Hero in a Halfling Page 2

  No one else in the pub had seemed to mind the wizard at all. Like he wasn’t even there. And when the man wanted a drink, he had went to the bar and filled it himself.

  Epik had watched it in wonder, his book forgotten.

  After the wizard had his fill of drinks, he’d left. No one but Epik had noticed, so he ran out into the road and then followed as the wizard headed down the lane, in the same direction as Epik’s home.

  “Good evening lad,” the man said after a moment. That familiar smile greeted the halfling, if a bit hidden behind the man’s beard—beards often have a way of obscuring a face.

  “Good evening, sir,” Epik said, surprised to hear a slight slur in his voice. He was a little drunker than he’d meant to be. “Are you a wizard?” he asked.

  “Well, you’re an observant one aren’t you,” the wizard said. “I am, in fact, a wizard.”

  Epik then took no time getting to the point. “Were you at my birthday party?”

  The wizard looked up the road.

  “Tell me,” he said, “is that your house just there, up the way?” Epik nodded. “Then yes, I was there.”

  Of course, over the years Epik had thought of a million questions to ask this wizard, should this day ever come. But only one came to mind at this moment. “Why?”

  The man laughed. “I was just passing by. And it seemed like you weren’t having a good time. I sought to remedy that.”

  “You were just passing by?”

  The wizard nodded. “I run a magic supply shop, up in the city. I came here for mud bugs. Same as tonight matter-of-fact.”

  “Mud bugs?” Epik said incredulously. “They’re magical?”

  “Oh, heavens no. But they’re a great filler. Crush ‘em up and add them to powders, makes things weigh more than they should.”

  “Couldn’t you just do that with magic?” Epik asked.

  “See, that’s the catch. My buyers look for things like that.”

  “Oh,” Epik said. The conversation wasn’t going anywhere like he’d imagined—not at all. “I thought maybe…” he trailed off.

  “You thought maybe I was recruiting you?” the wizard said earnestly. There was no hint of mocking in his voice. ”Sounds like someone reads a lot of stories.”

  “I guess so,” Epik said glumly.

  “That’s not a bad thing. Tell me, does your father live up in that house with you?”

  “No,” Epik said. And he wasn't sure why his father had anything to do with this. In fact, the thought of his father in that moment sent a pang of something unfamiliar down to his stomach, where most halflings find their emotions. Frustration?

  Now, eight years later, Epik’s father had come up again—also with the mention of magic. It seemed a strange coincidence.

  That night, Epik had more than brushed the wizard’s words away. He’d tossed the idea of his father completely out of his mind, hungry only for magic.

  “Can anyone become a wizard?” Epik had asked, finding at least one question he had wanted to be answered forever.

  “Anyone?” the wizard chuckled. “No, I imagine not. But if you’re asking if you can,” the wizard cocked his head slightly, “there is a simple test.”

  Epik’s heart began to hammer.

  “Tell me,” the wizard drew out his wand, “what do you feel?”

  Epik wasn’t exactly sure, but he thought he felt something stir inside him. Something in the back of his mind, just out of reach. “Magic?” he hazarded a guess.

  “Ah, of course, you’d say that, wouldn’t you? I guess I deserve it. But no.”

  “I did feel something,” Epik said.

  “No,” the wizard said, almost to himself. “That doesn’t seem right. Perhaps, it’s the wrong time? Yes, that must be it. The wrong time.”

  “What’s the wrong time?”

  “This,” the wizard said absentmindedly. “This is the wrong time.”

  “What—what was I supposed to say?” Epik asked, “How do you feel magic? What’s it supposed to feel like?”

  “Magic,” the wizard started, “well, it’s kind of… Well, it’s all around, but more importantly it’s inside you. Magic isn’t at all like what the storybooks say. There’s no switch. It can’t simply be turned on. It’s subtler than that. Magic has to be drawn out of us. It can take months. Years. Decades even.”

