Drosselmeyer: Curse of the Rat King

by Paul Thompson

  Fritz soared into the air and shot a bolt of magic into two men. Their eyes burst from the heat. The boys who had been wrapped in their arms ran screaming for the corner of the room.

  Three guards charged him with swords drawn, and he yanked the swords from their hands, swung the blades around his body in a fast arc, and skewered the soldiers to the wall.

  Fritz crushed the windpipe of a man cowering behind a teenage boy. The boy turned and smashed his elbow into his captor’s nose and raced over to the far corner with the other boys.

  He leapt and rolled, switching between magic and combat to conserve his strength. His charm was still empty from the fight with the Black Wizard, but the drain of magic, if present, wasn’t registering. His strength welled up in angry pools of seemingly endless churning energy.

  The piles of soldiers lay strewn about the room, quickly defeated. The limp, crooked bodies of the nobles dotted the room. Some on the floor, folded in unnatural formations, others pinned to the wall by spears and swords.

  Five nobles remained alive, all pressed together in the front of the room near Ivanov. Three held knives at the throats of boys and shouted threats of violence. The childless nobles promised wealth and other untold glories if they were allowed to live.

  “Stop this!” the Czar boomed from behind the men. The small huddle parted. The Czar stepped forward from among them and fixed his dark eyes on Fritz.

  “Where is my brother?!” Fritz demanded.

  The Czar ignored his question and flashed a triumphant grin. “Feeling tired yet, Drosselmeyer?”

  In response, Fritz blasted him with a spell that should have thrown him into the air or knocked him unconscious, but the regent stood upright, shaken from the force but unharmed.

  Fritz blinked his magic sight on and saw a network of protective enchantments around him. Before he could decipher them, a black-robed figure materialized next to the Czar.

  “Get me out of here!” the Czar ordered and grabbed the Black Wizard’s shoulder.

  The Black Wizard turned and squared off with Fritz.

  “Take me away from here,” the Czar commanded with more volume and a tighter grip.

  The shadowy figure stared at Fritz, eyes filled with hatred. He crouched low, ready to spring, but the Czar yelled at him.

  “I said take me away. Now!” He shook the wizard with both hands, and they disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  Fritz yelled and threw a blast of magic at the spot where they had been standing. It left a crater in the wall.

  He walked slowly toward the remaining five men, now whimpering. Ivanov stood in the middle, eerily calm for someone in his predicament.

  The first noble began screaming, but it turned into a gurgle as all his capillaries burst and the blood drained into his lungs.

  The boy in his clutches pulled away as the remaining boys shook off their captors and ran. Frozen with terror, the men watched their fellow noble writhe on the floor.

  Fritz inched closer.

  The second noble yelped and let out a blood-curdling scream until his skin melted away and the red-hot sludge of his organs spilled out.

  Fritz took a few more steps.

  The third noble barely had time to gasp before his head snapped and twisted toward the back wall.

  The fourth man fell to his knees, begging for mercy.

  Fritz looked at him with disgust. He lifted the man into the air and then slammed him down on the stone floor. His bones crunched and blood began to pool around him.

  The fifth noble tried to run, but his body stopped mid stride, straightened, and began to slowly extend. Ligaments popped and tendons stretched until the magical pull extended beyond its capability to hold the skeleton together

  Fritz faced Ivanov. “Where is my brother?”

  Ivanov smiled. “The Black Wizard said you’d be coming.”

  Fritz sent out a blast that knocked the tapestries off the wall, but Ivanov didn’t move.

  Fritz looked confused.

  Ivanov lifted up his hand. A silver bracelet around his wrist flashed with a spell blocking enchantment.

  The old man stepped down from the dais and walked cautiously around Fritz. “Fritz,” he said with an air of intrigue. “I always thought you were special.”

  Fritz kept his eyes on Ivanov. “Where is Franz?” he asked again.

  Ivanov licked his lips. “They wouldn’t let me have him. Borya said no.”

