Reslyn Keiser
| Also known as | Lady o' the Avonbourn |
|---|---|
| Species | Eslurian |
| Home | The Avonbourn, the Kella Desert |
| Status | Arrested by the Nelazgians |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Reslyn Keiser keeps the Avonbourn, the tavern and inn at the edge of the Kella Desert, and introduces herself as "Reslyn Keiser, Lady o' the Avonbourn".[1] She brews the house Oakenale, throws drunks off her tables, and is the reason Aero Ellisvat calls the place his second home.[2][1] She was arrested by the Nelazgians between the first and second novels for refusing to serve one of them.[3]
Appearance
Reslyn is an older woman with wiry, silvery hair and a mole on her cheek that dances up and down when she raises her voice.[2][1] Her teeth are discoloured and uneven, and there are fewer of them by the time she is last seen.[1][4] Her nose is crooked, her hands are callused, and the one she offered Reagan Hideaway across the bar was big enough to swallow Reagan's.[1][4] She wobbles on the steps of her own tavern.[4]
She speaks in a heavy burr, dropping her aitches and her ends of words: ale is a thing ye can wait fer, and the customers are pigs and mutts and scum.[1][4]
Personality
Reslyn runs a bar full of drunk bears, wolves and worse by sheer presence. Her method for a brawl on a tabletop is to lean over the counter, snap her fingers and offer the brawlers a choice: "Bum in the seat or bum in the street, yer choice." They sat down.[2] She threw a dishcloth in a bear's face for calling her by her surname, and told another to shut his mouth and get back inside without breaking off a goodbye.[1][4]
She complains constantly that she is leaving, and does not. Aero's summary is that she has been promising herself relief from the place for years and will burn down with it, which made her cackle.[1] Pressed on whether she would be all right alone, she waved it off: "dontcha worry about meh. I'll be all right here on me own."[4]
The bark is a service she provides. She refuses Aero's coin and pushes it back across the bar, and she is the one who kneels next to a girl covered in her own vomit and a dead crocodilian's blood and says help is on the way.[2][1] Told she had been a great help, she cut the thanks off with "Oh, dearie, please stop that right this instant."[4]
Background
Little is recorded of Reslyn's life before the tavern. She has kept the Avonbourn long enough that Aero has been coming to it since he was young, and she has dealt with, by her own account, all sorts of mutts for years.[2][4] She knew Elmryn and Reagan's mother well enough to have kept a photograph of the pair with their baby, and to recognise the Eyearke Stone on sight when it turned up round the daughter's neck.[1]
Story
The Heart of the Kella
Aero arrived late at night, blood on his shirt, and Reslyn had the Oakenale poured before he asked. She pushed his bronze presps back across the bar, told him the brew was the best he had ever tasted only by letting him say it, and sent him upstairs to see Noran Daharshi himself rather than answer how she was.[2]
Noran had been living in the last room on the right for five moons, blind and unable to leave her bed. It was Reslyn who prepared the pytocane she drank that night.[2] When Aero came back down, her manner had dropped to short answers spat through gritted teeth. He unsheathed the Viper, laid it on the bar and walked out. Reslyn shouted after him and held the sword out over the counter, and then kept it: she hung it on the wall behind the bar under a golden placard, because she "wouldn't dare leave it ta rust in the back".[2][1]
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Aero came back with Reagan Hideaway and Tab. Reslyn clamped him on the shoulder, poured three jugs of Oakenale for a single silver yerling and put the party in the last two rooms she had, knocking and listening at the door before opening it.[1]
That night a grappling hook came through an upstairs window. Reslyn ran in behind Aero to find broken glass over the floor, a dead crocodilian, Tab poisoned with rhinespire and Reagan on her knees. She called for a cooling rag, knelt beside Reagan and stayed with her.[1] Then she saw the Eyearke Stone stuck to the blood on Reagan's shirt, bent down for a closer look and took her along the hall to her own room, the last door, which she keeps locked.[1]
Inside she lit a fire, opened her desk drawer and handed Reagan a photograph. The two adults in it would have been Reagan's mother and father had Obellius Kalaar not got his claws on them, and the baby was Reagan.[1] Tab objected that Rulers are forbidden relations and that Elmryn would be no exception; Reslyn agreed she wished it were not true.[1] Tab threw the photograph into the fire, and Reslyn told Reagan it would be all right.[1]
In the morning she led them out the back to their mounts, gave Aero the Viper back with a wink and said she had an old drovig's horn that would do fine above the bar instead. She sent them off with all her luck, broke the moment to shout a bear back indoors, and went back up the steps and through the door yelling at somebody to get off the table.[4]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Aero, Reagan and Tab came back to a tavern in uproar and a stranger behind the bar. Asked where Reslyn was, the new bartender said she had never met the woman: "She's gone. Arrested." She had refused service to a high-ranking Nelazgian, and prisoners were reportedly being taken to Zybersia.[3] The party did not get to look for her. Erwin was drinking at that bar, Aero went for him, and a Rewakan gorilla of the Gangs of Varaar carried Aero and Reagan off to the Varaar Colosseum.[3]
Later, on learning that the Nelazgian tunnels all run to the Sacred City, Aero guessed that was where they were holding her.[5] She has not been found by the end of the second novel, and her fate is not established.[5]
Relationships
Aero Ellisvat calls the Avonbourn his second home and Reslyn will not take his money for a drink. She kept the Viper on her wall for him for years and gave it back without being asked twice, and she is the person he trusted to keep Noran Daharshi safe when Varaar was not.[2][4]
Noran Daharshi lived upstairs at the Avonbourn for her last five moons, behind a door with a sign reading Occupied. Reslyn housed her, kept her whereabouts quiet and prepared the pytocane that ended her suffering.[2]
Reagan Hideaway was told who her parents were by Reslyn, and given the only picture of them she will ever see.[1]
Tabitha Glowdish is unsentimental about her: she called the Avonbourn a dump and suspected Reslyn got all kinds of folks in it, then burned the photograph without a moment's thought.[1]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels and the cast list at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection give the name as Rez-lyn Kai-zer.[6][7]
M.C. Beeler's afterword to the Collection names Reslyn among the characters who have been with her for a while.[8]
See also
- The Avonbourn
- Aero Ellisvat
- The Viper
- The Heart of the Kella (short story)
- Reagan Hideaway
- The Kella Desert
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Collection, "The Heart of the Kella".
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Book 2, Ch. 8.
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 Book 1, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Book 2, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 1.
- ↑ Collection.
- ↑ Collection, "The Way Shadows Live".