by Greg Curtis
“Yes?” The man spun around in his chair – something that caused it to squeak quietly as the bearings needed some oil – to see them.
He had a fleshy face to go with his overlarge girth, Edrick noticed, and his skin was very pale. Things that he would expect of a man who spent years sitting at a desk in a room that had little natural light, reading. But for all that he did not look infirm or slow of wit. In fact, he looked quite sharp, and was carefully studying the two of them even as they returned the favour.
“These are Edrick Baraman, and Master Thatchwell of the Guild of the Arcane. They have asked to speak with you Brother.” The Brother introduced him and then turned to Edrick. “And this is Brother Reginald, the Head of our Chapter.” He didn't look at Master Thatchwell, Edrick noticed.
Chapter! The term surprised Edrick. He had understood that the Temple of Golanar had both a Priestly and a Monastic Order, and he'd assumed that this particular monastery being the largest around for a great many leagues would be the home of the latter. He had not expected such a large edifice to be only a Chapter. Just how large was the Order?
“Baraman?” Brother Reginald stared at him curiously.
“Lord Baraman is my father. But he has no knowledge of, nor interest in my visit here today.”
“And someone from the Guild as well.” He turned to Master Thatchwell. “We don't often see many wizards in our halls.”
“Your halls are somewhat draughty,” Master Thatchwell replied somewhat testily.
“Or your skin is somewhat thin, and the blood does not flow as it should. Some hard work in the gardens might help with the chill, wizard!”
Edrick found himself unexpectedly trying to stifle a laugh at the thought of Master Thatchwell working in the gardens. He'd never seen him with any sort of tool in his hand. But he wasn't completely successful, which earned him an annoyed glare from his old tutor. Then again, he'd never heard anyone give back to Master Thatchwell what the wizard had given to them. But the wizard said nothing. He was probably saving his venom for the Brothers.
“And if what I've been reading these past few weeks is correct, you, young Edrick are both a wizard and a runaway.” The Brother turned back to Edrick and stared at him, no doubt wondering if he was going to be trouble. “I'm also told that your actions in Reedton have left many in need of spiritual guidance. Tell me, why did you do that?”
Do what exactly, Edrick wondered? Lie about being married to Carrie? Could the Brother know that? Or assume once again the mantle of nobility? Edrick chose his words carefully, wondering all the while how the Brother could know of his actions so soon after they'd happened.
“Carrie needed to be rescued.” Even as he said it, he wondered why there would be so many flocking to the temple for spiritual guidance. He wouldn't have thought that people would be coming to the Temple in large numbers because of what he'd done. Or was it as a result of what his father had done after? Perhaps.
“Yes, yes I understand that of course. But to inflict such heavy punishments on men who were only obeying their orders?”
“They had been torturing her!” Edrick protested. Was there anything more that needed to be said?
“Yes, that’s true. Some did. But the Father teaches us that we do not take revenge for acts committed against us. We instead practice justice. And most were just common soldiers. Men who had done nothing wrong.” The Brother peered directly at him, his eyes seeming to bore holes all the way through to Edrick's soul.
“They imprisoned my wife!”
“Wife?” The Brother stared dubiously at him, his eyes seeming to pierce his soul. “No. I doubt it. Undoubtedly the woman means something to you, but the word does not sit well on your lips.”
“As you would have it.” Edrick wasn't going to argue with the man. Especially when it seemed he had the sharpest of eyes for peering into the truth of a man. He turned instead to the reason they had come. “I came here for a different reason. One concerning the coming battle.”
“Battle?” Brother Reginald held up his hands as if surrendering. “Members of the Order don't concern themselves greatly with matters of warfare. We know little of such things.”
“Of most things really!” Master Thatchwell interjected, still clearly upset with the Brother's comment about his needing to work in the gardens. As if he would ever work with his hands!
The Brother ignored him. “I wouldn't think we could be of much help you in such matters.”
“It is purely a matter of knowledge, and I suspect you would know more of it than anyone else. You might know the truth of what has happened to Wilberforce Wilberton.”
Brother Reginald sat there staring curiously at Edrick, clearly considering something. But what it was he didn't say. Instead for some time he remained silent, keeping his own counsel until in the end it seemed he came to a decision.
“Please.” He gestured at the two chairs opposite him. Unlike his desk they offered a view of the gardens outside.
“Pray tell me what it is that happened to Wizard Wilberton that you think the Brothers of the Order might be able to help you with.”
What did it mean Edrick wondered idly as he gingerly sat down in the chair, that the man could choose to sit at a desk with the only small window to his side and slightly behind him, and a stack of papers a foot high on the desk in front of him? That he preferred his work to the beauty outside? Or that he simply wasn't a man who could allow himself to be distracted by pretty things?
