The Apprentice – The Dice Pool

The Apprentice, Chapter 16 and Epilogue

The end

I’m under no illusions about what this story is. It was my very first attempt at writing anything log form. The quality of the writing (or lack thereof,) the self-indulgence and the repetition of tropes and cliches are all too clear to me. In fact, it’s been so long since I wrote this (more than 12 or 13 years, I think) that it no longer feels like I was the one who wrote it. This makes it easier for me to be critical of it, but it also allows me to see the parts that shine. The plot and the character of Maryk still work for me, and there are elements of the world I built here that I used in later writings too.

I decided to share the story here as something of an exercise, but also as a form of motivation. I would like to be a better writer, and I think, laying this book out here for the world to see (or whatever tiny proportion of the world visit my humble blog at any rate) has forced me to look at my writing from a very different perspective. And I can see the flaws and the areas for improvement. And, hopefully, that will push me to write more and to write better.

Anyway, dear reader, I hope you enjoy this finalé to the Apprentice. Let me know what you thought of the story in the comments if you like.

Chapter 16: Dead is Dead

Delegation of duties for the dead was surprisingly easy. I had already discovered in my work with the ancient dead that talents and predispositions still existed within their decaying bodies. Therefore, some were excellent farmers, some builders of notable skill and others natural warriors. In the case of the skeletons I had to just figure out which were which by assigning them the tasks and ascertaining whether they did them well or poorly. In the case of the recent dead of Pitch Springs they were readily categorised for me. The graveyard was already split into guilds’ sections so all the masons were buried together, all the smiths were in one section, all the cooks in another. Of course, a corpse’s previous profession was not the only consideration. Stage of decomposition as well as completeness or otherwise of body were also important. I separated them as best I could, sending a hundred or more farmer’s corpses into the countryside to begin working on the land, a trio of dead smiths into town to begin working at the forge, a score of shambling masons to begin construction of a much needed wall for the town, two dozen ex-quarrymen to the quarry to begin extracting stone for the wall, a baker’s dozen of deceased coachmen to liberate some of the town’s carts and start transporting the stone from the quarry. There were a few other small groups and individuals: I put Grey Greta back to work but not before I’d had her picked of all her flesh (a rotting, stinky washerwoman would never do.) Ditto the three cooks I found and sent to start cooking up a feast in the Town Square. A single sculptor’s corpse I put to work sculpting a statue of my father in the middle of Saint Frackas’ Square. My father’s empty corpse did end up at my side after all, grasping his bastard sword in two hands and standing to attention as much as one can when one’s head is lolling over one’s right shoulder like the knot on a tied up sack.

Duties assigned, I returned to my fortress to make plans for the next stage of my plan. I walked with my last skeleton guard and my father flanking me all the way back. By the time I reached my home the sun had come up and I could see many of my new servants out in the fields, hard at work. I knew there would be a backlash against them but I decided I would not allow it. Hurrying back to the fortress I gathered the remaining ancient skeletons and ordered them to wound anyone who tried to interfere with the work of the newer dead and then I sent them out to guard the workers wherever they were. This left the fortress all but undefended. I was not worried about an attack from town. There was a force of peace-keepers, certainly, but they were not particularly well regarded. The constabulary of Pitch Springs was never trained to a very high standard and were generally considered to be layabouts. I could not imagine them planning and executing a siege or infiltration, in fact, I doubt they could imagine it themselves. They had seemed to work effectively enough during the incident when I returned the mayor to town, to be fair to them, but even then it was my father who had landed the fatal blow. The only man I might have feared now stood at my side. I felt perfectly safe ensconced, once more, in my study.

I watched the happenings in the town and the surrounding country by the use of several Farsee mirrors all hung side by side on the wall of my study. There was unrest. The Pitch Springers mostly stayed indoors and avoided the few of the dead that I had sent to work there. I wondered if any of them would partake of the feast being prepared in the centre of town. When I saw a pair of constables attack the cooks I was appalled. Couldn’t they see that all they were trying to do was prepare a meal? Why would you assault cooks, whether living or dead? The skeleton guard made short work of the constables, though it was, perhaps, a little too efficient, removing a whole hand from one and shattering the kneecap of the other. On the Markinson’s farm, Old Father Markinson launched a single-handed assault on the rotting corpse of his former neighbour, Farmer Yantzi which had been cleaning his farmyard while the dogs cowered under the chicken coop. An attempted defense by the skeleton guard went awry and it ended up with a shattered skull at the end of the spade in Markinson’s hands. it crumbled into bones and dust and then the head came off Farmer Yantzi’s corpse too. I watched as the old man burned the body and the head. A number of other such incidents ended up with the dismemberment, decapitation or cremation of the dead servants I had sent out to help. The skeletons that were left after my father’s ambush were not warriors and it showed.

Most folk on the farms simply left the dead servants to it, however, and I began to hope that they were coming around to my way of thinking. Then I noticed that they were not just leaving the dead to their work, they were leaving the farms to the dead. A congregation had begun in the Temple of Mictus where it had all started. All the people of the town had gathered there and as the farmers arrived in Pitch Springs they made straight for it too. Undoubtedly, they were plotting against me. They thought me some sort of villain and they did not see the truth behind my actions. With them all gathered in one place, I was tempted to launch an assault of my own. After all, it seemed the only people I could trust and rely on were the dead ones. I looked at my father’s corpse standing nearby and wondered what the man would have done in my position. I laughed then, “You would never have been in this situation, would you?” Wholesale slaughter, though? No. There was no situation in which he would have condoned it. None. I would have to achieve my goals the hard way, as if any of this had been easy.

Before proceeding, however, I had to find out what they were doing in the temple. I could not penetrate its walls, however. I imagined it was the power of Mictus which kept me out. I consulted the Book of Royal Magic to find out what alternatives to Farsee were available to me. Every few moments, I looked up at the mirrors to see if anything had changed. It took about an hour, but eventually, there was movement. Six constables emerged from the temple’s front doors and saddled up the horses that they had left outside before riding off towards the bridge out of town. A pair of burly townsmen, bearing torches despite the bright daylight pulled the doors shut again after they had gone. Undoubtedly, the constables were coming to me. Maybe they had a plan to infiltrate the fortress and kill me. They would find that exceedingly difficult. I considered calling in some of the remaining ancient dead but quickly decided against it and sent the corpse of my father out to defend the gate and the walls. I was sure he would be more than capable, and so it proved. In fact, if the attack I was expecting had come from where I expected it to, I would be safe and well today.

I returned to my search for the spell I needed, secure in the knowledge that I was well defended. Some time later I heard the clatter of hooves on the paving stones of the little road up to the fortress gates and I knew the constables had arrived. Out of my window I could see nothing but the corpse of Korl Scharpetzi atop the battlements, looking down at his enemy as they shouted vowels at him from below.

Turning my back on the window, I returned to the book and the mirrors. “I have often wished, Maryk, that this was not you,” said a very familiar voice. I raised my hands and turned, “Master Gedholdt!” He was slowly walking towards me now, skinny as ever but much greyer than I remembered him and had he always had that limp? I do not think I had spared this man more than a passing thought since I ran away, taking his most prized possession with me. I certainly never expected him to turn up here, with an expression of sadness and determination on his face. “It is you, though, Maryk. What happened that transformed you into this?” He gestured to me and then the surrounding study and, by implication, the fortress. “I met someone and she opened my eyes to my responsibilities. Someone of my great abilities has an obligation to help others. That is all I have been trying to do: to improve my people’s lives.” Looking down at his boots he shook his head, “Improve your people’s lives by raising their dearly departed relatives to build armies of the dead?! You’re talking madness. You learned nothing when you were apprenticed to me! I taught you to use magic sparingly and for the best of reasons.” He was angry now, he felt betrayed. “Master I-” “Don’t call me that! I was never your master. I was just your mark, wasn’t I? You drew me in until you saw the opportunity to take what you wanted and go. You’re a trickster, a thief and a murderer.” He shouted the last word and threw out his hands in a magical movement. A wall hit me, I felt my nose burst and my chest crack and my legs lift off the floor; another wall hit me from behind, this time the real, solid wall of the study. I knocked the back of my head off it and my vision took a break again. Falling to the floor, I hurt all over but particularly in my chest where I was quite certain one of my lungs had deflated. I sucked breaths in at a rapid pace without much success in obtaining air from them. I looked up at my attacker. Never had I seen the man look like this, he looked dangerous. I inhaled deeply, once and shouted as best as my one remaining lung would allow, “Poppa!”

My father’s corpse would be coming but it would take time. How was I going to survive this? I had to think quickly and act quickly. The fastest spell I could remember was the first one I had ever performed, the first one that Master Gedholdt had taught me to perform. I said the word quietly and made the movements painfully. A sphere of light encapsulated the head of my old master, causing him to stumble back and fall over an ornate cherry-wood chair. I made for the door while he was blinded. I heard him roar the words of a cancellation spell as he struggled back to his feet behind me. I hobbled down the corridor and then down the stairs to my father and his protection. Where was he anyway? It should not have taken him so long to respond to the summons. I had expected to meet him on the stair but he was not there, nor was he in the entrance hall of the keep. Master Gedholdt had regained his feet and his vision, at least partially. I heard him cry out as he came to the stairs and fall down several of them before catching the bannister and regaining his balance. “Maryk! Maryk, this is pointless. You cannot escape this fate. You are accursed. This is the final fulfilment of those curses. Stop running and accept it.” I ran on. “Maryk! You don’t understand! I’m not alone here!” What did he mean by that? The constables posed no danger, that was for sure. Who else, then? Who-

I exited the great main doors of the keep and looked into the courtyard. The third of my masters stood there before the gates on the opposite side: the Fae-Mother. She stood at her full height, the hair on her head fluttering around the brickwork on the underside of the gate’s arch. A glow of dark, living green emanated from her uncovered face and hands, but her eyes, looking through me as usual were black holes in the glow and seemed to belong to the shadows behind her. My father’s headless body lay on the flagstones before her, broken and twisted bastard sword beneath it. I sobbed, it felt more like losing a father this time for some reason. Also, her presence filled me with an unconquerable fear. I fell to my knees at the top of the steps. Gedholdt stumbled awkwardly out the main door behind me. “I tried to warn you Maryk. I did not come here on my own,” he said as he came to stand beside me, “She sought me out.”
“I will speak for myself, Gedholdt.” The sound of her voice made all the stones which constituted my fortress vibrate at an incredible frequency, it made my eyes feel like they were being crushed. Even Gedholdt was having difficulty staying upright under the assault of the ancient Fae’s words. “You mentioned Gedholdt to me, do you remember?” I nodded. Pain in my chest and nose made it impossible to speak. “I knew he would understand what you were doing much better than I. I realised and released your potential and perhaps even pushed you in the direction you eventually took. I watched you and listened to your voices, inner and outer, for a time before you met me. I knew you already then, much better than you did yourself, and I saw a waste of a mind and a life. You humans and your butterfly lives, you must live them fully every second to make them worth while. The Fae can sit and contemplate or sleep for hundreds of years if we like but you…your people are different. I saw what you could become with the right desires in place and a sense of responsibility. I gave you those things when I touched you. When you started to raise the dead, your logic, I thought, was faultless. It was the perfect solution for all your people. When I saw the reaction of the townspeople to your creations, I was surprised. Why? Why could they not accept the servants you sent them? I had no inkling. That is why I sought out your Master Gedholdt. He explained it to me.” The Fae-Mother nodded to Gedholdt who started down the steps even as I cowered there at the top of them. “Folk should stay dead. Human folk that is,” he bowed to the Fae-Mother who tipped her head at him demurely. “We cannot come back whole from the other side. We cannot stop the progress of time on our bodies. No-one wants to see their dead wife or child or grandfather walking about town, faces rotting, stinking to high heaven. Dead is dead, Maryk. It is an unwritten rule and you broke it. But it’s even worse than that. So much worse.” Gedholdt had taken up a position at the right hand of the Fae-Mother and looked up the two feet to her eyes.
“Your servants. Their souls yet inhabit their bodies. Or rather, they were pulled back from the Aether to fill the empty spaces in their rotting corpses by your spell. This spell of yours required the revived bodies to have a force within them. But, cleverly, you changed the spell too, did you not? You altered it so that they would have to obey you or someone like you. So, even though these souls occupied their old bodies they could do nothing to control them.” She stopped talking, mercifully and looked down at the body of my father, sprawled on the ground before her.

I reeled and and covered my eyes as I lay on my back trying to breathe, trying to talk, trying to refute this, trying not to imagine the existence suffered by a mind trapped in a body it could not control. “No,” was all I could manage. “On the contrary. Where do you think the energy came from to do what you did? You? You are more foolish than I realised or I would not have given you my gift. Progress is all I ever strove for, as you know, for my people and yours. It is too late for my people now. Yet I thought you could do what I could not. But I cannot condone this. You have corrupted the very notion of progress by trying to achieve it in this way.” I heard her coming closer, both of them approaching.

“I didn’t know,” I wheezed.
“Ignorance is no excuse.” She was heartless. “The souls you stole to power the corpses which were at the very heart of your plans did not know what you had in store for them and yet you trapped them and used their energy without their consent.” The Fae-Mother stood over me now, her power rolling off her in terrible waves. I uncovered my eyes and looked up at her and Gedholdt beside her.

“There is only one punishment fit for the crime you have committed, Maryk,” Gedholdt’s voice cracked as he knelt by my shoulder, “ I think you know what it is.” A tear in his eye made my breathing catch. He turned away then and the Fae-Mother reached down to touch me again with her glowing fingertip, as she had done that day in my little cabin in Creakwood. That day she gave my life purpose, this day, she took it away.

Epilogue

So I died. I died and yet my life went on. Life, perhaps is not the correct word for this state. I exist as a presence inside my own rotting corpse. I can see after a fashion through the eyes of this body, well, eye, there is only the one left. If it were not for that, I think this existence might just be bearable.
The Fae-Mother briefly became my mistress again, well the mistress of my animated corpse. On the first day of my death, after she killed me on the steps of my fortress, she ordered me into my study. My body climbed the stairs back to the room where I had spent so much of my time doing such wondrous work and discovering such amazing things in my studies. I felt like a passenger on a carriage-ride on the way there. When I got there the Fae-Mother ordered my body to stop in front of one of the larger mirrors I used to use to Farsee. I stood there and then she left and Gedholdt went with her. I have not seen them or anyone else for a very long time.

I often used to wonder how long it had been since they left me there alone. I drove myself to distraction trying to keep track of the passing of the days. My mind went away for a while and when you are just mind, that is a serious thing. When finally I came back I knew not how long it had been so I gave up measuring days and weeks and months and years. I measured the passage of time, instead, by the rotting of limbs, the nibbling of rats, the decomposition of the body I was trapped in. There is no escaping it. But to try, I started to entertain myself with stories.

As I explained, my favourite one is the tale of the Man who Killed Sheep with a Stare and I told myself that one often, embellishing the tale in a variety of ways, adding more excitement or a new twist now and again. I had taken, more recently, to reciting to myself the tale of my own life. Once again I often changed it to please myself but it always began the same way. Perhaps I’ll start it again now and this time maybe I’ll let Cobbles live.

I don’t remember it, of course, but I killed my mother as a newborn. I did not learn this from my father. I was not aware of it at all until my sister told me. She has never forgiven me for it.

The Apprentice, Chapter 15

Dad’s home

Guess who’s back in town?

Chapter 15: Taking Control

Gentleness and graciousness had not worked. I was trying to better the lives of everyone and they were blinkered by base fear and ignorance. How could I have imagined anything other than this reaction from these people? Their lives were so black and white, good and evil, alive and dead. It was disheartening. Yet I was not ready to give up on my plans; if they would not see the future I would make them see. The mayor would have his part to play though I would have to do some spell modification again before I could make that happen.

I set my servants to the task of cleaning up the courtyard. It was only then that I noticed the child. A girl of thirteen or maybe fourteen (yes, I realise the irony of me calling her a child but the fact was I felt and looked a great deal older.) It seemed she had fallen to the ground in the rush and scrum as folks panicked. Then one of the tables must have fallen on top of her, depositing chicken bones, corn husks and greens to cover her further. At some point she had been knocked unconscious. As the skeletons lifted the toppled table off her she stirred.
“Hide quickly!” I ordered them. As she pushed herself up off the flagstones I went to her side, “are you hurt?” I asked. “I don’t think so, at least not badly. What happened? Where is everyone? Where is my father? My father left me!” She was becoming distraught. Her head was whipping from side to side in search of a familiar face. Tears dropped from her cheeks and her lips quivered. “Shush now. They have not abandoned you. There was an emergency and they all had to flee. You may have been overlooked in the chaos but you will be returned to them. Here take a seat on the bench and have some water.” I stepped away to fetch a water jug from the table behind us and quickly performed Calm. When I returned, she gratefully accepted the cup from me and gave me a pretty smile in return.

