A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  It was twilight when he arrived. But that was no surprise. For some reason whenever he arrived on this world it was always twilight. It didn't seem to have either days or nights. He wasn’t sure that this world even had a sun but if it did then he suspected it was green. It was the only explanation he could find for the green tinged sky. No doubt Val could explain it fully. But asking the sage seemed like a bad idea to him just then. Val when he saw the markings on his flesh and learned what he had done would call him a mumblecrust and a sot. He would probably call him a lot worse.

  The twilight realm was the perfect place for what he needed to do. It was a dead world. There was no life anywhere as far as he could tell. No one he could hurt. Just a vast, maybe even endless plain of dark, cracked rock, and the occasional patch of moss. He could unleash every spell he had, with all the strength he could muster and no one would care. No one would know.

  Should he dress? He wondered about that for a moment. But then he realised that dressing would involve standing up – and he wasn't sure he was ready for that yet. Besides, it wasn’t cold in this world, and there was absolutely no one to see him. He also discovered that his clothes made a comfortable cushion for him to sit on. Better to get dressed when he was done and ready to return to Styrion Hold.

  Once he was comfortable and Hendrick had managed to calm the voices in his head enough, he reached for the first spell. It was a simple one. It allowed him to launch small dimensional arrows as if from a gun. But no musket ball ever made could do what these could do. He discovered that when he released the first one at a rocky outcropping maybe thirty yards from him, and watched as it punched right through it.

  The arrow had pierced surely a dozen yards of solid rock! Now that was a weapon! But it was also dangerous. Because he realised as he stared at the hole the dimensional arrow had left behind, that it hadn't stopped. It hadn't even slowed. Hendrick realised it wouldn’t stop until the magic it was made of, dissipated. The arrow could travel a great many leagues until then.

  Still, this was a dead world and he had to practice, so he summoned another dimensional arrow and then another, firing them one by one at the outcropping, slowly turning it from solid rock into something with more holes than stone. For some reason he found the sight of the damage he was doing to the stone, fascinating.

  He only stopped when a part of the outcropping with too many holes and too little stone remaining collapsed in front of him. Because by then he knew the spell was under his control. And he still had a great many more demanding his attention.

  The next spell was another one of summoning, but this time from a new world full of creatures he didn't want to meet. Most of them looked like worms. Slow moving, far too large and with strange tentacles on the ends of their heads. Tentacles that bent and curved and somehow shrank all the way back into their bodies. Still, he practised the spells, studying the world closely, hunting for any creatures that weren't worms, and when he found none, summoning a worm. Then he sent it away again as fast as he could. Seeing it right in front of him he thought it even more ugly than it had been in his mind's eye. And it smelled. As for commanding it, that was nearly impossible. It didn't have the intellect to accept a command.

  Still he had to keep summoning it. Again, and again until the spell was properly practised in his mind and the voice of that spell in his head had muted. Only then could he send it away permanently and dream of never casting it again.

  After that he reached for a spell of prismatic light. It was another spell that was about as much use as a saddle for geese. All it did was to allow the light from one world to stream into this one, but through a dimensional manifold that acted like a simple glass prism. The result was that it created rainbows. Lots and lots of rainbows that danced across the grey sky. It was pretty at least.

  Hendrick cast the spell over and over again until he had mastered it, enjoying the displays of glorious colour splashed over the eternally darkening sky. Even if the spell was of absolutely no practical value to him, he found it good simply to watch the sky. And to bring some fresh light to this eternal twilight.

  And so it continued, as one by one he cast each of his new spells. Learning them, mastering them, he slowly made them his. And as he did so the voices in his head gradually quietened. The need to cast them faded.

  It took time. Hours upon hours. Each spell had to be cast and recast until it was firmly rooted in his thoughts. And he had picked up so many new spells! He didn't know how many exactly, but he guessed it was approaching fifty. He had to wonder if any afflicted man in history had ever had so many spells.

  But even after he'd finally finished practising them he knew he would have to keep doing it over the coming days and weeks just to make certain he could cast them with the ease he wanted. To quiet the demands he knew they would make on him to be cast. And even after that he'd add them to his meditations, so that the taints of the will of the ancient wizard could be eliminated from him. It would take years at the least. He might truly never be done.

  The only thing that mattered now though, was whether they would help him in his quest to find the bronze people. Some were useful tools. One – the dimensional arrows – would make an excellent weapon. But most of them like most spells in general, were of no value.

  Still, in the end when he was finished, he had some achieved peace inside his head. Enough that he knew it was time to begin work. Unfortunately, that began with standing up and dressing, something that involved moving his broken body. But he managed it in time, mostly because he was able to create a seat for himself out of the cracked rock plain by using his spell of warping. It was easier to stand and dress when he had something to sit on.

