“You don’t understand,” protested Boric. “The sword is cursed. I can’t let go of it.”
“Cursed!” spat the mayor. “We’ll see about that. Bailiff!”
The bailiff, a portly old threfeling wearing a sort of bronze cap, stepped forward and held out his hands to Boric, a look of grim determination on his face.
Boric sighed and unbuckled his belt, putting the scabbard in the little man’s hands.
“There,” said the mayor. “Was that so…”
But of course the bailiff was unable to take the scabbard from Boric. If he removed it from the left hand, the sword would stick to the right. If he pried it from the right hand, it would snap back to the left. After a minute or so of furious struggling, he somehow managed to get between Boric and the sword, but then found himself hopelessly adhered to Boric’s left thigh. With the help of several of the other functionaries, the bailiff eventually managed to extricate himself, collapsing in a pile with the other threfelings. The sword dutifully clung to Boric’s leg. Undeterred, the bailiff jumped to his feet and attempted to pull the sword from its scabbard — also to no avail. Even with the help of five other threfelings — three pulling the sword and three pulling the scabbard — the sword wouldn’t budge.
Boric bore all this with stoic good humor, not feeling that he had much of a choice in the matter. He couldn’t leave New Threfelton in the middle of the day, so he was bound to be the guest of the threfelings, at least for the next several hours. If he had to spend that time with threfelings crawling all over him to satisfy themselves that Brakslaagt really was cursed, then so be it. Fortunately, as stubborn as the little bastards were, they finally gave up after nearly a half hour of various creative exertions.
“All right,” said the mayor, folding his arms across his chest. “I have decided to allow you to hold on to your sword.”
Boric bowed slightly in a gesture of thanks. “I’ll keep it in the scabbard,” he said.
The mayor nodded. “Good, good. Now let’s get those wrappings off you.”
A collective groan went up from the assembled threfelings, who were mostly lying prone on the floor and wheezing in exhaustion.
“Also probably not a great idea,” said Boric.
“Another curse?” asked the mayor.
“As I mentioned,” replied Boric. “I have a condition. The wrappings help to control it. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.”
The mayor shrugged.[7] “You are a strange man, Boric, even by onetutherling standards. What brings you to these parts?”
Boric hesitated, considering how much he should tell the threfelings. “I am being pursued,” he said. “By others like me, similarly cursed. They share my condition and are convinced that I belong among them. I disagree.”
The mayor’s brow furrowed. “So that’s it? They want you to come and live among them? That doesn’t sound so bad. Why wouldn’t you want to be with your own kind?”
“They are…not good men,” said Boric. “The pain of their disease makes them cruel and violent. I am trying to resist such tendencies, and being among them would not assist me in that endeavor. Sir, I didn’t mean to trespass on your territory, and as soon as the sun sets I promise to be on my way.”
“Hmm,” replied the mayor. He turned to confer with the other functionaries, who had managed to pull themselves to their feet. After a moment, he turned back to Boric. “You are an officially recognized guest of New Threfelton, Boric. You may seek sanctuary here as long as you like, as long as you abide by our local rules and customs, and pitch in as needed.”
“Oh,” said Boric. “That’s very kind of you, but really, I hadn’t planned on staying very long. I need to keep moving.”
“Where will you go?”
Boric said nothing. Where would he go? Thus far he had only thought to put as much ground between him and the other wraiths as possible. But eventually he would run out of ground. To the south and east lay the territory of the Lemani barbarian tribes, who would be even less welcoming of a wraith than the civilized kingdoms. To the west was the hostile Kingdom of Skaal, and to the east, beyond the Kalvan mountains, was the Kingdom of Blinsk. He would find no sanctuary in any of these places.
“Well, until you figure out where you are headed, you will stay here. It will do you some good to rest and get some food in your belly.”
Boric grunted, fighting a wave of nausea at the thought of his exposure to rabbit stew.
“I have all the food I need,” he said. “I would be much obliged if you could find me a dark, quiet place where I could rest, however.”
The mayor instructed Chad to find such a place, and they settled on a dank, mostly empty cellar connected to the town hall. Chad begged him to consider a more comfortable room, but Boric insisted that the cellar was perfect. “But…” Chad protested. “It’s like a tomb in here!”
