The Dotard

by Greg Curtis

  Inside things were a little confused for a while. Everyone was grabbing mugs of tea and sandwiches from the tray and trying to find seats, which he soon discovered, he didn't have enough of. His home was large, but he'd never furnished it for so many. Fortunately, as well as the couches and easy chairs he was able to grab two benches from the dinner table and some more chairs from the upstairs bed chambers. Between them it was enough, even if he ultimately found himself sitting on a cushion, and leaning up against the wall.

  “So, you saw a dragon? I thought you'd given up frequenting the alehouses!” Master Thatchwell was the first to start with the questions, but only by a little. Immediately after him others started with their questions, all based on the little that he'd told Marshan.

  “Alright,” he held up his hand to stop them. “Yes, I saw a dragon. And at rather close quarters since it was trying to kill me at the time. I'll tell you everything that happened after the battle if you promise not to call me a liar, a drunkard or worse.”

  With that he proceeded to do just as he'd said, outlining his entire month and all the discoveries he'd made. Or thought he'd made. They laughed at his suggestion that the magical language wasn't actually a language at all, just sounds and movements. The instincts of magic. Maybe a couple considered the idea, but none were going to accept such a thing. Least of all from a young wizard like him without any connection to the Guild.

  But oddly the thing that caught their attention wasn't what he would have expected. When he told them about the dragon he heard only silence. When he told them about how he'd rebuilt the gate, it was the same. But when he told them about the most terrible plum in the world, that raised some eyebrows.

  “Tell me about this plum tree.” Mistress Yolande, asked.

  “Your pardon?” Edrick was caught by surprise.

  “You tasted it you said?”

  “Yes. It was awful!” In fact, just thinking about it brought back the memory of that bitterness. The taste of thousands of years of rot and death. It was enough to make him want to gag. But she wanted to know about it and so he told her everything he could remember of it.

  “And you say you found the spell in Master Wilberton's journals?”

  “Yes.” Edrick got up and grabbed the journal from the table where he'd left it and gave it to her, open at the page. He'd used that spell a lot as he'd repaired his home.

  “Damn it!” She stared at the journal entry as if it had somehow offended her. And then she cursed it again.

  “Mistress Yolande?” Edrick thought he should find out what was wrong – just in case it turned out that the spell was a short lived one and all the work he had done with it was about to suddenly unravel.

  “The idiot!” She stared straight at Edrick. “The dim-witted fool! How could he have done something so stupid?!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Carrie,” she turned away from Edrick to his newly avowed wife. “I'm very sorry, but I know what's wrong with Wilberforce. And there is nothing to be done.”

  “Mistress?” Carrie stared at her, her face filled with worry.

  “This spell, parts of it anyway, were in the journals you sent me. Journals that were older than the ones you gave to young Edrick here. Those journals dated from the time before he first started to lose his wits. But when he had started to become ill. In them he had written some details of his condition. He wrote that he was suffering from stone joint and that it had been growing worse. That he was searching desperately for a cure. But he was running out of hope.”

  Edrick shuddered a little at hearing that. Stone joint was a horrible disease. It slowly turned all the joints of the body into swollen balls of bone that didn't bend. It crippled a man and caused immense pain. Some claimed it was the disease sent by the God of Misfortune to those who dared gamble against him. But if the wizard had suffered from the condition he had seen no sign of it.

  “Yes, I remember,” Carrie answered her. “But it was a long time ago and it was mild. I remember he was able to treat it.”

  “No child, it wasn't mild. It was aggressive and cruel. For whatever reason his spells couldn't seem to touch it. At best they gave him a few days of relief and when it returned it came back worse each time. He feared that in time he would no longer be able to move. And he did not want to become a burden to you.”

  “Wilberforce was a proud man. It was perhaps his greatest failing. The thought of being unable to care for himself was a terrible one for him. The thought of you having to give up much of your life to care for him was equally terrible. He wanted you to have a life. A good one. To find a husband and have a family. He would have done anything for that.”

  “Then he found this spell.” Mistress Yolande tapped the journal setting out the spell in question. I distinctly remember some of the phrases and the patterns. I also remember reading in his journals about the spell and his hope that it might be his cure. He was working with the spell night and day. Researching it. Looking for any sources that might tell him more about it. Let him complete the spell. Wilberforce thought it was his only hope. He thought he could use the spell to restore himself to his youth, before his condition had worsened.”

  “But if he tried it, it would have killed him.” Edrick didn't understand what she was suggesting. “The spell doesn't restore life to what it heals. It just returns everything to how it was before it was destroyed. But not life or magic.”

  “Yes. And I think that is exactly what he did.” The Mistress stared at him, the look on her face one of utter seriousness, and perhaps a little horror. Then she turned back to Carrie. “I think Wilberforce cast this spell on himself, and he died. He just doesn't understand that he's dead.”

