Devil's Sacrifice
Tara K. Young
Copyright 2011 Tara Kristen Young
* * *
The wind and snow danced around the tavern doorway as a stranger opened it. Catching the door out of his hand, it whipped it back upon its creaking hinges and rammed it against the outside wall. A loud bang echoed within the contained warmth of the bar.
The wearied farmers and rounded barman took heed only long enough to ensure the unknown man was able to close the door quickly behind him. As his fluffed and bundled form shuffled from the entrance, they returned to the mirror pools of their drinks. At the far end of the bar, he found himself a half-broken seat near an almost entirely broken table. It managed to stand only due to an empty barrel propping up one side.
With a leather-covered hand, he reached out to brush the layer of dirt from the seat. His hand stopped just before he touched it and withdrew.
Once he was lowered into the chair, which would likely hold his weight only if he did not fidget, the barman approached and asked if he wanted beer, bread, or both. When the visitor had taken a moment too long in replying, the barman’s face hardened.
“It may be cold out there but these seats aren’t free.”
The fur lined hood shook with a nod. “Is the bread fresh?” the traveller asked.
The barman’s eyes narrowed. “The Wolds of Gren having fresh bread? We haven’t had fresh bread in several years. Where are you from?”
“Just passing through,” replied the stranger.
The barman's shoulders remained tense but he did not ask again. “You want the bread or not?”
The man nodded as he added, “And the beer.” With his order, he pulled out a large gold coin and placed it on the table for payment.
As the barman reached to take it, he said, “You definitely aren’t from around here.”
The stranger shrugged.
After the barman had left him alone, he began to remove the bundle of fabric around his neck and hood. Pushing his hood back, he revealed his tanned face and sun-bleached hair. He added fur-lined mittens to the pile of clothing that was rapidly accumulating upon his tiny, lop-sided table. He ran his fingers through his hair awkwardly.
“These travellers have nerve using up our stores,” said a man at the bar. His words were clear but had the slight hint of the slurring that was to come.
“Quiet, Amalric,” the barman warned as he bent to find a tankard under the bar.
“Why should I be quiet?” he replied as he jutted his tankard in the barman’s direction, sloshing his beer over the edge.
“Because you are getting on my nerves. The man is paying. He’s welcome,” the barman said.
With a large scoff and an even larger spill of his drink down his front, Amalric complained, “Gold can’t get my farm out of the snow."
As the barman stood with the tankard he had sought, he said, “No, but it has been doing quite well in buying the bread and beer you come for every night.”
The stranger remained silent and motionless but Amalric refused to leave him alone. He turned in his seat at the bar to face the newcomer and began to speak louder than necessary in the tiny, candlelit room.
“What paradise are you from that has such sun?” he demanded.
Silence.
“Your nobleness is too blessed to acknowledge the likes of me?” he said and, despite his offense, he continued, “We were once envied by all the kingdoms until that covetous traitor ruined it all.”
“Oh, be quiet,” came the much calmer and sober voice of a thin, black-haired man sitting on the opposite side of Amalric. From the stranger’s perspective, he had been almost entirely hidden by the farmer’s larger girth. “You are such a loud mouth,” the thin man added before lifting his tankard for a drink.
Amalric slid awkwardly off his stool and turned to face his new opponent. “You are beginning to whine like my wife,” he said with a much lower voice that had become ragged around the edges.
The thin man did not cower but laughed so deeply that it sounded as though his humour had been locked up for centuries only to be released at this moment in one exuberant fit. He was not the only one. The barman was chuckling too and the three other patrons in the tavern were laughing almost as heartily as the man at the bar.
Amalric did not blush or sit back down. He continued to stare at the thin man; looking as though he would wallop him.
“Stop, Amalric,” the man pleaded through gasping breaths and tears. “If you keep doing that, I’ll have to go into the cold for a piss. Stop!”
When Amalric would not back down, the barman intervened. “Sit down and go back to your beer or I will tell your wife what you said.” With these words, Amalric jolted and sat meekly in his chair, hunching over his tankard.
It took several more minutes for calm to restore itself.
Still contending with a random chuckle, the thin man called to the stranger, “Don’t mind him. He’s too meek to stand up for himself when sober so he finds his confidence in the beer. I’m Fredric.”
When the stranger did not reply, Fredric was not offended. “He’s right though. We were once a great kingdom. You must have come from quite a far ways not to know the story of our plight. Luckily for you, I decided not to hide at home tonight. I tell the story much better than Amalric. Also, luckily for you, I take your silence as consent in hearing it.”
“Not again,” muttered one of the two men at a table across the room.
Frederic gave a quick glare but otherwise acted as though he had not heard as he began the story.
“If it weren’t for trade, we would have starved long ago but when I was a boy, our kingdom had only the briefest acquaintance with snow each year. Our crops and our forest were more lush and vibrant than anywhere else in the known world. And yet, it was not the crops that made us the most coveted of the kingdoms. It was our queens.
“They have always been the most beautiful of any women ever to have lived and they cared for this kingdom. Their presence alone seemed to make the trees sing and our crops produce more bounty than we could use. The wheat was so high I couldn’t look over it and the sun made it shine like the richest of gold. All this because of our queens!
“During that age, each queen would have a daughter who would not make her debut until she married. None would see or meet the daughter until that day. After all, the most beautiful of all women needed to be protected from covetous eyes.”
The barman brought the stranger his beer and a loaf of bread that was only now losing the frost upon the crust. The stranger barely acknowledged the offering for he was staring infinitely at the table before him. Frederic was not deterred.
“In the end, these efforts were for naught. When the last of our queens married and revealed herself, her beauty proved too much for one of the lords. He did not care about her husband. He did not care for his own lands or for the people. He cared only for his own lust.
“One night, with the help of a witch he had enslaved, he stole the queen away and attempted to flee the kingdom. It was at this very tavern that he stopped with her for food and to seek to hire a carriage. And it was here that it all came to a horrible end.
“At the table you are sitting, my friend, is where it happened.”
The barman interrupted, “I suspected who she was but the poor girl seemed to have forgotten herself. The magic worked upon her was that strong.” He gave a firm nod as he agreed with himself.
Frederic continued, “That same magic must have been poison for the queen collapsed. While everyone tried to wake her by splashing water on her, yelling at her, and shaking her; one of the queen’s men, by pure coincidence, happened to enter. My father said he had been meant to take a message to the East until he recogni
zed his queen fainted upon the floor. He recognized too the lord and his witch and knew he could not apprehend them alone. He pretended to be concerned simply due to her faint and offered to pay the barman for a room for her to recover for the night.
“The lord must have had no idea of the power of his witch’s magic for he seemed as shocked as the rest of us and agreed to the offer. The Queen’s man then took his horse, which must have been the fastest in the whole kingdom, and rode it to breaking most of the night. He reported what he had seen to the king.
“To his surprise, the king did not order the knights to assemble. It is said that without a word he strode from the hall, mounted his own horse and rode here with his hand upon his hilt the entire way.
“By morning, the carriage was waiting and the lord held the queen in his arms as they left the tavern but around from the back of the carriage emerged not the driver but the king himself, with his sword drawn. And did he