by Deck Davis
“What?” asked Benjen.
“This is a heroes’ guild. It was a business, yes, but the guild also had an obligation to protect people, too. This leads me to think there is another reason that one might bury something under a quarite flooring and then set ingenious traps over the top.”
Joshua caught on, and he felt a little shiver of dread in his chest. “If it’s not valuable…then it might be dangerous,” he said. “That’s why someone went to all those lengths to protect it.”
Joshua began to pace a little now, and he and Kordrude made sure to weave the paths of their dual pacing around each other.
“Can you two cut it out?” said Benjen. “You’re making me dizzy.”
“Motion sends blood to the brain,” said Kordude.
“And I just feel tense as hell,” said Joshua.
Benjen sat on the top of the basement staircase, with the mouth of darkness leading to the depths just behind him. He stretched out his right leg and he massaged himself, starting at his thigh and then working downward, rubbing his muscles like a baker kneading bread.
“Nothing worse than cramp,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”
There was a strange tone in his voice, and when Joshua looked at his friend he saw that his face, usually a cheery pink, had lost its color.
“Are you okay, Benny?”
“There was a moment there when I thought that was it. When I saw the trap glow…it scared me.”
“At last you’re okay. We better stay out of the basement for now.”
“I really thought that was it for a second. I knew that we might get into trouble and stuff, and I thought I was ready but this…it all seems a little too real.”
Kordrude kneeled beside Benjen. With his long fingers clasped together, he gently tapped Benjen’s leg, almost as if he was a martial artist practicing his chop.
“What are you doing?”
“This will ease your cramp,” said Kordude. “You did well, Benjen. Most men would have panicked. And you, too, Joshua. A clear head will see you well in times of stress.”
“Clear head? My thoughts are running faster than a goblin fleeing from a troll. The traps, the quarite…whatever’s down there, I don’t like it.”
“If we stay away from the basement until we understand this better, we’ll be fine.”
“It’s not just that.”
“What is it?” asked Benjen.
Joshua folded his arms. “Well, I’m thinking that someone went to great lengths to keep whatever was down there safe. They wouldn’t do that for no reason. That makes me think that whoever did it…might want it back.”
~
The beggar sat against the outside wall of the tavern and waved his metal cup at passersby. He knew that the city guards would notice him soon and they’d make him move on. In a place like this there were as many beggars as there were rats, and they were treated with just as much disdain.
This was Isleyarn, the city of steel, the city of the metal mountains. Every building here was cast from metal so that they each looked like jagged swords pointing up at the sky.
Mages from the nearby mage academy earned a fortune from the spells they wrought on the houses and shops, because in the summer the sunlight would shine on the buildings and reflect back, casting a blinding glare into the Isleyarn residents’ eyes. As such, the mages cast spells to dull the glow, making sure that the spells didn’t last long and would need to be replenished every few days – for a cost.
It was a silly city designed by fools for architects and paid for by people with more gold than brain cells. It must have seemed a good idea at the time, to construct a city from steel, but in practice it was one of folly, and the beggar assumed that the architects must have been drunk throughout the design of it. Why else would they construct a city of metal in a part of Fortuna known for its lightning storms?
It made less sense than a drunken goblin trying to explain the intricates of alchemy. Well, much less sense, actually, since there were at least two renowned goblin alchemists.
The beggar chided himself for his archaic thoughts about goblins. Only the ignorant and racist folks thought about their green-skinned cousins as beasts with no intelligence, and the beggar liked to think that he was neither a fool nor a racist.
If society was a ladder, then the beggar was on the lowest rung of it here in Isleyarn, ignored by the travelers and the merchants as they walked through the streets, their boots making a dinking sound on the metal pavements (which also had heat-control spells cast on them, so that they didn’t soak up the heat and become unbearable to walk on. Another gold-maker for the greedy mages). Beggars were bad enough, in the rich city folks’ eyes, but gnoll beggars were the worst of the lot.
