by Jeremy Craig
“Oh.” Milly deflated as Manx eagerly lapped at his spillage and everyone else just sat about staring uncomfortably at the table in a long pregnant silence as the Master patted his journal and fixed her with an unblinking, scathing look.
He scoffed quietly to himself, irritably grumbling in a language no one but him seemed to know and set the hairs on the back of the neck to tingling before retuning his attention to dinner.
Using the old ladle he deftly scooped up heaps of meaty bean chili into the bowls that slid to him one at a time, each then magically sliding to each of us in turn steaming and full, not spilling a single drop as he recited the prophecy he’d just refreshed his memory on with me from the page of his journal.
“In true darkness’s fall the doom shall be woken
As from brightest Knight the dread shall spring
When the yellow eyed curse be broken
In blinded world threatened by beasts of fell wing
Should eternal nights scourge wards be smoten
The only hope the Dark One shall bring
If Forsaken lights truth finally be spoken
From among the risen a throne shall again find its king”
White Owl swirled his spoon in his chili. “Those are my words. I spoke them. I remember. You simply forgot they were mine.” He ate a spoonful and sighed serenely before adding, “Though I may have had much to do with that last bit. You need to mind what I say, even if you don’t remember it was me who said it, especially if I made you forget in the first place.”
He looked about and noted no one was eating, instead siting staring at him in horror at what he had admitted. He snorted and jabbed his dripping spoon at us. “Eat,” he ordered.
As to his famous chili, it’s delicious. Rich, thick and hearty. And cooked with a healthy half bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, a cardiologist’s nightmare portion of bacon, and quite a few other bits and such that’s for me to know and you to wonder about.
I know the recipe quite well. I helped him cook it more than once after that horrible day as we talked by Gramps’ old sweatingly hot stove—me telling him what had happened at the Clampetts and him carefully, browning, cooking, de-canning, chopping, stirring, explaining, and seasoning.
In fact, I think I’m the only other living soul who knows the recipe to this day, despite many attempts to weasel and bribe it out of me. “Ohh…a pinch of this and that,” is the most anyone’s gotten out of me yet, which is book loads more than the Master’s divulged about the recipe in ages (come to find out even Gramps had been unsuccessfully trying to weasel it out of him for decades), even telling famous chefs and world leaders to buzz off when they pester him about it.
White Owl treats the formula like keeping its secret is somehow critical to Feydom’s stability and security. So honestly, I’m still not sure what made me the lucky bearer of the secret of his chili, but who am I to complain?
The Countess got a bit of color back after the first few hesitant spoonful’s (it does indeed make you feel better) and as everyone busied themselves talking, gulping down chili, and dunking thick, crusty buttered bread slices into bowls, the story of what befell them at the Clampett’s homestead leaked its way out.
They had been set upon quite violently and unexpectedly by the black silk and leather robed, silver masked Nameless. They had only just managed to fend off the evil Fey.
In the end it had been the Countess that had sent the whole unholy flock packing with a spectacular display of devilish necromancy, her specialty. All this seemingly confirming lastly and completely to all that had been there that the Clampetts had indeed been behind or at least involved in everything in one way or another.
My parents’ murder, the attacks on the other Darklings, the hunting of the Clairvoyant, and the attack on the Lodge. Perhaps even hiding this new Warlock that everyone thought the likely culprit now leading the Nameless away on their homestead (which sat on a convergence of ley lines that made detecting things through magical means all but impossible).
In the end the wicked hillbillies had likely done themselves in mishandling the Fiendfire that the Warlock had whipped up. I had a slight brightening hope at that moment that maybe this horribly evil being had been consumed along with the homestead and all its occupants but had been quickly disillusioned of this notion. Evidently, Warlocks are the only Earthly thing Fiendfire can’t even give so much as a sunburn to.
Conversation slowed, dimmed, then ended as the last of the chili was sopped up with buttered crusty bread slices, and washed down with a tall glass of milk for me, and taller magically frosted glasses of frothing, oak barrel matured, Dwarfish mushroom beer (a trusty old standby of Gramps’ that he keeps a few bottles of in the fridge, for emergencies) for everyone else.
