The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

  Valeria did what no one else had dared to do, placing herself casually at the very centre of the room, so that she could look regally around at all its other occupants, drawn back against its various walls.

  All Reinmar could see of the man behind him was the sleeve of his robe, but he guessed that it was Brother Noel before he heard the murmured instruction to drop his weapon. He had no choice but to obey.

  Valeria did not seem quite as young as she had when Reinmar had last seen her, although she was still more vibrant than she had been when he first caught sight of her.

  “I thought you had gone to the secret valley,” Reinmar said bitterly. “The attack on Eilhart was supposedly not your concern.”

  “I had a dream,” was the lady’s reply. She seemed to think it adequate.

  Luther stood up and turned his back on his unconscious brother. “Did you come for me?” he asked.

  “She came for me,” Wirnt was quick to say. “I am her son.”

  “I think you will find that she came for the nectar,” Reinmar said quietly.

  “I did not come to hear you play guessing games,” Valeria informed them, impatiently. “I am the only one here who knows what this is all about, and the only one who knows how matters should proceed. I am the trusted one—the only trusted one.”

  Reinmar was surprised, but only slightly, by the distinct note of anxiety in her voice. She had been in control of the situation when she had last visited the house, but she knew that things were different now. “None of you is trusted, or ever was, or ever shall be,” he said, boldly. “Yours is a game in which trust has no part, and lust is everything.”

  The dagger was drawn more insistently against his throat, but the edge did not break the skin.

  “Now the whelp knows everything!” Valeria exclaimed, raising her hand in a languid gesture of contempt. “He is his father’s son, it seems. What a fool you were, Luther, to subject yourself to such as these.”

  “Give them what they want, Reinmar,” Gottfried said. “They have all the advantages now. Give them what they want and take Marguerite back to Eilhart. I can walk behind you, while they all find their own road to Hell. My father has had his last chance. From now on, we are our own masters, without obligation.” Reinmar knew that he was speaking hopefully, trying to persuade himself that all might yet be well.

  Reinmar knew, however, that all was not well.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why didn’t you bring the nectar when you had the chance, grandfather? And why did Marcilla put it back where you found it? Why does it keep coming back to me?”

  “You stole it,” Noel murmured in his ear, jut loud enough for the others to hear. “Thieves must be careful what they steal, lest the objects of their desire should steal them in return. You are ours now, Master Wieland, whether you know it or not.”

  “That’s a lie!” Gottfried was quick to say. “All of these are slaves already, but you are not. You should have smashed the phial when you found it, or spilled the liquor into the town sewer to mingle with all the blood it has spilled. Even now, it is not too late.”

  “But it is,” Brother Noel insisted.

  “Be quiet,” Valeria said, to Gottfried as well as the monk. “I say again, we should not be quarrelling over this. This is a family affair, after all—I include the girl, of course, since she seems so enthusiastic to join our little clan. What you have in your pouch, Reinmar, is what has brought us together after so long apart, and may keep us together in spite of our cuts and bruises. It can make us strong again, after far too many years of weakness.”

  “I fought last night to defend the town against monsters out of a nightmare,” Reinmar told her. “I saw my friends killed, and barely escaped death myself. Do you think I am ready now to become part of that nightmare?”

  “What better time could there be?” Valeria countered. “But that is not what anyone asks of you, Reinmar. No one here was fighting on the other side last night. We had better things to do with our time, and with our youth. The young do not know the value of youth, Reinmar, but I can assure you that I know it as well as anyone else alive. You might think I use it recklessly, but you will understand one day—as Albrecht understood, though he tried so hard to forget, and as Luther understands again, though he could not always remember it. We all know that it is best to stand aside from the battle that is mundane existence, let alone the kind of battle that you fought last night. Perhaps it is good that you did that, because you need to learn—but there is so much more that you might learn, if you would only seize the opportunity.”

  “This is nonsense,” Wirnt said, impatiently. “You may play whatever games you want, mother, but I came here to get the wine of dreams for myself, and I still mean to have it. I can take it, if I must.” He stepped forward, raising his arm slightly, to remind everyone that he still held Reinmar’s sword, and that it was by far the best weapon on display.

  The forward step was a mistake, because it brought him close enough to his mother to allow her to reach out and take his wrist—the right wrist—in her own delicate hand. The casual act could have been mistaken for a gesture of affection and reassurance, but it was not.

  Wirnt immediately tried to break free, but he could not, and while he struggled, his face grew somewhat older and the grey in his hair increased its dominion over the black. Flesh seemed to melt away from his overgenerous belly, leaving him almost as thin as his father had been. In the meantime, Valeria recovered the tiny fraction of her renewed youth that she had lost since she drank from the flask that Wirnt still held in his left hand.

  “Don’t be silly, Wirnt,” Valeria said. Then, to Reinmar, she said: “Sons can be so unruly, but their mothers always have the measure of them, even when their fathers retain no authority at all.”

  Reinmar heard Marguerite’s muffled gasp of astonishment, but no one else seemed even faintly surprised by what had happened. As she had openly declared, Valeria was the one who best understood what this was all about, and how it should go—but there was audible anxiety in every sentence that she spoke, no matter how contemptuous the words might be. She knew how the confrontation ought to go, but she was far from certain that it would.

