by Robert Beers
* * * *
“He's mad, I tell you; starkers. Totally, raving, starkers.” Wuest drained half of his ale in one go and picked up the pitcher sitting in the middle of the pub table.
“What else is new?” said Hodder, a life long friend. All elbows and knees with his six foot three scarecrow frame topped by a wild thatch of red hair, sat back in the booth and followed Wuest's example by tipping half of his own mug down his throat. The prominent Adams apple bobbed as the ale went past. “The last six Dukes've been starkers. You knows that. S'part of the heritage. Grisham wouldn't be Grisham without it.”
“Avin may be straight on this one though, Hodder.” Avin was Wuest's circle name. The one friends used. Stroughten, Wuest's other companion at the pub booth, was as ordinary in his appearance as Hodder was striking. Bland, medium brown eyes looked out of a medium face framed by medium brown hair. Stroughten's body was of medium height and built upon medium lines. The only unordinary thing about him was the fact that he was so unordinarally ordinary. He balanced Hodder's uniqueness quite nicely.
Stroughten reached for the pitcher, and refilled his mug, emptying the pitcher. He signaled for another before continuing his thought. “Gettin’ married to your favorite horse, or havin’ the moon arrested for keepin’ you up at night is fittin’ with the standards of our loving Duke's ancestors. Startin’ a bloody war with the Southern Empire because you're a bit bored is another thing alltogether.”
“Ok, so he's blooming starkers. There isn't a skrud's worth of difference we three can do about it, cept drink ale and complain.” Hodder followed his statement by giving an example of the drinking part.
Wuest took the pitcher a serving maid had placed in their midst and poured some of the ale into his mug. Some of it spilled over onto the tabletop. “I don't know what else to do. Knowing it's going to happen and being powerless to stop it...”
“I hear the sea air's good for a man's health.” Stroughten remarked dreamily.
“What?” Wuest's voice was beginning to slur with the amount he'd drunk.
“Yes...” Hodder picked up on his friend's tack. “A nice voyage would do us well, I think. Somewhere warm for the winter.”
Neither Wuest nor his booth companions noticed the look that crossed the serving maid's face as she listened in on their conversation. By the time the Duke's aide and his friends were snug in their separate beds, word of the coming war with the southern Empire was sweeping through the neighborhoods of Grisham like wildfire.
* * * *
Back in Bilardi's dungeon, McCabe felt the stirring as the world prepared for war. The voices inside of him quieted, as they, too, felt it, using his senses as their access into this world. He could sense the emotions of fear and worry spreading through the city as neighbor told neighbor about the ravening hoards of southern barbarians marching their way. He pushed with a small part of his/their will and extended the reach of his perception. Outside of the city, the emotions he liked the taste of best diminished. Word of war hadn't reached there yet, but there was something. A mind of power, raw and undeveloped, lay sleeping within reach of the gates, and another, no power there, no, but it was linked to something. He extended further. The sheer power of what he touched nearly overwhelmed him, and his questing senses recoiled lest he be discovered too soon. Those two held a combined power that could destroy what he'd become.
Another rat leapt onto his slab and died as it licked his hand.
A little more exertion extended his perception's radius even further, but he was careful to keep away from the area east of where he lay. To the west of him, he felt little of interest save a small spark of potential near Cloudhook. To the south, he could feel the Ortian army as it flowed north, and he paused to savor the raw fear of those conscripted along the way. The north proved uninteresting, and so he extended the radius to the furthest limit of his/their power. A name came to his mind ... Gilgafed. A bubble of nostalgia rose up within him. Part of him knew that name. Another part remembered the blood of a Garloc being used against him and wished revenge. The voices rose up again, wanting to feed on the power they sensed in that name. McCabe felt their hunger and echoed it. Unlike the other to the east, this would add to his ... essence. His store of power would increase, the whole becoming far greater than the parts. He would become this world's God. He liked that idea.
A small portion of his power was directed into the shackles that bound him to the slab and they crumbled to powder.
