The Dotard

by Greg Curtis

  “So cynical. So filled with doubt.” She shook her head sadly. “You know, Wilberforce was once like you. Doubting everything. But he grew into a truly great wizard. Until the end of course. He realised that the cure for doubt was knowledge. Clearly he went too far as a result of his suffering and desperation. But until then he was one of the greatest around. You could have a future such as that if you want one.”

  “You mean as part of the Guild?” Edrick tried to form a smile on his face, but he wasn't sure he succeeded. Even the muscles of his face were exhausted. But in any case he didn't see anything to smile about. “We're different you and I. You see magic as something that can lead to greatness. I see it simply as a joy. You want to use it to solve all the troubles of the world. I just want to play with it. That was all I ever wanted.”

  And that was the truth, he realised. It was embarrassing, perhaps even shameful, but he had never wanted to be anything more than a wastrel. His father had been right. He had wanted to go out and drink with his friends. Enjoy his life. Play with his toys. And magic had been one of those toys. Events had forced him to become a different man and to chart a different course in life. But in the end, the desire to return to the wastrel days of his youth was still strong.

  “Praise Sirtis! This must be hard for you!” Yolande sighed heavily. “Running away from your responsibilities all your life and now suddenly having them forced upon you.”

  “I ran away from a terrible marriage!” For some reason he felt he had to defend himself. Maybe because there was a grain of truth in her charge. More than a grain. “She was six hundred pounds, thirty years older than me and couldn't even care for herself. And I was only eighteen! To be forced to marry her was just wrong!”

  “But she wasn't all you ran away from, was she? Long before that you had been running away. You ran away from your studies. Your role in the family concern. Your duties as a noble. You were the child who refused to grow up. And you're still that child.”

  “I studied!” he protested, even though he knew she was right.

  “Only the things that interested you. And if they weren't too hard, or didn't take too much time. Thomas was clear about that.”

  “He was a hard master! Never satisfied!” He didn't think he'd ever heard a word of praise from Master Thatchwell either. Not in all the years he'd studied under him.

  “He had to be. You more than any other needed to be driven to achieve what you were capable of. And you still need to be. You have talent. A quick mind. But if you're not pushed you'll end up simply wasting your life as another noble born dilettante. The world already has enough of them.”

  Edrick thought about responding. This woman didn't really know him, after all. She was only working with what she'd been told by others. But he decided against it. There was no point. She had made up her mind. And there was some truth in her words.

  “I'll get some rest when your people arrive.”

  That though was unlikely. He would try, but his chances of sleeping were slim. Not when every time he closed his eyes he saw thousands of dead bodies and knew their deaths were the result of his actions. Or else he found himself lost in a world of grey smoke, being hunted by something he couldn't see.

  Maybe, he thought, the world really did need more dilettantes. They were at least mostly harmless. It was only when they got involved in affairs of state that things went horribly wrong. In hindsight he knew he should never have allowed Wilberton to feud with him. He should probably never have come to Coldwater.

  “See that you do. We can ill afford another wizard flat on his back.” She turned and limped off, presumably to go and annoy someone else.

  “Ignore her.” A woman spoke up from behind Edrick. “We should have been better prepared for what Wilberton attacked us with. She blames herself for our not being ready, and she's taking her anger out on everyone else.”

  Edrick turned around. “Marshan?” He was surprised to see her. He hadn't seen her since the battle. In fact, he hadn't even known if she'd been in it. At least she looked to be in one piece.

  “And also,” said Master Thatchwell, stepping up beside Marshan “because, though she doesn't want to admit it, she and Wilberton are old friends.” Master Thatchwell stepped up behind Marshan. “She wasn't in Coldwater when Wilberton struck at Master Errans. She said it would have been a conflict for her to stand in judgement on her friend. So, she didn't see what he did. And she wasn't there when he struck at you before that. She doesn't like the Faerie realm. Because of that, she refused to believe what he had done until it was too late. She kept telling everyone she spoke to that it was all some sort of mistake. Wilberton couldn't have done what everyone said. That's why she wasn't prepared.”

  “They were friends?” Edrick was surprised by that. And yet he had a vague memory of her suggesting something like that when she and the other wizards had visited him and Carrie. He hadn't really been paying attention at the time.

  “The best of friends. The two of them grew up together in the same town. They became wizards together. Studied together. Went on adventures together. They attended each other's weddings. I still don't think she can quite accept what has happened to him. What he's become. Not even now.”

  “How could she?” Edrick couldn't imagine that anyone would have imagined what had happened to the wizard. If what Carrie had said was right, then even Wilberton himself had had no idea what the result would be of his simple spell.

  “And how could you know what he would do?” Master Thatchwell suddenly became his old instructor in magic once more. Lecturing him as if was once more a student who'd made some basic mistake. “How could anyone?”

