A Tailor's Son (Valadfar)

  A TAILOR’S SON

  A Valadfar story

  BY D S M TILLER

  A Doodle Rat Publication

  A Tailor’s Son A story from the world of Valadfar By Damien Tiller

  Copyright © 2012 Damien Tiller

  The right of Damien Tiller to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act

  1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Doodle Rat Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

  written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are factious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9573986-2-7 Paperback

  Prologue: Dear Diary Valadfar is a world full of heroes. Magic wielding mages, demonic dark lords, brave knights and brutal barbarians; but we mustn’t forget the everyday man on the street. People like the bakers that wake up long before dawn to tend the ovens and make the bread, candlestick makers covered in wax and the tailor. Yes, the humble tailor, master of stitch and twine. But what would happen to this most humble of craftsman, this most gentle of man, if the world crossed his path with a darkness to rival even that of the demon Rinwid. That is what this story will tell. The year has moved on since the time of the Dragon Lords return to Neeska, and the Brilanka calendar now sits on the page of 128ab, the month of Wastelar, the first month of winter. Sitting in the dark alone and frightened Harold wrote upon the darkened candle lit parchment. If he was to be asked, he could not be as precise as to tell you the time, for he did not know it. All he knew was that it was late. The last bells heard from the tower of the newly constructed cathedral before the rain drowned out the reverberations of the bells had sounded midnight.

  Midnight had come to be known to the people of Neeskmouth as the witching hour. At first, it had been called this from the rumours of shadows, living darkness which supposedly hid demons from the end of the Dragons return. But when these stories faded the title of the witching hour remained in the common tongue. The phrase had gained weight as the city stopped its celebrations of freedom and fell into depravity. Its population boomed above what could be supported by the current infrastructure. It forced those at the bottom of the barrel to do whatever they could to put food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. Now the witching hour was the time of muggers, pinch-pricks, and even the constables themselves, who were supposedly charged as protectors from the previous but were just as, if not more so, corrupt. It all made going out after sunset a living nightmare. Although numerous, it was not for any of those reasons that Harold’s quill shook in his hand. The weather did little to help to settle his skin from its vibrations, his flesh seemed to attempt to crawl away from his body with outstretched hairs, and although that might make an onlooker think it was the cold that caused him to shake so, it was not that. At least not purely, he had a fear in his belly so powerful that his heart raced like the hooves of a post masters horse at full gallop. The night sky was thick with smoke, a small curse that the end of the war with the Poles had brought. The golden age that descended onto the city, as the treaties were signed, had brought with it an industrial growth that spread with the speed of a forest fire and with any fire comes smoke. The choking clouds poured from the newly built factories by the harbour and flowed inland on a strong westerly wind that blew from the sea. This almost nightly occurrence cast the moon to be hidden behind a deep blanket of smog so the only light outside was from the newly installed Dwarfen gas lamps. They struggled that night to stay alight, the downpour the gods had seen fit to tarnish the sky with threatened to dowse them. The rain clouds swirled as they moved across the sky. There was barely a break in them letting through starlight as the wind, so vicious in its path, pushed the rain hard and bullied it to fall more severe on Harold’s shutters. With each creak and slam of the aged windows, Harold’s heart missed a beat, for you see he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the creature came looking for him. Even with the strong oak, brought in from the newly grown forest at the edges of the Scorched Lands, pressed tightly in the doorframe there was a draft creeping in. The breeze as it crept in under the frame and rattled around the room made Harold’s fire dance and flicker. The shadows it casts across all four walls seemed intent to taunt him, adding to his panic-ridden state. The rhythmic gloom turned a hat rack into a shadowy assassin and back again with each pass of light. With each flash under the door Harold was forced to stop breathing and listen, just to make sure that he couldn’t hear footsteps outside. This goes some way to show the pure terror he felt as he sat alone. He worried that the thing would come for him, so much so that even the lack of footsteps worried him. What if it was someone intentionally making no noise outside the door? The paranoia drove him mad and that was why he felt the need to record the passing of the last few days. He had unwillingly become the antagonist for a grim fairytale, one that as the day grew to a close he could not seem to escape.

  Harold was the only surviving son of James Spinks, a tailor of East Street. East Street was nestled close to the canals north of the markets in the mid section of the city of Neeskmouth. Harold was not even the head tailor and was of little importance to the history of Valadfar for the most part, few people would recognise him as they passed him in the street. He worked out in the back room most of the time, doing repairs on the richer folks’ clothing, and if he was honest with himself, he liked it that way. Harold was a loner of sorts. His job did mean he had to interact with people occasionally but he did his best to keep his contacts with others at a minimum. He enjoyed a quiet life in his own solitude avoiding the bustle of the city. Neeskmouth had been growing rapidly since the second war with the Dragon Lords, factories and God only knows what else had been springing up along the Copse Hill road. The industrialisation of the city marked a time of change that meant little family owned tailors like Harold’s fathers would soon be outdated. He had worked for his father all his life with few stories to tell that didn’t involve a pricked thumb or a missed stitch, until that accursed night. The night of the explosion at the local tavern, it was that fire which started it all. His eyes were so sore that he could see how reddened and bloodshot they were even in the deep blue reflection of the ink well he dabbed his quill into. Yet he refused to close them and continued to write on the parchment that lay on the desk in front of him. Harold was no hero from a story, he was not the brave warrior or bard that filled the tales of the many libraries in Valadfar he was a normal man. For him, writing was the only thing keeping him sane. He felt terrified and alone. The true reason he scribbled so madly onto the pages was to keep his demons at bay, he knew that it may be his last night on Valadfar but what choice did he have but to continue. If he was to fail his notes might be the one thing to save the city. Now, before you grow too weary of these ramblings, let me take you back to the night that it started. To the last time Harold was just a tailor’s son.

