Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  Casker stopped walking. His black marble skin almost melded with the darkness of the cellar.

  Now, you have to leave.

  “I need to go?”

  I have to be alone with him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Things you cannot watch.

  Joshua thought again about what Kordrude and Beula had told him; that it was wrong to try and bring someone back from death. That necromancers didn’t just conjure life from nothing; there was a price.

  Joshua thought that dripping his blood onto Benjen’s head was the price, but maybe he was wrong.

  For the first time in the ritual, his conscience stirred. He’d been unshakable in his belief that Benjen would want him to do this, but what if he was wrong? If not, there wasn’t any way to ask.

  I’m being selfish, he told himself. I’m not doing this for Benjen; I’m doing it for myself. Because I can’t stand to think that he’s gone.

  You must leave, said Casker.

  And Joshua nodded. This was the last chance he had to stop the ritual, but he knew that even if his conscience somehow spread so large it stretched out to infinity, nothing would be stronger than his desire to bring Benjen back.

  As he turned around, smoke-like writing formed in front of him. This wasn’t the same as the writing he saw in relation to his classes; it was heavier, and it had a dark tint to it.

  Condemnation of the Abominable Ritual

  The Gods know that you have solicited the dark arts in order to cheat death, thus striking against the cycle of life.

  For going against the nature of death, you have received a permanent dark arts condemnation; you are now more susceptible to dark magic spells and weapons enchanted with dark magic.

  The god really knew how to drive the knife in, didn’t they? All he was doing was trying to bring back his best friend. Was that so bad? Did he deserve condemnation for it?

  What was so bad about it, anyway? Sure, Kordrude had warned him not to do this, but did this mean that all sepunas were punished by the gods for bringing back members of their race? Were necromancers punished?

  Or was it because sepuna rituals shouldn’t be used on humans?

  He couldn’t even think about the reasons or the consequences now. He couldn’t contemplate a time when dark arts would be used against him, but he’d worry about it later.

  He wanted to go and find a church dedicated to the gods and smash the place up, to spend his fury on demolishing their shrines. Then again, he knew that the Gods, wherever they were, were taking more of an interest in him than they were others.

  The question was; why?

  No. He didn’t want to know. Right now, he only cared about one thing; Benjen.

  He walked up the stairs and opened the cellar door and emerged into the cottage. Beula’s gaggle of foster children were in the kitchen, sitting in a circle while a goblin boy in the middle told them ghost stories.

  “And then…his head fell off!”

  The children shrieked in a mixture of terror and laughter. One of them, a human girl, noticed Joshua.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  He smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “Is Casker okay?”

  “Casker’s a demon,” said the goblin.

  “Hey!” called Beula. “Don’t say mean things about Casker.”

  Beula herself was in the living room. She was leaning over her oak table with a cloth and a bowl of water. She had her shirt sleeves rolled up and her hair was tied back, and she’d unfastened three of her shirt buttons. Joshua saw the barest hint of her green cleavage, and couldn’t help but think how pretty she was, orc or not.

  Then, he noticed what she was doing. She was scrubbing at the surface of the table, trying to wash Benjen’s blood from it.

  Joshua walked over and held his hand out for the cloth. “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “You need to sit down and have a drink. Forget anything else. I’m sure I have something strong to drink around here.”

  “No. You didn’t ask for any of this trouble. Let me do it.”

  It wasn’t just that he felt bad for the trouble he’d put Beula through, and that was quite a lot. After all, it can’t have done her children any good to see a dead body be brought in here, and for Benjen’s blood to stain her table.

  No, he wanted to do it because it was a menial task, something he could absorb his mind into and try to shut out everything else. He used to do that back home; when he was working as an accountant apprentice and he was itching to leave and buy a guild, he’d take his mind off it by getting entranced in work.

  He took the cloth from her and dipped it into the bloodied water. He started scrubbing the table.

  “How did it go?” said Beula.

  “Casker said I had to leave.”

  “I don’t approve, you know.”

  Joshua scrubbed harder.

  “It isn’t that I don’t understand,” said Beula. “But life needs death. There has to be a consequence to our time in Fortuna; if nobody ever died, if we all lived forever or if we died and then came back again and again, there’d be no meaning to anything.”

  “Pah,” said a voice.

  Joshua looked to the kitchen, where Fropty the three-eared, square-eyed demon was watching them.

  “This isn’t the time, Fropty,” said Beula.

  “Humans and their fear of death. Pah.”

  The elf girl in the center of the story circle glared at the demon. “Why do you have to be so mean, Fropty? Why can’t you be nice? The man is upset.”

  Fropty gave a dismissive hand wave.

  Beula fixed him with a stern stare. “Fropty, what have I told you about showing the children respect?”

  The demon gave an exaggerated bow. “I am sorry, little madam.”

  “Ignore him,” said Beula. “A demon could never understand something like this. To be honest, I don’t think you understand what this means, either, and what you’re getting into.”

  “What if one of your children died?” Joshua said.

  “Joshua!”

  “I know, it’s a horrible thing to say. But what if it happened? Wouldn’t you think about asking Casker to bring them back?”

