A young man dressed all in blue pushed his way into Slab's Tavern. He had the thin good looks and light brown hair of a native Zelloquan, I saw, and his robes were of good material, well cut.
Glancing around, he swallowed nervously, then started for my table. As he neared I looked him over. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, I thought, and nobody that young had much business here.
My tavern catered to the most bloodthirsty of clientele. Slab's had a certain reputation (well nurtured over the years) of being the toughest, roughest bar in all of Zelloque. I ought to know: I'd spread many of those rumors myself. When I took a quick glance around the main serving room, I saw pirates talking angrily in one corner, slavers throwing dice in another, and all manner of cutthroats bellied up to the bar for wine.
They didn't seem to discourage the boy, though. Ignoring all else, he slid into the seat opposite mine.
"Ulander Rasym, I presume?" he said.
"Perhaps." I studied him: pale lips, a paler complexion, the watery eyes of someone who read too much. Indeed, far from my normal run of customers. Something extraordinary had to have brought him here. I demanded, "Who are you?"
"My name is Vriss Arantine. I'm one of Pondrane's students. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"He's a wizard. So? What do you want?"
"Your tavern has ghosts."
"Of course. Everyone knows that." It was true: among the various magical happenings in Slab's over the years, ghosts often appeared. They were patrons who had died, mostly. And there was a table where chilled wine tasted like warm blood, and a spot (which moved around from night to night) where, if you stepped too close, monsters sometimes appeared.
"Good," Vriss said. "I had to make sure. I need to study them."
"What?"
"Yes." He nodded. "I'm writing a book called Manifestations of the Dead. It will prove conclusively that ghosts are no more than mental projections of latent magical talents."
He said it with such sincerity that I was left speechless for a moment ... a very rare occurrance, I assure you. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one who'd heard that preposterous statement. Slowly, behind the boy's back, a luminous white mist had begun to gather.
Ignoring the ghost, I said, "So what do you want?"
"I need permission to sit at a table in the back of your tavern for a month. To watch for such phenomena, of course."
The mist grew thicker, began to swirl up into a human form. "What do I care," I said, watching it, "so long as you pay for your wine?"
"Ah," he said eagerly, "you have put your finger on precisely the problem. I have developed a rigid scientific method for studying such phenomena--"
"Ghosts, you mean."
"--and I can't drink anything but water while I'm here, since it might cloud my judgment."
The luminous fog coalesced into a short, broad man in a flowing cape. I recognized him at once: Slab Vethiq himself, my tavern's founder and former owner, whom I'd served for twenty-odd years. After his untimely death I'd taken over his establishment and run it myself. Even dead, though, Slab wouldn't surrender his property. He had a tendency to show up at the most inopportune times to try to run things ... like now, when I was about to have this would-be scholar thrown out.
I just sighed. Such were the problems of owning a haunted tavern.
Slab nodded to me and winked knowingly. "Let him stay," he said in a way only I could hear. "He amuses me."
"But--"
Slab shook his head in warning. Then he was gone.
)