But this gnoll wasn’t just a beggar. He had a name, once. Jandafar the Red, they called him, a gnoll of renown, a level-5 guildmaster who commanded an army of sturdy heroes.
The heroes were gone, now. The guild was no longer his, and he hadn’t used his guildmaster class in decades. Now, his most-used class was beggar, of which he was a level 3 journeyman. This level was enough that it added a hint of pity to his words, ones that occasionally forced a bronze coin or two from rich folks passing by.
From the corner of his eye, Jandafar saw a man approaching. He was a large man with a swollen belly that spoke of lots of rich meals and good beer. He wore his money bag brazenly on his belt, but why shouldn’t he? There was little crime in the steel city, because the city guard were known for the brutality of their punishments.
As the man approached, Jandafar shook his cup. Before he spoke, he made sure his pity skill was working, its powers wrapping his words in sadness.
“Spare a bronze,” he said.
The man ignored him.
“Spare a bronze for a meal,” said Jandafar.
The man, his face flushed from what must have been several pints of beer, stopped. He gave Jandafar a contemptuous look. Then, he raised his foot and kicked the metal cup straight out of Jandafar’s hands.
A lonely coin tumbled out of the cup and then rolled on its side, travelling across the gleaming steel pavement before plopping into a rain gutter.
The man laughed and walked on, safe in the knowledge that he was rich and that he wasn’t a gnoll, and as such the city guard weren’t likely to act on his pettiness. The strictness of their justice was usually saved for those who didn’t have enough gold to ‘make it go away.’
Jandafar felt a heat of anger in his chest.
Remember the plan, he told himself. Keep a cool head. You haven’t kept a low profile for two decades only to be a fool now.
It was impossible. He closed his eyes and tried to retreat into his inner palace of calm, but in this mental structure he saw the man with his smug grin, and he heard his irritating laugh.
Jandafar focused on the man. He uttered three words in Kevish, and he felt another of his classes work deep within him, wrapping these words in ancient power. With a flick of his hand, and a glimmer of regret that he was being petty, he sent the words away from him as though they were gusts of wind, and he saw them hurtle forward down the street and then hit the man as he walked away.
The man would have felt nothing. The words were not a physical thing, and they didn’t cause him to turn around.
But he’d feel them tonight. Later, when he was with his wife or girlfriend or a lady he paid to act as such, the smug man would begin to feel the effects of the curse that Jandafar had just put on him.
When he removed his clothes and wanted to enjoy some…adult time…with his chosen lady (or man, Jandafar added mentally) he would find himself inexplicably unable to perform.
Jandafar didn’t feel any better for using the curse. In fact, he knew it was stupid. More than two decades he’d lived as a beggar, as one of the faceless people on the streets who the richer folk pretended not to notice, and it was all with good reason.
Maybe his time for hiding was at an end. Perhaps it would be safe to leave Isleyarn now and travel
to Ardglass again, where his old home waited, and within it…secrets that he’d buried long ago.
Chapter Seventeen
Time seemed to flow at double speed in this part of Fortuna, because when Joshua led the way through the chilly larder and the kitchen and finally into the hallway, the light streaming through the guildhouse windows was duller.
After finding the mysterious doors behind the portrait in the guildmaster’s room, and then discovering the mana traps and quarite flooring in the basement, a good portion of the day was already gone.
There was never enough time. Back home in the village, when he and Benjen day dreamed about owning a heroes’ guild, time seemed to crawl like a rock chigger – a bug Joshua had studied to earn zoologist - slithering through treacle. The future couldn’t come soon enough.
Now that they were here, now that the guild was theirs and they had a hell of a lot of work to do, time was sprinting away from them.
“A good chunk of the day almost done,” said Joshua, “And we haven’t even inventoried everything yet.”
“Sorry,” said Benjen, sheepishly.