  “I will not be your apprentice, lady,” he said.

  “Nor I yours,” she replied. “But there is a business to be run and a trade to be organised, and it requires a trusted man. You are a trusted man, now, in every sense of the word.”

  “My father runs the business,” Reinmar said. “I have no ambition to replace him before he is ready to be replaced.”

  “Take out the nectar, Reinmar,” Valeria said. “Let us all see what this is about.”

  “Don’t,” Gottfried said—but Reinmar knew that there was no point in leaving it where it was. He took out the phial, and held it up.

  “There is more than enough for all of us to take a sip,” Valeria observed. “The girl too, if she will. It will calm us all, and smooth our negotiations. It will revive those who need reviving—it may even have power enough to save Albrecht’s life.”

  It occurred to Reinmar when the sorceress spoke of taking “a sip” that even she had no idea how powerful the nectar was. Luther knew, if he still had enough self-possession to know anything at all, and Noel presumably knew, but Wirnt and his mother did not.

  “The last thing I need is medicine of that kind,” Gottfried growled. “I shall not drink, and nor shall my son. Nor will Marguerite.”

  “I’ll gladly take your share,” Luther told his son roughly. “Gladly.”

  Wirnt opened his mouth as if to advance his own claim, but nothing came out but a croak. He seemed astonished by his sudden weakness, appalled by the consciousness that he had tried to speak to some effect but had only been able to utter a wordless sound that might have been the dying breath of a carrion crow.

  Reinmar was still certain that he had never been meant to find his way into the underworld, but he understood now that not everything that he had done there had been his
own move in the continuing game. When he had taken up the phial he had yielded to temptation, and had never been free of it since. Even this was not an opportunity to free himself from that temptation, but only to postpone the conflict until another time. He was marked now, and the wine of dreams would follow him wherever he went, because he had penetrated its most precious secret. The events of the previous night might only be a sample of things to come, if he would not join Valeria’s conspiracy.

  Valeria was smiling now, but her smile was uneasy. “This is a great day,” she said, although the falseness of her confidence was obvious. “The reunion of a family; the healing of wounds old and new; the beginning of a new enterprise.”

  “I will not be part of it,” Gottfried insisted. “Reinmar—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Gottfried,” Luther interrupted. “You were young and stubborn when you set your face against this trade—as young as Reinmar is now—but you’re not so young now. You need the wine more than any of us, else you’ll die screaming when that wound turns septic.”

  “I will not die screaming,” Gottfried told his father, blending rage and outrage in his tone. “All flesh must wither and die, and all spirit too. Nothing can set that inevitability aside. There is nothing in that phial but delusion, and brief delusion at that. I have seen its promises, and I have seen them fail. I am an honest trader, and I intend to remain one for many years to come. You must make your own choice, Reinmar, but you’ve seen what life has made of me and you’ve seen what life has made of your grandfather.”

  “I’ve seen far more than that, father,” Reinmar said. I’ve seen the source of the wine, both the flower and the root of its temptations.”

  “You could not save the gypsy,” Valeria told him, although he already knew it, “because she never had the least desire to be saved. She was made to be a dreamer, and nothing could have kept her long awake once she had been called to her dream. Nothing. What could any mere man offer her, when she already had the love of a god?”

  “Let me go,” Reinmar said to Brother Noel. “Take the knife away, and I’ll open the phial.”

  The monk hesitated, but he had to look to Valeria for instruction.

  She nodded, and Noel removed his arm. He even took a step backwards, fully convinced that if things went awry he would have every opportunity to stab Reinmar in the back.

  Reinmar transferred the phial from his right hand to his left, but he made no move to open the seal. Instead, he looked at Wirnt. “I believe that you have my sword,” he said.

  Wirnt hesitated, and Reinmar saw a sharp glint enter the eyes that gleamed within his cousin’s suddenly-aged face. Wirnt freed his right hand from Valeria’s grip, and made a show of reaching out towards Reinmar—but it was the point that he extended, not the hilt.

  “Don’t be silly, Wirnt,” Valeria said, again—but it seemed that Wirnt had heard that particular injunction once too often. He slashed sideways with the blade, seemingly with all the force he could muster—not at Reinmar, but at his mother. The blade sliced into her throat, severing her windpipe and causing blood to fountain from her arteries at either side of her neck.

  The expression on her face was one of the utmost astonishment.

  As Valeria crumpled to the litter-strewn floor, Wirnt freed the blade again with a sudden wrench, and moved the tip in a slow arc, threatening to cut anyone else who moved.

  “Sons can be so unruly,” he said, mockingly, “but mothers must learn to let go. Do you not agree, Cousin Reinmar? Will you not agree with me that I had no choice? She really shouldn’t have tried to favour you over her own son, should she? That wasn’t right. You don’t really want that phial, do you? I shan’t be robbing you by taking it off your hands.”

  Reinmar smiled, as if to agree, and held out the object of the other’s fierce desire as if to surrender it.

