A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  Still, its plans hadn't gone perfectly. Hendrick was still alive for one. And the physicians said that the king was comfortable – whatever that meant. And while it had infected a young woman with some horrible ghostly monster and turned her into something even more deadly, the offspring was dead and she was in custody. Caged, or so he understood, and surrounded by soldiers, while the remains of the ghostly beast were still hanging out of her. Meanwhile the war it had started between the afflicted and the rest would now end. Maybe not perfectly, but it would end. As powerful as this behemoth surely was, it could still fail.

  “You know, you could have waited a little longer before you summoned me.” Val interrupted his thoughts.

  “I'm sorry. I didn't know how long we had and you might have missed it. But if you don't want to stay you can leave. Just say the word.”

  “No need to be hasty!” Val was quick to stop him before Hendrick sent him back. The truth was that he had asked to see this. He was nothing if not curious. And since he would be the one who might know what was happening when it happened, Hendrick wanted him to see it too. The sage might also be the only one of them to survive this, since he wasn't actually present. Only the image of his head floating in the air beside Hendrick was actually there. That was the reason that Hendrick was sitting by himself. Others were on the hill nearby watching, and several of them could have sat down beside him, but no one wanted to be near the strange floating head of a part man, part hedgehog, part mammoth.

  “Fine. I doubt it'll be long now anyway.” Hendrick let the silence return. It was best that way. And he was too tired to argue. Besides, Val was in a better mood for once and he didn't want to ruin it with conversation and saying the wrong thing. Unfortunately, sometimes idle questions just popped into his head and he had to give voice to them. And even more unfortunately the one on his mind wasn't an idle question. It was something that had been troubling him all day. It was guilt as he thought back on what he'd done. Torturing a young woman. In all his days he would never have thought he could do something like that. Even now, knowing what she was, the memory did not sit easily with him.

  “Do you think she was always like that Val?”

  “Who? Like what?”

  “Sana. Was she always a cold blooded killer? Or did going to the behemoth change her?”

  It would be easier in some ways he thought to deal with the idea that the creature had done that to her rather than accept the thought that a fresh faced, innocent looking young woman, scarcely out of her childhood, could be a murderous, conniving maniac. On the other hand, if the beast had somehow changed her then he had just torn the limbs off a victim of the creature. Neither option sounded good.

  “Well how should I know that? I never knew her before,” Val grumbled, pointing out the foolishness of the question.

  “But it's probably both. Behemoths poison their lovers – not that they are truly that. They corrupt their bodies and souls. But those who are lured by them aren’t pure of heart to begin with. There's always some base depravity. Some dark desire they ache to have fulfilled. There has to be a way in to their souls for their poison to take root.”

  “Oh.” Hendrick wasn't sure if that helped him or not. He had an image of Sana's crippled body in chains, being carted around by soldiers, somewhere in the caravan ahead. And despite knowing what she was, he kept seeing the face of a young woman.

  “Men! Such simple creatures!” A woman's voice suddenly interrupted them.

  “Mother?” Hendrick turned in surprise to see her standing there. Why wasn’t she at the front with the others?

  “You want to believe in the innocence of pretty young women. You think they're all as lily white and pure as the driven snow. You have no idea of the darkness that can live in a young girl's heart. It's why you're so easily manipulated! Your father included.” She sat down on the rock beside him, clearly not bothered by Val's floating head.

  “The physicians say he's going to live by the way. But hopefully he'll have learned from this and will stop following his phallus around all the time as he chases after pretty young girls. Maybe the lecherous old goat will even start thinking for once. It's unlikely but there's always hope.”

  “That's good … I think.” Hendrick didn't actually know quite what to say. And it would have helped if Val wasn't laughing like a drunken donkey. Others were laughing quietly too. Hiding their amusement behind their hands and making strange noises as they tried to choke back their chuckles.

  “Oh don't pretend to be shocked Hendrick. You're smarter than that. You know your father doesn't believe in the so-called Goddess of Love. He just wants an excuse to get his leg over each pretty new face that catches his eye. And he grows tired of the older faces. Perhaps our wrinkles remind him that he's getting older. Pritarma is just the excuse he uses to justify his lechery. And now look at what the old goat's done!”

  Hendrick didn't answer her. He couldn't. Because anything he might have said would have sounded like either denial, heresy or treason.

  “Oh very well then.” She sighed dramatically. “You want to live in your dreams and believe in a King of great virtue? Do it! Be a sheep! But honestly the day you picked up those magic stones was the most fortunate day of your life. You just aren't suited for life in the Court. I mean, you always want to see the best in people! You would have been eaten alive!”

  Strangely Hendrick found himself almost agreeing with her. Maybe the muck-spouting Marnie was right. Maybe what he had wasn't an affliction but a gift. It hadn't been much of one before, save for Val on his good days. But today it had been a true gift. It had saved his life and the lives of many others.

