by Sean Hinn
Rather, her attackers. A band of dwarves stood before her, axes at the ready, the closest holding his hand protectively to his chest. Shyla had never seen dwarves, but she knew enough to recognize them, and to fear them. Dwarves and gnomes were neighbors, but not friends.
“Yeh best stay back! This here’s a wolf, and he’s fierce protective of me! We’ll tear yeh to bits!” Shyla waved the knife before her frantically.
The light was just barely sufficient for Shyla to see the dwarves exchange confused looks. One marched up to her and slapped the knife from her hand smoothly. Shyla barely felt the gentle strike.
“Aye, little lady, and a mighty wolf he looks to be. Though yeh might want to tell him that.”
“Huh?” she said, inadvertently.
The dwarf whose hand she bit spoke then. “Aye, yer protector seems to have sprung a leak.”
Shyla glanced down to see Wolf in a cower, ears laid back, urinating on his own paws.
“Ah fer Mawbottom’s sake, Wolf. Yeh big pansy.” Shyla deflated for only a moment, then straightened again, glancing fitfully among the dwarves and slowly backing away. “Well I s’pose ye’ll be tryin’ ta have yer way with me then! But I’ll warn yeh, I’ll not let yeh near without leavin’ a mark!”
The company of dwarves laughed riotously at this. Boot replied.
“Nah, little lady, ye need not be worryin’ bout any such thing. Though after a bit o’ nightnectar, Fannor here might write ye a sonnet.”
“Aye, Boot! And it’ll warm the cockles of your heart!” said Fannor with mocking passion.
“Boot ain’t got no cockles, Fannor,” this from Narl.
“My cockles are bigger than your cockles, ya damned fool,” retorted Boot.
“Only if it’s cold outside!” Narl replied. The dwarves fell into peals of laughter again. J’arn glanced back at them, and they quickly silenced themselves. He turned to address the young gnome, suppressing a grin.
“I am J’arn Silverstone, Prince of Belgorne. Ye need not be afraid this night. Ye will come to no harm in our company. Ye nor your...wolf.”
XIX: MOR
James Thallinson wedged his shovel triumphantly into the dense clay soil and beamed with pride. A waist-deep pit twenty paces square lay before him, the hole now prepared to be filled with gravel and mortar, the foundation for a new manor to be the home for some unnamed aristocrat or noble family. The chore was expected to be completed by him and his four-man crew of laborers within a cycle, yet the first spadeful of soil had been spooned from the ground less than six days before.
Despite having worked throughout Mor as a laborer since adolescence, the gaunt man was not formidably strong. He was not formidably anything. James was not unpleasant, but also not particularly charming, nor physically attractive, nor was he ambitious, nor possessing of even a basic education. He could not be described as simply “average”, for even the most average of men typically possess either some singular talent or defect. James had neither; his only outstanding quality perhaps being a pervasive simplicity that inhabited every aspect of his impoverished life. James had never led his own crew before, a fact owing to his prevalent and characteristic mediocrity, though the man never failed to find and maintain employment moving dirt or sand or clay from one place to another. James Thallinson had a reputation for sobriety, punctuality, and hard work. The predominance of those qualities, combined with the lack of any noteworthy shortcoming in character, made him particularly well suited for the task of wielding a shovel. Eighteen years of digging into the soil of Tahr should, one would think, result in the creation of a sculpted man of great might and vigor, however, the rewards of such labors were meager, and accordingly James’ diet was proportionally mean, resulting in an overly lean physique, an underdeveloped intellect, and an absence of the belief that anything would ever change.
Until eight days ago.
---
James had arrived at the worksite just before sunrise, early as was his habit, and found himself greeted by a pair of men wearing the distinctive cerulean robes of Kehrlia. James thought the wizards’ presence curious, but not being a particularly curious man, he walked directly past them, intending to pay them no mind as he settled on a patch of grass to await his foreman. A voice behind him a moment later brought him to his feet.
“James Thallinson.”