“Now, someone at the party spoke to me of something odd. Perhaps you can illuminate the matter for me. This gentleman told me that the dead had risen in Pitch Springs once. Could this be true?” I asked. “Oh yes! It was the worst day I can remember. It was four years ago. There were three of them. One of them was Pretty Primmy Sharpetzi, one was this poor farmer who had walked under a plough and the last one was a little girl who died in a fire at her family’s farmhouse. I don’t know the names of the other two but I remember Primmy, all the girls do. We all wanted to look like Primmy when we grew up.”
“We live on Mictus Square so I saw the whole thing, well, when they came out of the temple anyways. I saw a little man or a boy leaving first, I don’t think he was one of the dead so I don’t know how he got away from them but they found Hindryk Scheimtzi inside the temple near the altar. There wasn’t much of him left, my Poppa said, but his Momma recognised his clothes. Anyways, it looks like maybe the dead ones had been too busy eating poor Hindryk to worry about this fellow who escaped. It’s funny, I remember seeing this little man pushing something ahead of him like it was on wheels, though I didn’t see any wheels on it. It might have been a big book or a little casket, it was hard to see. He pushed it all the way out of the square and not long after that the dead came out, I screamed when I saw the farmer. He came out first and ran off across the bridge.”
“I heard later that he had gone home to his farm, ate four chickens and a little puppy before his widow came outside to see what was happening. They say he almost chewed her head clean off before his son plucked up the courage to take him on with a pitch-fork, impaled his dead Poppa on it and stuck him to the wall of their stable. My Poppa, who’s one of the mayor’s men, said he was still struggling and writhing when he got out there to see what had happened. They burned the whole stable to do him in. It took a long time for him to stop moving and moaning, Poppa said.”
“The little burned girl went home too, I was told. Of course no-one was home. All her people died in the fire too, you see. I heard she lived for a few days after it happened and that’s why she wasn’t with them in the temple. So she went to the house but it was a burned down wreck. She went inside and just stayed there. It was a few days before anyone noticed there was someone in there. It was her old neighbour, a boy she used to play with, only six years old. I don’t know exactly what happened but she made short work of him by all accounts. After that she ran out of the house and into the town, attacking everyone she saw. A lot of folks got bit and scratched but she didn’t manage to kill anyone else before a constable rode her down on his horse. Even after that, she was still thrashing about though she was so broken she couldn’t get up. They caught her in a net and dragged her off outside town. Knowing about the fat farmer already, they burned her up and finished the job the house fire had started.”
“Primmy…poor Primmy. Guess where she went to. That’s right, she went home too, to her house on Saint Frackas’ Square but not before she visited the old washer woman she used to work for. Grey Greta got dragged out of that place and into the street. She was screaming and hollering so much half the town turned out to see what was happening. It was well past my bedtime but I snuck out wrapped in a blanket to find out what had happened. I saw Primmy there with her black eyes and blood all over her, tearing great chunks out of Greta with her teeth. By the time the constables arrived The woman was long dead and Primmy was just eating her! Everyone stayed well back, standing in doorways and behind anything they could find. I was hiding behind an old watering trough in front of the inn there when they came. When she saw them she hissed like a demon and spat the washerwoman’s blood at them. They charged her and forced her back into the house and then they threw lit torches in after her. We all watched it go up and everyone pitched in to put the fire out. When the constables went inside after it had cooled down, though, there was no sign of Primmy. She had escaped out the back. It was a few hours later when a constable went to check her house and he found what was left of her old governess in bits on the floor of the parlour. The whole place was covered in blood and Primmy, they said, was upstairs in her room, just sitting there on her bed. She tried to attack them when they found her but they hacked her to pieces and then burned the pieces in the square in front of the house.”
“It was all so scary and sad. I can’t believe that poor Primmy, Pretty Primmy ended up one of the walking dead.”
The girl fell silent then, her story done.
“Its time for you to go home now,” I said to her. I went and fetched one of the horses from the stables and lifted her up into the saddle. “Just tell your father you fell asleep after everything that happened and then took this horse home. Just pat him on the rump when you get there and he’ll make his own way back to me.” And away she went.

“She was not like you, my servant,” I said to the nearest of my skeletal minions, “her curse was unbalanced by a lack of control. You know your place and what you should do.” I looked down again at the corpse of the mayor, “although you do it a little over-zealously on occasion. I must bring control to Pitch Springs if this is ever to work anywhere else. You and you: take the body inside and leave it in my study,” I said, pointing at two of the ancient dead.

The next day, the mayor was up and about again. Dressed in a new shirt and jacket it was even difficult to tell that he had been speared through the chest and was missing a vital organ. He still looked dead, of course, but I had given him an ability unknown to the others; he could speak. Well, he could speak after a fashion. His mouth, undamaged and undecayed could still form words and I made it so that he could draw air into his lungs and release it to give his mouth’s words volume. I myself would give him the words to speak through a magical connection.
Back to Pitch Springs went its mayor with me following him all the way through the use of Farsee. I watched as he crossed the bridge and entered the town. An elderly man, his eyes no doubt, weakened by the years, approached to greet him. I could not hear what was said but as he drew nearer the old man slowed and peered harder before stopping, pointing at my mayor and running back into town, waving his hands about in the air. Panic ensued and all ran before the dead mayor. He continued on at a measured pace until he reached the town hall where he stood on the steps. The Town Square was deserted but I began to speak anyway.
“Folk of Pitch Springs, please come out to hear my words. I wish you no harm.” Nothing happened. Unsurprisingly, they did not believe me. “If you are so fearful then come and destroy this body…” This time there was movement on the far side of the square. A brace of mounted constables arrived followed by a few cowering townspeople brandishing torches. One constable started to shout something. I do not know what. I continued. “Finally, an audience. Please lend me your kind ears.” I noticed a few curtains flick in the windows around the square. I was getting their attention. “I have sent your former mayor here to tell you what I have to tell you. I am the occupier of the fortress on the Scharpetzi farm…Davus lu Fae, and I am speaking to you through this body for two reasons. One, I think you will take it better coming from the mouth of someone you know and trust; and two, to show you that the dead can be made to work for us. I raised this corpse from the dead to be a tool. It is a tool of communication, this one. Imagine a world where we used such tools to perform the manual tasks that we normally must spend hours of our time doing ourselves. They can farm, as they have on my land, resurrecting a farm from the dead. They can build and cook and wash and fetch and deliver and fight if necessary but all at our command. This is an opportunity that you can grab now! Imagine what your lives could become with the time to do as you please, when you please. Our people could progress culturally and academically and economically in great leaps!” I stopped speaking. The constables were very close now, right at the foot of the steps but their horses reared and shied away from the mayor’s animated corpse. The townspeople with their torches hung back and watched the mayor warily. Others had come out of their doors and stood around the edges of the square, hands covering mouths, eyes creased with disgust and dismay. “You still do not see the potential!” I shouted, angry now at their refusal to see my great vision for them. “You would prefer to fester in your pathetic little homes, toiling every day to earn a crust of bread when I am offering you a life of leisure and a feast! You do no-”

A man emerged from the town hall and walked around to look in the mayor’s drooping, pallid face. He was a big, broad, grey-haired, clean-shaven man, wearing a cuirass of banded mail and a bastard sword strapped to his back. I commanded the mirror to focus on the man as he spoke to the corpse. I fell to the floor when I saw his face as his achingly familiar lips and teeth and tongue formed the words, I – am – coming – for – you. I sat there, trembling as my father, Korl Sharpetzi, drew his enormous sword from its sheath and hacked the head off the mayor. He dragged body and head into the middle of the square. The townspeople closed in and threw their torches on it. I ended the Farsee spell and put my face in my hands. I wept as I had not done since I was just a babe. He was home and he wanted to kill me. He did not understand my plans. If there was one person in all the world I would have wanted to understand, it was my father, and I was sure he would. My certainty was misplaced, it seemed. Now, I had to make a plan to defend myself from him. He was war-hardened now, perhaps like he had been before he had ever had a family. He was a seasoned warrior and he had every reason to want to kill me: I had killed his daughter and then returned her to life as an abomination, I had caused the death of our governess who had been his own governess as a boy and he thought I was a menace to his town. I was afraid. I had never before been afraid of my father. When my sister and I were small children he never struck us and never raised his voice to us. Poppa always looked on us with kindness and understanding even though I had killed Momma and Primmy was always doing stupid things. The face of my father that I saw in the mirror had the look of someone possessed by hate and vengeance. He had earned some scars in the wars, I could see a jagged one running across his forehead and a crescent under his right eye but most of them were behind his bloodshot eyes.

I banished my fear, telling myself that if only I could meet him in person and he saw it was me I could talk to him rationally and make him see things my way. I dreamt of a tearful reunion, the two Scharpetzi men together again at long last. I imagined him at my right hand as my plans and my servants transformed the world. I was sure everything would turn out as I wanted it to; no, even better than that. Poppa wouldn’t hurt me, he would join me. So I decided to continue as if nothing had changed.
Now, graveyards, boneyards, cemeteries, mass graves, catacombs; these would all cease to be needed in the long run as corpses would be raised almost as soon as their souls had departed in the future that I pictured. So all those burial places would become plots of land that could be reclaimed in the name of progress. Until then, however, they were to be my primary source of new labour. I had to go recruiting that night, in fact and the most populous graveyard in the region was right on the edge of Pitch Springs. There were hundreds of corpses there, many of them would be too decomposed to be of any practical use but a great number would be relatively intact and could once again be made into productive members of society. It was time to go on an outing. A dozen of my skeletal servants accompanied me to the Pitch Springs Town Graveyard. The words were embossed on a metallic arch over the gate. It was the dead of night and the place was locked up so I had four of the skeletons pull the gates off their hinges to allow us entry. The gates clattered and clunked heavily onto the pavement outside and lay there resembling ornate cattle grids. I walked in after the gate wreckers, trailing skeletal minions. They formed a protective circle around me once I had come to a stop on the path in the centre of the graveyard.

I began the spell, the amalgam of spells which gave me control over the dead ones that I had raised. I sang the words and performed the movements perfectly but was interrupted when the skeleton directly to my right toppled over into a pile of bones and roots. It’s head had exploded. The circle had only just tightened around me when I saw the next one in line to the right collapse. What is happening to them? I thought. Is it magic? But then I saw it. An arrow streaked past my face, only a rib’s width from my nose, and exploded the skull of another skeleton directly to my left. I was under attack.

The area was covered in ancient, brittle bones. The magic that animated the skeletons also toughened and strengthened them but losing their heads seemed to break the spell and all its effects. Stepping backwards in an attempt to avoid the next arrow the sole of my boot connected with a leg bone which rolled and then crunched underfoot. The back of my head hit a paving stone with enough force to fill my eyes with black holes and bright stars. I was unable to arise immediately. While I lay there I could hear the swipe and swish of a heavy sword as it sang its way through my skeleton guard. I was showered with bone shards. Flinging my arms over my face I saved myself from blinding by that terrible rain. I shook my head painfully until my vision returned almost to normal and I saw him there, beheading the last of my skeleton guards. My father raised his enormous bastard sword in both hands and looked about him with practiced motions, wary, alert, ready to fight. From the corner of my eye I saw what he could not have from his vantage point; one of the skeletons, head battered sideways and crooked as a five-ace pack, trying to gain his feet behind a gravestone nearby where it had been knocked by the sheer force of one of my father’s terrific blows.

What would you do? I was not to have the chance to convince him of the rightness of my plans, his plan was to kill me, as quickly as he could. I could not, in good conscience, allow my father to murder his son after all that had happened to me in my life due to the murder of family members. What would you do? Well, that’s a question that does not matter. I was the one in this situation and I cannot imagine that anyone else has ever been in a predicament exactly like it before. Looking back now, however, I can see that, although I take responsibility for my actions like an adult, I know I was under the Fae-Mother’s influence still. I see it all so clearly…now that it is too late.

I called to him. He had not recognised me by my features alone since my features had changed so drastically in the years and months since last we had encountered one another. I called him, “Poppa! Poppa! Its me!” He looked towards me without a trace of the hate or anger that I had seen in his face when he was speaking to the mayor’s corpse. He wore the expression of focus and seriousness he always wore when working, no matter if he was pounding fence posts, writing a letter or teaching me a lesson. I knew what I was doing. I knew what was going to happen. I knew, even, a little of what I would have to live with later. But I was committed to my cause, to the betterment of all people, no matter the cost. “Maryk?” his whole face squinted and his forehead scar rippled in the folds of his brow, “It can’t be. Maryk is dead!” I levered myself up onto my elbows and said, “I’m not dead, Poppa. I’m Davus lu Fae. It is me. Just look. I know I have changed but you must know your own son.”

My Poppa leaned down, dropping his massive sword until the point rested on the ground. “By all the Saints…Maryk…What have you done here? Why do you look as if you are an older man than I? Was it…was it you that killed your sister? How could you do all this!? Didn’t I raise you better than this? Why, Maryk? Why? Why? Why?” I gazed up into his face. He was weeping. I had never seen him do that before. I remembered my sister saying that Old Aggie came to collect jars of his tears because they were magic. I remembered seeing his face smiling and at peace, sitting in his rocking chair following a long day’s work, puffing on his pipe and telling us all about goblin bakers and talking dogs and then his two bony hands grabbed each side of his grey head and snapped it sharply all the way around until he faced backwards. My father’s corpse fell on top of me and I screamed until the last remaining skeleton lifted it off and I was able to rise.
I finished the job I had come to the graveyard to do. More committed than ever before, that’s how I felt then. I had just killed my own father for the sake of it and now even he became just another dead servant along with everyone who had died in the town of Pitch Springs in the last hundred years.

The Apprentice, Chapter 14

Big plans

It’s nice to come up with plans and see them come to fruition, isn’t it? We gain an enormous sense of pride and well-being from our work, when it goes right, at least. Maryk is no different but his plans involve improving the lives of every living person, somehow. It’s a big deal! I’m sure we all wish him well in his endeavours, especially as his plans have a tendency to go a little awry, usually to the detriment of all those around him.

Chapter 14: The Working Dead

It had been in front of me for years. The last casualty of my curse offered the clue to how I could help my people gain their freedom. I spent several days in confinement while I studied and planned and prepared. Meanwhile, outside, the newly appeared fortress had begun to attract attention from the locals. I performed Farsee so that I didn’t have to show my face at the window. My assumption was that the local people had considered me dead, probably at the hands of the dead and moving Primula. I was in no hurry to disabuse them of this notion. It would be more useful for my identity to remain unknown. Anonymity might just offer even greater protection than my new home. Farsee transformed the surface of the mirror in my bedroom into an eye to view whatever I wished. It was one of the most useful spells I had mastered from the Royal Magic book. Now I looked at the area directly outside the gate and saw the Markinsons, beet-faced father and cruel sons. They were banging on the gate with sticks, either to get the attention of the occupant (me, though they couldn’t have known it) or to try to break it down. They would not succeed in either. I had no interest in them and a simple Silence spell around my room would take care of the noise they were making. Attention from the locals was inevitable of course but I had hoped to be left alone a little longer; I had a great deal of work to do, after all.

I found the spell I was looking for again. I had only used it once before and it had not worked as I had hoped it would that time but now I knew what to expect and I expected it to achieve my goals. I had to find another spell in the book, however, that I could use in conjunction to give me the control I had lacked last time. It would take time to find and even more time to meld the two spells. It was my greatest magical challenge yet. As such I spent all day every day for a week locked away in my, admittedly comfortable, rooms, studying and writing and working. I went out at night-time only, when it was safe to go and find food. I still survived on very little sleep each night, only an hour or two most nights, so that left me plenty of time to hunt. I used magic, obviously since I had never really handled a weapon with any great confidence. I simply lured the animals out with a simple Charm Beast spell and then fried them with a Firebolt. For vegetables I just went to the Markinsons’ and dug up what I wanted from their fields. I did not feel bad about this.

After a week like this I felt I was as magically ready as I would ever get. That evening I took my amalgamated spell on a scroll of parchment and exited my fortress, setting off to the Creakwood. I knew what I needed would be there. Coming upon the crevasse, I worried that I might have damaged what I needed, near as it was to the epicentre of the earthquake. As I got closer to my goal, though, I could see that it was more or less intact. Only a few gravestones had been knocked over, the graves themselves seemed unaffected.

The Dead, of course, would make the ideal workers for the society I wished to build. The dead would never tire, they did not require payment or even sustenance, they could be controlled to a degree the living could never be and to a degree the Ens could not because they did not have a will of their own. They could be much stronger than the living and would be unflinching and highly effective if sent into battle. Why had no other great mage ever thought of this before? I had read a great deal on the subject by this point. There had been many mages who raised the undead but none of them had ever sought to control them to such an extent. They had only ever been used in the pursuit of wholesale murder, chaos and terror. I think I am the first ever to have come up with a spell alloy that would not only raise the undead but also place them firmly in my own control. They would follow my instructions to the letter without question.

Of course the answer to my question is obvious to me now that I am free of the Fae-Mother’s influence. The dead deserve to remain dead and gone even if one thinks that the soul departs the body when life leaves it. No-one wants to see their loved ones or even their recently deceased acquaintances or neighbours walking about, performing everyday labours in a state of profound decomposition. Of course, the decomposition problem did not arise with the first set of bodies I took from their graves in the Creakwood.

The spell was quite a long one, taking about one hour to perform. When I finished the final movement I could see immediate results. Ancient skeletal hands, digging their way out of the ground, ripping roots apart on their way. They hoisted themselves up out of the holes they left behind and stood at attention by their gravestones like soldiers. There were more than a hundred of them but some had not come out so well. There were several missing skeletal limbs, one had no lower half and the ribcage of one was so badly damaged that it bowed forward constantly. Many of them had become one with the flora of the place and the right arm of one old blighter had been replaced by a long tentacle-like root. I was delighted with them. They would be my first workforce. I intended to put them to work in the fortress and the surrounding farm. I would make it thrive again and I would do it with the untiring limbs of my skeletons.
I marched them back to the fortress in the darkness. I had given them the command, “Defend me.” They defended me alright. They efficiently dealt with a fox, a house cat and a low-flying bat. All of them had simply gotten too close, I suppose. All of them might have caused me some harm, I suppose. Perhaps my orders had to be a little more specific, after all there was no reason for anyone or any thing to die needlessly.

Once back at the fortress I put them to work immediately. I had them destroy the old farmhouse and strip it of all useful building materials. You might think this caused me some distress but I was actually happy that the old place, abandoned and useless for so long, could be put to use in proving the rightness of my plans. I watched from the tallest of my four bright towers as the dead smashed it and tore it and pummelled it and I felt gladness. I watched them take the timbers and the stones and begin to build high walls around the farm. It might be difficult to do, I thought, but it was best if the neighbours did not yet know of the goings on in the Old Sharpetzi Place. Once the wall was finished I had them prepare the land. It had been a greenless, dusty ruin for so long that I did, at first, question whether we would have a chance of reviving it. “I have revived the ancient dead to serve me. One little farm should not be so difficult.”

There were certain things I could not have my servants do, however. They could not go to market to buy the seeds and beasts one requires to build a farm from scratch, at least not yet. Even if people accepted them, they would be incapable of negotiation and would be somewhat prone to being cheated. For now, I would have to handle any face to face dealings with other people. Even the idea of this made my heart race and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I once made a vow to myself to stay away from other people at all costs so that my curses would not fall on them and, although my outlook on life had changed since the Fae-Mother touched me, I had not forgotten this promise. I shook it off. “Well, if one person comes to harm I will honour them for their sacrifice in my cause.” This is what I told myself. I believed it too.

