by Alan Bayman
After returning I asked him a few questions about his business. When I quickly realized that he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, I took him around back, by the canal. The tide was high, and the water was almost up to the canals edge from the last rain. I thought of all sorts of things I should do to him out of revenge or some sort of justice for the children he raped and murdered.
But the more I thought about it, the more it weighed me down. Terrible things happened in the city all the time, often with the only hope that if you were lucky Adan and I would be able to stitch you back together. This man was by no means alone in his atrocities. In this city, in this world, atrocities were legion. Trying to make some sort of example of him would be just another terrible act in a night full of them.
So, I simply killed him. It was quick, efficient, left very little mess, and after I stripped his body, I turned it into liquid Miasma and stored it. Returning to the front, I put the slave collar on the bodyguard and untied him.
21.
“Please, everyone, gather around,” I said.
I was sitting in the chair the owner once sat. His table lantern had the wick pulled as far out as it could go, filling the dilapidated room with an unusual brightness. There were a few bloodstains on the floor, one from which had a long streak that led to the back of the inn where I had dragged the dead bodyguard before rendering him down.
Nine young women who the guard had herded from their rooms came before me, some of them limping, some with a little shuffle, all of them malnourished and filthy.
“I am the new owner of this establishment, which makes all of you my responsibility.”
I reached into the Traveler’s Bag at my side, and started pulling out loaves of bread, haunches of dried meat and fruit, and skins of watered wine, and started piling them on the table. They all stared at the growing pile hungrily until I gestured them over. As one they scrambled, almost knocking each other over to get to the table. I kept pulling out food until they were all eating their fill. Then I stood and started pulling out thick wool cloaks from the bag, handing one to each of them.
I watched Miasma drift around their hands, feet, to the tips of their ears and noses and knew that some of them would be losing parts of themselves to frostbite. I could fix that, but it would be a risk.
Soon they were finished eating and wrapped snugly in their warm cloaks. Many of them were swaying on their feet, made drowsy from eating.
“To bed,” I said. Pulling out all the extra blankets that were in the storage room and handing them out. “I will talk to you all tomorrow. Sleep together if you like, in whatever rooms you want.”
They all shuffled out, choosing to sleep together in the few rooms that still had doors.
I turned to the bodyguard.
“So, what should I do with you,” I asked.
He was a big man, looking of Cyrian decent, with blond hair and blue eyes.
“Have me guard?” he said.
“You helped the previous owner with what he did to street urchins,” I said quietly.
The man shrugged. “He was the boss, we did what he said. It ain’t like it was illegal.”
“Actually, raping and killing children is illegal.”
“Oh. Even street kids?” His words were curious, like he actually didn’t know.
I stared at him. I had assumed he was a smart man when he curled up on the ground and begged for his life. That was, after all, the smart thing to do when someone used magic against you and you had none. But it appeared that I had overestimated his intellect. Or at least his disposition. Was he a sociopath or as dumb as a rock? Both?
“Even street kids,” I confirmed. “What’s your name?”
“Darryl,” he smiled nervously.
“Well Darryl, your new job is to watch over the girls while I am gone.”
“I’ve done that before,” he nodded.
“Did you do it alone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, the girls were here with me.”
I looked at him, hard. He wasn’t saying it as a joke, and he spoke with all sincerity. Not even the hint of a smile.
I recategorized him as dumb as a rock or master thespian. So far, it was leaning strongly to the former.
Our conversation continued along those lines. Darryl it turned out had a good instinct as far as self-preservation went, but otherwise couldn’t think his way out of a burlap sack. It made him an excellent thug, and a good guard if all you needed was someone to stand around looking dangerous.
I sent him to bed and spent the rest of the night preparing the grounds for the ritual I had designed.
In the late morning when they woke up, I fed them all again and instructed them to all go down the road to a lodging house, where they would be staying for the next few months. I had arranged their lodging a few days before. The accommodations there were meager but extravagant compared to this place.
“They will feed and shelter you there. During that time, I will be repairing this inn. I will stop by on occasion to check in on you. When the inn is repaired you will have a choice; work for me or be on your way. I’ll not stop you if you choose to leave.
“You do not have to work while at the lodging house. You will not necessarily have to whore while working in the inn. I will be using you in the kitchen, dining room, and with the cleaning. Any questions?”
None of them had any. I produced a dozen cheap peasants blouses with dresses form my bag and handed them out. The ladies were livelier than the night before, murmuring thank you and some of them curtsying. The went around the back and rinsed off by the canal, before donning their new clothes and leaving.
I paid Darryl a month’s worth of wages and told him to keep squatters from moving onto the property. I then went home to help Adan with patients until the evening.
That night I began my ritual. I dumped twelve men’s worth of liquid Miasma onto the ground and sat down to meditate. I focused on letting my mind seep into the Miasma beneath me, encouraging it to mix with the water soaked in the ground. After a few hours I sensed it was like the water soaked with Miasma that the undead shaman was living in. Once it spread out far enough, I started pushing on the water infused Miasma like I had when I made an underwater tunnel.