Even Aunt Milly, who I was just starting to learn had a delicate pallet more accustomed to caviar and wine than beer and beans, wolfed it down as daintily and ladylike as she could manage. Though to be frank, I think she was still pining over the Chinese food she’d had a hankering for earlier in the evening.
Just as the Countess had taken her leave to start the highly involved and complicated centuries old protocols to convene the Council, and I had been set to gathering dishes, White Owl pulled me aside.
Brushing off my concerns for the chore Gramps had set me on with one of his exaggerated eye rolls, he snapped his fingers and sent the dishes whooshing to the kitchen. Aunt Milly all but having to dive to the floor to avoid a daunting flock of bowls and cutlery on their way to the sudsy sink, as the Master beckoned me out to the porch for a talk. Manx trotted after us while Gramps stared daggers at his old friend as he muttered obscenities to himself elbows deep in dishes.
We settled into White Owl’s customary spot, the table and two Adirondack chairs closest to the door, the hanging lamps lighting with another snap of the old man’s fingers as he settled into his seat with a pronounced sigh.
Manx flopped onto his side, staring off into the forest. His back leg worked as he drifted off, watery eyes drooping closed as the two of us sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the chirp of bugs and the soft distant hoot of an owl, as usual, waiting for the Master to begin in his own time.
Truthfully, rushing him is like a tiny halfling trying to tug a gargantuan tusked elephant with a sting leash. Either the leash will break, or the mighty elephant will step on the pesky nuisance before the mightily noble beast will ever take a single step before it intends to.
“I know you’re curious about the big secret of why everyone makes such a confounded fuss about you, eh?” he began as he fixed me with a shrewdly sympathetic but flat look, lips pressed into a thin line as he studied me with his dark shiny eyes. “I imagine it’s been a bit frustrating, has it not?”
I nodded and he grunted, staring off into the distance for another long moment before continuing. “Most people would say it’s complicated. I disagree. To me, it’s simple as can be, but I’m not like most people, am I?” he asked, to which I nodded once more, despite it being an obviously rhetorical question, something he seemed to find a touch amusing.
“What ‘those’ most people lack that I have in excess is experience. I was there, you see. When Merlin made your kind.” This admission somehow wasn’t nearly as shocking as his claim to be the mastermind behind pie. Not the mathematical concept, but the dessert one. Which the Master firmly believes is absolutely more essential and influential to human development than any string of numbers.
“I warned Agnos this was a bad idea and would cause him to come to a sticky end, and as usual he didn’t listen. Why do they never listen?” He sighed and shook his head wearily. “But as usual I was right, and let me tell you, being right all the time in a room full of deaf dolts is a curse like few others.”
He paused and eyed the star speckled velvety cloudless sky as if the weight of them all was bearing down on him before he flicked his gaze back to me. “I take it you read about the Oldfable and the vendetta between Darkling and Vraad, am I correct?
”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak as I knew what was coming. Someone was finally going to explain things, and just the expectation of this was enough to set my hands to shaking and blood thundering in my ears.
“The First of your kind were nothing like what you see today,” he explained. “Forged of blood and enchantments the likes of which haven’t been wielded since. They were unique and powerful by design. Which predictably, made them into the stuff of nightmares to those of the magically endowed so inclined to fear what they don’t understand. Which, come to think of it is pretty much all of them then, and, even most of them now. Some things never seem to change…”
That said he fell silent and began rummaging about his pockets. He pulled a shiny cigar tube from his flannel’s breast pocket, a cutter and lighter from his jeans pocket, and began to settle in for a good smoke, untwisting the cap of the tube and plucking the cigar out, rolling it in his fingers and sniffing at it with deep anticipation.