  “What does Borya have to do with this?” Fritz demanded.

  Ivanov lifted up his bracelet. “He gave me this. Said it would protect me against magical attacks.”

  “Why would Borya protect a pervert like you?” Fritz spat. “These parties aren’t his style.”

  Ivanov wheezed. “You are just as stupid as you’ve always been. Sure, you could hold your own with Dolph, but he always beat you eventually because you couldn’t see his end game.”

  “What is Borya’s end game?” Fritz asked.

  Ivanov laughed out loud. “These parties are only a halfway point for the boys. A little initiation into their true purpose.”

  He began breathing heavily, sucking air in-between his teeth. “Your brother was supposed to be here for this party, but Borya said no. Franz was supposed to be mine. That was our deal, but Borya said …”

  Fritz punched fast and hard.

  It landed solidly on the side of the old man’s head.

  Ivanov tumbled to the floor and retreated from Fritz’s steady advance. He held out the bracelet, shaking it. “No! No! Stay back!”

  “It will only stop my magical attacks,” Fritz said. He held out his hand and a sword appeared. He swung the sword in a practice circle.

  “I gave you a home. You can’t do this!” Ivanov screamed at him and stumbled over the body of a noble. He bumped up against the wall and stood up, hands clasped in front of him. “Please! Have a heart!”

  Fritz raised his eyebrows. “A heart?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ivanov whimpered and tried to pat Fritz’s shoulder. His tongue continued to flick over his dry, cracked lips. Ivanov bowed his head repeatedly, the obsequious gesture making his stringy hair flop back and forth.

  “You and Franz were always my favorite … ”

  Fritz’s hand shot out so fast, silver streaks of magic popped and flashed behind it. His pointed fingers ripped through Ivanov’s chest, cracking the ribs and disappearing into the cavity. He closed his hand around Ivanov’s heart and yanked his hand back.

  Ivanov registered it all for the next ten seconds. He saw his heart pump and then quiver to a stop. He saw his own blood trickle from his mouth onto Fritz’s sleeve. He stared into Fritz’s silvery-green eyes.

  His own hand was clasping Fritz’s arm. The silver bracelet flashed in the room’s light, and he slumped forward.

  Fritz let the body fall, wiped the blood and gore from his sleeve, and turned to the boys huddled in the corner. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  Fritz traveled them back to the main room of the orphanage, where they were greeted with tables full of food and boys wolfing down as much of it as possible. The boys from the party raced into the fray to partake. The other boys hugged their friends, and the cries of jubilation rang through the dingy room.

  Fritz traveled back to the fishing shack where Boroda lay listless on the ground. He pulled the wizard to his feet, amid protestations, and traveled him back to the mansion. He half carried, half dragged him to his bed and laid him down on the mattress.

  Boroda traveled in another bottle of alcohol, and Fritz boiled the liquid before it reached his lips, making it undrinkable. The older man gave up and slumped back into his bed, no longer resisting.

  Fritz undressed Boroda to put on his bed clothes and startled at the scars covering Boroda’s chest and torso. There was so much about his master he didn’t know and so much he wanted to find out, but not now. He had to find Franz and make sure he was safe.

  “Boroda, I really need you,” Fritz whispered.

>   Boroda was asleep and lost in a dream. The only intelligible word Fritz could understand was, “Perrin.”

  Fritz sat down by Boroda’s bed and cupped his face in his hands. “I can’t fight the Czar on my own,” Fritz told the unconscious man. “He has my brother. I’m running out of time.”

  Fritz sighed heavily, fatigue from his fight beginning to set in. He leaned on the nightstand next to Boroda’s bed.

  Inside the stand, something clicked unevenly. It was a faint tick but the lilting cadence caught Fritz’s attention.

  He opened the door and saw the crudely built clock from the country manor.

  The initials “PA” were etched into the side.

  Below it, face down, was a picture frame.

  Fritz turned it over.