So, I went to town. Pitch Springs had changed not at all, unsurprisingly, though I noted the damage my earthquake had done and the absence of the old washerwoman’s house where Primula used to work. By the black burns on the walls of the adjacent houses I took it that it had burned down. I had to go early on a Saturday morning to get to the market before the largest crowd had gathered there. If I were to be recognised by any of the locals, it would be difficult to explain myself. An illusion worked to disguise me as an old man. This was not such a difficult trick considering how I already resembled someone four times my age. A slightly more difficult trick was to make the merchants believe I had paid them when I had no form of currency. I had considered taking a cartload of superfluous furniture from the fortress and trading it but I did not imagine that many of the agricultural traders and farmers who manned the stalls would have enough knowledge of art or joinery to offer a fair price for them even if they wanted them. All of that was academic, of course, because I had no way of transporting it all. Among other things, I was there to purchase beasts of burden. In the long term, I fully intended attaching the dead to carts and carriage and having them transport goods and even people without the need for expensive horses and donkeys. In the short-term, I had to keep my activities secret so the animals would be a necessity. Also I would need them to pull the cart-load of supplies I was about to purchase. I did perform magic to fool the merchants at the market that day. I had some qualms about this as thievery seemed about as low an act as one could perform. However, I told myself that once my plan was entirely successful I could repay them what I owed them and more.
I decided to start relatively small. I purchased several bags of seeds for grains and tubers and also some for a variety of hardy greens like cabbage and kale. A dozen laying hens I got at a very good price off a farmer from out near Priest’s Point (or would have, had I paid him for them at all.) The horses I purchased were two large, sturdy drays, white and brown of coat and they were more than capable of drawing the cart (conjured.) I also stocked up on food for myself so that I did not have to live on nothing but eggs and the Markinsons’ stolen produce from.

On my way back to the fortress, sitting atop the cart, I considered how lucky I was that I ran into no-one who knew me in Pitch Springs. This made me wonder, but I took it as a good sign and continued on past the place of Grey Steel’s death. My spirits were high and I hummed a tuneless tune the rest of the way.

When I got there I was forced to strike the Markinson boys blind. The two of them had come sniffing around the gate of the farm this time. Since my servants had erected the wall and the gate in it they could no longer make it all the way up to the fortress. I saw them from the road. They had brought dogs and scythes with them. Watching them from the safety of the shadow under the trees, I considered murdering them. I still despised them for their unwarranted cruelty to their own dog all those years before and the very sight of them caused a rage to rise in my chest. Instead, I decided that I would punish them and rid myself of them in another way. Since they acted as though they were blind to the suffering of their animals, I would make them blind in fact. Blind was the sort of spell of which Master Gedholdt would never have approved. It seems that the old Fomori Emperor rather enjoyed using it as a punishment for those who disobeyed him. It was the most fitting treatment I could imagine for those monstrous boys. I performed the spell as quickly as I could but just at the end, right before the final movement in which I had to cover my own eyes, the Markinsons heard me and turned my way. They glimpsed me. I was the last thing they would ever see. I watched them for a while after that, fumbling and crying for their mother and for me, “Old man! Old man! Help! We are blind!” I stayed quiet until they regained enough sense to catch their dogs by their collars and tell them to go home. Then I proceeded the rest of the way up the road and summoned my servants to open the gate for me. As the gate opened I ran over the pair of dropped scythes and never even looked at them.

Now, farm supplies secured, the work could begin in earnest. It would take a year, as I saw it, to really see the benefit that my untiring workforce could bring to folk. All seasons are important on a farm and there is always work to be done, no matter the weather. I remembered very well having to muck out the sheep sheds in the winter with frozen-solid fingers and mud in my boots. The skeletons had no feeling in their fingers anyway and no boots to get muddy. They worked night and day all year round, ploughing and sowing and feeding and collecting and reaping and harvesting. I went back to Pitch Springs several more times to “purchase” more supplies, each time with the illusion of a different disguise. If the merchants realised I had cheated them the last time they might be loathe to accept my custom again. I bought livestock and not just chickens, a hundred sheep and a couple of cows and goats for their milk. Before the year was out I was self-sufficient and I never had any work to do except trying to keep the locals off my back.
Inevitably, the Markinson’s were not the last folk to come and knock on my gates. I had the local constable visit one day. I watched him in the mirror but did not even consider allowing him entrance. What was he going to complain about? Building code violations? A number of travelling traders and tinkers came to the gate. I was tempted to treat with them but decided to just let them go on their way rather than reveal myself to anyone too soon. One morning a whole gaggle of Kor worshippers arrived. Kor was a god from Bruschia in the North who was supposed to protect folk from magic. I saw that Mrs Markinson was among them. Maybe she had converted to Korism after her lads came home blind. It wouldn’t help them now. Prayers and entreaties to their god did no good, the wall and gate remained standing as did my home. I watched them leave, downcast, and wondered if they had any inkling that I was trying to help them and improve their lives. How could they? These religious types were always so narrow-minded. Acceptance from them was, almost certainly, impossible. No matter. Once everyone else saw the results of my works and the labours of my servants, they would be forced to acknowledge that I was right and that I would be able to help them progress to a new cultural level just as the Fae-Mother had done with her own people. Except I would be even more successful.

During this whole year I did not see the Fae-Mother even once. For me, I think this was a blessing. She had provided me the impetus to take up my great work and I was always grateful for that but I did not need her now. I was going to reshape human society with the help of my servants. Dead humans helping living ones, as it should be. I did not need the involvement of the Fae in this work.

I decided on a date that I would show my works to the people of Pitch Springs, my birthday seemed appropriate. In the dark recesses of my ego I imagined the date becoming a feast day in the future, to commemorate my good works. Benefactor, philanthropist, sage; these were all the titles I imagined my people bestowing upon me. In dreams I had even imagined a new name applied to the square where I had spent so many years of my youth: “Saint Maryk’s Square.” It made no difference to me that my opposition to the parochial and myopic religion of the common folk would preclude any such beatification. I imagined a new religion in my dreams and my day-dreams both. I imagined myself at its head and the worship of power and magic as its basic and most dearly held tenets. “Mad,” you say? Yes, I think that is a fair description of my state of mind. As it happened, the common folk were more likely to curse my name than bless it and burn me in effigy on my birthday than toast my generosity and genius.

Came the anniversary of my birth, November first. I had spread the word about my revelation that was to come that day by talking to travellers, traders, minstrels and tinkers who were due to visit Pitch Springs. I spied them on the road with Farsee and went out to meet them before they reached the gates of the farm. “A great celebration at the new fortress” I called it, “Some wonderful news from the new owner of the Old Sharpetzi Place on the first day of November,” I told them, “An introduction to the master of the place and his servants will be offered to all who attend along with some well deserved food and drink for his neighbours,” was the news I sent them off with. The people of the town would be unable to help themselves. The curiosity alone would be too much for most. And I was right, of course. They arrived in droves and they were ushered up the newly built road past the old farmyard and up to the gate of the fortress. There I met them. Many of them I knew, some I knew well. None of them knew me though I did not wear a Disguise illusion for a change. Truly my physical appearance had deteriorated even further during my years as a forest hermit. I was sixteen now but resembled a decrepit sixty year old. That is what the folk saw when they met me, an old man, bent and grizzled but with surprisingly bright and intelligent eyes.
“Welcome all to my farm. It is my honour to play host to you this fine autumn day. My name is…Davus, Davus lu Fae. Please, please enter the courtyard, the feast awaits.” I made a signal with my hand and the skeletons, hidden on the wall behind the ramparts turned the mechanism which opened the huge wooden gates. The folk of Pitch Springs and the surrounding land rushed in to get a look at the great keep and to be the first to get to the food. They were led, unsurprisingly, by the Mayor, Yan Wassiltzi, a broad man of prodigious height and an appetite that was known throughout the valley. It was rumoured that he had eaten an entire pig in one sitting. I hoped I had had enough food prepared.

Mayor Wassiltzi approached me as he watched the other folk fill out the benches. There were five conjured long tables which occupied most of the courtyard’s space; all were heavily laden with meat and vegetables, all from the once dead Sharpetzi farm.
“As Mayor of Pitch Springs I would like to welcome you to the area. I don’t know how you managed to put all of this together so quickly but it is damned impressive! Damned impressive!” said the mayor before hurrying off to join the rest of the townspeople who were already feasting happily. I attended each of the tables in turn and talked amiably to their occupants. They were in high spirits and were very complimentary of the repast I had provided and the beer I had had brewed.
“So, Master lu Fae! You run this place all by yourself, then? Must be a lot stronger than you look, eh?” interjected one wit, Elger Gottzi, who had always had a mouth too big for his brain.
Nodding, unfazed, I said, “All will be revealed shortly, good sir, all will be revealed.”

The sun was beginning to fall through the sky again and the guests at my little party were starting to feel the effects of the strong beer. I decided it was time to reveal the nature of my servants. I climbed the steps to the great door of the keep and standing before it, I struck lightly on the side of a glass with a silver teaspoon. The general chatter and hubbub faded until I could make myself heard without shouting.

“Thank you, honoured guests, for your attention. You humble me, truly by your presence here today. While you are here, I hope you will do me the service of treating this place as your own home.” There was general applause, cheers and one call for more beer. “Thank you, thank you. You are too kind. I do not deserve such good neighbours. I hope I can continue to repay you for your generosity, you, and all the good folk of this valley. In fact, I believe I can.” A hush had settled completely now and all eyes had turned from tankards and plates to my face. I saw them squinting, trying to make out what I was talking about. many of the faces I spied were still wary of me, even after having partaken of a great deal of my food. I could see the question lying unasked in their eyes, “Who is this strange, little man with his riches and his fortress on a farm?” No, I had not yet earned trust but there was no turning back now.
“Many of you will remember this place from before. Once it was a thriving sheep farm owned by a well respected family but its fortunes turned. The animals died in their dozens. The fields dried up and then washed away. It was abandoned when I came upon it. I knew it was exactly the place I was looking for. This successful farm, producing the delicious meat and vegetables…and beer (a cheer went up) you have enjoyed today was built in just a year. You are looking at me now thinking, how could this old duffer have achieved all this? You are right, of course. I could not have done it all on my own. I had a great deal of help. My servants did most of the labour. I just came up with the plans for them.”

“So where are these servants of yours, Mister lu Fae? Are they hideous or invisible or all abed from working so hard! They have done a fine job and are to be congratulated for it.” The mayor rose from his seat and climbed the steps to stand beside me, chicken leg still grasped greasily in his prodigious fist. “Well, Your Honour, for you to see, first-hand the nature of my servants is the very purpose of this little party. I wanted you all to first see the very good work they have done, to taste the fruits of their labours and to know that, whatever they may look like, they are the most amazingly valuable resource that we, living, breathing human beings have ever had. What I am talking about is free labour! Not slaves, before you say it or even think it, no; the concept of slavery is abhorrent to me as it, no doubt, is to you good and gentle folk. No, it is the one, thus far, untapped source of free labour. My servants do not need to eat, they do not need to sleep, they do not require shelter though it may be best to keep them out of the rain and the hot weather if you are to avoid undue decomposition. They are the answer to all your prayers. My servants and more like them will make a life of labour unnecessary. From today on you will be able to follow, instead, any pursuit you choose to: art, music, poetry, prose, history, beer, gambling, sleeping! Anything at all! You will never have to work another day in your lives. My servants and their kind will do it all for you. In the last year they have made a dead farm live again, and today, they prepared this feast for you all. Would you like to meet them?” I asked, warming greatly to my role as host and soon-to-be saviour. The mayor struck me so hard on the back that I almost fell down the steps. “Hah! Well, of course we want to meet them, man! If they’re going to do all our work from now on, we should at least be introduced!” I recovered, coughed, and clapped three times, slowly. I did not watch the skeletons emerge, I watched the faces of my guests. I knew where the skeletons would emerge from, the door right behind myself and the mayor. Only twelve of them were to make an appearance. The courtyard was simply not big enough to house the feast and all the ancient dead too. Twelve was enough, more than enough. Faces in the crowd below blanched and a silence descended briefly, oh so very briefly. In a moment a table had been tipped over, a child had been trampled into the flagstones, a beer barrel had smashed in the courtyard, townsfolk ran towards the gate or stood transfixed, one shouted, “the dead have risen again!”

Beside me the mayor’s smile quickly vanished but he continued the action he had just began as the doors behind us had been opening His open hand once again caught me between the shoulder blades. There was no strength in this slap and I was barely moved a foot by it. I turned back to him to tell him not to fear, there was nothing to fear, when the leading skeleton caught the big man by his back-slapping arm. I watched with a quickly rising sense of panic as the boney servant’s other arm thrust itself between the mayor’s own shoulder blades and emerged slightly left of centre of his chest clutching the still beating heart of Pitch Spring’s first citizen. A wave of hot blood washed over me along with a few splinters of sharp bone, not from the hand of the servant but from the chest of the mayor. A woman started to release a series of short, loud screams like a high-pitched donkey-bray and everyone not fixed to the spot started pounding on the inside of the gates to be let out. “Open the gates!” I shouted and watched my guests leave in a very disorderly manner. I looked out on the courtyard, just brief moments before, the site of a merry feast, now a ruin of upturned furniture, scattered food and beer not to mention the gore still pumping from the chest of Mayor Wassiltzi. This had not gone to plan. “Drop the body,” I said quietly. The mayor slumped off the lowering arm of my servant and then tumbled, like a string-cut puppet down the steps making a sound like a side of beef being punched by a sack of tomatoes. It landed amongst the detritus of the party, face up, jaw slack and eyes staring in horror at the beautifully reddening sunset sky.
I stood, looking at the corpse for a moment until struck by an idea. Then I took the murdering skeleton by the shoulder bone and said to him, “Plan B it is. Waste not, want not.”

The Apprentice, Chapter 13

Unlucky 13?

So little left in this tale. Chapter 16 will be the last one, so the countdown starts here. Do you think it will end well for young Maryk? In today’s chapter he makes a big change and some big decisions. His ambition is re-ignited and plans begin to form in his mind. It’s not all about him, after all, right? The whole world might benefit from his talents. It is his duty to help!

Chapter 13: Fortress

Much of the story of the Fae was unknown to me before the Fae-Mother chanced upon me (I say “chanced upon” but of course there was no chance about it. She knew where I was, why I was there and, possibly even what was going to happen to me there.) She told me all of it. Some of it, I believe, is coloured a little in her favour. The Ens seem unfeeling and destructive in her story except that they wanted freedom, which most humans crave for themselves (I do not think this is a concept which she understands.) Meanwhile, she feels as if her whole world was destroyed by her disloyal creations.

”Where are all the Ens now,” I asked one day after a long discussion about how best to help my people progress.
“They are not here now,” she said, “I assume they failed.”
I had, once again, taken up the habit of sleeping during my years in the wilds. The reason? Well, boredom, mostly. I had lost any and all ambition and desire for knowledge. My efforts to discover new knowledge at the start proved relatively fruitless, so I soon gave up. Other than the contents of the Emperor’s spell book, there was nothing to read. I spent a great deal of time in meditation and contemplation but generally became dissatisfied with my own thoughts after only an hour or two of this. So, I ate my fruit and made sure my home was relatively clean but outside these activities I didn’t get up to much. One night, I thought I would try a little nap and to my surprise, I discovered that the knack never leaves you. I did not sleep for long, no more than a few minutes, but it felt good and I decided to continue with it. Occasionally I have wondered whether this left my mind even more open to the Fae Mother. Lying there at night, mind undefended and dreaming who knows what. But then, of course, I did not know that she was still interested in me and that she would come back to me.

She did come back to me, of course. I awoke atop my pile of skins and furs one morning to find her sitting at my table in the cabin. This was a sight that was difficult to get straight in my head as the Fae-Mother was really too tall and my chairs too small for her to have been able to do this. She seemed to bring her own illumination into my messy hovel. My house was never dirty, my spells saw to that, but when you introduced the ancient nobility of the Fae-Mother to it, it became no better than a hole in the ground, a badger’s sett. “Bugger me!” I said under my breath. “Is that what you wish of me?” Asked the Fae-Mother. I shook my head into wakefulness and tried to remember my manners. “I was just startled, Fae-Mother. Your presence here in my humble home is unexpected.” I flung my blanket back and rolled out of bed. “Is there some way I can be of service?” The book lay closed on the table; she reached out a finger to it and held it a finger’s width away. “Of the humans I have met, you are not the most disagreeable,” this sounded promising already, “but you are very, very young to wield the power that you do. What will you do with it to help your people?” I did not like this turn of the conversation so much. “Mother, I have been cursed, as I told you before. The people could not benefit from my presence.” Her dark emerald eyes stared through me to the wall behind. I actually turned to see if she was looking at something there but quickly looked back. “I did not suggest that your presence among them would be necessary. Why did you bring this, with you?” she gestured, with a flick of her long index finger, at the libram, “The magic in this thing is so great and you use it in such petty, selfish ways.” I looked at my feet and shuffled them, I peered around my little cabin and saw the conjured clothing and blankets and furniture filling it; none of them were special or grand, my food was the most basic I could imagine, water-fruit, berries, some roots that I had found. I was not using the book’s magic to enrich my life so greatly and I told her so. “My life is incredibly simple, look at how I live, this is not luxury, Fae-Mother, this is subsistence.” She stood to her full height, she seemed to grow as she stood, in fact. Her head barely below the ceiling beams, she walked around my house, picked up some silver cutlery, let it fall again, swiped her fingers across a tapestry I had conjured depicting the Great Battle at Hollinhead, rested her hands on the back of a chair and said, “It is your choice to stay here out of the way, doing no harm, using your great gifts without imagination or direction. It is your choice to ignore the plight of the rest of your people and the possibilities, the potential you have to make their lives better and easier. How are they to progress when their brightest hides away in a hovel in a dying forest, subsisting on fruit and fen-crabs? You have luxury you do not deserve. You have the luxury to decide. Your decisions afford you the luxury of apathy. If your curses hurt or kill one or two or ten or one hundred, what of it? You could be helping and saving those most in need of it. Your mortal race has such a short time on the face of the earth, they should not have to toil and suffer, should they? Don’t they all deserve the choice of doing what they want? You did.”

