The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

  The door crashed shut behind him and he whirled around.

  Marguerite was there, but she was not alone, and the man behind her had a knife at her throat.

  Reinmar felt a pang of bitter regret that he should ever have allowed his private way into the house to be seen and copied.

  “Cousin Wirnt,” he said, hoarsely. “Your friends and kinsmen have been asking after you.”

  “I have had to be careful, cousin,” the stout man assured him. “I had no sooner left your shop than von Spurzheim’s men were snapping at my heels. What a pest that man is! I had no option but to hide, and by the time I tried to reach my father they had taken him away. I nearly returned to Holthusen, but that might have been more dangerous still, so I thought it best to wait for another opportunity to talk to my uncle. When I saw him leave, I nearly did not recognise him—but then I realised that you must have brought him wine, of the very highest quality. I am still willing to pay a fair price for the goods, of course—if a life can still be reckoned precious after tonight’s pageant of destruction.”

  “I’m sorry, Reinmar,” Marguerite said, in a voice almost as hoarse as his own.

  Reinmar observed, anxiously, that the gleam in Wirnt’s eye was not the glow of the wine of dreams but something more electric. The strength of his craving had obviously increased.

  He was not mad, in the sense that Luther had been mad, but he was desperate and dangerous, and the steadiness of his hand was unlikely to be trustworthy.

  “Let her go, Wirnt,” Reinmar said. “Marguerite has nothing to do with any quarrel you might have with me. She came here to render a service of extraordinary kindness.”

  “Should I be threatening the gypsy, then?” Wirnt countered, without moving the tip of his blade from Marguerite’s windpipe. “She’s no use to you, I fear. The call that the source will send out after tonight’s hectic work will be irresistible. You might even hear it yourself—but I must be gone by morning if 1 am to make the most of my opportunity, and I cannot go without a supply of the wine. You do have an abundant supply, do you not?”

  “Actually, no,” Reinmar told him. “My grandfather took it with him. There’s none left in the house.”

  “He had no bottle with him when I saw him,” Wirnt said, “and he can’t be such a fool as to march through the streets of Eilhart with a jug of dark wine when it is full of witch hunters. Where is it, cousin? In the cellars? No more lies, now.”

  “It was pure nectar he had, not diluted wine,” Reinmar said. “I’m not lying. If you hurt that girl, I’ll kill you. Let her go.”

  Wirnt’s only answer to the threat and the demand was to press the point of his dagger into Marguerite’s throat, drawing a trickle of blood. The fugitive candlelight reflected in her eyes acknowledged her terror, but she did not cry out. She was trying with all her might to be brave.

  “Tell me one more lie, cousin,” Wirnt said, coldly, “and I might press a little too hard.”

  “You have already done that,” Reinmar retorted, with equal coldness. “Now, you will have to earn enough regard to persuade me to let you out of here alive. You have no idea how much killing I have done this night, of not-quite-men and half-human chimeras and giant scorpions with entrancing scent.”

  “You have killed such a fiend?” Wirnt retorted scornfully “I doubt that, unless you had an army at your back—and if you did, that army is not behind you now. I need the wine, cousin Reinmar, and I think you understand by now how powerful a need like that can be. You know full well that I’d fight you if I had to, and kill you if I must, and you do not seem to have strength enough to swat a fly, let alone engage a man like me in combat. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I only want the wine you brought from the valley, and once I have it you can certainly trust me to take it far away from here. I’ll take it all the way to Marienburg if I can.”

  “And what makes you think that you can?” Reinmar countered, hoping that if he delayed long enough he might recover enough of his strength to make a fight of it. “If even I might hear a call, for merely having sniffed a cork, what will keep you from the hidden valley and a niche in the stone floor, and a lovely flower sprouting from your flesh? Or has no one told you yet how the wine of dreams is made?”

  “Reinmar, please.” The plea came from Marguerite, still terrified.

