A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  “Shite!” Her head fell again.

  “But we agreed on that from the start,” he reminded her. But then he wondered – had she been there then? “Some of the afflicted who don't want to fight might still want an extra spell or two as long as it can be hidden. So since we're already collecting fragments why shouldn't we make some available for them?”

  “And what do we tell the Generals? The King?”

  “Nothing, of course.” And why would they? This was a private thing. If there were afflicted out in the realm who wanted to absorb another spell or two but didn't want to come to the attention of the authorities or for their neighbours to know, or even who simply didn't want to travel all the way to the Hold, why shouldn't they be able to go to their local temple?

  “You know they're going to call it some sort of deception when they find out.”

  “Or simply another way we're protecting the realm,” he pointed out. “After all, some of them will get spells that will help protect their home towns if they're attacked. And they were stealing the fragments anyway. Besides, it's only going to be one or two spells. Not enough that people will notice.”

  Marnie didn't answer him. She just kept staring at the table glumly. As if he'd done something wrong when he knew he hadn't. He was sure they had discussed the idea – almost. But he decided not to press her on it.

  “Which brings me to the other task I have for you.”

  “Other task?” She raised her head again to stare at him across the table, her eyes narrowing in anger as she realised what he was saying. “Who are you to give me tasks?!”

  “Well you did volunteer! And there are only two of us who can do it since Tyrollan is busy with – whatever he's doing – and you can't do the other tasks. That requires Mithril magic.”

  “A likely story!”

  “We now number well over – a hundred and fifty affl – gifted.” Hendrick corrected himself quickly. He'd been doing it a lot. After a lifetime of thinking of himself as afflicted it was hard to change to referring to himself and the others as gifted.

  “Twenty or thirty people are going through the ritual every day. Afterwards they need to sleep for two or three days. That's a lot of beds the temple needs. We are beginning to strain the resources of the priests. We need to find lodgings outside of the Temple for our people. A boarding house or similar. Something big. And something that in time will become the heart of a new guild – though of course we won't call it that yet. That would be a political act with its own consequences.”

  “I still want to use the Temple for the – well let’s keep calling it a ceremony. Sooner or later someone is going to realise that we are becoming a growing power within the realm, and that whoever controls the ceremony has power over us. Few would dare challenge the Temple of Tarius the Benevolent One. And the Temple is a good choice for us as it has no vested interest in controlling us.”

  Of course that wasn't completely true. He could almost guarantee that at some point the Temple would come to them asking for some sort of favour. No doubt in time it would become ‘an arrangement’. But they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

  “I've spoken to my mother – through messengers since she doesn't seem to want to see me.” Hendrick wasn't sure why that was, but he suspected it was political. Something to do with her everlasting war with Marda or maybe the King's precarious hold on the throne. “She's spoken to the King and he has agreed to provide some funds when you find suitable premises.”

  “When you do find somewhere, you'll need to give it a name. For obvious reasons you can't call it a guild or anything to do with a guild. That would just be telling the others what we're doing. We don't want the Court to know that we're setting ourselves up as a rival power in the realm before we have to. You also shouldn't call it Altanis – it would just make people ask questions we don't want to answer. I think we’d all also prefer it to have no mention of the word 'afflicted' in its name. That's a term we're going to get rid of in time. So a simple name with no meaning would be best.”

  “By the gods! You really are your mother's son!”

  Hendrick ignored her. He guessed that she was simply pointing out that he was thinking about the politics of the situation, and not that he was being high handed with her and acting like a noble. At least he hoped so.

  “Meanwhile I'll be travelling on. Searching for clues as to the behemoth and the world it came from. Why it came here. Whether it was looking for something. Or if it left because it’s world was no longer a good place to live in. Whether there is a way it can be stopped.”

  “You think it can be stopped?” Marnie sounded surprised.

  “Stopped? I don't know but I doubt it. But controlled? Maybe. Val tells me that behemoths spend most of their time hidden away, sleeping. Why did this one wake up? And if so can we encourage it to go back to sleep? Feed it some milk of the poppies? Someone must know how.” He didn't know of course. And he doubted that if there was an answer it would be anything as simple as drugging it. But he had to try.

  “Also, I told Tyrollan about the bronze visitors I met. I assume he told you?”

  She nodded.

  “I think that the more I search, the more I get noticed. Sometimes by people with far greater knowledge than we have. Some of them may be willing to help.”

  “They haven't helped us so far.” Marnie pointed out the obvious. “They've been as much use as Vitanna's drunken tales.”

  “No. They've only observed. But I doubt they're finished with me. Especially now that we've translated the rubbings from the temple and I have more places to visit.” He nodded at the piles of writings and open books on the table in front of him.

