Wizard's Goal

by Alan J. Garner

  Disturbed by the mystifying coincidence, Maldoch surmised that the Dwarf King had taken appropriate security precautions. Unsolved murders and vanishings committed by unknown perpetrators on a large scale were incredibly worrying.

  "Junior's pet project took to patrolling the length of the eastern mountain range,” Dalcorne Senior affirmed. “Fat lot of good that did."

  "The Highland Grays are up and running again?"

  'Trotting, more like it.” Dalcorne snorted deridingly. “Ponies are for hauling mining carts, not riding."

  "The Lancers down in the Stranth would disagree."

  "Cavalry in the mountains is as daft as going for a swim wearing a suit of armor. It'll never catch on."

  "If it ever did, you'd die in the saddle."

  "Like you, I'll never retire. Life's too short to spend it wallowing in old age."

  The bearded geriatrics’ watched in mutual silence sunup beautify the heavens, the pink and gold blushes coloring the washy blue sky contrasting starkly with the backlit clouds and mirroring granite-gray mountains. Feeling remiss at his centuries of inattention, Maldoch turned to see the cool daylight whitening the violet snow below stoking the Dwarf King's rapture, the softening yellow glow erasing years from his lined face. Patting Dalcorne on the shoulder, the wizard departed to meet the nascent day head on.

  Disappearing back down the tower, relying on gravity to speed his descent, Maldoch reached the bottom only to be shouldered aside by barging guards hastening up the stairs. Curious but in a hurry himself, the wizard pushed on through to the courtyard and headfirst into noisy chaos.

  Soldiers of the Home Watch, the unit specifically tasked with safeguarding the Dalcorne castle and family, poured from their barracks like angry wasps, donning clothes and toting weapons while running half asleep in response to an unfolding emergency. Muffled by the soundproofing blocks walling the turret, dozens of booted feet pounded the cobblestones in response to a clanging alarm bell, the metallic rustle of jingling chain mail adding to the din. Overriding the clamorous mayhem was the combined racket of the iron-sheeted oak portcullis sliding down ahead of the massive gate doors slamming shut. This was a general lockdown!

  I'm shut in! Grabbing the nearest Home Watcher by the top of his head, Maldoch spun him around and demanded to be told the nature of the inconvenient callout. Before the accosted Dwarf could blurt his angry reply, the wizard had his answer. The bell abruptly stopped ringing and a frantic voice from on high rang out distantly in its stead. Barely able to make out the faint shouting puncturing the dawn air, he imagined hearing the word “king” followed by the distinctive cry, “MURDERED!"

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  Chapter Sixteen

  The plush, blue pile lining the walls soaked up the subdued candlelight yellowing the bedchamber, plunging the curtained four-poster into soothing shadow. Crown Prince Dalcorne sprawled languidly on a similarly carpeted bench at his father's bedside as a doddery physician ministered to the dying king.

  "He has the constitution of an Ogre. He might pull through,” Maldoch offered comfortingly from the doorway.

  Dalcorne sat up, looking out of sorts, his tousled yellowish-brown hair as careworn as his somber face. Gone was the silky feel of his informal designer clothes, traded in for an oily hauberk that irritated his soft skin, the leather fasteners at the front of the chain mail tunic sloppily left undone, “A Goblin crossbowman shot him in the balls, Maldoch. The bolt went through his metal codpiece like a needle through parchment. And yet Macehitter insists I wear this for protection.” He rattled his overcoat of interlocking steel rings dismissively.

  "You've finally inherited your dad's dress sense,” the wizard quipped callously.

  Unhearing, the distraught prince finished off his tale of woe “If the old buzzard does beat the odds to recover, the doctors predict him never walking again."

  "I doubt he'd walk the same after that anyway,” muttered Maldoch, cringing just from thinking about getting shafted in the nether region.

  "He'll be chair-bound the remainder of his life and all the more miserable for it,” fumed Dalcorne.

  Maldoch gazed sympathetically at the pillow-propped figure reclining behind the filmy linen hangings shrouding the great bed. The surgeons had not long finished their doctoring, pouring burning oil on the injury to staunch the profuse bleeding after extracting the offending crossbow quarrel, then suturing the gaping wound closed and wetting it with wine as an antiseptic. Now came the turn of the physicians, and those who specialized treating problems inside the body had their work cut out for them. Blood loss, shock, and infection; any of those medical nasties would snuff out the king's flickering life.