No one was in the dungeon to see him sit up. Fear had long since overridden the Duke's orders to keep a watch on his prisoner. McCabe looked at his wrists. They showed no sign of having been shackled for weeks in rusty iron, neither did his ankles. He wiggled his toes. He would get some boots before he headed north.
He fingered the tattered black silk of his shirt, and new clothing. The Duke would have something for him to wear; besides, a host should be thanked for his hospitality.
Dark-loving insects ran from him as he mounted the steps leading out of the dungeon.
* * * *
Cobain rushed down the hallway with a knot twisting the inside of his gut. His master's shrieks had pulled him out of a wonderful dream, the substance of which faded even as he ran.
“Master!” He cried, as he pushed through the door leading to the Sorcerer's chambers. “Master! What troubles you?”
Gilgafed lay in a fetal position, screaming as if his liver were being torn out of him while he watched. His voice was so hoarse that his servant could barely make out the words. “He's coming! I felt him touch me! He's coming!” This was repeated over and over.
Cobain tried to reach him, to comfort his master, but a barrier prevented him from getting any closer than about a foot away.
“Who's coming? Master! Who's coming?”
Cobain was suddenly gripped in the crushing grasp of giant, unseen hands. The sorcerer's voice came from everywhere in the chamber. “The Destroyer. He lives, and I felt his touch. He hungers for me, my power, and my life, and nothing will stop him from taking it all!”
Gilgafed's servant struggled against the mystical force that held him to no avail. “Master! Please! You're hurting me!”
“Send out my Golems. All of them. He must not get through. My life. Your life. The world's life depends on it.”
The sound of Gilgafed's voice echoed throughout Pestilence. The bats living in the caverns erupted out of the cave mouths as if the volcano had come back to life. They exploded into the early morning sky, creating a writhing dark cloud that circled the mountain, and sent several members of the fishing village at its flanks to their knees in prayer for Bardoc to save them from the evil one whose omen they'd just seen.
The last echo of the sorcerer's voice faded away, as did the force gripping Cobain. He fell to the marble floor of Gilgafed's chamber, and scrabbled backwards until his shoulders hit the wall. The Golems! Only a threat of the direst consequences would cause his master to issue such an order. Not for the first time he considered leaving Pestilence for more peaceful pastures, but threw the thought away as soon as it surfaced. He'd never get any further than the beach. One only needed to go there to see why. The sand of the beach was made up of bits of human bone.
* * * *
“Foggy.” Adam pulled the collar of his coat up so that it sheltered his neck. “And cold.”
“The weather's apparent to us all.” Milward remarked. “No need to state the obvious.”
Adam turned and caught the edge of the Wizard's scowl before it hid behind his beard. “Something bothering you, Milward? You've been cranky all day.”
The old Wizard patted his tunic inside of his robe. “I've told you before. I don't get cranky, or grumpy, or crabby. Damn and blast! Where's that skrudding pipe?”
“Of course.” Adam replied dryly. “I should have remembered that.”
“Ah ha! There it is!” Milward pulled out his errant pipe and proceeded to stuff its bowl with some of the fragrant Bac he pulled out of a belt pouch.
“That's better,” he stated, as he puffed his pipe to life. “Shall we get on down to the dock? I'm sure Rawn must be getting impatient waiting for us.”
Adam looked askance at Milward. “The old man? The one who ferried us over here to the library? But ... how can you tell? Was there a schedule? You certainly can't see the dock from up here.” He craned his neck to see above the rocks lining the cliff face at the library's southwestern border.
The Wizard puffed his pipe. “No, I sensed him. You could, too, if you just worked at it a bit. Go on, try.”
Adam worked the inner change that brought on the pressure he'd come to recognize as the power building within him. He started small, trying to expand his awareness of the things close by around him. It was as if a play opened in his mind, and he was sitting in a place that allowed him to swoop in close to each character as he chose. He saw the field mouse in its burrow under the rock next to Milward's left boot heel. Further out, there was a family of gulls below the lip of the cliff tending to their clutch of eggs, and further out from that...
