A Tailor's Son (Valadfar) Page 4

  His room was pressed so tightly against the surrounding buildings there were no windows. All four of the walls were solid brick. The room was bare apart from a bookshelf against one wall that was jammed from edge to edge with religious books. It was clear from the cobwebs they had not moved from their resting places for some time. Paul knew all the sermons within them off by heart, such lies and hypocrisy, he now thought, but at one time he had lived for them. Alone in his room was not a time to dwell on such things though, for he still had much work to do. A final glance towards the door and Paul pulled back the only chair and sat at his dining table. The candle in front of him flickered gently in a draft that crept in from under the door. The moving light caught the ridges of grime and showed up the many ring marks in the table’s top, each from the hot tea Paul enjoyed so much. It was one of the few pleasures left in his life since the darkness came. The pattern of rings almost made a decorative top of an otherwise plain piece of furniture. Paul had stolen it from the monastery before he moved. Stretched from one corner of the room until it almost touched the table at which Paul sat, was his bed. Unmade from the night before, the blanket huddled in the corner as if scared of the intrusion. Paul had made sure it sat close to the fire to keep out the cold and stop his damn knee from locking during the night, although it had been many weeks since he dared light it.

  The fire brought back the nightmares. In his dreams, he could hear the screams of the tanned skinned person from the beautiful Green Stone Isles. Paul had seen a child ripped limb from limb in a sacrifice while he stayed there. Paul wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his hooked nose. Those ingrates had such strong magic but their mystics turned the wisdom to such barbaric acts. None of these acts had made it into the report that he passed to the bishop. As far as the church was concerned, the mission had been a success. The village had renounced their false gods and taken on the word of Sacellum.

  Without fear of interruption, Paul Augustus pulled open a large leather bound book that had not moved from the table in some weeks. Inside were the notes on his research and documents from the mission. The pages were yellowed with age and the ink had smudged from a hand rapidly scribbling words with a blunting quill. On the first page, a creature taunted him. It was a detailed drawing of a leech. Around it were notes scribbled with arrows pointing to different parts of the creature’s anatomy. The bloodstains on the page were a memento of the dissections Paul had carried out on the creature in The Dark Gulf. Paul hovered above the page for a while, taking in the detailed description of the creature and trying hard to see what he had been missing in his research. After all, he had seen many leeches in Brilanka having being born in the country and lived there until his thirtieth birthday, he couldn‘t have not. As a boy, he had found a few stuck to his leg from swimming in the stagnant pool behind his house, and every time he had been to a doctor’s he had seen them in jars around the consulting room. It seemed leeches were used to cure almost any ailment since magic was banned. However, it was not until the mission to The Dark Gulf, the sea around the Tropical bounding and the Greenstone Isles, that Paul saw creatures as large as this. The holy crusade of the new century was what the bishop had nicknamed it.

  A sudden flutter from the candle’s flame caused Paul to regain his focus and he continued scanning through the pages. His notes described his time in The Dark Gulf, the villagers he had stayed with and their way of life. Paul missed the village so much and found himself almost daily wondering why he had returned to Neeska. The only reason he had come back was to complete his research but that was almost finished. The last test subject had been so close to a success that soon he could return to the village in Chhottaa-Ghar. Paul longed for the solitude and peace of the isle. It was so remote that most of the people who lived there had never before seen a white man, and mostly he longed for his mistresses he had left behind.

  When Paul had first arrived in Chhottaa-Ghar, miles of thick jungle surrounded the village so that it felt separate from the rest of the world. The villagers did not fear him as he had expected them to, but with hindsight and knowing the secrets they held within the place, why would they? No, instead of fearing him, they treated him with a kind of mild neglect. That which you would show a stray dog found starving in your street. A few children came and gave Paul scraps of food then stood around staring as he wolfed them down. It took weeks before they started to respond to his so-called teachings, but Paul watched them from his isolated pew and during this time, he started to study them. As he began to understand their customs he had noticed an air of fear over the whole village which confused him. It was something he could not see nor understand, and although his stay was only supposed to be for a few months, it quickly became a year. This was unauthorised by the church of course, but he could not leave the people.

  He became more and more accepted and soon moved into a hut with a bereaved woman. During his time talking to the women, Paul learned that they all seemed to be scared of their devil God. They did not share the same beliefs as the rest of the Green Stone Isles. Their teachings mentioned nothing of the Titans but instead fixated on the changed ones, which had been a shock to the bishop in Paul’s final report. During the twelve months Paul had stayed in the village, he had tried hard to learn the secrets of their religion, more obsessed with that than preaching the word of the Brilanka Bible. It was only after his first night laying with his landlady that she told him that the Abrus herb, which each villager hung around their necks, was a ward from their god. She had also given him a small cluster of the herb to keep with him as the villagers believed this herb would protect them or grant them some power over the bestial creature they worshipped. Paul continued to flick through the book until one word caught his eye from the page. It was a reference to the villagers’ idol. The false god he was to rid them of, the Rakta Ishvara as the locals called it. Paul had learned enough of their language to get by during his time there and had learned that the bestial god’s name roughly translated to ‘blood god’. The memories of the day he finally gained access to the temple flashed through his mind and he dropped the book to the table with a thud. Paul cradled his head in his arms, the sickness returning to his body once more. Paul had seen the bodies that littered the temple and had watched the child torn in two and then fed upon. So scared where the people of this being that they celebrated as it devoured the child knowing it would bring them another period of peace.

