by Ryan Drake
At last we came to a small stone building that must have been where we were heading because the Shadow stood there, clutching his walking stick and accompanied by his orc guard of honor. I’d seen the Shadow before, so instead of looking at him I focused my attention on the building, which wasn’t anywhere near as ornate as some of the others we’d passed. In fact, it was about as simple as a building can be, with four corner columns holding up a roof. Inside, a spool as big as me and more rested on its side in a sort of cradle thing that held it off the ground. It had large handles on either side that looked as if they allowed it to be turned.
I realized how close to the edge we were, and when I saw the thick rope leading from the spool, I understood. On the other end of the rope, somewhere on the land below, there was an anchor of some sort that at this moment was holding the Demesne in place.
“Ahh, there you are my lovely,” said the Shadow. “I was starting to worry that you had become lost.”
Gabby gave him the type of smile I’d seldom seen her use: it was open and friendly, without any hint of mixed feelings behind it. “No, your directions were perfect. We came straight here,” she said, and moved to stand altogether much too close to the old man before turning back to me.
I’m not altogether certain what happened then. Gabby sort of flinched, and the Shadow presented me with what I interpreted as a gloating toothless grin. Had he pinched her?
Before I could ask, Gabby started to talk as if nothing had happened. “Timmy has very kindly halted the Demesne’s progress for a time. To get back to the ground, use these to slide down the rope.” She held out at what was basically a leather strap with a curved metal bar in the middle.
I took it and understood, but Gabby explained anyway. “The metal bit goes over the rope. You can see it’s curved to keep it in place and smoothed so it won’t catch. You wrap the leather straps around your wrists. It’s quite easy.”
“So we go now?” I asked.
The Shadow barked a laugh. “Do you see any better time, sonny?”
And Gabby nodded.
Ok, I thought. Why not? I moved to the edge of the Demesne and looked down to the land below, then hooked the strap-and-metal thing over the rope and around my wrists as instructed. Then I turned back to Gabby and grinned.
“I’ll be there to catch you when you get to the ground,” I said.
Her face fell. She shook her head. “I’m not coming,” she said.
“Huh?” Again, not one of my most intelligent expressions, but it conveyed exactly the confusion I was experiencing at the time.
Looking back, I guess it was obvious that she intended to stay; the clues were all around. The smile she gave the Shadow, the way she’d never explicitly said that we were leaving, and even the fact that she was accompanied by the Shadow’s own orcs. I just hadn’t seen it. Or I hadn’t wanted to see it. Or I’d seen it and refused to believe it. Or something.
Either way, I was an idiot, and I was standing at the edge of the abyss with all my roiling emotions plain for anyone to see. The Shadow obviously did see them, because he chose to rub salt into the wound. And not just a little bit of salt; he used the whole shaker.
Keeping his leery old eyes on me all the while, he turned Gabby towards him and kissed her full on the mouth.
I must have made some sort of move towards them. I’m not really sure. All I knew was a moment of blackness where anything might have happened, and then Max was suddenly in my face, screaming, “Stop it yeh fool! It’s what he wants!” and all of the orcs had their weapons aimed squarely in my direction. I didn’t look at Gabby and never saw what she was doing. But I heard what she said.
“We’re not far from that village I told you about,” she said. “Brelor. I hope you find the Fracture.”
There was nothing in her tone at all to encourage me. It was as if she didn’t care at all.
So that was it. Without any other options, I looked at Max, said, “Are you ready? Hang on tight,” and stepped out into space.
20
A Time for Gloating
At about the same time as I stepped off the edge of the Demesne, the Fracture was flickering even worse than it had done before as it struggled to show Pingo T’Ong the victory he was after.
Pingo watched, not just immune to the Fracture’s affliction, but actively reveling in it. He knew that every flicker was a symptom of his own misuse of it. The amulet on his wrist was doing its job. He could feel the strength he was gaining with every passing moment and knew that the Fracture could not last much longer.
