A History of Magic

by Scott J Robinson

  “You did magic two days ago, so I guess their amulet is useless then.”

  “I guess so. Most amulets are. Let us continue before we are found by soldiers who are not so friendly.”

  The street where they had lost Falling Leaves was much busier than it had been the previous night. Two wagons had come together in the middle of the road, wheels locked in some strange, unsolvable puzzle. While the two human drivers argued, getting louder and coarser by the minute, traffic accumulated around them. Pedestrians could easily fit by on either side, but a lot chose to stay where they were and watch the excitement and that just added to the chaos. Rawk winced at the commotion. The tea had not helped as much as he had hoped. His head was throbbing again and the sun made his eyes ache and now this... He wasn’t about to tell Sylvia though.

  “Where do we start?” Sylvia asked.

  Rawk shrugged and looked around. There was a bakery not far away. He managed a smile. “Right there,” he said.

  Sylvia sighed and shook her head. “Do you still do the exercises you told me about? At this rate you will be huge by the end of the week.”

  “I’ve walked around this city a hundred times in the last few weeks. I’ll be fine.”

  “What about your hangover?”

  “I’ll get something with fruit in it. That will give me the anti-poxi-thingies.”

  “Antioxidants.”

  “Yes, them.”

  As they walked up onto the small porch at the front of the bakery, another woman was coming out. Rawk stopped when he saw her. The woman was wearing a scarf, wrapped around her face and head, covering everything but her eyes. It was all a bit of a mess, but was obviously an imitation of Sylvia’s headwear.

  The elf stopped by his side and gasped.

  Rawk gave the woman a nod of greeting and gestured to her scarf. “You need something longer,” he said. “And you actually start around the neck to hold it all in place.” He’d seen Sylvia wrap her face often enough that he knew approximately how it was done.

  The woman glanced at Sylvia and hurried away.

  “She was a southerner, I am sure.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a human.”

  “Yes. I’m guessing someone copied the scarf off you, Sylvia, because they saw you with me over the last couple of days. You’ve started a fashion trend.”

  “I do not want to start a fashion trend. The scarf is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years.”

  “Well, if everyone is wearing one it will make you less conspicuous.”

  The elf turned to watch the woman but she was long gone, lost in the crowd.

  In the bakery, Rawk picked some long thin thing with berries and fresh cream and while the mustachioed man counted his change asked, “Did you hear about the woman who was killed near here last night.”

  The man handed over the money and shook his head. “I heard about it, but I canna tell you any details.”

  “Oh. Well thanks.” Rawk nodded and took a bite of his food as he turned to leave. He stopped and looked back. “This is good,” he said around a mouthful. Then he followed Sylvia back out onto the street.

  “So this is your plan?”

  Rawk was still eating, so he nodded.

  “I see no more bakeries in the area.”

  He gave her a look and headed towards the next shop. The old lady behind the counter tried to sell Sylvia a pink, lacy dress and talked for five minutes about the horrible details of the murder before finally admitting that she didn’t actually know anything at all.

  A cooper in the next building kept working as Rawk asked his question, nodding slowly. “I heard,” he said, working at bending a stave. “Don’t know much, but Ben Balkam says the City Guard were all over the warehouse next to his shop this morning.”

  And it only took him a second to get to the point; Rawk liked him. “And where’s Ben’s shop.”

  “Next left up the hill. About fifty yards down there.”

  “And what does Ben do?”

  “He’s a shoemaker.”

  Rawk thanked the man and hurried back out onto the street. The wagons were still exactly where they had been, though the two drivers had stopped arguing with each other now and were arguing with the dwarves who had taken it upon themselves to actually try to sort out the problem. They were working at the wheels while the men swore at them and threatened to hit them with their cargo if they didn’t keep their dirty dwarf hands off. The dwarves carried on and Rawk started pushing his way through the still growing throng of people. Sylvia stuck close behind.

  They found the shoemaker easily enough and waited behind an old lady with what seemed to be a hundred pairs of shoes to be repaired. As she put each pair up onto the counter she introduced them with a short history and a detailed description of the owner and how the need for repair came about. Rawk tried to be patient but his hand twitched on the hilt of his sword. He wondered if he could claim she was an exot, trying to make him die of frustration.

  “This pair,” the woman said, carefully placing a pair of old felt slippers beside the boots, “belonged to my daughter. She used to wear them all the time, but only when she was at home. She never used to walk anywhere. She danced. Danced while she was cooking and cleaning and... But then she got pregnant and her man left her and she died when the baby came.” The woman fingered the hole in the bottom of the shoe. “The baby died too, of course.”

  There was a moment of silence after that as the woman reminisced and everyone else waited rather awkwardly. When the silence continued the cobbler cleared his throat. “I’ll see what I can do for you. I will need a few days though.”

  The old lady gave a small nod then wandered out onto the street as if she didn’t know where she was or where she was going.

  “Well,” Rawk said as he stepped up into her place at the counter, “that was a nice way to start the day.”

  The other man nodded, looking from Rawk to Sylvia and back again.

  “Are you Ben?”

  A nod.