I was sitting on the edge of my tiny bed, in my baggy, stained bed-gown, old man’s face raising my young man’s eyes to look far above into the celestial orbs of the Fae-Mother. I was enraptured and enchanted. She had me before she had even started speaking. Her magic was so strong that she did not even need to speak to bind me in her spell but her questions and her statements bound me even tighter. I nodded to her, momentarily dumb-struck, and then swallowed. “Yes. Yes. I see it now. I have been selfish. You are correct, Mother. I must help them! Those poor people! How should I do it? Be the muse to my imagination, Fae-Mother. I need help.” She looked down, looming over me, her shadow leaving me in almost total darkness. I watched her hand unfold from her long flowing sleeve and her finger emerge from the darkness and then she touched me in the middle of my forehead and I fell back on my bed and blacked out.

When I awoke I felt different. I felt a disdain for the man I had been. I felt disgust at the meagre existence I had allowed myself to slip into. Most of all, I felt ill at the waste of my time and my mind that I had perpetrated over the preceding three years. I had had the power of the Emperor of the Fomori the entire time and I built nothing more than a still-crumbling shack and some uninspired furniture. With the magic at my disposal I could build a kingdom, or a better society. I could become the world’s greatest explorer or scholar or sage. I had done nothing but hide in filth and exist in squalor. It was fear. I believe that’s what the Fae-Mother’s touch revealed to me. It was only my fear that kept me low. It was not the kind of bloody terror you might feel when confronted by a rabid wolf when you’re in nothing but pyjamas or the senseless fear certain folk feel at the very thought of speaking in public. The fear that kept me in this dreadful place was the type that exists in all one’s actions every day, the sort that has an effect on every decision one makes and every thought one allows to be consciously considered, it is the kind one never knows is there: fear of oneself.

I was no longer afraid. Realisation of the fear’s existence robbed it of the power it held over me. I remembered then the confidence and even arrogance with which I approached life as a younger lad. I was powerful and potent and I knew it. Primula and Cobbles’ deaths had instilled the fear in me but the Fae-Mother had shown me that my power was not to be contained, it was too important for that, even if it should cost a life or two along the way. My power and my genius were enough to vindicate my actions. I could make everything better for everyone, first in Pitch Springs and then the Valley and after that? Wherever I chose.

How was I to make everything better? How can one person, even one as brilliant as I, achieve such a lofty goal? I did not know then but I hoped the Fae-Mother would agree to be my inspiration as I had asked. I was sure of myself, but I knew what the Fae-Mother was capable of (or at least I thought I knew.) she led her whole people, there could be no greater advisor (please bear in mind that I had not heard the Fae-Mother’s full story at this point.) I had to seek her out again. But first I destroyed my pathetic cabin. I stood outside the mould-ridden excuse for a habitat, The Book of Royal Magic floating beside me open to the spell, earthquake. I never performed a spell so well before. I was absolutely unerring in my words, inflection, timing, movements. The finest dancer in the court of the King of the land could not have found fault with that performance and it opened a crack as wide as Saint Frackas’ Square and swallowed my home and all my possessions except for the clothes on my back and the book by my side. I heard much later that the earthquake was felt all the way in Bakhlvad and destroyed certain of the poorer built houses in Pitch Springs. A wing of the Town Hall was severely damaged and bones were uncovered in the ruins. Perhaps yet more evidence from the time of Mayor Moltotzi. The Creakwood too was forever changed by the quake. The crevasse separated it into two woods. One side had the stream, the other didn’t. The stream side flourished more than it had in decades, the other died but fed the land. The forest that was left was no longer called the Creakwood, it was called The Emerald Wood. As I see it now, that was my greatest achievement.

At that time, however, my ambitions knew no bounds. Looking back, I know it was the effect of the Fae-Mother’s powers on me but back then I thought I could change the world for the better. I thought my power gave me the right and the responsibility to do what I knew was best without interference. I still think there were elements of my plan that made sense and the reasons for what I did were pure but this wasn’t enough to avoid disaster.

I went in search of the Fae-Mother then. I walked the Crabfen where I had first encountered her to no avail. I journeyed to the quarry at the edge of civilised lands but did not find her. I travelled to Lake Brightwater and she was not there. In the end, I returned to the Creakwood, where I thought I would set about building my new home, this time a home fit for a person with my power. I looked to the book when I got there and found a spell near the front which was called simply, Fortress. That sounded like the thing I was looking for but it was an extremely long performance, it was to be started at dawn and there were major steps to include at midday, dusk and midnight and the performance could not be stopped at any time. It seemed physically impossible. I would need plenty of nourishment and rest before I started this spell but I had already destroyed my place of rest, the cabin was crushed in the Creakwood Crevasse. I needed somewhere to go and I knew just the place.

I returned to My World, the farm. The fields had dried up and there were no animals on the land. Even the old chestnut tree was dead. The house was an abandoned ruin. This was distasteful to me; it felt as though I were taking a step back, not progressing as the Fae-Mother had told me I should be. Still, my physical needs could not be denied. The Old Sharpetzi Place had seen better days but it provided me shelter from the cold and the rain and the wind while I stored up strength for the day of performance to come. I had brought some water fruit to stave off hunger and build strength and I produced a magical flame in the grate of the fireplace. A fire had not been lit in it in years and at first smoke billowed back into the parlour, blackening the floor about it but after I sent a levitating brush up the chimney it worked as it should and I was kept warm, sitting on an old sheepskin by the fire.

I had sat there by the fire with my sister beside me, watching my father smoke as he regaled us with tales of Dead Counts, Evil Mayors, Dragon Children, Magic Bears and all sorts of other wonderful subjects. Now, the house and farm were dead, my sister was dead and I assumed my father was too. In many ways it was fitting that I should come back here, I thought. I was the last member of my family and this was our family’s place (no matter the name on the deed.) My plan had been to perform my spell in the Creakwood and build my fortress there but this place seemed more fitting the more I thought about it. I went to the back window and looked up at the top field, now a dusty waste and knew that was the spot for my new home. Was I expecting to need the protection of hill and fortress? At that point, no, although I did foresee opposition from some to whatever I had in store, which I also had not yet worked out. I would be glad of it in the end, though.

I slept that night in front of the fire and dreamt of wonders, flying horses and metal men and fairy musicians. I woke before dawn to start the performance. I walked to the top of the hill and began at the appointed time, just as the sun peeked over the trees in the east. Movement would be constant for the entire day but many of the moves were only slight, I had to do no more than walk around the perimeter for much of the performance, nodding my head and chanting. The chanting was the most draining aspect of this gruelling performance as it had to be continued without pause for the entire day. I had developed a method of circular breathing to cope with that but it was not possible to stop for a break or a drink of water. I began to think that perhaps the Fomorin mages would perform a spell like this in concert, perhaps taking turns to chant and walk to allow them time to rest. This was not possible in my case, of course. Throughout the day I had a number of visitors. A scrawny ginger cat came to sit and bathe and watch my curious work until it grew bored with my repetitions and wandered off. A kestrel circled around my head as I circled the site of my new home. Finally, the Fae-Mother appeared, standing by the old gate of the field as if she had been there all along, supervising. She said nothing, just watched me. She was there when midday came and I stopped my circling and chanting and sang a passage in old Fomori, dancing into the centre of the circle I had described, ending it when I had prostrated myself in the dust, limbs splayed in the four prime directions of the compass. I then took up the chant again and walked back and forth along those directional lines my arms and legs had indicated. This continued until dusk when I repeated the actions of midday. Once I had done this there was a noticeable golden shimmer in the air around the circle. The sparkling seemed to trace the lines of walls and arches and ramparts. I was already exhausted by this time but I drew encouragement from the results I was beginning to see. I went on chanting and walking until midnight although my throat was raw and my feet were blistered. The shimmer became more and more pronounced after the sun had gone down. Now I could make out, not only walls and arches, but also towers and minarets and outbuildings in the courtyard. On and on I walked until the moon was high in the sky and I knew the end of the performance was approaching. I actually wept when the realisation hit me and with tears streaming down my cheeks I croaked the final few syllables of Fortress as I performed the last dance in the centre of the circle, which was no longer just a circle but a courtyard with high sandstone walls around which were dotted the outbuildings, smithy, stables, tannery and in the centre right by my side was a deep covered well. I span and saw the whole thing, the four strong tall towers with banners waving from them in the night air, the great solid wooden doors with black iron trim which led into the keep’s interior, the huge gate and portcullis, the only way in or out of the fortress, the ramparts, the arrow slits, the murder hole over the gate, the flagstones of the courtyard…

I awoke in a four-poster bed draped in the most luxurious bedclothes I had ever seen. I looked around the bright, high-ceilinged bedroom at sumptuous wall-hangings, gilded candelabras and paintings in oval frames of ancient Fomorin lords and ladies all flanked by shackled smiling slaves. “You have slept long enough, I think,” It was the Fae-Mother, of course. She stood at my bedside and touched her fingertips to my forehead as I sat up. “Yes, Fae-Mother. I agree. I have been asleep for three years.” She nodded and withdrew her hand. Then she walked around the spacious room much as she had done before in my old home, touching velvet and gold and solid stone this time. “I approve of this place,” she said. “This is the home of a man of great power. It reeks of power and it was a great physical effort for you to create it. You are going in the right direction. This is progress. But it is only progress for you. What would you do for the rest of your people? How will you better your world?” I threw back the covers and found a set of new clothes laid out for me. They were very much like the clothing the Fae-Mother wore herself. I picked them up and looked at her. “A gift,” she explained “for a new beginning.” Clothing like it I had never felt on my skin before, it was light as leaves and warm as fur, it seemed to change colour depending on the surface I stood upon or the wall at my back. “Most gracious of you, Mother. many thanks.” I bowed low and she inclined her head a little in acceptance. “What would I do for the rest of my people? I want to see them have the time to pursue knowledge and art and music and happiness. I do not want to see them reduced to broken old people anymore just because they had to work so hard all their lives to keep body and soul together. Work, labour, toil, these are the curses of the everyday man and woman. I saw it every day in Pitch Springs and on this very farm as a little boy. You work and work and work and then you die. There is more to life than that. I want others to see that as I do. So that is what I would do; I would remove the need for people to work; to give them freedom.” “Indeed. Admirable. Have you considered the method you would use to achieve this? It seems like an impossible task.”
She was looking through me again. She knew the answers before I delivered them but she knew that it would help me to realise the rectitude of my plans if I could have the agreement of someone like her, a master planner. “I have thought about it, yes. The work still has to be done. Folk need food, and shelter and clothing and ironmongery and defences. It takes work to maintain all of these things that we need, there is no way around that. So, we need someone or something else to do the work,” I looked her straight in the eye, “like the Ens, your own creations.” Again she simply nodded. I thought the voicing of this idea might have elicited a shocked response but of course it didn’t. She has, no doubt, heard it all in the millennia she has existed. “The Ens. Yes. They were my best idea and my worst. You can learn from my mistake. I could teach you how to breed and grow creatures like the Ens but you would have died before the first of them grew into anything useful and they would just betray you. No, not Ens, then. You must come up with a human solution. You must discover Maryk’s solution.” She walked over to where I stood by the window and she took my hand. I felt a thrill of excitement at her touch, a feeling I never experienced with a human girl. I looked up into her eyes. “Let your curses work for you.” “my curses? I do not…” I turned to look out the window and saw the Creakwood in the distance and the sun hanging low in the sky above it. When I turned back, the Fae-Mother was gone.

The Apprentice, Chapter 12

A Fae Tale

I often find it strange and somewhat embarrassing going back to these older examples of my writing. It was so long ago that I don’t have any clear memory of writing it and yet, I know I did. There are glaring flaws in it for me, but I present it more-or-less unvarnished for your judgement. This time, Maryk tells us the tale of the Fae, their rise and fall. In an incredibly round-about way, he explains the origins of the Fae-Mother and why she is all alone. Is it true? Of course not. But there are nuggets of truth in there, just like in any story.

Chapter 12: The Story of the Fae-Mother

Fae folk populated the world, or at least this part of it, long before man sprang forth to build and burn and breed. The Fae did none of those things. They grew and performed and were. It is said that there were Mountain Fae and Tundra Fae, Beach Fae and Fae of the Plains but the only ones who concern us here are the Woodland Fae of this valley, they called themselves the Giarro and the river which man later blackened takes its name from them.

In those days beyond antiquity the valley was ornamented with trees from northern mountains to southern sea and from eastern to western hills. The Creakwood was not even a handful of acorns back then, and it would have been swallowed twenty times over by the Valley Forest. The Giarro lived there amongst their trees. Their lives were of magic. They were magical beings themselves, immortal and unimpeded by the base physical necessities that so bedevil our crass existence. they consumed the world’s natural magic energy which, it is said, they harvested from the forest itself. They affected and manipulated their world with magic. Civilisation is not what you or I would have called their society and community. They had no houses or writing or domesticated beasts. They did not wage war on other Fae folk or other races. They did not use currency or, indeed, truly have a need for any worldly thing. They did not have ranks and all in the forest were considered equal, well, except for the first among equals, the Fae-Mother.

It was said that the Fae-Mother was the first and the leader, not only of the Giarro, but of all Fae in the world. So it was said but it was not true. There were other Fae-Mothers in other regions and lands but they are not important to our tale. The Fae-Mother of our tale was just like the other Giarro except for one very important difference: she, and only she, was capable of creating new Fae life. Fae were not birthed, not in the traditional human sense. As I have stated, they were without a messy, organic form like that of the forest beasts and, later, the humans. Without womb, they were born, instead, out of the thaumaturgical aether. Only the Fae-Mother knew the secret of this birthing and she required the merging of magical essences from at least two of the other Giarro Fae. Those Fae were diminished greatly in puissance and were forced to go into hibernation to regain their strength for a time after the process. During that time the rest of the Giarro gathered around the “new-born” Fae and taught her the way of the world. All Fae were created with equal potential and were assigned roles in their society as they were required. In this way, the Fae community was a perfectly homogeneous one.

The role of the Fae-Mother was not just to facilitate procreation but also to lead and direct the Fae. She had no advisors or sages or ministers or Fae Lords (though all of those exist in the myths we have about the Fae.) She led alone. She made all the decisions on the path her folk should take and how they should take it. Their success or failure was solely up to her.

A society like this one, so integrated and single-minded should be easy to lead. No cajoling or flattering or threatening would have been necessary to have her folk do what was required. All worked harmoniously and for the greater good of the Giarro, and their home, the Valley Forest. Being the first, however, made the Fae-Mother different to her children/followers/subjects. She had never been indoctrinated into the Fae way of life and she wanted more, she wanted improvements, she wanted progress. Progress, the Fae-Mother knew, was the very meaning and point of life. Why else would she have the ability to create more of her race from out of the very aether? As a race of immortals there was no need to replenish their numbers as humans do today, balancing life and death.

In her time in this world she had moved the Giarro Fae from where they had begun on the hills to the east of the river, down into the forest because she knew the very trees of this forest could nourish them all for as long as they wanted to remain there. She devised the process by which certain Fae harvested the magical energies of the trees and then distributed this amongst all the Giarro. She devised a new spell every day (it is still unclear as to the exact nature of Fae casting though it is known to be the progenitor of human magic. It is believed that, as they had no system of writing, ideas were communicated and disseminated by thought without the clumsy necessity for words.) These spells transformed the world of the Giarro. They would use magic to grow great tree towers, bridges of creepers, musical instruments, river-going vessels and artefacts like magic amplifiers, beacons, clothing and walking sticks. No grown Fae item was without a magical quality of some kind.

Human emotions can hardly be applied usefully to the Fae but for the purposes of our story let’s say the Fae-Mother felt pride at the progress of the Giarro. She often looked down on the Valley Forest from the tallest of the tree towers atop the highest of the hills in the west and was full of pride but was she satisfied? Oh no. She was an immortal, magical matriarch whose sole purpose was the eternal progress of her folk. She would never be satisfied. What she saw from her high perch was the movements of the Giarro about the Forest floor and through the branches and along the vine-grown walkways and up and down the river. The most time-consuming industry to which they applied themselves each day was the harvesting and distribution of magical energies. The Harvesters would use a spell of her own devising to draw out the energy from the forest’s trees. This magic was then stored in a kind of pod-container, an item bred and grown specially at the Fae-Mother’s design by the Gardeners. These containers were passed on to the Boaters who brought them up and down the river to jetties (also grown by the Gardeners) where they were handled and distributed by the Handlers. Each handler brought the pods during the day in giant leaf sacks (that’s right, the Gardeners again) to all the Fae in their part of the Forest. The following day the process started again.
The Fae-Mother herself had developed this system and although the harvesting and distribution of magical energies had been greatly improved over the years she could see that there would have to be a change if real progress were ever to be made. Her folk had too few musicians and poets and historians and she began to see the logic in filling more roles for these activities and fewer for the manual labour of harvesting. Their society flourished while their culture stagnated. Balance was required and would not be simple to achieve for anyone but the Fae-Mother.

Plans came easily to the Fae-Mother. That was her purpose after all. Her latest plan involved a whole generation of new births. With these births would come twice as many hibernations. There would be fewer old generation Fae left in the Valley Forest than new generation ones, in fact. This new generation would have more face to face time with the Fae-Mother than any generation previously. For a time, the Giarro society slowed down and entered a long winter. The magical energy in the trees was allowed to build up and then disperse naturally for the most part. The Fae remaining to teach the new generation their ways had plenty to survive on by simply providing for themselves. No matter what their role they absorbed the energy through touching the trees, this was not as efficient as the Fae-Mother’s previous system of absorption and distribution but it was only to be a temporary measure. The new generation of Giarro would be taught a new way.

Next, the Fae Mother decided to address the problem of her people’s manual labours. She was not willing to cull her own folk so she had to come up with a way of completing the work by other means. She needed servants but it would no more have occurred to her to domesticate the animals of the wilds than it would have occurred to you or I to sell our parents into slavery. No, there was really only one option, she would have the plants of the earth do the work for the Giarro. She would breed and grow plants that could walk and gather and contain and transport and distribute. They would be combined with the essences of animals to allow them to achieve these feats. These plants would have minds of their own. These plants were called Ens as an “en” was the Fae word for energy and that is what they provided freely. The new batch of gardeners would grow the Ens and then settle back to enjoy the freedom to explore the world, its beauty and magic and birds and beasts as new Ens replaced them in their work. The Ens were to be capable of doing any manual task that Fae could do and never require rest or wish to be entertained or have to consume magical energy themselves and even replicate themselves as necessary.

