A Bitter Brew

by Greg Curtis

  “To add to our troubles the behemoth's servants now have an almost free hand – or talon – to wreak havoc at will. There's no organised army to fight them. Not with the King and Daylon both claiming the throne and command of them. This is so arse backwards that a mist breathing mumblecrust couldn't have come up with a worse plan!”

  “On top of that I have my own personal nightmare to face. A half human / half whatever Sana is, out for my blood.”

  “And there's only one solution that I can see. I need to find the bronze people and somehow persuade them to help us despite how they were treated by the King. I need to do that as soon as possible. I'll have time enough to sleep when I'm dead.”

  “And you can't do anything about any of that. Not while you're in this sort of shape. You look like a goat after the wolves have finished with it! You need to rest and heal.” Marnie tried again.

  “I promise I'll do those things.” He reached awkwardly for his jacket and then thought twice about trying to put it on. In the end he opted for draping it over his shoulders and wearing it like a cloak. “But I'm going to make my rest count.”

  “Count?” It took Marnie a moment to work out what he meant. “You're going to absorb some new spells? In this condition?”

  “Of course. Do you know of a better way to get a couple of days’ sleep?” With that he walked passed her, heading out the infirmary's door and to the temple. It was the logical thing to do he thought. And at the very least it was better than lying about in a sick bed, unable to sleep for pain and worrying.

  “Hendrick!” Marnie raised her voice a little in frustration. But she didn't try to stop him. Probably because she realised it was pointless.

  Hendrick ignored her as he continued, and soon he was walking along the busy streets, unable to hear her any more. That was a good thing. It wasn't that he disliked her particularly. It was just that he didn’t need another woman trying to tell him what to do. He wasn't a child, despite the way his mother tried to treat him.

  In the streets, no one bothered him. A few people jostled him as they rushed around, and that made him swear, but by and large most ignored him. They didn't know who he was. Even the waifs and street urchins ignored him. He didn't look as though he had any stynes to throw them. And that he thought, was a good thing. He didn't want to be noticed.

  Walking though, wasn't so welcome. Though his legs hadn't been broken by Sana, every step made his side ache worse than before, while his knees felt like burning lumps of coal instead of joints. They worked, but they didn't want to bend any more than rusting iron hinges did.

  Still, he managed a good pace and only had to stop and rest a couple of times as he crossed the city. Shortly he found himself at the temple gate. Impatiently he walked through them and then the temple and into the garden where the barrels of metals awaited him.

  It was at that point that he found himself hesitating. Not because he didn't want to do it. But because he suddenly found himself wondering how many spells he should acquire in one go.

  His thought originally had been three as usual. He knew he could handle three at a time safely, even if the result did render him unconscious for two days. But was this the time to be cautious? Sana had nearly killed him. He'd barely escaped from that giant temple crab. Now the stakes had been raised. Both for him and everyone else. He wasn't even safe in Styrion. Marda, if she had any stynes left, would soon be hiring assassins to hunt him down and kill him along with the rest of the family. And he was still the only one who could walk between worlds.

  So much depended on him. On that one spell. If he died out there on another world, or for that matter if he died at Sana or Marda’s hands, there would be no one left who could contact the bronze people. Finding the bronze people had to be his priority. Not having enough spells or the right spells when he needed them, was a risk.

  But at the same time, he didn't know how many spells he could absorb before they potentially harmed or even killed him. He faced risks whatever he did.

  Hendrick stood there, thinking about his options. It was another dragon's choice where every option was bad. But there were no clear answers. There was no right and wrong. No safe and not safe. There was only need. And no time.

  No time. That was the thing that made his decision for him. Because he didn't know how long it would be before the behemoth's servants started over-running the realm. Or before Sana came for him again. Or how long it would take for him to locate the bronze people. But the one thing he did understand was that he didn't have the time to carry on as he was. He had to take a chance.

  Hendrick strode up to the nearest of the barrels filled with Mithril, raised his vest enough to free his damaged left arm, and then plunged his hand into the metallic fragments.

  Someone yelled at him a few moments later when they realised what he was doing. A man. But Hendrick ignored him just as he ignored the pain of his damaged body, and pushed his arm down as far as he could into the barrel and grabbed as many fragments as he could. He also ignored the sound of people running toward him a few seconds later. Somehow he even put aside the burning agony as they grabbed him by his broken shoulder and tried to pull him away. Even as they did so he managed to hold on to the barrel with his good hand and yelled at them to go away.

  Soon he began to absorb the spells. He could see the mithril, like liquid all around his arm, soaking into his flesh. He could see it rising up his arm. No longer a tracery of lines and veins, but an actual coating of sparkling grey seeping into his flesh. And by then he knew it was too late for anyone to stop it.