  Chapter 1: The QueensTavern The night that would change Harold’s life forever started fairly normally. It was a fortnight before that wintery evening he spent in darkness writing his notes. The date was Nymon the 16th of Thresh, a harsh autumn and one that hinted to an even harsher winter just around the corner with an icy breeze that kept the rats off the street. It was the worst anyone had seen since the poor harvests of 99ab that had almost plunged the city into total recession. The winter had come aroun
d early yet again this year, and with the ban on imported food from Gologan due to the damnable potato famine, everyone was feeling the pinch. The price of food was the highest it had been in centuries and meant that most people had taken on a second job just to make the ends meet. Harold was no different. His family did have some inheritance so they were not as poverty stricken as most, but would still be classed as one of the poor souls the city came to know as ‘unfortunates’. The worst-off worked the streets and docks around them barely scratching together enough to survive while the nobles continued to live off the rich pickings of their broken backs and scarred knuckles. Harold’s father was very tight with the purse strings and had lived through the war that almost brought Neeskmouth to its knees during the first century. He had learned not to spend a single copper coin where it was not needed, a trait that had been passed on to his thrifty son. Harold had just finished working at the little tailor shop on East Street in order to make more coins that would no doubt hibernate in his father’s moth filled wallet. His father had taken on an order from one of the local factories, two hundred aprons to be finished by the end of the next month. Harold had argued with his father that they couldn’t finish the order in time; he had tried to convince his father that one of the sweatshops that were filled with clanking machines, which the Dwarfs had brought to the city in trade, would have been more suited to handle it. Harold was ignored as always, and his father took the work. Harold was not sure if he did it for the money or if he feared giving work to the machines that drove the industrial revolution forward would speed up the inevitable end of their little family business. Whatever his reasons in his blind hope he had taken the massive order to be just a challenge, and as usual wanted to face it head on. He knew Harold would do everything he could to make sure they succeeded. It was this need to please that had made Harold stay late working on the aprons that day. He should have left the shop a few hours earlier but they had already been running behind on the day’s work and his father had rushed home sick with signs of influenza. This had delayed them even further on an almost impossible order. Harold had to admit that he was worried for his father’s health. The man was in his fifties and was starting to show just how old he had become, he had begun to weaken. Over the past year, Harold had seen the huge mountain-like man that was his father shrink. The flu was a killer and in his aged state Harold was worried about him carrying such an ailment. Harold did not have time to linger on his worries for long, no sooner had the last stitch been pulled tight he left the shop for the night. With the door bolted behind him, Harold was off to the Queens for his second job.

  The Queens was a little Drow run tavern down by the docks. Harold had started working there once or twice a week in the evenings to help maintain the cost of the family estate; it was a way to make up for the short fall in earnings coming from the tailors. That particular night Harold was running late, but he knew that no one would notice. They never did as long as Harold was there before the kegs ran dry. The money was good for the hours he worked and for the menial tasks that he was required to do, like lugging empty kegs of ale from the cellar onto a wagon, or unloading full ones that just arrived and tapping them ready to keep the foul smelling grog flowing. The money was much more than the work was worth, but the reason it paid so well was the hush money to avert his eyes from things going on there. The Drow had always had strong ties to the White Flag pirates and the Queens was a real den of iniquity. Gambling, fights, prostitution and other unmentionable acts that should never be carried out by decent Neeskmouthain men and women, were the stock and trade for the little back alley boozer. The tavern was favoured by the worst Neeskmouth had to offer. Still, Harold was left alone to do his job and he was the kind of person to go unnoticed so he did not let himself worry about what went on inside its walls. His only worry was the amount of liquor that used to go in and out of the place. Harold was a tailor, so he was not used to heavy lifting, but thankfully, he did take on a little of his father’s shape and was bulky. Not overly muscular like some of the bruisers that he saw fall in and out of the Queens of an evening but he was not a reed pole. All the same, the full kegs almost tore his arms from his body and with the number they had going in and out of the place you would have thought half the harbour had gills.