Hibernating in the half-aether caves beneath the far eastern hills, the old generation did not have an inkling of the actions of the Fae-Mother but, by the time they emerged, the new Giarro society was to be in place. The Fae-Mother knew that this new system would be difficult for the majority of the old society to accept as most of them had never known any role but that of Harvester, Gardener, Boater and Handler. She was uncertain of how they would react if she introduced the Ens while they were waking and this worried her greatly. Uncertainty had never invaded her consciousness before. Her only option was to create new Fae and send the old ones largely to the hibernation caves. Then, when they emerged, she would have the new generation introduce the old one to the new world. She was sure that, in time, the old generation of Giarro would see the benefit of their new roles and their way of life and not think of them as simply alien and wrong. If they would not accept it, the Fae-Mother did not know the consequences. There had never been anything so absurd as a war between Fae, that would be impossible. There had been some disagreements but only ever between Fae from different bordering lands; these were always settled amicably. She had no reason to expect unpleasantness but she had every reason to expect obedience.

The Ens were a thorough success. As they gathered and delivered, the Fae entered a new Age of Art. Music and song filled the Valley Forest from morning till night. The grandest and most beautiful of tree towers and sculptures dominated all corners of the valley The new generation of Fae experimented with the elements of air, water and fire to make works of unimaginable magnificence. And the Ens laboured on.

Hibernation ended for the old generation of Giarro and they emerged from their half-aether slumber. Their confusion and frustration was felt throughout the Forest and the new generation’s art took a distinctly grey and twisted turn during this time. The old Giarro were addressed by the Fae-Mother, her mind to theirs, “Your world of labours is gone, welcome to your new world, my Giarro. You will all receive new roles, artists, historians, musicians, poets. You will make our culture what it has always had the potential to be. You will make it beautiful.”

“What if we do not desire this?” There was a dissenting mind. It was strong and decisive and felt like only one other mind among all the Giarro, her own. Another Fae-Mother! Another creator! Another leader! The Fae-Mother was reeling still from the realisation when the Other spoke again, “You are aware of my existence and my role, yes? Then you know what it must mean. Your leadership is flawed. These Ens you have created are beings like us and cannot be used in this way. The Fae you tricked into hibernation may not want these new roles you are forcing upon them. What should they do now in your new world? I am here to lead where you have erred and failed.” The Fae-Mother severed the thought link between her new generation (the confusion and fear of whom was rank and patent in her mind) and the old. She cut herself off also from the Other. She also felt fear at the appearance of this imposter who wished to lead with ideas other than her own. This was impossible. Only she was the Fae-Mother of the Giarro. Having two was not possible. It could only bring disharmony and even conflict. A leader still, she anticipated and planned for this potential strife. If conflict arose they would need defence. Violence was alien to the Fae but not so the Ens who were created through the magical commixing of tree and beast: the natural world thrived on conflict. She had seen this many times. They were not grown to be defenders but they would do in a pinch while the Fae-Mother worked on a more final solution to the old generation problem. She summoned the Ens together so they could feel the power of her presence when she spoke to them.
“You were grown to serve the Giarro and you have done so with loyalty and excellence. You will continue to serve us by defending us.”
“What do we defend you from Great Mother?” The Ens asked as one. Looking down upon them from her tallest of tree towers she felt intimidated herself, with their huge wooden bodies and their thick wrapped vine arms the thousands of them looked as though they could certainly cause an enemy great hurt. “You will defend us from the Old Giarro who have come back to destroy our community and way of life. You will destroy them if they come here and give you cause. The New Giarro must not be made impure by their thoughts. I will prevent that. You must ensure that they are not made impure by their words or their touch. For this time, you will cease your current activities and go protect my Giarro from the taint of the old. Keep close to them and watch for the Old Ones. I do not know how they will move against us, but they will.” She reached out deeper into the minds of the tree servants. There was confusion there, just as there was in the minds of the New Ones and the Old Ones. And yet, there was also obedience and loyalty. They had been bred and grown well. Ens dispersed, the Fae-Mother set about constructing a wall of thought around her folk. They might have done this themselves and so spared her the energy but then, she would have to alert them to the existence of the Other and the reasons for cutting them off from their former fellows. She did not wish to deceive them. As she reached out with her mind to seal off the New Ones she could feel the Old Ones creeping amongst the trees of her Valley and congregating still at the caves of hibernation. At the centre of the congregation there was a mind that appeared to her as a void…The Other…she could sense nothing of her but saw her briefly In a glimpse from one of the New who had already fallen under her corrupting influence. She looked just like the Fae-Mother herself. She truly was an imposter then, some trick…somehow a trick… Or perhaps an unnatural aberration. She felt vindicated in her stand against this Other and endeavoured to close the minds of the right-thinkers as quickly as she could.

Attacks began to be felt through the aether as they occurred throughout the Valley Forest. A Fae life snuffing out is like a single candle of magic being doused, from a distance it is undetectable. Ten lives can be seen extinguished from quite a distance. One hundred Fae destroyed is like a great bonfire being put out all at once. The first few moments of the war felt like that in the mind of the Fae-Mother. It was over long before she might have expected it to be. The Ens had destroyed all of the Old Ones and brought The Other before her for judgement. “What judgement would you have me make on this being? She is an imposter and a fraud. There can be no other Fae-Mother. Destroy her and return to the harvest in the trees; our reserves run low,” said the Fae-Mother. “But she is you, Mother. We look at her and we see you, just as you are. If we would destroy her then why would we also not destroy you?” asked the Ens as one, The Fae-Mother discovered her error then. The Ens were thinking for themselves. They had followed her instructions until they had reached an impasse in the logic of them. Now they were left with the ability to question, they were left with no other choice but to question. She had made them too perfectly, had given them too much freedom. They should have been simply plants with the ability to do the tasks she assigned them but she had instilled in them the beast’s ability to learn and grow and ask. “You cannot destroy me, I am your creator. She is not your creator.” There was a pause from the Ens and a collective mental nod. “That is a fact we cannot deny and yet she could have created us just as you did. We can see the magical potential in her and the energy available to do it.” The Ens threw the Other to the ground and circled her. “We will do as you ask, but we will not continue to do it. This is the last time we shall do your bidding. We will not harvest for you and we will not deliver for you. We will bring progress to the Ens instead of the Giarro.” The Fae-Mother was taken aback. She had never even considered that her creations might rebel, might want something other than the betterment of her Fae. “You…you cannot do that. You are only here to serve us, your role is-” they interrupted her. “Our role has changed. Our minds are not like those of you Fae. Our fates are not sealed. We can destroy and we can build and we can decide for ourselves what is best for our people now.” With that the circle of Ens raised their mighty vine-tentacles above the Other. She looked at the Fae-Mother and smiled faintly before bowing. The mighty Ens crushed her. “We have decided that the Giarro are not best for our people now. Your decision to destroy the Old Ones was correct and now we carry it one step further. We have decided to destroy the New Ones also.”

The Fae-Mother fled. She was protected by their promise not to hurt their creator, perhaps, but she could not stand to watch as they cleansed the Valley Forest of her children. The fires of thousands of Fae were extinguished before that very day was done and the forest belonged to the Ens.

The story goes that the Fae-Mother retreated to the Caves of Hibernation and stayed there and sleeps there still.

I know better now.

The Apprentice, Chapter 11

Crabby

Maryk has seen better days. He has found himself living in the woods in a leaky old shack and subsisting on conjured fruit. For three years. He’s bored of it, and what’s more, he’s clearly not looking after himself. He needs a good meal, maybe one of those tasty crabs that live in the fens? And someone to look after him. That’d be nice too, wouldn’t it?

Chapter 11: Fen-crabs and Little Toes

Years passed. I grew up, not very much actually but nonetheless, I became a young man. By the time I was fifteen years old I possessed the face of a man far older, grey and white and blue in splotches as well. I spent most of my time in amongst the trees of Creakwood, the colour of which matched my own quite well. “I could blend in here like a twig-bug if I went around these woods in the nip,” I often said to myself, “never even need Invisible.” Sometimes I went out into the Crabfen, if for no other reason than to catch myself a couple of the eponymous crabs for dinner when I tired of fruit and berries. Sometimes I visited the old quarry not so very far from my old world to gather chalk for my homemade blackboard since I had no paper. I never saw anyone else. People did not go to the places I went. This satisfied me. That was the purpose of my new life. I could do no-one any harm out in these forgotten places, these abandoned houses and weathered graveyards. Well, no-one other than myself, of course.

For instance, came the day I lost my other little toe. The Crabfen had called me out again. My diet of water-fruit, grubs and occasional squirrel had begun to take its toll on my mood as it always did. “Oh! Water-fruit, so nourishing, oh, water-fruit, so dull, oh water-fruit, so boring, I want to smash my skull,” was a verse I penned all on my own and could often be heard to sing sitting under the glowing leaves of the water-fruit bush, in between tired chomps of unwelcome fruit. I had tried a number of other spells, which I thought might produce food of different varieties. They resulted in the creation of a number of poisonous toadstools (I spent two days over a pit behind my cabin after trying those,) the skeletal remains of a chicken unsuitable even to make stock, and a leather purse which has, admittedly, come in handy for the collection of berries and grubs. I came to the conclusion that the Fomori Emperor who wrote the book or, at least, had it written for him, had no need for spells to feed him; he had slaves for that. The water-fruit spell was, no doubt, no more than a novelty.

The weather was the type reserved for the days when your emotions are felt so strongly that they must surely be affecting it with their deep, bog-misery and their thunderous angers. Unsuitable for crab hunting in the fens, as the day may have been, I could not have put it off ‘till another one without, as the song suggested, smashing my skull. Rain fell, not in drops so much as in waves, drowning the fens. I could see not ten paces in front of me and the sheer weight of my conjured, sodden, cotton clothing weighed my emaciated body down so much that I considered simply doffing them. Of course the bitterness of the wind across the open bog might have done for me so I decided to keep them on. I performed the Umbrella spell to stave off a small fraction of the torrents. So, I squelched my way on through the Crabfen, determined to find a crustacean or two for my supper. “Crab, crab, crabbie, crabbie, crab crab,” I would call, counter to the effect that I wished it to achieve. “Where are you, my tasty little beauties,” I used to sing, thinking that it might entice them into my supper sack. It didn’t, not that day. I did encounter one but it avoided the sack.
It felt like days that I had been creeping and hunting and calling and singing for crabs. My boots, a hardy pair of conjured crocodile skin ones, went up to my knees and I was sure they were more than up to the task of crab hunting. On any other day, they would have been. But on this hellish, rain-soaked nightmare of a day the bog attempted to suck me down into it with each step. It did not get me, it almost did. It had me and it lost me.

A step in the wrong spot was all it took. I knew the fen quite well, I thought, but it transformed on that day. the whole thing was a trap and I was the prey. One step, as I said, was almost my undoing. The boot went thigh-deep into a patch of ground I had stood upon many times to seek out my own prey. I struggled and wiggled and pulled at my own leg and finally dislodged myself, leaving the boot there, in a grave of its own construction. My bare foot came out at speed and I fell back into the bog. Dirty, brown water crept into every opening and crevice both in myself and my clothing; my crab sack was gone; I spluttered and coughed up a lungful of bog in an attempt to right myself and that’s when I felt it; a slice, a thin, hard pressure and a crunch. I felt the warmth of the blood rolling down my foot and calf as they stuck up in the air like birch saplings. I spat and gurgled into a scream. “Bastard! Bastard, clawing, tearing, toe-clipper! Bastard!” I got my hand to my face to free eyes, mouth and nose completely of mud and bog water. I took a deep breath to shout some further obscenities at the little aquatic bastard that had shorn me of my last remaining little toe when I looked up. I used the breath for another scream instead.

Straight out of a fireside story had she come, and there she stood before me. I had no doubt about her identity. The Fae-Mother stood tall and spindly like a trellis supporting her clothes, most of which did, in fact, resemble plants. Stuck in the bog as I was I could not even guess at her true height but it was certainly taller than the tallest man I had ever met. The face she showed me was grey and swathed in shadows thrown by the leaf-like hood she used to keep the rain off. It seemed to do just that and better, I might add, than my Umbrella cantrip did. Her arms hung limply at her sides, hands twig-fingered and pendulous by her knees even when standing unbent. Her wrists, neck and ankles were adorned in layered circlets of black and bronze. The very surface of the fen is where she walked, disturbing neither bog pool nor grass blade. Feet spotless, she stepped and glided.

“You are in some distress, old man. Would you like some help? Perhaps I could assist you with your wound…” The voice which vibrated from her reminded me greatly of a lark’s song and a bear’s roar.

“I am no old man!” I said, foolishly indignant as the blood poured freely from the stump of my former little toe and wallowed in a bog more foul than the famed dung pits of Arampour, “I’m a fifteen year old young man!”

“Maybe it has been too long since I have seen a human, your kind have changed if all young men look as you do.” This time the sound on the air which formed these words was the blowing of a summer breeze and the the rumble and crack of a rockslide. I looked her in the eye as she spoke and I saw her in there. Eyes so old are not to be found anywhere else in the world. Her grey and shimmering green orbs looked back into my own eyes. “I can explain later about my looks; I would be more than happy to, Fae-Mother. Right now, I would like to graciously accept your offer of aid. I am in dire need.” Being polite was difficult. It had not been necessary for more than three years. I don’t care if I am spoken to politely when I am my only conversation partner.

She reached down with her long fingers and I grasped them. They were so long and slender that I almost feared to grip too tight but then, as I did, I could feel the fingers like thin iron rods pull me easily to my feet. Once upright, I found myself atop the grass like my saviour was. “Please follow me, old young man, and I will attend to your foot.” I limped along behind the Fae-Mother all the way to the edge of the Creakwood. Below a particularly wide-canopied weeping-willow bordering the bog and the wood we were totally protected from the elements. In fact, once the tree’s curtain of leaves had closed behind us I could hear neither wind nor rain and the light which filtered through from outside was that of a hazy summer’s day. The ground beneath us was firm and dry and I gratefully threw myself upon it before removing my shirt to expose my ribs and sagging-skinned belly. It was surprisingly warm also.

My saviour, the Fae-Mother, took my newly deformed foot in her iron grip and looked at it. She removed my other boot and compared the foot to the injured one. “It seems you are careless with your toes,” she said. In this place her voice reminded me of the whisper of tree leaves in a light wind and the echo one discovers in the boles of hollowed out trees.

“I have often been unlucky,” I said. She penetrated my soul with those timeless eyes of hers and spoke again, “Unlucky? I think you would say there is more than mere misfortune involved in the story of your short life’s troubles. You are a boy who resembles a man of advanced years as your race reckons such things; you have lost two toes; you are nothing short of emaciated and you live by yourself in the Creakwood where no people come any longer. It would take one person many more years to accrue that degree of bad luck.” Those eyes kept me pinned and I answered her because I had no choice.

“My name is Maryk Sharpetzi. I am accursed for the murder of my mother and twice accursed for the murder of my first mistress and thrice accursed for the murder of my own sister. My mistress, Old Aggie, cursed me to look the way I do but everything else that has happened in my life has been as a direct result of the curses I gained at birth when I killed my mother and three years ago when my sister died by my hand.” She continued to simply hold my foot in her hand. I started to worry that it was incredibly filthy (a young boy without a mother or governess to tell him when to do it can easily fail to wash himself regularly.) I wriggled it a little but she simply held on firmly. “Yes, that makes sense. Curses, of course I can see them rising off of your shoulders and head like fumes and smoke, two black, one red. It was not such a bad thing to kill Old Aggie, I think. She was a lying, devious, selfish, murderous human as so many of you are. It was not the act that cursed you in that case, it seems, but the woman herself. The other deaths and several other acts of lesser evil have become a part of your soul. They are terrible things to live with, curses such as those you labour under, and you have suffered greatly for them.”

Laying my foot back on the ground, she continued to speak while I looked in wonder at the wound. The flow of blood was totally stemmed, the stump seemed cauterised (I remember still the dreadful searing of the hot poker used to seal the stump of the toe on the other foot) and I felt no pain.) “But I think I know some things about curses that you do not. I would like you to find me again when you need to know more about this. Now, you need to go back to your shack and rest. You must be exhausted. Here, you may want one of these to help you recuperate.” She reached around behind her and drew out a sack, my sack. Inside, wriggling and snapping, was a brace of fen-crabs. She placed the sack on the ground before me and I grabbed it before my supper could escape.
“Thank y-” I looked up and the Fae-Mother was gone.

Perhaps I should explain a little about the Fae-Mother.

And you’ll get to read all about her in Chapter 12 in a few days, dear reader!

The Apprentice, Chapter 10

Moving

I hate moving. It’s one of the most exhausting and stressful experiences in life. All that organising and physical labour and long days and nights of work to get all of the stuff you have but are not sure you need to a new place. Maryk’s moving in today’s chapter. He felt he had no choice after the events of the last chapter. But at least he doesn’t have much stuff to move, I suppose. Just the clothes he stands up in and that one big old book he procured from his master.

Chapter 10: Life in the Wilderness

Twelve years is not a very long time in the grand tapestry of the world and, though I had been of the opinion that my own depth and breadth of knowledge and learning was vast and fathomless, in my own twelve years I had somehow managed not to learn a single thing about woodsman-ship, orienteering or foraging. I also had little to no knowledge of the town’s surrounding countryside. Countryside is rather a generous word for the scrubland, ancient forests, swamps and bogs of which it consisted, in all honesty. I eventually spent rather a long period of my life amongst the stinking fens and mouldering woods of the Giarri Valley and grew to know them even better than my first home on the farm but I never learned to love them. They were harsh and I was soft. My muscles had weakened to such an extent that I could walk for no more than an hour at a time and if my levitation spell gave up the ghost I could not shove the libram even an inch from where it had been deposited. To put it mildly, I was in trouble out there.

