Unfiction
Gene Doucette
Unfiction
GeneDoucette.me
Copyright © 2017 Gene Doucette
All rights reserved
Cover by Kim Killion, Hot Damn Designs
This book may not be reproduced by any means including but not limited to photocopy, digital, auditory, and/or in print.
For Luigi
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55
Dear audience, we are now coming to
The point where we must hang him by the neck
Because it is the Christian thing to do
Proving that men must pay for what they take.
* * *
But as we want to keep our fingers clean
And you are people we can’t risk offending
We thought we’d better do without this scene
And substitute instead a different ending.
* * *
Since this is opera, not life, you’ll see
Justice give way before Humanity.
So now, to throw our story right off course
Enter the royal official on his horse.
Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht
Contents
Part I
1. Kingdom
2. Phone
3. Alien
4. Eatery
5. Unnamed
6. Weapon
Part II
7. The Best-Laid Schemes o’ Mice and Men
8. ‘Twas Brillig
9. There Goes the Neighborhood
10. Take the Last Train
11. The Ghost in the Machine
12. The Wisdom of Owls
13. For a Horse
14. Here There Be Dragons
15. What M is For
16. Persona Non Grata
17. Four in the Morning
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Gene Doucette
Part One
Stories
Chapter One
Kingdom
“I understand you are a sorcerer.”
The speaker was a vast example of humanity, a truly gigantic man who easily could have been mistaken for a giant with dwarfism, if there were such a thing. He was heavily armored in thick leather, atop chain mail, underneath a fur cloak that appeared to have been manufactured from the remains of an entire bear.
He was from the northern climes, clearly. There was no reason to wear this much clothing on the southern side of the Ailing Mountains.
“Yes, indeed,” Osraic said. “I am a sorcerer. Can I be of service?”
This was only a partial truth.
“I am Cant of the Warven tribe. I have need of magics.”
Cant was standing in the middle of Osraic’s tiny shop, which was at the edge of the only slightly larger town of Lantor, one of the northernmost settlements in the nation of Kalspar.
Lantor was one of a chain of mud towns, so named because the streets were a perpetual morass of thick mud. This was in part due to the snowmelt runoff from the mountains, and in part because the range had a tendency to attract and retain storm systems.
Much of the mud from the mud town appeared to have found a new home on Osraic’s wood floor thanks to the heavy boots of the man from the Warven tribe.
“Of course,” Osraic said. “Is it a remedy you’re looking for? I have a number of potions on-hand for any variety of ailments.” He gestured around the room, which was wall-to-wall with exotic items.
“No, nothing like that,” he grumbled. “Do these offer protections?”
“Ah yes! These are fortune charms. They will improve the luck of the wearer threefold.”
“Hah. And what if you are a man with only bad luck? Does it triple your misfortune?”
“That’s not how they work, no. Ha-ha. So, no remedy or charm for you, then, Mr. Cant. A potion?”
“It’s Cant. There is no ‘mister’ or ‘sir’, there is only Cant of the Warven tribe. And you seem young for a sorcerer. Have you no master?”
Osraic looked young because he was actually very young, which was the reason he had elected to set up his first shop in a distant little mud town rather in than in the city. Well, it was one of the reasons. Another was that he wasn’t formally a sorcerer yet, but nobody this far from the center was going to check.
“Mine is the only name on the door, Cant of the Warven tribe. I’ve no need for a master.”
Cant grunted and stared at the door. “I can’t read. What does it say?”
Osraic sighed.
“Osraic Tal Nar Drang. Sorcerer. And again, that’s me. I would proffer my city papers if you require further proof, but as you’ve said, you can’t read so I don’t see how this would help. But, see the nice symbol?”
Most of the town of Lantor couldn’t read either, so the symbol on the door—an owl, more or less, rendered by a carver who didn’t know what an owl looked like—was mandatory. Most of the shops on the main road followed a similar symbol-based method of self-identification. All except for the alehouse, which used to have a sign up until either a boisterous wind or a boisterous guest tore it down. It hadn’t been replaced because if there’s one thing everyone knows the location of, it’s the nearest alehouse.
“You have too many names, you people,” Cant muttered. He was holding up a gingerroot homunculus and looking puzzled about it. “And, that symbol on the door looks like a baby covered in feathers. I walked past here thrice before asking someone on the street. You should fire whoever did that for you. I thought sure this was a nursery for malformed infants.”
“A valid complaint. I’ll take it up with him when next we speak. But in the meantime, once more, what can I do for you?”
“I told you, I need a sorcerer. How many times shall I repeat this?”
“Yes, yes, but for what? Potions are right over there.”