  “Your little friend will not lightly forgive you for this unnecessary delay,” Wirnt said, smiling grimly. “And when the cost of this night’s work is counted, you’ll need every friend you can find. You brought those monsters here, Reinmar—you. I am probably the only man for a hundred miles who does not bear you a grudge for that, because I know what your work has done to the price of dark wine, and I mean to have your secret supply for my own. I am young enough that I only need the merest sip for myself, and I know exactly what price to extract for the rest from those whose need and thirst is greater by far. Only let me have what I want, and the girl will be safe. I’ll be gone in no time at all.”

  “You’ll have to find Luther,” Reinmar said, more desperately than before—but as he spoke he saw that Wirnt’s eyes were no longer fixed on his. The stout man was looking past him, at someone on the stair, and there was a new uncertainty in his gaze.

  Reinmar turned, hoping to see Luther, or Gottfried, or even Albrecht refreshed—but what he actually saw was Marcilla, perhaps awake but definitely dreaming.

  The gypsy girl had her head slightly raised, as if she were listening intently or trying to catch a faint and fugitive odour. She was moving slowly but her body was quite poised, her eyes open but unseeing. When she reached the foot of the stair she moved towards the head of another—the stone flight that led down into the cellars.

  “It seems that I do not need you after all, Master Wieland,” Wirnt observed, triumphantly. “Your hiding place may be proof even against an educated palate like my own, but she belongs entirely to the wine, and has since the moment of her conception. You cannot hide it from her!”

  Reinmar was not sure that this judgement could be accurate, given that Wirnt’s mother appeared to be a sorceress, while Marcilla’s had merely been a gypsy, but he had already been warned that the gypsy might find the nectar wherever it was hidden. He had brought her out of the valley, but it seemed that nothing he could do could free her from the call that she had heard.

  He understood for the first time how hopeless his love had been, how small and impotent a thing any mere affection was against the kind of command that was incarnate in the perfume of the thing that Sigurd had slain, and which had slain Sigurd in its turn.

  He understood, too, that perhaps Luther had not been fool enough to take the nectar with him when he left the house. Perhaps he had hidden it again, in some secret place of his own.

  “Follow her!” Wirnt said, abruptly. “I’ll come along too—and remember that this pretty maid’s safety is in your hands. If I get what I need, she’ll be safe. If not—whatever might happen to you or me—she’ll be dead.”

  Reinmar did as he was told. He picked up the candle-tray from the bottom step of the wooden stair, and held it high enough to light Marcilla’s way down the stone flight, although it did not seem that she was in any need of the guidance of mere light.

  This is fortunate, Reinmar told himself, as he moved behind the ensorcelled girl. I would never have been able to convince Wirnt that my grandfather had the nectar, or that I could not find his hiding-place, but now I shall see where it is before he does. He has the dagger, but I have the candle.

  He tried, desperately, to think of some way in which he could turn that discrepancy into a winning advantage without exposing Marguerite to any further risk of having her throat cut. He was still horribly conscious of his own enfeeblement.

  Marcilla reached the bottom of the flight, and swiftly went on into the mazy corridors between the racks of wine.

  There was little enough room here for people to pass in single file, and Wirnt had Marguerite to cope with as well as his own over-ample girth. Unfortunately
, Wirnt knew only too well that there was a hazard in allowing Reinmar to move too far ahead of him and he quickly called an instruction to halt.

  “Now, my dear,” Wirnt said to Marguerite, when Reinmar obeyed. “I want you to move up behind your friend, and reach around him very carefully. I want you to remove his sword from its scabbard, very carefully, and drop it on the floor.”

  It took longer than Wirnt must have hoped for Marguerite to do this, but she did it, and the sword clanged upon the stone floor.

  “Good,” Wirnt said. “Now, put your hands around him and clasp him tightly. From now on, the two of you must move as one—but I have the dagger at your back and I’ll slip it through your ribs if I have the slightest cause. Now move on.”

