The day after the end of the world is never a pretty sight, I thought, as I stood in the doorway of my tavern and surveyed the damage.
The broken tables and chairs, the shattered glass where shelves of beer mugs had fallen, the gaping holes overhead where sections of the roof had blown away ... I had never seen such a mess, not even after the wildest of parties. Worse yet, the room stank--not only with the cloying sweetness of wine gone sour, but the ranker odors of decaying cloth and wood. In the space of a week, rain and flood had ruined ten thousand gold royals' worth of rugs and tapestries.
I almost sobbed at the loss. That I, Ulander Rasym, craftiest of all tavern-keepers in Zelloque, should be reduced to such a sorry state! It was almost more than I could bear.
"Slab?" a low voice rumbled behind me.
I took another quick glance around the tavern, but saw no sign of Slab Vethiq, former owner of Slab's, whose spirit had haunted the place longer than I cared to remember. Good, I thought. Slab had made a habit of interfering in my affairs. Being dead hadn't slowed him down one whit.
"He's gone, too," I said.
The front door creaked as, with one finger, I pushed it open. Suddenly its hinges gave way and it fell with a whoof of displaced air.
Lur, my seven-foot-tall bodyguard, with muscles to match and the sense of a good sheepdog, rumbled unhappily behind me.
I just stepped over the door and took another look at the damage, slower this time, lingering on all the little details, the warped floorboards, the stained plaster, the dirt and debris littering every surface. Underfoot, the residue of spilt wine made sucking noises and pulled at my feet. A deep ache grew in my chest; the shock of it all made breathing difficult.
I tried to convince myself it wouldn't be a complete loss. The walls looked sound; they'd weathered the tornadoes and hurricane winds without a crack. And most of the roof seemed intact; a few tiles had blown away, and some thatch had fallen in, but it could all be fixed readily enough. The huge oak beam that served as bar hadn't shifted an inch.
Pressed hard, I could have opened for business in an hour. If I'd had a customer. If I'd had the men to work at cleaning up.
But there wasn't much chance of that now, not after the storm. It had been as though all the primal forces had risen up at once and crashed down on Zelloque, poor old city, once the greatest ever to rise on Earth--but now more ruins than anything else. Most of her people had fled, or died, or still hid in their holes, afraid to come out lest the storm-winds return.
Something odd struck me: on the end of the bar sat a single glass goblet. I would have sworn it hadn't been there a moment before. Something green bubbled inside it.
I took a step forward. A bottle stood next to the goblet, and suddenly an ethereal hand raised it to pour more of its weird green contents.
"Slab," I said.
And suddenly he sat there, perched on the edge of the huge oak beam, looking smug in his immaculate green silk shirt, white silk pantaloons, and shiny sealskin boots. A gold earring dangled from his left ear, and the tattoos of monsters and naked women on his hands and arms seemed to dance to unheard rhythms. These were his best clothes. I knew; I'd buried him in them twenty years before.
"Slow day," he said.
"It's the end of the tavern," I wheezed. "It's the end of Zelloque."
He laughed, an awful sound that felt like fingernails dragging across slate. "Clean my place up."
"Why bother? No wine, no customers--"
"I'll take care of that." And then he was gone in the wink of an eye, bottle and goblet with him. I had an eerie feeling all over--as if I truly were alone. It was the first time I'd felt that way in Slab's Tavern since it came into my possession.
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