  The wizard changed course. He turned and began walking back up the road toward the main drag out of the village, toward the main road. Toward Dune All-En.

  “Is that it?” Epik yelled.

  “A while back,” the wizard said, still walking, but backwards. His voice carried softly across the expanse of road. “I believe I left a rabbit on that lawn. I trust she’s doing fine? Well fed?”

  “She is,” Epik said, attempting to step closer but finding his legs unable to move in that direction. “Mom's tried to get rid of her several times. And I thought for sure a snake would get her one day. But I saw the rabbit not three days ago, eating our potatoes. Do you want to see her?” Epik said, hopefully.

  “Excellent!” the wizard said just loud enough for Epik to hear.

  “Are you going to come back?”

  Epik had felt a strange tingle coiling around his head like he was in a hot bath. He couldn’t remember anything after that. No answer. There was only the darkness of stumbling home, sad and alone.

  The next morning, he took a job at the Hog’s Toot. The hope of seeing the wizard and thoughts of leaving the Bog were like ghosts haunting his mind, always there in the periphery, serving as a barrier between the repressed feelings surrounding his father that he’d worked to bury since he was a child.

  Time passed, the wizard never returned, and eventually Epik had made a pact with himself. To leave. To journey to the city on his own and find him.

  But like many hometowns, the Bog had a hold on him, literally bogging him down for years.

  Until tonight.

  Tonight, something was stirring in him, something that had laid dormant in the back of his mind for a long, long time.

  2

  The Men in the High Castle

  “Sire, I believe it’s time we have a serious talk about protecting the city.”

  “What do you think we’ve been discussing?” said the king.

  Nacer did have a plan—one to steer the king’s musing to his agenda, or rather, to one that he’d come into by agreement. He sighed.

  “It’s just the troops… um… they’re not guarding the city, per say.”

  The king was moving them around like chess pieces—chess pieces with aching legs as they marched hundreds of miles on each of the king’s whims.

  Where first Nacer had hoped to impact policy, now he just wished to get away. To go to bed. And still, there was that pressing thing on his mind, exuding some bit of pressure. He would try again tomorrow, that was it.

  “Will that be all, sire?” he said.

  “Will that be all?” the king mimicked. “Who do you think I am? Some common lord—a high country noble? You’ll stay right where you are all night, if I need you to.”

  Nacer nodded subserviently. It was one thing to see the king distressed, as had been common in the past few weeks, but it was something else to see him in his privies.

  The king paced around the room; it made Nacer nervous. The man looked less stately than a piglet in pajamas—and only half as greased. His oversized boxers cut off at the knee; he wore stockings so high they almost met the briefs. He was shirtless, except for a robe over his shoulders, his nipples pointing to opposite directions of the room. Apparently, there was a draft.

  The king looked at his massive table. It looked like a game, and to him it may well have been. It was carved to look like the continent, with pieces to match troop movements strewn across it.

  “We could call back the 6th regiment,” Nacer offered. But why? Why was he talking about troop movements? Again? That wasn’t his aim in the slightest.

  “No.” The king moved a piece on the boa
rd. Then he moved it back. “What about the 4th?” he said, putting his hand on another piece entirely.

  “In one of those friendlies with Foghorn—a hundred and fifty days march back to the city.”

  The king took his hand off the piece.

  “Do we know who’s winning?”

  “Oh, you know how friendlies go. They always end in a draw.”

  The king nodded. He strode across the room and backed up to his chamber pot, pulling the linen shorts down in one motion. Nacer let out a sigh, averting his eyes. His nose had no such luck. He found a glimmer of moonlight through a crack in the curtains.

  The king’s bed took up a small portion of the room. An inlet was carved out of a turret on the northwestern side of the castle; it fit a king sized mattress but nothing more. The room itself was ornate like chilled marble. If the king wanted to, each morning he could open his bedside curtains and look out at sea. He never wanted, at least, not anymore.