  He'd prefer death to being left a crippled eunuch the wizard horridly mused.

  Pasty-skinned and dead asleep, the elder Dalcorne looked a frail shadow of his former self, stunted by the massive headboard carved into the shape of a shield bearing his family crest that uncomfortably projected the aura of a tombstone. Noting the cloth bandage wrapped around the king's crotch seeping blood, the attending physician strangely had a phlebotomy kit at the ready and started tapping the old Dwarf's forearm to bring a twiggy vein to the surface of his blotchy skin.

  "No bloodletting,” Maldoch firmly instructed the shaky-handed doctor. Unlike him, the wizard took his oath to preserve life seriously. “He's losing enough blood without you draining more."

  Ignoring the opinionated visitor, the old physician appealed directly to the Crown Prince. “The king is running a fever. Removing a pint or two of sanguine fluid will cool his body."

  "Poppycock,” challenged the wizard. “The body is a machine, not a temple. By removing a key component you interfere with the overall workings."

  "You dare presume to tell me my—"

  "Stop playing at being god and consider your patient's welfare for once!” snapped Maldoch. “Bleeding the sick doesn't work. It only weakens the ill further."

  "Highness, I've been the Dalcorne family doctor since before you were born. I delivered you in fact, and also brought your son into the world. Will you listen to this ignorant southerner over me?"

  The prince decided yes, sending the affronted physician out of the room on the tail of the admonishment, “If my father perishes, he dies as a whole Dwarf."

  Introspection returned Dalcorne Junior to mutely deliberating the meaning of life as Maldoch leaned unobtrusively against the doorframe. A person can only stand being morbid for so long and the doleful Dwarf lanced the pall enveloping the sickbed by challenging the wizard to work some magic.

  Maldoch rebuffed the proposal. “The healing arts aren't my specialty."

  "But you sounded so clued-up censuring my physician."

  "That was Parndolc buggering him. Biology is an offshoot of his technical interests. Granted, Parny's no medical practitioner, but he's picked up a few tips in the field of health studies. And your quacks are sorely outdated and uninformed."

  "Get him here to save my da."

  "That would be pointless, Dwarf prince."

  "But you offered me hope a moment ago."

  "I gave you condolence."

  "But you're wizards!"

  "And not miracle workers,” countered Maldoch. “Even if I did flout the rules and zap Parndolc here, there's no guarantee he could save the king's life. He's likely too far gone."

  Momentarily sidetracked, Dalcorne queried, “Wizards follow rules?"

  "You don't know the half of it. We have a code of conduct we must abide by. Circumventing them, even the minor ones, causes all sorts of headaches."

  The prince frowned, confused by the revelation. “I would have thought exercising magic to be more liberating."

  Shaking his head, Maldoch expounded. “The boundaries are in place to ensure no magical terrorism takes place.” Not that they worked. Omelchor reveled in free reign with his badness, shamelessly ignoring rules and regulations.

  "Who set these guidelines?"

  "My boss—the Maker."<
br />
  "You speak with Jeshuvallhod personally?"

  "Indirectly, on occasion,” the wizard cagily admitted.

  "Can't you petition Him to bend the rules?"

  "It doesn't work like that. Even God answers to a higher authority. And His superior is totally inflexible."

  Stunned there was a power higher than God's, Dalcorne's misery deepened, plunging him headfirst into a well of despair. Anger broke his fall. “You're of no use to me or this kingdom,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Get out."

  "Your father's doom is in his own hands to counter now,” said Maldoch. “If he can find the strength from within, he may fight off death."

  "You reckoned he is beyond help. What changed your mind?"

  Maldoch borrowed one of Parndolc's many sayings. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."

  "Your sympathy is hollow and unwanted, wizard."

  "I deal in realities, prince, and the unpleasant one staring you in the face is that probably by nightfall your journey to the kingship, begun at birth, will be complete."

  Before Dalcorne could react and throw him out, Maldoch vacated the doorway, leaving the northern royals to whatever direness Fate had in store for them.

