The Beggar's Past

by J B Drake

  “This isn’t—”

  “I don’t think she’s going anywhere, Mardaley,” Baern said, his brow furrowed. “What’s the harm?”

  As the Magister spoke, Mardaley turned to hold his dear friend in a pointed stare, and for a moment, the furrow in the Magister’s brow deepened, till at last, his eyes went wide as he recalled a private conversation within the Gardens.

  “Perhaps it’s best you return…” Baern began, turning to the chronodragon, but his words faded away under the weight of Anieszirel glare.

  “No,” the Kin-Slayer replied, her voice calm but her gaze fierce.

  “She not going anywhere, Mardaley,” Maline said at last. “And if it’s about Tip, she got a right to hear it, don’t she?”

  Mardaley turned to her, then turned to his friend as if for strength, but all Baern could do was wince and shrug. Then, sighing, the wizened storekeeper turned to the chronodragon.

  “You’re sure he’s not coming?” he asked.

  Anieszirel nodded, then smiled. “He’s salivating at the thought of all the presents he’s about to receive.”

  “What presents?” Maline frowned.

  “Told Tip he was getting presents for being good in his lessons,” Marshalla replied. “Only thing could think of to make him come and not ask too many questions.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “Yes,” Anieszirel added, “and I told him I’d go spy for him, so we’d better hurry up before I’m gone long enough for him to begin worrying.”

  “Very well,” Mardaley muttered, then turned to Marshalla.

  “It’s best you sit, Marsha.”

  Marshalla shook her head. “Happy standing.”

  “Sit, Marsha,” Maline said. “Come, sit by me.”

  Marshalla pouted in response, but did as Maline had asked.

  “I suppose I ought to sit as well,” Anieszirel said as she glided into a nearby chair.

  “Right,” Mardaley said as he swept his gaze across them all.

  Then, he began his tale.

  “I know who Tip is, who he truly is. And I know why he is the way he is.”

  “How did you come to know this?” Baern asked.

  Mardaley nodded to Marshalla. “Marsha told me all I needed to know.”

  At this, the others turned to stare at Marshalla.

  “Don’t look at me,”she said, “got no clue what he’s on about.”

  “Well, go on, then!” Anieszirel demanded, turning back to Mardaley. “Who is he?”

  The storekeeper took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

  “Tip’s true name,” he said, “is Terril Philpott.”

  “Philpott?” Baern exclaimed.

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” Anise added.

  “The Aldurn incident,” Baern replied.

  “Aldurn incident?” Anise frowned.

  “Yes, when the town became the Marsh.”

  “I remember the incident, Baern,” Anise replied, “but what does the name Philpott have to do with it? From my recollection, the incident was caused by a gnome arcanist. Flutter…something.”

  “Flutterfoot,” Mardaley said. “Agril Flutterfoot.”

  “Right.” Anise nodded, turning to Mardaley. “So, what does Philpott have to do with it?”

  “Agril Flutterfoot had a young woman in his employ at the time,” Baern added before Mardaley could draw breath. “A young human woman by the name of Therese Philpott. She was his head researcher.”

  Anise frowned. “Human?”

  Baern nodded.

  “But…the Aldurn incident was almost a hundred years ago.”

  Again, Baern nodded, except this time his eyes were on Mardaley. “Precisely.”

  “A hundred years or no,” Mardaley said, “the boy in there is Therese’s son.”

  “Mardaley,” Baern replied. “Therese was hum—”

  “No, Baern, listen. That boy bears more than a passing resemblance to Therese. You yourself said, when you first met him, that the resemblance was striking.”

  “Oh, come now, Mardaley.” Baern scoffed. “So what if there is a striking resemblance? That proves nothing. The fact remains Therese was human, and Tip is elven.”

  “Maybe Tip half-elf?” Maline offered.

  Mardaley shook his head at this, his gaze upon his old friend. “Baern, you need to look deeper at this, he—”

  “The boy in that room is not a hundred years old, Mardaley,” Anise interjected.

  “Do you know what Agril was researching in Aldurn?” Mardaley shot back.