  It was a faded picture of a beautiful woman standing near a shoreline on a sunny beach. Her gauzy dress wrapped loosely around her figure. Her long hair draped past her tall, slender neck, and her lips parted in a laugh. She gazed beyond the edge of the photograph, a look of love and contentment on her face.

  “Who is this?” Fritz asked the sleeping wizard.

  Boroda was no longer thrashing around in his bed.

  Fritz had never stopped to think that Boroda might have ever been in love or even been married. He had never seemed the type for such sentimentality. He wondered what happened to the woman in the photograph.

  He turned the frame over again and noticed some writing in the lower corner. He held it up to the waning sunlight coming through the bedroom window.

  To my true love, Pickety Wickett.

  —Rosamund Lee

  Fritz nearly dropped the frame.

  Rosamund was a real person, just like Drosselmeyer.

  If Boroda’s current state had something to do with the characters in the nonsensical poem, perhaps the person in this picture could help.

  He took the photograph and stepped back through a misty cloud into the inky blackness he’d visited only hours ago. He struggled against the fatigue setting in and stretched out his hand, beckoning to the ivory point of light in the distance.

  The Celestine moved toward him.

  Touching the globe, he commanded, “Show me this woman.”

  The orb did not respond.

  He tried again. “Show me where this woman is!”

  Nothing.

  Frustrated, he glanced down at the picture and chewed his lip in thought. “Where was this taken?”

  The Celestine pulsed.

  Fritz peered into the ball.

  Waves lapped on a sandy shore. A small village, now unobstructed by the woman’s body, jutted into frame.

  Fritz vanished from the Celestine and landed on a small, shell-strewn street that led down a hill to a tiny village with cottages dotting the shoreline.

  As Fritz walked through the small village, people looked at him cautiously. A few retreated into their houses and shut their doors. He saw a small store with an old man smoking a pipe, sitting on a well-worn canvas chair.

  He crossed to the old man and greeted him with a polite, yet weary salutation.

  “I am looking for the woman in this photograph.”

  “What is your business with her?” he asked in a relaxed, yet guarded, manner.

  “It’s personal but urgent. Can you help me?”

  The man looked him up and down, ground out his cigarette, and called to his wife.

  The plump woman stepped out of the shop before he finished calling her name.

  “She likes to listen in on my business,” he told Fritz with a loud whisper.

  He handed the picture to his wife. “My wife is the nosiest person on the island.”

  “We’re on an island?” Fritz mused.

  “Of course!” the man waved his hands. “Did you ride a horse here? No. You took a boat.” The man muttered something while his wife studied the photograph.

  “Do you know her?” Fritz asked.

  “Sure. We know everyone on the island,” the man said.

  Fritz felt his patience wane and fought to keep his voice cordial. “Please, tell me where I can find her. It’s important!”

  The husband and wife whispered to each other, then the wife stood up, smiled sweetly and motioned to her shop. “Do you like anything here? Would you like to buy something?”

  Fritz sighed. Exasperated, he stuck his hand in his pocket and traveled in a handful of gold coins from the chest in storage. He threw the money on the ground in front of the shop owner. With a snarl, he demanded, “Tell me where she is.”

  Their eyes bulged at the sight of the gold.

  The wife pointed to a small path and began picking up the money from the dirt.

  Fritz trudged down the path in the direction the shop owner’s wife had shown him. The late afternoon sun and briny gusts of wind nicked away at his fatigue, and he quickened his steps.

  The island was a large, rounded mountain jutting out of the ocean with the little town carved into the western shore. His current path ran up the mountain and twisted around a stony outcropping before it climbed up a steep wall toward the northern edge.

  Set back into a sloped clearing was a quaint, stone cottage painted white. A short wall no taller than a chair encompassed a sandy courtyard. Several native trees sprouted from the bricked entrance and a few trees grew through the roof of the cottage. Outside the front door, strands of shells hung from strings and clinked in the ocean breeze.

  Fritz knocked on the door, and a slender woman with long salt and pepper hair answered. She was, undoubtedly, the woman from the photo. Older now, but every bit as beautiful.