  “I’m Rawk—”

  “Of course.”

  “—and this is...” Rawk looked at Sylvia with her face still cover with her scarf. “Anyway, to continue the cheerful proceedings, I need to ask you about the woman who was killed near here.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “The cooper said it happened in a warehouse near you.”

  “Macco? What would he know?”

  “He knows how to repair barrels, I imagine.”

  Ben smiled. “Barely.”

  “So, he says you saw all the soldiers loitering last night.”

  Ben started taking the shoes down off the counter and putting then into wooden boxes. He glanced up at Rawk and motioned with his head. “Five doors down that way, I think. This side of the street.”

  “You are a good man, Ben. If I ever need shoes repaired...”

  Ben nodded and continued with his work as Rawk and Sylvia headed out.

  “Told you,” Rawk said.

  “Yes. I know.”

  The warehouse was easy enough to spot but the main front door and the door into the office were both locked and didn’t even move when Rawk gave them a nudge.

  “What did you expect?” Sylvia asked.

  Rawk went to the corner of the building and down the alley at the side. It was wide and clean, as far as such things went, and obviously much used. There were three wagons, all full but with no horses in sight, waiting to be unloaded. And there was a small door being guarded by a dwarf.

  He watched them coming for a moment, then smiled. “Rawk.” He gave a nod. “And Sylvia, I assume.”

  Rawk nodded as well. “Hello. Do I know you?”

  “No. I’m Herron Mer Gal”

  “Right. Good to meet you then, Heron. So, what are you doing?”

  “Guarding the door.”

  “So this is where the woman was killed? Nobody’s allowed in?” He glanced through the door and saw half a dozen more dwarves standin
g around, talking and arguing.

  “Well, it’s not so much that they aren’t allowed. It’s more for their protection.”

  “So what are they doing? Cleaning?” Rawk asked.

  Herron glanced inside as well. “They will be soon. It’s a mess in there. Not pretty.”

  “Well, we need to go in,” Rawk said.

  “I think we will be able to handle it,” Sylvia added. “We have both seen a lot of blood and death, in our different ways.”

  “I don’t...”

  “You said that we were allowed,” Sylvia reminded him.

  “Well, nobody has said that people aren’t allowed, but I’m not actually sure that that’s the same thing.”

  “You know what Sylvia and I are doing?”

  “Your investigation? Of course. Everyone does.”

  Rawk motioned inside. “Well, that woman in there is our one and only way forward. This is the only chance we’ve got to find out who is opening the portals.”

  “So, it wasn’t her?”

  Rawk glanced at Sylvia. The elf answered. “She was a sorcerer, but she was only one member of a group. We need to find the rest.”

  “So we need to get in there and look before your friends clean up some of our clues.”

  “Nobody has said that we cannot,” Sylvia said.

  The dwarf let out a huff of breath and stepped out of the way. “I’d better not get into trouble,” he muttered.

  Rawk clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “I’ll tell them I had to threaten you.”

  Five steps into the warehouse, Rawk stopped. He swallowed and suddenly discovered that his hangover had fled, washed away in a sea of blood and gore. He looked at Sylvia.

  Sylvia had stopped halfway through unwrapping her scarf from her face. Her mouth was uncovered. It was open. “That,” she said softly, “is a lot of blood.”

  Rawk examined the scene again. “Yes, it is.” It wasn’t that the blood and the spilled entrails made him ill, but it was an unexpected sight in the middle of the warehouse.

  Falling Leaves was laying in the middle of a large open area with piles of wool bales making walls on two sides. Eight dwarves were gathered around a table near a narrow walkway towards the front of the building. There was a strange conglomeration of rusting machines against the far wall. Apart from the body and the blood, it didn’t look like the location for the doing of evil deeds.

  “Is opening the portals evil, do you think?” Rawk asked Sylvia. “I mean, if you leave your door unlocked at night, are you a bad person, or is the thief who takes advantage of the situation?”

  “They are inviting the thieves in, Rawk.”

  “But are they really? Do you think they really know what’s on the other side? They are probably letting through as many nice fluffy creatures as horrible ones.”

  He turned and saw Sylvia looking at him.

  “I mean, obviously, whoever did this isn’t the nicest person you’ll ever meet...” He cleared his throat. “Let’s find out who’s opening the portals and stop them, shall we.”

  One of the dwarves was coming over to them. He was the biggest dwarf Rawk had ever seen. It looked like he could lift horses if he wanted to.

  “Morning. What are you two doing here?”

  Sylvia finished unwrapping her scarf. “Good morning, Yed. We have come to have a look at this place before you do your work. The woman is Falling Leaves, a sorcerer who is involved in the opening of the ohoga portals.”

  “Falling Leaves? You don’t say. At least you saved us from spending a few hours looking for her arm.”

  “The stump of that arm has healed,” Rawk said, “I’m sure—”

  “I was joking, Rawk.”

  “Oh. Right.” Rawk looked at the blood. “My mind is on other things.”

  “I can understand that.” Yed looked as well. “Look, I can give you about fifteen minutes, at best. This place is going to stink like a slaughter house if we don’t get moving.”

