Brackstone was built at the foot of a plateau, where a river from the highlands plunged over cliffs to create a small lake. On a rocky promontory by the lake shore was a small castle built of local grey stone, with a thick curtain wall protecting it. The settlement had grown up around it, ringed by a lesser, outer wall, which in turn had been engulfed by houses spreading out along the road.
Josh was feeling strangely nervous.
This wasn’t some sleepy hamlet, or a provincial little town. This was close to being a city, albeit a small one, and there was no guarantee it would have kind, friendly people like Goodwife Benton or the Abbot of High Howe Priory in it. It was more likely to have people like the Sergeant at the border post, who had raided half the contents of Josh’s pack as an impromptu ‘fee.’
On the other hand, a city would be more anonymous than a small town, where everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Josh had arrived in the early afternoon, but spent a good few hours after that walking up and down the streets until he got a feel for the different areas. He didn’t want to rent some lodgings and then find out he was in a disreputable part of town, and that the proprietor was planning to steal all his stuff.
The place he found was shabby, but seemed respectable enough, and for a single copper a night, he could have it indefinitely. He paid up for a week in advance. It was a small attic room, where the only place he could stand up straight was just inside the door. The bed was directly underneath the eaves, and the walls were panelled with faded and bleached wood. There was a wooden-framed bed strung with rope, with a thin mattress on top, and the rest of the furniture consisted of a small bedside table, a washstand and jug, and a set of shelves recessed into the wall. The room was hot from the afternoon sun, and smelled of wood and dust.
First, Josh unpacked all his things. The sheep fleece, which he had had laundered in High Howe, went on the bed, and on the bedside table he put a palm-sized book of the Paragon’s teachings. He still felt guilty about the book. He no particular desire to follow the Paragon, but pretending an interest had seemed like a reasonable excuse to ask the monks to show him how to bind books and sew covers for them. At least now he knew how to make tiny spell books.
He had stayed at the Priory for three days, much of it spent in the library reading history books and, whenever Brother Ferno had gone out of the room, quickly pulling down one of the volumes he was really interested in, and scanning that.
He had learned a lot, but nothing about the Dreamer.
In the evenings he had been invited to speak with the Abbot, sessions that had been simultaneously alarming and enervating. At every point he had been worried that he would say something that would reveal him to be an outlander, but if the Abbot had guessed his origins, he said nothing. Josh had forgotten how much he enjoyed lively debate with a thoughtful, intelligent person, and by the time he had left the Priory, he had a letter of recommendation from the Abbot in his pack, which he could use to introduce himself to possible patrons.
In High Howe, Josh had bought himself two more sets of clothes from the market stall, and a leather vambrace that he could use to protect his arm when he practiced his archery, as well as some more arrows. He could be reasonably sure of striking a target at thirty or so paces, although everything he shot at had been stationary, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go for birds or rabbits, for fear of hitting them but not killing them straightaway, and having to deal with the consequences of that.
He also now had a large collection of feathers, the newest ones bought from the High Howe market, many of which he had primed to glow. He had discovered that if he cast Glow on a feather once, then it would have that enchantment laid on it permanently, and all he needed to do was feed it a trickle of magic, and it would start glowing again, although he still hadn’t managed to make the effect last for more than an hour. He needed to test whether someone else could make a feather glow after he had primed it, and then maybe he would be able to start selling them.
The cloak of invisibility and the shoes of water-walking he had bundled up in an old, burlap sack, and now he looked for somewhere to hide them. Careful investigation of the eaves revealed a cracked section of wood panelling, and by widening the gap he was able to place the burlap sack in the narrow space between the panelling and the roof tiles.
The rest of the evening was devoted to creating miniature spell books. In the end, he’d decided to create a sample spell book which had a single version of each different kind of spell, which he could show to prospective buyers. The proper spell books, however, would contain multiple copies of a single spell, except the one for his own personal use, which would contain all of them.
He wanted to prevent people from simply being able to copy the sigils themselves, so he had tested glueing extra sheets onto the spell sheets to hide the ink. He found that the spell would still work, even though he couldn’t see the sigil itself. If the extra sheets also had mundane writing on them, like tiny poems, then it would be good way to disguise what they were.
He didn’t think that buying spell scrolls was illegal, but selling them would immediately mark him as a mage, and Rob had said the nobility didn’t like mages wandering around who weren’t working for them. That meant he needed to sell his spells secretly. He was hoping that there was a market for cheap spell scrolls where people didn't ask too many questions.
Josh had also started to experiment with the parameters of the sigils, although all he had succeeded in so far was wasting a fair amount of paper. Most of the changes he made to the sigils didn’t even accept the magic he tried to infuse, which meant it wasn’t a viable spell pattern. He would keep at it. It was just a matter of trial and error.