  As nine years of the king’s rule over the kingdom crept toward ten, he was losing sleep. Now, he never left this room. Yet, King Simmons was up before the sun rose and to bed late in the night, issuing proclamations and orders. Doing what any king would do to cling to the last thread of life or monarchy—ten years in Dune All-En usually meant both.

  For the past two hundred years, almost as long as could be remembered, the city-state of Dune All-En had its ruler change hands with each decennial. Every ten years, the king or queen would die, be lost at sea, or have some other misadventure. Sometimes replaced with an heir, but often they were replaced with a cutthroat ruler from another city-state. King Simmons was no exception. After losing the throw of dice that is childbirth, born three minutes after his elder brother, and then falling in the line of succession to the throne of World’s Eye to Alexander’s three children, Simmons took matters into his own hands—or the hands of an army of mercenaries he paid handsomely.

  “And the navy?” Simmons asked Nacer, grunting.

  “Searching for pirates, I’m sure.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Exactly where we started, sire.”

  The Grand Counselor, the right hand of the king, looked at his liege impatiently. The hour was late, and he had that pressing engagement. See, Nacer was rather fond of his bed. He was also rather fond of the ladies that were now in his bed, waiting for him. He looked at his watch, and Jade’s hourly rate alone sent silver coins spinning in his head. And the other, what was her name? Veronica.

  The king nodded again as if this was exactly where he’d meant the conversation to lead.

  Another grunt, and perhaps it was over.

  Nacer sighed again. He would make one last attempt, prodding to get his job done. “So we leave the city to be guarded by… by the watchmen?”

  “Not just the Watch,” the king said. “The Palace Guard are well equipped, well trained. I’d trust them with my life.”

  “You often do,” Nacer chided.

  The king smiled despite himself.

  “And we do nothing with the 6th?” Nacer said, picking up the piece on the table. “Only two weeks’ march away?” Back to troop movements, he groaned at his own line of thinking.

  “No,” the king groused. “I’m sure of a threat from King’s Way! The 6th will stay saddled between us. It’s all the protection we really need.”

  “And that’s the only threat you’re aware of?” Nacer’s tone suggested that he may know otherwise.

  “No, no, of course not.” The king finally took the bait. “Could be anyone this time. A martyr, maybe? God knows we haven’t had a decent martyr in a hundred years. And a religious uprising is just what the kingdom needs.” The king paused. “No,” he said. “Not a martyr. Another king? Someone like me, willing to take what’s not his.”

  Not a king, Nacer thought, reluctant to move the conversation back to the damn troop movements. “You command a powerful army, sire. One you’ve placed in strategic locations. And, at your disposal, the world’s most veteran navy.”

  “Only because they stay out at sea the whole time,” the king argued. "You know, I'd like to see those beautiful ships out in the harbor every once in a while.”

  “Noted, sire,” Nacer said. Again he felt the conversation slipping from his grasp. One last attempt. “Anyway, I don’t think it will be another king,” he said plainly. “For one, there’s that constant reminder of the Battle of the East Rampart—your greatest victory, sire. Few kingdoms wish to contend with that. Your tenacity brought down that wall.”

  “And a lot of gunpowder,” the king said snidely. “You know, I would like that fixed. It’s been ten years!”

  “Noted, sire." Nacer said. His efforts weren’t coming to fruition. Hours lost. Hours he could have been—

  “Maybe you’re right,” the king agreed. “No one’s going to go about overthrowing me that way. Too obvious, I suspect. But let’s double the night watch on the wall anyway. I suppose we can't be too careful.”

  Nacer thought better than saying more. He could feel it now. He was about to be dismissed. To hell with the plan. To hell with the conspiracy.

  Finally, the king stood from the pot.

  “Perhaps a wizard?” he said inquiringly. “Half the time it’s wizards, you know.”

  And there it was. What Nacer had wanted all along. Still, he choked back the urge to steer the king away in some other direction. Habit. He looked at the king in mock speculation, silently goading the man into further reflection.

