Chapter 94 - Proper Instruction

Daggertongue watched my shock and horror with undisguised amusement. I reached for the poker to try and fish the volume from the coals, but the elven work was gone.

I turned and scowled at Daggertongue. He merely swilled his wine and tapped his forehead. “If I wanted that knowledge outside of here and in the world at large I’d have liberated it myself. Or reproduced it. As a fact I’ve taken pains to ensure that very thing doesn’t happen, and here I find my own lackey out trying to sell these secrets to anyone with a handful of coins. There’s value in being the only one to know a thing, Darcent of Stitch Alley.”

My blood ran cold. “How do you know who I am?”

He leaned forward. “That’s not all I know. Tell me, boy, what is it you see burning above my brow?”

Alkazarian.

“Nothing.”

A cruel smile crept across the elf’s face. “A poor liar. I know who and what you are.”

Name yourself.

“And it’s not the chosen one,” said Daggertongue. I sputtered. Daggertongue pouted out his lower lip. “Or did Margot Bethane’s visit put you in a mind that you were someone who mattered? I told her as much. That it was pointless. That you were not useful—not yet, anyway. She chose to visit you regardless and it proved her undoing." He took a sip of his wine. "Useless without proper instruction, in any case. Oh, what’s the matter, child, devil got your tongue?”

I said nothing. But Daggertongue didn’t need my words. He had a deck full of demons, and he fanned his cards for a quick reading, before nodding.

“Come with me. We have an appointment.”

He got up, and I noticed the staff was quick to stay out of his way as he made his exit from the pub. I scrambled to grab my robe and fall in step behind him. Dawn had almost crested the rise to the east, and the wane dragons were beginning to fade into the morning light. Mages would be getting their full suite of powers back for the day, and Daggertongue strode with purpose.

“What are the downs?” he asked.

“A festering pile of violence, disease, and carrion.”

“And is that what you wish for? To be a king of carrion?”

I considered. “No.”

“You want more. It’s natural.” He pointed up the hill. “What’s up there?”

“The estates of the highlords of Dragonmaw. The Kestus Sisters, the Tarbot family, the Masked Lady of the Deep Delve Consortium,” I eyed the elf, “and Lord Gillis Guifoyle, among others.”

“Among others,” Daggertongue nodded. “About a dozen others, in fact.”

I thought I had a pretty good idea which one Daggertongue was. He continued, “Your greed and your ambition could put you among them. You have the potential. You have power, you have the will, and you’re not afraid to seize what you believe should be yours—the essence of being dragon-courted.”

“The guild saw being dragon-courted as a curse,” I said.

We arrived—not at one of the estates, but at a non-descript office. The guard on duty, a truesilver-ranked adventurer, straightened at our approach. He nodded to Daggertongue and let us pass. Inside, the office was lavishly furnished in dark ochre wood from south of the Strait of Kings. The main room split off, and I smelled breakfast cooking somewhere down the hall, while two tamed zephyrs dusted the shelves holding all manner of curios. Daggertongue led me to a staircase, and I inwardly groaned as we climbed up three flights after I’d already climbed to the upper city.

He held out his hand toward a door at the end of the hall, and I felt a twinge of good, old-fashioned sorcery. There was a heavy, mechanical click, and the double-door split down the middle to reveal a high-roofed office with tight corners, lots of shadows, and a fire already stoked in the hearth.

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“The Seeker’s Guild turns dragon-courted into a curse,” said Daggertongue. He strode to his desk and uncorked a bottle of wine that waited in a chilled decanter. “Stifling, stilted, rigid institution. It has its uses, to be sure. But sorcery isn’t like letters. It has never been a one-size-fits-all affair. You can’t industrialize it,” he shook his head. “No matter how many times I must re-teach myself that lesson over the centuries. Least of all those that require adversity to achieve breakthroughs. The entire point of a structured education is to remove the very concept of adversity.”

He moved to a well-worn chair and settled into it, gesturing to a much less comfortable chair opposite it. “Unless you have a different view of the Soul Seeker Academy?”

“It turned out that almost everything the Guild told me about my suits was wrong,” I admitted. “I feel like my true education didn’t begin until I left the academy.”

