Jorm

by Alan Bayman

  What I discovered in those days was mostly in relation to my working with Adan. I could quickly ascertain the nature of a wound based on how the Miasma reacted with it. For example, I could tell if a broken bone had broken to a point and pierced muscle underneath, if there was internal bleeding, or even the nature of a man’s sickness. With that I first discovered how to manipulate Miasma; I was trying to mitigate the effects on a man with a coughing sickness, and I accidentally cured him by killing the disease. I almost killed him as well, but he walked out of the cottage at the end of the day and If I hadn’t of tried he would have died for sure.

  But most of my experiments took place in the storage room at night while Adan was sleeping. After a while I started walking the streets and alleys just before dawn. Most of the people were asleep then, save for some of the ladies of the brothels, who, if they weren’t to weary or drunk, crowded in the bath houses, or in the poorer area I lived; they would sit on the edge of the canals with a roped bucket, soap, and a rag. I walked by lines of them, chatting quietly, some of them passing around a bottle or pipe. As my walks became more frequent some of them began to recognize me and a few of them would smile and wave. One or two even offered their services. This reminded me of the sick brothel I first considered living at, and I returned to it, memorizing several routes in case it was somewhere I needed to hide. I felt being out and about in the late hours was safer for me because magicians where in the upper class and would not deign to be out in the slums at night out of pride. I was right, but for the wrong reason.

  As one discovery can lead to another, while memorizing my third route from the cottage to the brothel, I discovered a shop that was open late in the night; Cronwins Goods.

  Cronwin was a pawnbroker. Though he seemed to be a normal man, he almost never slept, save a few hours at dusk. He almost never left his shop, and it was always open. If he was sleeping he left his door locked but had a rope out front that went inside to a bell that would wake him up if pulled. He had a narrow face with a hatchet of a nose, ruddy skin with black, beady eyes and matching, tussled hair. His shop was packed from floor to ceiling with stuff, some of it tied off with twine to keep from toppling into isles, so narrow you had to step sideways to pass through.

  Every time I went there, I would find something interesting to mull over. It was difficult not to spend all my money there. From him, I ended up purchasing a variety of things: some humbler sets of clothes, test tubes, a mortar and pestle, a scrivener’s kit (expensive, but excellent craftsmanship, I couldn’t resist), boot polish, a comb, mirror, and an old jewelry box he practically gave away that I could sense Miasma around it.

  To him I sold the dagger that was thrown at me and a few other odds and ends I had found. In all this, I discovered that I am terrible at haggling, and probably paid more for most of what I got and sold things for less than I should.

  I still had enough gold for over a year of training though. That man I slew must have been filthy rich. That was something to worry about. He was undoubtedly a noble, or connected enough to them, and that meant there would be an investigation.

  Why they hadn’t tracked me down already, I did not know.

  4.

  A few days after my third trip to Cronwins, I got a message from him. It was in the middle of the day. Adan was passed out in one of his chairs, snoring heavily while I was splinting a dock worker’s leg. A boy I recognized as one of the street urchins came running in with a wadded-up piece of parchment loudly declaring that Cronwin had promised him that I would pay a silver for delivering a message. He then held the wadded-up paper behind his back and thrust out his hand expectantly.

  I glared at him. “Three coppers, or I’ll tell Cronwin you tried to ransom his note. A note, I’m sure he already paid you to deliver. Unless you’re lying and that parchment you’ve got is some nobles grocery list from a rubbish bin.”

  By the way I now talk, you can tell I’ve been around Adan for a while.

  The boy immediately deflated, making himself look smaller, his thrust-out hand now cradled in supplication. “Please,” he whimpered.

  I walked over to him and held out my hand. “The letter first.”

  Scowling, he handed me the wadded-up piece of parchment. It read:

  Jorm;

  I have something for you. Come tonight or sooner. Great opportunity.

  --C

  P.S. No trick, on my honor.

