Disenchanted (10 page)

“All right, Boric,” said the mayor. “Let’s get you inside.”

Boric was led into a nearby building, where he had to stoop almost to his knees to get inside. The burlap sacks were removed and a sudden glare blinded him. Making matters worse, his eyelids seemed to be stuck open. He held up his hands in an attempt to ward off the light. “Please, the windows!” he yelped.

The window shutters were closed and Boric sighed with relief. Boric found himself in a domed room that might have served as a pantry in Kra’al Brobdingdon, but appeared to be a sort of town hall. Small round windows, now shuttered, dotted the walls about halfway to the dome’s apex, and several narrow tunnels ran out of the room, presumably leading to similar areas. Boric had the sense that threfeling architecture consisted mainly of digging out beneath hills and then shoring up the walls with twigs and stucco. Standing in the middle of the room, the ceiling was out of arm’s reach. The mayor and several other New Threfelton functionaries were regarding him soberly.

“Now, if you would please hand your sword to the bailiff,” said the mayor.

“Um,” said Boric. “That’s going to be a problem.”

“Listen here, stranger!” snapped the mayor. “You are a guest in New Threfelton, and as such you are not permitted to carry a weapon. I don’t know how they doing things in Stomplerville or wherever you’re from, but…”

“You don’t understand,” protested Boric. “The sword is cursed. I can’t let go of it.”

“Cursed!” spat the mayor. “We’ll see about that. Bailiff!”

The bailiff, a portly old threfeling wearing a sort of bronze cap, stepped forward and held out his hands to Boric, a look of grim determination on his face.

Boric sighed and unbuckled his belt, putting the scabbard in the little man’s hands.

“There,” said the mayor. “Was that so…”

But of course the bailiff was unable to take the scabbard from Boric. If he removed it from the left hand, the sword would stick to the right. If he pried it from the right hand, it would snap back to the left. After a minute or so of furious struggling, he somehow managed to get between Boric and the sword, but then found himself hopelessly adhered to Boric’s left thigh. With the help of several of the other functionaries, the bailiff eventually managed to extricate himself, collapsing in a pile with the other threfelings. The sword dutifully clung to Boric’s leg. Undeterred, the bailiff jumped to his feet and attempted to pull the sword from its scabbard — also to no avail. Even with the help of five other threfelings — three pulling the sword and three pulling the scabbard — the sword wouldn’t budge.

Boric bore all this with stoic good humor, not feeling that he had much of a choice in the matter. He couldn’t leave New Threfelton in the middle of the day, so he was bound to be the guest of the threfelings, at least for the next several hours. If he had to spend that time with threfelings crawling all over him to satisfy themselves that Brakslaagt really was cursed, then so be it. Fortunately, as stubborn as the little bastards were, they finally gave up after nearly a half hour of various creative exertions.

“All right,” said the mayor, folding his arms across his chest. “I have decided to allow you to hold on to your sword.”

Boric bowed slightly in a gesture of thanks. “I’ll keep it in the scabbard,” he said.

The mayor nodded. “Good, good. Now let’s get those wrappings off you.”

A collective groan went up from the assembled threfelings, who were mostly lying prone on the floor and wheezing in exhaustion.

“Also probably not a great idea,” said Boric.

“Another curse?” asked the mayor.

“As I mentioned,” replied Boric. “I have a condition. The wrappings help to control it. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.”

The mayor shrugged.
^[7]
“You are a strange man, Boric, even by onetutherling standards. What brings you to these parts?”

Boric hesitated, considering how much he should tell the threfelings. “I am being pursued,” he said. “By others like me, similarly cursed. They share my condition and are convinced that I belong among them. I disagree.”

The mayor’s brow furrowed. “So that’s it? They want you to come and live among them? That doesn’t sound so bad. Why wouldn’t you want to be with your own kind?”

“They are…not good men,” said Boric. “The pain of their disease makes them cruel and violent. I am trying to resist such tendencies, and being among them would not assist me in that endeavor. Sir, I didn’t mean to trespass on your territory, and as soon as the sun sets I promise to be on my way.”