“We think that Wilberforce Wilberton may in fact be dead. That he may have killed himself some years back. Which means that the person we thought we were dealing with is not who we thought he was but a lich.” Edrick let the words spill out. But immediately they did he almost wished they hadn't. It sounded so foolish. Like one of the tales spoken by the bards.
The Brother’s eyes abruptly widened in surprise. Edrick assumed that meant that he hadn't heard the theory. At least there was something he didn't know.
“The lich is re-whelped? Why would you suggest such a thing? How do you know?”
Re-whelped? What did that mean Edrick wondered? And why did he refer to “the lich” instead of “a lich”? But he gathered that now wasn't the time to ask.
“We don't truly know,” Edrick answered him. But we discovered a spell in Wilberton’s journals, of restoration, and the likelihood is that he cast it on himself – and accidentally killed himself in doing so.” Edrick proceeded to tell the Brother about Wilberton’s writings and what had been discovered in them. He told the Brother about how he had tested the spell on a number of inanimate objects before trying it on a plum tree and the bitter fruit it had borne. And then he explained Yolande's theory, spelling it out in as much detail as he could, before finally explaining why he'd come. As he did so he found himself wondering if the Brother really didn’t know anything about this – and why Master Thatchwell was simply letting him speak.
Once he'd finished he relaxed back in the seat and waited as Brother Reginald considered what he'd said. But he found himself wondering if the Brothers could really help. Somehow he doubted anyone could. It was an uncomfortably long wait.
“Wizards! Truly another word for arrogance!” Brother Reginald looked distinctly unhappy as he gave his verdict. More so when he abruptly clapped his hands and called for another Brother to attend them and then ordered him to assemble the scholars in the library as quickly as he could.
“I could say the same about Priests!” Master Thatchwell snapped back sourly at him. He really was in a frightful mood.
Brother Reginald shut his mouth tightly, presumably to stop this from descending into an unseemly squabble.
“You came to the right place. But you are asking the wrong question. Master Wilberton is not the lich. He is merely that which the lich rides. There is only one lich and he is no wizard. No man at all. He is the Demon of Death.”
“A demon?” Edrick hadn't expected that. And yet the word fitted well with the image he had seen of the wizard the da
y that he had destroyed the gate. An image of something not quite human and deeply frightening.
“The demon,” Brother Reginald corrected him.
“Babble!” Master Thatchwell finally objected his voice filled with scorn. He had even stopped squirming in his seat. “Poppy dreams and madness! There are no demons! Edrick we should leave! Clearly this man knows nothing! He will just fill our heads with the ramblings of the old and insane!”
“There is one – and you would do well to listen, child.” The Brother gave Master Thatchwell his most withering stare. “You came for knowledge did you not? And now you wish to run rather than learn it?”
That silenced the wizard, though he clearly wasn't happy about it. Probably he was shocked at being called a child. Still, he nodded and returned to his squirming as he tried to find a more comfortable way to sit on his battered backside. Edrick could have told him though, that there was no comfortable way.
“I don't understand, Brother.” Edrick truly didn't. How could there be only one demon?
“In the original pantheon, there is the family. The Father who brings the law to the world and created it. He who governs us all. The Mother who tends to the life of the world as a mother should care for a child. And their children, including Sirtis who you wizards follow. Each carries out their assigned chores. Those chores were assigned to them by the Father, Golanar.”
Edrick kept his peace when the Brother said that. He had heard the claim before, though of course no wizard or other follower of the Lady of Light would ever accept that she was but the child of Golanar! It was insulting. She was the Mistress of Magic after all. Not some child of the gods! Probably not even the followers of Andal – and there were a few who followed the Lord of Misfortune – would have accepted that their Lord was a child of Golanar either as he assumed the Brother was suggesting. But this was not the time or place for a religious argument. Surprisingly even Master Thatchwell remained silent, though he had a pained look on his face.
“But there was one child who refused his father. Who would not do his chores. One child who had been tasked with rebirth. For whatever reason he found it beneath him. And because he refused, death entered the world. His task was to return those who had reached the ends of their lives, to their beginnings again. But without him, they instead entered a place of non-rebirth – death as we call it.”
“The child spoke out against his father. He tried to convince his brothers and sisters to side with him against their father. And though they did not, he created enough discord within the family that many other troubles entered the world. Sickness took root where before there had only been health. Misfortune took the place of luck. And darkness began to cover the world.”
“Golanar became angry. He saw his law being flouted by his own son. He saw that his world was being damaged. And so he chose a firm punishment for a wayward child. He cast him out of the home – the heavens as we know them – and into an underworld so deep that from it he could not speak to his brothers and sisters. He took much of his son's power away from him. If he would not use the power he had been given to carry out his assigned chores, then he should not have them. He even took his name from him. And then he left his child to think on his mistakes.”
“So, the son of the gods in the heavens became the demon of the underworld. Eternally alone in the darkness. It must have been a terrible fate. And yet he still did not repent his failings. He did not return to his family. Instead he grew yet more angry in the darkness, and eventually became something else. We do not know exactly what.”
