by Greg Curtis
Edrick felt like he’d been kicked in the gut when he heard that. Because he knew the man had to mean Wilberton’s granddaughter Carrie. As far as he knew, Wilberton had no daughter. Not anymore. His father had apparently arrested Carrie! The gods alone knew what his people had to be doing to her as they interrogated her.
How dare Carrie be made to suffer for her grandfather's crimes! And how dare his father be the one to cause her such suffering! Edrick could not let that stand.
But even as he completed his purchases and got back in the wagon to head for the camp where the army was amassing and thought Carrie was being held, he spotted a face he knew studying him intently from the other side of the road. A woman who had had last seen with a sour look on her face. Today though she just looked puzzled.
“You!” Edrick recognised the woman as the one he had encountered with Master Thatchwell in the forest a month or so past. His student? Assistant? Just fellow Guild member? He marched across the road to her, and watched her mouth fall down in disbelief as she stared at him. “I need to know exactly what's been happening in my absence.”
“But –?!” She ran out of words and simply let her mouth open and close without any sound coming out.
“Yes, I know. I’ve been away for a while. I had to rebuild a Faerie gate and it took time. But that isn't important.” Apparently it was to her though, judging by the look of shock that wouldn’t leave her features. Edrick ignored it and decided to press on. “I want to know everything that's happened here while I've been away. How my father came to be in charge of an army. And most of all, why Carrie is locked up somewhere and what the Guild are planning on doing about it!”
“But Wilberton killed you!” She didn't seem to be listening.
“He certainly tried,” Edrick agreed. “But it's not important. What matters is that you have a Guild wizard locked away without cause. Why hasn’t the Guild done something about that?” He returned to what was important.
“We've been trying,” she began. “But Lord Baraman isn't listening to us. He won't even see us.”
Edrick could believe that. His father never listened to anyone – including his sons. The last time Edrick had seen his father had been when he’d gone to protest his arranged marriage ten years before. Before more than a sentence had passed his lips, his father had cut him off, informing him that it was about honour and the family estate. It was his duty to marry Gerta and that that was the end of the matter.
“Then you should make him listen!” Edrick replied angrily, even though he knew he was asking the impossible.
“We have been trying! But the Guild has been badly weakened. Wilberton murdered half a dozen of our more senior members, crippled many more, and none of the rest of us can offer Lord Baraman any way to stop him. Meanwhile the King has given Lord Baraman complete command to do as he will. He's said that the wizard must die at all costs and instructed Lord Baraman to make it happen. No matter what anyone says to him, he says that Carrie Wilberton is the only one who can tell them how to kill her grandfather and that she's betrayed the realm. Against that nothing we say has any meaning.”
“Meanwhile Wilberton has magic the likes of which no one has ever seen. His power is immense, and he doesn't even bother with casting any more. With just a thought he seems to be able to bring down the most terrible destruction. If we could offer a way to fight him, maybe your father would listen to us. But we have nothing.”
“You would understand if you had seen Coldwater. What it's become.”
“I see.” But he didn't really. What she was telling him, didn't seem possible, though given everything he’d heard supported what she said, he had to accept it. But he could still save Carrie, and he was determined to do so. No matter what.
“Now …” He stopped as he suddenly realised that he didn't actually know the woman's name, and then had to ask.
“Marshan Duckworth.”
“Well then Marshan Duckworth, I don’t have any better idea then any of the Guild members do on how to fight Wilberton given what you've said. But I do know how to fight my father. I've had a lot of years to think about it. And it isn't the way you've been doing it. You never try to reason with a merchant. And my father is most definitely that.”
“You have to trade with him. Either offer him something he wants or threaten to take something away that he values. It's that simple. He simply won't give you anything unless you trade him something he wants more for it. Unfortunately, you don't have what he wants which is a way of defeating Wilberton. Since you don't have that, you'll have to attack instead. Strike him where he's vulnerable instead and take something that’s precious to him – then force him to bargain to get it back.”
“You have something in mind?” Marshan looked surprised – even a little hopeful.
“There are certain things that my father will give anything for. And the most important one of all is his station. My father is a Lord. That's not just a title to him. It's his entire world. If you threaten to take that away from him, he will bargain.”
It had taken Edrick a long time to realise that. To understand that before his father was either a father or a man, he was first and foremost a Lord. He would lose his estate, sell his entire family into servitude and cut off his good arm before he gave up being Lord Baraman. That was why he'd made the deal with the Banner family and sold him into marriage. It wasn't about the wealth, though that was probably welcome. It was about an alliance that would promote the Baraman name through the lists of the nobility.
“We have no way of doing that,” Marshan objected. “Only the King can remove someone's title. And none of us are even nobility let alone royalty. We don't have the ear of the King or the Court. But even if we did, what could we say? That he's locked up an innocent woman? Even though you and I both know Carrie is innocent, the King might not be so easily persuaded. Not if it doesn’t suit him.”
