Suffering from the inability to become inebriated has left Riposte Clasicant more cantankerous than usual. The body count is rising, and Pertuli isn't the only one who wonders if Rip's condition is more serious than an unusual curse; with dire resul...
"I'm told this Tyella is a great beauty," I coaxed. "Anyone particularly enamored of her?"
"Oh, aye," my dwarven informant chuckled, taking the last gold scale and adding it to the little towers he was building on his side of the table. Two-thirds of his greasy beard was braided with white, yet he looked as merry and rosy-cheeked as a child playing with blocks. "Who wasn't? Never went for that sort myself, no offense—I like a woman with meat on her bones and curl to her beard... but it can't be denied this Tyella, Daughter of Ovaren, single-handedly started a revival among the 'tionals."
"Shunnels?" I asked, wondering if the dwarf's rambling stories would help or hurt my search. He had information, but cutting through the meat for the bones was difficult.
"Y'know ... painters, poets, princes. Emotional types. All throwing themselves at her feet. Heh heh. There was a church, even," he chuckled, "though that was short lived. Silly tallfolk."
"A church to Tyella?" I asked, impressed. She had seemed like a snooty bitch in my one brief encounter with her a hundred years ago, but didn't take her for having a goddess complex.
"Naw, no, not to her... to her ideal beauty, or some such confounded thing," he said. He looked up from his stacks of money long enough to drain his ale, then went back to straightening his little stacks. "So-called priests argued for weeks in their forums on the precise language of it. All hogwash, if ya ask me. A true deity spends days chopping goblin heads with an axe of truesteel, not worrying about perfumes and glamours."
"Where?" I asked
"Hey Miss Ivy 'of No Particular House, Daughter of None' " he said, ignoring the question, "you sure know the way to an old dwarf's heart: fistfuls of gold to stack and fine ale to keep my tongue wet while it's wagging." He smacked his lips and peered longingly at his now empty mug.
I rolled my eyes, and signaled to the house wench. "Another ale for Master Grimoldine Kezmor," I called to her.
"Goodly lass," the elderly dwarf crooned. "Ye really are a DURMAKaza."
"The church, Kezmore," I snapped, growing impatient. "What was it called, and where was it?"
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A quarter bell later, I was squinting through the suns' blazing glare at a moderately large edifice on the west side of Temple Row, its weathered facade staring back at me like an old skull. The remains of sky blue paint and weather worn sculpted figures wreathed the building's roofline like a sparse hair, and though it wasn't in disrepair, exactly, its current owner clearly didn't maintain it the way it once was. A sign board over the time-worn entryway depicted a woman with long dark hair, outspread arms, and the seal of the Lodgings Guild floating over her head.
I stepped in to find an open lobby mostly occupied by clusters of people speaking quietly or eating together. Women were moving from group to group, entertaining their guests with light conversation, directing servants or taking orders for more food and drink. A circle of desk fortified a small area in the middle of the room, where an older woman in the robes of a priestess marshaled her forces. Despite icons and the trappings of religion adorning the walls, it all felt like an inn of some kind.