That night he dreamed of running through the streets of the city trying to hand out spell papers to random citizens. He had to keep arguing with them to take it, while shadowy tentacled things oozed from the alleyways towards him, but he couldn’t move on until he’d given out a spell paper.
When he woke up, he was covered in insect bites. He scrambled out of bed as soon as he realised. He’d been sleeping on top of the fleece, but the bites were clustered wherever his skin had been close to the mattress. Ugh. Was it fleas? Or, he realised, more likely bed bugs.
He’d already paid for this room a week. How did you get rid of bed bugs? None of his spells would kill insects. After pacing up and down the room for several minutes while thinking up various solutions and then discarding them, he eventually settled on heat. Smoking them out would have been the most sure method he could think of, but he didn’t have any way to create smoke safely. But maybe he could heat up the mattress enough to kill anything nesting inside it.
Ugh.
He didn’t want to use up his pre-prepared book of heat spells, so that meant he had to spend an hour or more drawing twelve new ones. The heat effect spread over an area about three or four feet in diameter, so if he overlapped them it would raise the temperature just high enough to kill the bugs, but hopefully not enough to set anything on fire.
If this worked, maybe he could work as a bed bug exterminator.
Casting Heat twelve times in short succession was a struggle, even with all the practice he had been doing. By the time he’d finished he was feeling limp and dizzy and there were dark spots floating in front of his vision.
The bed smelled faintly of scorched linen, and was too hot for him to lie on, so he sat down on the floor to recover instead. He had intended to keep watch to make sure the mattress didn’t suddenly burst into flames, but found himself jerking awake some time later. He felt less dizzy, but he was ravenous. The bed hadn't started a fire, and had had enough time to cool down to room temperature, so he must have been out for some time.
When he emerged from the boarding house it felt like late or mid-morning. He revived himself with a pie from a street vendor, and walked to his first goal.
Towards the edge of the town there was a complex called the Gymnasium, where every able-bodied citizen under the age of fifty was mandated to train for an hour or more every day. Training consisted of weapons drills, with wrestling and archery for the men, and archery for the women. Josh presumed this was preparation against the Storm King and his minions, although whether for defensive or offensive operations he wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to ask in case it made him look like a spy.
Rob the Hedge Knight had said it was possible to learn weapon skills without having the class for it, albeit at a slower rate. Josh was determined to learn to defend himself. He had been in several dangerous situations now, and while it would probably take years to reach the proficiency Varian and Mistrz had demonstrated, he had to start somewhere.
Josh had missed the morning training session due to the bed bugs, but the second session was held in the middle of the day. His paper from the Sergeant at the border was sufficient to let him in, and the gate guard solemnly noted down his name in a thick book to confirm his attendance.
During the sword fighting lesson, he found himself put with youths who couldn’t be more than fourteen. He didn’t even get to hold a sword, but spent the whole session shuffling backwards and forwards while the drill instructor corrected their balance and posture.
Josh wasn’t a fighter, but he’d watched enough online videos about it to know that footwork was massively important, so he didn’t really mind.
At least he wasn’t put with the beginners for archery. All the practice he had done while travelling, every morning and every night that he could, had paid dividends, because he managed to get his last set of arrows clustered nicely in the centre of the target. The master archer in charge of the training gave him an approving nod, and then jerked his head towards a shaded stand at one end of the field.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“Asking for you,” he said.
“What?” Josh asked, stupidly. “Who is?”
“High ups. Sent for you.”
“Wait there are … people watching in there?”
The shaded stand had a discreet screen that prevented anyone on the outside from looking in. Josh had just assumed it was a storage shed or a changing room of some sort. He hesitated, then walked over, unstringing his bow as he did so.
The stand was open on one side, he saw as he reached it, so he went to the opening. There were several nobles there, their clothing as bright and clean as flowers, frothed with lace and embroidery. Standing in the centre was Lady Paleyne.
“De Haven,” she called. “What magnificent shooting!”
She was exaggerating, Josh thought with irritation. The next group was setting now by putting the targets back a good twenty paces, which would make a much better spectacle. He couldn’t help but feel she had followed him here, somehow, but how would she have known he was in Brackstone? She had left the inn at High Howe with her party six days ago. He hadn't expected to see her again.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said. “It’s very kind of you to say so.”
The assembled ladies all tittered and glanced at each other, making Josh feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“And where are you headed next?” Lady Paleyne inquired.
He had been intending to go to the bathhouse, but he wasn’t going to tell her that, so he gave her his next destination.
“The library, my lady.”
She clapped her hands.
“Oh, capital! I was planning a visit there myself. Didn’t I say just now, Clarisa, that I would fancy a trip to the library?”
