Excerpt: The Minstrel

I was happy. I was not going to have to exercise Minstrel’s privilege before entering the Crossroads Inn in the village of Morryn in the far south of the lands. The coin purse was not close to empty. The twenty-four coins was more than enough to keep me at the Crossroads for seven sleeps should that be required.
I entered the establishment only that I was going to spend two sleeps in the room that I favored when I came to this town. A window on an upper floor looking over the main door of the Crossroads.
The innkeeper, Marridden they call him is a gentle man. Warm of spirit, appreciative of news from the road. I shared with him of the run up to Cer Ifinn and the troubles that lay ahead. Cer Ifinn, the four villages surrounding a pond that crown the Southlands. That is eight days south of here. Watching Marridden, a balding man with a tonsure consistent with a holy man of old, I left him word about the news of the councils of Cer Ifinn that their very stability was at stake from an outside force that I knew nothing of. I could not stay long enough to know for certain what the next move for all of the Southlands.
Darkness was about to descend on Morryn as I sat in the inn. The drink I needed to have, a small flask of methyglas, spiked with local fermented barley. The concoction, Marridden’s own creation, left me feeling flush and happy.
I don’t normally relax this much, but Marridden’s Crossroads Inn has been a haven of calm without the roads of the South to think about.
“How did you like the flask,” said Marridden his time divided.
“Good,” I was not going to lie but a recent batch that I had tasted a previous trip to the Crossraods Inn was better.
A new person came over to my table. Her bodice, black, her skirt I could not see over the thick belt she wore over her midsection. Her hair raven black but something about that felt off. The jaw screamed someone who had not been here long. Not a Southlander.
“So,” she said, “is there anything else I can get you?”
“Yes, my meal.” I said as a log popped behind me and the fire started to stoke itself to a higher heat that I had felt at my back than I had in quite some time.
“That will be a little while. You are right to ask for it now.”
“That I am,” I said looking at her leave.
Something hit me at that point. I don’t know why, but something was odd.
“Wench!” I roared.
“You wanted your meal. Why are you calling me over, before I have started to make your meal?”
“Bad dream. I will speak of it some now, but I don’t like to share all my bad dreams with just everyone.”
“Why all the secrets?”
“I am a minstrel. My secrets give me a measure of both insecurity and a means to survive. I live, others groan and quiver in the fear of what might happen.”
“What is your name?”
“Call me Ien Piper.”
“Why that name?”
“Earned on both fronts. However there are items that even I am not going to get into on a chance meeting. Something about you gives me bad dreams. I only see you now for the first time wench. Yet you scare me. Why?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I don’t know everything, but you know what I am going to eat in the room if that is all right with everyone.”
“Your meal, you paid for it. Take it where you will,”
I was not going to argue. I needed some time away from this seat anyway. The wench was starting to give me more than uneasy feelings. Rather she was something that was going to haunt for me for a long time.