15. OLD POWERS

Martimeos sat in the common room of Night Fisher inn, smoking his pipe, sending rings of blue smoke towards the ceiling. Elyse sat nearby, and idly she worked the Art in glamor, turning his smoke rings black. She had asked again how to blow rings with smoke, and he had tried to show her, only one puff upon his pipe had set her into a coughing fit. So, reluctantly, she had contented herself instead with toying with his smoke-rings.

They were both still covered in the rotten pumpkin-gore that they had trampled through at Valerie Tuck’s farm, which stank so that even Cecil did not want to be near his witch for long. Before them sat a plate of buttered biscuits, long since grown cold, gone untouched. The witch had said that she did not want to eat while she felt so filthy. Martimeos, on the other hand, simply did not have much of an appetite. There was too much on his mind.

The well. The thing in the well. The shattered one. He lingered on the things that creature had said. Though to tell the truth, that wasn’t really what was on his mind at the moment. He was wondering whether they’d have to flee Silverfish before night fell.

===***===

Rescuing Minerva had been an ordeal, and so had been getting her back to town. Valerie had had the old woman tied up in her cellar for more than a day, it seemed. While Fortune had surely smiled upon her in her rescue (Valerie had never spoken to the old apothecary about her plans, and they had not discussed it for her sake, but both Martimeos and Elyse agreed: Most likely, Valerie had meant to feed Minerva to the well) it had not left the old woman in the best of conditions. She had only managed to go down the road some ways in a shuffling, panicked walk away from the Tuck farmstead. And then, even with the support of Elyse and Martimeos, and the witch loaning her the fae-stick to use as a crutch, the old apothecary had become too pained, winded and weak from hunger to walk.

Martimeos had considered carrying her, but she would certainly be too heavy and the distance too far. Instead, the old woman had directed him to the nearest farm she knew that was still occupied and which might have a horse for them to ride. He did not like the idea of leaving Elyse and Minerva alone on this strange road with the horror of Valerie’s farm barely out of sight behind them, but he was the fastest runner and so he was the one who had to go. He had whistled for Flit, and fortune smiled upon him that his familiar was actually near enough to hear it. He had given the cardinal directions to circle around the two women and come flying straight to him if anything happened to them. He had given Elyse his crossbow and told her how to use it. And then he had set off in the direction Minerva had told him about, to the farm of Jace Polk.

The Polk farm had been well off the main road; at a walk it would have taken a good part of the day, and the quickest way to it was to cut through eerie country. Old abandoned farmhouses and fields overgrown with thorns, through puddles of fog and past black, dead trees. Even running as fast as he could, he had time for fear. What if more of this wasted and thicketed land was haunted by demons, or ghosts, or something else? How many horrors lurked in the wells here?

It was the way of the world now. Things had grown more dangerous everywhere, but it seemed the further west he went, the sicker things became. The land around Pike’s Green, his village of birth, was not like this

(though it would never be the same again)

Martimeos had shook this broken thought out of his head, and his thoughts turned instead to what the thing in the well had said to him. What revenge did Valerie Tuck have need for? What had happened to her family? The same thing that happened to the rest of Silverfish, he thought grimly. But who would she be avenging herself upon? Why had the thing in the well seemed so satisfied, although it had failed to control him? Your revenge is purchased. What had it known? Eventually, though, the thoughts gave over to the roar of blood in his ears, and he had focused only on sprinting, on stretching his long legs out over as much land as possible, on leaping over thornbushes and freezing streams and ditches.

He had made it, breath ragged and heart pounding, to the farm of Jace Polk. The man was a sheeptender, and Minerva had just been at his farm to tend his diseased flock. Martimeos had recognized the signs of spivy, the wasting disease that slowly turned sheep into bald, stick-thin horrors of oozing sores, barely looking like sheep at all by the time the disease killed them. Polk’s sheep look like they were deep in the plague, and Martimeos doubted that half of them would live past the winter.

Jace Polk had turned out to be be a gnarled and gap-toothed old man who answered his door with a suspicious swiftness, carrying a club in his hand and demanding to know what this stranger was doing on his land. Martimeos had recognized his sort; he knew men like this in Pike’s Green as well. The sort of men whose faces looked like soft leather draped over hard wood; the sort of men who would rather die than let their children tend the farm before they were in a grave. Only, Martimeos realized, Polk probably had no choice in the matter. He could see no signs of the man’s family, see no signs that anyone lived on this farm except for him. And again, no sign of children. When Polk died, it would be just another empty farm dotting the land.