  “What have I done?” Paul whispered to the shadows of his cold and tiny room as he remembered back, but the shade did not answer his question. Paul Augustus gave in to his anguish and wept.

  Chapter 3: Unknown Questions A rather well dressed gentleman used to come into Spinks and Sons to have his suits altered in size. He worked for The Times, a newspaper press that had opened up a few months before the fire at the Queens. The single ply broadsheet newspaper had started to replace heralds in the streets, the once proud profession fading into nothingness. With pennies the Times could get children to sell the one or two sheet long parchments at half the cost it used to cost to pay educated men to proclaim the news and the pages could be transferred from person to person allowing the news to travel at twice the speed it used to travel around the city. The Scorched Lands being slowly cultivated back into a lush forest by a selection of Elves from the Alienage had allowed the price of wood and thus paper to fall allowing this new industry to enter the city and boom. It was the reason for the noble’s regular visits to Spinks and Sons; he was growing fat on the fine foods his booming business allowed. This well dressed noble had told Harold that it was estimated that some three thousand Iron Giants were living in Neeskmouth since the end of the war. They had all settled when the Dragons had been beaten back and William had taken the throne. The noble had a long moan about the subject and Harold remembered thinking to himself at the time that most of them lived close by in the wooden parts of the city and not near the stone houses of the noble district so what did it matter to the posh reporter with his creamed hair and manicu
red hands? The Iron Giants worked in the sweatshops and factories or as pinch pricks for O’Brien.

  When the war was first won everyone expected the Iron Giants to stake claim to the noble parts of the city, and to start with they had, but they were not cut out for it and it didn’t take long for the more cunning Neeskmouthains to out-trade them or wangle their way back to the head of the pile. After twenty-eight years, all but a handful of Iron Giants that came to the city now made up a large part of the lower classes. The only people lower down on the social ladder were the poor mages that suffered at the hand of Baron Malcolm Benedict, and below them in the criminal underclass were the Drow. The city truly began to slide into depravity when Lord William had lost the vote and was removed from office in 118ab. His successor had cancelled most of the rejuvenation projects that William had started and it was the reason many parts of the city lay unfinished. Not only had Malcolm Benedict left the city unfinished he had brought back the purge of mages. With magic outlawed and any mages who admitted to the gift being imprisoned in the Tower there was little or no chance to make use of the limited medical resources the city had to offer. Even less if you did not have the wealth of the noble district to back you. The gentleman from the Times had gone on to protest against the work that a Drow pastor had been carrying out as he tried to establish a hospital for poor and sick that could not afford private fashions. His answer was to send them back across the oceans where they belonged if they could not afford to look after themselves why should they rely on the charity of the city and those, like him that had worked to make money? During the many months he visited the small family tailors, he complained to Harold more and more about this idea as its backers grew and a plot had been picked to begin building it. Harold didn’t realise it as he slumbered but when he awoke he would be more than thankful that this spoilt swine did not get his way and the hospital found backers from across the sea and had since been built on Duck Street. The streets’ original name had been replaced to reflect the new occupants and the strange apparatus the doctors often wore. The porcelain masks which covered their faces and came off at an angle looking like a duckbills to protect them from sickness and so called bad air. Harold hadn’t really held an opinion either way as during the many times he heard the Times reporter complaining, but he may not have survived the explosion at the Queens tavern if it had not been built.

  Harold awoke to the loud pounding sound of rain against glass, matched only by the drumming inside his own skull. It was another cold and damp Thresh night. Harold had no idea how many hours he had been out cold. He could remember the fire at the Queens, the heat and whiteness, then the beach. Amongst the confusion stood out the memory of the burning man. He had seemed so real, but as horrid as a nightmare at the same time. It took some minutes for Harold’s mind to clear fully and the random confusion of his thoughts to align with the waking world. The journey from the explosion to his hospital room was a blank but even with his sore head Harold could still remember the image of that man crawling from the flames. Harold knew the man’s face from the papers, a bonus of The Times man’s visits. He always brought a free paper and Harold often read them. Harold tried so hard to remember the article from which he’d recognised the sketched face. He had always had a great memory for faces but could never remember the name that went with them. Perhaps he was a criminal that had done something horrible or he might have worked with the O’Brien’s. No, thought Harold, that was not it. Suddenly his mind sparked and it came to him like a racehorse across the line. He was the man found dead in Common Road. Harold remembered reading the article on how the man had died. It was a mugging, and a vicious one at that. There was no way that it could have been him. After all, dead people do not generally get up and become arsonists, yet Harold was so sure. He put it down to a concussion and moved on from the haze ridden day dreams waiting for the rest of his senses to awaken.