“I see him. He's sitting in his boat ... smoking. Just like you are. It's almost like I can reach out and touch him.” Adam extended his right hand slowly.
“Don't do that!” Milward slapped Adam's hand down and the vision evaporated like a popped soap bubble.
“Why'd you do that?” Adam was more than a little irritated. He was having the most fun he'd had since coming to the library. And that included the time he'd spent researching the life of Labad.
“Because you would have given old Rawn a heart attack, at the very least, touching him, when he knows very well he's alone in his boat.” The Wizard pantomimed a ghostly hand reaching out and touching an unsuspecting shoulder.
Adam's eyes grew huge. “You mean, it was real? I was really there? I could touch him? Wow.”
“Yes, wow.” Milward echoed Adam's exclamation with a very small fraction of the enthusiasm.
“Can all Wizards, I mean, could all Wizards do that?” Adam followed Milward as they made their way down the switch back steps to the dock.
Milward's staff tapped the stone of the steps as they descended. “Only the most powerful. Most could only sense the area around them for a few feet. Good for finding lost keys and not much else. The very powerful, the few, such as Labad ... and myself during my younger days, could in essence be in two places at one time, but it was, and still is,” He fixed Adam with a warning glare over his shoulder. “A most dangerous thing to do. The unwary Wizard who attempts to manipulate things in the vision can become ... trapped ... yes, that's a good word for it. Trapped between the two realities.”
Adam could see his shudder from behind. Milward must know of someone that had happened to.
“Did they die?” He asked carefully.
“One can only hope.” The old Wizard replied. “Magik is a tool, Adam, that can be used to gently sculpt the fibers of dandelion fluff,or to bludgeon an enemy into paste. Technique and the skill of the practitioner are what make the difference, and the gentler skill is the harder to learn. Unlike other arts, a slip with this tool can be fatal to both the painting and the painter.”
“I'm coming to understand that,” Adam said, as he stepped onto the wood of the dock. He could smell the acrid aroma of Rawn's pipe coming from the boat moored at the foot of the dock. He felt a sense of accomplishment with the affirmation of what he'd seen with his magik on the cliff top.
“See?” Milward said, as they walked down the dock. “He's already loosening the ropes. Not a patient man, our Rawn.”
“I'll have ‘er loose in a jiffy, wizard.” Rawn's pipe puffed out billows of smoke, as he flipped the last coil off the piling.
Adam coughed as a cloud of Bac smoke rolled over him. “Thanks, but you needn't rush on our account.”
Milward climbed into the boat, and moved to a seat just starboard of the tiller. “Don't listen to the lad, Rawn, we're here, so let's be on our way.”
Rawn stood stiffly at attention and made an exaggerated seaman's salute. “Yes, Milord Wizard. At once, Milord Wizard. Shall I order room service, Milord Wizard?”
Adam nearly stepped into the straight instead of the boat, he was laughing so hard. Milward impaled Rawn with a fixed glare. “Do you have a sudden appetite for lily pads and flies, Rawn?”
The old sailor gave Milward an impertinent grin. “Do you know how to sail a boat?”
Milward blew out his mustaches with a “Hmmmphh!” And sat back with his arms crossed. Adam's chuckles received another glare.
The trip back to Grisham was as smooth as the trip from there had been rough. Adam was just as glad for the change. Last time, he'd nearly embarrassed himself by sicking up all over Rawn's boat. Only a strong resolve and several deep breaths prevented what he would have considered a personal tragedy from taking place. Milward rode the entire trip over, wrapped in a wall of sulky silence. Something was eating at the old Wizard, and Adam was at a loss as to how to pull him out of it.
If Rawn noticed the difference in his passengers from the first time they had ridden with him, he gave no sign indicating so. The old sailor puffed away on his reeking pipe, and hummed a merry, off-key tune. Gulls followed the boat in its tack from the library to its home slip at the southern end of Grisham's wharf. Every now and then, one of them would skim the surface of the straight just a couple of inches off the water, and then dip their bill in to snatch out a small silvery fish. Adam watched them for much of the passage, fascinated.