“Not your fault, pal. How could we have expect mana traps rigged in the basement?”
Kordrude moved ahead of them, so that he was standing at the foot of the stone staircase. This was the main hallway, with the main guild doors facing the stairs, and the kitchen and larder behind them, and the grand hall ahead, through an open archway.
The crowsie picked up a metal bowl from the bottom step. It was the one Joshua had accidently stood on when he was rushing to help Benjen.
“I was going to ask,” he said. “What’s with the bowls?”
Kordrude’s feathers seemed a little limp. “You’ll think it is foolish.”
“Right now, with no explanation, all I see is you leaving little bowls of water around the guild. This is foolish enough, Kordrude; it can only improve with context.”
“When I was growing up, before I settled on bureaucracy as a main class and took linguist as one of my secondaries, my grandmother taught me the witchery class.”
Benjen backed away from Kordrude as if he’d just turned into a flesh-hungry demon. He held his hands out, palms-first. “Woah. Witchery, Kordrude? Tell me this is a joke.”
“I advanced to level 1, no further. I knew the class wasn’t for me when grandmother said that to get to level 2, I had to slaughter a chicken and use its blood in a binding potion. I can’t stand blood; it makes my legs go weak and my beak feel numb.”
“You’re not joking, are you?” said Benjen, stepping back.
“Why ever would I joke?”
“Okay,” said Joshua. “Just calm down a little, Benjen.”
“Calm down? He’s spreading witchery around the guild!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Kordrude.
“Benjen doesn’t like witches or witchery. In fact, he doesn’t like anything vaguely mystical or supernatural.”
“I don’t trust it,” said Benjen. “At least with mages, you know there’s a framework. They have to study a certain way under guidelines set by the three kings, and they have to have proper qualified mentors. Psychics, mentalists, mystics, witches…they don’t have any guidelines or anything.”
“Are you scared of witchery?” asked Kordrude.
“No…I just don’t trust it.”
“And yet you trust mages.”
“Like I said; they have guidelines.”
“It seems to me that the difference in your mind between witchery and magery is just the room it is taught in. Do you know where most mages draw their power from, Benjen?”
Benjen shook his head. Joshua thought about it, and he didn’t know, either. He guessed that he’d just accepted that mages could use some kind of force that others couldn’t, and he hadn’t thought to probe deeper.
Now that Kordrude mentioned it, he couldn’t believe he’d never asked himself that question. Why was it that only certain people could learn the mage class? What was inside them that made this the case?
He stared at Kordrude now, rapt with attention, another mystery tugging at him.
The crowsie didn’t say anything.
“Well?” said Joshua. “Where do mages call their power from?”
“Nobody knows precisely.”
A wave of dissatisfaction crashed through Joshua. Being suckered into a mystery or a question and then having the answer yanked away was an uncomfortable feeling, and he knew that he’d have this bouncing around his brain all night now. It was why he’d given up reading the mystery books that Benjen loaned him, ones where a wizard would travel Fortuna solving intriguing crimes. The answer never lived up to the question.
“If nobody knows, what does it have to do with witchery?” said Benjen. “You can’t tell me that what witches do is the same as mages. Mages have colleges where they teach classes. They’re sanctioned by the three kings. They don’t use frog’s eggs and chicken feet to cast spells.”
“Frog spawn,” corrected Joshua.
Benjen glared at him, and Joshua held back a laugh. Benjen was such a big bear of a guy, and so cheery, that seeing him irritated was humorous.
“My point is, young lad,” said Kordrude, “That people are happy to accept the magic of mages, even though they don’t know where their powers come from. Yet, they are even more ignorant about the origins of witchery, but they are skeptical of it because the three kings haven’t officially recognized those who practice it.”
“Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“I have to think that in coming out here, you wanted to see the world. A big, big part of that will be opening yourselves up to new ideas. Now, you lads are great. I can tell that you’re kind-hearted, and you are in this for the right reasons. Even so, sometimes, your background shines through, and I can tell you’re from a little place in the west where the rest of Fortuna might as well not exist.”