  Everyone in the room stared at Mistress Yolande, trying to make sense of what she was saying. Edrick did too. But no one spoke. A few looked like they might want to ask the obvious questions. But none did. Instead they waited for her to explain.

  “This is a spell of perfect physical restoration. But it can neither restore nor sustain life or magic. The two are inextricably bound to one another. Both perhaps part of the same thing – the soul for want of a better word. You could not heal your plum tree. And your gate works because the magic that flows through the standing stones comes from the waters not from the stones themselves. He cast this spell and repaired his body. But his life ended when he did that and his soul was cast adrift.”

  “In the normal course of things, that should have been an end to things. He should have simply died. However, he is a wizard – and a powerful one. And this spell takes time to work. As his body was being destroyed and replaced with a newer version of itself, his soul was adrift but still trying to cling to the new body. A body that looked like his old one, but was in fact just a replica. He became a ghost desperately holding on to his own flesh. Part of this world, part of the next. I imagine that the body he created to house his soul feels to him as the plum tasted to you Edrick. Like a thousand years of death. And no matter what he does, he can't spit it out. Because that would kill him.”

  “His madness stems from that. As he tries to understand that he is both alive and dead. As like any man he fears death and being caught right on the very edge of it he is now fighting desperately against anything that pulls him closer to it. The paranoia is simply part of his uncontrollable fear. He fights desperately against death, but feels its teeth on his throat, growing ever tighter. It seems to him that everyone is against him. Pushing him towards that abyss.”

  “And Carrie,” Mistress Yolande turned to address her directly, “you are a part of what keeps his spirit in this world. He loves you. He also must have you with him. He cannot have anyone come between you and him. His hatred for you,” she turned to Edrick, “comes from that. His fear that you will take Carrie away from him.”

  “His loss of control of his spells is because he cannot concentrate on anything while he is also desperately trying to keep himself from departing this world. I suspect his magic has become so powerful because it is fuell
ed by the desperation of a drowning man clinging to life.”

  “I'm sorry Carrie, but your grandfather is dead. He killed himself. There is no cure for that. All you can do is help him to move on.”

  “No!” It was barely a heartbroken whisper that escaped her throat, but everyone heard Carrie's denial. They all saw the pallor in her face. Abruptly Carrie stood up and ran outside.

  Edrick got up too and hurried after her. He didn’t know what he could say or do but he could lend her his support. And so he wrapped his arms around her, letting her cry in the rain. He didn't know if Mistress Yolande was right, though he suspected she might be. But just then Carrie needed him. So he held her and made soothing noises, and said a few silent prayers to the Mistress of Light to care for her child. And finally, when she had no more tears to weep, he guided her back to her bed so she could rest.

  By the time he was done the others had gone, and he had to think that that was a good thing. Carrie was not up to listening to any more about her grandfather. Least of all about how to kill him – and this had originally been intended to be a Council of War – at least what passed for such a thing among wizards. But someone, presumably Mistress Yolande, had left a book on the table, open at a specific place. And when he read it, Edrick finally understood what she was saying. He just couldn't believe it.

  Wilberton had become a lich.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  This world was accursedly sunny, thought Carrie bitterly, as she sat on one of the benches in the garden, lost in her thoughts. She just wasn't in the mood for sunshine. As far as she was concerned it was time for rain. Driving cold rain that chilled the very marrow. Something that matched her mood. This realm however, was refusing to oblige her. And so she ended up sitting out on one of the benches in the garden, hating it.

  Didn't this world understand? She needed to wallow in her misery for a while. And it was hard to do that when all around her it seemed to be an eternal spring. A land filled with hope and the promise of new life to come, when all she knew was death. Trying to make sense of what made no sense at all.

  How did you live with the knowledge that your only living relative was dead and had been dead for years? Even when he'd been wandering around doing all the normal things that living people did? Carrie didn't know. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea. She'd read the writings Yolande had left for her. Everything that was known about liches. In theory it made sense. But theory was no match for her memories of her grandfather walking around the home, eating, drinking, laughing and being the kindly grandfather, she knew when he was supposedly a ghost clinging to some sort of half life.

  But the one thing she did understand was that this “discovery” now meant that any concerns the others might have had about taking his life had disappeared. Now killing him – if you could it “killing” when the person was already dead – was just. And they weren’t actually taking his life; - just helping him “move on”. By Sirtis did she hate that term!

  The trouble was that she couldn’t accept what they were claiming. That the man she saw walking and talking was not her grandfather, but a dead receptacle that now trapped her grandfather’s soul, preventing him from moving on. That was crazy. They were wrong! They had to be!

  Carrie felt helpless. She couldn't tell them they were wrong. It was the only working theory they had and it matched the facts perfectly. Worse than that, if she somehow disproved it then not only did they have no theory at all left to explain what they were seeing, but she had to return to the understanding that her grandfather was genuinely mad and doing all these terrible things because of it. That he had become a monster. If he was dead then at least he was blameless. In a way.