  I looked back at the boy, who was still standing there, looking as small and meek as any street beggar. I gave him 3 coppers, and he immediately straightened up, grinned, and ran out.

  “You’re too nice,” The dock worker said from the table. “Boy’s probably marked you as an easy target now. He’ll trade that info to all his friends. You’ve made him rich today and given yourself all sorts of headache.”

  I shrugged. I already knew I was lousy at trade.

  The night was cloudless and the air cooler than usual, almost enough for frost to form. Autumn was well on its way, and the trade streets where crowded with merchant wagons parked from out of town. Hired guards sat on a few of them with blankets over their shoulders and crossbows in hand, their eyes drifting somewhere between weary, drunk, and bored.

  I gave them wide berth. I had chosen to come out just before midnight, when most taverns where closing down and then men visiting them where not stopping over to brothels but where staggering home. Pickpockets and thugs also roamed the streets at this time, but I was wearing my poorer attire and did not sway enough to mark me as an easy target.

  Cronwins Goods was closed and locked, but a few minutes after ringing the bell the man opened the door and let me inside. After letting me in, he locked and barred the door again, signifying the place was closed. This was unusual for him, and I said so. He looked at me nervously, the small lantern he held the only source of light in the room. I could see in the dark, but I wondered if he could see any further than a few feet.

  “All apologies, good patron. I wish for our conversation to go uninterrupted. You are of course free to leave any time you like,” He gestured toward the door, causing his shadow to flicker wildly behind him. “But please, stay a moment let us share some tea.”

  He always offered tea. Sometimes I partook. I found that I could drink liquids, and even eat small amounts of food if I chewed enough. But it always tasted terrible and sat heavily in my stomach until I puked it up again. If I didn’t vomit it out, it would eventually start to leak out of me in a more “natural,” but unpleasant and entirely uncontrolled manner.

  I decided it was good to maintain the façade of being alive, so when he led me to counter and poured from an elegant teapot he kept behind it, I took the offered cup gratefully, and kept myself from grimacing when I sipped from it. Cronwin took a steaming cup under his nose and inhaled deeply, a smile playing across his lips. He then took a long sip and sighed.

  “Dark leaves, with aspris root and lavender. Not too sweet, not too bitter, but oh so rich. An excellent batch, the best tea I’ve had in quite a while. The vendor is a friend of mine, if you are interested.”

  “Is this tea your purpose in calling me here?”, I asked.

  “Oh no, not at all,” he smiled. “Forgive my weakness, I can easily lose myself in a fine brewing.” He took another long sip, finishing his cup and setting it down on the counter. I copied him. I noticed he no longer showed any signs of nervousness. Indeed, he was his old self again. A memory stirred within me, having to do with some sort of alchemist book I had been copying. Both aspris root and lavender could be used to make a calming effect, strongly so if used in conjunction.

  He had drugged us. Or rather he tried to, with partial success. Him, to make himself less nervous, and probably me to put me at ease. There was likely to be a catch or two in whatever it was he was going to offer, and he was looking to slip something into the deal in hopes that I wouldn’t catch on.

  On the positive side, this meant I was pretty sure he had not figured out that I was a zombie. Most drug
s don’t affect the undead, and if he knew I was one, he wouldn’t have wasted his “good tea” on me.

  “I was digging through one of my old storerooms and came across something that I thought would be of great interest to you.” He reached behind his desk and carefully pulled out a blue silk bundle, about half the size of a loaf of bread. He carefully set the bundle on the counter and gently unraveled it.

  Inside was the most exquisite doll I have ever seen. It lay on its back, wearing the tiniest perfect replica of leather armor, dyed black, with chainmail greaves, gauntlets and pauldrons with rings so small they could fit through the eye of a needle. Its elaborate helm ended at the face with a porcelain mask of a wolf, painted with such detail that it must have been done with either magic or a single hair from a brush.

  “It is, exquisite,” I said, and I meant it. Its eyes were made of some material I could not make out because of the sheer amount of Miasma roiling in them. The doll was filled with it.