  The rubbings had proved useful. Just not in the way he'd hoped they would. They said little about the behemoths and how to fight them. But they did refer to temples on other worlds. A vast web of them. Once, many thousands of years ago, there had obviously been some sort of magical society that spanned the worlds. Perhaps the remnants of that society still existed? Perhaps he'd already encountered some of them? But even if the remnants of that society had long since gone and the bronze people were something else entirely, they might still have answers. Now he had the location for several more temples on several more worlds. Who knew what he might discover?

  “Oh by the gods! Don't think I'm fooled by your self-serving justifications.” Marnie let out a tired sigh. “We have a thousand problems to deal with and you just want to go exploring new worlds!”

  Hendrick didn't answer her. He couldn't. Because he knew there was some truth in her accusation. But he also knew that the solution to their behemoth problem wouldn't be found in Styrion. So he changed the subject to more practical matters. The numbers of volunteers they could expect to start arriving as time went by and the word of what they were doing spread throughout the realm. The sort of premises they would need. The number of stynes they would need to pay for it and where they would get them – the King would only pay for so much. In fact, after the loss of Styrion Might, there was probably only so much he could afford now. And somehow his conversation with Marnie became almost civilised.

  But still he found himself looking forward to leaving this realm in the morning.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Another day, another world and another temple. At least that was how Hendrick was trying to think of his day. Every day. But it wasn't really working out that way. First it had taken him far more than a day to reach this point. Even long stepping steadily, the forty or fifty leagues he'd travelled had taken him many hours to cross. The limitations of the spell had slowed him down as he'd had to climb fence after fence, ford streams and scale small hills. There had to be a way around that he thought, but thus far everything he'd read about the spell had said that the only way was to go around obstacles. Which mostly meant staying on the roads.

  And when he'd finally reached the nearest point in this world that matched a point in his own, it had still been several leagues distant. Leagues he'd ha
d to walk because the track – though it wasn't really worthy of even that title – was far too rough and full of holes and mounds to long step more than a dozen yards at a time. It really looked as though some mad prospector had been digging small holes everywhere – thousands of them! To add to his woes, this was another world that stank. Actually the air was absolutely foetid. Why did so many worlds stink?

  But to make his annoyance complete, when he finally reached his destination, it didn't look much like a temple at all. It looked like a giant stone that someone had simply dropped down on the ground and then scrawled illegibly over – with a blunt chisel. The scrawls weren't particularly neat. The letters weren't straight. They were big and clumsy. The lines weren't straight either. In fact if a child could have used a mallet and chisel, then this would have been the sort of thing he might have written. Maybe a very big child.

  An unexpected roar took his thoughts away from his misfortunes. Though whether it was actually a beast's roar or something else he couldn't be sure. It almost sounded like rocks grinding against one another. Hendrick couldn't tell which direction the roar was coming from. He couldn't even see what was making the sound. All he knew for sure was that it was loud and getting louder. It was causing him no small amount of worry which was why he now had four spectral panthers escorting him. They didn't seem to like the sound either. He summoned a couple more, just in case.

  Then he started work with the parchment and charcoal as he had intended, and tried to ignore the chill running up and down his spine.

  This wasn't a safe world. It looked peaceful with nothing but odd looking yellow grass and relatively flat if uneven land everywhere. But it just didn't sound peaceful. Then again, there didn't seem to be many peaceful worlds out there. After visiting at least several scores of worlds, he was beginning to realise that they all had their dangers. Even the ones that seemed dead. Things attacked him, often without warning. The land sometimes fell away unexpectedly under his feet. Sometimes even the air he breathed seemed to attack his eyes and lungs.

  More than that, so many of the worlds were dead. Not just dead because they'd never had any people on them, but dead because their people had died out. So far he'd found at least half a dozen worlds with ruins on them. Some of them even had dead cities. It was starting to trouble him now. Why had the cities and the worlds all died? What had happened to the people? And why was it so common? He had no answers and suspected there were none. But he still kept asking.

  As he worked, Hendrick tried to put those questions aside. There was nothing currently attacking him. Though it seemed he once again had visitors as Val abruptly informed him.

  Hendrick turned around to see the three bronze people were back. He was reasonably sure that they were the same three he'd seen before. Their faces looked the same to him, though it was difficult to tell when they were all made of bronze and free of wrinkles. Strangely, it appeared that they hadn't changed their clothes either. Was it a uniform, he wondered?

  “Thanks Val. Keep an eye on them please.” Hendrick wasn't that happy to see them. On the other hand he wasn't particularly troubled either. He didn't like not knowing things, and he knew there was a reason for their presence. After all, this was the second ancient temple he’d visited and the second time they'd shown up. That couldn't be a coincidence. Were they watching the ancient temples for some reason? Or him?

