[DH] Repayment to Vorsthold (pt 2) - 26 Mar. 2019 - Taffeta

1496 DR, 24 Ches


Nerry is sliding a tray of Korinnish pasties into the oven when he hears the ‘ting ta-ting’ of the bell announcing a customer, or at least a visitor. ‘I’ll be right with you,’ he calls, closing the heavy oven door. He pats his hands on his apron and is briefly engulfed in a cloud of flour, from which he emerges to pull aside the curtain and step into the front of the shop.

‘Oh! That was quick!’ The baker lifts the hatch in the counter-top and greets his wife with a hug and a kiss. ‘Everybody safe and sound?’
‘Yes,’ says Taffeta, ‘all grand. Quite a trip, though! The Vorsthold is incredible, a city all underground! Are the girls at home?’
‘Aila’s up her tree, and Idari’s visiting the Dolfkens.’

The two of them go through to the serving side of the counter, where Nerry up-ends an hourglass while Taffeta starts to climb the steps. ‘I think,’ she says, ‘we could afford to build that extra level with my share of the reward money.’

Nerry grins. His three-level shop counter is, after the quality of his pies themselves, probably the most famous feature of his business. His father – as he loves to tell customers when they first see the construction – always used to tell him when he was learning the trade that it was important to look people in the eye when you do business with them. That was all very well in Hardbuckler, a town of gnomes and hin, but it presented a bit of a logistical challenge when Nerry opened his shop in Daring Heights.

The multi-storey counter is his solution. To the customer facing it, it looks like a side view of a giant staircase: a stretch of counter-top about two feet from the ground, then a rise to another surface about three and a half feet high, and then a third level about five feet up. Behind is a set of stairs so that Nerry can move between the different levels and place himself on approximately the same level as any customer, enabling him to follow his father’s advice and also saving customers from having to bend down or reach up to receive their purchases. He’s proud of it – or he was, until one day a few months ago a tattoo-covered fellow came in with an armful of documents and a funny little pair of glass ovals in front of his eyes, and as Nerry stood behind the highest counter-top and craned his neck to look up at his new customer he realized he had not quite catered for everybody after all.

So now, when Taffeta swings herself up to sit on the mid-level counter-top and shows off a clinking purse, the baker bounds up the steps and embraces his wife again. ‘My resplendent magpie! What did you do to earn all this?’

‘Not a lot, to be honest!’ says Taffeta, seeming a little embarrassed.
‘But Idari said they needed you – you aren’t saying she got it wrong?’
‘Well, no, but I think they only really needed me for one thing. The fighting and all that – it was tough, but I think they could probably have handled it without me. They really just needed me to help them find something.’

‘What were they doing in the Vorsthold anyway?’
Taffeta kicks her heels under the counter. ‘Well, when I went to Aurelia to ask her to send me there, she explained they’d gone to help the dwarves as repayment for the Vorsthold giving weapons and armour during the orc invasion. Daisy, Oriloki, Demik, Rholor, Dorian, Varis, and Grimes all volunteered to go. She didn’t know what exactly the Vorstborn wanted them to do, but she’d been watching them by magic and said they were fighting mind-flayers!’
‘What’s a mind-flayer?’
‘They’re like people with horrible tentacled heads. They can control your mind and make you do what they want. They’d taken control of some of the dwarf guards. When Aurelia transported me to the cavern, I saw Grimes and he said they were trying to rescue the dwarves but the mind-flayers were making them fight back. Demik was surrounded by them but then he flew up in the air – never seen him do that before! And Varis shouted at them to stop, then as they were hesitating they sort of slumped down and didn’t seem to know what was happening – I think Rholor did that. Anyway they were out of the mind-flayer’s control. It all happened before I could even get down to where they were!’

‘There were some other people there too, tall and thin with greenish-yellow skin… Mmm, what’s the in oven? Smells lovely!’
‘Fresh batch of pasties,’ says Nerry. ‘But they won’t be ready for a bit. There’s quipper pie just out of the oven about an hour ago?’
‘Hmmm… I’m not feeling too keen on seafood after today. I’ll wait for the pasties! Anyway, these other people are called githzerai apparently, and they’re old enemies of the mind-flayers – illithids, they call them. They helped finish off some mind-flayers who Oriloki and Daisy had trapped in a bubble, and then their leader said we had to take back their fortress.’
‘Fortress?’
‘That’s what Morpith called it – she was the githzerai leader. The fortress was a great big thing like a pyramid but flat on the top, all made of dark metal. Morpith said they use it to travel between planes. Only one of their people can hold it together – they do it with their minds. So the fact that this one was still standing meant the mind-flayers must have taken control of one of them. Oh, and the dwarves’ commander had been captured too.’
‘Sounds like a bad situation!’
‘Yeah, the githzerai and the dwarves were all very worried about what the mind-flayers might find out if they could get at the thoughts of their captured people.’