“Hmm,” replied the mayor. He turned to confer with the other functionaries, who had managed to pull themselves to their feet. After a moment, he turned back to Boric. “You are an officially recognized guest of New Threfelton, Boric. You may seek sanctuary here as long as you like, as long as you abide by our local rules and customs, and pitch in as needed.”

“Oh,” said Boric. “That’s very kind of you, but really, I hadn’t planned on staying very long. I need to keep moving.”

“Where will you go?”

Boric said nothing. Where
would
he go? Thus far he had only thought to put as much ground between him and the other wraiths as possible. But eventually he would run out of ground. To the south and east lay the territory of the Lemani barbarian tribes, who would be even less welcoming of a wraith than the civilized kingdoms. To the west was the hostile Kingdom of Skaal, and to the east, beyond the Kalvan mountains, was the Kingdom of Blinsk. He would find no sanctuary in any of these places.

“Well, until you figure out where you are headed, you will stay here. It will do you some good to rest and get some food in your belly.”

Boric grunted, fighting a wave of nausea at the thought of his exposure to rabbit stew.

“I have all the food I need,” he said. “I would be much obliged if you could find me a dark, quiet place where I could rest, however.”

The mayor instructed Chad to find such a place, and they settled on a dank, mostly empty cellar connected to the town hall. Chad begged him to consider a more comfortable room, but Boric insisted that the cellar was perfect. “But…” Chad protested. “It’s like a tomb in here!”

Boric grunted and closed the door. He was alone in the darkness.

[6]
Skulking, it should be noted, is considered a very serious crime among threfelings, although it differs only slightly from acceptable pastimes such as lurking and sneaking.

[7]
The fact that diseases could be passed from one person to another has been well known among the denizens of the Old Realm for centuries, but somehow never penetrated the collective consciousness of threfelings. The resulting lack of prophylactic precautions on the part of threfelings (and generally filthy nature of the threfeling lifestyle, living as they do in muddy warrens along with countless farm animals) caused them to be constantly bathed in a veritable sea of contagion, which strengthened their immune systems and made serious communicable diseases almost unheard of among their kind. It has been observed by more than one historian that the unlikely survival of threfeling society over the past thousand years or so was primarily a side effect of the profound and widespread ignorance characterizing its population.

TWELVE

Boric regretted agreeing to travel with Milah — that was her name — almost immediately. She peppered him constantly with questions about the ogre, and about Brobdingdon, and about the Vorgal tribes to the north, and on and on. Her curiosity seemed to know no bounds. After several hours he realized that he still knew virtually nothing about Milah.

“Why were you traveling that way, disguised as a messenger?” he asked.

Milah smiled coyly. The road north of Plik was wide enough for two horses side by side, and she took advantage of this by riding along Boric’s right side. She still wore the messenger’s uniform but had removed the beard and wore her hair in braids. When they passed other travelers, she would pull her hood over her head and let Boric do the talking. She would have made a pleasant traveling companion if she had just shut up for five minutes. “I might ask you the same thing, Derek,” she said.

“I assure you my beard is quite real,” said Boric.

“But you’re no more a messenger than I am.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You talk like an aristocrat. You try not to, but you slip into it when you forget yourself.” She contorted her face into a mockery of Boric’s stolid demeanor. “I assure you my beard is quite real,” she growled, dropping her voice an octave.

Boric scowled.

“Cease your prattling, wench!” she went on.

Boric found himself smiling in spite of himself.

“I assure you that my sword is quite long!” she growled.

Boric broke into a laugh. “All right, enough,” he said. “It’s true, I’m not a messenger. I am the son of a nobleman from Brobdingdon. My father is quite wealthy, but as the third of three sons I don’t stand to inherit much. The king offered a reward for killing the ogre, and I volunteered.” This account was true, of course, although it left out some important details.

“I knew it!” said Milah.

“Your turn,” said Boric. “Why are you traveling as a messenger?”

“Because I
am
a messenger. Check the official rolls. Milo of Skaal.”

“You signed up for the Messenger Corps under an assumed name?”

“I had to. They don’t accept girls.”