Not that it mattered. He’d already siphoned off more than enough of its power to do what he so desperately wanted to do. He was ready, and that was good.
Even better, the futures the Fracture showed him were much more promising than ever before. To his mind, I no longer seemed as much of a threat. Sure, futures where I interfered with his plans remained, but in all of them I was accompanied by a scantily clad woman. And that woman (Gabby) had stayed on the Demesne, leaving me to continue on alone. Or as good as, with just a drunken pixie for company.
Pingo chuckled at this outcome, regretting only that he hadn’t realized Gabby’s importance earlier. Had he done so, he could have sent Thork Yurger after her instead and erased the threat to his plans long ago.
Still, Pingo was about as careful as he was ugly, and he didn’t want to leave anything to chance. And he had power to spare! So instead of forgetting all about me, he focused his attention on the Fracture. Using lore gleaned from the Fracture itself and known only to a very few of the most evil men alive, he used a small fraction of that power to bend it in a way it was never meant to be bent.
The Fracture gave a faint wail, as if it were somehow keening or in pain. The noise startled Pingo so much that he might have stopped what he was doing out of sheer surprise. Only the fact that the Fracture also showed him Thork Yurger, as he’d commanded it, kept him focused on his task.
The diminutive assassin appeared to be riding a small pony through a wide grassland with the orc army behind him.
“Thork,” Pingo said.
The assassin flinched as if stung. He looked about for a moment then stared with gape-jawed amazement right at Pingo. “M-m-master?” he said.
“Yes, Thork, it is me. You’ve failed me time and again, haven’t you?”
Thork Yurger gave a single nod. “G-g-gordan of Riss still l-l-lives,” he said, “But I’m t-t-tracking him even n-now. The D-d-demesne—”
“Gordan has left the Demesne. He is heading to Brelor.”
“B-brelor? Near your p-p-palace? The orcs and I can b-b-be there in just a few d-d-days—”
“Make sure that you do it right this time, Thork. I’m growing weary of your failure.”
Another nod. “Th-th-the villagers there are superstitious, and d-d-don’t like orcs. But perhaps I can use their superstition and g-g-get them to help.”
“I care not how you do it,” said Pingo. “But I will not wait a matter of days. I want it done now.”
So saying, Pingo bent the Fracture even more, encouraging a louder wail. Abusing its power like never before, Pingo reached into its essence, plucked Thork Yurger from the back of the pony and deposited him many leagues away, on the outskirts of Brelor. He laughed at the assassin’s confused expression before letting the image flicker and fade.
He was ready, he thought. The rite he had planned would take time to complete, but there was nothing stopping him from starting it now.
The Fracture, flickering wildly and still keening occasionally, was ignored as he began his preparations.
21
Brelor
Maintaining an air of despondency while zooming down a rope with Max hanging onto my hair and whooping and hollering at the top of his miniature lungs wasn’t exactly easy, but I managed it somehow. I even considered letting go of the straps half-way down, if only to shut him up. But that wouldn’t have worked, I thought. Max could fly, and I c
ould not. And despite my present mood, I still had things I wanted to do with my life.
I didn’t have to put up with his noise for long, however. He stopped when he saw just how fast the ground was coming towards us. Judging by the angle of rope, I figured I’d touch the ground with my toes no more than half a dozen paces before grinding my face into the dirt, unless I could somehow work out how to stop myself fairly quickly.
True to form, Max looked after himself first. “Not me,” he said. He flapped his wings and let go at the same time as I started to swing back and forth.
Once … twice … nearly there … and I managed to wrap both legs on the rope in front of me so that my boots acted as a brake. I was still moving pretty fast, so I used the leverage I’d gained to twist the strap-and-metal thing so it grabbed the rope a little more.
It worked. I came to a complete stop just before my feet touched the huge metal anchor at the end of the rope.