‘Ting ta-ting ting,’ says the bell again.
‘Ah, Dennar, good to see you!’ says Nerry, climbing up to the top level of his counter to greet the tall human. ‘How’s Cala?’
‘Afternoon, Nerry! Afternoon, Taffeta! Funny you should ask after Cala, for she’s sprained her ankle – nothing serious, but she’s to keep off her feet and rest, and you know she won’t eat my cooking, so tonight it’s Shortcrust’s finest for dinner, ha ha!’
‘Always at your service, friend. What’ll you have? I took a batch of quipper pies out of the oven not long ago, one of those’ll serve for lunch tomorrow as well if you like. Or I’ve all the usuals of course.’
‘What’s the Taffeta special at the moment?’ asks Dennar, grinning at Taffeta. ‘Dust and dirt, from the look of you! Been on another expedition?’
Taffeta laughs and brushes herself down. ‘Just got back!’ She hops down from the middle counter and comes up the stairs to join Nerry behind the top level.
‘It’s rabbit with bacon and onion in a suet crust,’ Nerry replies to the human’s question. ‘A full pie should keep you going tonight and all of tomorrow, or you can take as many slices as you prefer.’
‘Ah, onions don’t always agree with Cala’s stomach so I’d best give that a miss. I’ll take a quipper, please.’
‘I’ll get it for you now. That’ll be three silver, please. My skylark, would you kindly relieve our Mister Clifford of his hard-earned coin?’

As Dennar counts out his coins and hands them over to Taffeta, Nerry disappears into the back room and emerges again with a package.
‘Here you are. Now give Cala our love, won’t you, and say we hope her ankle gets better soon.’
‘Thank you both! See you soon at the shop, no doubt.’
‘Ting ting,’ goes the bell.

‘Poor Cala,’ says Nerry.
‘At least it’s a night she doesn’t have to cook all evening after working in the shop all day.’
‘True. So what about this githsewhatsits fortress then?’
‘Well the githzerai said they’d come and clear out the mind-flayers while we went with Morpith to try to get control of it back from whatever had taken it over. Morpith knew how to get to the place where the fortress was controlled, but we didn’t know how to find the missing dwarf commander. Luckily – which I guess is why Tymora wanted me there – I know a way to find things. Some of the others could have done it I expect, but they’d been fighting all day and hadn’t got much magic left in them, so it was my turn. Freya, one of the dwarves, told me that her commander had an arm made of mithral: that was unusual enough for me to find. Then Grimes escorted her and the other dwarves back to the Deepfast – that’s the Vorsthold bastion – and we went on to the fortress. Once we got to the fortress I just got out my little forked twig and imagined a metal arm, and then I could sort of feel which way it was.’
‘Hold that thought,’ says Nerry, looking at the almost-empty hourglass. ‘I’d better check on the pasties.’

Watching the grains tumble down onto the large mound in the lower bulb of the hourglass, Taffeta smells a delicious warm gust of air from the back room.
‘That’ll do it, I reckon!’ announces Nerry, and a few moments later his wife appears through the curtain into the kitchen.
‘Careful,’ he says, ‘they’re hot.’
Taffeta deftly snatches one of the golden crescent-shaped pastries from the tray, careful to touch only the pointed ends where the pastry is thickest and furthest from the hot centre. ‘Don’t you worry, I know what I’m doing!’
Nerry chuckles. ‘’Course you do, love. So did you find the commander?’
‘Yes – or, at least, I found the room he was in. But before I could get to the doorway, Daisy and Rholor ran up to it and started casting spells. I don’t know what they did exactly, but there was crashing and screaming and I think I heard at least one bear, and then two great bursts of fire shot out of the doorway and it all went quiet. Then out comes this dwarf, in the middle of strapping a metal arm onto his shoulder. Then he starts putting on armour and picking up all sorts of weapons from around the room, and meanwhile he’s saying there’s a giant brain that we have to kill. Mmm, that’s good,’ Taffeta adds with her mouth full of Korinnish pasty.
‘I aim to please!’ smiles Nerry.

