"Hullo, Bert!" Lem shouted genially from the table at which he and Nelhoepher habitually held court at the Blushing Loaf. "How're yeh doin'?"
"Oh, I'm doing alright, and yourselves?" Bertronius responded happily in spite of the stress he was feeling. He had spent the day scouting some of the running games where he had looked for Ractor in the previous weeks in the hope that the inveterate gambler had returned to his deleterious stomping grounds. Unfortunately, none of the tired, scowling men at the cards had heard from or seen his prey in months. If Ractor was still in Susselfen, he was maintaining an exceptionally low profile, which, Bertronius mused, was understandable given the numerous debts he owed to dangerous individuals.
"Well, we've been quite busy, me friend, quite busy indeed!" Nelhoepher boasted cheerfully. "O' course, we've been keepin' an eye out fer the double agent," he continued lowering his voice to a stage whisper. "We're more sure than ever that one of our colleagues is working fer the enemy!"
"Really? You still think that one of the spies is a traitor?" Bertronius asked, not sure whether he was more amused or annoyed by his friends' continued insistence on the existence of a turncoat.
"It's true, Bert!" Lem added a little defensively. "We've heard a good many things here in this bar, we have. And, I'll tell yeh, Bert, some of 'em are downright worrisome!"
"What have you been hearing?" Bertronius inquired patiently.
"Well, there was this one chap what came in here," Lem began thoughtfully.
"Yeh mean that big guy with the queer eyes, and bushy beard, Lemmy?" Nelhoepher interrupted helpfully.
"No, no, that's not the one I'm thinkin' of, but he was a suspicious character too, that one was. No, I was a thinkin' of that skinny fella, the one what had such big ears that he seemed to have to put a bit of effort into turnin' his head," Lem responded, thoughtfully.
"Wait, was his name Leamont or Leabont or something like that?" Nelhoepher was clearly having trouble putting his finger on the individual Lem was referring to.
"I don' think we e'er got his name, we were mostly jus' listenin' to him. In any case, Bert, this big-eared man said summat rather interestin' 'bout a friend what he had to go meet downtown," Lem concluded with a proud, meaningful look.
"Why does that make you think there's a double agent?" Bertronius asked, quite skeptical that there was anything to Lem’s claims.
"Well isn't it obvious?" Nelhoepher asked incredulously. "It's really quite simple, Bert! Yeh, have to keep in mind, this man with the ears, he was 'bout the shadiest character I e'er saw -- I canna believe I forgot 'bout him -- good work, Lemmy!"
"No problem, friend," Lem said gratefully, a triumphant grin on his round, boyish face. "Like Nel was a-sayin', he was a real down-and-out lookin' sort o' man, and he was talkin' 'bout meetin' a friend. Alright, I'll grant yeh that in itself ain't too suspicious, but he said he was a goin' downtown to meet him!"
Bertronius stared blankly at his two friends, still not seeing how they had reached their apparently obvious conclusion.
"Yeh dunna see, Bert?" Lem said hopefully. "We are downtown! We're 'bout as far downtown yeh can be and still be in Susselfen! It must have been code!"
Bertronius looked at Lem and then at Nelhoepher and then back at Lem before responding. "Are you two drunk?"
"Well, I mean, yeah, but that's beside the point!" Nelhoepher responded with some frustration.
"Are yeh tellin’ me that this, along with all the other stuff we've found doesna make yeh the least bit suspicious that someone's a-spying on us spies?"
"I guess it does, Nel, I guess it does," Bertronius finally conceded, not really wanting to listen to any more of their addled ramblings. "How have you two been getting ale anyway? I thought you lost most of your money in that card game we played last week?"
"Lemmy washed pots for a few hours while I minded the door this mornin' so Arna said we could have a few on the house," Nelheopher replied, before winking and adding, "I think she likes havin' a couple of strappin' young spies around to keep the riffraff in line."
"Aye, it was hard scrubbin', too!" Lem agreed cheerfully. "Last night though, we got a couple of tall tankards of ale from a very nice elf, just fer helpin' him off with his coat! He was a right gentleman, he was."
"That he was, that he was," Nelhoepher said with a fond expression on his face. "What was his name again? Starfish or summat, eh?"
"Aye, Starfish, a fine fellow...no, no, it was Starling, definitely Starling," Lem continued thoughtfully. "I remember because I said to myself, as soon as I heard it, I said, 'Starling, just like the bird! My what lovely names these elves have!' I distinctly recall sayin' that to meself, I do."
"He certainly sounds like a nice elf," Bertronius agreed. "Hey, what do you say I go get us a few tankards, lads? I bet I could get Arna to pour them for free," Bertronius asked suddenly finding his spirits lifting. Bertronius found that Lem and Nelhoepher never failed to distract him from his dark and growing obsession with Larthon Ractor. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it would do him good to take the rest of the evening off with them.
"Aww Bert!" Lem said, an enormous, sweet smile crossing his face. "Yeh always know just what to do to make a man's day!"
Jellihondor and Glothnafar had made the long journey back to the rebel’s camp without incident, and were greeted most hospitably waiting there. Glad to be among their friends, but exhausted, the old elf and the centaur set up their tent and bedded down while the night was still young. Neither could remember a time when they were more grateful for a long night of sleep.