“You don't have to. There are certain things every noble born man can never do. Acts that would betray everything they stand for and bring the nobility into disrepute. And most important of all, acts that would force the King to strip their titles from them.”
What constituted a crime was different depending on whether you were noble born or common born. A noble could never be accused of theft or murder, or for that matter most of the things the commoner could be held to account for. The nobility was seen as above that. If they stole something or killed someone then it was generally accepted that they had the right to do it. But there were still some crimes the King would not tolerate. The so called noble crimes. And they came down to two things. The first of course was high treason. And the second was anything that brought the nobility into disrepute. So, while theft wasn't a crime for a noble, being shown in public to have committed theft was. It was why nobles generally didn't commit such acts.
“And how do we get him to commit an act like that?”
“You don't. He would never do it. You need to prove that he's already done it.”
Marshan stared at him, even more confused than before, and perhaps wondering if he'd gone crazy. But she didn't say anything. Probably because she had no idea what he was talking about.
“There are two noble standards that I can show my father has broken. The first is that no one, no lord, no member of the Court, not even the King's Hands, may act against another noble. Not in any manner. That is the King's prerogative alone.”
“Carrie Wilberton is not a noble,” Marshan immediately told him.
“She is, if I say she is! For what little it's worth, I am Lord Baraman’s son and that makes me a member of the nobility. Praise Sirtis I never wanted to be that. I just wanted to live an ordinary life and be happy. Maybe I wanted a family that cared for me. And I don't want to go back to being a lord. But today I'm going to be the lord I was born to be. Because a lord's word is absolute.” Naturally she didn't understand. But then she didn't yet know the rest of it.
“The second standard is that no one may harm their own family. It wo
uld be a stain on a man's honour that could not be removed. That law applies to lords as well as commoners.”
Unfortunately proposing that your eighteen-year-old son wed a woman more than twice his age and three times his weight against his will did not constitute harm. In fact, in arranging the marriage his father had done nothing wrong. But in running away Edrick had fallen short of the noble standard expected of him. He just had to hope the King didn’t decide to strip away his title before he had the chance to spirit Carrie away.
“Carrie is family to Lord Baraman?” Marshan's eyes bulged.
“I'm going to use those two standards to force my father to release her,” Edrick carried on, ignoring her question as the rest of the plan unfolded in his thoughts. “Your task is to get as many members of the Guild to my father's side in the next few hours as you can. I don’t however want them to speak. I just need them to act as witnesses. Above all tell them not to contradict me. Remember that for all everyone knows me as Edrick, I am a noble and it is a crime to contradict a noble.”
As he began explaining his plan to her, Edrick realised that he hated it. Carrie herself wouldn’t be too thrilled once she heard what he was about to do. But he also knew that it was all they had. And it should work. Of course, there was a world of difference between “should” and “would”. But it was the only plan he had.
Chapter Nineteen
Darkness was settling on the land when Edrick finally made his way into the camp. It had taken him some time to prepare for his meeting and he had to start simply by going back to his home in the Faeries' realm to get himself appropriately attired. That meant bathing, shaving and grooming himself, and finally dressing in the clothes he hadn't worn in ten years. And then when he had finally done that he'd driven from the Sitwell forest straight for Coldwater so he could get an idea of what had happened.
Even staring at it from a distance it had come as a shock. He'd never seen the town in such a state. He'd never seen any town in that condition. Marshan had told him what to expect, but he still hadn't imagined the reality. It turned out that she hadn’t been exaggerating despite the madness of what she had claimed. If anything, the Guild wizard had been conservative in her description. Coldwater hadn’t just been levelled; it had been destroyed! And even if there was anything left in the town still intact, the magical storm swirling overhead was guaranteed to make sure it wouldn’t remain so for long.
Clouds floated above the town. Dark clouds that every now and then were lit up by orange lightning. They spun slowly as though they were part of a whirlpool. He understood that the clouds had been there ever since the battle eighteen days before. It looked like they were slowly building in power. The buildings – those he could see which hadn't already been flattened – burnt with what looked like orange fire. Edrick knew that it couldn’t be fire though. There was no wood left to consume. It was the stones and bricks themselves that burnt, and yet they weren't consumed by the flames. He feared they could burn forever. And between the fire in the ground and the fire in the sky lay darkness. He guessed it was probably caused by the ever thickening dust. Dust moreover that somehow seemed to live and breathe. To even move. It even occasionally roared – a sound that shook the ground and made the air tremble. It set his heart racing far too fast.