It was difficult, and there were times when I had to give up and start over, but in a few hours before dawn I had pushed the water away from underneath the entire property line. To my surprise I sensed a great deal of empty space under the building. That would be useful later.
I set up a modified ward to hold the infused water in place, holding the ground water from seeping back in. It would have to be renewed every week or so until I found a better way to do it.
After that, things went smoothly. A few months went by as I worked, trained, and meditated while hired craftsmen rebuilt the inn.
Adan was busier than ever. With our occasional alchemical supplements, my own supply of rat gut, and Tina’s hospitality we nearly quadrupled our clientele. Fewer patients died, which meant less food for me, but the greater volume of people coming in made up for the difference.
Haas had finally decided that my posture was good enough to start learning to fight. I went from just standing there to just standing there and punching or kicking. Sometimes he would have me hold a blade in various stances.
My knowledge of Necromancy grew with each experiment. I was able to make a dead rat move for a couple of seconds and was sure that if I wanted I could start delving into reanimation. The prosthetics I created already were after a fashion, but there were differences in making an animated part compared to an entire construct.
I had taken to meditating the first few hours of every night while Tina curled up next to me. She had fewer nightmares when we did this, and I would always toucher her and placer her into a deeper, healthier slumber before I went to work. In so doing, I began to recognize what the biological state of a person looks like while their mind is in the Dreaming. For some reason, observing this enabled m
e to reach deeper meditations.
Through interviews with the Shaman and his Dreamweaver ancestor we were able to ascertain that I was no longer eating people. Well, uncontrollably at least.
Neither was I blacking out recent memories. I tried facing some of the more painful memories, but my progress was slow. The Shaman was not dissuaded, however, telling me that the ancestors were enthusiastic about my progress.
Shan-lo and I would often meet during these meditations in the wetlands. I would sit cross legged in some small clearing we had found, while she would camp out nearby and watch out for anything going wrong while I woke my fourth chakra. Sometimes, I would seek her out, and we would tumble among the reeds, clothing forgotten. Her body was strong- densely packed with muscle for one so small. She would flush and tremble with eager excitement, and then grow bored and dismissive just as quickly once we were done. I once asked her why, and she gave a smile with a shrug and said, “You are not him.”
22.
It took six months to rebuild the Inn. First, I named it Blackwater Inn. After which, I quickly realized that there is much to do in running an Inn and I was terrible at it. There is purchasing food, stable supplies, inn supplies, permits, bribes, alcohol for the bar, more permits (bribes), maintenance, maintenance supplies, security, more bribes, and pest control. The only thing on the list I wasn’t worried about was the pest control, as I really saw it as an opportunity for more suture supplies and liquid Miasma.
I took my troubles to Adan, and he simply laughed.
“I told you it was more trouble than it was worth,” he sneered. “What? You thought you could just build a business and let it run itself? You’re a greater fool than I thought.”
“It’s your business too,” I said.
He grinned at me. “I did my part, as promised. Now you do yours.”
I spent a week over at the Inn, trying to sort out which of the girls would do what kind of job. Finally, one of them came up to me and said, “Milord, have you ever run an inn?”
“No,” I said, sighing. “And I know I’m making a mess of it.”
She smiled faintly, and said, “Why don’t you hire a seneschal?”
I was about to respond with something like “I can’t because I’m not a noble,” when I realized I didn’t need one, I just needed someone who could run an inn for me. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, and it would have saved me a lot of time and money if I had worked it all out before the Inn was finished.
Finding someone turned out to be easy. Too easy. I asked a former patient of mine, a local shopkeeper who had been kicked by his horse, if he knew anyone who qualified as an innkeeper and needed work. He immediately introduced me to “a good friend of his;” a tall man with sandy brown hair and a lopsided smile. Said his name was Winden, and he would be happy to work for me.
In the first few weeks of Winden’s hire everything went splendidly. We were able to open, and patrons started coming in good numbers. Then a cart overturned in front of the Inn while one of the girls was fetching eggs, almost killing her. Then the wards I set broke and the kitchen flooded. That night a brawl broke out and one of the patrons stabbed the other in the eye, killing him. I had to stay away for a week while the kitchen continued to sink out of fear the guards would investigate me. By then the water had spread to the pantry, destroying several months’ worth of food.
I was looking around the Inn, searching the ambient Miasma for whatever had broken the wards, when I noticed there was no Miasma at all around Winden. All the miasma he would unintentionally walk through or near would immediately veer into someone or something else.
I followed him for a time, my suspicion growing, when I saw some ambient miasma veer into a serving wench suddenly. The moment it did she stumbled and almost dropped the mug of ale she was carrying.
So, I sat at the bar, watching Winden work behind it while casually tossing ambient Miasma in his direction. It was weak, but it seemed to divert harm thrown his way in a six-foot sphere radiating from a bag at his waist.