James faced the men nervously, a faint tickle of fear trying vainly to warn him, Run! Acknowledgment of his instincts came too late, however, as one of the men continued.
“Master Sartean D’avers requires that you attend him at Kerhlia. Now.”
Terror welled and roiled within James’ heart and mind as the three walked the streets to the Keep of Kehrlia in the growing light of morning, and by the time they reached the steps, James Thallinson had vomited twice. He sobbed and blubbered his sinuses dry as his escorts remained silent, offering no explanation, James asking none. He knew. He had misused his mouth. He had spoken the nickname. He had mocked the most powerful and feared man on the surface of Tahr, he had been heard, and if he was very, very lucky, he would die this day.
They arrived at the steps to the keep, but James could not ascend them. His legs would not obey his mind. He was frozen with dread, his feet obstinately refusing to do anything more than remain rooted in place. The silent wizards on either side of him grasped his elbows without a word, and he was lifted from the path and carried up the steps effortlessly, no longer trembling in fear, but now convulsing, the hammering of his heart threatening to split his veins and spill his lifeblood on the steps of Kerhlia before he even discovered the nature of his doom. James wished for death. He willed his very spirit to traverse the Veil as he was carried into the keep. He silently prayed and begged and bargained with any god or demon that would hear for his life to be taken from him. No response came.
His escorts released him onto the marble floor in the center of the foyer of the Keep of Kehrlia, and somehow James Thallinson kept his feet, more from an accident of balance than as a result of muscular strength. His downcast eyes saw the hem of a black robe before him, and he squeezed them shut so tightly that the muscles in his face seized with pain.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” the voice of Sartean D’avers echoed smoothly around the circular foyer, seeming to come from everywhere at once. A sound escaped the horrified throat of the man in response, some unintelligible expression of confusion and fear.
“Ah, forgive me, I see your eyes are closed, you must be preoccupied with imagination. Open them.”
James eyes obeyed the command somehow. Sartean continued.
“Is it not remarkable?”
“Ah-I-uhh,” James emitted another equally incomprehensible utterance, followed by silence. Sartean let the silence carry for a moment.
“Come now, James Thallinson. You must admire the opulence. Look around you, a flawlessly calibrated radius of the most exquisite and priceless marble, as immaculately shaped as blown glass, its acoustic perfection causing my voice to reverberate from all directions simultaneously. Does the sound of my speech not seem to ring from deep within you, James? Is the effect not utterly grand?”
Despite his terror, James’ eyes felt obliged to survey the foyer, his ears compelled to attend the quality of sound emanating from around him, comparing the wizard’s description to what his senses experienced. He did not understand half of the words the sorcerer had spoken, but he did grasp their meaning. Aside from a flight of marble steps leading upwards and yawning widely behind the wizard, and two arched openings in the walls on either side of the stairs, the entranceway of the great tower was, to James’s estimation, perfectly rounded, the azure and white marble appearing seamless, its meandering veins continuing uninterrupted along the walls, as if the entire vestibule were hollowed from within a single stone. The walls rose from the glossy floor at right angles, a curvature evolving uniformly from a point intermediate between the floor and an inexplicably glowing ceiling that soared fifty feet above his head. James felt an overwhelmi
ng sense of vertigo as he imagined himself shrinking into nothingness. He felt entirely insubstantial as he stood in the center of it all, the enormity and grandeur overwhelming, this only the first level of a tower he knew to extend to the skies.
“Do not allow yourself to be too overcome, James. I would imagine that the modest life you lead does not lend itself to spending much time in places such as this, though I will admit, no place quite such as Kehrlia exists. Tell me, James, about that modest life.”
“Ah, I…sir?”
Sartean glided forward, the movement barely perceptible. “Now James, if we are to have a conversation, you must contribute. I will forgive your awe, but I must insist you be more lucid. Here, perhaps this will help.” The wizard allowed one hand to extend from beneath his robes, and gestured at the man.
“Absharra.”