  When he was done he stepped back to Styrion to find himself in the midst of a furore. A number of priests were currently in the sleeping dormitory interrogating the patients, in what sounded like hysterical tones. The instant he arrived they flocked to him as if he was their mother hen. But the panic died down once he arrived, because it was his disappearance was apparently the cause.

  It seemed they'd been searching for him for quite some time. He'd been gone fifteen hours in total. Long enough for them to notice that he was missing and to start a search. Also long enough for the dark of night to become a bright sunny day. Something that was welcome after the eternal twilight of the world he'd just left.

  What wasn't so welcome was the way they immediately started pestering him with questions even as they tried to steer him back to his bed. Especially when he realised why. It seemed that the priests and healers had thought he'd gone wandering into the city and got lost like a senile old dotard. They'd assumed that his mind had been broken by what he'd done to himself.

  Hendrick did his best to convince them that he was in his right mind. That he was neither under the influence of Vitanna's mist nor demented. He wasn't sure if he succeeded though. They still stared dubiously at him. Especially when he told them his plans. It would also have helped if they hadn't kept staring at his face. But he supposed he couldn't blame them for that. Not when they gave him a mirror and he saw his sparkling grey eye.

  After that they fed him, worked on his strapping, so that he could move with a little less pain, and even packed for him – even as they kept politely suggesting that he was breathing the mist for even thinking about doing what he intended to. They agreed to send a message to his mother – she would expect that even if he doubted she cared. They also agreed to send another to Marnie and Tyrollan, advising them that he was awake and what his plans were. They even lent him a great cloak, which was fortunate. With the hood up people didn't notice the sparkling grey lines on his face or his eye. The pilgrim staff was welcome too, since he knew he had a long way to walk and much of it through difficult terrain. And even if he wasn't a priest of the Order of the Benevolent One, it couldn't hurt to look like one.

  The strange thing was that as he left the temple and headed down the street toward the city gates, he had an image in his mind. A story told by the bards
about the ancient wizards. Of them always carrying staffs and wearing great cloaks with their hoods up like him as they wandered the world on their great magical adventures. And he had to wonder; was he now what passed for one of those ancient wizards?

  If he was he quickly realised, there was one thing he had to be certain he never did. He should never tell Marnie!

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  It was too early to be out of bed Marnie thought. Certainly far too early to be out in the city streets. The cobbles were still cold from the chill of the night, and the sky was barely blue. But it seemed that she had no choice in the matter. Not when the soldiers had come and dragged her and Tyrollan out of their nice warm beds, and ordered them to accompany them to the Royal Chambers. Apparently the Council Chambers had now officially become the Royal Chambers. She wasn't sure why or what that meant – if it meant anything at all.

  Not much these days seemed to mean anything. Not for long anyway. The King would issue a proclamation and then within hours it would be changed. Taxes had been raised and lowered within the same day. The city gates were one minute open, the next closed. And soldiers were everywhere. Obviously things were not well in the Court.

  But then the tales the bards were telling were worse. They spoke of a civil war breaking out across Styrion. Of some towns and cities accepting Daylon's rule – and of others rejecting it. Of armies massing. And of battles to come.

  Meanwhile the people were scared, and were doing what people always did when that happened. They were turning to their gods. Pritarma's followers were said to be holding orgies in many of the cities that lasted for days at a time. They were also arranging mass weddings. Vitanna's followers were simply drinking themselves into a stupor at every opportunity. It would be a good time to be a brewer she thought. S'bet's followers were joining them, proudly proclaiming that this was the end. The last war. Naturally those who followed the Goat Footed God would want to celebrate the end of the world since they believed that what would follow it would be their Lord's world. Even the disciples of Dibella were said to be about. Stealing more victims for their sacrifices as they desperately tried to make contact with the Queen of the Dragons. This would probably be a good time to gain immortality.

  It was the followers of Tarius though who were mostly holding the people together. The Benevolent One preached wisdom as well as compassion, and even if there were some terrible wars to come, wisdom said that they all had the best chance of survival if they weren't starving, cold, tired and suffering from the after-effects of Vitanna's grapes.

  But the priests could do only so much in the face of panic. Naturally while the people prayed and celebrated, work wasn't being done. Factories and mills were barely operating. The markets were barely trading and the stores were empty, as the only thing anyone wanted to buy was wine and ale. Town guards were said to have deserted their posts. Rioting had broken out.

  And all of that was happening while the reports of the behemoth's servants appearing across the realm were growing in both number and horror. Now the creatures were said to be striking towns and villages at will, and more often than not, destroying them. Those who survived were reported to have fled in all directions. Many were said to be broken in spirit. That shriek of the behemoth’s servants didn't just shatter eardrums and crack skulls; it sapped spirits and broke minds.