  “Unfortunately your brother's not much smarter. Naive despite all the years I tried to teach him about the true nature of people. Luckily his wife Ells is a lot sharper. She knows how to push and pull Myka to get him to do the right thing. He'll do well in life.”

  He would Hendrick knew. If for no other reason than the fact that he was the heir to the family business. And even though they'd likely lose a lot with the fall of Styrion Might, they still had enough money to live good lives with mansions and servants. They would never have to work for a living like him.

  More importantly if everything went wrong here, at least Myka would be safe Hendrick thought. His family too. They were many leagues ahead now, and were travelling to Styrion Hold, the second largest city in the realm, where the family had property. Myka had left before Sana had revealed her complicity in the behemoth's plans, and so knew nothing about this.

  “You, meanwhile I understand are making beer!”

  “Hopped ale,” Hendrick corrected her without thinking.

  “And how is that any better? Are you building a trading concern? Are you on the Council of that town you live in? Do people respect you? Ask you for advice?”

  It was a while before Hendrick could find an answer for her. And when he did he realised it wasn't one she'd want to hear. After all he wasn't rich and how could he possibly be on the Council when he wasn't allowed in the Council Chambers? But he couldn't tell her that. She wouldn't listen. Not to what she would consider as excuses.

  “I have a house,” he defended himself. And then he had to correct himself as he remembered the rest.

  “I had a house.”

  “Small dreams.” His mother shook her head sadly. “Where did I go wrong?”

  Val chose that moment to start trumpeting with laughter, causing the heat to rise in Hendrick's face. How had his life come to this he wondered? He'd had a good life. Peaceful. Successful. Then the mercenaries had come to kill him. Now he had this! Being laughed at by a sage from another world and proclaimed as a disappointment by his own mother in front of an audience!

  Hendrick didn't answer her. He knew there was nothing he could say that would satisfy her and he didn't feel like an argument. Not now. Instead he turned to stare back at the distant city. “You know Mother, this may be a dangerous place to be.”

  His mother humphed politely.
“We're nearly two leagues from the city. What could possibly harm us here? And I personally want to see the thing that's ended my husband's rule.”

  “What?!” Hendrick was caught by surprise. “But you said he was going to recover.”

  “Yes he will, but the great oaf wed a traitor. He's been bested by some ancient monster and had his city taken away from him. And believe me it didn't decide to attack Styrion Might by chance. It's the heart of the realm and the very symbol of the King's power. He's been publicly humiliated and betrayed by a girl! We told him that girl was rotten! But she was fair of face and the clod never listens in affairs of his phallus!”

  “Now the story is spreading. In a day everyone from the city will know what he did. In a month the whole realm will know. There will be laughter and mockery. The bards will write songs of his foolishness. Then will come the anger. The claims that Oster is unfit to rule. That he's senile. A dotard with poor judgement. The calls for Daylon to assume the throne will grow and Oster won't be able to silence them forever.”

  “When he does, Daylon's wife will become the Queen. He has only one wife because she was smarter than her mother in law and so she won't have to settle for just being the First Wife, First of the Ladies. His sons will become the new princes. The only princes. His mother Marda will of course become the matriarch and guide him – and doom the rest of us to lives of pointlessness. The bitch!”

  “All of us other wives will become relics, cast aside, soon to be forgotten. I will retain the title of Lady and be granted a stipend. You and Myka will no longer be princes, but I think your brother will at least be able to claim the title of a Lord. You won't of course because of your affliction. And the family fortune is about to be destroyed along with the city.”

  “And it’s all because of this beast! Damn it to all the hells, I want to see this thing and I want to send its worthless soul to the underworld!”

  Hendrick wondered if he should tell her that he was beginning to suspect that hell was in fact where this beast had come from. But he decided not to. There was no point. Nor was there any point in mentioning that they were surrounded by people doing the same as them, waiting for the beast's arrival, and that all of them could hear her complaining. Presumably she was aware of the fact and just didn't care.

  “We should have had ten more years! Oster was in good health. There were no threats on the horizon. It would have been long enough to build a proper trading concern for your brother. Now we're about to be ruined! And all because that lecherous old goat could not resist the lure of a pretty face. Again!”

  “Of course I want to see this thing! To see what spawn of hell has ruined us! And then I want to stick a knife in its heart! This thing does have a heart wizard?” She turned to Val.

  “I'm a sage and yes, it probably has a heart. But getting anywhere near it with a knife is likely to be difficult. It lives in the depths. You'd be burnt to death, crushed by the pressure or die from breathing poisonous fumes long before you got anywhere near it. No one save its servants can survive in its lair. No mortal at least. And I'm not sure it even can be killed. They're supposed to be immortal.”

  “Supposed to be, Sage?”

  “You never truly know if someone's immortal until they've actually lived forever,” Val told her.