Martimeos had tried to explain, as quickly as he could, about his urgent need, without giving away too much that would raise uncomfortable questions from the old man. Minerva had been hurt out on Valerie Tuck’s farm, and had need of a horse to bring her back to Silverfish. What had it been? Bandits, of course. No, she was not on the Tuck farm, she was already down the road. No, he wasn’t sure what had happened to Valerie (this, at least, was the truth, in a way).

It was no good, of course. It never was with these sorts of men. The kind of man Polk was, you could pledge innocence on the voucher of Demesque and Karilail themselves, and they’d still want three neighbors, two cousins and a brother to attest to the good nature of the child-gods. To be fair, it was not exactly an easy tale to swallow that Martimeos was peddling him, and he doubted any farmer in the world would be trusting enough to give up their horse to a stranger who swore to his need.

But his words and his manner were, at least, convincing enough to save him a bludgeoning from Polk, for which he was thankful. The farmer might be old, and thin, but the cords in his arms spoke of a long strength forged in them by countless years tending his fields. No, Polk had gotten his horse instead - a tired but healthy-looking dun mare that he called Ioletta, a surprisingly fanciful and foreign-sounding name that Martimeos had not expected out of a staid farmer like him. Polk had also, as he mounted the horse, made sure that the wizard had seen that he had a sling with a stone already in the pouch, before telling him to lead on.

And so Martimeos had run back, having waited just long enough for the soreness to settle into his legs and now need to be run out again. Fortune had smiled again that Polk was actually a decent rider and was not phased by the sometimes rough land they had to cross, steering Ioletta, old as she was, to leap across stream-carved ditches where necessary. It was no miracle of riding, but there were many farmers who rarely used their steeds for anything more than pulling a plow or the occasional simple walk into town.

Martimeos had been breathless and sweat-drenched by the time he had come back to Minerva and Elyse. He could tell from Polk’s wide-eyed stare and stunned silence that the man had never really expected that he’d see Minerva; he suspected he was being led into a trap or ambush. Blessed Fortune that he had had the bravery to risk it anyway. Minerva had been quick to explain that she was quite all right, and no, these young people were not ruffians, they were her rescuers, and quite kind too.

That had quite the effect on Polk, who apparently put much stock in the apothecary’s opinion. He had even given Martimeos and Elyse - well, mostly Elyse - a toothy, approving smile as he dismounted his horse and helped Minerva on. “Should we try and put together a search party for Valerie? What happened t’ya, anyway? Was she carried off?”

Martimeos had shared a glance with Elyse. There would be a need to explain what had happened at the farm, and he was sure that the witch, like he, had come up with a few potential stories. But before either of them could say anything about it, Minerva settled the matter for them with complete and unerring finality.

“Valerie is dead,” she had said off-handedly, with a frank weariness, even as Polk still helped push her up onto the horse.

The farmer had listened in pale shock, and then in open-mouthed gawping horror, walking beside his horse and listening to Minerva tell the tale on her way back to Silverfish. The apothecary had been unsparing in her brutal detail. She had gone to Valerie’s farm to apply the salve she had to the woman’s scarred face - those wounds would never fully heal, no matter how old - when she had been knocked out from behind. When she had awoken, she had been tied up in Valerie’s cellar.

Valerie herself had not said much to her. Valerie never said much, of course; her mouth was too mangled to speak very clearly. She had been pensive, even hesitant, in what she was doing, but she had admitted to killing Mercy. Minerva, even in her candor, said that with faltering reluctance, and Polk had reacted like someone had just punched him in the gut.

She had mentioned the well, too. The noise that had come from it, at least. She did not, or could not, know what Martimeos did and what Elyse could guess at, but she at least knew something was not right with it. Martimeos wished that she hadn’t. Things such as this…demons, and other powers haunting the land…they had a way of making folk panic. But to his surprise, Polk took this in stride. “I knew something was wrong with that well,” he muttered. “You could see the land about it going rotten. And she was always by the damn thing. I thought she was trying to fix it. I told her she ought to have filled it in and dug another far away from it.” His expression grew dark, and he spat. “I don’t suppose it matters, another wicked thing here. What worse could happen?” And then he had glanced at Martimeos and Elyse, and his look had gone furtive.

