by Resa Nelson
Mandulane paid attention. The boy’s story revealed which villagers might be troublesome and which ones might believe whatever story Mandulane chose to tell, whether true or not. He could have dissuaded the boy through commenting on how his village thrived and its people had everything they needed, unlike most villages Mandulane had seen. He could have crushed the boy’s fantasy that everyone who lived in a port city had great wealth and that anyone could become a sailor just by asking for the position.
Instead, Mandulane enjoyed knowing that his knowledge surpassed that of his new friend. Mandulane reveled in his new-found sense of superiority. He played the role of dutiful listener and co-conspirator with relish.
After a few months, the village boy spoke of a new plan. “Did you hear what the merchant said yesterday?” the boy asked Mandulane while they worked side by side to weed a field flush with a thriving crop of corn.
Mandulane didn’t think much of the merchant who had stopped in the village. The man peddled weapons and Mandulane had no silver to purchase such expensive things. Better to pretend the merchant didn’t exist. “No, I didn’t speak with him. There’s no good that comes from that.”
“I beg to differ.” The village boy wrenched his head to look at Mandulane with eyes that sparkled with hope. “The merchant told a tale of a new religion in the Southlands.”
Mandulane barked a disgusted laugh. “Religion! No good comes from that either. What have the tree spirits ever done for you?”
“Nothing. But that’s the point. The Northlanders have their warrior gods. We have our tree spirits. The Southlands has whatever pixies or fairies or peculiar gods they worship.” The village boy hushed his voice. “But there’s word of a god more powerful than any in all of those countries put together. A god who wants you to live the life that will make you happy and can make it happen.”
Mandulane scoffed. “Impossible. The merchant only told you that story to help you part with that silver ring you used to wear. That’s all the silver you owned—am I right? And if you’re not wearing it today, then that means the merchant managed to talk you into giving it to him yesterday.”
“Shows what you know.” The boy wrestled a weed out by its roots and tossed it onto a pile behind him. “I used that ring to pay for food and supplies we’ll need to get to that place in the Southlands where they know about the new religion. You’re welcome to come—on my silver.”
The boy’s plan surprised Mandulane. On one hand, he’d thought about settling down in this village, which would provide him with steady work and plentiful meals. On the other hand, the work and the villagers bored him. Maybe it was the boy’s constant yammering about doing adventurous things, but Mandulane found the idea of traveling to the Southlands appealing.
Maybe a change of scenery would do me good.
Mandulane accepted his friend’s invitation, and the next day they left the village and walked for weeks until they came upon a camp made up of dozens of blue tents and populated by men wearing brown robes. At first, when the Midlanders tried to speak with them, the men reacted in a hostile way and circled them with daggers drawn.
When the village boy started to take his own dagger in hand, Mandulane stopped him. “No use in that. There’s only two of us and too many of them.”
One of the men stepped forward and spoke in broken Midlander. “You from Midlands?”
At that point, Mandulane relaxed. He knew everything would turn out alright.
Instead of working for a landowner, the village boy and Mandulane began working for the leader of the new religion, known as the Krystr Lord. The work remained similar, but they now were required to attend meetings where the men spoke of the Krystr as their god.
Despite his belief that gods were useless, Mandulane paid rapt attention. By listening to the rules and concepts of the Krystr religion, he theorized what kind of men embraced it.
They’re afraid of losing whatever they think rightfully belongs to them. They’ve acted like brigands in the past without much success. Now they’re regrouping. They’re determining where they went wrong and how to make it right the next time.
Seeing a rigid structure of power, Mandulane found ways to make himself invaluable. While his friend puffed up his chest and talked about himself, Mandulane studied the most powerful men who served directly under the Krystr Lord and stood ready to pick up the slack when the men assigned to aid those powerful men faltered.