I wondered how the orcs who came down this way managed to stop. Then I wondered if they actually did come down this way, or if they had some safer option. Either way, I didn’t waste much time thinking about it as I untangled myself from the straps and dropped lightly to the ground. When Max turned up a few seconds later, I offered the Demesne an ironic salute, chose a route that would have taken us into the mountains if we walked far enough, and set off.
We entered the village of Brelor slightly less than two hours later. I tried not to create as much of a stir as I had upon entering Ulm, but my various adventures up until then had left me with nothing.
So a passing stranger found himself lighter by one coin pouch. I took that coin pouch to the nearest tavern, commandeered a barstool, ordered a tankard of ale for myself and a half for my diminutive friend, and in twenty minutes flat I was working on my third.
“I just don’t understand,” I repeated for the umpteenth time.
The Puking Orc reminded me a lot of The Rancid Pusball where I’d met Max and Gabby. It was perhaps a little lighter and cheerier, but it still smelled vaguely of vomit and urine and the body-odor of many different species all pressed in together.
The layout was slightly different. There was no mezzanine. But other than that, we could have been back in Ulm. Even the barkeep reminded me of his fat, sweaty counterpart at The Rancid Pusball, except that he had a thick black beard instead of a mustache. There was even a Poodle equivalent standing watch at the door. Of course, he was shorter and somewhat less formidable, but the intent was the same.
“I mean, what’s he got that I don’t?” I continued.
I admit it: I was a little drunk, heading steadily towards a lot. Max surfaced from his half-tankard and gave a happy belch. I figured that listening with your head buried in foam can’t be easy, so maybe he hadn’t heard me. But he surprised me by offering an answer.
“’Side from bein’ ruler of everythin’ an’ rich enough to make yer eyes water, yeh mean?”
“Yeah. Seriously though, why should that matter? I mean, you saw him. He’s old. How could he compare to me? How could she even think…?”
“Maybe she values ’is wealth an’ power over yer talent of repeatedly ruinin’ ’er life,” said Max.
The idea of emptying the rest of his drink over his head suddenly appealed. Instead, I took a long swallow of my own (it was very similar to the overly fizzy ale back in Ulm) and muttered dire imprecations under my breath. Max must have heard, because he buried a malicious chuckle with his head back in his ale.
I considered the most recent episode of my life and decided it was one of the least satisfactory adventures I’d ever had. On the plus side, visiting the Demesne was something I never thought I’d be able to do and nobody there had beaten me up. It had been a short, safe, no-harm-done adventure, where the most physically uncomfortable thing to happen to me was that I got to spend a cold night locked in a cell listening to Max snore.
But I’d gone there with Gabby and I’d left without her. Somehow, I’d lost her to a man maybe four times my age (or maybe forty times my age if you believed the rumors) with a distinct lack of teeth. And there was nothing at all that I could do to get her back.
I sighed into my ale and contemplated her final words to me. “I hope you find the Fracture,” she’d said. I have to admit, for long periods of time I’d pretty much forgotten about that malformed sprite, even though my quest for it had been the seed for everything good, bad or indifferent that had happened since. I had my reasons for forgetting, of course; getting attacked by a sequence of goblins and orcs does take your attention away from such things, as does the presence of a beautiful woman whom you’d like to get to know a bit more intimately. But now there wasn’t anything distracting me other than my ale and my despondency.
With that thought in mind, I shrugged my shoulders. Might as well get back to it, I thought, and turned on my stool to the tavern in general. “Listen up!” I called to one and all, and was promptly and completely ignored. “I said LISTEN UP!” I bellowed as loudly as I could. The conversation died to a murmur as heads of various sizes and species turned my way. Some expressed obvious annoyance but others appeared to be curious.
Waving my tankard as if it held some sort of meaning, I said, “Anyone here know where I might find a thing that lets you see the past, present and future? Called the Fracture?”
Some faces stared blankly. One or two looked furtive. Others looked at me as if I’d committed a crime. Seconds later, they’d all lost whatever interest they had and turned back to whatever they were doing before my interruption.