  “Uhm…” Anise furrowed her brow in thought.

  “He was researching a perversion of the natural order.” Baern growled.

  “Aren’t most arcane researches a perversion of the natural order?” Anieszirel quipped.

  Baern shook his head. “Not like this. Agril was a genius, a true visionary, but a visionary with no moral fibre of any kind—”

  “My kind of gnome.”

  “ Anieszirel…” Mardaley sighed.

  “What? Oh, very well. Continue.”

  “Thank you,” he said before turning to face the others. “Like Baern said, Agril was nothing short of a genius, but a genius with no moral compass, and one day he got it into his head to research a way to bind a demonic entity’s etheric essence to a mortal.”

  “He…what?” Anieszirel said.

  Baern nodded. “Agril’s home city was laid to waste by a band of mages some decades before the Aldurn incident. He’d owed them money, lots of it, but essentially told them he had better things to do than pay. So, they decided to kill everyone he knew.”

  “Good gods,” Maline whispered.

  Mardaley sighed. “They weren’t the most honourable of mages by any means. He tried to stop them, of course, but the mages had an army of mercenaries, more than Agril and the town’s militia could handle. And when the mages had fought their way into the centre of the city, they opened a portal to the Netherworld and left, unleashing hordes of demons upon the city’s denizens.”

  “Good gods,” Anise whispered.

  “Yes.” Baern sighed. “Agril changed that day. He became obsessed with demons, and finding ways to contain and subjugate them. He thought it grossly unfair that a lesser demon with no armaments, enchantments or martial prowess could still decimate an unremarkable and untrained mortal without any effort, and sought ways to correct that imbalance.”

  “Then, one day he came upon this gem of an idea,” Mardaley continued. “He felt a demon’s advantage stemmed from their increased natural affinity with the arcane, and he thought if he could harness that affinity, turn it into a conduit to the arcane that a mortal of any race could harness, it would be more than enough to allow an ordinary mortal stand against a demon and survive.”

  “Wait, he was going to stick a demon in somebody?” Maline asked, her revulsion plain.

  Mardaley smiled. “No, not all of the demon, just the part that makes them wield magic so much more freely than mortals. Which means their consciousness is of no use in this.”

  “Hrm…” Anise muttered, her brow furrowed. “His idea has some merit.”

  “But hugely impractical,” Anieszirel replied, “if not impossible. A demon’s arcane affinity is part of their core being. It’s written into their etheric signature.”

  Mardaley nodded. “Precisely.”

  “Which is why,” Baern added, “he came up with the wonderful idea of augmenting a mortal’s etheric signature with a demon’s.”

  “What?” Anieszirel and Anise cried in unison.

  Baern nodded. “Precisely.”

  “You mean to tell me that crazy bastard thought it would be a good idea to play with one of the very building blocks of life itself?” Anieszirel demanded, mouth agape. “Truly?”

  As one, Baern and Mardaley nodded.

  “We tried to dissuade him, of course—” Mardaley began.

  “What do you mean, we?” Anise interjected.

  “Mardaley and I,” Baern r
eplied. “Agril was a friend of ours.”

  “Wait…” Anise frowned. “The Aldurn incident happened almost a hundred years ago, so what you’re speaking of would’ve had to have happened over a hundred years ago.”

  Baern frowned. “It did. Why?”

  “So…” Anise replied as she turned to Mardaley, “Mardaley was around back then?”

  Slowly, as one, all save Baern turned to stare at the elderly storekeeper.

  “Just how old are you, Mardaley?” Anise asked.

  “Oh, come now!” Baern exclaimed. “You speak as if Mardaley was born this old! He and I met in his youth!”

  “Youth?” Mardaley replied, raising a regal eyebrow.

  “Well, perhaps not youth,” Baern hastened to add, “but you had far fewer grey hairs back then.” As Mardaley smiled, Baern turned to Anise.

  “And besides,” Baern continued, “there are a thousand and one tales of humans who have learnt to dull, even stave off the ravages of time. How in the world is—”

  “How many of those tales involve a storekeeper, Baern?” Anise interrupted.