  Reinmar moved on. Marguerite’s hands were clasped tight in front of his chest, and the pressure of her arms seemed a far greater restraint than it actually was—but he heard Wirnt pick up his sword as they pressed on, and knew that he was now at a very severe disadvantage indeed, even though he still had control of the light.

  Marcilla had moved on swiftly ahead, but she came to a stop now, and moved her arms uncertainly, as if her fingertips were able to sense the direction of the missing phial. She moved off into a blind side-corridor, heading for a section of bare wall.

  There was no more visual evidence of any loose mortar in this wall than there had been in Reinmar’s bedroom, but Reinmar knew that Luther had lived in the house for a very long time, and that von Spurzheim could not have been the first warranted official to think that its cellars ought to be searched.

  Wirnt, who had obviously reached the same conclusion, let out an audible sigh of anticipation.

  Then there was an almighty crash, as something exploded upon the stout man’s head.

  Marguerite screamed as the sword or the dagger pricked her back, and clutched Reinmar so tightly that he dropped the candle-tray. The candle flickered, but its light did not fail, and the flame stabilised again when the tray came to rest right way up.

  Reinmar turned, putting his own arms protectively around Marguerite’s body and hoping fervently that she was not too badly hurt.

  She was not. Wirnt had been felled far too abruptly to be able to carry out his threat. He had been struck from above, not from behind; he had had no chance to see or hear his assailant’s approach.

  That assailant was stretched out atop a rank of shelves, from which he had plucked the jar of wine that he had shattered on Wirnt’s solid skull. Ulick, it appeared, had never left the house at all. He had merely hidden himself, in a place that was too narrow to accommodate anyone but a person of his slender configuration.

  The gypsy boy’s eyes were wide open, and must have been sufficiently capable of sight to guide his blow, but as soon as Reinmar looked into them he knew that Ulick’s condition was exactly similar to Marcilla’s. Reinmar deduced that he had been set here to stand guard over the phial that Luther Wieland had hidden in the wall, and keep it safe for his sister, perhaps also for himself.

  Even so, Reinmar felt that he had to make an effort to talk sensibly to the boy.

  “Ulick,” he said, quietly. “You must not let Marcilla drink the nectar. If both of you will only consent to let it alone, there is still a chance that you might survive this dread affair. I understand now that I should never have brought it out of the valley, but I was confused by its perfume. It is evil through and through, and ought to be destroyed.”

  While Reinmar was speaking, though, Ulick scrambled down the racks and picked up Wirnt’s dagger.

  Reinmar might have been able to make a grab for his sword had Marguerite not been in his way, but he could not bear to thrust her rudely backwards over Wirnt’s fallen body, using her as a shield. It would have been too cruel even if it had not been too dangerous. It was Marcilla that he loved, still, but Marguerite was his friend, and she had already been frightened and cut for his sake.

  “Is the nectar yours, Master Wieland?” Ulick asked, in a voice not quite his own. “Do you claim it for yourself?”

  “No,” Reinmar said. “I do not. It is not the sort of thing that any mere man can or ought to possess—he who has it is himself possessed.”

  He felt a hand upon his shoulder then, placed from behind, and felt Marcilla’s fingers caressing the side of his neck. He felt her breath upon his cheek as she leaned forward to whisper in his ear—but the voice that spoke to him was not quite her own, and he knew that no matter how he had striven to deny the fact, she was already possessed.

  Marcilla’s voice, like Ulick’s, was now the voice that had spoken to him out of nowhere while he was wide awake, and had spoken to him far more subtly in his wine-induced dream.