Under normal circumstances, Mandulane would never stoop to serve a god of any kind, much less a new one. But to gain favor among the most powerful, he made certain they knew when he took the Krystr vows without stooping so low to make a show out of it. A short time later, one of those powerful men offered Mandulane the duties of being his assistant.
Mandulane didn’t hesitate to accept, considering it a first step toward a more important goal.
While his village friend stayed behind in the ranks and continued working the fields that fed the camp, Mandulane spent his time attending private conversations among the powerful. At first, he did little more than simple things like fetch water or food for the powerful men and sometimes even the Krystr Lord himself. Whenever Mandulane saw an opportunity to anticipate the needs of these men and act on performing a duty before being asked, he jumped on that opportunity. In time, in addition to performing duties, he offered quiet comments to his master that could solve problems.
Despite a growing appreciation of Mandulane, his master had a habit of taking credit for every problem Mandulane solved while blaming him when his ideas failed.
Mandulane believed in loyalty. When his master showed his two faces, Mandulane decided not to whisper his next problem-solving idea in his master’s ear.
Instead, when Mandulane thought of a solution to a new problem during one of the conversations between the powerful men and the Krystr Lord, he spoke up and told his idea to the Krystr Lord.
Outraged, the powerful men protested and called for Mandulane’s execution for having the gall to speak to the Krystr Lord.
Mandulane stood tall and refused to bow down to any of them. When his master stood and raised a hand to strike Mandulane, the Krystr Lord shouted for the master to stop.
“This young man has value,” the Krystr Lord said to the master. “If you can’t see that, then let him work for me instead of you.”
It took all the effort Mandulane could muster to keep from grinning in triumph. He’d expected his master to react with rage and suspected the Krystr Lord had enough wits to recognize that he’d be better off with Mandulane than without him. It had been a risky plan, but Mandulane believed he was cleverer than anyone in camp and that he could manipulate them all.
For the next several months Mandulane pretended to defer to the Krystr Lord while using that time to observe him and his ways. The Krystr Lord had a plan that would take many years to execute. He created a network of scouts to travel to different countries under the guise of being merchants. Each scout traveled until he encountered a true merchant and then killed him. The scout could then steal the merchant’s clothing and wares and peddle those wares as his own.
The purpose of the scouts confounded Mandulane at first. When alone among other servants, he complained that it made more sense to simply attack other countries instead of sending scouts to skulk about in them.
“You don’t understand,” a fellow servant said one day after Mandulane grumbled while they pounded clothes to clean them at the river’s edge. “That’s what the Krystr Lord tried at first. It began here in the Southlands. Some of the clerks succeeded in attacking a few villages. But when they destroyed the place where they train dragonslayers, a dragon attacked them. All but a few of the clerks died. Those who lived to tell the tale believe the Krystr made it happen as a warning that dragons are real and have the power to rule the world if we don’t have dragonslayers to protect us from them.”
“Dragons,” Mandulane said. His mind flickered, and a brief memory of dragonslayers slipped between his fingers befor
e he could grasp hold of it. Moments later, he knew he’d forgotten something important, but he had no recollection of what it might be. He shook the thought away. Getting distracted was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He focused on the few things he could easily remember about dragons and dragonslayers. “Of course, dragons are real. I’m from the Midlands. I lived in a port city for a while. Dragonslayers passed through there twice a year on their way to and from the Northlands.” Mandulane considered the man with suspicion. “Most everyone here is native to the Southlands. Dragonslayers winter here. How can you not know that dragons are real?”
His fellow servant removed a brown robe from the water to wring it. “Most everyone here is from the outskirts. I’ve heard you brag about how big the Midlands is. It’s nowhere near the size of the Southlands. I never met a dragonslayer. I never saw a dragon. When you spend time around people who have never seen such things, how are you to know what’s real and what’s a fairy tale?”
Mandulane understood that logic but he didn’t agree with it. Such thinking led to downfalls.
He wondered if the Krystr Lord might be used to thinking in such a way.