  That was when Brother Noel—who had come late to his vocation—hurled his dagger with all the force he could muster. The blade buried itself to the hilt in Wirnt’s chest, cutting deep into his heart. While Wirnt was falling, Reinmar stepped forward, using his left hand to pluck the sword from the dead man’s nerveless fingers.

  The compound stink of blood and shit filled the room, but Reinmar was used to that by now and did not feel the need of a stronger perfume to cloak its vileness. He was now a man to whom the sight and nearness of death came naturally: a man who could anticipate the malice of others and make them pay the price of folly. And why should he not extract such prices in full, given that he was not merely a man who had fought and killed beastmen, and matched wits with fiends, but an honest tradesman?

  “The Lady Valeria should have known, if anyone did, how weak the bonds of family affection become, when they are strained by the wine of dreams,” he observed. “You must go away now, grandfather. There is no safety for you here. If you manage to reach Marienburg, tell anyone who asks that there will be no dark wine to be had for a year and more, and none to be had in Eilhart at any future time—not, at least, from the Wieland shop.”

  Having said that, he suddenly felt quite tired, but he knew that it was not a decision he would regret within the next few years, so long as he was awake and free of dreams.

  “One day, Reinmar,” Luther said, in a low voice, “you will understand. You are too young now, but you will never have Gottfried’s gift of utter insensitivity, no matter how you may try to cultivate it. One day, you will understand.”

  Reinmar turned briefly to look for Brother Noel, but the monk had seen Reinmar take back his sword, and he knew the havoc that blade had already wreaked among his brethren. He was running away as fast as his legs would carry him. Reinmar did not expect to see him again. Luther had not moved to follow him as yet, and his attitude suggested that he was in no hurry, but his awkward stance betrayed his deep anxiety.

  Reinmar looked down at the fallen bodies of Wirnt and Valeria—which seemed older now than they had before they suffered the fatal blows—before looking up at his grandfather.

  “Don’t ask me to give you the nectar, grandfather,” he said. “Don’t try to take it, either. You’ve had your share. Just go.”

  Luther seemed to be on the point of arguing, but he was not as mad now as he had been. Recent events had overlaid a new sobriety upon his hard-won youth. He looked hard at his son, but Gottfried was deliberately looking the other way, refusing to see him.

  In the end, Luther took one more look at the condition of the flesh on his once-wrinkled hands, and decided that Reinmar was right. He darted a glance in Albrecht’s direction before he left, but did not take the trouble to check whether there was any life remaining in the fallen man.

  It was left to Gottfried to haul himself painfully to his feet and make his way to where his uncle lay. His verdict was succinct. “Dead. We can only hope that he lived long enough to know that he was properly avenged.”

  When Reinmar looked down again, he saw that Valeria’s corpse was still mutating, although Wirnt’s had settled. Her flesh had shrivelled considerably, so that the skin lay upon her bones like parchment. The blood that had spilled from her gaping wound was now as black as ancient ink, and every bit as dry.

  Valeria must have hoped that she was invulnerable, Reinmar supposed, because she knew some petty sorceries. In fact, she had been as vulnerable as anything alive to the whim of the mysterious creature that she worshipped: the dark and playful god whose name he had not yet contrived to discover and probably never would. She had died anxious, perhaps because she understood how capriciously vindictive that whim had become.

  Reinmar remembered something that Matthias Vaedecker had said to him. The greatest power our enemies have is not that they can release daemons upon the world, but that they can twist their knives inside the hearts of those we know and love, turning cousin against cousin, brother against brother.

  Foremost in his mind, however, was one of the slogans that his father had been so enthusiastic to teach him.

  Good wine matures.

  “We
have to go back now, father,” he said to Gottfried, as he went to free Marguerite and help her to her feet. “The battle is finished, but the war goes on. Eilhart will not be rebuilt in a year—and from now until we all die, there will be people in the town who shudder every time they hear tales of monsters in the hills.”

  “There will always be monsters in the hills,” Gottfried said weakly. “We must all learn to live honestly and carefully with our fears, as we must all learn to live honestly and carefully with our lusts and appetites.”

  “And with our dreams,” Reinmar said, as he replaced the phial in his pouch, taking great care to ensure that the stopper was secure and that the glass was in no danger of breaking.

  He knew exactly where he would hide it, once he was home.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When asked why he dresses entirely in black, Brian Craig claims to be in mourning for H.P. Lovecraft, but the real reason is too dreadful to reveal. The rumour that he joined the British Antarctic Survey in 1993 “to get away from it all” is false; he failed the medical and had to join the French Foreign Legion under a pseudonym instead. He is not allowed to discuss the reasons for his dishonourable discharge therefrom in 1999, but he is glad that he will now have more time to write and play cricket.

  Brian Craig was the author of Zaragoz, Plague Daemon and Storm Warriors in an earlier range of Warhammer novels, and has contributed short stories to a range of anthologies, including The Dedalus Book of Femmes Fatales, edited by Brian Stableford. He is 28 and only looks older because his troubles have aged him.

  Scanning, formatting and basic

  proofing by Undead.