  “This entire disaster is a circle of tragedy and recriminations. A bitter circle. Carrie's blaming herself for not being able to stop her grandfather when she couldn't have. You're blaming yourself for telling the right people what they needed to know and then having it go wrong. Yolande's blaming herself for not imagining what her friend would do. There's no end of blame going around. And no point to any of it. None of you made any mistakes that could have led to this. None of you could have expected what happened. Even Wilberton himself only made a mistake. A stupid mistake but not a malicious one.”

  “Blame does not help here. And guilt has no place. You and the others need to understand the most basic rule of the world. Sometimes bad things just happen. You can call it Andal's doing. Why not blame the Lord of Misfortune? You can blame someone else. You can even blame yourself. But none of it helps. When bad things happen, the only thing that does help is fixing them.”

  “Finish your work here. Get something to eat and drink. Then rest. Mistress Yolande is right in one thing. You are no help at all if you collapse.”

  Master Thatchwell fixed him with one long, final stare before turning and marching off. Marshan followed him half a second later, and Edrick was left standing there with his row of patients, wondering if he'd just been told off. He suspected that he had.

  But as he returned to his patients it wasn't guilt that plagued him. Instead it was a half-formed thought, circling at the back of his mind. Yolande had been to the magical realm before. She had hated it. It was almost the first thing she'd ever said to him. She had also been on adventures with Wilberton. It stood to reason that Wilberton had been to the realm of the ancient Faeries too. Thinking about it he was almost certain they would have gone together. The question was, why did it matter?

  Edrick didn't know. But he knew that it did. It mattered a lot.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was a grey day in Faerie. One of the few. Normally if it rained, it rained hard and soaked into the land quickly before it fined up and the sun returned. And that when he thought about it was probably the best sort of weather you could hope for. But there was no hoping and wishing involved in it. He knew that now. Just as he knew so much more about this land than almost anyone else. Things he would never have considered possible – if not for having spoken with Yolande.

  Of course
, she didn't know what he knew. She hadn't guessed the truth. No one had. It was just him. The dilettante as she'd called him. But maybe that was exactly what he'd needed to be to solve one of the most baffling mysteries of the magical world. Certainly, the fact that he'd come to this land not seeking to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Faeries was the reason he had been able to – ironic though it was.

  Though describing it as ironic wasn’t quite right. Because it was intentional – the result of a plan. The Faerie’s plan. They hadn't disappeared at all. They were hiding. And they didn't want to be found. No one had realised that. Except him now. Maybe that was because while others had come here to find out what had happened to the ancient people – he had come here to hide. And this was the perfect realm to hide in.

  The real question was how determined were they not to be found? When the Faeries found out what he knew, would they try to stop him from revealing it to the other wizards? That was his worry. Still, he knew he had to speak to them. It was the only way he could get answers to the questions he needed answered.

  Edrick considered the wisdom of what he was doing as he sat in his vegetable garden with a mug of orange blossom tea in his hand. Was this the smart thing to do? Or was it stupid? He didn't know. But the Priests were going to try again to sanctify the demon of death as he hid in his enclosure of iron golems and there was a good chance that it would once again end in disaster. They claimed the demon had survived even when the land had been blessed, simply because he was safe hiding in the body of the wizard shielded by his magic. Edrick only knew that he couldn't allow thousands more people to die. Whether his plan was smart or stupid, it had to be done. Maybe they would understand that.

  He sipped at his tea as he waited for his guests to arrive, trying all the while not to let his nerves get the better of him.

  It wasn't long before the first of his guests showed up, cantering in through the open gate. Then after staring at him for a few moments as he sat at the small garden table, the unicorn made straight for the beans. He didn't actually doubt that they really did like beans even if they were lying about everything else.

  “Welcome!” He raised his cup to the unicorn and then took another sip from it. Naturally the beast ignored him as it started grazing.

  Edrick let her begin her feast while he worked out what to say. Or actually, while he worked up the courage to say it. And it took a surprising amount of time to find it.

  “I guess you thought I was safe, didn’t you? That I wouldn't figure out your secret? Because unlike all the other wizards, I didn't come to this land searching for you?” Edrick managed a small slightly bitter chuckle. “Bad news, I know you're one of the Faeries.”

  That still shocked him. But if there was one thing his time as Master Thatchwell's student had taught him, it was that you had to look at things critically and examine your assumptions. In this case, the main assumption everyone had made – himself included – was that the Faerie would be like other people. That they would look like men and women with two arms and two legs. That they would walk upright and speak a language of words. And that they would live in houses. It had never occurred to them that those assumptions could be completely wrong.