  “What do you want?” she asked curtly.

  “I’m a friend of Boroda’s. Are you Rosamund Lee?” Fritz asked.

  She sighed and stepped aside. “Come in.”

  Fritz entered and bowed.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Fritz.”

  She extended her hand. “I’m Cora.”

  “Oh,” Fritz said, dazed. “I’m sorry. I thought your name was … ”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need your help,” Fritz told her. “My brother’s life is in danger, and the only person that can help me save him is Boroda. He learned some news about the death of his former apprentice, and now I’m scared he might be drinking himself to death. I found your picture in the drawer of his bedside table and thought that maybe he’d listen to you.”

  Cora sat back in her chair and studied Fritz carefully. “What makes you think he would want to hear from me? I haven’t talked to him since he told me about the death of my child.”

  “Your child?” Fritz held his breath.

  Cora straightened. “Perrin was my child.”

  Fritz gasped. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She looked away, fighting her emotions. “Boroda was never able to get past the death of Perrin,” she said harshly. “He will not forgive himself. It has consumed him.”

  She stood up and walked over to an open window that looked over the ocean. “Give him time, Fritz. He will come back to you.” Cora turned around and rested her elbows on the sill. “At least, that is what I still hope for.”

  Fritz joined her at the window.

  “He is grieving the death of his son. Neither you nor I can shorten that process for him,” Cora continued.

  Fritz gasped, as the hair on his arms stood up. “Perrin was Boroda’s son?!”

  Cora smiled. “Yes.”

  “That means you’re his …” Fritz’s head was spinning.

  “Wife?” Cora asked with a wry laugh. “Of a sort.”

  “But Perrin called him ‘uncle,’ like I do,” Fritz said.

  Cora shrugged and stared out over the ocean. The sun was setting and the light bathed the little house in an orange wash. “Boroda and I were married when I was very young. He was still an apprentice, and I was a naive island girl. We were deliriously happy.

  “We dreamed of having a family, and Boroda believed he could be both
a wizard in The Order and a husband. He found out before too long that those choices were mutually exclusive.

  “Boroda promised he would leave The Order. He said we could choose new names and move somewhere no one would find us. We teased each other with pet names.

  “I called him Pickety Wickett. It’s from a children’s story we tell here on the island about a useless man who was always getting into trouble.

  “He called me Rosamund Lee after an aunt he had that was extremely fat and rude.”

  Fritz filled in the last link. “And Perrin was Drosselmeyer?”

  Cora nodded. “We tried for several years to have children. We had almost given up when I finally got pregnant. Perrin was born, and on the day of his birth, Boroda told me that there was a magical bird called a Drosselmeyer whose song was so beautiful, it would make even the saddest person smile.” She turned her face away from Fritz. “Boroda told me that the song of the Drosselmeyer bird could never hope to compare to the sound of our son’s laughter.”

  “So what happened?” Fritz asked, still spinning from the revelations.

  Cora shrugged. “Our son ‘snapped,’ as he called it. Practiced magic. Lifted a rock with his mind and threw it into Boroda’s lap.

  “By this time, Boroda was a full-fledged member in The Order himself. He told me that The Order now knew of Perrin’s existence but not his lineage.

  “If our son was to remain safe, he would need to come with him to live and train as a wizard in The Order. He assured me he would keep him safe and would bring him back as often as he could.

  “They did visit me often, at first.

  “Then Boroda, without telling me why, said he was going to destroy The Order and that it wasn’t safe for Perrin to visit me. He had to build something that would require all his time and energy, and he constantly feared that the other wizards would find out about me and use me to get to him.”

  She laughed a short, single outburst laced with hurt and disdain.

  “I saw him a few years later but it wasn’t to tell me that he had destroyed The Order. It was to tell me that my boy was dead. He blamed himself. He said I would be in danger if he stuck around, promised to come back to me as soon as he could, and that was the last time I ever saw him.”