Dalshire: a small request

 Melrose stood outside Rufus’s house.  Behind him the door slammed shut with enough force to rattle the glass in the windows next to it.  Melrose grinned; Rufus’s offers of payment had been entirely predictable — gold plate, precious gems, another sword — and entirely refusable.  It had taken the mage-smith nearly thirty minutes to realise that what Melrose wanted was an introduction to the Duke of Palehaven and a job with him, and then, seeing his political capital about to evaporate, Rufus had nearly exploded himself.  But he had acquiesced and, tucked inside Melrose’s leather cuirass was a letter of introduction to the Duke, cursed into illegibility.  When Melrose returned with this Device that Rufus wanted the curse would be broken and the letter usable.  Of course, he could just go and find another mage to break the curse, but working for Rufus was easier, for now, and seemed interesting.

The surprising thing about Rufus’s request was that the Device seemed to be so close at hand.  Melrose had been expecting some elaborate map drawn on the skin of some poor unfortunate soul — mages seemed to have an aversion to paper in his experience, preferring the days of effort it took to tattoo some victim with the details of the spell, or the map, or whatever, and then killing and skinning the victim (not necessarily in that order) and then preserving the skin without damaging the tattoo.  The whole process seemed ridiculous to him when you could take a pen and paper and write it down and then curse it, as Rufus had just done, so that only the right kind of people could read it.

Though a mage’s idea of the ‘right kind of people’ would put a racist to shame in most cases.

One and a half ‘streets’ across Dalshire was a low building that looked like a workshop.  At one end were a pair of wooden double doors that looked like they would let carts in, or at least unload outside them, and the windows were small and up under the eaves suggesting that they were for letting light in but not prying eyes to see.

“In there,” Rufus had said, his eyes aglitter with greed.  “That’s where they’re keeping it.  Just pop in, liberate it, and come back.  Once it’s here I can look after much better than they can.”

Just pop in….  Melrose shrugged as he thought about that instruction, and then sauntered up to the double doors and knocked.

Snow had mounded up in front of the doors, looking at though it had been blown by the wind into drifts and it was clear that the doors hadn’t been opened that morning.  The windows, despite being shadowed by the eaves, also had snow on their ledges that looked undisturbed.  No-one was in sight when Melrose looked around, and his knocking — more a pounding with the side of his fist — was loud in the winter air.  He doubted that anyone nearby had missed his polite request for entry, but when the doors didn’t move and no-one called out for a couple of minutes, he repeated the knocking and waited a couple more minutes out of politeness.  Then he tried to pull the doors open.

The left-hand door was bolted somehow and though the door shuddered as he put his strength into heaving on it, it stayed put.  The right-hand door moved though, hesitantly as the mounded snow tried to stop it, and with the occasional scrape over stone where the ground wasn’t level.  He forced it open enough for him to walk inside without having to squeeze through the gap, and then went in.

It was dark inside the workshop, and he stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust.  The light through the high windows was grey and muted and the light from the doorway behind him fell as a sharp, bright cone to his right, illuminating a splintery wooden wall and some stone flags on the floor, but little else.  As his eyes adjusted though he started to make out shapes, which resolved themselves into machines of varying heights and widths and lengths.  They were laid out according to some kind of plan, but Melrose could identify none of the machines or tell why they were positioned as they were relative to one another.  The floor was paved with large stones that made him think of a cathedral and was well swept.  In the middle of the room was a large square table with papers stacked neatly on it.  Melrose nodded: this was what Rufus has described to him.  He stayed perfectly still, looking around, trying to work out what Rufus had omitted when describing this place.

He found a couple of chairs positioned oddly by one machine and well away from the table, but they seemed innocuous enough.  At the far end he thought he could make out the large glass jars of trapped lightning that were used to power the machines, but there was no way to investigate them more carefully without going over there.  Hanging from the ceiling, above where the light from the windows fell, was a collection of metal rods that put him in mind of a spider and he made careful note of where to avoid on the floor below to avoid having it drop on him.  Then he decided that maybe Rufus had told him everything he needed to know about this place.