A few minutes later the screen door banged open, shattering the silence and stirring Manx out his lazy slumber. He perked up his ears and lifted his shaggy head to watch as out stalked Gramps, just as the Master had neatly trimmed and lit his fine Cuban. He took a deep pull of the rich tobacco as he flicked closed his old brass lighter and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“What took you so long?” White Owl asked innocently as he blew out a hazy fog of cigar smoke. Gramps glowered at him, pulled over a chair that grated against the porch boards noisily, and plopped down to sit before us with an unhappy grunt. Manx’s head slumped down a heartbeat later with a grunt, droopy watery eyes fluttering closed with a low whine.
“So, you told him?” Gramps rumbled discontentedly as he scratched at his beard, fixing the Master with an irritable sideways look.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, not without you,” White Owl answered despondently as he eyed his old friend and took another deep pull that he blew out his nose before offering to share. Gramps eyed it, wrinkled his nose, and waved it away.
“How do you abide those barbaric things?”
“Asks the man with a corn cob pipe named Bessy?” White Owl retorted with a coyly arched brow as he shrugged and went back to enjoying the rejected cigar with a deeply contented sigh.
“It’s sentimental,” Gramps scoffed waspishly, looking quite offended and aggrieved at the insinuation in the Master’s retort. “At least I have some sense of style and don’t just stick any old rolled up heap of dry leaves into my mouth.”
Refusing to take the bait White Owl snorted and shook his head, giving his old friend a sideways look through the haze of tobacco smoke. “More importantly Artur, it’s time. I am going to tell him, now that you’re here, of course. Whether you like it or not.”
“Are you now?” Gramps growled.
“Indeed,” the Master advised. “As I was saying Ben, the First generation of Darklings were forged in an all but lost combination of blood and magic that made them seem to be a unique and dire threat to all of Feydom.”
Gramps eyed him as he spoke of the Forging. A deeply disturbed glimmer in his black eyes at the whole “mostly lost” bit, but he stayed silent, a resigned look on his exhaustion lined face as he settled back into his chair to await the inevitable.
“How were they different from me?” I asked. It seemed like a natural question, but I’d missed the obvious answer that was right there looking me in the face the whole time.
“From you, they weren’t so different, although even to them you would be considered unique,” White Owl answered with a dry humorless chuckle. “But from every single other one of the Darkling generations since them up to you, they were very, very different.” He gazed at me appraisingly between puffs and Gramps made an unhappy noise and cracked his knuckles.
“What does that mean though?” I asked frustratedly as I looked from one to the other confusedly when things failed to immediately make sense.
“It means, Ben, that you are special,” Gramps answered as he folded his arms against the night’s chill and fixed me with an unhappy, glowering, almost pitying glance.
“No, no, no. It doesn’t,” White Owl interjected softly. “It actually means three things. That you are dangerous. And like all dangerous things, you are a threat, and a deeply valuable commodity. Depending, of course, on who you ask.”
Chapter Ten
You can never really go home…
The “Full Council” was called to meet as it always was. With much argument and fuss over destinations (my aunt insisted on no boats), amenities, bickering over chefs and menus, finally White Owl (who utterly and confoundingly refused to attend, stating his presence would only complicate things further) told the whole insufferable lot to stuff it and just get on with it.
Fancy ribbon and wax sealed invitations were delivered by the Silent Ones, a mysterious and dangerous group of demons that have a rather simple creed: “We will deliver anything (and they mean ANYTHING) for the right price, and if you try to stop us we will make a memorable example of you by killing your whole line very, very painfully and publicly.” I know, it’s not quite the UPS’s old, “What can brown do for you” catch phrase, but it’s honest. They will seriously do it. Don’t ever try to even so much as trip one of them, it’s just not worth it.
A month later Madam Mildred Maxine Del’Cove—Aunt Milly—Gramps, and I were all stepping unhappily into a portal and walked out groggily into a grand and fully Darkling owned castled and walled in tudor-esque town in the North Cliffs of Scotland overlooking the sea. I’m pretty sure if any mundane’s ever got into the place they would think they’d stepped into a huge fantasy film set or a renaissance festival of some kind.
