The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume One

by Charles Williamson

  Michael stood and shook hands with Sir Gregory. “If we have a deal, send word to The Unicorn Steed. I’m going to walk around the hospital ruins this afternoon, but I’ll be at the inn by dinnertime.”

  Michael went to the hospital site and asked the foreman, Claude the Builder, to show him around the site, explaining that he had made an offer on the property. They talked about the lack of bodies. The possible tunnel location was directly below the collapsed back wall of the four story stone building. Neither mentioned it. The current stone removal had not been anywhere near the back of the site.

  Along the main road from the Great North Gate, about ten paces of stone had already been cleared or relocated in preparation of removal. That gave Michael an idea for a short-term use of the roadside space without permanently compromising the location for a future hospital if the healers were able to return someday. He discussed it with the Claude, who seeing a chance for additional work, agreed to bring him a drawing of the plan tomorrow morning.

  “Currently, you’re working for Sir Gregory I assume,” Michael commented.

  “He’s a hard man to work for, but he always pays on time. He’s about as honest as you rich folk ever are,” Claude replied.

  “He is the agent for the King in selling the property. Do you think he really has title to the land, rather than the healers’ guild who owned it for over a thousand years?”

  “Clear title or no, Sir Gregory has the full power of the monarchy behind him. His wife is the new king’s favorite cousin. If he sells you this land, it will be yours; the King selects all the judges in the province who could rule on ownership. In any case, I heard all the healers are dead and therefore can’t complain. Perry protect us from the next epidemic, since the healers can’t, but I think you’d own this property if King Richard says so.”

  When Michael returned to The Unicorn Steed, the owner rushed up to him and said in an awed tone, “The High Priest and Sir Gregory both sent word that they would like to dine with you tonight. It’s exciting for us to host a meal for both of them. I’ve sent my chef to the High Priest Palace to discuss his preferences with his head chef. The Unicorn Steed will make you proud, I promise. The last time the High Priest banqueted here was when the High Priest of Northport was our guest four years ago. I think six courses each with a fine wine will be enough. We have good china to use in your private dinning room; we’ll put fresh flowers in both your sitting room and dining room. We have some forty year old brandy that should be perfect for after dinner.”

  The innkeeper would have continued on with the details, but Michael smiled and nodded. He thought he might need to make some more gold crowns before he paid his bill at the inn. “Spare no expenses. This is probably the only time I will ever host two such important guests for dinner at the same time.”

  Michael went up to his rooms and found four chambermaids busy cleaning and preparing the table. Michael had grown up in a small village until he became an apprentice to William of Hearthshire Town. He had no experience with ostentatious dining and wondered what he could possible talk about for the three or four hours the dinner would probably last. William had once explained that the easiest conversation is when you let your guest tell you about himself. He decided to try that.

  An hour after dark, Sir Gregory arrived, smiled, and said, “Michael my friend, we have a deal. The High Priest will witness and cosign the transfer, and I have brought along the King’s official seal. The property will be yours this evening. What do you plan to do with it now.”

  “In the long run, I’ll probably take your suggestion that the property is suitable for manor houses for the local gentry, but in the short term, I plan to construct an exclusive shopping arcade using the limestone blocks and columns from the hospital. It will cover only the front street area, leaving the rest of the property for future development.”

  Michael continued with his merchant’s persona sales pitch. “This Street of Dreams will be the most elegant shopping location in all of Glastamear. It will have a guarded entrance that only allows entry of the right people for the high-end jewelers and clothiers to whom I plan to lease space. I will have guards to protect the merchants, so they will not need to hire their own. There will also be at least one fine place to take a meal or have a drink. The arcade will have toilet facilities suitable for ladies and gentlemen of class, and a back room for their servants to relax while the patrons shop or dine in the highest style.”

  Sir Gregory looked impressed. “Do you have enough capital for your project, perhaps you need a partner.”

  “I can get the capital from my father, but I will need a local agent who knows which businesses are suitable. I’ll still be traveling with my pearls, so I can’t stay and manage the project. Claude the builder has agreed to design and build it for me. Are you interested in being my agent?”

  Sir Gregory replied, “Yes, but I would be more committed if I had an ownership interest.”

  “I think one quarter share or fifty crowns a month, whichever is greater would be agreeable.”

  Sir Gregory smiled, “You have a partner and agent.”

  They shook hands. Michael said, “I’ll ask solicitor Martin of Court Street to draw up the partnership agreement for us. We’ll sign it before I leave town next week. I’ll be seeing Claude about the plans tomorrow morning. You’re welcome to join us at the second hour after breakfast.”

  Two knight protectors entered Michael’s sitting room without knocking and looked around suspiciously. After their inspection, the High Priest of Briarton, Baron Joseph Wheaton, a corpulent man in ornate scarlet robes, entered. Both Michael and Sir Gregory stood and bowed and the High Priest blessed them with the sign of Perry Ascendant. The three men had wine and sweetmeats in the sitting room before going into the private dining room for the banquet.

  During the third course of the elaborate meal, the topic of the Street of Dreams project was discussed. Michael offered a concession to the church to further strengthen his merchant credentials and protect the project site until the hospital could be reconstructed in the distant future.