  “Nevermind that now,” Mardaley replied testily, “The point is, Agril was determined to see his research through, and I think he succeeded.”

  “What you speak of is impossible,” Anieszirel said. “You can’t change a creature’s etheric signature. Only the gods have such power.”

  “Agril had a history of achieving the impossible, Kin-Slayer,” Baern replied, “and this was something we felt best to monitor.”

  “So the Tower sent someone to monitor him?” Anise asked.

  “No.” Mardaley shook his head. “They saw it as the pipe-dream of a deluded genius, nothing more.”

  “But you thought otherwise.”

  Mardaley nodded. “Like Baern said, he had a history of achieving the impossible.”

  “So you sent Therese to spy on him,” Anieszirel said, shaking her head.

  Taking a deep breath, Mardaley stared at Baern before letting it out slowly.

  “Yes,” he said as he turned Anieszirel, then smiled. “She was the perfect spy. A brilliant arcane mind, and quite capable.”

  “So, what happened?” Maline asked.

  Mardaley shrugged. “She turned.”

  “What you mean?”

  “In time, she came to believe Agril,” Baern replied, “and began to aid him fully.”

  “Yes,” Mardaley sighed. “She kept in touch for a time, but that didn’t last. Her last missive was of her telling us her son would be the first to be enhanced.”

  “What in the hells?” Anise exclaimed.

  “You sent her in there with a child?” Anieszirel added.

  “We did not know she was with child at the time,” Baern replied.

  “She kept it from us,” Mardaley added. “That last missive was when we first knew.”

  “Mardaley was beside himself when he found out,” Baern continued. “He petitioned Naeve directly to send people after Therese, but Naeve refused, not that I blame her. Therese wasn’t held against her will, so to remove her would’ve been to abduct her, and that was something Naeve could never sanction on someone not affiliated with the Tower in any way.”

  “The old battleaxe made a point to punish Baern, though,” Mardaley said, “for acting upon something she’d already decreed the Tower would stay away from.”

  “Yes,” Baern sighed, “she did.”

  “The missive held something else,” Mardaley continued, his eyes now upon Marshalla. “A term Therese used to describe her son. Starlight. Her darling Starlight.”

  “And you think they succeeded,” Anieszirel said, her tone speaking volumes of her thoughts on the matter.

  Turning, Mardaley nodded, his gaze one of all seriousness. “When word of what happened to Aldurn reached me, I felt sure it was because they’d failed in their endeavour, and it was their failure that claimed that town. But now, I believe Aldurn’s destruction was because they succeeded, at least in part. I do not believe they accomplished precisely what they set out to do, but I do believe they managed to infuse the boy with…something.”

  “Something…?”

  “Yes, something.”

  “I’m finding it difficult to believe Tip has some great power flowing through him, Mardaley,” Anise replied.

  “Yes, well,” Baern replied, “Mardaley and I think Tip had his mind fractured and there is a second Tip in there, one the Tip we know is unaware of.”

  Anieszirel frowned. “A fractured mind with a suppressed other, one able to wield this…gift? Power? What in the world do you even call it?”

  Gritting his teeth, Mardaley forced a smile to his lips as he nodded. “Precisely. I think the fracture happened during the incident. Something happened to Tip in there, something so painful it spawned this other side of him, and that side kept control of the…gift.”

  The chronodragon stared at Mardaley in silence for a spell before at last shaking her head.

  “No,” she said. “Sound though your theory is, it doesn’t explain how…”

  As Anieszirel’s voice faded, Mardaley’s frown grew.

  “Explain what?” he asked.

  Anieszirel sat in silence, her eyes darting from storekeeper to Magister to Archmage and back again, her gaze lingering upon the Archmage the longest.

  “It doesn’t explain what, Kin-Slayer?” Baern repeated.

  Anieszirel stared in silence for a moment longer.

  “It…” she began, but fell silent once more.

  “Anieszirel,” Mardaley replied, “now’s not the time for secrets. If there’s something important we haven’t considered, you must share it with us.”