“Because it isn’t safe for a girl to travel alone.”

“I’ve done all right,” she said, patting the pommel of her sword. “Been on the road for over a year now.”

“You’ve been lucky,” said Boric.

“I’ve been careful,” she replied. “In any case, I’m almost done.”

“Done?”

“Brobdingdon is my last stop. I have one last message to deliver, to King Toric.”

Boric’s eyebrow raised at the mention of his father. He would have asked Milah who the message was from, but telling him would violate the messengers’ code of conduct.

“You know the king?” she asked.

“I’ve met him,” said Boric.

“I hear he is a wise man, but that his sons are cowards and fools. Is that true?”

“It’s mostly true,” Boric admitted.

“Does your father have any… influence with the king?”

“My father?”

“You said your father was a wealthy nobleman.”

“Well, yes, I suppose the king has taken advice from my father from time to time.”

Milah clenched her fists in the air. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “I knew it! This is the one! It’s finally going to happen! Why didn’t I go to Ytrisk first? People said that it was a backward province, that the king didn’t have the money and wouldn’t see the value, so I wasted a year traveling to the other five kingdoms. And it turns out I should have gone to Ytrisk first! But then I might not have met you, and obviously our meeting was meant to happen. So that you could take me to your father, and he could talk to the king!” She squealed with excitement.

Boric regarded her, puzzled.

“My message,” she explained. “It’s not really a message. I mean, it is. It’s a message from me. About an opportunity. Something that could change the world. My father, you see, was one of the court alchemists in Avaress. He was killed in one of the barbarian invasions after the Fall, but his notes survived. My older brother inherited his laboratory, but he had no interest in alchemy. I’ve always been fascinated with it, though, ever since I was a kid. A few years ago I started reading my father’s notes and I realized what he was trying to do and how close he was when he died. I convinced my brother to allow me to continue his work. The deal was that if I succeeded, he was going to go to the King of Avaress and try to get funding.”

“Funding? What do you mean by funding?”

“Well, I could only create a single prototype, and it didn’t work very well. The idea was to sell the king on the idea, and get him to build us a much bigger laboratory and supply us with the minerals that we needed — ”

“Milah, slow down,” said Boric. “A prototype of what?”

Excitement shone in Milah’s eyes. “I’ll show you.” She halted her horse and dismounted, pulling the beast to the side of the road. Boric did the same. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out something, wrapped in cloth and string. She untied the string and unwrapped the cloth. Inside were two discs about the thickness of a coin and the width of Boric’s palm. She handed one to Boric.

“What is it?” Boric asked.

“Look at it,” said Milah.

Boric looked at the disc. One side was dull gray and the other was glossy silver, almost like a mirror, but the image it showed was dark and blurry. “A mirror?” asked Boric. “I can hardly see myself in it.”

“It’s not you,” said Milah. “It’s me.” She was holding her own mirror in front of her face.

Boric squinted at the mirror. “If you say so. What’s the point?”

“It’s a two-way mirror!” Milah exclaimed excitedly. “I can see you and you can see me!”

“All I see is a blur,” said Boric dubiously, cocking his head. “It looks a little like a monkey.”

“Well, like I said, this is a prototype. The zelaznium isn’t pure enough to get a good picture. I need a bigger lab and better equipment, and — ”

“The what?”

“Oh, it’s what the mirror is made of. A mineral called zelaznium. I named it after my father, Zelaznus. He’s the one who discovered it. The final version will be bigger, of course, and much clearer. And it will have a significantly longer range. These only work over about twenty feet. But with better equipment and purer zelaznium, I could make a pair that can send images up to a hundred feet. Maybe more.”

Boric frowned. “What’s the point?”

“Communication over long distances!” Milah exclaimed.

“I can already communicate over a hundred feet,” replied Boric. “It’s called shouting. Anyway, I can’t talk through the mirror, can I?”

“No, but you could use hand signals — ”

“I can use hand signals without a mirror.”

 “Yes, but don’t you see the potential? Maybe eventually we could string a series of mirrors together, or find some way of amplifying or focusing the transmission.”