  “Yea, beautiful, isn’t it?” Cronwin sounded so relieved when he spoke, I looked back up at him. He looked so relaxed, it was almost as though he was a different person. He looked as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight that had been propping him up as much as he had been holding it.

  “It is the perfect replica of a Judesen,” he continued. A Judesen was the elite guard of the White Council, the head of the Necromancers Guild and the ruling body of Ubenfold. I recalled there used to be a king when I was alive, but even then, the king ruled in name only and the White Council controlled everything from the shadows. They must have found at some point they didn’t need to hide anymore.

  The word Judesen came from the words Judicar, meaning “Judge, jury, and executioner” in Late Cyrian, and Endesen, meaning “wizards envoy” in Uben. The two words summed up the role of the Judesen quite accurately.

  All this went through my mind as Cronwin continued to talk. He told me that the doll once belonged in the box that I had purchased from him previously, but he had misplaced the doll and thought it lost or stolen. Seeing as I had already purchased the box, he felt that I should have the doll to go with it.

  I figured this to be some sort of trap. The doll was obviously magical and most likely cursed. But I figured that curse seemed to revolve around the use of Miasma, and as someone who was already dead, Miasma couldn’t hurt me. I figured that I could take the doll, work out some way to drain the Miasma, and then sell it to some other merchant. With its detail and craftsmanship, I could get at least 50 gold for it. More if I found a collector.

  I took the doll, rolled up in blue silk and stuffed it in a bag to take back home with me. There I unraveled it and placed it in the box I had purchased. It fit perfectly. It bothered me that Cronwin had tried to deceive me. I thought we were becoming friends. I planned on finding a new pawn shop to frequent from then on.

  A few days passed as I spent some time examining the doll, but mostly with work. A plague had swept through the city, and while Adan spent his sober moments lancing boils and bandaging sores, I quietly killed the disease within patients. It backfired a little as rumors began to spread that Adan’s services could cure the disease, and within a day we had lines of patients out the door. At first the first crowd Adan eyed me suspiciously. But as more people came in he just shrugged and took their money.

  It bothered the glowing embers within me to have to turn them away at night. But Adan insisted at closing the doors at sunset.

  “If you don’t lock the door at dark, they’ll come at all hours,” he said. “Then you’ll never get any sleep.”

  While this was true for him, I didn’t sleep. I wondered if I should start taking patients at night while he slept, perhaps encouraging him to drink more spirits so I would be less likely to wake him.

  But then again, I was using the night to explore and experiment with Miasma. Perhaps a compromise is in order, I thought to myself. Maybe go out and treat some homeless vagrant? But then the Miasma that hovers over this place would not shroud what I was doing…

  It was sometime after the eleventh hour of the third night after I received the doll that I heard the box move. I was holding a vial in each hand, one filled with dark liquid Miasma, and the other empty. I had recently discovered that my mental urging I could coax liquid Miasma to move. I say coax, because it was nothing like commanding. I felt like I had to convince it to go where I wanted. At the moment I was holding both vials upright and unstopped, but slightly tilted so their lips where just touching. I was trying to convince the Miasma to move from one vial to the other.

  There was a click, and a faint creaking sound from the shelf directly behind me. I carefully sealed the vial of Miasma and slowly turned around.

  As I have stated before, in the dark I can see clearly, but only in black and white. The room was unlit, but in shades of grey I saw that the box turned a few inches from its resting spot and the latch for the lid had come undone. I knew that It had been locked.

  I watched it, unmoving as the lid creaked open no more than an inch. From within, I could see the mask of the doll’s head staring at me with two pinpoint eyes of roiling darkness. I thought of reaching for a weapon, but as soon as I glanced away, a black cloud of churning Miasma shot out from within the box and enveloped me.

