The Brazen City

by Torsten Weitze

  ‘Yes, this is he’, gasped Ahren in amazement. ‘But he’s endured enough...’ and he got no further.

  ‘Enough? I think not!’ said Jelninolan in a voice burning with rage. At which point the mist sprang forward and wrapped itself around Sven’s toes. The gossamer began to spin around his feet, and Ahren heard in horror the bones snapping as the magic bent the miller’s son’s limbs into impossible shapes.

  Sven let out an ear-shattering scream of pain, and Ahren watched dumbstruck as the mist began moving ever higher.

  The priestess wanted to kill Sven; the apprentice was in no doubt about that.

  Ahren was fully aware of the irony of the situation as he made himself as large as could in front of Jelninolan, spurred on by the courage of despair. He then pleaded for Sven’s life.

  ‘This isn’t you, Jelninolan. You can’t kill him in cold blood’, he began. He could hear another bone breaking behind him and he quickly continued. ‘He can be convicted! We can bring him before the village council! But what’s happening here is wrong! What I’ve done is wrong!’

  He went up close to the elf, he could feel the coldness she was radiating, and he forced himself to smile at her. ‘You’re good-natured. And friendly. You have a sympathetic word for everyone, and you hate causing pain.’

  He cupped the elf’s face in his hands, her eyes seemed to be looking through him. ‘You’re like a mother to me’, he blurted out in a pleading voice, and at last his words seemed to get through to her.

  In an instant the windstorm died down, the snow fluttered to the ground, warmth and compassion appearing once again in the elf’s countenance.

  She looked down at the maltreated miller’s son, and her face flickered between satisfaction and horror. Then she turned around and without a word disappeared into the forest, the trees closing protectively behind her.

  Ahren considered for a moment if he should follow her, then decided to stay. He needed to get help for the miller’s son. Sighing, he trotted over to the main house to tell Sven’s family so they could look after him. He tried in vain to ignore the bitter taste in his mouth caused by his own deeds.

  A heavy calm lay over the area during the next few days. Deepstone was in a state of shock following the chain of events that had afflicted the sleepy village. The deliberate poisoning of Culhen had of course been terrible, but Jelninolan’s mystical outburst of emotion had truly shocked the inhabitants. Her magical storm had berefted three houses of their roofs, severely damaged the mill, and almost killed one person. That seemed to be a case of really overdoing things in a normally peaceful community, and so the little village seemed to have huddled down behind closed doors so that it could lick its wounds.

  With stubborn determination Ahren would do his training alone while the wounds he had received during his march through the forest gradually healed. He spoke rarely and always made sure Culhen was close by his side. Falk gave him the necessary breathing space and concentrated instead on helping Trogadon repair the damage Jelninolan had meted out in her rage. The elf had returned that same evening from the forest and retired to the mayor’s house where she had remained since. Khara stayed by her mistress’s side and so out of Ahren’s sight.

  Uldini, meanwhile, patched up any political damage and explained to the village council exactly what had happened. Ahren was grimly satisfied when he found out later that Sven had been banished from Deepstone. His exile would come into effect as soon as his injuries had healed sufficiently.

  Ahren was returning from yet another gruelling trek through the forest, Culhen close by his side. The apprentice had planned to complete all of the obstacle courses in the one day, and had, in fact, done so successfully, if only just about. It was dark already and Falk was awaiting him at the door of his hut. His master’s silhouette was lit up by the flickering light of the tempting open fire coming from within the cabin, and suddenly Ahren couldn’t wait to be home again.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d make it home at all’, the old man grumbled as he obligingly made room for him.

  Ahren could only nod with exhaustion and collapsed on one of the stools at the table.

  Falk slowly closed the door and sat down beside the young man, placing a steaming bowl of stew on the table in front of him. Gratefully, Ahren began to devour it, and Culhen, who had placed his nuzzle on Falk’s lap and was giving him begging looks with his wide eyes, started whimpering impatiently.

  Falk frowned as he looked at the wolf sternly. ‘He’s learning too, is he?’