  They still tried, and finally he was pulled away from the barrel, only to fall backwards and land on the grass. But it didn't stop the spells from becoming a part of him. He could actually feel them seeping into his skin, and that was new.

  But it was good. If he survived this – if he made it through – he would surely have all the spells he needed to walk the worlds in safety. To find the bronze people. And if he had to, to stop Marda and protect his family.

  Hendrick laughed, a somewhat maniacal laugh born of both pain and fear, as he saw the figure of a priest suddenly appear in the sky above him. A very worried looking priest.

  “Pray for me Father.” He laughed some more as the blue sky above began to dim. And he kept laughing until the light faded completely.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  It was quiet around the bed. It was always quiet in the temple, and especially in the sleeping quarters where the new recruits rested after absorbing their new spells. But this area was quieter again. No one spoke. No one moved. The sleeper barely even breathed.

  None of them knew if he would keep doing even that little for much longer.

  “I still don't understand why he did this.” The healer Yalden broke the silence. “Did he want to die?”

  “No.” Lady Peri was quick to deny the suggestion. Even perhaps a little angered by it. “My son is no coward who would run from a fight. He would stand his ground even in the face of overwhelming odds. If he did this by design rather than accident, he had a reason. A good reason! One that befits a Prince!”

  But did she believe that, Marnie wondered? Or was she simply saying what she needed to say? A child who killed himself was never politic. A son who died trying to save the realm was.

  The more Marnie saw of Lady Peri, the more she realised just how calm and calculating the woman really was. There was no true warmth. No humanity. Just cold reason and a determination to always come out ahead. And because of that she was a truly dangerous enemy, at least in the political arena.

  She had after all destroyed the King with a few well-chosen words, and in the process probably started a civil war as her former husband tried desperately to cling to power. The Court was now divided. She had destroyed her enemy too. Lady Marda had fled and there were now warrants out for her arrest for treason – and oddly enough for being a secret follower of Dibella. That though Marnie didn't believe. Undoubtedly Lady Marda was a cold, calculating and completely uncari
ng creature. But she wasn't stupid. Certainly not stupid enough to follow the Dragon Queen. Marnie suspected Lady Peri's hand in the charge.

  Of course with Lady Marda being charged with treason and named as a disciple of the Queen of the Dragons, the chances of her son Daylon ever inheriting the throne, were slim. After all, what were the chances that he too was a disciple? The other faiths could be allowed. But to follow the Queen of Dragons was beyond the pale. A king could not be a disciple. If Daylon wanted the throne, he would have to seize it. And who would follow a follower of the Queen of Dragons against the King?

  Now according to the criers not only was Daylon battling with his father in a war of assassins, bribes, speeches and legal pleas, he was also having to battle with Marthan, the eldest son of Lady Simone, the King's second wife. Because with all three of Lady Martha’s son’s suddenly disinherited, Marthan had suddenly become the heir apparent. He was also according to gossip, so feeble minded that he couldn't even dress himself. It seemed to be a family curse. Perhaps there was a reason that neither he nor his younger brother R'ven was ever seen in public. It might also explain why their battle was being waged on their behalf by retainers and advisers.

  Marnie didn’t care which of them ended up sitting on the throne. She only cared that for the moment the realm was completely undefended. The army didn't know who to obey and there was fighting among the generals. And while the army had been minimally effective against the behemoth's servants, they had at least offered something. It would be many months before even the cities nearest Styrion Might would be defended by the gifted. Many of the towns never would be. Already there were reports floating around the city that other towns had been attacked.

  “And what reason could anyone have for doing this to themselves?” The healer gestured at his patient.

  He had reason for asking the question. Hendrick was deeply unconscious, and only partially dressed. And what the lack of clothes revealed was anything but normal. His entire arm from his finger tips to somewhere under the bandage strapping his shoulder to his side, was a block of sparkling grey. There were no lines there anymore. No spiderwebs of sparkling grey. Extending out from the top of the bandage was where the mass of sparkling grey finally gave way to lines. But these were thick heavy lines that looked like they’d been drawn in charcoal by a blind man's finger. They also now covered his whole body. On one side the lines ran all the way down to his toes. There was another set that criss-crossed his chest and back. Some ran up his neck and onto his face. One even went up into the eye itself. He now had one eye of sparkling grey!

  How many spells did he now have, she wondered? Twenty? Fifty? She didn't know. If he eventually did wake up she wondered what he now might be able to do? Defeat the beast itself? Was that why he'd done this? To give himself a fighting chance against whatever the beast might send against him. To kill Sana? Or to kill whatever else was out there in the other worlds as he searched for the bronze people? It was the only thing she could think of. But even if the reasons behind it had been good, it had still been a reckless and foolish thing to do. He had now been unconscious for four days and she feared he would never wake.