  “Why do they watch you but do nothing?” Val fretted. “It's not as if you're particularly interesting after all.” Val eventually broke his silence as Hendrick worked, his thoughts clearly running similar lines. He seemed torn between watching Hendrick work and watching the bronze people.

  “Thanks!” Hendrick kept working, covering piece after piece of parchment with the charcoal wax, but still keeping half an ear tuned in case the sage said something important.

  “No, I'm asking a serious question. Physically there's nothing remarkable about your people, save the horrible lack of features on your faces. It's as though the gods decided they'd made a mistake with you humans and simply removed everything. Your intelligence isn't that great and not much of what you say is very interesting. Your technology is primitive. And your magic's not that advanced either. It's strange of course – but now that we know why – it's more sad than interesting. This race’s magic is obviously far more advanced, even if they lack any understanding of proper clothing.”

  “So why waste their time watching you? Surely they have more important things they could be doing?”

  “Maybe they think I'm beautiful! After all, their faces are more like mine than yours. And who are you to judge what other people should find pleasing?”

  “Oh hush child!” Val started laughing. “Isn't it obvious?! How can a lack of something be beautiful?”

  “You know, some days you don't sound very sage like.” Hendrick continued with his rubbings, doing his best to ignore his friend. But in the back of his mind he was thinking that a lack of Val just then would be a very beautiful thing indeed.

  “It's true what they say,” Val mused. “A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous! A tiny sliver of wisdom can lead to all sorts of errors! Perhaps it is wrong of me to try to teach you anything of logic. You just use it to make bigger mistakes!”

  “Like inviting you to watch as I explore these temples?”

  That shut him up! Though even if he didn't say anything particularly cutting after that, Val still managed to start grumbling like an old sot instead. But Hendrick was fine with that. He needed to work. The sooner he was finished here, the sooner he could leave. And when the roaring returned even louder than before, he decided he didn't want to stay here a heartbeat longer than he had to.

  Then everything unexpectedly changed.

  Val called out suddenly and Hendrick looked up to see a mound of dirt rising up out of the ground. Moments later he watched in disbelief as a giant stone crab crawled out. A crab that looked to be six feet across and made of actual stone. All around him he could see other mounds rising out of the ground.

  In that moment Hendrick finally realised that what he had thought was roaring was the sound these crabs made as they dug through the ground. It also explained why this land was so utterly full of holes. Each one was where a crab had dug its way out of the ground and each mound beside it was the earth they had pushed aside. Most of all though he realised as the crab started scuttling towards him, that he was in danger.

  The panthers streaked into the attack, and quickly had the first crab on its back. But there was a problem. Because while they could turn the crab over their teeth and claws seemed to have no effect on its stone skin. If these creatures could right themselves, Hendrick knew he would be in a lot of trouble.

  But he had his own defences, and he hastily gathered his gear together and then raised a bubble to let him step up on to the top of the rock. Presumably even stone crabs couldn't dig through stone! But could they climb?

  Once there Hendrick started summoning more cats as more and more crabs dug their way out of the ground, so that they could turn the next ones over. And even as he did so he studied the crabs that had been turned over, looking for any sign that they could right themselves. They didn’t seem to be able to but with the sheer numbers digging their way out of the ground he knew he was still in trouble.

  Hendrick desperately summoned some spectral parrots, thinking that if they could crack trees with their beaks, they might have some success with the stone carapaces.

  His plan worked, and he watched with relief as the first of the parrots jumped onto the nearest upturned crab and smashed its Mithril beak into the its softer stone underbelly. There they proved more vulnerable and Hendrick watched as the carapace shattered and blood poured out. Green blood. Red or green though, as the crab almost immediately stopped struggling to right itself and its legs stopped moving, he knew the fluid was vital.

  After that he just kept summoning creatures. More than he had ever called together before at one time. Soon he had around thirty panthers flipp
ing the crabs over and half a dozen parrots finishing them off. Still, it wasn’t enough as a tidal wave of crabs gradually came closer. They were swarming!

  Then without warning the stone he was standing on started shaking and rose from the ground.

  It took him a moment to realise what was happening. But when he saw the giant legs the size of trees pull themselves out of the ground all around him, he understood. He was standing on the back of a giant stone crab!

  The Queen, he wondered? Did stone crabs have Queens? Were they like bees? Or was she simply a fully grown one surrounded by children? And who in their right mind would carve writings into the carapace of a crab? That didn't make any sense at all! And how old was this crab? It must be thousands of years old, given that that was the age of the map that had noted its location. Did that mean it hadn't moved in all that time? Suddenly he had so many questions and no answers at all.