  Ahren nodded mutely, enjoying his food and the warmth that was slowly filling his tired limbs. Then he spoke. ‘He’s figured out what behaviour works for different people. Yesterday he sat up and begged in front of the butcher, who promptly gave him a fat piece of ham. He might still speak like a baby, but he can trick you like a master thief.’

  Culhen stared at him, the picture of innocence, before finally responding with thanks uttered in such a dry tone that Ahren laughed out loud. ‘Oh, and he’s developing a sense of humour. Unfortunately, he’s imitating Uldini’s style.’

  Falk grinned and ruffled Culhen’s thick fur energetically. ‘The THREE save us’, he said jokingly. Then he became serious and looked searchingly at Ahren. ‘Are you ready to talk about it?’ he asked softly.

  Ahren closed his eyes in exhaustion. ‘What’s there to talk about? Jelninolan and I both blew our tops, it’s as simple as that. Would I turn the clock back if I could? I really don’t know. I’m only glad I was so hungry that morning that in the rush I left all my weapons lying in the hut. Otherwise Sven would be dead now.’ His voice had been becoming quieter until it was no more than a whisper.

  Falk scratched his beard and poked the embers in the fire in order to bring it back to life, and for a moment the flames threw dancing shadows onto the walls. Then he turned back to his apprentice.

  ‘It’s not quite that simple. You understand that Culhen influenced you, don’t you?’ he began to explain. Ahren barely shook his head but Falk nodded, confirming what he’d said. ‘I’ve already told you that Culhen is a predatory animal. A self-centred, greedy, cuddly predator. It’s not only his greed that he’ll convey to you. But also, his hunting instinct. Or his fighting frenzy.’

  Falk left his words hanging in the air, and Ahren gulped in surprise. He hadn’t thought of Culhen as a normal wolf in such a long time that he never considered what impulses might be slumbering in the animal.

  ‘Culhen has better control of these instincts than you do because he was born with them. But they are new to you. Which is why it’s vital for you to learn how to invoke the Void again and to maintain it so that the next time, you can control your emotions and those of your wolf’, Falk continued. ‘I have it easy with Selsena in that respect. Titejunanwas are as intelligent as humans in their own way – and they aren’t hunting animals. You, on the other hand, have to deal with all the usual problems that come with a companion animal.’ His master was smiling again, and he stroked Culhen, who groaned contentedly in response.

  Ahren was secretly pleased that he wasn’t solely responsible for his actions. Ever since the incident in the mill he had been at a loss to explain how he had lost control so completely and had found the experience deeply shocking.

  Pondering all this, he put the remains of his stew on the floor, where Culhen gobbled it down at lightning speed. ‘But what about Jelninolan? How come she almost became a murderer?’ he asked. Now that he had an explanation for his own behaviour, he wanted to understand what had happened to the compassionate priestess.

  Falk exhaled and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘You know how magic has an effect on its creators? Fighting magic makes them aggressive, healing magic makes them passive, and so on?’ he asked.

  Ahren nodded and the old man continued. ‘If the sorcerer is exhausted, just as Jelninolan and Uldini were in the last few weeks and especially after saving Culhen, then they are in a particularly vulnerable state. If they then take on too much, or something throws them traum
atically off course, then you have an Unleashing. That’s what you saw.’

  ‘An Unleashing?’ repeated Ahren, confused.

  ‘When creators of magic deliver magic directly from their emotions. That almost always occurs involuntarily and is a sign of complete exhaustion or extreme aggression, which is why it often manifests itself in an excessive deployment of destructive magic. Occasionally an Unleashing is deliberately created, mostly as a last resort. It hasn’t happened with Jelninolan since the Dark Days. Unleashings are far too unpredictable’ said Falk darkly. ‘When she heard that a villager had poisoned Culhen – a gift from her goddess – well, that led to this Unleashing, mild and all as it was. You were finally able to bring her back to her senses with your words.’

  A cold shiver ran down Ahren’s spine. If that was a mild Unleashing, he really didn’t want to experience a fully-fledged one. ‘How else can you deal with one, apart from using words’, he asked curiously.

  ‘The normal practice’ said Falk in a serious tone ‘is to run away.’

