From alt.pub.dragons-inn Tue May 30 08:57:57 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8470 Path: netcom.com!csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!caen!reeve.research.aa.wl.com!WS008013F18C2D!simonj From: simonj@rh.wl.com (Jeff Simon) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [Jake Shade] Chapter 4: Liquid Courage and the Red Lady Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 06:03:48 EDT Organization: Parke-Davis Rochester Lines: 317 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.205.215.16 Summary: In which plot development is temp. stalled for the sake of humor. X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #4] ******************************************** What has gone before: After being tossed from the normally friendly confines of the Stumble Inn, the Academy student Tadmaster the mage journeys to a tavern of a different sort. Luckily, he is accompanied by his new friend, the cursed outlander known as Jake Shade. ******************************************** Chapter 4: Liquid Courage and the Red Lady Tadmaster tried to hide his nervousness as Jake Shade led him into the Red Lady. Tad had heard some of the other students talk about the tavern when the instructors were elsewhere. They referred to it as the 'Scarlet Harlot' often as not. Only the oldest and the bravest of the Academy students went there. To Tad, it sounded like a good place to get killed. "C'mon Tad, the beer's not getting any colder." Jake held the door open for the younger man. Gathering his courage, Tad went in. The interior of the tavern was a full-scale assault on Tad's senses. Heat from a roaring fireplace rolled out to envelope him. Smoke from tobacco and other substances hung like a thick haze in the air. Barmaids whirled around the room in a non-stop parade, their arms filled with foaming tankards for the rowdy patrons. Tad could not help but notice the amount of sweat-flecked skin their low-cut bodices exposed. Jake noticed him noticing and grinned. "That's the spirit, Tad!" Jake looked around for a moment, finally spotting a vacant table near the fireplace. He grabbed a chair and turned it so that he could sit with his back next to the wall. Tad emulated him, watching as Jake deposited his backpack under the table. It thumped when it hit the plank floor. "Sounds heavy," Tad commented. "I got tired of wearing my armor all the time,"Jake replied. "I haven't found a place to live yet so I'm making like a tortoise and carrying my house around on my back." A copper-haired serving wench came over, bending down to make a few token wipes at their table with a rag of dubious cleanliness. She looked up in time to catch Tad enjoying a peek down the front of her blouse. She smiled at the embarrassed mage. "See anything you like, sir?" she asked sweetly. Jake saved the flustered mage from having to formulate a reply. "What types of ales do you serve here, oh Sultana of the serving board?" The serving wench blushed and became a bit flustered herself. "Well milord, we have both kinds. Phudd ale, and Duph ale." Tad wasn't sure, but he could have sworn he saw Jake wince a bit. "Bring us two of the kind that you like," Jake instructed her. The woman bobbed her knees in a half curtsey, and took off to fill their order. "Well, she seems impressed with you," Tad commented somewhat jealously. "Yeah, but she thinks that you're cute." Jake told him. "Really?" Tad asked, craning his neck for another look at her. Jake just grinned. The serving wench returned with two foaming tankards, leaning over Tad's shoulder to set them on the table. Tad's heart raced as he felt her breast press softly against his back for a moment. Jake handed her a silver piece. "My buddy Tad here says that you can keep the change." The young woman smiled at Tad and winked. "My name is Lyssa if you need anything else, milords." "I will remember that," Tad promised her solemnly. Lyssa laughed and ruffled his silver hair affectionately before moving away to take care of her other tables. "I think that I am in love." Tad told Jake. He took a mighty pull at his tankard. Jake took a cautious pull at his own. He made a face. "Well, I guess a Thomas Hardy was too much to hope for," the outlander said wryly. "What's a 'Thomas Hardy'?" Tad asked as he took another deep drink. "Never mind. Say, you've got a moustache there, Romeo." "Who's Romeo?" Tad wanted to know as he wiped at his upper lip. "Tad, I brought you here so that you could answer some of my questions; not so that I could spend my time explaining the concepts of quality outland ales and literature." "Yeah, yeah." Tad was more interested in Lyssa and what she was doing than he was in his new friend's questions. "Fire away, my outland friend." "Well, this isn't important, but just out of curiosity, why is your hair that color? It looks a bit . . . odd on someone of your age." Tad was normally a bit sensitive about his hair. Tonight, his spirits were sky-high and nothing was going to bother him. He felt like a giant. "Years ago, before I came to Generica, I was apprenticed to an old wizard back in the village. He was ancient. I mean a real fossil. He insisted on teaching us at a set pace no matter how intelligent or talented we happened to be." "Wait a minute," Jake interrupted. "You said 'us' and 'we'. "I was apprenticed along with my friend Kaempi," Tad told him. "KMP?" Jake asked doubtfully. "No. Kaempi," Tad repeated impatiently. "Anyway, I was doing a little 'free-lance advanced studying' in the old fossil's spellbook one night. I was making a decent amount of progress, when Kaempi bursts into the hut right in the middle of my attempt to cast a Prismatic Sequencer spell. I lost control of it, and you can see the results. My master claimed that he was unable to reverse the spell, but I think he just wanted to teach me a lesson. I'm used to it now. I kind of like it, actually." "It . . . er, makes you look distinguished, Jake told him. "Yeah?" Tad preened a little bit. "I've been told that before." Jake quickly put his tankard to his mouth. Tad noticed