‘So this talk of a big brain scared Morpith good and proper. She called it an “elder brain”, said it’s like the leader of a mind-flayer colony and if there was one in the fortress, that was very very bad – like mind-flayers-conquering-the-material-plane sort of bad. So we followed her further into the fortress and as we were going, we all started getting this voice in our minds, mocking us: Morpith said that was the elder brain. Then just when we were getting close to the room we were heading for, Demik suddenly attacked us all with this wave of painful energy! Oriloki told us Demik was being controlled by the elder brain.’
‘Brandobaris’ bag of tricks! Did you manage to help him get free?’
‘Nobody could do anything to snap him out of it, so we all just piled into the room and attacked the brain itself. Huge thing it was, covered in tentacles and lying in a pool of glowing water. You see why I didn’t fancy seafood earlier, between that and the mind-flayers with their squid-heads… And there was one of them there too, or at least its head looked like a mind-flayer but the body looked like one of Morpith’s people and she seemed to recognize them…’

Taffeta goes quiet for a while, eating her pasty. Nerry takes one for himself and pulls a piece off the end – he likes to feel the pastry stretch and break apart and see the steam rise from the filling. He watches it drift up towards the beams of the ceiling. It’s a long way up.

‘Well, there was nothing we could do for that one. It attacked Morpith and knocked her out, and Varis too. Dorian managed to push it into another plane but it had been holding the fortress together and with Morpith out cold the place just started shaking apart, so he had to let the thing come back. But Morpith recovered and took control of the building. Daisy made the brain sort of… turn into mush, and I got in a good shot at the mind-flayer that stunned it so the others finished it off. It was all fairly quick, really. Oriloki revived Varis, and Demik recovered from the brain’s influence.’

She pops the remaining knotty pastry end of the pasty into her mouth and licks her thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re good at this, you know?’ she says to Nerry, smiling mischievously.

‘What happened after that, then?’ he asks. ‘Was that the end of it?’
‘More or less. The githzerai took their fortress back to wherever they came from. They let us keep the elder brain’s treasure – apparently there was some impressive gear in there, as well as a lot of money. Daisy’s very happy about a wooden staff she picked out, I don’t know what it does. Rholor found some fancy robes and acted smug about it all the way back. He’s probably trying them on in front of a mirror now. The Vorstborn made some special shields for some of the others too.’
‘What about you? Is that where the money’s from?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Even though I didn’t help very much, they still gave me a half share, which is plenty for your counter I reckon. And this bag, too,’ she says, showing off a rather ordinary-looking drawstring shoulder-bag ‘– it’s much bigger inside than it looks. I’ve got my backpack and everything in there!’
‘No!’ exclaims Nerry. ‘I assumed you’d gone home and left your things there! You’ve got it all in that bag? Let me see!’ Taffeta opens the neck of the bag and Nerry peers inside. ‘Well, I never knew magic could be so useful.’
‘There’s something else useful, too.’ Taffeta reaches into the bag and pulls out two little smooth stones, each carved with a matching geometric pattern. She hands one to Nerry and holds the other in her hand. Suddenly Nerry seems to hear Taffeta’s voice whispering in his mind, though he can see her mouth isn’t moving: ~~This will help us when I’m away. Just think a short message and I’ll get it.~~

Taffeta laughs as she receives Nerry’s jumbled thoughts in reply: ~~I what? this incredible how? not cut off again like Lassitude Oriloki did similar maybe how often? can the girls? how many? how far? need~~
‘We’ll have to practice,’ she says, smiling. ‘But it’ll be good to be able to keep in touch.’
‘It will, it will. This is your best find yet. Never mind about the counter! Now we don’t have to worry…’ Nerry’s enthusiasm goes damp as he sees a flash of distress in Taffeta’s face. Normally he tries to downplay the fear and helplessness he feels when she goes off into danger, rarely knowing when she’ll be back, never completely certain whether she’ll be back at all. He hesitates and then rallies. ‘And now you can tell me when you’re coming so I can have the pasties ready and waiting when you arrive,’ he grins, fairly convincingly.
Taffeta smiles back and puts her arms around him tightly. ‘I’ll expect them steaming,’ she whispers in his ear, then kisses his neck.
‘Now then, missus! If you carry on like that, the pasties won’t be the only things steaming in here!’
‘Maybe I will, then,’ she says.
And she does.