  “What do we tell the people?” Tyrollan asked the question that they had really all come to answer.

  “The same as before. That he's still sleeping.”

  Sleeping? More like at death’s door Marnie thought. But Lady Peri was right. Their people were worried about this. For good or ill they saw Hendrick as their leader. They needed to believe that he was still alive and would soon wake up.

  What would their people say if he died? That he was a fool? A hero? A coward? That it was all a bizarre accident that had followed from being struck on the head in his battle with Sana? Or maybe that he'd been drunk? He was a brewer after all.

  “We should let him rest,” Lady Peri announced. “Whatever chance he has can only be improved with that.”

  And then she did something that completely shocked Marnie. She sat down on the edge of the cot beside her son, and reached out a hand to stroke his cheek softly.

  Was that emotion? Actual concern? Because the one thing Marnie had become ever more certain of was that the Lady had no such impulse. In fact she was beginning to think that the entire Court was the same, lost as they were in their cold calculations and political manoeuvrings. And within that pit of well-mannered vipers the Lady was clearly one of the most deadly. But as everyone knew, vipers offered no milk for their offspring.

  Was this the caring heart beneath the endless layers of cunning and plotting finally showing through? Or was it too a calculated gesture designed to deceive watchers into believing that there was such a heart? And what must it be like she wondered, to grow up in a house where you would never know the truth about such things?

  In that moment Marnie understood Hendrick in a way she never had before. He’d grown up with a father he barely knew. A mother whose heart he could never be sure of. No wonder he followed Vitanna! The God of Celebration must have seemed like a blessing to him when faced with his own family. His mother had been right. The day he had been afflicted had been a fortunate one for him. It had freed him from his family home. She almost pitied him.

  If he really had tried to kill himself, she would have understood. She might have done the same in his shoes.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Waking was pain. It was confusion and exhaustion. And most of all it was loud. How could you wake up more tired than when you'd fallen asleep? And why was there so much noise in his head? So many impulses to do something? So many different things? He'd once brewed an ale that was so strong that it had left him in agony for the entire day that had followed sampling it. This was worse.

  Hendrick lay there on the cot, trying to quiet the noise and make sense of things. Eventually he managed to at least reduce the din to a mere babble in the background. Quiet enough that he could think. That he could remember what he'd done.

  The voices, the urges, the impulses; they were all spells that had now become a part of him, and were demanding to be used. That was normal. What wasn't normal was that there were so many of them, and that they all demanded to be used first. It was like feeling starved, thirsty, exhausted and a hundred other things all at once, and every need demanded that it be sated first. He should have expected it he supposed. It was normal, as was the solution. He had to start using the spells.

  But he couldn't do it here. Hendrick realised that as he looked around the darkened room and realised that he wasn’t in the infirmary where he'd last woken up. He was in the temple. He also appeared to be surrounded by other sleeping people – all of them no doubt recovering from having absorbed new spells. But his spells could be dangerous. Especially if he couldn't control them. And with so much noise and chaos in his head, he might have trouble with control.

  Hendrick realised he had to leave. To find some place where he could be completely alone. Only then could he cast in safety.

  He sat up – or at least he tried to. But he was weak. Weaker than he could ever remember being in his life. And he was in a lot of pain. His shoulder wasn't as bad as it had been, but moving his arm even in the bandage was still agony. So instead of sitting up he ended up making it half way before collapsing back with a grunt of pain.

  The next time he tried he didn't attempt to sit up directly. Instead he rolled on to his side, swung his legs over the side of the cot and then pushed himself up into a sitting position with his good arm. This time he was successful, though it still left him hurting and gasping for breath as he sat on the edge of the cot.

  But pain was good! The sudden understanding filled him. Then came the confusion. Why he thought pain was good he didn’t know, because it was not something he had ever thought before. And yet somewhere deep inside him he had this inexplicable belief that it was good. That he should embrace the pain and use it as it would make him stronger.

  Hendrick shook his head, trying to get rid of the bizarre thought, while at the same time wondering where it
had come from. Could it be connected to the new spells? The thought worried him. Quickly though Hendrick shook the worry off. Right now he needed to take back control. Of his thoughts. Of the spells. Of his broken body.

  Once he'd managed to put his thoughts in some order, Hendrick spotted a pitcher of water someone had thoughtfully left for him, He picked it up carefully so as not to inflame his shoulder, and downed most of it in a rush. The rest he poured over his head. It was cool and for some reason he was boiling. Maybe he had a fever on top of everything else?

  The water helped. It cleared his head a little. Enough to tell him what he needed to do, and to look for his clothes since he didn't want to do it in a state of half dress. Spotting them he grabbed them and stepped into the twilight world. The very first world he'd ever visited. And he found himself on the very same plateau of dark, volcanic rock he had arrived on so long ago.