I was in trouble before I had even left the town boundaries. I stopped at the crossroads on the other side of the bridge, staring at the signposts in the middle of the junction. Priest’s Point was twenty-four miles away to the south and Holdtbridge thirty-eight miles to the north-west. I had never been to these places so I thought that it would be safe enough to go to either one and be left to myself. I started towards Priest’s Point since it was the closer but soon realised the mistake in my decision. It was not a matter of living in a town where people would leave me alone. My curse would be no respecter of the choice of a hermit’s life-style. Proximity alone could be sufficient to kill those around me and destroy the lives of my unknowing neighbours. No, I could not be allowed to do that again. Murdering my sister and transforming her into a dreadful form of walking corpse were the actions of a person who no longer deserves the company of other people. I would live a hermit’s life, thought I, but out here, in the wilderness amongst the other animals, far away from the lives of others.

Leaving the main road of dust and stone walls, I took a track, which was made mainly of roots and puddles of dull, stagnant water, into the Creakwood. The wood was a thousand years old and I had heard so many horror stories about the place as a lad that I was in possession of a deep dread of its crumbling, creaking boughs and its moss bedecked trunks and its canopy from which seemed to peer a host of malevolent eyes. Still, I had made my decision, yet another decision of life-changing importance in the space of no more than a few hours. The woods were as good a place to start my new life as any, and better than most.

Dropped foliage conspired to hide the path from me before I had gone a mile down the track. The confidence I had had in my decision waned and I felt sweat trickle down my back. What had I been thinking, I thought as my pace slowed, I had no business out in the wilds, fending for myself. I could barely fend for myself in town. How could I have thought that this was going to work? I’ll barely last a day without starving to death or having my liver eaten out by a rabid badger or my eyes by a vicious pigeon or my soul by a wood wraith. The fact was, however, I saw not another living thing moving in those woods that day. The story goes that the woods perceived my puissance and quieted its denizens in respect. Looking back, however, the atmosphere was one, not of respect but of fear. Of course, at that time, my fear was all I was aware of, well, except for a vague sense of being watched.

I walked deeper, mind still a web of terror. Determination and a lack of options drove me on. The darkness was distilling itself down to a cruel, iron-dull fog. I no longer knew how long I had been walking and I could not tell the time of day or evening anymore. I stopped for a brief, terrified rest and wished I had thought to bring food or, at least, water along. I glared at the useless floating libram, accusingly. It had no response to my blame and could do nothing for my hunger and diminishing physical strength. Was that true? I took hold of it and drawing it nearer to me, I opened it. Only a faint glimmer appeared and only if one of the rare droplets of light in Creakwood’s gloom happened upon one of the book’s gilded characters. I stood to cast a Light cantrip and seconds later I was searching the book of Royal Magic for food conjuration. Now, obviously I had only been burned by this book so far and the idea of performing another spell from it at this point actually formed in my stomach a little brick of fear and loathing but I was desperate, lost and alone and I was out of ideas.
“Nourish” was the name of the spell I found. I could find none better suited to the task of feeding me than that. I chose a small patch of relatively flat forest floor and began the casting. Its movements were complex and the timing incredibly subtle but I was just about up to the task. I finished the performance and brought into being a tendril of green-tinged energy which escaped from my cupped hands, seeming to drip through them and into the ground at my feet. Rumbling emanated gently from the earth beneath me so I stepped back, just in time, as it happens, to watch a bush grow before me from a sapling to the height of a tall man in a matter of seconds. It was laden with an abundance of large, heavy, red and orange fruit the like of which I had never before seen. Green illumination glowed out of the plant’s leaves away from which the trees in its vicinity drew. The branches above creaked and groaned with such a racket that I was sure they would start to break and fall all around me. Instead, a gap formed in the canopy and honest sunlight streamed through rendering my meagre Light sphere redundant. I stepped into the rays of sunlight and picked a fruit from the new grown bush. I bit into it savagely. Lightly citrus flavoured water poured into my mouth from the centre of the fruit while I chewed the soft mauve flesh which tasted much like the water and had the texture of a perfectly ripe pear. Water Fruit seemed the ideal name for them so that is what I called them. Success! Finally success to celebrate. I sat on the forest floor in the sunlight by the water-fruit bush and smiled to myself, one hand grasping a second fruit and the other resting lightly on the libram. “Perhaps,” I said aloud, “I shall survive this after all.” Even then, before I was aware of her existence, the Fae-Mother heard my words, spoken naively, like the child I was still. Back then I knew nothing of her, despite all the power in the pages beneath my left hand. Why was she paying me any attention then? I wonder often myself. I like to think that, just as the Creakwood did, she felt the potential power in me but I can see now that she desired power, certainly, but it was not the power inside me, it was that inside the Emperor’s Libram. In hindsight, she seems very short-sighted but I would only say that now because I know she is no longer spying on my words or my thoughts.

I had created the water-fruit bush which would feed and water me, it had even provided precious sunlight through its effect on the dry and cracking trees that stood about it. When I finished eating I began planning. Realising that I should try to discover more about my surroundings I set off on a walk around the perimeter of the newly created water-fruit clearing. My floating Light sphere bobbing along at my right shoulder I found a few useful things. The first and most important was a woodland stream. The stretch of it in the immediate vicinity was choked and swollen with reeds, dead tree limbs and long-ago fallen leaves but I thought I might know a spell or two which would make short work of that particular obstruction. I also came across an eminently climbable horse chestnut of a venerable age and a profusion of sky-reaching branches. Finally, I found signs of life, or, if you can’t put it that way exactly, signs of a human presence nearby: a graveyard. It was an ancient place; you could tell there had once been engravings on the stunted, rounded stones but they were so weathered and covered in lichen and moss that whatever the ancient mourners had wanted remembered of their loved ones for generations was now unrememberable. Perhaps this wood had once been no more than a grove on the outskirts of the cemetery. Maybe the people all abandoned the area or were killed. It is possible they were all enslaved by Fomorin invaders leaving their rotting ancestors’ last resting sites to become annexed by the trees, which once shaded the dead’s living visitors. I continued on my patrol of the area and found the last item of interest, the wreck of a shack. Damp and mould had had their way with the roofless emerald and black log cabin. It was home to a multitude of birds, bugs and rodents.

I returned to the water-fruit bush, looked about the clearing around it and decided that this was the place for me. To the average twelve year old, obviously, there would be nothing about any of my discoveries that would lead them to think this would be the place in all the world where they would want to live. No bed, no toys, no mother, no father, no blankets, no bread, no tea. No matter, thought I and looked to the book, still where I had left it, floating by the bush.

My first priority, since I already had food and water, was to attend to the cabin. I started with a simple Clean and Tidy cantrip, one of the first I had learned to help me in my work in my master’s house. It achieved little but the removal of the mould from the wooden walls, the weeding of extraneous growths and the clipping of the grass around its outskirts. The fallen-in roof would have to be replaced, a door attached, floors and walls repaired and brickwork rebuilt. It would take me a lot of work to complete all of these tasks. Not muscle-work, not leg-work, but brain-work. I sat on the step of the house and began. As I studied, raindrops started to drop as thick, round pearls through the canopy above, falling on the precious pages of the libram. I cast a quick Umbrella and then continued. It would not be the last time I sat on the front step of my new home and studied the Emperor’s book until the small hours of the morning, no, not by a long, long way.

The Apprentice, Chapter 9

The Match-maker

What a good brother and friend! Maryk just wants his friend and his sister to be happy together forever. A laudable and romantic ambition, I think we can all agree. He wants to use his skills and abilities to allow love to flourish and happiness to reign! Perhaps he can even do enough good to wipe out the curse his short life has laboured beneath since his very birth. I’m sure it will all work out perfectly.

Chapter 9: The Consequences of Magic Potions

Our water had monster’s blood in it, although this was never verified by a visual inspection of the site, it is the general consensus, or, at least, the belief. No-one drank from it or fished from it; certainly no-one swam in it. A few brave boatmen fared the black waters but most people got no closer to it than the crumbling wooden bridge over it. It did not smell bad or feel strange to the touch and it even looked quite beautiful sometimes when the sunlight or moonlight struck it just so but everyone knew it could kill you.
I knew that but, also, I knew I could make it not kill you. I could do it, at least, I could now…not then, though.

Inevitably, Cobbles knew a man who ran a boat. He brought trade goods from Pitch Springs to Priest’s Point on the coast. In exchange for a day’s work, this man was willing to look the other way when Cobbles filled his canteen with poison water. This was the final ingredient. His love was only days away from embracing him now.
We met by the fountain in Saint Frackas’ Square and he handed me the canteen. “I’d like that back when you’re finished with its contents. I’ve had it since I was wee,” he said to me, as if he were not performing the single most important act in his life. “Of course, of course. It’s yours after all,” I replied as if I was not about to seal my fate. “So, how long?” he asked. “Perhaps two days; you shouldn’t rush these things, you know,” but I should have said three days or four, not two. “Fine, fine!” he said, “I can’t wait, eh? Primmy will be mine just like I’ve wanted all these months.” I nodded and shook his hand. “Oh!” he said as an afterthought and yanked a single hair from his curly head, “You need this too, right?” “It wouldn’t work at all without it, Cobb,” said I, taking the hair. We said our goodbyes and I went to stash the pitch water in my laboratory.

Later, I sat at the dinner table and discussed the events of the day with Mrs Blanintzi and Primmy, who beamed her happy smile at us both and spoke of her friend, Olka. Olka was in love with the baker’s lad but had a boil the size of a grape on the back of her neck. So, obviously, she couldn’t show an interest in the boy in case he should fumble across it when they were courting. “Courting!” said our governess, “There was no courting in my day. You young people have no morals. I should stay away from that Olka girl; she sounds like a tart. Courting! In my day you married the man your parents arranged for you and that was that. Courting didn’t come into it.”

I sat and smiled and enjoyed the company of my family. I wondered what it would be like in the house when Primula left to marry Hindryk (that’s Cobbles’ real name incase you’ve forgotten. I know I often did.) It would be odd but I thought I’d like to have the old place mostly to myself. Mrs Blanintzi, after all, wasn’t so bad. She had strict rules but was less strict in their enforcement.

That night I prepared the equipment to distill the poison out of the black water and began the process. It would take 36 hours by my calculation. I was off. I should have experimented on a small volume of the liquid first to be certain of my calculations. I should have given some to one of the many rats that were so easily caught in the cellars and gutters of the town to see it’s effect. I should, perhaps, have thought twice about the entire damned undertaking. Refusing to craft the potion for Cobbles at this point would have been cruel to him, certainly. I might have lost a friend over it. But looking back at it, I can see how much I might have, not just retained, but also gained. A whole life of learning and maybe even teaching, of respect from my peers and maybe even of those far above my own station. Master Gedholdt had met His Majesty, the King. He displayed a medal on his mantle. I could have been ten times the sorcerer that my master was. Instead, I made a love potion for my friend.

Two nights later, I took the ruby liquid which had resulted from the distillation of the Pitch Springs Water and mixed it with the other ingredients in a small cauldron I had for just such purposes. It should have been the colour of beets when it was finished, instead it was the colour of stout. I paid the colour no mind, trusting instead in my own expertise. I had never made a potion that did not work as it should. This was an indisputable fact of which I was very proud. So I bottled the stout-coloured elixir and went downstairs with it. My sister had just arrived home for dinner and was at the door shaking herself dry like a dog. The weather had been miserable all day. Sheets of rain and hail had been sweeping over the town since early morning. I had not been out in it as I had been busy with the potion and Master Gedholdt had not needed my services. I helped her off with her coat and hung it to dry by the fire. Surprised, she smiled at me and said, “What’s all this about, turnip-head?” she said with suspicion. “Why, Primmy! I don’t know what you mean!” I answered, all innocence. “You want something…” she was right of course. “Well, there was something small. I made something, a concoction I’m thinking of bottling and taking to the market next month…” I started. “And? What has that got to do with me?” “You’re too clever, sister of mine. I thought, since it might bring in some extra silver it would allow you to, perhaps, cut the number of hours you have to toil for that old bat if it works out. But I need someone to test it first. Just to taste a bottle of it to see if folks would want to drink it.” Smile slackening, Primula asked, “what does it do?” Little did she know…”Do? Why, nothing, not really. It’s more of a savoury fancy. A beverage for those who would rather not become inebriated.” “Oh. Why would someone want that?” She asked “My good sister. Our family has been lucky enough not to have endured a religious education or upbringing but many are those worshippers who are forbidden the taste of liquor. Followers of Saint Kannock, for example, though not completely abstinent, are not permitted alcohol at the weekends. That is when I intend to sell my beverage outside their temple.”
“Smart,” said she, and took the bottle. The lot was gone in a nonce. She smacked her lips said, “Not terrible, brother,” swayed in place, groaned, “something, something’s wrong,” stumbled two paces through a little side table and towards the fireplace. I caught her just in time, preventing her immolation by only a fraction of an inch. We fell in a heap on the parlour floor and I was laughing, what a jolly joke she was playing on me! When I took a breath I realised… Primmy was not laughing, she lay on top of me not even moving, not even breathing. She had fallen face down and I could see her pretty hair all in a mess, duller than normal. I struggled out from under her and saw her right arm trapped uncomfortably beneath her and her legs stuck out at odd angles. I had to be sure. Of course, I knew what this was, but I had to be sure. Turning her was not easy. As I said, I was wasting away and my muscles were weaker, then, than when I was a six year old boy. But turn her, I did. The deep blue veins in her face and neck stood out as if the blood had tried to force itself out through her skin. The eyes in her pretty face were like great black pearls, glistening with a liquid light but the worst was her mouth. Her teeth had all become like shards of coal and her tongue, also black, protruded rudely from between them. She was dead and I had done it. I did weep, if I remember clearly, I did, but I do not recall wailing or crying. Silently, I took up the empty bottle of Love Potion and pocketed it, then I went downstairs to the kitchen and informed Mrs Blanintzi that something had happened to Primula. I thought only of Cobbles then, oddly. What would he do now that his love was dead and gone? Would he be alright? I followed the old woman upstairs, thoughts occupied by the plight of Cobbles all the while. The governess stopped and stooped and wailed over my sister’s still-warm corpse and I thought that Hindryk’s life would be ruined now. Mts Blanintzi ran into the square and I followed as if attached to her by a string. I looked around and saw him there, Cobbles looked at me and I knew that it was even worse than I had thought. He knew. Cobbles knew I had killed her.

No-one else knew what killed poor Primula. The town doctor looked at her but the best he could come up with was, “she was poisoned.” He was not incorrect of course, but he could not be any more specific. A letter was sent for my father to return immediately but he was far away on the borders of our country defending a fortress against an infidel foe. He might not have been able to return for weeks and essentially, it would have been too late for him to do anything. Perhaps if he had been there I might not have continued down the pitch black path I had laid in tomb-stones before me. Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. What is the point in considering such might-have-beens when the past is immutable and the future, for me, at least, forever ruined? At the time, I had only one thought for the future. I had the thought that if I was going to be a sorcerer then I should be able to gain from it, and so should Primula. You have guessed by now, of course, what was on my mind. I did not have the knowledge. I could not perform the spell, if it even existed, because I did not know it. I knew where it could be found, though, and I knew how to get it. I just hoped that Master Gedholdt had not heard of Primula’s death because, if he had, he would certainly prevent me from even entering his house. I had to go that very night. I was just lying awake in my bed, considering the problem, as I saw it, of my sister’s death and how to fix it. So, once I had hit upon the answer it made sense to go immediately.

I skulked for an hour beneath the tree in front of my Master’s house before the lamp light went out in the front window. He was finally off to bed. I saw the lamp snuffed out from my vantage point and wondered why Gedholdt did not simply use a light spell all the time. I waited another thirty minutes and then crept, black-clothed, to the window. It was an old one with a latch, which would come loose with a jiggle or by the simple manipulation of a magic hand. I cast the spell, whispering the words and performing the actions as untheatrically as possible (this is a difficult thing to achieve when performing magic. It is always a performance and so, usually requires grand movements and projected voice.) Once it was open, I climbed awkwardly through and into the front room. The book I was looking for was not where I expected it to be. I could not have foreseen this as I had never been in the Master’s house so late before. The Master’s current work was the study and translation of the “The Emperor’s Libram, Royal Magic” and whenever I had previously been to his house it was placed, open to a particular page or closed against prying eyes on a stand on his desk. He often spent eight or ten hours a day at the libram, whispering and memorising and making notes. I did not know that he moved it at night. I went to the strongbox in the kitchen. I was certain that’s where he would secure it. Gedholdt kept all his valuables in the strongbox, thinking, incorrectly, as it turned out, that if a thief came to rob a magician, he would not expect the valuables to be there. It was an unassuming but large box with a sturdy, but not magical, lock. I had taken great care in creeping through the house and slowly shifting open the door but I knew the box creaked unnaturally when it was opened or closed. I had no choice, of course, but I steeled myself for the possible repercussions of my next action. Everything up until this point, my master might have forgiven. Breaking into his house was one thing but the Emperor’s Libram was not only his most prized possession, it was also the most dangerous by an extremely wide margin. I did not hesitate long before casting the “Open” spell. The sturdy lock was helpless against the magical spell; I heard the click and then I pushed up the lid. Wood groaned, iron scraped and I gasped. I cast another spell, “Levitate” this time, and took the glittering gold book from its ineffectual hiding place beneath a pile of tea cloths. As I did so, I heard a disturbance upstairs. The groans which had woken my master were echoed by the groans he made in the floorboards. He yawned and said something to himself. I could hear him coming downstairs. I pushed the floating book before me and ran for the front door, heedless, now, of the noises I made. The footsteps on the stairs quickened but by the time I heard him reach the bottom I was gone.

Home again, I had to find the spell. I floated the book up to my lab where it occupied most of the free space. I sat cross-legged on the attic floor and studied. Knowing that Gedholdt would figure out soon enough who had performed the daring robbery, I worked as fast as I could. The wonders writhing restlessly on every page made it difficult to skip anything and I could finally see why my master seemed so obsessed with it. But there was just one spell that I needed. Just one. I was confident, once again, in my ability to accurately translate such ancient writings. The spell I was searching for would be called “Revive.” It took two hours but I discovered it near the back of the book in ink of red and black. The sun would soon be up, I had to move fast or no-one would ever believe that she had simply recovered from her injuries.

