Melody Tiamat
The Dragon's Bard - Book 1
Rift
Nightingale sank down on the bed without even bothering to take off his boots. It had been a glorious evening and even longer than usual; he’d sung himself almost hoarse and played until his hands cramped to enthusiastic patrons. Two rival inns had sent emissaries to try and tempt him to their common rooms. It was heady stuff to a lad who, less than a week ago, had been waiting tables with no real hope of anything else in the future. He was fed, happy, wanted; the innkeeper treated him like royalty and the maids like he was a god or something. It felt like a dream, he thought, and fell asleep with a slight smile on his face.
His happy dreams turned awry when a rag was stuffed roughly in his mouth and he woke to a confusion of flickering shadows that seized his arms and roped his wrists together behind his back. He could hear Figment squawking and see another shadow hauling a struggling sack out of the window, then the bandit from a few days prior loomed up above him.
Khristu knew he had to get the bard out of the room quickly before whatever it was that was making such a racket in that sack woke the entire town. Once they’d cleared the town he would find out what was in there if he had to run it through with his sword, he vowed.
"Grab his instrument," he instructed one of the other men with him then turned to the bard again. This time he was taking no chances and the evil-smelling potion in the vial he was unscrewing would ensure the bard’s silent removal. He poured it onto a scrap of rag and clapped the rag over the youth’s nose as the boy wriggled and kicked. Nightingale couldn’t speak with the rag in his mouth but that didn’t stop him from trying to yell. Due to the strenuous use he’d given his voice earlier in the day nothing of any real volume came out but between that and Figment’s squawks the bard could hear the inn’s other patrons starting to stir. Then a rag was pressed over his nose; the fumes from whatever was on it made his head spin like a top, distorting everything his senses were trying to tell him before dragging him down to blackness.