“But we do know that while he can no longer reach all the way to the heavens, he can reach into our world as we stand half way between the two realms. He can reach into the hearts and souls of men and women and twist them. We are fortunate indeed that his father took much of his power away. That means his abilities in turn are limited. He can influence many but may only reach fully into the soul of one man at a time. He can act, but only through one person at a time. And while he can bend and twist someone’s thoughts, he cannot force any to his will.”
“So instead he tricks and he manipulates. He whispers in the darkness. The demon plays with the people of the world as if they were but puppets. And always he looks for a way to bring the world of men into darkness. His darkness.”
“He is also cunning. It is likely that the demon worsened the wizard's illness in order to make the Wilberforce Wilberton more desperate. He likely also found the spell for him, knowing the wizard would use it. And when he did, far from finding a cure, the wizard as your friend has said, found death. More importantly death found him.”
“Imagine – a man suddenly made dead. Finding himself in a flesh that tasted and felt like death itself when he was completely unready for such a thing. Imagine that that man is a wizard. Filled with the greatest weakness all wizards live with – arrogance. And then imagine that as he suffered a voice came out of the darkness, offering him hope.”
“The demon made a deal with your dying wizard. Something to allow Wilberforce Wilberton to remain in the world of the living even when he had died. Of course he let the wizard believe he was in control. At least while the deal was struck. But there would have been a price. A terrible one. And once Wilberton had accepted the deal the demon slowly started taking control.”
“In the past when this has happened, the Demon of Death has chosen the most powerful of men to become his tools of destruction. Lords and Kings. And they have been called lich lords and lich kings. Rulers of walking death. They have done terrible things. Now he has claimed a wizard. This is the first time that I have heard of it happening. And while I have no name for what Wilberton has become, it is clear that the demon works through him, using his magic to bring about ruin. It is the demon who has made Wilberton’s magic more powerful. He is using the wizard to destroy the creations of his father.”
“You were right to come to us. But I do not know what can be done to stop the wizard lich. In all our history we have never faced such a threat. But we will try.”
“So he's not dead?” Edrick finally asked the obvious question, wondering what he was supposed to tell Carrie.
“Alive? Dead? Those words have little meaning,” the Brother told him with a helpless shrug. “They are words for wizards. Words that describe boxes into which you may put ideas. But sometimes the boxes do not fit. And sometimes there are no boxes.”
“There are always boxes,” Master Thatchwell immediately corrected the Brother, obviously annoyed by what he considered a slight on wizardry. He had been silent too long. “But sometimes the clarity of wit is not there to see them. That is the domain of Priests. Failing to see what is clear, and then pretending to find wisdom in blindness.”
“And sometimes there is wisdom in listening.” Edrick jumped in, ignoring the filthy look he got from Master Thatchwell – both for interrupting him and for daring to contradict him. But he had to do something before he ended up in the middle of a holy war. “Pray continue Brother.”
“We have the histories of all the times the Lich has previously appeared in our world. The records of how he was fought, and how he was defeated. Because he was always defeated. If he hadn't been, this world would be dead. We will happily read them with you, and hope that an answer may be found in them.”
As the Brother said that another of his Order appeared in the doorway and announced that the scholars had assembled in the library as requested. Brother Reginald stood up from behind his desk and walked to the door. But he stopped half way there.
“Come young Lord Baraman, Master Thatchwell.” He gestured to them. “It is time for us to begin work. And Master Wizard you may be certain we will find some softer seats for you to sit on as we do so!” And with that he continued on his way, pushing past his Brother, and heading down the passageway, leaving them to get to their feet and hurry after him.
“You should know we are under some constraints of time.” Edrick called after the Brother as he followed him. “My fellow wizards ha
ve done their best to keep my father from launching the battle for Coldwater. But they cannot delay him for much longer.
“Then we should walk more quickly!” was Brother Reginald’s response. And he proceed to do exactly that, forcing them to hurry after him, no matter the aches of their bodies.
Still, as he hurried after the Brother, Edrick felt confused by his strange tale. Confused and worried. Facing down an undead wizard was one thing. Tackling the Demon of Death was something else entirely. Especially if he was actually some sort of god! And Edrick just hadn't expected it. Despite his worries, Edrick discovered a new feeling beating in his chest. Hope. The Brother might not have all the answers, but he at least knew the problem they were dealing with, and that it was something that had been dealt with in the past.
Of course he might have looked more certain if he wasn't – like his old tutor – busy trying to rub the life back into his aching backside as he walked!
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rain had come to Coldwater. It was a bitter cold, driving rain that was making life uncomfortable for everyone. Everyone that was except Carrie. She was happy to put up with it as she stood with the Brothers. She would be happy to put up with anything if it would help her grandfather. Especially now when the time was drawing close.