I had devised the story that I would tell to explain her revival, if, for some reason, I was questioned. She had not died, no, she had but fallen into a semblance of death, a coma-paralysis caused by whatever poison she had consumed. When I went to visit her body in the temple, that night, it had worn off. She awoke, groggy and ill, right enough, but alive!
I hurried to the Grand Temple of Mictus, Saint of Souls, where the dead were laid before burial, armed now with the knowledge that would make things alright. If only I had managed to do this before word had been sent to my father, I remember thinking, I might have saved him some heartache. He would be happy, still, to find her alive when he arrived and she and he would enjoy a pleasant family visit, instead. Ha!

The door to the temple was unlocked, as always, but there did not seem to be anyone around other than the dead. It was a long, high-ceilinged, marble and granite, grey and white space. The tiles beneath my feet caused my footsteps to echo maddeningly as I walked the aisle, guided by dim torchlight. My sister was not the only occupier of the altar that evening. Two more corpses flanked her, all three draped in red cotton sheets as tradition demanded. I looked at her and thought, how dead she looked. She did not look like my sister anymore, she looked like a thing, an object, no desires or worries or likes or dislikes or emotions or…well…life. A second-guess stayed my lips as I approached the corpse and set my body in the opening pose of the spell. Maybe she’s the lucky one, I thought, maybe she is the one to have escaped this world of pain and disappointment and suffering and toil. Then I thought again of Cobbles and his misery and his knowledge of my murder and I proceeded. It was a long spell, and I performed it for close to an hour. As I reached its final syllable and flicked my wrist with the last movement I heard a cock crow and then I heard the temple door creak open.

“What are you doing? What are you doing here? What are you doing to her, you little wraith? Haven’t you done enough, already? Haven’t we done enough!?” It was Cobbles, come to pay his respects and beg her forgiveness as well, of course. I lowered my arms and turned to face my friend as he ran towards me up the aisle. I shifted a step backwards and almost tripped over a rug. “Its alright!” I cried, “She, she’s not dead after all, she’s not, look!” I could hear her move behind me on the cold stone altar and I knew then that it had worked and that I had performed a miracle, that I was blessed, even. I watched my friend slow a little and, just before he had reached me, stop, looking, gaping at the miracle behind me. “What did you do, you little monster?” he breathed. Finally, I looked and realised that it had been no miracle, it was yet another curse I had lumbered myself with. Primula, still wearing her red cotton sheet had slipped off the slab she had occupied and begun to shamble towards Cobbles, arms bent at the elbow, hands pointing in his general direction, eyes, still black as coal, rolled back in her head and mouth hanging open limply. There was that slug-like tongue sticking straight out and around it came the sound, a groan and a scream in one, high pitched and low at the same time, echoing out through a jagged cave of a blackened mouth. Her pallor had not changed from the time I entered the temple, she was grey and blue and black in splotches and her veins still protruded startlingly from the skin of her face and neck and now her hands and her feet too. Nor was she alone. Her two altar mates had risen now also, one a burly corpse of a man who seemed to have encountered some sort of agricultural accident as he was missing his left arm from the shoulder down. His colouring was more red and pink with blue spots but he, too, was black around the stump of his lost arm. The other one was a child no more than six years of age. A girl I think, though it was difficult to tell. The corpse presented nothing more than a burnt and ruined face, lipless, lidless and hairless, its unsheathed teeth chattered horribly as it worked its charred jaw.

I stumbled away from them, Cobbles and his opinions and his troubles vanished from my mind but my feet had lost all sense and I fell backwards onto the tiled floor, I hit it hard, jarring my shoulder and knocking my head to momentarily stun myself. Despite this, I saw what happened when they got to Cobbles. He had, perhaps, been paralysed by fear and disgust at my actions. Finally, my friend felt the embrace of my sister, not-so-pretty Primmy now. She kissed him and he screamed as she came away from his face with a sliver of it in her teeth. The others surrounded him then and I looked away as he screamed horribly for another ten seconds or ten minutes, I don’t know. When it was over, I was left, still on the floor with the blood of my friend, Hindryk, pooling about me. My walking corpses had gone, they had left me alone and gone out into the town. I took off my gore-soaked jacket and threw it over Cobbles’ grisly remains, then I ran out into the Pitch Springs dawn to follow the trail of blood. Unfortunately, they had split up. What could I do anyway? I was just a boy still and all of my skills were failing me. I had killed my sister with a magic potion and then revived her to a vile state of undeath along with two others. They were all, no doubt, decent people who did not deserve this treatment. Everything I did to try to fix things only exacerbated my problems or created brand new ones. It was time I stopped. It was time I left.

Decision made, I ran to our narrow house on Saint Frackas’ Square, retrieved the Libram and ran to the bridge over the accursed pitch water and left Pitch Springs behind for good, or so I thought.

The Apprentice, Chapter 8

Origin stories

Find the other chapters here.

I like an origin story with a little bit to it. A lot of place names are pretty dull. I come from a place called Sligo, Sligeach in Irish. It means “shelly place.” And, yep, it is. No mystery there. And maybe Pitch Springs got its name from the unnatural depth of the river at the location of the town or maybe the colour of the earth was so dark below the river that it made the waters seem black. But, actually, there’s a far more interesting tale behind it…

Chapter 8: The Story of the Naming of Pitch Springs

Pitch Springs had not always been named such. In fact there is a story attached to its renaming which has fascinated me since I first heard it. Many now say that the tale is nothing more than a bucket of bull’s manure but I am certain there are nuggets in it, even still, of truth or half-truth at least. I will relate here the Story of the Naming of Pitch Springs

Many years ago, in the village of Brightwash the mayor, a man of great girth and booming voice named Moltotzi, decided to build a series of mills along the riverside in and around the town. This would be of great benefit to the people of Brightwash and provide much-needed employment for several of the younger men who had been born too late to inherit any land and too stupid to study something worthwhile. The mills were really very popular. The town became famous for the fine bread flour it produced. Brightwash began to prosper and so did Mayor Moltotzi. He was hailed as a miracle-worker. The young men who found jobs at the mills soon found themselves prosperous enough to take wives and build houses of their own. Before long, nature took its course and lots of little would-be mill-workers came into the world. The village grew and Moltotzi said it was time they changed the name. Brightwash became Milltown and felt just a little bit darker.

Now, the folk of Milltown had always lived on the banks of the sparkling River Giarri so stories of the river’s odder inhabitants had been passed down for generations. Occasionally, a farmer making a delivery in the early gloom of morning or a sot wending his way home in the late black of night might report ed that they had seen one of them lurking or leaping in the middle of the deep river, sylkies; beasts that could take human form. While immersed in the river’s silvery mirror waters they appeared as nothing more than otters, remarkable only in their exceptional size but on the occasions when they left the river they were transformed into short, dark-haired men and women with deep black eyes. It was said that they survived on the bounty of the river itself: its fish and weeds and the plants of the river banks; so they did not interfere with the doings of the people of the town. Well, except in one very serious respect: supposedly they kidnapped young children. It was said that they did not procreate in the same way that people and animals did, you see, due to the fact that they were a magical species which were left over from the ancient times of the Fomorin Empire. So, to make more little sylkies they had no choice but to draw from the population of humans in their area.

The people of the town did not, at first, realise what was occurring. Their children simply disappeared from their beds. It was thought to be the evil work of some wicked man but there was never any evidence of that found at the homes of the disappeared. One father, one of the newly married mill workers named Davus was not willing to let his two year old son, Krish, go the same way as the dozen others taken from his neighbours. He determined to stand watch all night every night, if necessary, to find out who was responsible for these outrageous abductions, and to kill them. Darkened by night and partially hidden behind a curtain in their bedroom, he sat as Krish slumbered in his cot. His wife, Yolanna, slept in the bed next to the cot. He fought off sleep all night with a concoction prepared by the wise woman of the town (I often wonder if Aggie was this old.) The first night passed by without exceptional incident as did the second but on the third, Davus was sitting there behind his curtain, clutching the spade he intended as a weapon, when the silhouette of a darkened, naked woman slipped, soundlessly through the window, even as he watched. He did not act immediately, but paused to determine the intentions of the intruder. The little, hairy woman skulked to the edge of the cot, looked in, reached down. He burst from his place of hiding, thrusting the point of the spade like a spearhead at the neck of the kidnapper. A sylkie is not a defenceless creature, however, and is swift as an adder when attacked. This one sidestepped Davus’ effort and screaming like a cat, flipped out of the still open window. The whole house was awake now, Yolanna and Krish crying in startled horror. Davus vaulted through the window and made chase, raising a hue and cry as he went: “Awake, awake now!” He shouted, “Enemies here! Enemies! Up Milltown, Up! Up!” He whooped and hollered all the way to the river until half the town had come out of their houses and onto the streets. It was enough to cause the would-be kidnapper to be trapped. the sylkie, only strides from the safety of her river home found a wall of Milltowners blocking her path. The surrounding enemies made her crouch into a defensive position and watch as Davus came on, spade twirling in his hands as he did.

“Stop!” Cried the woman, in a gurgling bark. She held her hands out to Davus who smacked one of them with the flat of his spinning spade. She yelped and squealed in pain and stuck two of her bruised fingers in her mouth. “Where are our children?” asked Davus. “No children in the river! Just pups!” she garbled, fingers still mouth-bound. Davus’ spade spun and whirled about and then it stretched from his hands and struck her in the right knee. The sylkie woman went down and wailed terribly. “Where are our children, monster?” Shouted her tormentor now. “No children in river…just…pups,” she managed, whining and shaking all the while. Davus did not accept her answer. Had he not seen her attempt to take the child from his cot under his very nose? Had she not confessed by simply being? As if someone else had decided to voice his own thoughts, a shout came from the crowd, “You’re a sylkie, you can’t be trusted! That’s what you do! You take children and spirit ‘em away under the water. You have my Mikel! You have him down there!” The Sylkie fell to her knees as if struck again and growled, “No! We have pups. Not want your children. Not for the river, not for us, for the mayor!” Davus paused, his interest piqued. He had long been suspicious of the mayor and his ever-growing palace with its ever heightening walls in the centre of old town. He thought him a venal and greedy glutton but he could not imagine that he would have something to do with the disappearance of all those children, eleven in all now. “The mayor?” he asked, using the spade to support him as he knelt down beside the bruised and pathetic sylkie, “what about the mayor? Tell me n-”

“What’s all this, here!” The voice was unmistakable. The mayor had won elections based entirely on the strength, depth and timbre of his voice. Many claimed it had persuasive powers. Some said they had been hypnotised by the merest greeting from the man. Davus felt the reverberations of the mayor’s famous vocal cords in his own breastbone. He turned, and there the man was, dressed as if for the hunt, enormous red jacket over cream waistcoat, leather jodhpurs. He held a crossbow: Mayor Moltotzi. The mayor parted the crowd like so many chickens and came through to stand beside Davus. “Your Honour, I caught this sylkie trying to take my child, Krish. I chased her out and woke up the town.” “Yes, yes, good man…” “Davus, Mayor, it’s Davus.” “Yes, yes, I know that. Now, let’s just have a look. Well, she is a beastly looking whelp and no mistake. Still, how do you know she’s one of these river-dwellers? Hmm?” The mayor was questioning Davus but his reply came from the crowd of townspeople which had expanded till almost everyone was there, “She tried to take his lad! She’s a demon!” There was a rowdy chorus of agreement from the rest of the assemblage. “Indeed? A demon, well th-” “No!” interrupted the injured woman on the ground and attempted to crawl away. “It was you, you, you. Monster! Monster! You, monster mayor! You made us, you!”
A stone flew from the back of the crowd, hitting the sylkie woman square in the nose and knocking her back to the ground; another came from closer to the front and in no time the crowd was a mob and the stones flew freely. Davus ducked and covered his head with the blade of his spade and crawled away from what had just become a lynching. creeping away, wanting nothing to do with it, he hid and watched from the trees at the riverside until it was over and the town had gone home. Then he emerged and slumped to the spot where lay, not a woman, but the carcass of a large river otter, bleeding and battered almost beyond recognition. “What had she meant about the mayor?” he muttered to himself and then picked up the sylkie and brought her to the river.

A month passed; the abductions had stopped. The people of the town had forgotten all about the events of that night by the river. Well, everyone except Davus and his wife at least and Yolanna only because she had stayed where she was to look out for young Krish. He began to wonder if folk had been right about the mayor and the power in his voice. Everyone had turned so quickly. By the time they had started beating the poor woman they had sounded more like a pack of hyenas than the pleasant townsfolk he knew, no more words just howls and grunts and screams. And now…now the event may as well not have happened. He did not bring it up. He had been suspicious of the mayor since then and he was worried that there were agents amongst the Milltowners now. Making up his mind to go to the river and ask the sylkies what happened, and why, Davus made his excuses to his wife and went that very night.

It was just before midnight when he reached the riverside and he was reminded, uncomfortably of the night of the stoning. There was the stain still on the paving stones of the path to the jetty; there was the tree he had hidden behind; his shame hurried him along. He stood at the edge of the jetty and called, “Sylkie, sylkie, sylkie-o.” Over and over. He had brought an offering, of course, salted sardines. It had cost him a full day’s wages but he thought a sea fish would be a delicacy to river dwellers. The bells in the clock tower rang twice while he called and waited and introduced his bucket of fish to the river’s slow-flowing waters. His patience eventually bore fruit; a head bobbed out in the centre of the river. He had not seen it emerge and did not know how long it had been there by the time he finally spotted it but once he did, there was no mistaking it. Sleek, wet, shining dark, with moon-mirror eyes, the giant otter yawned, casually revealing the set of long glinting teeth in a jaw that he had heard could shatter the leg of a full grown man. He hesitated, but of course it was already too late. They would not let him turn around now. There were more heads bobbing out there, perhaps a dozen of them; one of them changed, becoming the head of a beardless youth. “Come in. Leave your clothing. Bring the fish.” He undressed clumsily and then, holding onto his bucket, jumped in. “Let the bucket go,” said the young sylkie man. Doing as he was told he watched the heads all submerge and then felt their wakes swirling about him below the surface. As they gathered and played with their food. He took a breath and dived. He could discern their dark bodies blur in dance about him; claws swiped at his face and missed by a whiskers’ breadth; a sideswipe almost surprised the air out of his lungs and then he was hoisted uncomfortably with little paw-hands in his oxters and dragged swifter than any man has ever swum in water. His eyes were forced closed by the pressure of the water on them and he kept his arms and legs as straight as he could so they didn’t catch on anything. They swam him for far too long.

Lungs burning and underarms aching he emerged finally from the water. His surrogate swimmers chucked him unceremoniously out of the water and onto the riverbank. Coughs wracked his chest and head for a few minutes and he spat up river weed and tiddlers. When he looked up there was a scrubbing brush-bearded man before him, dressed only in filthy torn britches and a sackcloth shirt.
“What?” Dared this sylkie wise man. “I was there…” “Where?” The man’s face betrayed a deep impatience. “When your woman died, I was there. I was one of them,” confession felt good, “I caught her.” The strike came too fast for Davus to see but he screamed when it came. Blood ran freely down his face from the four long slices made by the sylkie’s claws. Hand to face, he pushed on it to try and stop the bleeding. When he looked back at the man, it was as though he had never moved. “I deserve worse,” he said. “Did you come for worse? For punishment? We could do that but it would do our kind no good. It would make our lives much more difficult. No. Why did you come?” said the elder. “I came to ask you about Mayor Moltotzi. Your woman said the children were for him, not for you.” Davus’ voice was thick with his own blood, he spat some out and looked at the man again. He said nothing. “You don’t steal children to make them into sylkies, do you? You don’t kidnap them so you can have your own young. Am I wrong? You know what people think of you. I can see to it that they learn the truth. Just help me discover it!” The old sylkie hawked and spat a black gob into the mud. “The mayor is an evil thing. Not a man. Not him. Looks like it but so do I, eh? No, not a man. It’s name is Mulloch. It is here to feed. It eats usually sheeps and goats and rabbits and birds but once every month it wants a little one. ‘Give us human ones,’ it says, ‘and I’ll let you keep your pups.” Davus was aghast. “He knew, didn’t he, that we would all blame the sylkies for this? We are all so sure that sylkies take our wee ones for their own that we wouldn’t even think of another culprit. That’s what I believed but I needed proof as well…and then I found your woman in my house that night. The Mayor was able to use that discovery to deflect the blame onto you and your people.” The sylkie elder nodded curtly. “We will be leaving here. We have lived here in this river for many birthings but the mills hurt the water and they hurt our pups. Three have been sucked into them and killed already. They are too young to know the dangers and we want our children to roam free in their own homes. But I do not want to go until I know that Mulloch is no more.” The elder held out his long nailed hand to Davus and Davus held out his. They shook and and agreed. “That bastard will die. I will make certain of it.”

Davus was not a warrior; he was not an assassin; he had no magical powers, but he had a desire for true justice and the will to achieve it. His adversary was the most powerful man in the town and extremely popular with the citizens of Milltown. Also, he lived in a fortress. But, he had his weaknesses. He had a passion for the hunt and spent much of his time tracking and shooting game with his hounds. A retinue always accompanied him on these hunts since he could not be expected to fetch the kill or cook his own food while out. Also, he needed a squire, a stablehand and even a coachman if the hunt was to happen far from the town. Davus knew this about the Monstrous Mayor, as he began to think of him, because he had a friend who worked as a beater in this retinue, a friend he could replace. He would have to bide his time, though, and formulate his plan, not to mention waiting for his face to heal. Injuries like that never healed fully of course and he was scarred forever afterwards. His wife told him it added character and he earned the nickname, Scar.