Glothnafar woke from a deep sleep with a start and found himself covered in sweat, leaving him instantly embittered by this forced return to consciousness. Although he heard nothing but the sound of crickets and snoring, and saw nothing but the sleeping form of Jellihondor next to him in the tent they shared, but still felt a deep and pervasive wave of apprehension sweep over him.
Without warning another, equally familiar sensation crept in: the centaur felt his mind being pulled away from his body by a force so strong that there was no hope of resisting it. The centaur did not resist as his eyes rolled back in his head and he knew that in a few short seconds he would be totally enthralled in a trance.
Once he had entered this strange, all encompassing state, Glothnafar had no awareness of anything around him – he could only sense the strange magnetic pull drawing him out of that moment in space in time. He allowed the unknown force to pull him in, the periphery of his mind teased by faint echoes and indistinct sounds as he drifted closer to his ultimate destination. The sounds became clearer the closer he got, and Glothnafar heard, to his great surprise, that it was his own voice he was eavesdropping on.
“I saved you – I do not regret it. I knew what would happen before the battle even began, and yet I saved you. I only wish I could see the rest with my own eyes…” Glothnafar felt the mysterious force pulling him away again, more strongly this time, as if it did not want him to linger here. His mind was filled with different sounds now, which strengthened with each passing moment, and he realized he was hearing the Rebel’s victory once more, but this time, he was starting from the beginning instead of hearing disjointed passages out of context. He had been expecting this for some time now – the trances had been revealing more and more to him of late and he had been finally begun to piece together a more holistic understanding of the mysterious event.
He heard the roar of a crowd, people screaming with wild abandon and soldiers banging their weapons together. He heard a strong, fervent, deep voice call out to the rebels. “The day has come to end this long war once and for all! Tomorrow, we storm the Queen’s castle, and we will cut her and her own down where they stand. Tomorrow, we will cut the head off the vicious Elothninian snake and those still seduced by her corrupt will. You will once again live unmolested in your rightful homes. When the sun rises again, it shines on a new day, and before it sets, it shall shine on a new land! One transformed by our vision and our victory! And when the thing is done, and the Witch-Queen lies dying in a pool of her own blood, we will plant a Golden Tree in her courtyard so that none will ever forget who this land belongs to.” As the crowd of zealots lost themselves in their screams, Glothnafar could feel himself sinking away from that unknown moment in an unknowable future, back to his bed roll next to a still sleeping Jellihondor.
Something about the speech troubled him. He knew it must be Jarthen, after all, the Oracle herself had confirmed it, but how? ”The voice from his trance had such resonance and timber, such assurance and confidence – it couldn’t possible come from a child!” he thought. ”And yet – it is his voice. It is unmistakably his voice, but wiser, and tempered by experience…”
Glothnafar gasped quite suddenly, as the pieces finally slipped into place after long years of waiting. The voice was Jarthen’s voice, but it was the voice of a man – the victory would not occur until after the lad had come of age. With an anguished expression, the centaur simultaneously realized another outcome that the vision portended: he knew with an awful certitude that he himself was not destined to see this happy day: both the conversation he had somehow overheard himself having during his trance and the Oracle’s cryptic warning to Jellihondor made it unequivocally clear. He looked at his old friend’s sleeping form, fully aware of how hard he would take the loss and hoped with all his heart that his intuitions were wrong, but Glothnafar still felt the truth of his vision in his very bones nonetheless.
McNab hated to do it, but he knew that he had to. Bertronius was inadvertantly threatening to undermine a very important rebel action, and the old spy, despite his personal affection for the lad, had to prevent him from further jeopardizing Starling and the others.
“Where the hell is he goin'?” McNab wondered silently to himself. He left the lodging house especially early that day in order to avoid talking with his young charges, and had been waiting in the shadows of a nearby alley where he could observe Bertronius's movements without being seen himself. The auburn headed lad had also risen early, leaving the house only an hour after McNab himself. "He looks decisive this mornin'," McNab thought fondly in spite of himself as he watched the young spy leave the building.
McNab tracked Bertronius through the winding, crowded streets of Susselfen easily. The narrow thoroughfares harbored a soft fog that reflected the pale light of the morning sun and obscured a man's face at ten yards. McNab followed him as Bertronius expertly wound his way through a series of alleys into progressively seamier neighborhoods. past the prostitutes and petty criminals that walked the sordid streets of this part of Susselfen. It was remarkable, the spy reflected, that this boy, who had been raised a vassal in the rural environs of the Fethil, could traverse the most sordid ghettos of the Empire at the age of 15 without batting an eye. He was well on his way to becoming one of the finest spies in the Empire: it was a shame that they were working for different sides, McNab thought.
Finally Bertronius stopped at a dark, weatherbeaten door to a basement pub. McNab recognized it as Dunkler's Tavern – the usual haunt of the infamous Graz Mayhew, who he knew had recently been paid by Starling to distract the boy. This was uncommonly good luck: there was little doubt that the reliable old scoundrel could keep even this resourceful teenager on the run for the few more days that the rebels needed to make their escape.
His concerns about Bertronius’ interference lessened, McNab left Dunkler’s Tavern and headed towards the other side of the city where he had an appointment with Starling.
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