Naturally then, the third step he took, just bringing him alongside the nearest machine, was the one that caused a bright flash of light and a cold sensation like falling into ice-water.  He shuddered, fighting to breathe, flailing out with his arms.  For several seconds there was nothing, just the feeling of falling, and then he seemed to slow and stop.  He was still blinded by the flash, only the odd, vision-obscuring after-images dancing in front of him, and he still couldn’t breath.  He tried again to suck air into his lungs and again failed.  Something seemed to press against him from behind, and reflexively he reached for his sword and pulled it free from its scabbard.

Immediately he could breathe again and he panted, his chest tight and heaving.  Black spots that he hadn’t been aware of receded from his vision and he could see again.  The feeling of being surrounded and suffocated disappeared like frost evaporating under strong sunlight.

“Who the hell are you?” asked an annoyed-sounding voice somewhere in front of him.

Dalshire: a long conversation

 The book had no pictures but nearly a hundred pages of hand-written scrawl.  In the candlelight, which made shadows cavort across the walls like some two-dimensional circus, it looked ominous and demonic and Melrose found himself edging slightly away from it.  Rufus closed the book up after several seconds.

The main room of the house was messy, though Melrose supposed that when you were blind you either didn’t care about the mess or weren’t aware of it all.  Against the back wall were two bookcases, one full and the other half-full.  This struck him as odd since Rufus couldn’t see to read.  There was a single chair in the room, set near a fireplace that was cold and dark; snow had fallen down the chimney and settled on top of charred-looking logs.  There was a footstool near the chair that looked stained and dirty, and across the room was a door that led into other rooms in the house.  Judging by the size, from the outside, there must be several more rooms through that way.

There were two windows opposite the bookcases, both curtained for the night.  By the door leading deeper into the house was a waist-height wooden table on which sat a dirty plate and a half-full cup of water.  A fork had been dropped on the floor beneath the table.

“When did you go blind?” asked Melrose. He bent to retrieve the fork from the floor.

“About five years ago,” said Rufus.  “You’re going to ask how I read the book, aren’t you?”

“It’s a pretty obvious question,” said Melrose.  He put the fork on the plate with a clink and Rufus’s head turned sharply towards the source of the sound.

“Don’t move anything,” he said waspishly.  “If you move things I won’t know where they are.”

“Just picking up the food-weapon that you dropped,” said Melrose.  “Saves you finding it with your foot later.”

“Well… tell me first then,” said Rufus.  He shuffled across the bare wooden floor to the bookcase and ran his hand over the spines, deciding where to put the book back.  “Actually, make yourself useful and light the fire.  It’s freezing in here.”

Melrose agreed completely with that assessment of the room and knelt down by the fireplace to see what needed doing.  Though charred, the logs still had plenty of unburned wood on them so he turned them to bring the freshest wood to the bottom and then looked for kindling.

“I have a device,” said Rufus, “that can read the books to me.  It’s a decidedly clever little thing that was… well, brought to me, I suppose you’d say, shortly after I went blind.  It’s saved me a lot of trouble.  Finding a good amanuensis is a nightmare, you know?”

“No,” said Melrose scattering small twigs and wood shavings over the stones in the fireplace, mounding them and then setting them alight with the flint.  Rufus’s head turned again on hearing the snap of the metal against stone.

“Oh, there’s a device for lighting the fire as well,” he said.  “Didn’t I say?”

“No,” said Melrose, getting back to his feet.  “You seem to have a lot of devices.”

“Heh, yes,” said Rufus.  “Well, you see —“

“Sharpening this sword,” interrupted Melrose, “is going to involve finding you a device, isn’t it?”

“That’s quite the conclusion to jump to!”

“Isn’t it?”

The logs in the fire had caught light before Melrose managed to get Rufus to admit that this was the case.

“Right,” said Melrose.  He sat down in the chair, ignoring the look of annoyance of Rufus’s face.  “So, I’m going to have go and find this thing.  Who can sharpen the sword using it then?”

“Well, practically anyone,” said Rufus throwing his arms wide as though to encompass the whole world.  “Anyone at all.  So long as….”

“Go on.”

“Well, the device needs a command word,” said Rufus.  “It’s in the book.”