“I don’t want any of these trinkets. I need to hire a sorcerer. I need for you, Osraic Tal Nar Drang, to accompany me, and for this I will give you gold. I assume you southerners still do business in gold and at least that much hasn’t changed since the last time I came down the mountain.”
Osraic was oddly pleased that Cant remembered his entire name.
“Accompany you where?”
“That is a complicated question.”
“It’s really not.”
The door behind Cant opened. Osraic couldn’t see who had come in, at first, because the northerner was blocking his view. He could hear her voice just fine, though.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked.
He didn’t recognize the voice, and when the voice’s owner stepped around Cant, he didn’t recognize anything else about her either.
“It’s impossible to hire a sorcerer in this town, it seems,” Cant said. “The only one they have appears to be too stubborn.”
The woman was much more human-sized than Cant, about the same height as Osraic. She had brown hair, pulled back behind her head and partly hidden in a fur-lined hood that hung from her shoulders, attached to a heavy cloak. Her face was freckled, and she had maybe the most amazing green eyes he’d ever seen.
Those eyes looked him up and down. “You there, call your boss down so we can discuss terms.”
“He says he’s the sorcerer,” Cant said.
Another ten minutes passed in which Osraic attempted to reiterate his bona fides to the young woman without sounding cross about it. He didn’t want to sound cross because while going over his résumé he realized first, that her eyes were actually emerald green, w
hich was simply extraordinary, and second, that she was most likely an elf. He’d never met an elf before, and was tempted to go wherever it was she wanted him to go just to get to know her better.
“I apologize,” the girl said. Cant called her Atha, and Osraic was busy rolling her name around in his mind during her apology. “I’ve never met a sorcerer without a beard. I assumed it was mandatory for your profession.”
“I’ve never met a man without a beard,” Cant said. Osraic decided the large northerner was making a joke, as it was not difficult to find a clean-shaven man south of the Ailings. Cant either had a very dry wit or was a poor joke-teller.
“It seems the two of you have traveled a long way specifically to hire me for some reason,” Osraic said. “So why don’t we—”
“We needed a horse too,” Cant said. “And dried food.”
“Yes, and those things as well. But as you’ve said, the reason for this is complicated so maybe—”
“And rope.”
“Yes fine! How about if I close the shop and we go down the road to the alehouse, sit down and have ourselves a few pints and maybe you can tell me what mad quest shook you off the side of the mountain and through my front door. Would that be all right?”
Cant shrugged. The elf smiled.
“That’s a splendid idea,” she said.
Borric’s Saloon was easily the most important establishment in town. Nearly everyone who worked on the main street of Lantor spent at least part of their day there; was large, bright where it needed to be and dark where it didn’t, surprisingly clean, and served food at least two measures above edible.
And of course there was the ale.
“This is the only reason to bother with this side of the Ailings!” Cant said, regarding the drink in his half-drained stein.
“There’s no ale in the north?” Osraic asked.
“There is,” Atha said, “but only in the baldest definition of the word. Alcoholic, and brownish.”
“Stay clear of the ale in our travels, sorcerer,” Cant barked. “If it doesn’t make you ill, the next day you’ll wish it had.”
“Yes, our travels. Why don’t you tell me more about that? Before I agree to anything?”
Osraic had no intention of agreeing to go anywhere further than Borric’s with the two northerners, no matter how often Atha transfixed him with those eyes. But he was willing to seem interested for quite a long while.
Atha smiled. “I think first I would like to see some demonstration from you, master sorcerer.”
“Call me Osraic.”
And I am no master, he thought.
“Osraic, then,” she said.
“A demonstration of what?”
“Use your magics. No large feat, just a minor proof.”
Something Osraic learned early in pursuit of this career was that there was really very little true magic in the world. It existed, certainly, but not as widely as anyone unfamiliar with the profession believed. Most times, when called upon to prove himself he could get away with a simple sleight-of-hand. The art of “magic” tricks was nearly as important to a professional sorcerer as scholarship and the innate ability to manipulate true magical energy. Sleight-of-hand and real magic was often indistinguishable to citizens.
Osraic debated whether Cant and Atha would be swayed by a disappearing coin or one of a thousand card tricks he knew. Elves were reputed to have better eyes than humans, and might not be counted upon to fall for a proper misdirection, so it was a risk. And he wanted to hear their story.
“Do you have a quill?” he asked.
“I don’t,” Atha said. “I can read, but have no need to write. Cant does neither.”
“How about an arrow?”
“Yes, those I have.”
On the floor at her feet was a large sack, from which she extracted a single arrow. He took it, and examined the sack.
“You have a bow in there?” he asked.
“No, not there.” She pulled a hairpin from the brown tangle on her head and held it up in the sunlight. It turned out to not be a hairpin at all. “This is my bow.”