Boric grunted and closed the door. He was alone in the darkness.
[6] Skulking, it should be noted, is considered a very serious crime among threfelings, although it differs only slightly from acceptable pastimes such as lurking and sneaking.
[7] The fact that diseases could be passed from one person to another has been well known among the denizens of the Old Realm for centuries, but somehow never penetrated the collective consciousness of threfelings. The resulting lack of prophylactic precautions on the part of threfelings (and generally filthy nature of the threfeling lifestyle, living as they do in muddy warrens along with countless farm animals) caused them to be constantly bathed in a veritable sea of contagion, which strengthened their immune systems and made serious communicable diseases almost unheard of among their kind. It has been observed by more than one historian that the unlikely survival of threfeling society over the past thousand years or so was primarily a side effect of the profound and widespread ignorance characterizing its population.
TWELVE
Boric regretted agreeing to travel with Milah — that was her name — almost immediately. She peppered him constantly with questions about the ogre, and about Brobdingdon, and about the Vorgal tribes to the north, and on and on. Her curiosity seemed to know no bounds. After several hours he realized that he still knew virtually nothing about Milah.
“Why were you traveling that way, disguised as a messenger?” he asked.
Milah smiled coyly. The road north of Plik was wide enough for two horses side by side, and she took advantage of this by riding along Boric’s right side. She still wore the messenger’s uniform but had removed the beard and wore her hair in braids. When they passed other travelers, she would pull her hood over her head and let Boric do the talking. She would have made a pleasant traveling companion if she had just shut up for five minutes. “I might ask you the same thing, Derek,” she said.
“I assure you my beard is quite real,” said Boric.
“But you’re no more a messenger than I am.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You talk like an aristocrat. You try not to, but you slip into it when you forget yourself.” She contorted her face into a mockery of Boric’s stolid demeanor. “I assure you my beard is quite real,” she growled, dropping her voice an octave.
Boric scowled.
“Cease your prattling, wench!” she went on.
Boric found himself smiling in spite of himself.
“I assure you that my sword is quite long!” she growled.
Boric broke into a laugh. “All right, enough,” he said. “It’s true, I’m not a messenger. I am the son of a nobleman from Brobdingdon. My father is quite wealthy, but as the third of three sons I don’t stand to inherit much. The king offered a reward for killing the ogre, and I volunteered.” This account was true, of course, although it left out some important details.
“I knew it!” said Milah.
“Your turn,” said Boric. “Why are you traveling as a messenger?”
“Because I am a messenger. Check the official rolls. Milo of Skaal.”
“You signed up fo
r the Messenger Corps under an assumed name?”
“I had to. They don’t accept girls.”
“Because it isn’t safe for a girl to travel alone.”
“I’ve done all right,” she said, patting the pommel of her sword. “Been on the road for over a year now.”
“You’ve been lucky,” said Boric.
“I’ve been careful,” she replied. “In any case, I’m almost done.”
“Done?”
“Brobdingdon is my last stop. I have one last message to deliver, to King Toric.”
Boric’s eyebrow raised at the mention of his father. He would have asked Milah who the message was from, but telling him would violate the messengers’ code of conduct.
“You know the king?” she asked.
“I’ve met him,” said Boric.
“I hear he is a wise man, but that his sons are cowards and fools. Is that true?”
“It’s mostly true,” Boric admitted.
“Does your father have any… influence with the king?”
“My father?”
“You said your father was a wealthy nobleman.”
“Well, yes, I suppose the king has taken advice from my father from time to time.”
Milah clenched her fists in the air. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “I knew it! This is the one! It’s finally going to happen! Why didn’t I go to Ytrisk first? People said that it was a backward province, that the king didn’t have the money and wouldn’t see the value, so I wasted a year traveling to the other five kingdoms. And it turns out I should have gone to Ytrisk first! But then I might not have met you, and obviously our meeting was meant to happen. So that you could take me to your father, and he could talk to the king!” She squealed with excitement.
Boric regarded her, puzzled.