  “My lord, I believe the new shopping arcade will be a nice addition to the city, and I would like to show my appreciation for your support by giving the Temple Fund a one crown in twenty share of the revenue.”

  “May Perry bless your project for your support; perhaps one crown in ten would guarantee Perry’s blessing so that every priest in the city would know of your good feelings for the Temple and patronize your merchants.”

  “I would be honored to share my possible success with one coin in ten of the net rental profits going to the Temple Fund.” Michael smiled when the High Priest agreed since it was exactly what he expected to settle on.

  The power of either the church or the king could steal his whole project if they chose. Giving this revenue to the Temple Fund was exactly the same as giving it directly to the High Priest since he decided on all the expenditures, and making Sir Gregory a partner without requiring any capital contribution should secure the King’s approval.

  It was near midnight when the banquet was done and Michael was tired, but he spent an hour making golden crowns to give to Claude the Builder to get his arcade project started.

  During the next week, Michael had frequent meetings to finalize the plans for the Street of Dreams Arcade. He had enlisted the proprietor of The Unicorn Steed to provide the food and drinks at the dinning facilities. He secured agreements to occupy space in the arcade from three well-known jewelers, three fine cloth merchants, four excellent tailors, and two vendors of fine imported goods. One spice dealer was considering relocating and two high-end dry goods dealers were possible tenants.

  By the end of the week he had decided that under different circumstances he might have enjoyed being a merchant. It would be an advantage to have revenue coming in as he worked to build the organization needed to overthrow the Church of Perry Ascendant. The cash flow would help to hide the fact that he could magically made crowns, and as the
project became widely known, he could become a well-known merchant improving his disguise. In spite of the busy week, he grew more and more anxious about the healers who might be hiding at Fay Woods, and was excited as he finally rode through the North Gate on his fine black stallion, Ebony Honor, while leading his sturdy packhorse, Strong Heart.

  Chapter 29

  Michael grew increasingly apprehensive as he rode northeast through the fertile farmland toward Fay Woods. The apple orchards were heavy with the autumn fruit, and almost everyone in each village was busy with the harvest of grains and produce. He loaded his packhorse with the fruits and vegetables of Glastamear’s breadbasket in anticipation of finding many healers in hiding. However, Michael was not certain he would be able to enter the great primeval woodland ahead, whose trees were said to be three times as tall as the tallest in any other forest on Glastamear. The Fairy Folk were not known to be friendly to humans.

  Michael had read many old tomes in William of Hearthshire’s thousand-volume library. He was one of the rare citizens of Glastamear who understood that almost all of these foods were gifts of the Elves, brought down to feed the growing human population from Little Brother Moon, the great ship in which they had arrived at Home. Since that time two thousand years earlier, these elf-gift plants had displaced most of Glastamear’s original forests and prairies. At Fay Woods, he would see the original flora left untouched since before humans were created. He was not certain anything growing in Fay Woods would even be edible to humans.

  Two days before he expected to reach Fay Woods, Michael made camp in a grove of pecan trees and decided to try a technique that William taught him early in his apprenticeship. It had an elfish name that translated as perfect recall and allowed a student to directly access the memory of any book he had ever read. Michael knew he had read a few references to the Fairy Folk in the first two years of his apprenticeship.

  Michael fed his horses, put a pot of water to boil for a stew, and sat in the position of recall and meditation. He cast the spell, and he began to read passages from old history books on the inside of his closed eyelids. It was more than an hour later when the spell wore off. The pot had boiled dry and the fire had died to glowing embers. Nonetheless, Michael had found what he was looking for; his question had been, “What kind of magic did the Fairy Folk employ?”

  Many Old Kingdom accounts reported on interactions between humans and Fairy Folk, but after the religion of Perry Ascendant became established, none of the books gave any accounts of friendly contacts; the fairies withdrew to their remaining forest and penalized any human who dared to enter.

  Forest magic, from the oldest accounts, was related to the fairies ability to reform their bodies to any shape and to adjust them to any weight they chose. Most accounts said that their bodies were radiant, giving off a yellow glow after dark.

  Nearly all accounts agreed that the remaining Fairy Folks lived in a large mound in Fay Woods whose only entrance was a crack smaller than a hand. No human could ever enter. They were also said to be able to fly by reducing their weight to such an extent that they could float on the slightest breeze or form their bodies into the shape of a bird. The oldest accounts referred to them as spirits of the air because their pliable bodies sometimes had no more substance than the air, but at other times they seemed to be as solid as any human.

  The oldest books had also reported that they could grow a giant tree in a single day if enough of them sat in a circle around the spot and chanted an ancient elfish chant. They could make flowers bloom in the dead of winter, and if angered, they could cause any human crop to shrivel and die with a wave of their hand. All accounts seem to agree that they did not welcome humans into their forest; and Michael was planning to enter it without an invitation.

