A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  “Your Highness?”

  “He has started rounding up the afflicted in all the towns and villages and is marching them to Dumas Line. He is also having the guards in all the towns he controls, organise hunts for the bits of magic metal. He intends to have the afflicted acquire the spells however he can. At the end of a musket if necessary. Now, is that not faster?”

  “He is rounding up our people?” Tyrollan raised his voice in shock, and he was normally a man who was never shocked. “But they have committed no crime!”

  “There is a war on – two wars actually – and magic may be the key to winning both of them.”

  “It is still a crime, your Highness! A great evil!”

  Tyrollan was right of course, but he'd missed the bigger picture Marnie realised. The King had said two wars. And one of those was the civil war between him and his son. Daylon was planning to use their people to fight as his soldiers. And the King didn't care about the rights and wrongs of the situation. It wasn't about justice of fairness. This was war. That was why there were so very few courtiers in the chamber, and the King was surrounded by high ranking soldiers. It was why they'd been summoned at such an early hour. She shuddered. This was going to be bad.

  “And I'll worry about that when my son is on trial. For now my worry is that in a few months we'll be under attack by armies of magical soldiers.” The king suddenly leaned forward on his throne to stare intently at them. “And he will have a great many more of them than we do.”

  “I cannot have that. And so accordingly I am issuing a notice of conscription for your people.”

  Marnie gasped. Tyrollan's face fell. And then his expression hardened. Seeing it Marnie hurriedly kicked him in the leg. He was going to disagree with the King. That was not only foolhardy but also potentially treasonous. And even though she wanted to refuse the King too, she knew they could not afford to. Aside from leading to the hangman’s noose, it would change nothing. They hadn't been called here to debate the issue. The decision had been made before they had been pulled out of bed. They were only here to be informed of the King’s decision.

  “Your Highness,” Marnie began hesitantly, “there will be a great many problems with this.”

  The King's face darkened as he turned to her. He did not want to hear about problems.

  “Problems?”

  “The people you are talking about, are not soldiers. Most of them aren't even people who could become soldiers. Half of them are women. Many of them are children and the elderly. None are trained. They don't know how to fight. And they don't want to.”

  “More than that they have spent their lives hiding their gifts from people. Being belittled and bullied simply for having the markings. The last thing any of them would want would be to have more markings. More reasons to be shunned. Even now when we offer stynes for service and try to lessen the shame of being afflicted, only the very smallest fraction of them agree to do this.”

  “They will run. They will hide. And they will resist. And some of those who resist may be dangerous. You could end up with more conflicts to deal with.”

  “We will deal with that when it happens.” The King seemed unconcerned.

  “There is more Your Highness,” Marnie continued nervously, struggling to find something to say to stop this madness before it began. Something that wouldn't sound like defiance. “Magic cannot be used as a weapon like other weapons. It does not work as they do. There are no true defences.”

  “When soldiers fight with swords, they may use shields to defend themselves. When they use muskets they may take shelter behind walls from the muskets of their enemies. None of that holds true with magic. A shield against muskets will not protect against lightning or disease. And neither can the magical become an army. Everyone is different. There are so many different spells. Thousands upon thousands of them. It would be like trying to create an army when some of your soldiers have knives, some have muskets and some have poison. You would not get an army. You would get a rabble.”

  But even as she tried to tell him that she could see her words were falling on deaf ears. The King had made up his mind long before they had been summoned.

  “My generals are aware of the problems. We will deal with them.”

  “And then there is the fact that most spells are not weapons. Often they are of no use at all. And there is no way to determine who will get what spell.” Marnie hurried on, hoping against hope that if she couldn't actually stop this madness, she could at least limit it.

  “And as my son Hendrick has shown, the problem is that you are too cautious. The more spells someone has the more likely that some of them will be warspells.” The King pounced on her argument.

  “I'm sorry Your Highness.” Marnie struggled to find something to say. But the only argument she could find against his was a lie. Or maybe just an exaggeration, she wasn't actually sure. But she seized on it desperately. “I thought you knew. I thought the priests would have told you of your son's condition.”

  “Told me what?” There was suddenly an uncertain note in the King's voice.

  “That your son is unwell.” She bowed to him and then chose to keep her head lowered as if what she had to tell him was a true sadness to her. Mostly though she was keeping her head down so that her face didn't reveal that she was desperately lying.

  “Unwell?”

  “We do not know fully Your Highness. We know he lay as if dead for five days. And that he vanished after that for a time. But when he returned for a short time, it was clear he was not well. The priests were unable to make sense of much of what he said. They said he was obsessed with finding the bronze people. But that he could not explain why. He also didn’t seem to understand many of the questions that were put to him, while others he answered in ways that made no sense. Often he did not seem to hear them at all. He was, they said, deeply disturbed. He seemed to be suffering from some mania, and they could not reason with him.” That wasn't exactly what they'd said. But it was close enough.