  Sylvia nodded. “Of course. We shall examine the body first so you can get that away as soon as possible.”

  “Excellent. Thacker wants his surgeons to take a look.”

  “I imagine so. Has anyone touched the body? Have the walked out to it?”

  Yed shook his head. “We’ve only been here about five minutes. We’ve just had a quick look around and were trying to work out how to go about things. I drew the short straw, so I’ll be going out there soon enough.”

  “I thought you were in charge,” Rawk said.

  Yed laughed. “Kings soon lose the respect of their soldiers if they aren’t willing to lead them into battle occasionally.”

  “I guess so.”

  Rawk followed Sylvia towards the body, being careful to find clean, dry patches of floor to place his feet, which became more difficult with every step. And with each step it became harder and harder to ignore the smell. It became harder and harder to ignore the naked body. When he got there he stopped for a moment. He was going to take a deep breath to calm himself, but thought better of it. The taste of death was unlikely to calm him at this point. He crouched down to look.

  There was a gaping hole in the stomach and another in the chest. “So, I guess this isn’t a Fiddernich.”

  “No. No it is not.”

  “It’s hard to believe that someone who removed a heart without leaving a wound then turned around and did something like this.”

  “I agree, the change does seem incongruous. Each of these methods of killing is frightening in its own way but the two of them together? I imagine the minions are petrified, not knowing what to expect.”

  “I guess.” There were sigils, or something similar, scrawled in blood on Falling Leaves’ legs and arm. “What do those words say?”

  Sylvia gathered herself and examined the marks as well. She mumbled to herself for a moment. “Hadaven, mulkern, grech.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have expected that here.”

  “You know of the jakanini?” She sounded impressed.

  “Of course not. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Sylvia sighed. “It is part of an ancient curse from the northern regions of Nern.”

  “And it’s normally painted on dead people?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what’s missing?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, surely there must be another word to go on the fourth limb.”

  She looked impressed again. “Yes, there is. But the four words mean ‘Your soul to never’— which basically means ‘go to hell’— and the word ‘to’ is missing. I would not think that was significant.”

  Rawk tried to think about what it might mean. After a minute he sighed. “You’re probably right. Whoever did this wasn’t leaving a message. Not for us, anyway.”

  “The violence is the only message here.”

  “So, was it done with magic? Or just with knives?” Rawk looked at the wounds for the first time.

  Sylvia did too, tilting her head to the side and pursing her lips. “I wish Thacker had sent a surgeon... I think it is a knife; it seems to be an actual cut.”

  “So, not helpful then. It could be any sadistic bastard, really.”

  “Indeed.”

  Rawk stayed where he was, staring at the body, wondering if there was anything he could decipher. But the longer he looked, the less he saw. Apart from the blood and gore. That wouldn’t leave him alone. Eventually, he rose to his feet and made his way over to where the dwarves were watching. They were standing by a trestle table near the gap between the bales. “Have you had a look around this place?” Rawk asked.

  Yed shrugged. “The lads had a bit of a wander around but didn’t find anything significant. No bloody knives or signed contracts or anything like that, if that’s what you were hoping.”

  “I was hoping, to be honest.” Not that he knew what he would do with the knife if he found it. Rawk looked around, as if he might see something from where he was that the dwarves has missed
. He didn’t, of course. “Has anyone talked to the owner? Did he know people were using his warehouse?”

  “He came around a bit earlier, very surprised and annoyed, and we sent him on his way. He didn’t know anything. That’s what he told us, anyway.”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you finished here? I’ve really got to get started.”

  Rawk looked at Sylvia and the elf nodded. But she turned to Yed. “The surgeon will be looking at the body today?”

  “We’ll be sending it straight there.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Hani Mer Habaonet.”

  “Thank you. I may go and see her, to see what she finds.”

  While Yed started his work, and Sylvia watched on, Rawk started to move away. As he headed towards the table, he passed a couple of dwarves going the other way with a big bag. He nodded a greeting but kept going to the workers that remaining behind.

  Rawk watched for a moment. “So, none of you found anything unusual around here?” Perhaps if he asked the question enough times someone would change their mind. They were starting to ready themselves too. They donned aprons and gloves and took tools from bags. There were old rags and scrubbing brushes, shovels and scrapers. And there was a crate with glass jars full of clear liquid and another one full of empty jars. There was a half eaten pastry on the corner of the table.

  “Nothing particularly strange stands out,” one of them said. He glanced out at the floor of the warehouse and gestured vaguely at the body and the blood. “Except that, of course.”

  Rawk sighed. “That’s what Yed told us. I was hoping you might have thought of something though.”

  “Sorry.”

  One by one, they moved away until there was just one left. “I’m not quite sure how I ended up in this line of work,” he said as he examined a scrubbing brush critically, as if a patch of rotting skin might still be stuck on there from the last job. “My father was a boilermaker. He had an apprenticeship lined up in his workshop and everything.” The dwarf grunted. “But I wanted to explore my options.”

  “Well, it seems that stuff like this is just another day at the office. For some of you at least.”

  He looked out at the floor again. “Not this. Nobody can get used to this.”