  Ahren had a restless sleep that night. He dreamed of lightning flashes, of mists and of an all-swallowing abyss. In the middle of this bubbling chaos sat Jelninolan, and she was smiling at him good-naturedly.

  The sounds of busy hammering and sawing filled the air, drawing Ahren irresistibly towards them. Thaw had begun to set in a few days earlier, and by the previous afternoon the remaining snow had disappeared from the meadows, with only a few stubborn remnants of snow remaining in the spots that the sun hadn’t reached. The retreating winter led to an explosion of activity in Deepstone, and as soon as soon as the first delicate signs of spring were in the air, the first repairs, which had been agreed upon between the various families during the winter months, were put into effect. Almost everybody was roped in and helped as much as they could – even Uldini could be seen slowly floating a heavy beam down onto the butcher’s house, whose roof had been a victim of Jelninolan’s Unleashing. Hardly had the beam been set on the ridge when half a dozen villagers were hammering away, ensuring that the beam would be firmly fixed in place as the butcher cheerfully called out his gratitude to Uldini, who responded politely before moving on.

  Ahren was so surprised by Uldini’s behaviour that he approached the Arch Wizard and examined him curiously. ‘You’re in a very magnanimous mood today’, said the apprentice delightedly.

  ‘Stop gawping at me as if I were a five-legged calf. I’m just undoing the damage that Jelninolan caused. In more than one respect’, he snorted in a low voice and scowled grumpily.

  Then they arrived at the next house and the smile reappeared as if by magic on the childlike face of the Arch Wizard as he used all his charms and asked how he could help.

  Ahren dropped back and shook his head in bemusement at the Ancient. Uldini would undoubtedly never change. He alone in their group had the ability to smooth the waves in a politic manner.

  The young man ran past the busy activities of scurrying villagers and was approaching the mill, only to be astounded by what he saw in front of him. Trogadon was standing there, stripped to his waist and was just shoving an enormous stone into the newly constructed wall of the large building. Eight villagers were lending him a hand and were trowelling mortar into the gaps. There was little sign of the jagged hole that the elf had ripped out of the mill in her rage. In its place a stone porch stood proudly, built of a wonderfully intricate arrangement of newly mortared stones.

  As Ahren approached he could hear Trogadon’s booming voice, which echoed a merry song in the Dwarfish tongue down the hill. Ahren couldn’t prevent himself from smiling and he was filled with deep affection. A day never passed without Trogadon’s joie de vivre infecting him. He walked swiftly up to the thickset figure and he swallowed hard when he saw the massive bundle of muscles which were constantly rippling along his broad Dwarfish back as he worked away. The proportions of the Little Folk generally appeared alien to humans, and the strained broad torso on the warrior’s thickset legs gave him an almost square shape as he shoved a heavy stone into the appropriate gap in the wall. The fact that he still had enough breath to sing was the icing on the cake.

  ‘A nice song’, said Ahren, by way of greeting. ‘Can you sing it in the Northern language as well?’

  Trogadon gave the stone one last shove and it slid into place with a grating sound. Then the dwarf turned around to face Ahren and gave him a broad grin. Sweat was dripping from his long beard, whose normally carefully braided plaits were hanging down to his belly button in a dishevelled manner. The dwarf would usually tie the plaits behind his back with his other hair, and this unexpected sight made Ahren grin.

  ‘I’m not sure how appropriate that would be’, he answered with a side glance at the villagers who were standing around listening to them. ‘It’s about three young damsels, a merchant and his cart.’

  Ahren shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sounds very pleasant.’

  ‘The four don’t use the cart for travelling’, said the dwarf and gave the apprentice a mischievous grin.

  The young man knew the warrior well enough by now to understand what he was suggesting. ‘I think you might be right regarding the appropriateness, sir.’

  Trogadon gave a loud guffaw and slapped Ahren on the back with his powerful hand, causing the young man to gasp out loud. ‘Enough of this formal address, boy. You are a Paladin of the gods, and I am a simple dwarf. No need to “sir” me!’