“My message,” she explained. “It’s not really a message. I mean, it is. It’s a message from me. About an opportunity. Something that could change the world. My father, you see, was one of the court alchemists in Avaress. He was killed in one of the barbarian invasions after the Fall, but his notes survived. My older brother inherited his laboratory, but he had no interest in alchemy. I’ve always been fascinated with it, though, ever since I was a kid. A few years ago I started reading my father’s notes and I realized what he was trying to do and how close he was when he died. I convinced my brother to allow me to continue his work. The deal was that if I succeeded, he was going to go to the King of Avaress and try to get funding.”
“Funding? What do you mean by funding?”
“Well, I could only create a single prototype, and it didn’t work very well. The idea was to sell the king on the idea, and get him to build us a much bigger laboratory and supply us with the minerals that we needed — ”
“Milah, slow down,” said Boric. “A prototype of what?”
Excitement shone in Milah’s eyes. “I’ll show you.” She halted her horse and dismounted, pulling the beast to the side of the road. Boric did the same. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out something, wrapped in cloth and string. She untied the string and unwrapped the cloth. Inside were two discs about the thickness of a coin and the width of Boric’s palm. She handed one to Boric.
“What is it?” Boric asked.
“Look at it,” said Milah.
Boric looked at the disc. One side was dull gray and the other was glossy silver, almost like a mirror, but the image it showed was dark and blurry. “A mirror?” asked Boric. “I can hardly see myself in it.”
“It’s not you,” said Milah. “It’s me.” She was holding her own mirror in front of her face.
Boric squinted at the mirror. “If you say so. What’s the point?”
“It’s a two-way mirror!” Milah exclaimed excitedly. “I can see you and you can see me!”
“All I see is a blur,” said Boric dubiously, cocking his head. “It looks a little like a monkey.”
“Well, like I said, this is a prototype. The zelaznium isn’t pure enough to get a good picture. I need a bigger lab and better equipment, and — ”
“The what?”
“Oh, it’s what the mirror is made of. A mineral called zelaznium. I named it after my father, Zelaznus. He’s the one who discovered it. The final version will be bigger, of course, and much clearer. And it will have a significantly longer range. These only work over about twenty feet. But with better equipment and purer zelaznium, I could make a pair that can send images up to a hundred feet. Maybe more.”
Boric frowned. “What’s the point?”
“Communication over long distances!” Milah exclaimed.
“I can already communicate over a hundred feet,” replied Boric. “It’s called shouting. Anyway, I can’t talk through the mirror, can I?”
“No, but you could use hand signals — ”
“I can use hand signals without a mirror.”
“Yes, but don’t you see the potential? Maybe eventually we could string a series of mirrors together, or find some way of amplifying or focusing the transmission.”
“Whatifying the what now?”
“Think of it this way: what would you do if you wanted to say something to someone on that ridge over there?”
“I’d yell.”
“And if they didn’t hear you?”
“Yell louder.”
“And if they still didn’t hear you?”
Boric thought. “Cup my hands around my mouth.”
“Exactly! So I just need to find a way to make the mirror louder. And find a way to focus the transmission, the way you do when you cup your hands around your mouth. The principles are quite simple; I just need time and equipment and manpower.”
“In other words, you need money.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Milah bit her lip. “A hundred thousand gold pieces would get me started, and say, another forty thousand a year for the next ten years or so. Plus a large supply of zelaznium, which would require — ”
“A hundred thousand gold pieces?” Boric asked, amazed at Milah’s presumption.
“Yes, well, now you understand why I’ve been going from kingdom to kingdom. Only the monarchs have that kind of money. First my brother went to King Rapelini of Avaress, but Rapelini is a paranoid miser. He turned down my brother’s request but kept the prototypes he had been carrying so that he wouldn’t be able to get funding from any of the other monarchs. My brother, who had no interest in the mirrors himself but knew they were my passion, demanded that King Rapelini return them. Rapelini refused. My brother made some foolish remarks about making another set of prototypes and aligning with another, more farsighted monarch and getting his vengeance on Rapelini. He was tried for treason and hanged.”
“I’m sorry, Milah,” said Boric.