“You really think that?” said Joshua.
“Not in a bad way, but yes; it’s clear as day that you haven’t seen even an inch of the world yet. And you, Benjen, might find some of the things you see hard to understand, hard to empathize with, and tough to accept. All I’d ask is you read a book on witchery that I will loan you and see what you think.”
Benjen chewed his lip. “I guess I could…”
“What are the bowls for?” asked Joshua. “Maybe answering that would make him feel better.”
“The water is from the river, and the silt mixed into it is a connection to the earth of Fortuna. The brown berry is a ward of luck; out of every hundred thousand brown berry seeds, only one reaches bloom and as such they are the essence of luck. The ward is a simple one; a showing of respect to the land around us, and a dash of fortune to make sure no harmful spirits find their way into the guildhouse.”
“Harmful spirits? Ghosts?” asked Benjen, his face even paler.
“Malignant phantasms, ghouls, poltergeists, cursed specters. They love to rattle around in abandoned buildings - the older the better. I don’t sense anything in the air, but my level 1 witchery wouldn’t let me detect a more sophisticated spirit. I was just being careful, more for my own peace of mind than anything.”
“What do you think, Benjen?” asked Joshua. “Are you okay with Kordrude leaving his wards around?”
“Well, any protection is good, I guess. I’ll read your book Kordrude…but I’m not sold on this whole witchery thing yet. I’ve heard weird things about it, and I definitely don’t want any chickens to be slaughtered on guild grounds.”
Kordrude held his hands up. Little feathers peeked out of the sleeves of his coat. “I assure you, young Benjen, no chicken will lose its life on my account. There’s a reason I advanced in a word-based class, and not magic.”
Joshua could see Benjen was skeptical, since his life-long distrust of anything mystical wouldn’t disappear overnight. But where Benjen was distrustful of witchery and mysticism because he was worried about it being harmful, Joshua was different.
&nbs
p; He didn’t see any harm in placing a bowl of silt water on the floor and calling it a ward. There was nothing inherently dangerous about it, after all. He just doubted it would work, witchery class or not.
Satisfied now about the mysterious bowls, he turned his mind to other things.
“It’s day one, and we haven’t catalogued the place yet. I want to get everything useful or sellable piled up on the grand hall table, and then we can work out what we need.”
“Does the wager still stand?” asked Kordrude.
“Whatever keeps you going. And Benjen?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe leave the basement. Just the larder and kitchen will be fine.”
The rest of the day, and then the evening, was spent ransacking the guildhouse. The old building echoed with the sounds of their activity; boots clomping along wooden floors, doors opening, cupboards being ransacked, Benjen yelling out when he got a splinter in his thumb.
Joshua felt exhausted by the time night had settled upon that little guildhouse hill. He heard the night insects chirp to each other, and nocturnal owls and other birds squawked as they swooped over the lands hunting for field mice and voles.
Finally, the three of them met in the grand hall, where their trove of guildhouse treasures was piled on the long oak table.
It wasn’t much of a treasure haul at all.
Joshua stared at the three piles. There were old swords and axes, the metal blunt and dirty. Those had been Benjen’s findings, and he’d also collected a bunch of cups, mugs, pots and pans from the kitchen. He’d found a box of unused candles in a cupboard, as well as three large sacks of grain.
Kordrude had procured an old guild house tapestry that had been left in a sideboard in the grand hall. When unraveled, it was fifteen feet long and the banner of the old heroes’ guild was woven into it; two swords crossing together, and with a blue and red ‘H’ and ‘G’ in the middle. It was yet another detail that Joshua hadn’t thought about. They’d need to get a banner of their own to hang on the front of the guild so that people passing by would see the building and know what it was. He guessed that they could use the old banner, but really, he wanted something new. Something that was theirs.