One of the other ladies, presumably Clarisa, smirked.
“Yes, I heard you say so, quite distinctly, my dear.”
It was as if they were playing some kind of game. Lady Paleyne looked at Josh expectantly.
“We can walk there together, then,” he said, reluctantly.
“How kind of you!” She picked up the edge of her skirts and glided towards him, saying over her shoulder, “Clarisa, my love, do send Jann to me at the library in a couple of bells, if you would be so kind.”
And before Josh knew it, she had taken his arm and they were walking down the street, away from the Gymnasium.
“Would you like some advice, sir?” Lady Paleyne asked. She smiled up at him. He’d forgotten about the dimple. Her eyes were liquid and dark, and her lips were soft and pink, and the dress she was wearing, although it covered her from head to toe, was a symphony of delightfully veiled curves.
“What advice?”
If she noticed the ungracious tone in his voice, she ignored it.
“If a lady is going in the same direction, the appropriate term is to offer to escort her.”
Josh was confused.
“There’s a difference?”
She let out a peal of laughter, causing a man wheeling a barrow-load of turnips to turn his head appreciatively.
“You may not see the distinction, but a woman will, I assure you.”
Oh, it was one of those mysterious female things. She tapped him on the arm with one finger.
“Now, why don’t you say it for me, properly this time?”
Josh felt like a dog which had unexpectedly found itself in a puppy training class. But if she was going to teach him social conventions, he should humour her, galling as it was. This will help with your disguise. It will help you survive. He took a deep, slow, breath to calm himself, then cleared his throat.
“May I escort you to the library, my lady?” he asked, feeling stupid.
She tsked, and tapped him on the arm again.
“No, no, no. You need to sound as if you mean it.”
Inhale. Exhale. Pretend he actually liked her, even though she was flighty, false and manipulative. He repeated the words, but this time trying to sound as if nothing would please him more than to walk to the library with a deranged noblewoman.
She gave another trill of laughter, but replied, “I would be most grateful, sir!” Then she spoiled it by adding, “There, that wasn’t hard, was it?”
He ignored that.
“What are you planning to read at the library?” he asked instead, not because he cared—she didn’t seem the sort of person who would be interested in books—but purely to change the subject.
“What would you recommend?” she answered instantly.
For fuck’s sake.
“Perhaps the librarians will suggest something," he said.
Josh was feverishly trying to remember the right way to the library. He had passed it twice the previous day, but he had an idea that he would be committing some kind of deadly social sin if he asked Lady Paleyne for directions. Happily, he recognised a statue—one of the Heroes fighting a giant monster in a lake—and a few minutes later they had arrived at the front door.
Josh went to pull out his letter of introduction from the Abbot, but Lady Paleyne sailed up the steps without stopping, and he had to scramble to get to the door before her so he could open it. He could imagine what she would have to say to him if he left her to open her own doors.
Inside, the library was an atrium full of reading desks laid out in rows, and radiating out from the atrium were alcoves lined with shelves of books. The Abbot had told Josh that the library was funded and kept by the Church of the Common Covenant, which probably meant it was censored according to religious sensibilities. At the far end of the atrium was a large archway blocked by a desk and beyond that he could see more shelves. Presumably that was the section were all the valuable or restricted books went. Anything about the Dreamer would likely be there, which meant he would need to find a way in.
Today he would just scout out the premises.
A librarian hurried over as soon as they stepped inside, bowing low to Lady Paleyne.
“How may we assist you, my lady?”
“My young friend here will be choosing a book for me to read,” Lady Paleyne announced.
Josh had books of his own he wanted to find. Why did he have to be responsible for her too?
What sorts of things would she like? Probably novels about nobles having extra-marital affairs and stealing love letters to blackmail each other with, like uh … Josh didn’t read those kinds of books himself. Something that read like Downton Abbey, or Bridgerton?
“Do you have any fiction?” he asked the librarian.
From the look on the librarian’s face, he might as well have asked for porn.
“Do you mean…” the librarian hesitated before saying, in an aghast tone of voice, “…story books?”
Wow, really? Josh couldn’t help noticing that Lady Paleyne had lowered her eyes—she had long, thick lashes that swept across her cheeks in a dark crescent moon—and was biting her lip as if to keep from laughing.
“Yes,” Josh said breezily. “Story books.”
The librarian hesitated again.
“We don’t…” he began. “We only have morally improving works, such as the Tales of Anjafrid.”
Morally improving works sounded ghastly.
“You don’t have anything…” Frivolous? Scandalous? Romantic? “…suitable for a lady?”
“I can recommend Guidance for Young Ladies by the esteemed cleric, Ponson de Verlow.”