  The apprentice wanted to protest; after all, the person he was speaking to was at least two hundred years his senior and also bore an Ancestry Name – one of the names of the revered heroes of Dwarfish history. Only one living dwarf could lay claim to such a name at any given time, and although every member of the Little Folk strove to get the proverbial name for themselves, only very few managed it, and so Trogadon’s accomplishment was remarkable, to put it mildly. But when Ahren looked at the friendly face with all its laughter lines, his resistance cracked. ‘Whatever you think, friend’, he said, trying out his new privilege immediately, and when the dwarf nodded in recognition, Ahren’s chest swelled with pride. This was the first time that any of the others had treated him as an equal, even if it was in the small matter of a form of address.

  Distracting himself from his emotions, Ahren pointed at the porch. ‘A fine piece of craftsmanship. What gave you the idea?’

  Trogadon shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dwarf pragmatism. We always made necessity into a virtue. I asked the miller family if I could improve anything now that I was repairing the damage. They had an old stone shed that wasn’t up to much, and after a lot of humming and hawing, they asked me if I could build a storeroom onto the mill out of it.

  Then he lowered his voice. ‘Uldini told me to make myself as useful as possible so I used a few tricks of the trade that you don’t find outside the Dwarfish caves.’ He tapped on the stone approvingly and added: ‘Worked out well, didn’t it?’

  Ahren was about to respond when he caught sight of a plump figure who was conscientiously pushing mortar into a wide gap. Asla, the miller’s wife, was kneeling five paces away at the new wall, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.

  With a lump in his throat and his hands dripping with sweat Ahren went over to her and struggled to find the words he needed to apologise for the worry and damage he had caused to her home and family.

  Yet before he uttered a single word, the blond-haired woman burst into tears and began to speak in a broken voice. ‘There’s no need, Ahren. I know who is really to blame’, she sobbed. My Sven should never have harmed poor Culhen, even his father says the same. The wolf was always such a good animal and now he’s even a Messenger of the goddess. And to do it in such a cowardly underhand way, with poison...’ she broke off, convulsed in sobs of shame. Ahren tried to calm her down.

  ‘Culhen is well again. And I’m sorry that I lost control of myself.’ He faltered in dreadful fear of the answer to his next question. ‘How is Sven? Did I injure him very badly?’

  The memor
y of the boy’s battered face had haunted him ever since, and up until this point he hadn’t found the courage to ask about the young man’s condition.

  ‘The priestess visited us last night. She too wanted to ask for forgiveness for her deeds, and she healed my boy while he was sleeping. His right arm will continue to be stiff and his feet will be largely useless, but at least she was able to reconstruct his face and legs half-way decently.’

  Ahren gasped in shock. He couldn’t imagine how much damage he and Jelninolan had inflicted if the elf’s powerful healing magic had proven so ineffective. Then he remembered that the priestess was in a severely weakened state and would have at her command very little power until she fully recovered herself. That meant that Sven would just have to live with his injuries for the moment. Without even noticing, Ahren began to feel pity for the young man. Not even the memory of Culhen’s suffering could stop from speaking his next words. ‘Perhaps Keeper Jegral can help?’ he suggested hopefully. The priest of the human god, HE, WHO MOULDS, had treated Ahren’s broken hand that time and had healed it through magical powers. Without that kind deed the young man would never have succeeded in becoming Falk’s apprentice.

  Asla shook her head and began crying again. ‘He’s refusing. Culhen is a sacred animal, sent by the THREE to help you fight against HIM, WHO FORCES. He said he wouldn’t use the magic of the gods to help a malefactor.’

  Ahren stood there thunderstruck. The other workers had retreated a respectful distance and Trogadon had retired inside the porch to continue his work there. Only he was standing there with Sven’s mother, broken by grief and shame.

  It was only then that Ahren fully understood the extent of the disgrace that Sven with his cowardly deed had wrought on his family. The apprentice still looked on Culhen as his loyal wolf, albeit one who could speak to him now thanks to the Blessing of the goddess. But for the rest of the world the animal was a symbol, a sign that the Thirteenth Paladin had returned and a walking wonder. The miller’s son could hardly expect help, and somehow that seemed right, thought Ahren sadly.