  “Dearest Reinmar,” the voice said, “we are all possessed, from the moment we first learn to see till the moment we must learn to die. We are possessed by our appetites and our lusts, and no matter how hard reason may fight for its empire, those claims of ownership can never be set aside. You are possessed, my darling, and the chit you hold in your hands is possessed too, securely and forever. You do not have the choice to be anything but a possession, and never will; the only freedom you will ever have is the freedom to be used in a better way than some few of your fellows. You might be mine, if you wished it, but if you will not be mine you will only be another’s, or held in common by all my awesome kind, to be buffeted one way and then another, never knowing true rest or fair certainty or real pleasure. Far better to be mine, dear heart, knowingly and willingly. That way, at least, there is some slight reward in life, instead of endless worry and endless travail. Believe me, darling Reinmar, there is nothing you will desire more when you grow old than the opportunity to put the clock back and give yourself entirely to me. Seize that opportunity now, and save yourself a deal of pain.”

  Reinmar’s arms were still around Marguerite. She had relaxed into his grip and was pressing herself against him, breast to breast. He knew that she had heard every word, and that she was waiting with bated breath to hear his reply.

  “I cannot,” he said. “Marcilla, I cannot.”

  He could not be sure that Marguerite would be prepared to believe that he was talking to Marcilla, and only to Marcilla, but he thought that it might be safer if she did.

  “Corrupted by discipline,” said the voice, regretfully. “If you could kill for me, you’d find so much more pleasure in killing. You glimpsed that, I think, in the instant before the fiend died. Can you not remember what killing ought to be, my love? Must you make it a matter of duty and discipline?”

  “Take the nectar and go, Marcilla,” Reinmar said, his voice raw with thirst. “Take it, I beg you, and go.”

  The hand moved away from his shoulder, but it was not withdrawn. Instead the fingers reached up to put gentle pressure on his eyelids and deny him sight.

  “Oh, my silly darling,” the voice said, “I could have done that at any time since you stepped out of the underworld, but the game is not done yet. You do not understand me at all, for all your yearning dreams.”

  And with that, Reinmar found himself falling slowly into unconsciousness. His throat was still desperately dry, but it proved in the end that he was even more tired than thirsty. He faded away into delicious, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Reinmar awoke when water splashed his face. When he raised his head the rim of a cup touched his lip and he drank avidly. He took the cup in his own hands and drained it completely before looking up into the candlelit face of the man who had given it to him.

  “Godrich?” he said.

  “That’s right,” the steward agreed. “What happened here, Master Wieland?”

  For a moment, Reinmar did not even know where he was, but when his eyes had taken in the wine-racks he remembered. His first thought was to look for Marcilla, and it was not until he had registered the fact of her absence that he became aware of the significance of the fact that there were others missing too.

  Wirnt had gone. So had Marguerite. Did that mean that
she had been taken prisoner again?

  Reinmar looked at the blank wall then, and saw a gap where a loose brick had been carefully removed. He stood up, silently cursing the discomfort that immediately afflicted his arms and legs. He looked into the hole, but there was nothing there. He put his hand into the space, extending groping fingers into every cranny. If the phial had been there he would have been able to touch it, but it was not. Had it ever been there, he wondered, or had the drama played out in the cellar been a mere charade from beginning to end? Had Marcilla led Wirnt to Ulick under false pretences, so that Ulick might smash the stone jar upon his head?

  Godrich was still waiting politely for an answer.

  “My cousin Wirnt was here,” Reinmar told him. “He was looking for dark wine, but Luther had taken the phial I brought from the valley. If Luther really did hide what remained in here, I have no idea where it is now. What hour is it?”

  “Three after noon,” Godrich told him. “You should come upstairs, if you can walk. I’ve made a meal of sorts, though there’s nothing at all to be bought in the market.”

  “Three after noon! I must have slept the clock round, or very nearly.” Reinmar consented to be led away in the direction of the stair, but he looked for his sword first and was not at all pleased to find it gone.

  “I dare say that you needed the sleep,” Godrich observed, as they began to climb the stair, unhurriedly. “To judge by the state of your clothing, you were in the thick of it.”

  “Is it over?”

  “Not quite, but the Reiksguard have matters under firm control.”

  “The Reiksguard. Not von Spurzheim?”