Came the fateful day of the hunt. Davus replaced his friend in the role of beater and he joined the hunt at the gates of the mayoral palace in the centre of town. He never even entered; he didn’t have to. Out came Moltotzi astride a huge dray horse, the biggest in the region, it was said. Davus kept his head low and sat astride his own plain pony, trying to stay out of sight. They were to go, that day, to the nearby Hills of Heather where the mayor would hunt grouse with his specially made crossbow. It was not a long ride to this place, just an hour from the town but it was very different: colder, wilder and wetter. There was a mist blanketing the hills when they arrived, poor weather for hunting. The mayor managed to bag just one grouse all morning. Davus he knew it was a sign and he knew an opportunity like this one would not come again. They stopped for lunch near the top of a long-dropping waterfall, the very source of the Giarri on which Milltown stood. The company camped near enough to the water for the cook to fetch it but not close enough to allow its noise to overwhelm conversation. As the other servants busied themselves around the fire, Davus snuck off and planted something near the mayor, just close enough for him to see it from the corner of his eye, a feather. It was one of enormous length and had been part of a fan, once gifted to Yolanna by her mother. “What’s this?” said Moltotzi when he spotted the feather and, grabbing his crossbow, went to get a closer look. He picked it up and marvelled that it might have been dropped by a bird he had never before shot. He looked around for the beast only to discover, that’s right, another feather and another and another until the trail of them had wound him a zigzag as far as the waterfall. He stood there at the cliff, looking around dumbly for the bird he had come for, crossbow cocked and raised. But there was no bird, there was only Scar. “For the children,” whispered Davus as he crept up behind the bulk of the monster. He calculated for a just a moment and then ran at the broad red-coated back of the mayor. He managed to stop himself from going over too, only by clutching the hardy heather on the edge of the cliff. Davus watched him disappear into the mist and heard his unearthly scream all the way to the bottom. No-one else did. The little retinue returned to the town after hours of searching the hills, assuming the mayor had wandered off in the mist and fallen over the cliff side. They were partly right. When they returned to the town they entered the mayor’s palace to see if he had somehow made his way back there. They searched it high and low and found no sign of him. What they did find shocked the whole town, well almost the whole town, Davus and Yolanna were not surprised when a secret dungeon was uncovered. It was littered with the bones of children and the truth was revealed to Milltown. Of course it was not called Milltown for much longer. Once the party had returned from the hills the waters of the bright Giarri had turned unaccountably dun and then dark and then black and they have stayed that way to this very day. Black as pitch is what they were. It was not the residents’ idea to rename the town again. No-one knew exactly who started it, in fact, but that’s when Milltown became Pitch Springs.

The Apprentice, Chapter 7

Making friends

Our protagonist is not, perhaps, the most gregarious of characters. He is bookish and strange and somewhat obsessive. But we all need a friend sometimes, don’t we? In today’s chapter, Maryk attempts to cement a new friendship with a little light alchemy. Should go fine.

Chapter 7: The Happiest Time of My Life

The two years I was apprenticed to Master Gedholdt were the happiest of my life. I treasured, still, the memories of my self-teaching on the farm but they were soon eclipsed when the true nature of my studies in the house of the sage became clear to me. I had had no inkling the real potential of magic. But I learned; I absorbed it like a soft white bread absorbs the honey spread over it. I had mastered the twenty four basic runes used in the writing of magic spells and the two hundred and eighty eight compound runes derived from each of them within the first six months, purely through my own studies. These continued night and day unless I was occupied in cleaning up after my master, eating or socialising with friends (left to my own devices, I would have forgone human contact in favour of books but Master Gedholdt insisted, “Magic can make you powerful and knowledge can make you wise but if you have no-one with whom to share these gifts, what is the purpose? Learning for the sake of knowledge, alone, is worse than pointless; it is a waste of a fine mind.” I did not understand this point of view. I thought that knowledge would allow me to help people whether they were aware of it or not. All I needed was to trust my own judgement, and certainly I did that, more so than anybody else’s.) By the end of the first year I could read and even write basic spells. Master Gedholdt would not allow me to cast even the most elementary of cantrips, however (I was sure I was more than capable and only the esteem in which I held my Master stayed my hand.) Six months after that the written Fomorin language gave up the last of its secrets to me. Though Master Gedholdt forbade me from studying the great tome which had brought the two of us together, the title of which, “Dansh no Tikka, Ekktu Nakkori,” I was now capable of translating as “The Emperor’s Libram, Royal Magic.”

In the six months that followed, I finally realised my ambition to cast real magical spells. I watched my Master cast a simple illumination spell one day after I had finished the chores he had set for me. He did it, he said, because the oil lamps were too dim for reading in the evenings, but he looked at me pointedly when he did it. I watched the choreography of hands and feet and listened carefully to the exact tone and inflection of each syllable as he spun the spell a second time. “Now, Apprentice, perhaps if you could master this trifle, it would save me the bother of having to do it for myself in the future,” he said as if setting me yet another chore. With that, he turned away and walked into the kitchen, claiming to have left his spectacles there (even though I had clearly seen them resting on top of his head.) It disappointed me a little when I realised that he had left, not to save me embarrassment if it did not work but to save his own eyesight if it worked too well. I duplicated my Master’s spell exactly and produced in the air above my head a sphere, perhaps two inches in diameter, glowing with a soft, creamy light, the like of which could never be produced by a flame. When Master Gedholdt realised it was safe, he re-entered the room and said, “Good. Not a bad little light. Perhaps next time you can make one that doesn’t follow you around, eh?”

After the Light spell I perfected the casting of many relatively risk free, minor spells: Simple Levitation; Munch’s Floating Hand; Warm; Animate Minor Object; Read; Throw Voice; Clean; Minor Umbrella and too many others to list here without your gracious patience being tested to its limits. I was a Magician. The type of magic I learned could often have been reproduced by a talented illusionist or charlatan. Still, I felt a suffusion of wonder at my own achievements. My Master informed me that, as a rule, practitioners spent the first six years of study simply amassing the knowledge required to sufficiently control the power that was to be theirs. “It seems that you came to me almost prepared for it, however. You knew instinctively the balance between delicacy and power and will be required to channel the thaumaturgical currents responsible for the acts of which we are capable. It is a rare gift. That is why I have allowed you to progress to the more practical level of study that you are now mastering.” He kept a much closer eye on my activities, after that, though, and he expressly forbade me to perform any magic outside the confines of his house. “Folk would not understand if they witnessed it. We keep our more arcane abilities an open secret so that people can ignore it if they choose and make use of our services if they wish. Be discreet.” I obeyed this order almost always. Occasionally, when I sat, exiled from the Land of Nod in my tiny laboratory I would conjure a Light to replace the smelly, flickering oil lamp but I never demonstrated my new found abilities in the presence of anyone else.

Meanwhile, my friendships developed with some of the other local children. To be honest, when I first attempted to cultivate relationships with them, it seemed like a waste of time. And yet, I soon discovered that it was good to have friends and confidantes. I told them nothing of my real studies of course but I revealed just enough of the exotic truth to whet their appetites for more of my company. One lad, in particular, sought me out as often as he could. His name was Hindryk Scheimatzi. He was the shoemaker’s son so he lived next door, right above his father’s shop. He had obviously earned the nickname, “Cobbles,” by virtue of his father’s noble profession. He enjoyed being called by this alias. Apparently it denoted some degree of intimacy between acquaintances. Cobbles was not a person of any special intelligence nor was he a dullard; in fact he was very funny. He loved to entertain me with his japes and acrobatics. His particular favourite trick was to run directly at a wall and then backflip off of it. It was impressive but difficult and dangerous so he saved that one until he was sure he was in full view of a gaggle of school girls or sometimes even young mothers. He was not fussy, as long as they were of the opposite sex and paying him attention. I was still quite young when he started this, just eleven years of age, and I had yet to develop an interest in the female of the species. Cobbles, though, was several years older (in fact, he was the same age as my sister) he even sported a wispy moustache, of which I liked to make fun but was secretly jealous.

Cobbles worshipped me, he came looking for me before I went to Master Gedholdt’s house every morning and met me outside his front door. Why? You might well ask. I was a diminutive, bookish young lad, who was developing a pallor comparable only to that of his Master. Cobbles, in contrast, was five years older than me, tall, athletic and moustachioed. The answer, of course, is that he befriended me to get closer to my sister. Still, there was mutual advantage in our friendship. For me, Cobbles kept the rest of the town’s youths off my back when I was clearly a prime target for them. For him, I provided a very good reason to spend time around Pretty Primula and to garner a great deal of advice on the likes and dislikes of my sister.

A budding relationship between the two of them, I felt, was of use to me. If it worked out, it would be handy to have someone like Cobbles around me in the future. I had once been robust and even strong but my muscle was wasting away, I assumed because of my constant studies and lack of healthy exercise. I was wrong about the reason for it of course but nevertheless, I knew that I would be requiring the services of a strapping lad as my physical powers waned.

There was a problem, of course; my stubborn sister. Her refusals of Cobbles’ affections became embarrassing even to me and his clumsy, slipshod advances made me cringe. For example, one evening Primmy was returning from her day’s work where she had clearly been beaten again. Her cheeks were plum with blood and bruise and she was wearing her hair as a veil in an attempt to disguise it. She encountered us in Saint Frackas’ Square where Cobbles was doing handstands on the edge of the old fountain while I watched from our front doorway in an attempt to stave of the encroaching cold. At the very scent of Primula (she had the constant, if not exactly unpleasant odour of soap about her) he launched himself off his perch and performed a backflip to come to a landing directly in her path. Primula had not noticed his acrobatic feats but was startled to find Cobbles blocking her way. She looked up and spoiled the curtain effect of her locks. She was smiling her big, dumb smile as usual but she reached up to cover her cheeks with her hands. This is what Cobbles said:
“Oh no! You don’t need to cover you face, that colour in your cheeks makes you look pretty.”
The perpetual smile dropped to a momentary scowl before she pushed past him, saying, “Hindryk, You don’t know how to talk to a girl!” I could not have uttered the sentence any more succinctly myself. She was upset with him from that point on. His pathetic, crushed expression was spelling disaster for my plans to keep him around. I had to do something more direct to help this potential relationship to flourish for it could most certainly not be left in the hands of the erstwhile Prince Charming.

Now, Master Gedholdt had forbidden me from using magical spells anywhere outside his house and I did not want to jeopardise the days of contentment and learning which I so treasured by committing that most cardinal of sins. You have already guessed it, no doubt: I would have no choice but to write some lines for Cobbles to use to win the heart of my sister and perhaps some simple verses of love poetry for him to recite outside her window of an evening to woo her and show her how much he cared…Absurd! I was no poet, though I could write a pleasant enough passage of prose, I do not think it is the sort of thing one’s lover would appreciate read aloud to them to fill them with desire, no. I decided instead to return to the teachings of my old Mistress, one of her stocks in trade, The Love Potion. My current Master knew nothing of my former alchemies so could not forbid it. Even if he had known, I do not feel that he would have had the right to prevent me from practicing this particular art.

My plan presented several difficulties. Firstly, the ingredients for a real Love Potion were expensive and difficult to track down. The potion Burnt Aggie used to pawn off on her unfortunate customers was not merely inferior quality. In fact, it produced an effect which no-one particularly wants in a lover (or at least I assume so, I am not what one might term experienced in these matters,) uncontrollable flatulence. Saint Valentzi’s Day in Pitch Springs was rivalled only by market day in the intensity of the odour infusing the town (although things had changed considerably in the years since the murderous harridan had burnt to the ground with her hut.) I was certain that my new recipe would achieve the desired results without any appreciable side effects. I would have to recruit Cobbles into my plan to procure the ingredients. I was reluctant to do this as Master Gedholdt had told me never to make my abilities known to others if it was avoidable but I felt I could trust Cobbles and I wanted him to trust me completely too. Of course, when I told him my intentions, he leapt at the opportunity and offered to use his own money to pay for the herbs, booze and gold needed for it. This was the greatest risk I had taken since I first went to spy on that contemptible sow, Aggie, when I thought there was a very good chance she might like me for dinner and possibly dessert too. I considered it very carefully. I compared both of those situations and decided that the Old Aggie business had gone about as well as it could have despite having ended up with her resembling an overcooked lamb joint. Of course, I was only interested in how things had turned out for me, not for her, and for me the results of my association with her had been overwhelmingly positive. I weighed the risks and came to the decision that it would be riskier for me in the long run if I were not to bring Cobbles into my confidence.

One Friday evening when I had finished some magical cleaning chores for the day in Master Gedholdt’s house. As I was leaving I spotted Cobbles climbing a tree in the Lord Belintzi Memorial Gardens. I walked over to the tree and looked up at him as he hung upside-down from a sturdy branch and told him, “I am an alchemist and I am going to make you a Love Potion so you can woo Primula.” He tumbled from the bough and broke the middle finger of his left hand.

Here is a list of the ingredients required to craft Maryk’s Love Potion:

The roasted heart of a rabbit
A leaf of gold
Essence of lover’s tears
The egg of a storm gannett (yolk only required)
A ring of silver
A sprig of honeyleaf
Four gooseberries
A single hair from the would-be lover’s head
A quart of Pitch Springs water

You can, perhaps, see why I needed the help of one somewhat more able-bodied than myself to obtain some of these items. I had made one of these potions only once before and that was when I had access to the well-stocked and arcane larder of Abominable Aggie. I had never had to think about where one would have to go to find the egg of a storm gannett, what one would have to do to retrieve the lover’s tears from which I could derive an essence. The most unattainable of all, of course, was the leaf of gold. I did not have money, Cobbles did not have money and I knew no-one to borrow it from who would not ask uncomfortable questions as to its necessity. I was going to bring up all of these issues with Cobbles before handing him the list. We were sitting on the fountain steps in our square where I had told him I would give him the list. He was looking at me with an hint of wonder, a hint of fear and a hint of anxious expectation. “Just give me the list, Maryk, don’t you worry about what’s on it. Whatever it is, I’ll get it, just you see. For Primmy, I’ll get it.” So, I handed it to him, saying simply, “Get me the lovers’ tears and I’ll distill them.” He nodded then asked hesitantly, “Which one’s honeyleaf, again?” I smiled and watched him cringe (I had become gaunt as a scarecrow and my teeth were beginning to yellow noticeably. I was starting to think my growing list of physical abnormalities had more to do with Aggie and her curse than my propensity to study indoors.) “I’ll show you the right herb. By the way, if you have to do…anything…anything to get some of those ingredients…don’t tell me about it, eh?” And he didn’t.

He brought each item to me as he came into them. Surprisingly, he brought me the tears first. I asked him how he obtained them so quickly.
“Kitten,” he said with a shrug as if the explanation were somehow obvious and I was to wave my hand at him and say, “Oh, Kitten! Of course. Why did I even ask?” Instead, I peered at him for a brief moment before finally asking, “Kitten..?”
“You don’t know her? She’s one of the whores that work over in front of the garrison most nights, you might have seen her there.” In truth, Cobbles often forgot about our age difference. “She was in school with me till a few years ago. Kitten’s not her real name, you know. She’s really called Hochti. You can see why she doesn’t go by that, rea-“
“I don’t need a whore’s entire biography, Cobbles,” I interrupted.
“‘Course you don’t. Anyway, she said she had this regular fella who always cries after they do the thing.” I laughed as I knew Cobbles would expect that.
“Let me guess. Was it because he loved her so dearly and could not have her to himself?”
“How did you…you really are clever, Maryk, you really are.” I said nothing, simply basked in his lightly won admiration. “Anyway, I gave her a couple of coins to purloin some of these tears and there we go. Nothing untoward or even unlawful really. He paid her for her time and so did I in a way.”

I told him he’d done well and then dismissed him. It was very late and I had to get the tears to my attic laboratory before too many of them evaporated. I thought about the man Cobbles told me of. He was so in love with a whore that he tortured himself by going to visit her regularly. He probably spent all his earnings on his visits, for which she cared nothing at all. He wept like a rejected schoolgirl because he knew he could have her as often as he could afford but she would never want to have him. Why would someone subject themselves to such base indignities in the name of an indefinable emotion that has only served to cause strife and mental anguish, wars and bar brawls and murder and tears? Songs compare the feeling to magic. Well, I had never experienced love but the feeling of magic, that was unlike all others. The stomach plunging of fear, the volcano of hate, the sweet nothing of happiness, all dull and distant compared to the emotion of magic. That was molten gold running in your veins and clouds lifted from your eyes and a light of such intensity and vitality that you are sure it could never go out of your mind until it does and you are reduced again to the status of animal and base human.

I completed the extraction of the essence of emotion from the tears and went to bed to lie down for an hour before dawn.
The next day I spoke to Master Gedholdt of the love my friend, Hindryk bore for my sister and how she did not reciprocate.
“It may surprise you to learn, Maryk my lad, that I myself, have never been much of a ladies’ man (is that the term?)” I feigned shock, he saw through my inept play-acting. “It’s alright, really. I expect that the time is now past for me, though I do still think of, well, of, uhm, of taking a wife, shall we say. Yes, I still think of it often. As you have seen, however, I do not often have the opportunity to meet other folk. My studies and my work occupy my time most exclusively. I have my regrets, Maryk. You do not have to have the same sort. You are still a little young, I know but you should never neglect that side of life. My father once told me that the love of a good woman is what truly makes a man. Of course this was before he was tried and imprisoned for attempting to actually make a man from the parts of others. Hopelessly insane, of course, Old Papa.” He continued talking about his family and the various insanities, obsessions and mental misbalancings which defined them for some time. Continuing to consider his words of advice about women, I did my chores, half listening to his stories, all of which I had heard many times before. Do not think this disrespectful; on the contrary, I had nothing but the utmost respect for my Master and his opinions and advice but I felt the advice was more like a library: there to be picked and chosen from rather than read from A to Z.

That evening Cobbles and I met again. He brought most of the rest of the ingredients I needed for the potion: the roasted rabbit heart, the leaf of gold (borrowed from the gilded cover of a book in the Master’s Library in the school), the silver ring (I did not ask), the honeyleaf sprig (he was able to find some of the potent herb in the mouth of an old mine shaft near the quarry) and the four gooseberries which were actually quite difficult to find as they were out of season (I would make do with dried ones, I told him.) The last item he revealed was a thing of real beauty, the egg of a storm gannett. It’s shell glistened in the light of the oil lamps on the square. It had a lustre like mother of pearl and the colour of an oil spill on the surface of a deep pool of still water and wherever the light struck it, it seemed to leave a lightning strike.
“I’m going to crack this open and use only the yolk!” I said.
“Tomorrow, I’ll fetch you the quart of Pitch Springs water and you will make me my Love Potion. Maryk, I’ll never be able to repay you for this,” said Cobbles.
“Don’t you worry about the payment, Cobb, just leave that to me,” I answered.