  But the most bitter pain was that she couldn't stop them trying to kill her grandfather. It had to be done. She knew that. It wasn't just because of all the people he'd killed. It was for all the others that he was surely going to kill. They had to be protected. And she could not stand in the way of that.

  It left her feeling like a traitor to her own family while she was sitting out here, basking in the sunshine as if nothing was wrong.

  A shadow unexpectedly fell across her and she looked up to see Edrick standing in front of her with a mug of tea in his hands. He offered it to her and she took the mug without thinking. Instincts and convention guided her hands even when she didn't want a drink.

  “It's only orange blossom tea I’m afraid. I know you don't like it, but the healers say it's good for a body.” Edrick sat down on the bench beside her, and lapsed into silence, perhaps understanding that she didn't feel like talking.

  He was a good man she thought. Better than the father he came from. Not perfect perhaps, but at least he tried to do the right thing. And he cared. Still, it hurt her to know that he was doing this for her because he felt sorry for her. Worse, maybe he even pitied her. That she was a wretch in need of help? She had never been someone who needed help before! Had that changed?

  The two of them sat there in silence, sipping their tea and staring at the world around them, for what felt like ages. Not doing anything at all. Just lost in their own thoughts. She knew Edrick had his own problems to deal with., namely his family. He was clearly angry with his father. He probably also worried what his family would demand of him now that he had been “found”. Carrie envied him that. As awful as his problems were, she would have given anything to have them instead of the one she had.

  “So, do you think the battle has started?” Eventually she broke the silence, asking the only thing that mattered to her. The thing she was trying not to think about. That while she was sitting her out in the sunshine, the battle against her grandfather had begun. It was why the Guild had shown up in numbers before. The battle had been looming and they like the soldiers had their role to play. They had needed to know what they would face and had hoped Edrick might have some answers for them. Instead those answers had come from Yolande. She wondered if the answers they had received had helped them.

  “I hope not. I spoke with the others and told them it was too dangerous. Whatever your grandfather has become, he's simply too powerful. Better to leave him alone and try to contain him. Eventually this will end. All things end in time. I think the Guild agree with me. I doubt my father will though. Especially if they tell him Yolande's theory. He'd never accept that. He'd call them mad.”

  “But you think she's right?”

  Edrick just shrugged non-commitally.

  “So then, you don't think he's …” Carrie couldn't bring herself to say it. But she had to ask. She had to know that at least someone thought the wizard was wrong.

  “I don't know.” He paused for a moment, clearly thinking about what he should say.

  “I've read everything Yolande has sent. And it fits. But it still sounds like the tales of the bards. Drunken bards! The trouble is that there's just so little to work with. No one's even written about a lich in centuries, and even then, what they wrote was contradictory and sketchy. Yolande could be right – I just don't know. I don't think anybody does. But whatever he is I don't want to fight him if I don't have to. I've done that once. It didn't work out so well. He dropped a shed on me!”

  “But if your father insists? If it should come to a battle?”

  “I'm not going to go out and try to kill him. I promise you.” Edrick grabbed her hand and patted it. “For a start he'd mash me into the ground! Again!” He tried to make light of things.

  “Besides, I'm not sure we can fight him. Not if Yolande's right. Not us wizards anyway. And certainly not the army. It's not just his power. This isn't the sort of fight any of us are meant for. It's not military and it's not magical.”

  “Then what does that leave?” Carrie asked, puzzled.

  “If Yolande's right and he has become some sort of living death, then it's something the Priests need to deal with. Not the priests of Sirtis. The Priests of the Father. Golanar has dominion over life and death.”

  “I’ve already told the others. I said that if a
nybody has knowledge of liches it would be them. Not us.”

  Liches! Carrie shuddered as the word rolled off his tongue. She hated that word more than any other she'd ever heard. But she held herself back from yelling at him. It was the term everyone was now using.. Instead, she concentrated on what he was saying.

  “You think the Priests have an answer?” Carrie didn't credit that. She respected the Priests – but not in the affairs of wizards.

  “Maybe. But if not them then I don’t know who else. Certainly not wizards. There is no spell that can restore either life or magic and for a good reason. Magic doesn't have sway over those things. We can take the magic that's free in the world and use it. But we can't create new magic. Nor can we create new life. Only the gods can do that.”

  Carrie wanted to protest. To remind him that her grandfather was a wizard after all, and that he had done this to himself. More importantly, she wanted to protest that he wasn't a lich! But she kept her thoughts to herself as she knew what his response would be. That her grandfather was precisely in this mess because he had tried to restore life to his body when it was impossible. He was simply clinging on desperately to what remained – a dead body that had once held his life. Maybe Edrick was right? she didn't know.