Reave the Just and Other Tales (3 page)

“Young man, you are not the first to approach me for a potion in this matter. You are merely the first”—he hefted the purse—“to place such value on your object. Therefore I must give you a magick able to supersede all others—a magick not only capable of attaining its end, but in fact of doing so against the opposition of a—number—of intervening magicks. This is a rare and dangerous enterprise. For it to succeed, you must not only trust it entirely, but also be bold in support of it.

“Behold!”

The alchemist flourished his arms to induce more fires and explosions. When an especially noxious fume had cleared, he had in his palm a leather pouch on a thong.

“I will be plain,” said the alchemist, “for it will displease me gravely if magick of such cost and purity fails because you do not do your part. This periapt must be worn about your neck, concealed under your”—he was about to say “linen,” but Jillet’s skin clearly had no acquaintance with finery of that kind—“jerkin. As needed, it must be invoked in the following secret yet efficacious fashion.” He glared at Jillet through his eyebrows. “You must make reference to ‘my kinsman, Reave the Just.’ And you must be as unscrupulous as Reave the Just in pursuing your aim. You must falter at nothing.”

This was the alchemist’s inspiration, his cunning at work. Naturally, the pouch contained only a malodorous dirt. The magick lay in the words
my kinsman, Reave the Just
. Any man willing to make that astonishing claim could be sure of one thing: he would receive opportunities which would otherwise be impossible for him. Doors would be opened, audiences granted, attention paid anywhere in the North Counties, regardless of Jillet’s apparent lineage, or his lack of linen. In that sense, the magick the alchemist offered was truer than any of his previous potions. It would open the doors of houses. And conceivably, if the widow Huchette were impressionable enough, it would open the door of her heart; for what innocent and moony young female could resist the enchantment of Reave’s reputation?

So, of course, Jillet protested. Precisely because he lacked the wit to understand the alchemist’s chicanery, he failed to understand its use. Staring at his benefactor, he objected, “But Reave the Just is no kinsman of mine. My family is known in Forebridge. No one will believe me.”

Simpleton,
thought the alchemist.
Idiot
. “They will,” he replied with a barely concealed exasperation born of fear that Jillet would demand the return of his gold, “if you are bold enough,
confident
enough, in your actions. The words do not need to be true. They are simply a private incantation, a way of invoking the periapt without betraying what you do. The magick will succeed if you but
trust
it.”

Still Jillet hesitated. Despite the strength which the mere idea of the widow Huchette exercised in his thinking, he had no comprehension of the power of ideas: he could not grasp what he might gain from the idea that he was related to Reave. “How can that be?” he asked the air more than the alchemist. No doubt deliberately, the alchemist had challenged his understanding of the world; and it was the world which should have answered him. Striving to articulate his doubt, he continued, “I want a love potion to change the way she looks at me. What will I gain by saying or acting a thing that is untrue?”

Perhaps this innocence explained some part of the affection Forebridge felt for him; but it did not endear him to the alchemist. “Now hear me,”
clod, buffoon, half-wit,
said the alchemist. “This magick is precious, and if you do not value it I will offer it elsewhere. The object of your desire does not desire you. You wish her to desire you. Therefore something must be altered. Either she must be made to”—
stifle her natural revulsion for a clod like you
—“feel a desire she lacks. Or you must be made more desirable to her. I offer both. Properly invoked, the periapt will instill desire in her. And bold action and a reputation as Reave the Just’s kinsman will make you desirable.

“What more do you require?”

Jillet was growing fuddled: he was unaccustomed to such abstract discourse. Fortunately for the alchemist’s purse, however, what filled Jillet’s head was not an idea but an image—the image of a usurer who demanded repayment at the rate of one fifth in a week, and who appeared capable of dining on Jillet’s giblets if his demands were thwarted.

Considering his situation from the perspective not of ideas but of images, Jillet found that he could not move in any direction except forward. Behind him lurked exigencies too acute to be confronted: ahead stood the widow Huchette and passion.

“Very well,” he said, making his first attempt to emulate Reave’s legendary decisiveness. “Give me the pouch.”

Gravely, the alchemist set the pouch in Jillet’s hand.