  Grumbling how Dwarven engineering had yet to install lifts to the uppermost apartments crowning the Royal Keep, he descended the bothersome stairs, pausing on several landings to rest. Home Watch sentries stationed on the landings and bolstered by personnel drawn from the Highland Regiments scowled at the wizard, thinking his visitation brought misfortune to their king. Shrugging off their uninvited disdain—spellcasters were generally as popular as a dose of the clap—Maldoch gained the bottommost floor and hurriedly crossed the echoey flagstone floor, already late for lunch.

  The Dwarf court functioned in a less stuffy and more informal manner than its Anarican twin. Mealtimes were when those retainers who occupied positions of command within the castle, whether military or civilian (that distinction often blurred in the highland kingdom), dined alongside the sovereign and his kin in what can best described as a familial atmosphere.

  King's Hall accentuated that air of homeliness. A tenth of the cavernous dimensions of the adjoining Great Hall, this cozier chamber was devoid of the rich trappings adorning it huger opposite. Modestly furnished with a dining table and the habitual fireplace found in every dwelling throughout the perennially cold northlands, its ancient unlined sandstone walls, patterned in blocks of varnished grey, white and red, squatted steeped in the history of the ages. If rocks could talk, they would recount the formation of the world and the many reincarnations it undergoes as plate tectonics work their geologic sleight of hand.

  Being a guest, staff seated Maldoch opposite where the king normally sat. Filling the chair on his immediate right was a soldiering Dwarf known to the wizard because of his eminent position as Eastridge Scouts commander. Khandoss Stoneclub was a gaudy sight that only a mother could love, sporting a Van Dyke style beard dyed one half gold, the other silver, surmounted by a purple tinted moustache—Carallordian national colors. Beefy arms decorated with tattoos of plump-figured Highland maidens sensuously caressing all manner of hafted weapons poked out from the sleeveless mail vest covering a surprisingly wiry frame. Below the waist he wore the traditional kilt, but Maldoch did not recognize the tartan patterning the heavy woolen material as belonging to any particular clan.

  Uncomfortably facing the empty chair at the far end of the table, the fact that none of the royal family at all was present accentuated for the wizard Dalcorne Senior's non-attendance. Servants dished him up a banquet of filling winter cuisine: generous portions of steaming pottage thickened with almonds and served with thickly cut slices of paynmain. A main course of alows smothered in peurade, a pepper sauce, followed the hearty soup and lordly white bread, accompanied by a side dish of wild carrots marinated in honey and herbs. Those diners with spare room in their overstuffed stomachs complimented the short ribs by partaking of pudding in the form of sweet pastries fried in oil. All in all, it was a lunchtime meal fit for a king; another reminder that he was glaringly absent.

  Disinterested in the repast served him, the wizard sequestered from his neighbor the low-down of the heinous attack.

  "The Carnks are crafty devils, Maldoch. They must've cottoned on to the king's daily habit of touring the front gatehouse battlements at daybreak."

  "That would've entailed spying on this castle for some time to learn his morning routine.” The wizard was astounded, more than disturbed, by such skullduggery. Staying undetected for days, even weeks, out on the bleak openness of Horae Flat in full view of the castle demonstrated frightening skill and tenacity.

  "Yeah, the sneaks,’ muttered Khandoss. He held no such respect for Goblin achievements. “Right on sunrise they lined up the giant slingshot we found unmasked a stone's throw from the base of the gates and catapulted two warriors into the air. One made it over the parapet, while the other arced in too low and smashed halfway up the wall.” Khandoss chuckled evilly. “Even though each wore heavy hide padding to soften the impact, the guy imitating a human fly ended up squished like a bug against a wagoner's teeth. He slid down the stone blocks faster than a blob of grease. Messy, but pretty. Talk about performance art. Unfortunately, his partner in crime lucked out. Recovering instantly from the shock of his successful landing, he fired a crossbow point blank at the king bollocks. The prick circumcised him before Dalcorne could swing his hand axe in self-defense! I came as soon as Mernoll rang the alarm bell."

  "And the vengeful Home Watch chopped the assassin up into a hundred pieces rather than capture and question him?"