  Harold walked the quietening streets alone on his way to the tavern not eager for the weight of the kegs that awaited him. His body had begun to yearn for sleep although the sun was only just setting. He had walked this same path many times before and knew each loose cobble, each rise and fall and slope that cluttered his path. For just that moment, Harold could relax. He did not need to think as he passed the high and preposterously tall buildings all around him that helped to block out the hustle and bustle of sound. As usual as Harold walked along the canals and he was daydreaming. It was a good pastime for him which he had carried and used most of his life. The trait had started back at school when Harold was just a boy and had caused a fair few chalk rubs to be thrown at him by his teacher, old Macgregor, not to mention the cane once or twice. Harold had hated Macgregor. He was from the Western Reaches somewhere and seemed to detest all children. He was the headmaster of the school and he ran the place more like a prison, often taking some of the more poorly behaved children and locking them away in his room for hours at a time. Those he took would always come out crying followed by a red-faced Macgregor. Harold had been lucky enough to never go into his room. Macgregor was a Pole, not an Iron Giant as his people were known in times of peace, but a cold blooded warrior, a giant-like barbarian race of men named after their Polearm weapons, and there were rumours that he had slaughtered children during the war. Harold never found out whether it was true or not and he did not wish to know. Harold was a coward at heart and did his best to just block out the memories of his school days. As he grew, his cowardliness continued into his adulthood. The city scared him, although his family lived on the edges of the more lower class parts of the city, he had been sheltered from the worst it had to offer. Now as a man working for the Drow, he had seen a lot he had never wished to. So to avoid spending too much time surrounded by the horrors poverty could bring Harold had learned to daydream.

  The dreams Harold had walking down the Harbour Path were the same ones he had as a child. They had always been about the coast. His mother and father had taken him to the Port Lust when he was young and the sights and smells of the sea stayed with him all his life. Harold remembered staying in his grandmother’s little cottage and how the gulls had flown overhead, they were a beautiful white, not the dirty black grey of the pigeons that painted the rooftops around Neeskmouth. Harold swore to himself that one day he would go back there, but the house was ruined. It had decayed with years of isolation. His father had always been too busy to travel down and maintain it and his mother was unable to manage the Neeskmouth home, let alone a far away holiday cottage that was rarely visited. The painted walls of the seaside retreat had begun to flake and the once pure green grass of the expansive lawn was now little more than a jungle of weeds. However, in his daydream, it was still as perfect as when Harold was a boy. Small and full of character, it had some small birds nesting in the thatch roof

  – swallows Harold seemed to remember they were. They used to dart back and forth through the air chasing the butterflies as he sat on the cliff top watching them. Every morning Harold used to travel down the stairs that lead from the garden straight down to the shore and spent the day at the beach pestering rock pools and chasing clouds, then at night they had slept with the sound of the ocean as it brushed the rocks, stealing pebbles as it went. The little windows had wrought iron bars in the shape of a perfect cross. The shutters themselves were engraved with flowers. Harold felt happy and safe there, both as a child and now in his dreams as an adult. Harold found a fossil of some long dead creature at the base of those pure white cliffs and still had it to this day, sitting above the fireplace. For him, it is a last memento of his childhood, a memory of innocence that seems so rare in a city full
of beggars and thieves.

  Still daydreaming Harold came down from the bridge that crossed one of the waterways on the Harbour Path. The sound of the waves in his dream married off well to the very real sound of a ship’s bells that rang out from within the haze of smog. The changes to the harbour had brought in a lot of work and made money for those that already had it, but those that did not suffered even more, working longer hours in hot, smoke-filled, and cramped factories that were run by oppressive managers who had little care for those they worked to death. The thick clouds these factories produced seemed to grow denser with each passing year and now covered most of the city. They mixed like an unhealthy stew with the smell of the canals. On some days, it was so thick that it seemed almost pliable. The buildings around this area of Neeskmouth had already begun to take on some of its blackness and were quickly losing what little charm they had to start with. They were overcrowded with multiple families being squeezed into each one of the hovels like wharf rats. Many of the households also had nowhere to graze their animals so kept them inside with them sleeping with the slurry and straw in the same space they cooked. It was a breeding ground for fleas and rats and sickness often plagued the poor. With the promise of yet more gold to be made from the secrets the Dwarfs were finally sharing from the Kingdom of Goldhorn drove the greed of the rich. It meant there would be need for more people to come to the city to work within the factories and it only promised to get worse for those already below the bread line. The sun was falling over the horizon as Harold’s daydream was broken by a husky and desperate voice close to his left ear.

  “Looking for a good time? You look clean enough so I’ll do it for half pence, what d’yer say?” The young woman leaning against a nearby wall asked him as she staggered out of the shadows looking like a scarecrow. She instantly made Harold feel ill at ease. She sported two blackened eyes, no doubt from an unhappy client the night before or from her pimp or, worse, her husband. Her ginger-red hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail and was thick with grease. The few hairs that escaped the grasp of the ribbon clung to her forehead as if glued in place. She gave Harold a smile full of remorse and the smell of cheap bourbon hit him. Harold watched unsure if he should risk aiding the poor girl as she almost lost her grip on the wall she had taken to holding. She had been drinking, maybe to keep out the cold or to block the thoughts of what she would have to do for her meal that night. Harold could not say for sure which. It was a world he didn’t understand, he skimmed along its edges and in his naivety he even went as far as blaming the poor girl for letting her life end up this way. Because of his sheltered upbringing he did not understand. He could guess that having to work the streets could not be an easy task, but he didn’t know that for some single women it was the only life they had ever known being driven to the trade as children by their own parents.