“What do you think of your master?” Mandulane said.
His fellow servant shrugged. “No worse than the rest of them, I suppose.”
“Do you ever think of becoming a master? Or do you want to spend the rest of your days washing the clothes of everyone who thinks he’s better than you?”
“It’ll happen in time.” After wringing water out of the robe, his fellow servant shook the wrinkles out, folded it, and placed it in the pile to hang dry once all the other robes were washed. “You know how it goes. We study. We wait. When the masters say we’re ready, we progress to the next level.”
“If we do what they say, we’ll be old men before we take their place.” Mandulane spoke in a steady and casual voice. “What if we found a way to make it happen sooner? What if we could take their place tomorrow?”
His fellow servant stared at Mandulane. “Such thinking could get us killed.”
“Not if we act quickly. Not if we have enough on our side.” Mandulane picked up a filthy robe. Instead of washing it, he threw it into the river and made no attempt to retrieve the robe before the current carried it away. “The Krystr says we men are far above women, and yet the masters seem to think we’re lowly like women. We’re doing the masters’ laundry. We’re cooking their meals. We pick up after them. How are we any different than the lowest of the low? If serving the masters is supposed to put us on the road to reaching their level, why are they pushing us so far below it?”
Instead of continuing with the wash, the servant looked at Mandulane with careful consideration. “How do you think it’s possible to get where we deserve to be?”
Mandulane smiled, confident his world would soon change.
CHAPTER 22
The alchemist Bee woke up with a clear head.
She sat straight up in bed in her chambers inside the tower on Tower Island. Because the Scaldings had a history of dozens of their family members being slaughtered by a monster inside this tower, only Bee lived inside it.
No one else wanted to make their home there.
She didn’t mind. She had her own history with Tower Island and the Scaldings that inhabited it.
Bee knew her merchant father Claude and alchemist mother Thurid had befriended the dragonslayer Benzel of the Wolf. She had a faint memory of Benzel that included ponies and running and flowers. Despite her parents’ attempts to pretend otherwise, Bee and her sisters knew Benzel had given his only child Skallagrim to the Scaldings for his upbringing. Bee never understood why it happened, only that it did.
Last year, Bee’s work led her to understand her path. It took her to the village of Hidden Glen, where she met Skallagrim. She tried to help by persuading him to return to Tower Island, her next destination. She tried to convince Skallagrim to let go of his anger and resentment, but they already held him captive.
Bee’s alchemy work had revealed an oncoming malevolence. She’d spent a year preparing potions and reading all the signs presented. Based on all she’d gleaned, Bee warned Skallagrim that he would soon meet his death if he didn’t correct his course. She cautioned Skallagrim that he would be putting the safety of his children at risk. She foretold that he would put the safety of the entire world at risk.
Why didn’t he listen to me?
But Bee already knew the answer to that question. Skallagrim had married the sister of a dragon goddess. Skallagrim’s brother had unwittingly killed her in her dragon form, not knowing she had a mortal form as well.
The desire for revenge consumed Skallagrim until it became more important than anything else. He vowed to hunt down and kill his brother to avenge his wife’s murder. Bee remembered what she told Skallagrim before they parted.
If I go to Tower Island and become the alchemist who serves whatever Scalding is in charge, I will be in a position to know all that happens. That would put me in a position to help your children in whatever way is possible.
Since hearing of the deaths of Skallagrim and his brother, Bee vowed to protect Skallagrim’s children, Drageen and Astrid. Since the day their grandparents, Sven and Snip, fell to their deaths from atop the tower, Bee vowed to stay sharp and trust no one but the children she had sworn to protect.
With her chamber door closed, no light reached inside. Threads of dreams tickled her thoughts. She’d dreamed of a cloaked figure threatening the children. When a forceful wind had blown the hood away to reveal his face, she’d recognized it at once.
Bee stared into the darkness with a shocking realization. She’d learned to trust her dreams, because what they revealed often came true.