his own was empty. "Say, how about another round?" "Sure." Jake flipped him a silver piece. "You pay this time. Two hours later Tad was having the time of his life. Never before had he realized how witty and charming he was capable of being. His new friend Jake seemed amazed and entertained at even the most mundane of his stories. Lyssa seemed to make excuses to keep coming back to their table. "Let's have one more." he suggested to Jake. "Well Tad, I'd like to but . . ." Jake made an exaggerated show of checking the interior of his coin pouch. Tad could have sworn it had been full a moment earlier. He squinted at the suspicious pouch. For some reason, he couldn't seem to focus his eyes on it. "I think all this smoke is starting to affect my eyes," he announced solemnly. "Something is, that's for sure," Jake agreed. Just then, Tad's keen hearing picked up the sounds of a struggle. Lyssa was being manhandled by a burly longshoreman at the bar. The unshaven lout had an arm around her shoulders and kept trying to put his hand down the front of her blouse. Lyssa fought to get away, but she was no match for the dockworker's strength. "Hey!" Tad shouted in a commanding voice. All conversation in the tavern ceased. All eyes turned towards the young mage. "Let her go! Tad ordered. Out of the corner of his eye, Tad noticed that Jake had his head buried in his hands. Maybe he had a hangover. The burly longshoreman stood up, releasing Lyssa as he did so. "Are you talking to me, little guy?" "Yeah." Tad had never felt so confident. "Let the girl go!" he repeated, not noticing that the man had already complied. "Why should I listen to a little Cha-head like you?" the dockworker demanded. Tad began the mental exercises necessary to formulate an Arcane Bolt spell, sometimes known as the Magic Missile. For some reason, it was more difficult than usual. Then he got it together. "I feel honor-bound to warn you that I am a Mage," he told the big man ominously, "capable of killing you with a word." For some reason the dockworker was unimpressed. Maybe he was intoxicated. "Oh yeah?" the man countered, "I feel honor-bound to warn you that I am the man who is about to stomp your guts into the floorboards." The muscular lout balled one huge hand into a fist and stepped forward. "You asked for it," Tad told him sorrowfully. He extended his right arm in a grandiose gesture. Five bolts of magical death flashed from his outstretched fingers. The long- shoreman yelped in fear as the arcane bolts streaked unstoppably towards him . . .and passed by harmlessly. They impacted against the wall of the tavern thirty feet behind him. Jake was impressed in spite of himself. "I've never seen one of those miss before," he said to no one in par- ticular. Tad looked at his outstretched hand blearily, as if it had betrayed him. The longshoreman saw his opportunity and stepped forward with a vicious uppercut. Tad's teeth clicked together loudly as his head snapped back. He stumbled backwards and kept going, toppling like a hundred year-old oak. He hit the floor with a considerable thud. The longshoreman grinned at his buddies before turning back to Tad. He drew his foot back for a brutal kick. "That's enough!" Jake Shade ordered, all signs of his former good mood gone. The burly dock worker turned towards the outlander belligerently. "I suppose you're a wizard too!" he sneered as two of his friends came up behind him. They stared at Shade over Tad's unconscious body, cracking their knuckles suggestively. Shade stood up leisurely, reaching over to pick up an iron poker from beside the fireplace. "No weapons!" the bartender shouted frantically from the back of the room. Shade held the poker out in front of him with both hands. The muscles in his thick forearms stood out like ropes as the iron began to creak. Straining slightly, he bent the poker into a 'U' . Then he turned it over and bent it once more, twisting it into a vaguely snake-like form. It clanged on the floor as he tossed it in front of the three dockworkers. "I am the wizard of twisting things into new and unusual shapes. Would you like me to demonstrate on you?" The three dockworkers looked at the twisted poker, then at each other. One of them took his knit cap off. "That won't be necessary sir," the leader said politely. They filed out of the tavern quietly. The rest of the Red Lady's patrons looked at Shade with superstitious awe. He ignored them, and bent over to pick up Tad. He slung the unconscious mage over his shoulder. With his free hand, he dug a gold coin out of a belt pouch. He tossed it to the bartender. "Sorry about the poker," he said and headed for the door. Lyssa was standing between him and the exit, eyes shining, copper hair lustrous in the firelight. "My hero," she said in a breathy voice, coming towards him with outstretched arms. "Hell lady, it was nothing," Shade told her. "Not you. Him." Lyssa said, planting a passionate kiss on the unconscious Tad's cheek. Shade muttered something unprintable, momentarily tempted to drop his burden. He exited the tavern, careful not to bump Tad's head on the door jamb as he left. Once out on the night streets of Generica, he turned in a circle until he got his bearings. He shifted Tad's limp form into a more comfortable position and set off in the direction of the Academy. "I hope you're not planning on making a habit of this," he told the unconscious mage as they left the Red Lady behind. ***************************************************** Tadmaster the mage and the 'Wizard of bending things into new and unusual shapes' are copyrights of Jeff A. Simon, 1995. All rights reserved. The reprinting of this story for profit is forbidden without the express permission of the author. Jake Shade would like to thank the mage Kaempi for helpful suggestions, along with Steve Hutchison, who has been an able guide. ***************************************************** -- The opinions expressed in this message are mine alone. This message does not necessarily reflect the positions or opinions of my company or organization.