Oh well, I thought. It had been worth a try. I turned back to the bar and took another swig.
The barkeep wandered over. “You look like trouble,” he said, his words a mumble that his beard nearly stifled.
I snorted a little into my drink. “I get that a lot,” I said.
“Hmmph. Well. Be that as it may, if you want to avoid some, you’ll listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” I said, wondering what was on his mind.
“There’s something you ought to know about this place. Brelor, I mean. We live in the shadow of a powerful man.”
“Yeah, the Shadow,” I said. “I’ve met him. Old guy. I can’t say I like him much.”
“Ok, ok, yes, you’re right, but no, not him. Someone else. Powerful, but not as powerful as the Shadow. Or at least different. I don’t really know. Anyway, this is important, so listen.”
I thought the barkeep might bore me to death before he ever got to the point. “Will you get to the point?” I asked.
The part of his face I could see over his beard turned a delicate shade of pink. “Don’t know why I bother,” he said, and started to turn away.
“No, wait,” I said. “I’m sorry. Please, say what you mean to say.”
It seemed to mollify him. “Hmmph,” he said again. “Well, it’s like this. There’s this man who lives in the mountains. But not humble-like, you know, like a hermit. This one lives in a palace with servants and suchlike to do his bidding. He’s got power. Not as much as the Shadow, but power over the likes of you and me nonetheless. He’s got money and a small army, like a Lord or King. But as far as I know, he isn’t neither of them. And he commands magics as well. I’ve not seen much of that, but I know those who have, and it’s scared them properly let me tell you. Are you listening to this?”
I realized I’d been yawning. I blinked, said, “Yes, please, do go on. What sort of magics does he do?”
“Huh? Oh, they say he can give you boils or make you sick in the mind. They say he made the crops fail a year or two back. And sometimes there’s this dark cloud that forms above his palace. Not natural, that cloud…”
It sounded like a dull list, and perhaps a touch unimaginative. I mean, it seemed to me that just about any unpopular man or woman living alone could get tarnished with the same brush, and there wasn’t a lot they could do to disprove it. But that didn’t mean this powerful man couldn’t do magics. It just
meant it would take a bit more convincing before I believed it.
“So you’ve got someone powerful nearby,” I said. “Most towns and villages do. How will my knowing about it save me some trouble?”
“Because unlike other powerful men, this one doesn’t like hearing about people hunting for things he considers to be his domain. Like this Fracture thing you’re talking about.”
Oh. “And what might he do about it should he hear?” I asked.
“It isn’t really what he might do about it that’d be your problem. It hasn’t gone that far before, although he has the power to be very unpleasant if he chooses. It’s what Brelor might do about it, to keep him happy and stop him from doing anything.”
Made sense, I thought. In a messed up kind of way. “And what might Brelor do? And who exactly in Brelor might do the doing?”
The barkeep shrugged. “Some have been run out of town. Others, locked up. The very worst, well, they’ve been burned alive, in front of the whole town. Makes for a pretty sight, that does. The screaming goes on for quite a while longer than you’d expect, although by the end there isn’t much in the way of volume. Just a high pitched wail that drives some of the animals crazy, mostly hidden by the crackling of the fire. As for the who, just folk. Like those you see here. And me.”
The way he said that last left no doubt in my mind that he would have been near the front of the queue if it came to that with me.
I didn’t really like the idea of being burned alive. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. The barkeep nodded and once more started to turn away. “Before you go,” I said, “How about another?” My tankard was empty.
22
Thork Yurger’s Return
Now, don’t go thinking that I didn’t take the barkeep’s words seriously. I did. Even though I’d only reached a small fraction of the Shadow’s years, I was not exactly innocent of the ways of the world. I’d traveled widely and knew that not all towns were as calm and reasonable as Ulm had been. Strange was the norm, and normal was, in my view, fairly strange.