Gloomer is behind all the troubles. He was on top of the tower when Sven and Snip fell from it. What if they didn’t fall by accident like he told us? What if he pushed them to their deaths? What if Gloomer murdered them?
She then thought about the dragonslayer Bruni who had died the same day. Bee had tried to contact Bruni’s ghost but the spirit had already departed the mortal world.
If Gloomer is a murderer, does that mean he killed Bruni, too?
On the surface, it made no sense. Bee knew how the Scaldings handed power down within their family. If Gloomer killed Sven, then Drageen would inherit leadership—all of the Scaldings knew that, including Gloomer. Too many Scaldings would have to die before Gloomer could come into power.
What other reason could Gloomer have to kill Sven? Or Snip? Or Bruni? Why would he do it?
Bee dressed in the darkness of her chambers and then opened her door to let in the soft light filling the tower. She thought about what had happened during the past several years since Drageen had come into power. She thought about the way Gloomer stood by the young man’s side and advised him at every turn.
It dawned on Bee that Drageen trusted Gloomer and always took his advice.
Gloomer is using Drageen like a puppet. It looks like Drageen is in charge of the Scaldings and Tower Island. But Gloomer is the one making the decisions and getting his way.
Gloomer knew most of the Scaldings would have to die before he could come into power. So, he did the next best thing. He gained control of a young man too inexperienced to know when he’s being controlled.
The realization terrified Bee. Standing alone in her chambers, she looked out to the dimly lit tower that surrounded her.
Thinking about all the blood that had been shed inside this tower, Bee felt alone and helpless.
How can I protect Drageen and Astrid from their own kin? The Scaldings admire Gloomer. If I tell them what Gloomer is doing, no one will believe me.
They’ll believe Gloomer’s lies instead.
But then she remembered that being an alchemist gave her power.
Bee spun to face the cabinet where she kept her most favored herbs, spices, and other ingredients. Walking up to it, she opened its doors, which released an abundance of scents. At first, she detected the heady, ea
rthy scents of the spices ground from things grown underground. Next, she noticed the tangy smell of pods and dried berries that grew on vines that spread across the ground or climbed up trees. Finally, she inhaled the faint florals of an assortment of dried flowers.
What do I want to do to Gloomer? Confound him? Cripple him?
Kill him?
All that Bee ever learned came from her alchemist mother. Bee knew of different types of alchemists that existed in the world. She understood the Creation’s Law: Whatever it is you put out in the world will come back to you threefold.
Bee’s mother practiced alchemy of a positive and nurturing nature. She’d encouraged Bee to think of the Creation’s Law before concocting any potion. Thurid gave Bee even more encouragement to think about the law.
If I kill Gloomer, then someone will try to kill me. Coming back to me threefold, it would either be a death three times worse than what I bring to Gloomer or two other people would die.
What if those people were Drageen and Astrid?
Bee refused to consider any potion that might put the children’s lives in peril. She eliminated the possibility of killing Gloomer.
She considered crippling him instead.
If I cripple Gloomer, then I could be crippled three times as seriously. If that happens, how could I continue to be an alchemist? If my hands and arms are broken, I can’t make the potions needed to protect Drageen and Astrid.
Bee realized the same problem would arise if she confounded Gloomer. The law would bring confoundedness to her, and she’d become useless as an alchemist.
Or maybe even dangerous if she continued creating potions but didn’t have the wherewithal to make them correctly.
Bee paced the room, considering every solution she could imagine.
None of them pleased her. Bee felt as if the situation with Gloomer had become a puzzle that couldn’t be solved.
Bee sat at the table she kept at one end of her chambers. During the past year, whenever she felt worried or bewildered, Bee had developed the habit of calming her troubled mind with a few sips of honey mead. As a matter of that habit, she filled a third of her mug with it and drank. The sweet taste and soothing sensation that coated her throat calmed Bee at once.