  “Let me tell you something. I grew up with five older brothers, and one by one they all left home to go and fight in the diamond wars in the south. All the boys in the clan did. Do you know how many came back? None of them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Death happens, Joshua. It’s only through embracing it that we can have any sort of connection with life. There’s an orc saying; ‘a person has learned enough when he has learned how to die.’”

  “Benjen was twenty, and he had plans. He wanted to fix up the guild with me, and he wanted children someday. Three of them. He wasn’t ready to learn how to die.”

  “And nobody is ready when death knocks on their door. Yet, we all have to answer, don’t we? I think we should teach young ones about death as soon as they’re old enough to talk, but that’s just me. Orcs think about it differently, I suppose.”

  “In my village, we didn’t talk about it much. We had a burial plot a few miles away, and when people died we took them there and the Elder said a few words, and that was that. People got on with things, and they pretended like it hadn’t happened.”

  “Perhaps that’s what you should do, Joshua.”

  “Pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “No. In your guild, I mean. Heroes will die; that’s a fact. Maybe you should have a burial ground near the guildhouse, so that you can properly honor the fallen. A place where heroes like Benjen could rest.”

  It warmed him a little to hear her call Benjen a hero. Lots of people would have disagreed, he knew. Benjen was a pacifist, and in his last moments, when his life had depended on it, he hadn’t been able to shrug that off. Plenty of people would call that cowardice, rather than heroism.

  But to Joshua, heroism didn’t just mean fighting. It meant other things; l
ike being a true friend, like always being there for the people you cared for. Joshua had no doubt that had the rapier been coming his way, Benjen would have leapt in front of it to protect him.

  Still, maybe Beaula was right about the burial plot. This was a whole side to the guild that he hadn’t thought about until now. He’d fixated on the glory and the quests, and he hadn’t thought about what he’d do when some of them inevitably went wrong.

  A burial ground was a necessity; he just wasn’t ready for Benjen to be the first to be laid to rest in it.

  Three knocks on the cellar door broke him from his thoughts. The sound echoed in his mind, and a burst of nerves made his stomach turn to water.

  Was that Benjen?

  He was about to race to the door, when Beula grabbed him.

  “You might not like what you see,” she told him. “I’ve never seen a sepuna ritual, but…”

  There were another three knocks.

  Joshua ran to the door. He pictured Benjen standing on the cellar steps, waiting to be let out.

  He opened the door, to find Casker standing there. The sepuna child beckoned him with a hand, and Joshua followed him, closing the cellar door behind him and going down the stairs.

  He was so nervous that the small stairway seemed to go on forever, but finally, he reached the bottom, and he saw Benjen.

  He saw his body lying on the cellar floor, still as cold as he was before.

  I am sorry, said Casker.

  “What happened?”

  The ritual did not take. He is not sepuna, and the ritual did not warm for him. I am truly sorry.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  They sat around the freshy-scrubbed oak table, and Joshua felt a burning in his throat from the orange drink Beula had given him. It was so alcoholic that if he’d put a torch to his mouth he could have breathed fire, yet there was a hint of thrip honey in the aftertaste.

  Over in the kitchen, her foster children were still telling stories. The goblin had rejoined the circle, and now a little elf girl was in the middle. Her tales were much more animated that the goblin’s and she seemed to have a dozen different voices to call on to act out her stories.

  She looked to be well on the way to earning the storyteller class, if she hadn’t gotten it already. From there she could learn the lie skill, and maybe she’d move on to earn the bard or negotiator class.

  Casker the sepuna boy sat on the opposite side of the kitchen, and Joshua felt bad for him. He wasn’t part of their group, even despite Beula’s orders for the other children to include him.

  Joshua looked at him with a trace of warmth. Even though the ritual had failed, at least he’d tried. The sepuna boy had done everything he could to help him.

  Maybe boy wasn’t the right word, though. With no facial features whatsoever, it was only his diminutive size that made him look child-like. When he’d been pacing around Benjen’s dead body, he certainly hadn’t seemed young.

  On that thought, tension filled Joshua’s chest. He pictured Benjen down in the cellar, and he knew he’d have to move him. The problem was, he couldn’t face it. Even opening the cellar door and going down there again would be like admitting it to himself; acknowledging that his friend was gone.

  No. He preferred sitting at the table and dulling his senses with the incredibly harsh honey liquor.

  Beula drank from her glass and unlike Joshua, she didn’t wince.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I know this isn’t the time, but who knows when you’ll be back.”

  “You really don’t need to,” said Joshua.

  “No. You didn’t have to come here. And everything you lost, what it cost you…”

  “Really, Beula. You don’t have to say anything. I’m going to finish this and I’ll go, I’m sure your children need to go to sleep. I’ll…I’ll come by for Benjen in the morning.”

  God, the words felt bitter on his tongue. He was talking about Benjen like he was a piece of meat that he needed to collect. How else should he say it, though? Maybe he needed to talk like this. Practicality was always his strong point; it had kept him focused in the years when they saved up to buy the guild.

  That was it. Practicality over emotions. It was the only way he’d get through the next few days without crumbling.