James felt a bit of his fear diminish, and though not nearly at peace, he felt the paralysis of his mind part like mist before daylight, and looked up at the wizard’s angular face for the first time.
“There. Now speak, James Thallinson. Tell me what a day in your life is like.”
James cleared his throat and spoke. “Well, sir, I usually wake up before the sun and make myself somethin’ to eat, if there’s somethin’ to eat, and try to get it eaten before anyone else wakes up. Then I go–”
“Anyone else, James? You mean you do not eat with your family?”
“Ah, no sir, I ain’t got a wife, nor children.”
“No wife? Surely? A man such as you?” Sartean’s tone was frank, and James could not tell whether the wizard was mocking him, though he suspected he must be.
“Ah, no sir, as it is, I ain’t all that good with words, or women, or things like that, and I ain’t got much money, well, none at all really, so I ain’t found a wife. ‘Sides, I live in the Common, so’s I got no house for a wife to live in no ways.” James looked at his feet.
“I see,” Sartean said, his tone unchanged. “Go on, lead me through your day.”
James continued. “Well sir, I eat, like I said, if there’s food, then I get dressed and head for whatever job I got to do. I’m a digger, and I dig for all sorts o’ reasons, but mostly it’s about the same, only thing different really is where I’m digging and what the ground’s like. Sometimes it’s just regular old dirt, and that ain’t so hard, but sometimes it’s clay, and sometimes–”
“I understand. So for whom do you dig, James?”
“Huh?”
“Your employer, James. Who pays you to dig?”
“Ah, well, lately, last few seasons, I been diggin’ for a crew that’s assigned to the sewage details, but there ain’t no pay, really. The city puts me up in the commons, they feed us once a day on the job, and once in a while we’ll get a little money for ale, but I ain’t much of a drinker so I give it to my ma when I get it, and she brings me a little food when she can so’s I can have a breakfast some days.”
“Interesting. So, for how long have you been a digger, James?”
“All my life, sir. Since I was taller than a shovel, at least.”
“That would be eighteen years, two seasons and a cycle then, would it not? Since you became taller than a shovel, I mean.”
James blanched. “Ah, I think so sir, right about that long.”
“Exactly that long, James.” Sartean began to circle around James slowly, and spoke. “You began digging the week after your father died in a brawl over a woman he had bedded the night before, the young bride of a childhood rival and powerful merchant named Vincent Thomison, who cut your father’s throat in a fit of jealousy, sawed off his head with the same knife, and deposited it on your doorstep for your mother to find. You were told that your father died in an accident while laying stone for the walls of Mor, and you did not learn the truth until the night of your twenty-fourth birthday, when you met Vincent Thomison at the same tavern in which he killed your father, where he would have killed you then as well, if not for the presence of a squad of city guards in the bar. He then told you that if he ever saw you again, you would meet the same fate as your father, and that was the last time you ever entered a pub, or had a drink of ale. You have led a completely penurious, anonymous and simple life for all of your thirty years, James Thallinson,” Sartean paused his speech and his circuit, watching the color drain from the man’s features. He leaned in threateningly from James’ right side. “Until today.”
James fell to his knees and began to bawl. “I know I was wrong, sir! I shouldn’ta said your name, or used that other name, or been shootin’ off my mouth like I did, I was just havin’ a hard day is all, and I lost my good sense–”
“Good sense has never been a thing you were overly possessed of, James. Stand up and be silent. I am not finished speaking.”
James rose quickly, shoulders heaving, and he suppressed his sobs to the degree he was able. Sartean continued. “I know all there is to know about you James, and I know that you fear me. I know the rumors that circulate around Mor about me, and I know why the people of Mor live in horror that the great and terrible Sardine Cadaver will invade their homes in the dark of night, and steal them away to some dark dungeon where they will be tormented and tortured to a slow death that they will pray to the First Father to hasten. Do you know why these rumors persist, James?”
James snuffled. “No sir.”
“Master.”
“Huh?”