“So anyone who knows this word can sharpen the sword?”

“Yes.  Well, technically yes.”

Melrose sighed and stretched his legs out, resting his feet on the footstool.  A strange aroma like dried herbs rose up from it with a puff of dust.  “I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he said.  “I’m staying here, in the warm, in front of this fire.  So you can take as long as you like to tell me what the new problem is, but you are going to tell me.”

Rufus hummed, hawed, prevaricated and tutted his way through six excuses before giving in.

“The device I’ve got can’t pronounce the command word,” said Rufus.  “Someone needs to read the book and tell me, or you, or whoever, what the command word is.”

“Doesn’t sound so hard,” said Melrose sleepily.  The warmth of the fire was extremely welcome after the day he’d had, and while he was aware that the blood on his cuirass was probably smeared all over Rufus’s chair, he found it hard to care.  The grotty little man seemed to have an excuse for everything he was expected to do.

“I couldn’t read the word when I could still see,” said Rufus.  “The handwriting in the book is execrable.  The device has coped pretty well, but it stays silent at the command word, so either it can’t read it either, or it doesn’t know how to pronounce it.  So you probably need a wizard to read it.”

“What does execrable mean?” asked Melrose.  “And aren’t you a wizard?”

“Trainee!  Trainee!  And I don’t have a mentor either,” said Rufus, sounding excited.  “You’ll need an actual wizard from somewhere, and they don’t grow on trees.”

“Funny thing,” said Melrose, sounding reflective.  “Only when I first met you — and several times after that, when I think about it — I don’t recall you mentioning the trainee part before.”

“Well—“

“In fact, I’m sure I remember you calling yourself the mage-smith of Dalshire.”

“Once, maybe—“

“Lots of times, in fact.  I bet, if I go out and ask the people here, they’d probably not tell me about the trainee thing either.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“Hah.”  Melrose closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the fire.  “You’d like that.  But still, I don’t think you can get away with calling yourself a trainee, Rufus.”

“I am still blind though.”

Melrose thought about it.  “No devices to help you see again?”

“Not without your sword being sharpened first.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire, and then a pop as some knot of wood exploded sending a plume of sparks up the chimney.

“I see,” said Melrose finally.  “So what am I getting paid for all this then?”

“I don’t—“

“Cut the bluster, Rufus.  I only ended up back here because you lied to me about the sword to begin with, and now it turns out that you want this device and that device and gods know what else… and all I want is my sword sharpened.”

“That is a form of payment!”

“Not when the reason it can’t be sharpened is your lies,” said Melrose.  “So, if I’m getting all this junk for you, then my sword gets sharpened and I get payment.  You’ve got till the morning to figure out what you’re going to offer me.  And if I don’t like it, I’m taking your stupid book and finding someone else who can read it.”

“That’s not a very sensible threat,” said Rufus, but he didn’t sound confident.

“I’ll burn the rest of them too,” said Melrose looking at the fire.  “I hope you get on well with your neighbours, as they might set fire to the whole house.  Who can tell what happens when a trainee mage’s book go up in flames?”

“Morning, you said?” asked Rufus after a significant pause.

“Yes.”

“Ah.  Well.  Goodnight then.”

Dalshire: Rufus and Melrose

 “You made it!” said Melrose, his voice a little high and indignant.  “Where else should I bring it to be sharpened?”

“Anywhere!  Anywhere else at all!  Take it away, and stay gone when you go!”

“No-one else can sharpen it,” said Melrose.  He started to walk over to Rufus as he felt like he was shouting from a distance.  “I’ve asked.  I’ve paid.  I’ve even forced some people to try who…”

“Were reluctant?”  There was a note of scorn in Rufus’s voice.  He held up a hand.  “Stop moving, I can tell you’re getting closer and I don’t want you or that — thing — anywhere near me.  But, I will say that I’m slightly impressed that you offered to pay some of them.”

“I did pay some of them,” said Melrose stopping where he was.  He was nearer the house than the wall now but he was sure that Rufus could get inside and lock the door before he could reach him.  “I would have paid anyone who managed to sharpen it.”