Martimeos spoke up only when Minerva mentioned how he had gone to the well after it had made its unearthly noise, and he had shot the apothecary a warning glare that he hoped Polk did not see as he did so. He merely said that he had felt himself being drawn to it, and had felt hypnotized before Elyse had shaken him out of it. Polk had merely nodded sagely. “World is full of darkness like that, lad. Calls to you, it does. You’re lucky your woman has some steel in her spine. Plenty of others would have fled.” Elyse had merely laughed, amused, and said that he certainly was lucky that she was by his side.

The farmer had merely said a prayer to Demesque and Karilail when he heard about Valerie’s death. Minerva had, thank Fortune, not said anything about them working the Art. Martimeos had been afraid for a moment that she might.

But all this story-telling had not done wonders for them when it came to keeping quiet. The moment that they had made their way back into Silverfish, Polk had told them that he trusted them to lead Ioletta to the Night Fisher inn, where Ritter should stable her. And then he had scuttled off, disappearing quickly into the fog, and unless Martimeos missed his guess he was off to flap his gums and spread rumors.

And of course he had not missed his guess. Even before they had been through with stabling Ioletta, people had come stumbling out of the mists, one here, one there, a couple here, peering at these two strangers. Some of them called out to Minerva, asking if she was alright. By the time that they had actually made it to the door of the inn, there were around a dozen folk - more than he had ever seen in one place in this village - standing in the inn’s courtyard, beneath its colonnades, watching them, and now he could feel the anxiety from them. They must have heard that these strangers had saved Minerva. But they had undoubtedly also heard that these strangers had killed Valerie.

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A low, worried rumble had followed them into the inn, and he could feel the weight of their stares as he closed the door behind him.

===***===

Martimeos knew how quickly stares and whispers could turn into anger and clenched fists. To always be leery of the fear of that was what it meant to be an outsider, not truly one of them. Oh, on their own, and when spoken to face-to-face, most folk were reasonable and could be dealt with. You look a man in the eye, and he starts to see what a silly thing his fear and hate was. Most men, anyway. The world was already full of enough danger to go looking for it in your fellow man who simply wanted peace.

It was when they banded together that things became dangerous. The same man who would shake your hand if you spoke to him alone would swear you were a demon in disguise if the rest of his fellows were shouting it. And so often they did not need much of an excuse. Those who practiced the Art knew it well, as did merchants, and all others who found themselves in strange places amongst folk not their own. Sometimes all it took was the simple fact that you were an outsider, and they were suffering. Or sometimes a single voice in the crowd demanding blood could become, in a terrifying instant, a majority. Sometimes even those you thought you knew would turn away from you.

Ritter and Minerva had gone out to talk to the folk in the courtyard and reassure them. It did not settle Martimeos’ nerves that they had felt the need to do this even before Minerva had settled in at all, or had something to eat. The woman had recovered somewhat during her ride back, given water and freedom from fear - he thought the old apothecary probably had more steel in her than anyone else he had seen in this village - but still, it did not bode well at all. They were strangers, nosy strangers, and they had just killed one of their own farmers. The fact that Minerva vouched for them might have carried weight with Polk, but would it carry such weight with everyone?

And Ritter. Would the innkeep speak up for them? He glanced out the window, but the old mercenary and Minerva stood at the far end of the inn’s courtyard, in the shadows of the colonnade, and they spoke in hushed tones that he could not hear. He could not see the faces of those they spoke to, either, only that there were less than there had been at first - six people left out of the dozen that had once gathered near the inn. Perhaps that was a good sign? Or perhaps Ritter had sent out runners to gather more bodies, and they were tying the nooses for their necks right now.

He sighed, and remembered his shame, remembered what it was about him that the shattered thing in the well had been able to take hold of. His hate had made him vulnerable, had allowed the thing in the well to draw like to like. He had allowed that hate, and his paranoia, too much free reign since he had come to Silverfish. Something about the town drew it out of him. It became burdensome to suspect everything and everyone. Even Elyse, his heart kept shadows of suspicion for, though she had proven faithful and true time and again. He would tamp down on his darker thoughts, then. Though he was still glad that the inn’s fireplace was crackling with a merry flame. If they come through that door in anger and with ill intent, I will set this whole inn ablaze.

Elyse, for her part, was silent. If she had any thought to speak, it was dimmed by the grim look on Martim’s face. Instead she played with her shadows and glamor on his smoke-rings and watched him, thoughtful.