  “We have been at pains to keep this quiet. We have asked the priests not to speak of it. Hendrick is greatly respected by our people. If it was learned that he had suffered a malaise of the mind it would upset them greatly. But we are concerned that he may be dangerous. To himself and others. We may need to restrain him if he returns though we fear that we may not be able to.”

  “I see.” Finally the King sounded concerned – but only that his plans were not working out as he had planned. “Absorbing too many spells at once is dangerous.”

  “Perhaps Your Highness. But we cannot be sure. It may be that absorbing too many spells at once is dangerous. Or it may be that simply having too many spells is dangerous. The mind may not be able to cope with more than a certain number. Or it may be that certain spells are simply too dangerous to be held by a man. Our hope is that Hendrick will return in time, perhaps recovered, or at least willing and able to be helped, and we will learn more then. But our fear is that he won't. Or perhaps that it will be worse and he will prove a threat. Maybe even a more dangerous threat than the behemoth.”

  Silence greeted her words. Marnie hoped that that meant that the King was considering what she'd said. Eventually she raised her head again to look around the chamber at the generals, trying to guess how they had received her words. Many of them seemed to be in deep thought. But whether they were thinking that she was wise, timid or lying she didn't know.

  The King was obviously thinking about what she'd said too. Hopefully she had made him rethink his plans. She doubted it though. At best, what she had told him would cause him to be more cautious.

  The King soon proved her right.

  “The plan goes ahead. The conscription will be proclaimed, but the elderly, infirm and children will be exempted. Caution will be exercised in how many spells each new recruit is given and how quickly. But it will be more than it is now.”

  “I have Spoken!”

  That was it. The King had made his decision and Marnie knew that there was n
othing that they could say. Tyrollan clearly thought about trying, which was why she kicked him in the leg again. It seemed to silence him, though he glared at her a little angrily. All they could do she knew, was bow, and then let the soldiers escort them out of the chamber.

  Once outside on the concourse and alone, they were able to talk more freely. And immediately they started discussing plans – quietly. Plans that began with her talking to the priests of the Benevolent One and persuading them to support what she'd said. The more they could paint a picture of a king's son whose mind was broken, the more they could restrict the excesses of the King's new decree. She also liked the idea of bad mouthing the annoying little muck-spout. Though in fairness to him she thought, it was beginning to look like the entire Mountforth family was trouble.

  They also had to deal with the practical matters as they realised that the numbers of their people in the city were going to increase enormously. A few hundred was likely to become a few thousand within a month. It might ultimately be in the tens of thousands. She didn't know. No one had ever counted how many afflicted there were. But she was happy to send Tyrollan off to deal with that. Because it occurred to her that even as the repairs to their current quarters were proceeding at pace and sixty of their number now called it home, they were going to need more stynes and more premises. He was good at dealing with such things.

  The thing that most struck her as she left Tyrollan and headed toward the temple, was the bitter irony in the situation. Hendrick had been against the idea of rebuilding the magic city of Altanis. He had said it would lead to nothing but trouble with the nobles. And here it was the King himself who was driving the wagon in that direction. Because when he was finished, there would be a city full of wizards living in Styrion Hold. It would become the new Altanis. Meanwhile she was the one who knew that it would lead to trouble and would have to stop it. Because even if everything else went perfectly and the beast was driven from the world and the civil war resolved peacefully, they were going to have a new power in the realm. A power comprised of angry wizards. That could result in yet another war. And the only solution that she could see, was to build Hendrick's guild. To make a place for their people in the world. But it was clear that the King wasn't interested in that.

  She also realised that the chances of one of their number finally finding and using these infernal magical engines to free himself from his affliction, and in doing so killing them all, had just grown exponentially. Meanwhile the chance that some of their number would now become a danger, had become a certainty. Everything Lady Peri had feared might happen seemed to be coming true.

  And it was the King who had caused it! He had to know the danger. He had read the book, hadn't he? But she supposed he was more concerned with the immediate threats facing him than the one that might destroy the world sometime in the future.

  Why was it, she wondered, that the sun had finally poked its head up above the horizon and the morning sky was the brightest blue, and yet she felt that a new night had just fallen?

  Chapter Thirty

  Another day, another world, another temple. Hendrick was becoming tired of them. This would now be his fourth ancient great temple he’d visited since he’d covered himself in spells, and it was much like the others – even if one had been carved into the shell of a giant crab. All of them were simply places where writings he couldn't understand had been permanently carved into stones – or shells.

  But then it wasn't the temples he had come for. It was the bronze people. He had no idea where their world was and no way of finding them. Not when there were millions upon millions of worlds out there, and short of visiting them all, he could only see a few paces into any of them. He might have already seen their world, and not realised it. But he was sure that they watched the ancient temples. They would therefore see him. Sooner or later he hoped, they would become curious.