“Remarkably honest of you,” said Rufus.  He reached up to his neck with a pale white bony hand and pulled his dressing gown tighter about his shoulders.  “Damn it’s cold out here.  Is it snowing yet?”

“Yes,” said Melrose.  “Now, are you going to let me pay you to sharpen this sword, or do we have to do things the hard way?”  He took another tentative step forwards, watching Rufus’s head to see if he was listening for footsteps.

Rufus sighed, a long drawn out exhalation of breath that sounded more frustrated than tired.

“I can hear you move,” he said.  “I’d love to tell you that my other senses got sharper when I lost my sight, but that’s not even slightly true.  I have a couple of devices that boost my hearing, my sense of touch — I don’t use that one much — and one that lets me feel changes in magnetic fields.  Nearby magnetic fields, of course, but it’s still an interesting one.  So stay where you are, please, or this conversation is over.”

“The hard way then?”

“Did I say that, idiot man-child?  Wait, did I call you that already?”  Rufus shook his head.  “Never mind, you puling imbecile.  What makes you think I can sharpen the sword if no-one else can?  That has to be the triumph of hope over common sense.”

“You made it!”  Melrose was aware that he sounded whiny now and his free hand clenched into a fist.  After a moment he realised what he was doing and unclenched, reaching up and sweeping the accumulated snow from his hair.  His head felt briefly colder.

“Ah,” said Rufus.  “There that is again.”  He shifted his weight to his other foot and shivered, causing a light snowfall from his shoulders.  Melrose realised that the snowfall was getting heavy.

“What do you mean?” A feeling of dread crept over Melrose, manifesting as an uncomfortable contraction of his stomach and a sensation that he’d missed something important.

“Well,” said Rufus staring up at the sky as though he could see the snow twisting and cavorting above him.  Melrose followed his gaze, but the mesmerizing dance of the snow was wasted on him and he resumed looking at Rufus.  “Well,” said Rufus again, and coughed.  Then he cleared his throat.  “Well.”

“Get on with it!”

“Aha, yes, I suppose I have to.  Well.  Well, you got the sword from me,” said Rufus, who seemed determined to drag the words out for as far as they would go.  “I accept that.  I agree with that, even.  That’s entirely true.  I had the sword, and I gave it to you.”

“You didn’t make it, did you?” said Melrose with a feeling of tired certainty.  “That’s the problem here.  You let me think you made it, and you didn’t.”

“I’ve made a lot of swords in my time,” said Rufus hurriedly.  “A lot.  Many more than most people, in fact.  Even blacksmiths, I’ve made more than some of them.”

“But you didn’t make this one,” said Melrose.  “That’s what this is all about.  You don’t know how to sharpen it, do you?”

“It’s not like I ever said I did!  And there’s no warranty with swords either, you get one and you use it until it’s done, and then you replace it.  Often with someone else’s sword, in your case, but that’s probably not what you want to talk about right now.”

Melrose glared at Rufus until he remembered that the man couldn’t see him now.

“Who made it?”

“Well—“

“Who made it?”

Rufus fell silent for a moment.  Then, “I don’t actually know.  It was a gift…” he tailed off as though he could feel the silent intensity of Melrose’s gaze.  “It was supposed to be pawned,” he said, correcting himself.  “The person who left it with me took a small amount of gold plate in exchange.”  Rufus ignored the sarcastic-sounding “Hah” from Melrose.  “They were supposed to come back and redeem the sword.”

Melrose shivered, feeling the cold that he’d been forcing himself to ignore all night.  “So you don’t know who made it and you don’t know how to sharpen it, and if I throw away all your rambling, you’re trying to tell me that you expect me to mug someone and take their sword to replace this one.  Is that supposed to be advice?”

Rufus coughed again.

“Oh for gods’ sake!  What now?  What else haven’t you told me?”

“It’s probably quite hard to, uh, get rid of that sword,” said Rufus in a quiet voice.  “I couldn’t until I sold it to you.”

Melrose’s shout of annoyance was loud enough that lights turned on, briefly, in the nearest houses.

“Look,” said Rufus waving his hands placatingly slightly to the left of where Melrose was standing.  “Look.  I never said I don’t know how to sharpen it, ok?”

“Yes, you did!”

