”, which was really just a catalog of the various milky parts of the ladies in question, set to a 4/4 meter.
“Still in Amn,” Firebead replied, “as of a month ago, at least. Seems that for every slaver’s ring they stamp out, another pops up in its place.”
“Ployer again?”
“Oh no, Ployer remains well and thoroughly ruined. But where there’s money, there are scruples to be lost, and ever since Eila Coltrane died, there’s not been a good strong voice against the trade among the legitimate merchant houses. They won’t dirty their hands with it, but they won’t denounce it, either.”
A roar went up from the Dalelands scholars. A fresh round had been obtained, and the additional lubrication provided them with the necessary gusto for “The Helmite’s Lament”, which contained entirely too many one eye puns.
Maera choked and gagged, tears burning her eyes as she struggled to regain her breath. “My GODS. People drink this? On purpose?”
“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Imoen was taking very small sips.
“I think it burned a hole in my throat!”
A pleasant, mellow air had settled over the common room as the pendulum swung away from boisterousness towards the sort of thoughtful conversation that only occurs when the participants are just drunk enough to make even the most minor point deeply philosophical. Gorion and Firebead had moved to a pair of chairs near the fireplace and were enjoying their brandy in just such a vein.
“I know, Beregost seems like an odd choice, but it’s a charming town, really. And I got the house at quite a bargain,” Firebead said, looking content as a cat.
“Then do I expect to see more of you, or less?” Gorion asked.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. Buying all those books isn’t exactly cheap, you know, and it’s not as if I’d get a discount for living a day away.”
“You see! It all fits perfectly!” One of the Waterdeep scholars simply could not keep his enthusiasm contained. “One day in the stacks, and already my thesis is better supported than five years of research elsewhere.”
Seated closer to the Dalelands group, Gorion heard the snort clearly. “Five years,” sneered the most senior of them.
The Waterdhavian blinked owlishly. “Excuse me?”
His challenge was met with a shrug. “I’m not sure I’d be so proudly proclaiming a thesis that is only five years in the making. That’s all.”
The affronted scholar bristled. “If you know what you’re doing, well rounded research doesn’t have to take decades.”
Gorion and Firebead exchanged a long look, and scooted their chairs a little closer to the fire.
“Mae,” Imoen slurred, “you’re evading the question.”
“I said I like him!”
“But do you really LIKE him?”
“Dreppin’s a nice guy, and he’s really sweet, so yes.” Maera stuck her tongue out at Imoen, momentarily distracted by the fact she couldn’t get it to curl.
“Do you like him enough to…you know?”
Water would have vaporized before the heat radiating off Maera’s face. “Um…we already have.”
Imoen stared, as before her very eyes, her friend became a keeper of forbidden knowledge. “Oh my gods. Oh my gods! You…oh my gods!” She seized Maera’s hands in her own, eyes huge and only half-focused. “What was it like?”
“You’re stretching the text so far you’re lucky it doesn’t snap and slap you in the face!” In the common room, the battle lines had been drawn.
“How is that interpretation a stretch? It may stretch your outmoded ideas, but I fail to see how that’s a bad thing!”
“Care to make this more interesting?” Firebead asked his drinking companion, a twinkle in his blue eyes.
“How so?” Gorion asked.
Firebead tilted his head towards the ceiling, indicating the barely visible runes carved into the wood of the beams. “Winthrop hasn’t activated the wards yet. I give it a quarter hour. Ten gold if I’m wrong?”
Gorion eyed the red-faced intellectuals carefully. “That’s utter tripe, and you know it!” one bellowed. He shook his head.
“I don’t think the odds are in my favor, old friend,” he smiled.
“Then shall I simplify it for you?” shouted the senior Dalesman. “Your methodology is shoddy, your interpretations weak, and your sources suspect. You’ve barely even glanced at anything beyond a narrow range of secondary literature, and it’s obvious you’re afraid to because you’re so wedded to one idea you can’t bear to be proved wrong in your own text. If you would pry your head out of the cavity it is currently lodged in, you would see just how flimsy your scholarship really is. You are wrong, incorrect, mistaken, off the mark, and thoroughly, terminally full of it. Additionally,” he spat, swaying slightly as he delivered for the coup de grace, “your mother is a whore.”
Silence reigned. The only sound was that of Winthrop tapping his palm against a particular spot on the bar, causing the anti-magic wards to flare to bright, blue, life. Gorion and Firebead ducked, just as the chair was thrown.
“Wazzat?” Imoen peered at the door.
“Soundsh like a…. like a fight.” Maera was still confused by her tongue’s refusal act as it should.
“Let’s go watch!”
Maera shook her head violently. “Can’t. Legs don't work.”
“Awww,” Imoen whined. “We miss all the good stuff.”
Gorion pressed himself against the wall to avoid being struck by the Waterdhavian who had just been tossed bodily in his direction. One of his colleagues was being bludgeoned with an empty (and heavily dented) tankard, but a spirited defense of the honor of the City of Splendors had been mounted by another pair, one of whom wielded a chair leg. He was the first to go down when Winthrop finally waded into the fray, his good humor evaporated and his short cudgel raised.
“You see, Firebead?” Gorion said, trying not to laugh and accidentally find himself on Winthrop’s List. “I would have lost your wager, and I don’t even have ten gold on me.”
The half-elf shook his head at the tableau of groaning academics. “I really thought you stood a better chance. I was not expecting the maternal insults quite so early in the proceedings.”
An hour later, a stormy-faced Winthrop summoned Gorion back to one of the storerooms. On the floor, draped over each other like sleeping kittens, lay Maera and Imoen. They were both snoring like old men.
“They well nigh emptied that cask!” Winthrop groused. “That was near a half gallon of my best whiskey!”
Gorion gently roused his ward, blinking hard as she exhaled. She could have stripped paint. “Maera, my girl, what did you do?”
She waved a hand limply. “Im’sh idea.”
If Imoen resented being thrown under the proverbial oxcart, she made no indication. “And you went along with it?” Gorion asked.
Maera’s glazed eyes made it obvious she was seeing at least three of him. “It was awful at first, but then it got better.”
“But it will get much worse again.” Gorion heaved a sigh. This was one of the parts that didn’t make into bard’s songs about nobly taking in orphans. He turned to the barkeep. “Winthrop, I imagine the hangover will be punishment enough. And perhaps they could set the common room to rights tomorrow, and any extra chores you see fit, to offset the cost of the whiskey?” Winthrop grunted, and together, they knelt down to haul the wayward pair off to bed.
As he half-carried his lanky ward through the warzone otherwise known as the common room, Gorion reflected that there was wisdom in that silly old rule about drinking outside the inn. The Library surely would have been burned down ten times over without it.