Page 8 of Potions & Pints
“Absolutely not,” he replied. “Sunfall’s not much better than Gamlin Ait for me.”
A wave of guilt came rushing into his heart at that comment but he wasn’t about to go rushing back to Sunfall to ease it. There’d been too much damage done, he decided, surreptitiously fingering the moonstone still in his pocket.
“Then Gamlin Ait it is!” Vir cried, back to his enthusiastic self. “Anyway, I’ve already booked a spot on the ship as a crewmate, and it would be rude to let them down. I hear they’re still looking for people, though. Why don’t you come with me?”
The idea appeared to excite the orc and, despite himself, Tan was slightly flattered at the invitation.
“Yes!” Vir continued getting swept up in his own farfetched plans. “We’ll go to Gamlin Ait together! Since you know all about the dangers there, you’ll be the perfect companion!”
But Tan was frowning again. Yes, he did know all about the dangers there — that’s exactly why he had no desire to go. He’d be happier staying in Lurg, even if it did mean spending his days pulling ales and watching goblins crunch their bones.
“Sorry, but that’s definitely not happening,” Tan responded, shaking his head in the face of Vir’s excited planning. “If you want to drown in the Heaving Sea, be my guest. I’ll be staying here, thank you very much.”
5
As it turned out, pulling ales wasn’t such a terrible fate after all, especially once Tan started getting good at it.
“One delicious stout coming right up!” he called, sending a glass careening down the bar. Luckily the goblins were agile enough to catch them, otherwise Tan got the distinct feeling he’d be at the receiving end of a talking-to from Cionus.
But the satyr seemed pleased with his work — Tan recognized he and Vir had taken a risk on him and, despite his initial reluctance to take up the job, he was truly grateful for the help. He was glad he was doing something right, even if it was just serving up drinks. Tan reasoned that if he poured enough of them, he might start chipping away at some of the less wholesome of his recent actions. At least where his own conscience was concerned.
However, he was starting to think it might be something of a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ kind of situation. While he’d mastered the art of pulling beers, the cocktails were proving to be a little more troublesome.
Customers constantly complained that they tasted strange or wrong, or just plain bad and he didn’t know how to fix it. They all tasted fine to him. It was doing his head in.
An answer came for that too though, in a most unlikely package.
“Bitter for goblins, sour for orcs, sweet for elves, herbal for satyrs and centaurs,” came a voice from the far end of the Trout Trap one night as Tan had to remake yet another poorly received cocktail.
“What?” Tan asked, trying to find the owner of the voice. He peered through the dim light of the tavern in the direction of the comment. It turned out to be a dark-haired elf to whom he’d served an ale earlier.
“That’s why your cocktails aren’t going over well — you’re not accounting for the tastes of different races,” the man replied matter-of-factly before taking another sip. “Here.”
At this he handed over a few sheafs of paper, and as Tan flipped through them he realized they were cocktail recipes. Each one was categorized according to who they’d best serve.
Tan looked at the man curiously and suddenly recognized him.
“Hey, aren’t you the Assistant Librarian?” he asked, confused.
The man grinned, a little hint of mischief in his eye. “The very same.”
“And you’re helping me…why? I thought the Librarian hated me,” Tan countered, raising an eyebrow.
The elf just laughed. “That’s exactly why. The old man gets on my nerves — I don’t mind getting on his from time to time. Besides, being surrounded by books all day is only interesting if you get to use the information somewhere.”
He flashed another smile and finished up the remains of his ale. “Now I’ll take a Rulian Tangle, if you don’t mind.”
“A what?” Tan asked.
The assistant just nodded to the paper in Tan’s hands.
“Oh, right.”
It didn’t take Tan long to learn each recipe by heart and after a few days of compliments and return customers, he was almost beginning to like being a bartender. The pay was decent, the customers friendly, and there was never a lack of entertainment.
Every night Vir would perform, pulling out poems, songs and stories to titillate the crowd. It seemed he was becoming a favorite with the patrons too, and after a while Tan didn’t know if people were coming back night after night for his cocktails or Vir’s show. He found he didn’t care. In fact, he almost hoped it was for the bard — the profession was clearly Vir’s passion, whereas Tan was just tending bar because there was nothing better on.
“This evening,” announced Vir one night. “I’ll be telling a tale of Lothian — the great water elf warrior who was said to have taken over the kingdom of the giants and banished them to Petrea. We begin in an elven settlement, deep within the waters of the Bay of Dathriel. The seafronds glisten in the filtered blue sunlight, the currents softly caress the walls of the elven palace. But inside, all is not calm…”