  But then why would it? The idea that people would be like … well, people, was so deeply ingrained in everyone from birth, that anything else would seem mad. And of course the Faerie had helped things along. Obviously they could shift shape. Some wizards could too. And they'd created the myth of the beautiful magical, human looking race. Naturally they'd been believed. Because even if they'd guessed that these magical people could change shape, who among his people would have believed that it was the human shape that was the unnatural one?

  The unicorn looked up at him for a moment, studied him, and the returned to its meal. It was trying to pretend that it was what it seemed Edrick realised. To convince him that it was just a beast of the field.

  “I suppose I should tell you how I knew. It wasn't just the logic of it though I should have understood that sooner. The understanding that we couldn't find any ancient structures, no towns and cities, no houses, because you never had any. If you don't wear clothes but rather have your own fur you don't need houses for shelter. So you never built them. And we couldn't find books and writings because if you don't have hands in your true form, you won't read and write and so you won't have books.

  And then there was the language. We have literally spent centuries trying to make sense of the magical tongue, never even thinking that it wasn't a language like our own. Without our vocal chords, you don't speak in the way we do. You don't have words and sentences. You have sounds and gestures. Instincts and emotions conveyed through them without the need for words. Things we did not understand. But which ironically enough, our animals do .”

  And hadn't that hurt! The realisation that he couldn't understand them – but the animals he and the others had brought across – the horses and even his cat – could.

  But it was the understanding that you were hiding that actually revealed you.” And that was actually ironic.

  “Everyone else who came here, every wizard, was looking for you. They were trying to find out what had happened to your people. And all of them said they felt the same thing. That they felt uncomfortable here, though they couldn't explain why. None of them wanted to stay. By contrast I have always liked it here. But then I didn’t come here looking for you. I wasn't searching for anything. I was running away. Hiding – just like you.”

  “So, when I put those things together and realised that anyone who came here looking for you or to solve the mystery of your disappearance would feel unwelcome and leave, but those who didn't could stay, the rest followed. Ancient races long since gone from the world don't need to hide. The fact that you were hiding meant that we weren't looking for an ancient missing race at all. We were actually looking for a people who were still around, hiding. One day you'll have to tell me why you're still in hiding.”

  “There were other things too. You made mistakes. When one of you attacked the dragon – thank you for that by the way – you did one thing I didn’t expect. You closed the gate. At the time I thought it was strange. But the dragon had opened it so why couldn't you close it?”

  “But then it occurred to me. You and the dragon might both have the magic to open and close a gate. Some dogs can nose doors open, even turn handles with their teeth. We call that clever. But no dog ever in the history of the world, has closed a gate behind him. Why would they? Opening a gate allows them access to what's inside. Closing a gate is about stopping something from getting in or out. Animals don't consider such things.”

  “Again, on its own it would have meant little to me and I would have left it there. It suggested that you were far more than you seemed, but not that you were people. But the Argani had also told me that they occasionally saw unicorns on their world. Fleeting glimpses of them, alone and running. The same as the people of Riverlandia do. And they had legends of a world like this one. A land of magic and unicorns.”

  “Taken together those things told me that this was your home. That this is where unicorns come from. But just as some of us travel through the gates and visit other realms, so it seems do some of your people. And as far as I know, only people explore other realms.”

  “That told me that you were using the gate system to explore other realms. Opening and closing them behind you. You had other gifts too. Things that animals don't have. Like the ability to show your thoughts to mine. To understand bargains. And you come from the world where the gates seem to have come from. Added to that the gates work for you, and you know to close them. I may not always be the quickest but in time even I worked out the obvious explanation. You were the people who built the gates!”

  Of course he still had to work out how a people without hands – at least in the proper forms – had carved stones, or why they had built a road between gates, or inscribed symbols on stones. But that he suspected would come in time. What was import
ant was that these were the gate builders. That shocked him. Even having known it for a day or two, just saying it out loud made it sound like madness. And yet it was true. He knew it.

  “It was a good ruse.” Edrick raised his cup once more to the unicorn. “But it's over.” He paused for a moment.

  “Unless it's not.” He let that thought linger for a bit before continuing.

  “You see, I wasn't looking for the ancient Faerie. And now that I've found you, I don't actually care that much. As far as I'm concerned, you can keep your secret. It doesn't matter to me. But I will reveal it to the other wizards of Riverlandia and beyond – unless you give me a reason not to.”

  “You see I need your help. I need to find a way to destroy a lich – or someone possessed by the Demon of Death depending on who you listen to. Or to send it home. I figure you should know how – since you helped bring it to Coldwater.”

  Edrick drained his mug then and stood up. “I'll give you a few minutes to talk it over.” He assumed that others were listening even if they weren't present. “When you're ready to talk I'll be out at the front of the house.”