“No!  No, I didn’t!  I just said that I couldn’t sharpen it.”

Despite his enhanced hearing, and the ability to feel the sword’s presence through the way it changed the magnetic fields, Rufus was still startled to feel Melrose’s hand clamp down on his shoulder.  He tried to shudder, but he was being gripped too firmly for that.

“That was amazingly fast,” he said weakly, trying to twist out of Melrose’s grip, but the man had fingers like iron bars.

“Yes,” said Melrose.  “Let’s go inside, because if much more of me goes numb you’ll have to thaw me out in the Spring, and you can tell me all about how this sword can be sharpened and who is going to do it for me.”

Rufus sagged, trying one more time to get free from Melrose, but he found himself being held upright by Melrose’s grip and then pushed through the doorway.

“Inside, yes,” he said sounding defeated.  “I suppose I can show you the book, too.”

“Still haven’t learned how to read,” said Melrose, kicking the door shut behind him.  “But I can look at the pictures if there are any.”

Dalshire; evening, in the snow

As the sun set, gleaming redly between the sparse rooftops of Dalshire, grey clouds gathered and meshed, suffocating the crimson rays and hastening the onset of twilight. A few minutes later the first flakes of ashy-white snow began to fall and a light breeze sprang up from the north. The beggars that had gathered, rather forlornly, in the middle of Market Square, stood up one by one, carefully ignoring one another, and shambled or limped away, seeking shelter and warmth where they might find it. When the snow began to settle and mound only one beggar was left: wrapped in a colourfully striped blanket that was smeared here and there with crumbling brown dirt she was mumbling to herself and tugging absently at her greasy, rat-tailed hair as though trying to reset a wig on her head. At the edge of Market Square a lamp-lighter clutching a long pole hurried from one filigreed black-iron lamp-post to the next, the pole hooking open the little glass chamber atop each pole and dipping inside to light the wick there before tapping the glass shut again. Two of the lamps failed to stay lit but the lamp-lighter, huddling against the breeze as though it were much stronger, hastened on, uncaring of the darkness between pools of yellowish light.

Another figure appeared, walking stiffly. They seemed to see the lamp-lighter and let out a cry, maybe a call or a greeting, but the lamp-lighter never turned his head nor slowed his tread and soon vanished from sight. The beggar, whose feet were starting to numb with the cold, looked up without interest and watched until it became apparent that the figure had seen her and was now walking in her direction.

“You’re in the wrong place,” she said, her voice quiet but carrying well on the frosty, ice-enhanced air. “You should leave now.”

The figure didn’t stop its jerky gait, as though it had only learned to walk the day before, but it did raise its head slightly. The beggar thought that they might be male, and noted that the shoulders were broad and looked muscular.

“My name is Melrose,” said the figure in a voice that was deep and gravelly. The beggar felt a sense of unease stir within her, like butterflies in her stomach. “I’m looking for Dalshire.”

“You’ve found it,” said the beggar. “Well done. You can leave again now.”

“So I’m not in the wrong place,” said Melrose. “Why do you keep telling me to leave?”

“It’s for your own good,” said the beggar. She shifted uncomfortably, disturbed by something more than the increasing cold, and rubbed her ankles. She had to fight down an urge to get up and run away. When she looked up again Melrose had closed the distance between them and was now illuminated by a lamp. His face was passably handsome but scarred on the right side in several places, the oldest and whitest of the scars just missing his eye. His hair was blond and straight, dampened by the falling snow, and fell down his neck to somewhere behind his back. He was wearing a leather cuirass that was covered in blood that was too wet and too dark not to be fresh, and his arms and legs, all wrapped in leather strips, looked to be bloodied too. There was an iron smell in the air and something that reminded her of the slaughterhouse.

“I’ll decide what’s good for me,” said Melrose. He took another step forward and she realised that he’d been leaning on a sword to help him walk. He brought it forwards, planting the point on the snowy ground, and the blade was luminous in Melrose’s shadow.

“They won’t give you a room for the night,” said the beggar, gesturing at Dalshire. “They won’t offer you food, even for money. They won’t open their doors if they see that sword. You’re in the wrong place.”