  But still, he felt exhausted. A devasting weight pressed down on him, and the liquor that should have been strong enough to dull his thoughts was barely touching them. Right now, Benjen would have been proud of Joshua’s stomach for liquor.

  Beula pushed a cloth purse across the table. “Here,” she said. “It’s not much, but you deserve it. If you hadn’t have showed up, I don’t know what Carlisle would have done. He’s crazy when he drinks, and the hate he has for me…sometimes, I worried that he’d just set the place on fire in the night, and the cottage would burn down with me and the kids in it.”

  Joshua opened the cloth purse. There were two gold coins, eight silvers, and five bronze inside. Right now, every single coin was vital, what with everything he would need to buy to fix up the guild.

  Not to mention that he’d need to be able to pay his heroes in the future; heroes would work on a quest loot-only basis for the bigger guilds, but Joshua would need something better than that to persuade them to join his lowly one.

  But then, was it ever going to reach that point? Could he even do this without Benjen?

  “I wanted to give you something else, too,” she said. She went into the kitchen, grabbed a wooden crate, and then came back and set it on the table. There were a dozen jars inside, each filled with gold syrup.

  “Thrip honey is good for minor wounds and poisons, which I’m sure a guild of heroes will get a lot of. Or you can eat it, or you can even sell it in town. Hilda the botanist will pay good coin, especially if you tell her I sent you.”

  “I really can’t take this,” he said.

  “Heroes’ guilds aren’t a charity, Joshua. You’re going to have to accept payment, you know. And the way things are around here, it might not be long before people are beating down your door. Word spreads.”

  “The way things are around here?”

  “I thought it was just me, at first. I was noticing things. Demons on the prairies. Lynxes prowling in the fields. One of the kids told me they saw a basilisk. Something’s going on around Ardglass, and the town guard don’t seem to care much. You’ll get more business than you can handle before long. So, Joshua, take what I’m offering, and go and recruit yourself some heroes.”

  Binding of the Seeker

  Store of Secrets updated

  [Major] Secret added: Strange Happenings Around Ardglass

  “Thanks, Beula. I mean it. I’m glad I met you, even with everything…it’s just nice to meet good people.”

  “You’re a hell of a lot stronger than you think. I can see it in you. Just don’t give up. Don’t give in to grief. You can’t bring your friend back, so go and do something else; go and honor him by making a strong guild, and by helping folks out.”

  Joshua didn’t know if he could do that, but he nodded. He stood up. Beula rounded the table and stood in front of him, and before Joshua could do anything, she pulled him into a tight hug.

  As a decidedly non-huggy person, he almost pushed her away. But he gave into it at the last second, and he realized how good it felt to be close to her, to feel her body against his. Something welled up in him; an utter sadness that her hug was threatening to shake free.

  He backed away, but he looked at Beula with new eyes now. Between her and Kordrude, he knew he’d been right about one of his beliefs; there might have been evil in Fortuna, evil waiting for a heroes’ guild to counter it, but there was a lot of good, too.

  He headed toward the door and opened it, and the cool night breeze met his face.

  “Don’t get yourself worked up thinking about collecting him,” Beula said. “Thrip honey will keep him fresh, and the cellar is cold. I’m sorry to speak to plainly about it, but we need to think of practicalities.
Me and the kids can sleep upstairs for a night or two. Just take care of yourself for the next couple of days. And more importantly, don’t give up. Okay?”

  He nodded to her, and then he left the cottage with his crate of thrip honey in his arms.

  When Joshua got back to the guildhouse, he and Kordrude sat around the long table in the grand hall and they drank wine and they talked about Benjen, and Kordrude told Joshua about his wife. They traded stories back and forth, starting with sad ones but then mixing in the funny ones as the wine took hold of them.

  Combined with the liquor Beula had given him in her house, the wine created a fog of alcohol in his head, and Joshua decided to say goodnight once he started slurring his words, although the actual word came out more like “Goodgenicht.”

  He stumbled up the stairs and then headed right, toward the guildmaster bedroom. He wanted to be alone tonight, rather than sleeping in the dorm room with Kordrude.

  He stood in the door way and he stared at the portrait of Jandafar, the old gnoll guildmaster.

  “Wonder where you are,” he muttered. “I could do with you here right now. Get some advice, one guildmaster to another.”

  The portrait didn’t answer, and he knew that Jandafar was probably dead, which was a shame. Despite the way he scowled in the portrait, Joshua guessed that Jandafar was a good gnoll. He had to be; bad people didn’t run heroes’ guilds, did they?

  Well, maybe they did. After all, guilds were businesses these days, and morality wasn’t a question when it came to gold. It wasn’t about good or bad, but about profits. Maybe that was how some guildmasters stayed sane; they thought of their heroes as assets, rather than people. Nobody ever shed a tear over a balance sheet, did they?

  He stared at the portrait and he thought about the physics-defying tunnel behind it, and the five mysterious doors at the end of the tunnel. He’d need to earn guildmaster level 1 to open the first one, but would he ever do it?

  The question worried him. He’d never, ever expected to waver on that. He’d never imagined going back home or quitting. But then, he’d never expected Benjen to die, either.