  I felt a sudden sense of vertigo followed by the sensation of my face slamming against the floor and the sound of the empty vial I was holding shattered next to me. Voices filled my head, a chorus of murmuring commands and pleas. I was lost. I could not mover or even think. I felt the Miasma filling me, soothing away the wound from when my head hit the floor, pushing out fragments of glass from the broken vial.

  Then suddenly, the voices all at once halted. I could still feel their presence within my mind like they were holding their breath. Waiting for something.

  When whatever they were waiting for didn’t come they began again, only stronger. Their voices went from a murmur to a roar, shouting, screeching, crying, and begging all at once. I thrashed around on the ground, my mind in agony, the Miasma from the box quickly healing the wounds from the broken glass I rolled in. I think I even punched myself, to try to get the voices out of my head. But whatever injuries I inflicted, no matter how severe, the Miasma quickly healed me.

  Again, the voices suddenly halted, and again there was a waiting. And for a third time the voices began. They were deafening. I must have screamed. The agony was greater than anything I had ever remembered feeling. I remember wishing I could black out, of intense, frantic desperation. More glass shattered, my thrashing knocked the flask of Miasma from the table I had set it on. The released ichor responded to my need, wrapping around my head, giving my mind a protective shroud. It wasn’t enough to block out the voices, but it made the them bearable.

  For a third time the voices stopped. Again, they waited. I scrambled to my feet, cutting myself on glass, trying to reach for the doll and crush it. With a roar that threw me to the ground again the voices leaped from my mind, hovered over me as a black cloud of roiling Miasma with two pinpoints of green light glaring down at me, and then it flew through the wall to the outside without leaving so much a scratch on the stone.

  I stared at the wall, frozen for a moment, when suddenly the door to the main room slammed open. There stood Adan. He was naked save for some ragged undershorts, and his skin was blotted and patchy from age and a strange belief that he only needed to bathe his arms and face. He swayed drunkenly one hand holding his lantern, the other a bludgeoning stick.

  “What in the THOUSAND Hells is going on,” he bellowed. His eyes looked around wildly.

  “Nine,” I blurted. I wasn’t thinking right. Too much had happened.

  “What?” he looked down at me, startled.

  “Nine. There are nine Hells. Each one has a thousand regions. I suppose you could say nine thousand hells, but a ‘thousand hells’ is a misnomer. There are also supposed to be nine hundred and ninety-nine sub realms to Hell within the Abyss, so I suppose you could s
ay ‘what in the nine thousand nine hundred in--‘”

  “DO YOU have any idea what time it is?” he yelled.

  I stared at him for a moment.

  “Um, no.”

  “It’s time I should be sleeping.” He glared at me then looked around. “Clean up this mess. Since you’re so keen on keeping me up at night, you can work the table without me in the morning. I’m sleeping in.” He slammed the door shut. Then yelled through it:

  “Wake me up again and I’ll beat your ass!” There was a pause, then, “turn customers away in the morning and I’ll beat your ass!” there was another pause, and then a third yell, this time further away, “piss me off again and I’ll beat your ass.”

  5.

  I waited until near morning to move from where I was and check on the doll. By then I had gathered my wits and was sure Adan was deep in slumber. The doll hung over the edge of the box, empty of Miasma but undamaged, save for a thin crack that ran straight through the right eye of the mask and across the left cheek.

  I thought of mending it and then selling it. But the more I thought about it the less of a good idea it became. Mending the mask might reactivate its magic somehow, so it might attack me again. But if I sold it, whoever bought it might mend the mask and suffer as I did or worse. So, I decided to keep it for further study.

  The day was less crowded than the one before. The plague was quick in its lethality, and those who caught it either succumbed quickly or recovered enough to not require our services. Still, there were many that morning whom I managed to save in time. As the day wore into late afternoon, Adan finally staggered in, already drunk, and sat in his usual chair in the corner. I made a pretense of getting him more spirits to drink, and as I did so I laid a hand on his shoulder and killed the plague that was just beginning to get a hold of him. I had spent so many days killing the disease that I could see right away when it was within someone.