Evenings in Yartar

Holder plopped down on the bed and sighed. The bed gave out a sigh of its own, and the rats under it pattered around squealing in fear of being crushed by its weight. At this point, he wasn’t sure there was a single hovel-inn he and his mother hadn’t lived out of in all of Faerun. And this one was by far the worst.

He flipped through the guidebook of Yartar that his mother had left him. “What’s the point of a guidebook if I can’t go out?” He had used to love the guides she brought him, but the disappointment of not celebrating his eighteenth birthday weighed on him like heavy bags of manure. They had been traveling from Longsaddle, as always a sudden affair due to his mother’s mercenary work. Holder had felt especially resistant because he had to give up a comfortable job as a farmhand, and the added fact that his mother apparently forgot his birthday tipped him over into an unprecedentedly foul mood.

“I hate movin' around like this. Next time I’m not gonna have it. I’m eighteen.” A rumbling in his stomach, sending more creaks through the bed, interrupted his griping. He resolved to go downstairs and eat something.

The common area of the inn featured a tavern which, while dirty, served wonderfully cheap seafood. Holder found the shalass stew the most appealing, but settled for a simple meal of unspiced eel and a mug of gulletfire, paying with the patinated copper pieces he had earned building barges that day. He didn’t dwell on the complicated look the innkeep gave when bringing his plate-- as gnomes were uncommon in most towns, it was nothing new. After his meal, he bathed in the public bathhouse, staring longingly at the soap that cost an exorbitant fee to use. His mother had still not returned, but this wasn’t anything unusual; he had long since gotten used to spending most days alone. He went to sleep with only the rats for company.

The next day, his mother was gone again-- either having already left or never returned at all. Holder’s eyes stopped on her side of the room. It looked like the latter. After forcing down a breakfast of stale bread, Holder headed across town for yet another day of work at the docks. Today he took a detour through the Fishyard, admiring all the jeweled accessories and fresh-caught shalass he couldn’t possibly afford. Despite the cold, the market was bustling, and he came dangerously close to being trampled a few times, but the little bit of sightseeing cleared some of the dark clouds in his mind. He arrived at the docks refreshed and ready, and jumped right into cutting wood to the delight of his employer.

Absorbed in his work, he found himself listening to a conversation between two fishermen, walking down the dock:

“Ya heard about Mythrite? Iss down Southeast I think it was, by the Greypeaks. They callin’ it a boomtown.”

“You don’t say? What, they found gold or somethin down there?”

“Mithral. Whole load of it. Heard iss not too late ta strike it big. I’da go myself but I got m’wife an boy, see.”

“I know what you mean. I think I’m more suited to these here waters. Dangerous ’s Yartar may be, it’s my home.” The men boarded a boat and sailed off, leaving Holder once more among the regular chatter of the dock workers.

“Mythrite, huh.”

*

That evening, Holder decided to stay up and wait for his mother. While waiting, he read the inns section of his Yartar guidebook, imagining what it would be like to live in one of the three or four star ones. Or even better, to have a real home, and enough money that he could throw some away on knick-knacks at the Fishyard. That fantasy had been growing stronger with each successive move, harder and harder to ignore. He would suggest to his mother that they travel to Mythrite.

Drowsiness had begun to tug on his eyelids when the door flew open. He saw the face of his mother, a face covered by a cloth mask and hood, eyes wild. The whole room shook with the force, despite her diminutive stature, squeaks echoing back. “Get your stuff.” Then, under her breath, “that bastard inkeep…”

Thrown off a bit by her panic, Holder regained his composure.

“Why, ma? Can’t we just stay in one place for once?”

“You don’t get it. We need to GO.” She started throwing Holder’s books and rusty knife from the table into a satchel.

“Not ‘til you explain. I’m sick of this. All of this.”

His mother paused for a second. “I know, honey. I’m sorry--” A throwing knife flew by, cutting her off. Blood trickled from her shoulder.

“Dawna Callough. Thief. Surrender the stolen goods.” Two women appeared in the doorway, fully clad in black. Humans.

“Shit. They’re here.” She tossed Holder the satchel and pushed him towards the window, drawing a dagger of her own. But as he stumbled out the window, Holder watched another throwing knife fly through her index, middle, and ring fingers, removing them from her right hand with perfect accuracy. Holder felt himself falling at the same speed as his mother’s dagger, and landed with a thud, the impact broken by a pile of rotting eels. His mother landed catlike next to him as he scrambled to his feet. He finally grasped the gravity of the situation.

The two of them fled through the midnight city. The stamina Holder had gained laboring helped him keep up with his mother, though at some points he was afraid he might lose her. No doubt the pain of her lost fingers was also slowing her down, but they somehow managed to cross the River Dessarin and reach the hills to its south, where they stopped to rest. It was nearly daybreak when they spoke again.

“I heard about a town called Mythrite,” said Holder. “I think I wanna go there and start a life.” There were many other things he wanted to say, but his thoughts were too jumbled and his body too tired. The stench of eel still plagued his nose.

“Okay,” sighed his mother.

They resolved to take the caravan together, surviving off a bulging pouch of silver that Holder didn’t have the heart to ask about.