Daggertongue shook his head, tutting to himself. “Three years, wasted. Three years lost—despite my best efforts, I couldn’t touch you.”

I considered. “Wait, if I’m not some chosen one like Margot Bethane said, why do you even care?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Besides the fact you have the potential to become a skilled sorcerer? Perhaps then that the fel witch went into your home and you somehow emerged alive. Should that not be enough? I knew her. Powerful does not begin to describe her. She was a force of nature, a once-in-a-generation storm whose like I haven’t seen in hundreds of years.”

“Is that why you followed her?” I asked.

“Does that allegiance bother you?” asked Daggertongue.

“No,” I lied.

“Liar. But I digress. We all follow someone, boy. Even Bethane served, in her fashion. But where it concerns you, the focus of prophecy is not the only role to play. We need not speak of that now. What you want, is to know about my relationship to Bethane.”

Daggertongue got up, moved over to the balcony, and looked out at the city. He sighed. “Elves live in cycles. I was born among rags and rats. The Golds had waged war on Azurenon for four decades and left the city little more than ruin and disease. There I wallowed for five-hundred years before coming into my talent. A gift for seerage and sorcery made me rich for one thousand years, then poor for a thousand years more as the world changed around me and those who could read the Wills were cursed and spit upon. I scraped together enough silver for a ship to Dragonmaw, where my sole ambition was to spit on the bones of the Golds—only to find the city had been remade, twice, since the orcs marched down from the Cauldron. And so, I scraped and scratched, amassing a meager fortune—using an old elven investment trick, which I traded to a lich for a handful of silver. But it was never enough. Not until the Fel Witch came.

“Bethane was a means to an end—a plow unyielding, from behind which I could take my due without recompense. I could use whatever means I wished, no matter the cruelty or rigid binding of law. I did not mind her wanton destruction because I was not in her path but instead at her side, picking up pieces to re-arrange them according to my design. When I’d collected all that I wanted, I found that too much of the world was now mine to let her continue destroying it. I betrayed her, slaughtered her lieutenants, and left her to her fate.”

He huffed, musing to himself, for a moment with his chin couched between his finger and thumb. “I dare say I killed more of her inner circle than all the adventurers in Dragonmaw combined. Yes… I think that is so.”

“The Adventurer’s guild ought issue you a badge,” I said, in part to distract myself from the fact this man had stood toe-to-toe with some of the most dangerous people ever to live in the city, and to a man had put each of them in the ground. Or, at least, splattered them across it.

Daggertongue barked a laugh. “Yes, I’m a regular hero, aren’t i? And thanks to the amnesty, I kept most of what I took for myself. I expect I shall be flush for another millennia, if I manage to survive it. Bethane’s plans live on, you see. As do her most persistent followers.”

I leaned forward. “Why didn’t you finish the job then?”

Daggertongue shrugged. “To what end? They were scattered, broken. What she sought to hasten, in truth is still inevitable.” He turned, the Alkazarian card still burning on his brow. “But now voices once quiet have discovered your involvement—despite my best attempts to keep you shielded. If I had any doubts, they were shattered when you accessed a library blocked by more than simple stone. But I’ve worked too hard, gained too much. And I’ll be damned if I let that moldy old bitch take what’s mine from within the ground where her skull grins at naught but the roof of her coffin. No… it simply won’t do. And I can’t simply leave you to your own devices when it comes to your training. I’ll be taking a direct approach, from now on.”

He came back inside and traversed behind his desk. A curved bookshelf—apparently on rails, as he slid a section to the side to reveal a second collection behind—dominated the entire east wall of the circular room. He tapped his cheek and hemmed for a moment before drawing forth a volume. He handed it to me. “Here. Begin by reading this. Return to me once you’ve done so.”

“You’re assigning me homework?” I asked.

“More a continuation of your independent studies,” he said. “I did so endeavor to begin undoing the damage the Seeker’s Guild had wrought.”

If I had any doubt in my mind that Daggertongue had a hand in my life before I’d ever heard the name, the book in my hand dispelled it. I looked down at the title.

Lancaster’s Manual of Wills: Vol 2