===***===

Eventually, the folk who had come to Night Fisher Inn in curiosity over the strangers dispersed (Martimeos watched them go from the window, discreetly, and breathed a sigh of relief when they did).

When Minerva came through the door, she was chewing on what looked like a honey-glazed biscuit with one hand (at least someone had seen fit to bring her food) and sorting through the herbs in her pouches with another. She had a determined look about her, and to look at her you’d never think that earlier in the day she had been tied to a chair, except for the ropeburn around her wrist. Though even this was more faint than you’d expect, with Elyse having worked some of her healing Art on them. Ritter, on the other hand, trailed after her, and he seemed pale and sickened. He hadn’t heard what had happened, before he had gone out to talk with folk, and likely he had just heard it from Minerva’s mouth right there.

The innkeep looked at Martimeos and Elyse, sitting in a smoke-filled corner, and rubbed his chin, eyes troubled, and opened his mouth as if to say something. Then he shook his head, and said, “I’ll go and bring you some food, and some wine,” and then disappeared into the kitchen.

“How did folk take the news?” Martimeos asked, as Minerva sat down at their table, sending the smoke that drifted around them gusting away in great billows.

The old woman sighed, and finished the last of her biscuit, dusting crumbs from her frock. “The same way folk take any news in this village, these days,” she muttered. “Numb. Looking like dead fish. All except poor Finnel, he cannot stand to hear of any violence, even simple talking of it. He ran back to his Lady when he realized what the story would be.”

“Did they believe you, though?”

Minerva glanced upwards, hearing the concern in the wizard’s voice. He was clenching his pipe in his teeth, and his eyes were as dark as a shadowed forest. “You don’t have to worry, lad,” she replied softly, though not without an edge of fear in her voice. “They believed me, and Polk was out there telling folk how you practically outran his horse in fetching help for me. They aren’t happy, but they aren’t casting blame at your feet.” She smiled, the first genuine smile Martimeos felt he had seen from anyone in Silverfish, and some of the tension went out of him. He thought that in the old woman they might have their first true ally in this village.

Ritter came out then, with a platter carrying a loaf of bread, a large pad of butter, a bowl of mustard and pickles, along with a large jug and four cups. He set all this on the table, hesitated a moment, and then pulled up a chair, pouring everyone their share of wine. “Mercy and Valerie both gone,” he murmured as he did so, shaking his head. “May the Gravetender spare them from the Dark Stranger.”

“The Gravetender?” Elyse asked curiously.

“Just a god they keep, in Farson’s Pass.” The innkeep drank down his cup as soon as he had poured it, and then poured himself another. “So,” he asked slowly. “What was it? A demon?”

Ritter nearly jumped when Martimeos spoke in answer. He had been studiously avoiding looking at the wizard. “I think there are likely many who would name it so,” Martimeos said slowly, “but I am not so certain.”

Both Minerva and Ritter looked surprised at this, but Elyse only nodded thoughtfully, which surprised him. Had she been able to tell, even without having talked to the thing in the well? Perhaps she had a good sense for sniffing out demons. That came with the Art, too, a feeling for them, but it was sharper in some than others. “This is known to those who work the Art,” the witch spoke up in explanation. “There are those who would say of anything strange, ‘this is a demon.’ But a wizard or a witch, they know that there are many powers in this world, and a demon is that which comes from another place. From Outside. Not of our world.”

“If not a demon,” Minerva said softly, “then what?”

Martimeos puffed on his pipe, and the soft red glow of the bowl twinned itself in his eyes. “My former teacher,” he began after a time, smoke curling from the edges of his mouth, “Traveled quite far, in his time. Far off to the west, there is a place called the Caean desert. You have heard of it?” Minerva shook her head, but Ritter nodded, fascinated. “From what he told me, ‘tis a dry and desperate place, but there are folk who eke out a living there. Either they are banished there for being mad, or the sun bakes the sanity right out of their heads. But they are strange.” He sent a plume of smoke billowing up towards the ceiling. Could they possibly be more strange than the people of this village, though?