There was a tiny, stifled sound from Lady Paleyne. She was still biting her lower lip firmly. Did she just find everything Josh said or did amusing? He couldn’t imagine her appreciating advice for women that was not only written by a cleric, but a male cleric at that. That sounded like a suicidally bad idea. He imagined Timothy's cousin Rachel being presented with a book like that. It was the sort of thing you would only want to witness from a safe distance.
“So … no legends?" he asked. "Or fairy tales? Or, I don’t know, epic poems? With stories?”
“I would hardly refer to the literature of classical philosophers and great poets as story books,” the librarian said, in freezing tones.
“Where are they?” Josh asked.
There was a pause as the librarian recalibrated, and then he said smoothly, “Follow me.” He added a little bow towards Lady Paleyne. “If you please, my lady.”
Josh rated neither a bow nor an ‘if you please.’ The librarian left them at a section full of leather-bound tomes with curly gold writing on the spines. Josh plucked one at random, and opened it.
That man is altogether best who considers all things himself and marks what will be better afterwards and at the end; and he, again, is good who listens to a good adviser; but whoever neither thinks for himself nor keeps in mind what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man.
Ugh. No.
He tried another, which fell open in the middle of a dramatic scene involving a young girl being sacrificed on an altar. That was too close to the memory of the sacrificial gallows in the marsh. He shuddered and put it back.
There was one labelled The Queen of the Fey. He pulled it out and flipped to the first chapter, which featured a gentle knight in shining armour, riding out across a plain upon a feisty steed. Further in, the knight was slaying a dread monster in a cave, after having previously been advised not to enter by the lady accompanying him. The Queen of the Fey had not, so far, figured in the story.
Still, that was probably as good as Josh was going to get. He passed it along to Lady Paleyne, with a short bow, and went to look for history books.
But did she leave him in peace to do so? No, she followed him, book in hand, which made it harder for him to surreptitiously glance over to the restricted section. His best idea to get access to the restricted books was to come into the library, disappear out of sight in one of the alcoves, and don the cloak of invisibility and wait until the library was closed.
He might need to repeat that several days in a row, until he found the information he needed.
The history section had little that he hadn’t already read back in at the High Howe Priory. Spiralia, the online game version, seemed to have been set in the version of Six Spires that had existed fifty years previously, just before Prince Rupern had been born. The same year, the Seven Heroes had ‘arrived from beyond the mists, come to this mortal realm to aid the land of Celespire in its time of dire need.’
The Heroes were long-lived, and ‘if dealt a mortal blow, would rise again, renewed.’ Each had a different speciality ‘in the arts martial or magical.’ Three were knights, two were mages, one had a skillset that sounded rogue-like, and one had been a smith.
Josh was convinced they must be outlanders.
One of the mages, Gwynifer, had been killed by Tylas the Undying, when he had first risen as a threat thirty-five years ago. The remaining Heroes had banded together to imprison him.
Had Gwynifer had a player core? Was that why Tylas the Undying was, well, the Undying? Had he stolen it to give himself a brand of immortality? If so, the Heroes had been either unwilling or unable to strip it from him, which was maybe why they had imprisoned him instead.
All this had raised even more questions. The system that went along with the player cores appeared to owe a lot of its inspiration to Spiralia Online, which had mechanics developed over decades of roleplaying games.
If the Heroes had come from Earth fifty years previously, that would mean they were from the nineteen seventies. Back then, video games had been in their infancy, and people had mostly played in arcades—games like Space Invaders and Pong. Game consoles had existed, but roleplaying games had been mostly text-based, like the 1971 version of The Oregon Trail. Josh had studied all this as part of his introductory course work in Computing Studies and Game Design.
It didn’t seem possible that the fully evolved character screen in Six Spires had been created fifty years ago. It had too many game mechanic elements that had been developed since then.
Did that mean time was passing faster in Six Spires than it was on Earth? Josh almost hoped that was true. If fifty years on Earth was, for example, five years here, it means that he had only been missing for less than a week, not a month.
“You’ve been staring so hard at those books you are like to wear a hole in their spines,” a voice said, and he gave a start as he remembered the existence of Lady Paleyne.
For once, she didn’t have an amused look on her face.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“Then let us leave this place, and find a decent tea shop.” She tilted her head invitingly. “And I will buy you tea, and you can tell me what troubles you.”
Was the wretched woman never going to leave him alone?
They were interrupted by a slight disturbance as a messenger arrived in the library. He was panting and his face was shiny with sweat. The moment he saw Lady Paleyne, he made a beeline for her, and bowed hastily, then gasped out his message.
“My lady,” he gasped. “There is an infestation in Mistress Hallon’s chambers! Some kind of deadly magical summoned swarm!”