Honestly, the place looks like something out of a fairytale (because it is) with countless towers and battlements and cobbled streets that are all alive with a riot of color, noise, and smells. Massively bearded Dwarfish tinkers worked metal with comically large hammers on anvils. Half Elves and Fey human traders called out wares from colorful carts, tents, and stands.
Fruits, vegetables, fabrics, and even gems of every color and description, fish both alien looking and run of the mill and items of boasted magical origins (some more questionable in authenticity than others. I believe I even remember one old slightly mad looking grey beard trying to peddle what he claimed to be magic lamps with genies in them).
There were Fey of all kinds both kindly and not living their best lives amid the laughter, drunken singing, haggling, chopping of fish, braying, grunting, and clucking of livestock, sizzling of meats on grills, arguing, and even a troop of rude wicker brooms pushily sweeping the streets all by themselves. There was even an old A series Ford repurposed into a flower stand, bike messengers zooming about and a troop of street magicians playing bagpipes. In short, it was enough to leave the unindoctrinated in quite a dizzying befuddlement.
A troop of richly blue cloaked and plume helmeted Darkling guardsmen with gauntleted hands on their sheathed swords eyed us coldly, black eyes narrowed to suspicious and angry slits. They marched by in shining breastplates, chainmail, and gold trimmed tabards bearing the embroidered crest of four snarling wolves defending a crown of white roses in shining silver thread.
“You lot just HAD to pick Camelot,” Gramps sighed as he lugged two huge, leather suitcases, Manx at his heels sniffing the air excitedly.. Some hurried, grumpy denizens of the market grumbled uncouth admonishments in many languages complaining about tourists and us being in the way as they shouldered and pushed their way through and past our tiny party.
Gramps’ flannel shirt, jacket, faded jeans, muddy work boots, and aged patina worn leather shooting hat pulled down low over his face really couldn’t hide his nature. A few more passersby eyed the very distinctive black jeweled sword belted at Gramps’ waist and gave us a wide berth, making a point of trying not to look at us, burying their nose in scrolls, lists, or just whistling and strolling by as quick as can be. One who did stare after him was so distracted he ran comically i
nto a sidewalk lamp.
Aunt Milly arched a brow irritably at him as she eyed his attire and tutted under her breath haughtily. “I would think you of all people would enjoy a trip home, Artur.” She snickered coyly and winked. “Besides, where better to hold a council on this magical mess we’re all in than in a city ruled by Darklings?”
“This place hasn’t been home in a very long time,” Gramps retorted coldly as he guided us to the inn where our VIP reservations had what Aunt Milly had assured were the best rooms in the town waiting for us. “Be that as it may, it’s the safest place in all Feydom. You’ve said so yourself many a time.”
“I actually said it used to be the safest place in the world.” Gramps stared back over his shoulder at the gallows and dark stained many notched headsman’s block set up on a huge wooden platform in the town square center and shuddered. “Things have changed since my time.”
“So, I see,” Milly sighed as she stepped on a small squishy pile of stinking, fly circled manure with her designer shoes and eyed the troop of brooms angrily. “Can’t even walk on the streets without ruining a perfectly good pair of Armond’s. My Armond’s, Artur. It’s an affront to civilized society. Has this place no sense of sanitation and such?”
As a point of interest, “Armond’s” are a ridiculously expensive and exclusive line of Feyish footwear (think Prada and such made with Minor Drake scales, Minotaur leather, Basilisk hides, and even a golden fleece or two) designed by Hugo Armond. A brilliant chauvinistic pig of a toad-munching Satyr with a talent for five things—collecting rare magical antiquities, making ugly shoes everyone mysteriously can’t get enough of, seducing women, pissing people off, and surviving assassination attempts.
I’ve even heard there’s a long running centuries old pool with a rich stake in gold betting on when the horny old goat will finally get offed. I may or may not have a bit of a stake in it myself.
Hugo is a bit of an obsession of Aunt Milly’s. Personally I’d rather stick an ice pick in his eye than have to listen to him endlessly prattle on about himself again.