  Staring intently at Mardaley a moment longer, Anieszirel gritted her teeth in silence. Then, as Mardaley moved to speak, the chronodragon’s gaze softened as she raised her chin.

  “It doesn’t explain how Tip’s still a boy after a hundred years,” she said at last. “ Or even explain the difference in races. This Therese woman was human, Tip is elven.”

  Mardaley stared at her in silence for a spell, his piercing gaze held easily by a calm stare from the Kin-Slayer.

  “We know nothing of this gift,” Mardaley said at last. “For all we know it might grant eternal youth, or possibly lock Tip in the body of a young boy for the rest of his days. And how do you know Tip’s elven? Because of his ears? Because of his elven features? If his etheric signature’s been altered, can you say without a doubt those were not side-effects of the alteration? Tip has yet to take the Birthing, and, thus far, I am unaware of any full and deep scrying of the boy’s mental and physical state. He may look elven, but for all we know that may well be all that is elven about him.”

  “I …” Anieszirel began, but had no words to counter Mardaley’s argument.

  “Forgive me, old friend,” Baern said, coming to the chronodragon’s rescue. “I side with Kin-Slayer on—”

  “Would you stop calling me Kin-Slayer?” Anieszirel snapped. “My name is Anieszirel, use it!”

  A sheepish smile parted Baern’s lips.

  “My apologies,” he said, bowing slightly to Anieszirel before turning to Mardaley once more. “I side with Anieszirel on this. Though your theory seems sound, it’s still just a theory. You lack proof of any kind.”

  “Oh, do I?” he smiled, then turned to Marshalla.

  As one, all the others turned to Marshalla, and as they did so, an uneasy silence fell upon them all as they caught sight of the haunted visage that was Marshalla’s.

  “You alright, Marsha?” Maline asked as she placed a hand upon Marshalla’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, just…” Marshalla began, turning to the caring elf. But words failed her.

  “How much of what I said is a lie?” Mardaley asked. “And how much of it is true?”

  “He told me his name was Terril,” she said after a brief silence. “Never asked him for this other name.”

  “That could be mere coincidence,” Anise replied.

  �
�Coincidence that Tip and this Therese looked alike,” Anieszirel asked, “and Tip happens to carry her son’s name?”

  “Well…” Anise replied. “You explain it, then!”

  “Tell them the rest, Marsha,” Mardaley said, his eyes upon Marshalla still. “Tell them what his mother used to call him.”

  Marshalla shook her head before licking her lips. Then, with a deep breath, her lips parted as she spoke once more.

  “He…he said his mummy used to call him Starlight. Her darling Starlight.”

  The silence returned, as suffocating as it was unsettling.

  “This is impossible,” Baern whispered.

  “Is it?” Mardaley asked.

  “Yes, damn you!” Baern bellowed. “Do you know what you are saying?”

  “Yes, Baern, I do.”

  “It’s impossible, I tell you!”

  “If it’s more proof you need, then more proof you shall have.”

  “You’d better hurry,” Anieszirel said as she rose. “I’ve tarried here too long, Tip’s beginning to worry.”

  Mardaley nodded, then, taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.

  “What you doing?” Maline asked.

  But Mardaley remained silent, and as all stared, the elderly storekeeper’s face began to change. As they watched, the wrinkles in his face began to smooth and his hair darkened and grew. As they watched, the elderly storekeeper shrank and slimmed, his body transforming to that of a woman, and before their very eyes, the elderly storekeeper twisted and morphed into the human that was Therese Philpott.

  “That Therese?” Maline asked, her mouth agape.

  Mardaley nodded, smiling.

  “You’re going to make him think Therese has returned?” Baern asked.

  “Yes,” Mardaley replied, his voice that of a woman.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Anieszirel hissed.

  “Mardaley, no,” Marshalla said, shaking her head as she rose. “He thinks his mummy’s dead.”

  “You’ll shatter his mind for gods’ sake!” Anieszirel added.

  “We need answers,” Mardaley replied.

  “Yes, but not like this!”

  “And what if he lashes out at you?” Anise asked. “What then?”

  “The enchantments and wards in my sitting room should be enough to negate anything he tries.”