“You will address me as Master, James.”
The man nodded fervently. “Yes, si-yes, Master.”
“So you do know, then?”
“Ah, I mean, I don’t know for sure, Master. I don’t know very much at all–”
“Yes, you do James. You know that the rumors exist because they are true.” Sartean paused for effect, allowing the reality of the grim admission to settle in the man’s imagination. James’ terror returned.
“Or rather, they have been true. You see James, I had thought to bring you here to punish you. To allow your disappearance, and the eventual discovery of your broken body, to serve as a warning to those who would mock me. You must understand,” Sartean began circling again. “I do not do such things out of vanity. I do them for the safety and security of Mor, so that its people know that a society must, first and foremost, live in respect of law and order, and by extension, respect of the people tasked with maintaining that order. Do you understand, James?”
“I…I think so, Master.”
“I do not think you do. Not fully. No matter, I will enlighten you. As Master of the Keep of Kehrlia, James, and leader of the Fraternity of Incantors, it is my duty to help protect Mor, even more so than that of the army, or the guard, for it is the power of sorcery that truly protects this kingdom from threat, not the pointy shards of metal that soldiers wield. If I, as the chief defender of this kingdom do not command the fear and respect of the citizens of Mor, then how, I must ask, will I command that esteem from our enemies?”
James waited for a moment, to be sure that his response was required, then replied. “I...I think I do understand Master. You have to be strong for the kingdom, and that means sometimes you have to do things that are mean?”
“Yes, James, exactly that. You are a clever man, to understand so quickly. Tell me, how is it that you have not yet advanced to foreman?” Sartean asked, a sincere and curious quality to his voice.
“Ah, well sir…ah, Master, I guess maybe I just ain’t been very lucky so far?” James responded cautiously.
Sartean stopped, directly in front of James, and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. James’ blood froze. “No, James, you have not been very lucky. And that is why you are here. You see, James, in learning about you and your life, I have had a realization. Your story is not so uncommon. You live your life in a prison, a cycle of unfortunate circumstance and poverty, one that you cannot break free of, and in time, you no longer even feel the chains around your neck. Is this not so, James?”
James examined the floor. “Yes, Master,” he replied truthfull
y.
Sartean moved his hand from the man’s shoulder, and cradled his chin, gently, as a father would, and lifted the man’s face to his own. “I know, James. I know. And your struggle has inspired me. Tell me, James, how does your body feel right now? Do not answer too quickly, take a moment, examine your own flesh, and tell me how it feels.”
James did so. He considered the blisters on his hands and feet, the ache in his back, the exhaustion of his muscles that seemed to reach into his very organs. James had long ago stopped feeling the chain around his neck, he decided, and it had been some time since he indulged himself in recognizing his own pain and weariness. “I am tired, Master. So tired. My body...every part of me hurts something awful. I don’t even think about it no more, it’s just the way it is. It’s the way it’s always been.”
Sartean withdrew a small flask from his robes. “Drink, James. No, do not be afraid. Drink. Just a sip.”
James unstopped the flask, drank a mouthful of the warm, bitter fluid, and handed it back to the wizard. As the flavor of the drink insinuated itself into his taste buds, his eyes slammed shut with disgust, the potion thick and viscous, tasting like…like ash, and dandelions, and burnt hair. A succession of unpleasant tastes assaulted his palate, and the solution made its way down his throat, searing its way into his stomach, and just when he felt he might vomit, a feeling of strength surged within him, a sense of youth, and potency, and boundless energy…
“Master!” James exclaimed, his terror and shame and weakness of a moment ago now less than a memory. He reached for the flask and the sorcerer pulled it away quickly.
Sartean smiled. “Easy, James, not too much. Tell me how you feel now.”
James smiled at the wizard as he sought the words to describe the sensation. It was useless. “If you have a shovel, Master, I’ll show ya.”
Sartean nodded. “Do not show me, James. Show your foreman. And when he asks you how you managed to work so quickly, send him to me.”