  Simmons continued, “This whole kingly business came from a wizard’s plot, you know. Didn’t read the fine print of that spell⁠1, now, did he? Magic’d up a sword in a stone, convinced everyone that whoever shall pulleth the sword shall be king—”

  “Oh, I heard he led a good life in the end,” Nacer added.

  “Who? The king?”

  “The wizard.”

  “Ah,” said the king. “Maybe.”

  The Grand Counselor smiled serenely, parting his pencil-thin mustache and bristling the end of his goatee. He’d achieved his goal, somehow. And tonight he could sleep more soundly. After that pressing engagement of course.

  “So, what do you suggest we do?” he asked. “About this threat to the kingdom?”

  “So-called threat.”

  “Exactly, sire,” Nacer said, sardonically. He could still have his private jokes, after all.

  “Notify the Alliance,” the king said. “Then send up the captain of the Watch. Anyone found doing magic within the city walls will be arrested on sight.”

  Nacer left the room in haste, a hiss of triumph parted his lips. There was still plenty of hours in the night and still women in his bed. Then he tripped over the outstretched foot of Sir Robert. The mammoth knight laughed and brought his foot back against the wall.

  “Would it hurt you to show a little respect?” Nacer said. “We’re in this together, you know.”

  Sir Robert was stupidly silent.

  After drafting the proclamation, Nacer retreated to his bedchamber, happy with himself. He licked his lips in anticipation of the evening's activities. But instead of two girls lying naked in his bed, he found an elf in his room, and a male elf at that. The thin figure had his back to the door and was placing a note on Nacer’s bedside table. Turning back, the elf saw the Grand Counselor standing in the doorway and scurried backward, holding his hands out in surrender. His golden blonde hair was the same color as the lamplight, which glowed brightly in the room.

  “I’m sorry,” the elf said. “I was told to send them away,” he pointed to the note, “and retrieve you.”

  “Can you at least tell me who sent you?” Nacer asked. “What’s the man’s name?”

  “I cannot,” the elf said graciously. “I have taken the oath.” He backed away, his eyes locked on Nacer. With a flourish, the elf bowed, exiting.

  The Grand Counselor tore open the note.

  3

  A Shadow in the Dark

  The Magical Trade Alliance took up an
elaborate and sturdy building between the castle and the port. It nestled up to the shoreline and served as an intermediary between the city-state of Dune All-En and the outside world. Dealing with all variety of magical artifacts and services, whether imported or exported, it was the magical hub of the city. There was even a small sect devoted to maintaining magical trade in the city itself.

  Several lobbying organizations set up shop along the cobbled street beside it: the Inter-kingdom Wand Association, the Dune All-En Coven of Witches, the Fortune Tellers Faction, and of course, the Society for AstroPhysics, who were beginning to think their specialty may lie in another realm of natural law. And like many intergovernmental organizations, work at the Alliance was ongoing, day and night, 24/7, with the exception of every other Friday from two to close due to training.

  The king’s official proclamation made its way through the lobbyists. An all-hands meeting was held, and even included some wizards without them2. An emergency forum was scheduled for the next morning. If this proclamation were to hold water, nearly a third of the city’s businesses would be run into the ground—not to mention the inevitable bankruptcy of the Alliance, whose funds were built from small tariffs and taxes marked on Alliance approved products and services.

  With all of the shouting and scrambling, the copying and printing—the general commotion of a world turned upside down—no one noticed the candlelight, dim in an open window of the building across the street.

  There, an even older sect, one as old as the city itself, occupied a squat and featureless building. Dark figures stood, cast in shadow. Typically dressed in business attire, the men—if they were men—wore hooded black cloaks. There was the low hum of murmuring under cloaks while they loitered by the donuts at the pastry table, feigning disinterest, taking one, then two, before finally the cloaked figures took their seats.

  The tallest figure stood at the head of the table, waiting for the attention of the room. When it never seemed to come, he said, “Hear ye, hear ye, I bring this meeting of the Chamber of Commerce to order.”