  Michael had read one banned manuscript hidden in a secret wall safe in Williams’s library. The document, written in elfish, seemed to explain the intense antipathy between the church and the Fairy Folk. Four hundred years earlier, a force of six hundred knight protectors entered Fay Woods with the intention of ejecting the Fairy Folk, burning the woods, and converting the land to a giant farm that would be owned by the church. The manuscript, written a hundred and fifty years before Michael was born but long after the events, claimed that no knight protectors survived to explain what happened to them, and no churchman had entered the forest and returned since. Folklore from the human communities near the Fay Woods claimed that the knight protectors had been turned into rodents, but none of the more ancient accounts of forest magic claimed that power, only that the Fairy Folks themselves could change into any animal form.

  The following day, Michael was contemplating the uses of forest magic when he began to detect the signs of fire mages ahead. When he enhanced the power of his ring with a powerful cast of detect all manna, the semicircle of fire mage signs was revealed. He counted forty fire mages guarding against entrance to or exit from Fay Woods. They had arranged themselves so that they had overlapping ranges of manna detection to prevent any healer from sneaking through their line and reaching the forest. Their presence was somewhat reassuring since they would not have sent this group to guard the forest if the church didn’t think that the Fairy Folk might offer sanctuary to healers. It also was possible the healers had been followed to Fay Wood, and the knights were sent to prevent their escape.

  Although Michael could cast transparency on his horses to make them invisible, it seemed safer to leave them behind since he didn’t know how to block their sounds or tracks. He found a lush meadow and used the dwarfish spell stone dome to create a safe place for them to graze. He cast excavate to open the top of the dome and to make a small exit he could crawl through and two more to allow the entrance and exit of a small stream. The protection should last a week, and he assumed he would either be successful or dead by the time it wore off, and he wanted to give his horses Ebony Honor and Strong Heart a chance to escape if he didn’t return.

  He took all the valuables and anything that would identify him, and removed bridles and saddles so they would be unencumbered and able to run from predators once the dome disappeared. He used the spell dwarfish strength so that he could carry as much food as possible, and found he could handle all of the food his packhorse had carried.

  Michael studied the pattern of knight protector manna signs until he understood their cycle. He decided that the hour after noon was the best time for his attempt to reach the Fay Woods through this knight protector blockade. He enchanted an amulet with quench fire manna so that any knight protector that got within fifty paces would lose his spell casting skills. He also wore clothing that had been enchanted with stone armor to help protect him from arrows and swords, but his real protection was stealth.

  The gigantic forest trees were visible long before he reached Fay Woods; it seemed the claim that the trees were three times as high as any other forest was true. However, he also noticed their striking colors. It was autumn in the ancient woodland; orange, scarlet, and yellow were replacing the blue-green of the native forest giants. From his reading about the Fairy Folk, Michael knew that in winter this land would be impassably deep in three paces of snow. From the ancient accounts, snow was no barrier to the Fairy Folk because they could reduce their weight until they could walk gently on top with only a trace of footprints.

  Michael passed through the blockade of knight protectors without incident, but he worried how he could get any substantial group of healers out of the forest and to Black Sand Beach through a cordon of more than forty knight protectors. It was about twenty days of travel by foot; they would need to remain undiscovered the whole trip. Harvest time was probably the best time to travel because of the food available, but still there might be thirty or more healers who had escaped through the tunnel under the wall of Briarton. Finding the healers would only be the beginning of the process of getting them to safety.

  As Michael approached the line of enormous trees, he could see that they had already dropped more than a foot of autumn leaves.
His every step would be clearly visible as he moved ahead. Once he passed the first forest giant, he dropped his transparency spell since it was doing no good as he trudged noisily through the fallen leaves; he didn’t want any Fairy Folk to think he was trying to sneak up on them.

  As he scuffled past the second giant tree, he detected many manna signs to the northeast and began to travel in that direction. As he got closer, he realized he was seeing the signs of thirty-seven healers and well over a hundred extremely powerful manna signs of a type he had never detected before. The Fairy Folks manna was more powerful than the strongest high priest or master healer; it was even greater than he had detected from Obert, shaman of Black Sand Beach. Soon he found himself surrounded by glowing yellow lights that flickered in and out of existence on every side.

  After a few minutes, one of the glowing balls turned into the form of a gorgeous young woman appearing to be about Michael’s age. She was nude, except that her long brown hair was arranged in front to provide some modesty. Her body floated half a pace above the forest floor.

  In a melodious voice she said, “Michael Elf-Blood, welcome. You may call me Morgan. Take this branch of the Red Flower Tree as a sign of welcome. Every creature in Fay Woods will know you belong here. I will return to our healer friends to let them know you are coming. Tread lightly and build no fires.”

  Michael smiled, but he did not say “thank you” because the old stories claimed that the Fairy Folk did not like to hear those words. Instead he said, “I am in your debt, Morgan of Fay Woods.”

  She smiled warmly and faded away until no sign of her manna remained.

  Chapter 30

  When the fairies were gone, Michael noticed he was not alone from the many animal sounds around him. He cast detect life and discovered that life signs were everywhere. Some slithered through the leaf litter like giant constrictor snakes and many watched from the tree canopy. There were eight large six-legged animals moving in a pack a hundred paces to his rear and three carnivores ready to pounce from distant tree branches, cousins of the ambush lions he’d encountered in the Great North Woods.