  “Hush! I think it's about to happen.” Hendrick was certain of that as he heard the sound abruptly change. As the almost continuous thunder somehow became a note. A musical chord that floated across the air toward them. And as the flickering red glow finally stopped flickering and became a simple red glow over the city.

  Silence fell all around as everyone turned their attention back to the distant city, all of them wondering what would happen next.

  But for a while, nothing did. For ten, twenty beats of a nervous heart, everything was completely still, and Hendrick began to wonder if that was it. If they had somehow got it all wrong. And everything had been for nothing.

  And then, between one blink and another, a mountain appeared in the heart of the city. Except that it wasn't a mountain. It was a volcano, with streams of orange lava flowing down its slopes. And it had arrived without fuss. There had been no explosions. No violence unleashed on the world. One moment they had been looking across to the city. The next there was a volcano in its heart. The silence and peacefulness of it shocked him.

  “Tarius be praised!” Hendrick gasped the prayer out in shock. All around him others did much the same. Because it was impossible! Volcanoes didn't simply appear. They rose up out of the ground. They grew over time. Aeons of time. And yet there it was, sitting there as large as life and lighting up the night sky. It was also filling the surrounding city with molten rock.

  This wasn't what he'd expected. Where were the explosions? The flashes of blinding light and thunder in the sky and beneath the ground? Or alternatively the crater that should have formed as the city completely disintegrated. Instead what had arrived after all that was almost peaceful. He didn't understand that. It had caused so much chaos and death, and it was destroying the city. But it had been so quiet!

  Lava started licking at the parts of the city that could still be seen, and fires soon took hold where it flowed. Hendrick had no doubt that everything the lava touched would either burn or melt in the intense heat. And the horrible thing was that in the dark of night it looked almost pretty. Homes were going to burn. People were going to die. Many already had. And yet it looked pretty!

  In time a wind rose up, bringing with it the stink of brimstone. It hurt the eyes and made breathing unpleasant as the smell irritated the lungs. Some started coughing. Still, no one moved, transfixed to the spot as they sat there watching.

  They were witnessing the death of Styrion Might. It was slow and almost pretty from where they were watching. But Hendrick knew that up close it had to be truly horrible. Because as the lava kept flowing out of the top of the volcano and flowing down its side, it was pouring through the city's terraces. Anyone still left in the city would be running for their lives, if the fumes hadn't already choked them to death.

  A piercing shriek unexpectedly split the air, making all of them jump and turn. It was a woman's shriek, and came from somewhere behind them. It was followed shortly after by a fireball which rose into the sky. But Hendrick couldn't see anything more than that. It was on the other side of the hill from where they were, hidden in its shadow.

  “That was Sana.” Val calmly announced it to them as they sat there staring. “I told her that she was doomed.”

  “Doomed?” Hendrick asked, unsure if he even wanted to know what the sage meant.

  “Her master found out that his new servant had died. He was unhappy and he blamed her for it. At a guess I suspect he set her on fire. But she was always doomed from the moment she went to the beast. If the creature inside her had lived, it would have torn her apart when it finally emerged into the world. This was at least quicker. More merciful. At least as merciful as a behemoth gets.”

  “Uh huh.” Hendrick couldn't think of anything else to say. But as the fireball behind them faded and the sky turned black once more, he turned his attention back to the city.

  It was a very slow death. At least it looked slow from where they were watching. The lava seemed almost graceful as it oozed its way down the terraces. It took hours for the lava to reach the outer terraces. But in the city itself he guessed, the lava would actually be flowing much more quickly. If people were still alive in the city, they probably wouldn't be able to out run it.

  At one point he asked Val where the lava kept coming from. Because he was sure that the volcano should be running out of it when it no longer had the depths of its former world to draw it from. But the answer didn't please him as the sage told him that there had to be another smaller portal somewhere inside the volcano. The behemoth was simply drawing it from his former realm as he built his new home here out of it.

  And that apparently was its plan. This behemoth was looking to make itself a new home of fire in this wo
rld, and so it was building a palace of molten rock for itself. In time the volcano would grow into a monster. One so large that it dwarfed all others. The sky above it would become choked with poisonous fumes and the land fouled. No one would be able to live anywhere nearby.

  But why? Surely the world the beast had come from was already like that? Why did it need to move here? It was a question for which the sage had no good answer.

  As for the behemoth itself, they saw no sign of it. Val said it was because the beast actually lived inside his volcano. They would likely never see anything other than its servants. Unfortunately Hendrick had already seen one of its servants – the creature that had been attached to Sana's middle – and he didn't care to see any more.

  By the time the sun rose, most of the city was gone. Here and there they could see small outcroppings of buildings standing tall as the rivers of orange flowed slowly around them, but Hendrick knew that they wouldn't stand for long. Already they were the colour of charcoal. Soon they would dissolve into the lava which had already travelled beyond the bounds of the city.