In similar fashion, Jillet hung the thong about his neck and concealed the periapt under his jerkin.

Then he returned to Forebridge, armed with magick and cunning—and completely unshielded by any idea of what to do with his new weaponry.

The words
trust
and
bold
and
unscrupulous
rang in his mind. What did they mean?
Trust
came to him naturally;
bold
was incomprehensible;
unscrupulous
conveyed a note of dishonesty. Taken together, they seemed as queer as a hog with a chicken’s head—or an amiable usurer. Jillet was altogether at sea.

In that state, he chanced to encounter one of his fellow pretenders to the widow Huchette’s bed, a stout, hairy, and frequently besotted fletcher named Slup. Not many days ago, Slup had viewed Jillet as a rival, perhaps even as a foe; he had behaved toward Jillet in a surly way which had baffled Jillet’s amiable nature. Since that time, however, Slup had obtained his own alchemick potion, and new confidence restored his goodwill. Hailing Jillet cheerfully, he asked where his old friend had been hiding for the past day or so.

Trust,
Jillet thought.
Bold. Unscrupulous
. It was natural, was it not, that magick made no sense to ordinary men? If an ordinary man, therefore, wished to benefit from magick, he must require himself to behave in ways which made no sense.

Summoning his resolve, he replied, “Speaking with my kinsman, Reave the Just,” and strode past Slup without further explanation.

He did not know it, of course, but he had done enough. With those few words, he had invoked the power, not of the periapt, but of ideas. Slup told what he had heard to others, who repeated it to still others. Within hours, discussion had ranged from one end of the village to the other. The absence of explanation—when had Jillet come upon such a relation? why had he never mentioned it before? how had
Reave the Just,
of all men, contrived to visit Forebridge without attracting notice?—far from proving a hindrance, actually enhanced the efficacy of Jillet’s utterance. When he went to his favorite tavern that evening, hoping to meet with some hearty friend who would stand him a tankard of ale, he found that every man he knew had been transformed—or he himself had.

He entered the tavern in what was, for him, a state of some anxiety. The more he had thought about it, the more he had realized that the gamble he took with Slup was one which he did not comprehend. After all, what experience had he ever had with alchemy? How could he be sure of its effectiveness? He knew about such things only by reputation, by the stories men told concerning alchemists and mages, witches and warlocks. The interval between his encounter with Slup and the evening taught him more self-doubt than did the more practical matter of his debt to the usurer. When he went to the tavern, he went half in fear that he would be greeted by a roar of laughter.

He had invoked the power of an idea, however, and part of its magick was this—that a kinship with Reave the Just was not something into which any man or woman of the world would inquire directly. No one asked of Jillet, “What sort of clap-brained tale are you telling today?” The consequences might prove dire if the tale were true. Many things were said about Reave, and some were dark: enemies filleted like fish; entire houses exterminated; laws and magistrates overthrown. No one credited Jillet’s claim of kinship—and no one took the risk of challenging it.

When he entered the tavern, he was not greeted with laughter. Instead, the place became instantly still, as though Reave himself were present. All eyes turned on Jillet, some in suspicion, some in speculation—and no small number in excitement. Then someone shouted a welcome; the room filled with a hubbub which seemed unnaturally loud because of the silence that had preceded it; and Jillet was swept up by the conviviality of his friends and acquaintances.

Ale flowed ungrudgingly, although he had no coin to pay for it. His jests were met with uproarious mirth and hearty backslappings, despite the fact that he was more accustomed to appreciating humor than to venturing it. Men clustered about him to hear his opinions—and he discovered, somewhat to his own surprise, that he had an uncommon number of opinions. The faces around him grew ruddy with ale and firelight and pleasure, and he had never felt so loved.

Warmed by such unprecedented good cheer, he had reason to congratulate himself that he was able to refrain from any mention of alchemists or widows. That much good sense remained to him, at any rate. On the other hand, he was unable to resist a few strategic references to
my kinsman
,
Reave the Just
—experiments regarding the potency of ideas.

