Free Travellers' Rest by James Enge

The awkwardly made maker and his dwarvish apprentice were passing through trackless green fields peppered with large, slow-moving shell-backed beasts. Ahead, scattered around the junction of two roads that met in the shadow of the nearby hills, were some ragged brick buildings. The town, if that’s what it was, looked worn, weather-bitten, barely populated.
    The apprentice—a gray-faced, brown-bearded, dark-eyed dwarf named Wyrth—said, “Master Morlock, let’s go on to the next town.”
    “No.”
    “Morlock, those beetles are taller than I am. Imagine what the bedbugs are like! Next town, please.”
    “I believe these are cattle. Note the udder on that one.”
    “I have better things to do than look at the private parts of cows! Um. If that’s an udder, there’s another one sprouting from the beast’s other side. Are you sure they’re cows?”
    “No. They seem to be chewing cuds, though. If you can bring yourself to look.”
    “You may practice your wit on me as you like, Master Morlock. It needs the practice, as God Sustainer knows. I still vote for the next town.”
    Since voting had nothing to do with the matter, Morlock proceeded with his loping irregular stride toward the buildings clustered at the town’s center. His lack of reply was all the reply necessary: Wyrth was free to continue to the next town if he liked, but Morlock was stopping here.
    “For the conversation, probably,” Wyrth speculated at Morlock’s crooked shoulders and followed him into town.
    Two roads met at the town’s center, where there was a fairly large hostel several stories high. But the facade was in poor repair, and the road running westward to the sea was ill tended and untravelled, carpeted with brown weeds. The road running north toward the hills was in a slightly different condition: the weeds carpeting it were more of a reddish gray.
    “Next town,” Wyrth muttered rebelliously, but followed Morlock through the broad open door of the hostelry into the shadows within.
    One of those shadows was snoring behind a counter. Morlock rapped a knuckle on the counter and the shadow jumped like a startled rabbit and, rubbing its eyes, said in a professionally suave voice, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Your pardon! Welcome to Travellers’ Rest at Boulostreion! What can we do to assuage the weariness of the long roads you have travelled to reach us?”
    “Couple rooms,” Morlock said. “Lunch.”
    “Lunch. Yes. Lunch. Let’s see. Right now it’s about—”
    “Noon.”
    “Noon. Not really? I’ve slept the morning away. I hope my good wife and daughters have not done the same. I mean—daughter. Never mind. One moment while I check. Before I go, may I ask how long you’ll be staying with us?”
    Morlock opened his hands and shrugged. When the hosteller realized that was all the response he was going to get, he shrugged himself and hurried off.
    “If there is cooking going on in this establishment,” Wyrth remarked, “then I’m one of those cow-beetles back there. I didn’t even see a thread of smoke from the chimneys as we approached.”
    “They don’t see as many travellers as they once did; that’s clear,” Morlock replied.
    “Maybe travellers know something that we don’t and tend to travel a little further down the road? To the next town perhaps?”
    Morlock travelled a little further into the hostelry, where there were many tables and benches set up in a roomy (if somewhat dim) dining hall. The benches, tables, and floor were all scrupulously clean, as far as Wyrth could tell. He was about to comment on it when Morlock gestured at something moving in the shadows nearby. It was some sort of insect fringed with dozens of feathery tendrils; it spun endlessly across the shadowy floor.
    “Does it eat the dust?” Morlock wondered. “Or just pick it up to deposit elsewhere?”
    “What else does it eat besides dust?” Wyrth countered. “How will you feel when you find one crawling up your thigh in the middle of