  Laying there with his thoughts, Harold could hear the rain outside falling heavily. His vision was still impaired and the darkness did not help matters. He tried to push himself up the hard pillow his head rested on without luck. Harold could feel himself being beaten in his efforts to sit up. He was unable to gather his bearings with the pain agonising every part of him it felt like he had bruised everything from his hair to his toes. The weight of his own body pushing him back onto the mattress, Harold felt defeated. He slid his hands up his body and reached for his forehead, as his arms slipped out from under the blanket that was laid over him. The cold instantly bit at his fingers and goose bumps dotted his arms. Harold felt blood on his face and needed to find out how badly he was hurt. His fingers quivered as they found cloth wrapped around his skull. It was a bandage, coarse and softened only by the fact it was damp with his blood. Harold tried hard to understand what was going on but needed to stop the beating behind his eyes to do it. He had a headache worse than ever before in his life, and with a trade of long hours sitting in the dark trying to thread needles, he’d had a few. It made sense that Harold was in a hospital but the question became which one? He had heard some horrific stories from clients that had lost loved ones to the hospitals.

  When the mages went and the last of their potions vanished from the market stalls. Butchers or nobles with a macabre mind took to setting up small surgeries close to the dark streets of the harbours. Most of them had no clue to the biology of the human body and the healing arts they practised were little more than experiments. Mistakes in surgery, people catching infections from the filth and open wounds, as well as the medical practices themselves, killed more than they cured. Harold knew he was safer battling his wounds at home rather than letting some knife-happy surgeon at him with rusty implements. At that moment Harold wished to the creator that the apron had taken just a few more minutes to stitch together the previous night. If it had, none of this would have happened. Harold would have arrived at the Queens after the fire started. This small thought began an avalanche of questions in his mind. Harold had to get some answers and soon, before his head imploded under the pressure of his own thoughts. He had stayed unmoving for long enough. It felt like days but Harold knew it had only been minutes, the constant thud behind his eyes keeping time like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Harold pushed himself up onto his elbows, not giving in to the pain this time Harold continued until his back rested against the brickwork behind him, grunting with the effort he allowed himself an imaginary pat on the back. The room felt warm to him but his breath crystallised in the air and Harold knew that it was the pain that warmed his blood from the inside blocking out the chill. It felt like his insides were an oven, but Harold could see the signs of cold on his arms. He was suffering from a sort of fever from the agony and could only pray it wasn’t an infection from the dirty sheets.

  A light shone in the hallway outside and Harold could just make out the silhouette of another door close by. If that was another ward then this was not some small practice but could be only one of a few places. As the darkness lost its power over his vision Harold began to see in monochrome the room around him. He could tell there were other beds in the large room and along the walls. Harold could just make out an assortment of jars, no doubt containing leeches or body parts in formaldehyde. A small table sat next to his bed and Harold could see a jumble of shiny tools on it that looked more like something a carpenter would use than a doctor. The sheet that covered him was dirty so Harold dropped it to the floor, relieved to see he still had all his limbs when it fell from him. He was surprised that there were no candles or gas lamps in the room, the only logical reason Harold could think of was that he was the only patient in the room and he had been out cold so there had been little point lighting the room for his benefit. That did make him wonder if the doctors had actually planned for him to wake up or had they just left him here until a dead collector came around.

  At that moment something flickered causing a brief shadow to darken the light outside in the corridor, it cast a deep phantom that engulfed the whole ward in blackness. His
heart leapt to his throat and Harold hoped that it was just the wind blowing out a candle. Harold thought of calling out but his throat was so dry that not even a squeak escaped. He really needed a drink but the taste of smoke and the awful smell of the spilt spirits still haunted him. The shadow receded but Harold could hear footsteps clapping against the flagstones outside in the corridor. The disturbance to whatever source of light that dimly lit the walls around him had not been the wind as Harold had hoped. Someone was coming this way. The light grew brighter as the candle of the intruder to his thoughts grew ever closer and Harold got a better look around the shoddy ward.

  A wardrobe was open at one end below a barred window and inside it hung six pure white nurses’ uniforms, including their silly hats worn to keep their hair from falling into open wounds. The beds around him were empty and some had the sidebars up, turning them into odd-looking cots. The floor was surprisingly clean and partnered well to a bucket and mop that looked to have had a lot of use. They hid in the corner next to two peeling, white tables, similar to the one next to his bed. Being able to see in colour in the light was pointless. Other than the whites in the room, the only other colour around him seemed to be gray. The floor was a gray, the walls were plastered gray and the only hint of colour was a limp plant sitting isolated at the other end of the ward and the odd stain on another of the beds that Harold didn’t want to think about. Harold glanced to his right and took a better look into the tools the surgeon had placed next to him. They were not, as Harold first thought, just tossed on the table but were displayed rather neatly. It was their strange shapes and jagged edges that gave them a cluttered look in the dark. The tools themselves had fine ivory handles. The fact that each one seemed to end in a point or blade, and a large wooden hammer around the size of his fist sat next to them, meant Harold didn’t want to stay long enough to see them being used. His attention left the macabre tools as the footsteps stopped outside the room. The door slid open and Harold prayed it was someone coming to tell him he was fine and would be going home soon. As the door opened a self-assured man strutted in and made straight for Harold’s bed.