  "He never made it off the roof alive,” confirmed Khandoss. “Only the castle guard didn't do the killing. The coward fell on his knife before he got axed. Knowing it was a one way trip made him completely suicidal."

  "Kamikaze Goblins is novel,” Maldoch wryly remarked.

  "So was finding them dressed in deerskin."

  "But the Grizzlies, not the Elk Clan, holds the monopoly on crossbows. Could they be ringers?"

  Khandoss considered the wizard's suggestion. “There is enough bad blood between them for that."

  Deeming it trivial, Maldoch skipped to a more relevant poser. “Did the shooter make an attempt to break into the castle before he filleted himself? He would've been trying for the vault."

  "He nailed Dalcorne in the family jewels. I don't think he was too bothered going after the crown jewels as a sequel."

  "This day just keeps weirder."

  "There's more weirdness in the shape of thirteen bound Dwarfs discovered dumped in the snow behind the catapult when soldiers swept the area."

  "A number unlucky for some."

  "I'll say. The lot were executed by a sharp, upward knife thrust to the base of the skull ... evidence of a swift, silent kill.” Seeing curiosity framing the wizard's countenance, Khandoss elaborated. “Slitting someone's throat is a bloody, noisy affair; your victim gurgles and thrashes around for several long minutes. Ramming a blade into the brain through the thin bone here—” he tapped a finger above the nape of his neck, “—kills cleanly and quickly, if done expertly. Botch it, and your knife scrapes across the scalp and slides off. Do it correctly, you kill virtually instantly. Whoever the luckless sods happened to be they were dispatched like fish, their tongues cut out too.'

  Maldoch ruminated, slotting pieces of his mental puzzle into place. The murder victims could only be the missing engineers, obviously hijacked to build, take apart and reassemble on site in the dead of night a collapsible catapult, and then brutally disposed of when their usefulness was at an end. His admiration of Goblin ingenuity waning, the wizard remained bamboozled by the grisly purpose behind the handiwork of the scalpers responsible for balding the massacred Druscan merchants. How was that atrocity linked to this audacious attack on the king's person?

  Unable to connect the dots outstanding, Maldoch's mind turned to more solvable problems as his predatory gaze drifted ove
r his luncheon companions.

  Stuffing his face, stripping every last scrap of meat from a greasy boar spare rib, his bushy beard plastered with splashes of soup and sauce, a typically rotund Dwarf paid no attention to Maldoch's scrutiny. Mailed from head to toe, the bulging birnie grappling to contain his beer gut, he was a study of miniaturized mass. The same applied to his hairdo, an Afro of golden-brown frizz literally exploding out and under the sides of his untied hood. He displayed the cutesy look of a teddy bear encased in steely knitwear. Without benefit of an introduction, Maldoch worked out that the gluttonous eater, the only other soldier at the table, had to be Mernoll Macehitter, besmirched officer in charge of the Home Watch. Not that the captain's appetite seemed affected by the morning's proceedings.

  At Mernoll's side a truly roly-poly Dwarf rocked back on a protesting chair, patting the sides of his chunky belly in time to the creaking timber. Pottbur Gamecook loved his profession. Proud to show off a waistline that dwarfed his best friend's ample girth, Carallord's premier chef selflessly sampled each dish prepared by his own hand to ensure perfect delectability. Laughing eyes mirroring his irrepressibly cheery disposition twinkled out of a chubby, freckled face rimmed by the thinnest of reddish-blonde beards. Certainly the happiest of dwarfs, the grumpiest sat rigidly across from him.

  "Who's the life of the party?” Maldoch murmured to Khandoss, noisily swilling beer to lubricate his parched throat.

  "What?” he sprayed, setting down his silver tankard and wiping his piebald beard with a stained napkin. Enthusiastically messy eaters, Dwarf diners wisely kept piles of table linen stacked on hand. ‘Och, that old sourpuss is Despenser Fortkeeper. He's about as happy as a crofter living in town.'

  The steward of the castle looked your typically serious bureaucrat. Graying strands of black hair were neatly combed sideways over a progressively balding pate. Hirsute, frowning eyebrows ridged a bulbous nose overhanging a mustached upper lip set in a permanent pout of displeasure. Dressed immaculately in plaid, Morband Fortkeeper was the model of dour conservatism.