“Me too,” said Milah, shrugging. “That was three years ago. Fortunately, Rapelini assumed that my brother was the brains behind the mirrors, so he didn’t bother going after me. I spent the two years making another set of prototypes — the pair I am carrying — and then applied for a position as a Peraltian messenger under my brother’s name, Milo. I had no money; everything I had was spent on making the prototypes. My only hope was to make enough money as a messenger to travel to the other capitals and convince one of the other five monarchs to fund my laboratory. I had naively thought that in general kings were wise, or at least more or less sensible, and that Rapelini had been an exception. What I found over the course of a year, traveling across much of Dis, is that Rapelini was an exception all right: he was the only one who saw any value in the mirrors at all. Not only did the other four kings refuse to fund my laboratory; they didn’t even bother to try to steal the prototypes. King Skerritt of Blinsk called them ‘worthless trinkets.’ Of course, they knew me only as a poor messenger boy; I can hardly blame them for not taking me seriously. But if we can go to your father and convince him of the value of the mirrors, and then he can talk to King Toric…”
“Hmm,” replied Boric. “There are no guarantees, of c
ourse. I mean, it’s true that my father and the king are close, but I’m sure the king has a lot on his mind these days, what with the threat from the Skaal — ”
“I know, I know,” said Milah. “But I have a good feeling about it. I just know that the king will see the value of the mirrors if only we can get your father to present the case to him. He would do that, wouldn’t he?”
“Milah…” began Boric. This was getting out of hand. He had been convinced in a moment of weakness to let Milah accompany him on his return journey, but he had it in mind that they would part ways once they got to Brobdingdon. At some point he was going to have to tell her that his father was the king and that it was unreasonable to expect him to introduce her to him so that she could try to sell him on some crazy scheme to make magical mirrors. Boric was going to have his hands full with his scheming brothers when he got back; he couldn’t be championing the futile causes of some woman he had just met.
“I know, one thing at a time,” said Milah. “I’m just a naturally optimistic person. I’ve had to be, to survive the number of rejections I’ve received. I just can’t believe that meeting you was an accident. There has to be a reason. Anyway, let’s get going.” She got back on her horse and Boric, not knowing what to say, mounted his.
They rode the next several miles in silence. Whenever Boric looked over at Milah, she was smiling. It made Boric want to smile too. The women he had met at Kra’al Brobdingdon — mostly the daughters of other Ytriskian noblemen — possessed the intellectual curiosity and verve that came from spending one’s days being schooled in important matters like which fork to use for eating fish as well as the bland homeliness that came from generations of inbreeding. A general rule seemed to hold throughout the Six Kingdoms that the more notable one’s family was, the more plain looking and dimwitted one was likely to be. This axiom was so reliable that no one was surprised when a local idiot who appeared at the gate of Kra’al Brobdingdon one day, wearing an ornate horse blanket that he had stolen and fashioned as a sort of toga, was admitted into the castle by the guards, who assumed that he was an important member of the royal family. Boric and his father, being both clever and handsome, were exceptions to this rule, but his brothers took after their mother Gulbayna, a dull-witted, barrel-shaped hag with hands like ham hocks and teeth like the moss-covered boulders strewn about the bed of the River Ytrisk. Toric had married her in an attempt to secure the support of the semicivilized barbarian tribe known as the Vorgals, the chief of which was Gulbayna’s father. Whatever credit Toric deserved for introducing some fresh blood into the royal line by marrying a barbarian’s daughter was more than blotted out by his choice of a wife who was the result of an even more unrelenting regime of inbreeding than his own. Among the Vorgals, chieftains were selected on the basis of the number of different ways a man could trace his lineage to Stengol the White, the semilegendary seven-fingered albino forefather of the tribe. Gulbayna’s father could trace his bloodline to Stengol through no fewer than seventy-two paths, making him his own uncle, brother-in-law, and nephew. Gulbayna was the fruit of Stengol’s marriage to his half-sister/cousin, and the entire tribe was relieved when Toric offered to take her off their hands. When Gulbayna’s father died, the Vorgals enthusiastically endorsed Toric as their king, having realized that they had pushed their own system of selecting leaders about as far as it could go.
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