“One day, one of these madman guides my teacher to what he swears is a demon. It is a pit dug in the ground, dug deep where digging is hard, in land where to strain yourself is to invite death beneath the glaring sun. In the center of the pit is a large, red boulder, and other madmen are strewn about, either dying of thirst or merely staring at this rock. My teacher said he sensed no presence at first, but when he chipped at the boulder, blood flowed from it. And when the light of the moon shone upon it, it would awaken, and whisper vile blasphemies in three different voices. My teacher spoke to it, and it said it was old, older than the mountains, but he thought it was something of this world. It tried to gain a foothold in his thoughts, touching his mind, but found no purchase there. The madmen, though, it was in them, in a way, he could feel it. Though he said he could not tell whether it was their madness which it exploited, or whether their madness fed the thing somehow. He fled before the thing could order the madmen to kill him. It was, he said, an Old Power of the earth.”

A silence settled over the table. There were tales of the Old Powers; detritus left over from an age so long ago that whatever had named them was long dust. There had never been anyone to be able to say what, precisely, they were, and they seemed disparate in nature. Alain the Dweomer, half-mythical progenitor of the Aurelic Crown, was said to have faced an Old Power before he became King; some stories said merely that it was a monster ‘made from starlight’, while others said that upon its defeat Alain had kept its head, and it whispered knowledge of the Art to him. Another, very old story said that on the very western edge of the world, where the land turned to gray seas that none had ever sailed across, (except for Hooloon the strange, Hooloon the necromancer who came to torment and beguile before disappearing as mysteriously as he had come), that there where the land ended, there was a severed head as big as a barn in those last white sands, and it too spoke secrets of the Art that none else knew; this was an Old Power. The only thing all the stories seemed to agree upon was that these Old Powers were ancient beyond remembrance, and they hated the gods. Some said they were a race of monsters the gods found so vile that they cast them down in destruction, a relic of a time before man. Another theory held that they were the denizens of the dark places of the earth, far beneath the ground or in deep water, living unseen. Or that they were gods themselves, little gods of the monstrous creatures of the world. Many folk thought of them as demons, and that was perhaps all they needed to know. But they were of this world, and not any other.

“And you think this thing in the well was an Old Power, as well?” Ritter spoke up after a long moment. If the man had truly traveled with wizards, perhaps he had heard of such things before.

“It spoke to me,” Martimeos replied quietly into what was suddenly hushed silence. “In its manner. It said it was very old, and that unlike the gods, it would answer Valerie’s prayers.” He paused, giving the innkeep a meaningful look, one that made Ritter distinctly uncomfortable. There was something a little wolfish in Martimeos’ eyes as he spoke. “Her prayers for revenge. Perhaps it was that very thirsting for revenge that awoke the thing. Going by her face, I would say she seemed like she had a lot to wish revenge for, though I could not say what it was.”

“We will have to…to fill in the well…”

“Do nothing of the sort. Send no one near it. At most, place a sign warning people away. Just leave the farm abandoned. Why not? Like so many others around here.” Martimeos’ voice was harsh, unforgiving. He was suddenly angry, but not at Ritter, or not only at him. “I know not what befell you here, but it seems to me you’ve accepted death. What’s one more empty farm?” He downed his wine, and then grabbed the jug and poured more.

A tense silence fell over the table, and it was Minerva who spoke into it. “You have not told them, have you,” she asked gently. Her steady gaze settled on Ritter.

The innkeep’s face was ashen. “No,” he croaked. “No, I have not. It’s not for outsiders to know.”

The old woman placed a hand on his arm, and Ritter looked at it, stone-faced. “I think they deserve to know, don’t you? That they might not walk around in ignorance.”

“Perhaps.”

“You know they work the Art,” she went on, even more gently than before. “They might be able to tell us something…”

“Then you tell them, Minerva.” Ritter stood, and he was not looking at any of them. He looked as grim as a soldier who had just been ordered on a death march. There was something there in his voice that Martimeos had not noted before. It was a grief well-hidden, but for it to show through in a man like Ritter was, a grizzled old mercenary, it must be intense indeed. “You tell them. I won’t have the evil soiling my tongue. I’ve heard it too much, and I have no stomach to hear it again.”

They watched him walk stiffly away, out the front door of the inn, a wounded man who could not hide it very well any longer. Through the window, he could be seen striding through the courtyard until he disappeared into the mist that came creeping in again, now that the day’s sun was past its peak and no longer strong enough to burn it.

Minerva looked for a moment as if she wanted to go after him. But in the end, she merely sighed.

Then she turned towards Martimeos and Elyse, and told them of the curse that had befallen Silverfish.