  Meanwhile he had rubbings to make.

  This one was easier than some of the others. But then it wasn't a temple in the way he understood such things. Maybe it had been once, he didn't know. To him it was simply a cliff face carved with screeds of text and images. Perhaps long ago there had been pews arranged at the foot of the cliff. Even an altar. But if there had been, they had long since vanished. Now there was only a cliff face covered in writings.

  The greatest problem he faced as he worked wasn't with either the temple or the rubbings. It wasn't even with the cold, and this was an icy world which was why he had bundled up tight. It was with the light. Something was wrong with it. Everything on this world was discoloured. There was orange and red everywhere. There were no greens and the sky was yellow. As for the sun, he hadn't seen it, but he doubted it would be a normal soothing yellow. And the strange colours made it difficult for him to make out much of the text. Things weren't sharp enough.

  Still, he thought as he worked, when he got the rubbings back to the temple in Styrion Hold, they would become clear enough in the sunlight. Then he could get them translated and learn more ancient secrets. He could become more powerful. Knowledge was power. And life was about power. Always and only.

  The unexpected thought came from out of nowhere, and for a moment he almost believed it was right. But Hendrick immediately squashed it. He didn't know exactly where these strange thoughts kept coming from, but he knew it was something to do with the spells. That as well as the magic and the will to use it, a tiny piece of the actual soul of the long dead wizard had come with it. The wizard’s memories and thoughts. And whoever that wizard had been, he had valued power above everything else. Mastery of magic. Control of everything. These things hadn't been mere lusts for him. They had been the air he breathed.

  But spells and magic weren't power to him. They were about wonder. He didn't want power. And as before Hendrick stood on the dark impulse – hard. He could defeat these strange urges he knew. In fact he mostly already had. Still, sometimes they crept up on him when he wasn't paying attention, and tried to make him see the world their way. It was an annoyance. He was Hendrick. Not some long dead wizard. And he would not cede control of his thoughts to another. Not even to a ghost.

  So he stamped on the strange thought and shouted it down, with everything that he knew himself to be. And soon it was gone. Back to whatever dim, dark recess in his mind it had come from.

  In the end, he was in control. He was himself. And that was all that mattered.

  Maybe, he thought as he worked, what he was tired of wasn't actually the strange thoughts. Nor was it the temples or the rubbings. It wasn't even the pain of his battered flesh, though that was fading with time and he could now move his arm much more freely. It was what was happening in Styrion.

  He kept returning to the realm. To Styrion Hold and the great temple of the Benevolent One. He kept bringing back his rubbings and picking up fresh supplies. And each time he did the priests informed him of what was happening in the world. Of everything his father was doing – and doing wrong.

  How could things have gone so wrong? He kept asking himself that question as he travelled the worlds. How could everything have been turned arse backwards? It was as though every decision his father had made lately, starting with his choice of newest wife, had been the wrong one. Instead of brewing with barley and grains and yeast he was brewing with poison. Fermenting death and destruction. Was he cursed in some way? Or had he become a curse? A follower of the Goat Footed God?

  Surely he could have dealt with Daylon's insurrection better than to declare war on him? To demand his head? And to decree that there could be no peace? Daylon might have been dim-witted in starting the war, but his father seemed just as dim-witted in stoking its flames. There should have been peace. They had a beast to fight. They needed to be united. But his father and Daylon didn’t seem to understand that. Hendrick doubted there would be peace any time soon.

  And as was always the case when the Goat Footed God was running things, each bad decision led to a worse one.

  Now his people were no longer mer
ely shunned. They had become slaves. You could call it something else. Conscription as his father did. But in the end, they were being rounded up in wagons and transported to Styrion Hold, and then forced to absorb new spells. That was slavery in his view.

  That was just so wrong! Things had been going well. The lot of his people had been improving. There had been the beginnings of some greater acceptance of them. Even respect. The prospect of a guild forming one day had been on the horizon. Now suddenly they had fallen even further down the ladder. From being merely shunned to becoming property.

  Then there was the fact that his father had tried to kill his mother – he still wasn't sure how to feel about that since they were both largely strangers to him. But murder seemed to be the family way of late. His eldest half-brother was trying to kill his father, while other half-brothers of his were trying to kill Daylon. Lady Marda had fled, barely ahead of the hangman. Lady Simone was now insisting on being addressed as the First Wife, which seemed a minor thing in the pantheon of disasters the kingdom was facing, save that she had always been a simple creature who loved clothes and luxuries far more than work. He suspected she had gone into her dotage the day she was born. Her eldest son Marthan, who if he succeeded in killing Daylon, would become the first in line, and was even more cloddish than his mother. R'ven was said to be the same. Neither were ever seen in public.