That evening I brought over an entire jug of distilled spirits and challenged to drink him under the table. The wager was that if he won, I would give him the Inn. If I won, anything of his was mine, and he’d work for half a year for room and board only. He grinned as we shook on it.
“I haven’t lost a wager in years. I don’t plan on it now.”
As I’ve said before, food and drink do nothing for me. The spirits gave me an unpleasant stomach sensation until I hurried to the lavatory before it leaked out of me. Winden was out in less than an hour.
While unconscious, I donned my spectacles and looked in his bag.
Inside was a single polished white stone with flecks of black. The spectacles told me that it was a Cursed Luckstone. It worked by slowly draining the luck from those around it and storing up good fortune, then it would activate whenever some misfortune was going to befall whoever carried it. It was potent in short bursts, but by no means foolproof as I had demonstrated. Also, the stone could be broken, releasing all the pent up good fortune in one moment.
I tuned the stone to myself, then put in my bag. I was going to hide it in the canal (maybe giving bad luck to fish), but it didn’t seem to be able to work while hidden in its confines.
Winden was still hung over when I saw him the next evening. He was also furious when he found out I had taken his “lucky rock.” I told him I had someone who knew some magic look it over and found out it was cursed. He immediately relented, but I got the feeling he already knew about the nature of the stone.
That was the end of the issue, for on that very same day shortly after stepping out for errands, Winden was stabbed to death by an enraged fisherman. The fisherman swore up and down that he looked exactly like the man his wife was having an affair with. I supposed that using the Cursed Luckstone for so long caused him to run up a deficit in fate.
A curious thing happened later that week with the Cursed Luckstone. At the time I thought little of it, attributing it to my absent mindedness or a lack of coordination, but in later hindsight, a much more sinister light was revealed.
Three times throughout the week I opened my Traveler’s Bag to fetch the Cursed Luckstone and make sure it was not affecting me in any way. On two of those occasions when I first tried, I ended up pulling out The Book of Names instead. Each time I put Book back and then drew the stone out, thinking the error was mine. Now I am not so sure.
Instead of searching again for a new seneschal, innkeeper, seeing as it was just that job, I instead offered it to the woman who came up with the idea in the first place. She resisted at first, being afraid that no one would take her seriously or respect her as a woman trying to run an Inn. I convinced her by informing her Darryl would be under her direction, along with any other bouncers we decided to hire.
It was a good choice, and the woman, whose name was Petra, quickly made herself indispensable. Soon the Inn was bringing in a steady income of both money and information. Adan accused me of giving him more than fifteen percent as a way of showing him up, so I showed him the inns accounting. After that he said, “So we’ll make back a little money you put into it before it sinks,” and left it alone.
23.
On this night the wetlands were shrouded in fog. The grasses and trees in my night vision looked grey and hazy, with harsh lines blurred into soft curves. It was unseasonably warm, giving signs of an early spring. Animals croaked as insects gave out a riot of clatter, and occasionally’ the soft trill of a night bird in search of a mate could be heard.
“So, she finally wants to see us again,” over the din I said to Elgin. Shan-Lo was sitting at the other end of the boat, looking around uneasily.
“There have been problems with the Gargoyle,” he said. “His name is Bastion. He sealed up the boarders of Mothers land for a while, and killed anyone who came in.”
“How did he do that,” I asked. “I thought he was just a tribesman.”
“Gargoyles have a nat
ural talent for earth magic. Mother taught him some before things went bad.”
“Still-”
“He made a deal with an Orc tribe. Their Shaman enchanted tattoos on him. He can move like a ghost now and pull people into the Spirit Realm.”
“That’s some powerful magic,” I said thoughtfully.
“He can do other things, but only in the Spirit Realm. Gargoyles in the spirit realm become like earth elementals.
I didn’t know a lot about the Spirit Realm. I knew that the realm of Null, or Death, was part of the Spirit Realm, but separate from it at the same time, the details of which I had yet to grasp. Spirits and souls inhabited the realm and it served as a path to other places like Arcadia, the Abyss, and places where the deities themselves dwelled, or ruled in singularity.
But apart from my knowledge of Null’s Realm, I didn’t know anything else about it.
The fog grew thicker as the night grew long. Eventually, a pale fire light could be seen in the distance, signaling Alula’s house. We drifted along in silence, letting the current carry us there. Shan-Lo’s ease seemed to grow, alerting me as well. Elgin turned to me and began to whisper, “When we get off the boat hurry straight away to the cottage. Don’t-,”
that was the moment the boat exploded.
There was a terrible roaring sound. Bolts of stone burst through the boats floor, tearing it apart like hot hail through parchment. Elgin was torn apart. Pieces of stone went through my arms and legs as I leapt from the boat. Midair I heard Shan-Lo scream. I tried to turn and see her as the black waters enveloped me. Something had muddied the water. The realization that I was essentially wading through mud in the presence of someone who knew earth magic came to me a moment too late. The murky water suddenly cleared as the dirt blasted through me.