  How could the world fall apart so quickly? That was what she kept wondering. It had only been two weeks since the King had so disastrously attacked the visitors. And yet it seemed that the realm might not survive two more. Was this part of the behemoth's plan? To spread fear and despondency? Or was it simply their own King, making one terrible decision after another? Was he actually a dotard as some were claiming?

  She guessed that she and Tyrollan had been summoned because of the beast's ghostly servants. The King wanted his cities protected. He wanted at least one threat dealt with. If he could at least deal with the attacks of the beast's servants then he'd only have a civil war and a kingdom falling into anarchy to deal with.

  Unfortunately he wasn't going to like what they would tell him. That they still only had eight of their people who now had a spell that could be of use against the behemoth's servants. If they divided their forces in two, that meant they could send four people to protect one additional city. Their thinking was that they would need at least four per city. Four and a few more who had other spells that might help. A single city out of fifty! Two if you included the Hold. But in the end the problem was a simple one. They had plenty of spells. They just didn't have enough of their people volunteering to accept the spells. And there was nothing they could do about that.

  But there was still hope. Hendrick's and Tyrollan's other plan – the private ceremonies at the other temples – was apparently working well. They had been given word that some of the temples had been busy. And that they'd come up with their own plan. To place the fragments on the backs of those coming to them. That way the new spells would be hidden under clothing. No one would know that they had any extra spells. Maybe some of them had useful warspells and would defend their homes.

  As they marched up the street Marnie found herself wondering just what the best way would be to tell the King that. Or whether they should at all. Hendrick had been clear that he did not want the information getting out. He feared it might be seen as a threat. He had a point, she admitted. But if they didn't tell the King that, then they were left with only being able to tell him about the limited success they had had. She found herself hoping that Tyrollan would accept the task of speaking to the King. He was better at such things than her.

  She also found herself hoping that this wouldn't turn out to be another ambush. She couldn't imagine why it would be – but then she hadn't expected it to be one the first time. She supposed that was the basic nature of an ambush.

  Her fear only grew as they approached the Royal Chambers. But she told her terrified heart that it couldn't be. Not when their guards were prepared to walk in front of them through the doors and no cannon sounded. Still, she was slow through the doors and checked both sides just to make sure before entering.

  “My King.” Their escorts bowed to King Oster as he sat on the throne. “Marnie Holdwright and Tyrollan Dan as requested.”

  “Good.” The King dismissed the two soldiers with a nod and turned his attention to Marnie and Tyrollan.

  “Now, enough time has passed,” the King began, not wasting his time with pleasantries. “I need to know the progress you've made in training people to fight these monsters.”

  The King clearly wasn’t in a good mood. But that wasn’t surprising really. The previous day he'd divorced his third wife, Lady Recina. He'd had to, as it was a matter of honour. Word had come from somewhere – Marnie suspected that it was Lady Marda – that Lady Recina had been bed hopping with a soldier. It turned out she’d been doing so for many years. The King had been openly made a cuckold, and that could not be tolerated. The soldier in question was now swinging from a rope somewhere, Lady Recina was rotting away in a dungeon, and six more sons had been disinherited. The King could no longer be certain they were his.

  However, though a bad day for the King, it had been a good one for the bards who were making up bawdy refrains across a hundred alehouses and earning stynes by the score. She also supposed this must be good news for Hendrick too since as far as she knew he hadn't been disinherited. By her count, nine of the heirs ahead of him in line for the throne had now been disinherited. Two more were so mentally feeble that they couldn't inherit. Now there were only four more princes and his brother ahead of him. He was sixth in line. At this rate he could be king within a month! Of course being afflicted, he wasn't eligible. But still!

  On the other hand, the thought of calling him King Hendrick galled!

  “We are making progress Your Highness.” Tyrollan bowed to the King. “But it's slow. At present there are eight of us who have magic that we believe will be effective against the behemoth's servants. And we believe that a
group of four of them, together with a few others of our number to support them, will provide an effective magical defence for a city, if there is a guard to support them and keep watch. I can have the first group ready to leave for whatever city you decide today.”

  “One city! The King stared at them unhappily. “I have fifty cities to protect and thousands of towns and villages! One city is simply not enough.”

  “I'm sorry Your Highness.” Tyrollan bowed again. “But only a very few of the spells that we find and absorb are effective against these enemies. There are only so many of our people who are willing to accept new spells. And absorbing the spells is a slow process. It will take time.”

  It would and the King had to have known that before he called for them. But still, Marnie checked the room carefully to see if any guns were pointed their way.

  “Yes, it is – your way. But it seems my son has hit upon a quicker method.”

  His son? Hendrick? Marnie was surprised by that. She would at least have expected that the muck-spout would have come to them if he'd discovered something useful. And they hadn't seen him in four days. Not since he'd picked himself up out of his sick bed and headed out. But then she saw the thunder in the king's face, and realised he wasn't talking about Hendrick. He was talking about his eldest son and former heir – Daylon.