“Enchanted!”
“Yes, obviously. You’ve no idea what a pain it is to carry a longbow everywhere.”
Osraic wanted a closer look at the bow. He knew of this enchantment but hadn’t ever tried it; examining a stable one would be helpful. He wondered why they weren’t bringing the sorcerer who’d done that for her to go on this trip of theirs, but decided against asking.
“Why didn’t you have the quiver enchanted as well?” he asked instead.
“I tried once, but arrows the size of toothpicks have a tendency to go missing.”
“That was a disaster,” Cant said. “She was afraid to speak the words to resize the arrows for fear one had become lodged in an awkward place.”
Atha laughed. “It would be an embarrassing way to die.”
Osraic studied the arrow. “You make your own,” he observed.
“There are no armories from which to buy such things in the mountains. But trees and birds we have plenty of.”
“Falcon?” he asked, sniffing the fletching.
“Very good.”
“Are you going to fondle it all day or will you be demonstrating your magic, sorcerer?” Cant asked.
“Right.”
Osraic held the arrow, tip down, on the table. Beneath his breath he muttered the necessary phrase, and let go. The arrow remained upright, point-down, apparently balanced in place.
“This?” Cant said. “This is a vagabond trick.”
Osraic twirled his finger above the arrow, and it began to spin in place.
“Is that better?” he asked the large man.
“Marginally better,” Atha answered. Cant only grunted.
With a twitch of his fingers the arrow rose off the tabletop and turned until it was horizontal with the surface. With another twitch Osraic made it drift toward Cant’s face until the point was inches from his eyeball.
“And now?” Osraic asked.
He sincerely hoped this would be an adequate demonstration, because it was just about the only trick he could perform reliably.
The ability to levitate small, light objects was one of the first things any sorcerer learned. It had a surprisingly wide range of applications, so wide it was possible for most to make a perfectly respectable living without advancing any further. Osraic expected to reach a much more advanced level of aptitude in time, but he hadn’t yet.
Also, if called upon, Osraic couldn’t have used the arrow as a weapon. The full degree of force he could apply to the arrow would at best have caused it to bump into Cant’s face gently. He was confident so long as the eyeball was the target he would not be called upon to do this.
Cant and Atha shared a meaningful glance.
“This is sufficient proof, thank you,” Atha said.
Osraic gestured and the arrow floated to the elf. He spoke the words, and the object was released. It fell into her waiting hand.
“Now why don’t you explain what you need from me?” he asked.
“Very well,” Atha said. “We seek the Cydonian Kingdom. I’m certain you’ve heard of it.”
Osraic laughed. But for some reason, he was the only one laughing.
There was a legend. Nobody knew how old it was, or if it represented some sort of true history, and if it did, what that history might have looked like.
But the legend itself, everyone knew.
The Cydonian Kingdom—known by most as simply the Kingdom—was supposed to have been the birthplace of all the races of the world: humans, elves, giants, trolls, goblins and so forth, from a single ancestral people. The inhabitants of the Kingdom—a race of beings called Cydonians—lived harmoniously up until the day they didn’t any more, an event known as the Fall.
Every take on the legend came with a different version of what caused the Fall: a war; a plague; an accident; and so forth. The Fall of the Kingdom was an entire literary genre unto itself, and wheth
er those stories were to be found among the histories or in the fictive mythologies depended on whose library one happened to be standing in.
Osraic didn’t take the Kingdom seriously in any real sense, but he did have a favorite version of the Fall. It was the one his mother told him.
There was a mighty sorcerer named Orsak—sometimes Orak, or Ossic, or a half-dozen others including Osraic’s own name—who came to rule the Kingdom. At that time, magic was much more common and much more important, which meant Orsak’s power, as the ruler of a land of mighty sorcerers, was tremendous to a godlike extreme. This was a problem when Orsak went mad.
In some accounts, the madness was due to grief over the loss of a true love, which is how the poets and the bards told it. Other accounts told of a betrayal, and an act of violence meant to kill Orsak, which succeeded only in causing his derangement. This violence was a physical blow or a magical spell, depending.
A less popular account had the sorcerer falling into a great sleep and dreaming the spells that caused everything that came next. As a child, that was the one Osraic preferred, because it was the least horrible. As an adult, he leaned toward the violent attack / betrayal story as the most plausible, when he bothered to entertain the idea that it was true at all.
What came next was that Orsak spoke a new set of spells of a kind nobody had ever attempted before. These spells took the combined attributes of the Cydonians and divided them up. No longer were his subjects as tall as giants and as clever as goblins and as strong as trolls, and so forth.
Unfiction Page 1