Was it alive? Edrick didn't know. The roar sounded like it came from some terrible beast that had been called into the world. Edrick suspected it struck fear in the hearts of anyone who heard it. Certainly it did in him. He had visions of a great beast suddenly lunging at him from out of nowhere. As if it had just scented Edrick and saw in him a perfect after supper snack.
Seeing Coldwater Edrick immediately understood why there was an army present. What else could you field against such a thing? But he also understood that the army would be useless. You couldn't fight magic of this nature with cannons and bullets. He wasn't sure you could fight it at all.
And somewhere in the middle of that was Wilberton. This thing was the wizard's doing. How? How could any wizard create something like this? It was simply too big. Too powerful. And too crazy. But maybe not for whatever that strange vision he had had of Wilberton had shown him. That thing, whatever it had been standing in Wilberton's place, might find what he was seeing, perfectly fine.
Edrick had to put those questions aside as he turned his wagon back toward the camp. Not only could they not be answered, they weren't his priority.
He drove directly into the camp and brought his steam wagon to a halt right in the middle of it as if he had every right to be there. And in theory he did. In practice he had come only for one reason; to free Carrie. He had a plan. And becoming Lord Baraman once again was part of it.
It was a bad plan and everyone would hate it. The wizards would hate it. They would hate it because he was about to lie and the wizards would have to pretend that it was true. They had to if they were to convince his father that he had grossly wronged Carrie. He doubted that Carrie herself would be particularly fond of what he was about to do. And his father would be beside himself with rage when he realised what Edrick was doing. But he thought it would work.
“Soldier!” Edrick called to a man standing watch nearby and pretended an authority he didn't have. It seemed to be convincing enough, and the man approached hurriedly, looking somewhat nervous.
“Sir?” He snapped to attention.
“Stand watch over my wagon!”
“Yes Sir!” The soldier instantly ran for the wagon and took up a station beside it.
He had no idea who Edrick was of course, but he realised he was important. Who else would dare give him orders? And who else would be dressed as Edrick was, save a noble of some sort? Seeing the soldier’s reaction Edrick was pleased to have taken the time to return home and pull out his old clothes from his days of life as a noble born brat. They were a little tight now but he’d used a spell to stretch them and even ten years later they gave the right impression.
The strange thing was that even as the soldier recognised the clothes as a sign of his noble blood, Edrick felt like a fraud wearing them. He'd grown comfortable over the years in his cottons and leathers. Used to his rough working man's boots. They were a part of him. Part of who he had become – a silver miner and a wizard. He wasn't the noble born brat he had been. He wasn't the runaway. He had become the man he had once pretended to be.
“And you!” He called imperiously to another soldier, and waited until the man approached him. “Take me to my father.”
“Your father Sir?” The soldier looked confused.
“Lord Baraman. I am Lukas Edrick Baraman, his son.”
That was the part of the plan that Edrick hated most. Naming himself. And after ten years of hiding his name, it was hard to even get the words out. But it had to be done. He couldn't break Carrie out of her gaol cell unless he spoke to his father. He didn't even know where she was being held. And for the same reason he couldn't cast a spell to free her. Even the most powerful spell needed a target. The only way he could get her out was through his name and his father.
“Yes Sir!” The soldier instantly stamped his foot on the ground, spun on his heels, and marched away, leaving Edrick to follow him.
At least, he thought, his name seemed to carry some weight. But of course it was only the Baraman name that they knew. The soldiers knew nothing of him as either a wizard or a silver miner. They probably knew nothing about him at all.
The soldier escorted him through the camp. Past endless tents and camp fires that had already been lit, though it was only just gone dusk. Past soldiers drilling in the field with their weapons. Past make shift watchtowers that had been built for the soldiers to spy on the town from. Though why they needed such towers when the town was right in front of them barely a league and a half away he didn't know. Maybe it was for the spyglasses he could see being used from the top of them?
Eventually he was led to a large tent in the middle of the camp. There he found his father currently bent over a table covered in maps, to
gether with several generals and a few other nobles. No doubt they were discussing plans. But what plans could be made in the face of the monster they were facing, Edrick didn't know. Plans to run away maybe? Master Thatchwell and Marshan were also there, standing to one side along with a few other wizards, who he hoped had come in response to his call.
“Lord Baraman. Your son.” The soldier announced him, then stepped to one side and stood rigidly to attention.
Edrick's father looked as though he was about to reprimand the soldier for interrupting him, until the last part registered. Then he looked up hurriedly, before taking a step back in shock.
He looked older than Edrick remembered. His hair had more grey in it, his face more wrinkles. And he was sure his shoulders were a little more slumped than they had been. But it was still his father. Overdressed as always, and wearing a gold emblem around his neck that Edrick instantly recognised. The badge of royal investiture. Suddenly he knew why his father was here leading an army. He had become the King's new Right Hand. How had that happened?