Because of those references, the serving wench, a buxom and lusty girl who had always liked him and refused to sleep with him, seemed to linger at his elbow when she refreshed his tankard. Her hands made occasion to touch his arm repeatedly; again and again, she found herself jostled by the crowd so that her body pressed against his side; looking up at him, her eyes shone. To his amazement, he discovered that when he put his arm around her shoulders she did not shrug it away. Instead, she used it to move him by slow degrees out from among the men and toward the passageway which led to her quarters.

That evening was the most successful Jillet of Forebridge had ever known. In her bed and her body, he seemed to meet himself as the man he had always wished to be. And by morning, his doubts had disappeared; what passed for common sense with him had been drowned in the murky waters of magick, cunning, and necessity.

Eager despite a throbbing head and thick tongue, Jillet of Forebridge commenced his siege upon the manor house and fortune and virtue of the widow Huchette.

This he did by the straightforward, if unimaginative, expedient of approaching the gatehouse of the manor and asking to speak with her.

When he did so, however, he encountered an unexpected obstacle. Like most of the townsfolk—except, perhaps, some among his more recent acquaintance, the usurers, who had told him nothing on the subject—he was unaware of Kelven Divestulata’s preemptive claim on Rudolph’s widow. He had no knowledge that the Divestulata had recently made himself master of the widow Huchette’s inheritance, possessions, and person. In all probability, Jillet would have found it impossible to imagine that any man could do such a thing.

Jillet of Forebridge had no experience with men like Kelven Divestulata.

For example, Jillet knew nothing which would have led him to guess that Kelven never made any attempt to woo the widow. Surely to woo was the natural action of passion? Perhaps for other men; not in Kelven’s case. From the moment when he first conceived his desire to the moment when he gained the position which enabled him to satisfy it, he had spoken to the object of his affections only once.

Standing before her—entirely without gifts or graces—he had said bluntly, “Be my wife.”

She had hardly dared glance at him before hiding her face. Barely audible, she had replied, “My husband is dead. I will not marry again.” The truth was that she had loved Rudolph as ardently as her innocence and inexperience permitted, and she had no wish whatsoever to replace him.

However, if she had dared to look at Kelven, she would have seen his jaws clenched and a vein pulsing inexorably at his temple. “I do not brook refusal,” he announced in a voice like an echo of doom. “And I do not ask twice.”

Sadly, she was too innocent—or perhaps too ignorant—to fear doom. “Then,” she said to him gravely, “you must be the unhappiest of men.”

Thus her sole interchange with her only enemy began and ended.

Just as Jillet could not have imagined this conversation, he could never have dreamed the Divestulata’s response.

In a sense, it would have been accurate to say that all Forebridge knew more of Reave the Just, who had never set foot in the town, than of Kelven Divestulata, whose ancestral home was less than an hour’s ride away. Reave was a fit subject for tales and gossip on any occasion: neither wise men nor fools discussed Kelven.

So few folk—least of all Jillet—knew of the brutal and impassioned marriage of Kelven’s parents, or of his father’s death in an apoplectic fury, or of the acid bitterness which his mother directed at him when her chief antagonist was lost. Fewer still knew of the circumstances surrounding her harsh, untimely end. And none at all knew that Kelven himself had secretly arranged their deaths for them, not because of their treatment of him—which in fact he understood and to some extent approved—but because he saw profit for himself in being rid of them, preferably in some way which would cause them as much distress as possible.

It might have been expected that the servants and retainers of the family would know or guess the truth, and that at least one of them would say something on the subject to someone; but within a few months of his mother’s demise Kelven had contrived to dispense with every member of his parents’ establishment, and had replaced them with cooks and maids and grooms who knew nothing and said less. In this way, he made himself as safe from gossip as he could ever hope to be.

As a result, the few stories told of him had a certain legendary quality, as if they concerned another Divestulata who had lived long ago. In the main, these tales involved either sums of money or young women who came to his notice and then disappeared. It was known—purportedly for a fact—that a usurer or three had been driven out of Forebridge, cursing Kelven’s name. And it was undeniable that the occasional young woman had vanished. Unfortunately, the world was a chancy place, especially for young women, and their fate was never clearly known. The one magistrate of Forebridge who had pursued the matter far enough to question Kelven himself had afterward been so overtaken by chagrin that he had ended his own life.