“Have I asked for any of those things?”

The beggar thought about that for a moment. She’d been doing all the talking so far, she realised.

“Just warning you, friend,” she said, getting her feet under her, just in case running away turned out to the prudent option. The sword looked nasty, but the man looked injured; she thought her chances were worth taking.

“Hah. I don’t care for friends,” said Melrose. “The bookkeeping isn’t worth it.”

“Huh?”

“Is this Dalshire?”

He had to repeat the question before she started listening again, and then she nodded. “There’s nothing here for you,” she said, feeling like she was repeating herself.

“Let’s let the gods decide that,” said Melrose quietly.

“They make their own gods here,” said the beggar without thinking. As she heard her words hang on the icy air momentarily she clapped her hand over her mouth and jerked upright, throwing a small cloud of dusty snow around her.

“Now that sounds more interesting,” said Melrose, and for the first time he smiled. “Why don’t you tell me more about that?”

The beggar sprinted off and Melrose watched her go. Her blanket streamed behind her, clutched under one arm, like a strange flag, and she jinked from side to side as though worried that he was going to throw something at her. When she had vanished from sight he looked down, confirming that her footprints were clearly visible in the thin crust of the snow, and slowly shook his head.

“Thoughtless,” he said, probably to himself. He turned, wincing slightly as scabs over recent wounds were pulled taut, and lifted the sword. It had been described as a miracle of engineering by its makers, and despite its size and length making it look like it needed two hands to wield, it was light enough that he could wield it with one and even fence with it. The edge was dulled though and nicked in places and the leather wrapping on the hilt was worn and torn.

“Show me,” he said, addressing the sword, and a moment later he felt the sword pull on his arm, lifting it horizontal and then tugging it to his left. He let himself be turned, his feet squeaking on the new snow, until the sword stopped pulling and his arm dropped to his side.

“…” he said, looking up at the sky and realising that without the sun he couldn’t tell what direction he was facing. “This way,” he said, though it didn’t feel as convincing as naming the compass points.

The snow was unmarred as he walked through Dalshire, which was more a collection of houses than a village. Each house seemed to have been set up independently of the others and where three or four houses formed an impromptu street it felt like it had happened by accident. There were wells on almost every property rather than a single communal well, wooden fences and stone walls that just ended abruptly, presumably at the point where land ceased being claimed and became community property again. The houses were one, two or three storeys with little architectural consistency and the quality of their construction was as variable. Melrose struggled on, pain slowly building in his wounds as the chill of the night seeped into his bones. For a moment he wished that he was back in Tal Xlitif with its wide, straight streets and thoughtfully designed neighbourhoods and then he pushed that thought aside with vehemence and stared ahead through the swirling snow that was now getting heavier. When a two-storey stone building set in the middle of a grassy field with a low dry-stone wall around three sides of it finally came into view he stopped and looked it over carefully, counting the number of windows and checking the colour of the doors — one at either end of the property — and even estimating the distance between the nearest door and the dry-stone walls. When he was certain that he had the right place he strode across the grass, leaving dark footprints where the snow was crushed away, and knocked on the red door.

As the beggar had predicted, there was no answer. Melrose knocked again, to be polite, and then went to take a slab of stone from the dry-stone wall. He wiped it free of snow and hefted it thoughtfully, considering the windows. All were dark as though the house were empty. He selected a window to the side of the red door and got a grip on the stone as though it were a discus.

“Put that down!”

The red door had opened silently and a man was standing in the doorway holding a flask in one hand and a battered small wooden shield in the other. He was wearing a woollen dressing gown and seemed a very improbable warrior.

“Rufus,” said Melrose, lowering the stone to his side. “You’re still here.”

“Where else would I be, idiot man-child?” said Rufus. His eyes were unfocused and unseeing, but after a moment he shook his head as though trying to get water out of his ears. “Say something else, I think I might recognise you.”

“It’s Melrose,” said Melrose. He set the stone back on the wall. “You’re blind?”

“No, I just don’t like looking at things unless I choose to. Of course I’m blind, you cretin! Melrose…, that name rings a — oh dear Gods, no. You’ve brought that damnable sword back, haven’t you?”