The wharf above Rawn's dock was a beehive of activity. People rushed everywhere, many of them carrying what looked to be their life's possessions. Several men, along with some women and children, were standing at the foot of a gangplank arguing with two burly ship's guards, demanding that they be allowed on board. One of the men was waving what looked to be a fat purse. It clanked with the highpitched sound of silver. The guards appeared ready to stand there all day.
Milward got out of the boat first, still silent. He looked deep in thought. Adam followed him, as Rawn steadied the boat with one hand on the edge of the dock.
“What's all this about, Rawn?” Adam stepped back, narrowly avoiding being run over by a fat matron running past with two squalling girls in tow.
“It's the bloody war. S'got everyone's knickers in a twist. Bunch o’ nonsense, iffn ya ask me.” Rawn looked at the bowl of his pipe, and then tapped the dottle into the waters of the straight.
“War?” Adam stopped dead in his tracks and turned to stare at the old sailor. “What war?”
Rawn spat into the water from where he stood on the dock. “That's right, ain't it? You an’ the Wizard there been outta touch over there in that library, ain'tcha? Seems our Duke got hisself inna dustup with the southern Emperor. Seems they's a milliyun o’ them soljers o’ theirs on th’ march ta turn Grisham into one big bonfire.”
“But ... that's horrible!”
“Iffn it's true.” More spittle flew from Rawn's mouth to the strait. “Sonny, when you git ta be as old as me, you'll learn more people'll sell their houses over a rumor, than they will on anythin’ else. Don't you go gettin’ yer knickers inna twist, too. Ask yer agin’ friend, there. He'll tell ya. S’ probably all over summat somebody said over a drink'er two, nothin’ more.”
“Is that true, Milward?” Adam tapped the old Wizard on the shoulder. A couple leading a pack mule rushed past, the mule braying its complaint at being made to go faster than it wanted to.
“Huh? Who's jostling me? Oh, it's you, Adam. What's the question?” Milward's eyes looked out of focus, like the eyes of a poppy addict.
Another knot of people pushed against them. A few tried to climb into Rawn's boat. He beat them back with a coil of rope. “I gotta git outta here, lad, afore summat happens, an’ I lose me lively'ood. Good luck ta yer's. Back! Git yerselves back, ya bleedin’ twits! Go find another boat. Back!”
He flashed a knife big enough to be called a small sword and uncoiled his line from the piling with the other hand. Some
of the people on the dock yelled and cursed at him as the sailboat drifted away from the pier, but the knife prevented them from taking further action.
Adam led Milward away from the pier and into the wharf area proper. The crowds grew closer, and there seemed to be no pattern to their activity other than a general movement toward the port and the ships at anchor there.
“Watch where you're putting those big feet of yours!” The old Wizard admonished a man with long, braided hair, and beads woven into his beard that had swerved into him. The crush grew tighter as they worked their way to the intersection that would take the to the market square.
“If one more bumpkin steps on my toes, I swear, I'll send a lightning bolt right up his bottom,” Milward grumped, “What's causing all of this anyway?” The crowd noise was so loud he had to shout for Adam to hear him.
“That's what I wanted to ask you about,” Adam shouted back, as they pushed through into the cross street that led into the square.
The crowd thinned abruptly along with the accompanying noise. Adam looked toward the square and saw why. A troop of Grisham soldiers swept through the square and into the side streets. Several carts pulling prison cages held a number of occupants. Some of them looked pretty wretched.
Milward turned from looking back at another one who'd come close to trodding on his already abused toes and saw the soldiers. He grabbed Adam by the arm. “Press gang. It's begun already.”
“When we get back to the inn, you and I are going to have a talk.” Adam glanced at the Wizard.
“You don't understand, boy.” Milward turned and faced Adam. “Those brutes are a press gang. Their job is to round up every single man, or child able to lift a sword. They are going to see you as an ideal candidate.”
The gang worked their way across the square and split off into smaller groups. One of the groups appeared at the opposite end of the street they were on, effectively cutting off any hope of retreat for those unfortunates still there.