Chapter 8: An Attack

Chapter 8: An Attack

Orwa, Day 26 of Rhexia

Winking Moons

Year 602

Those who wish to make an offering to Minos the Wealth Goddess

must do so with coin. The amount is irrelevant.

If a person happens to place a material on her altar that is not currency,

they can expect an entire year of bad luck in recompense.

—Major Cities of Heladrith: An Overview

The next morning, Beynon was desperately unhappy to hear that the council would be holding an impromptu meeting right there in his chambers to discuss the attempted assassination.

He understood on some level that he should be grateful they were considering and including him, but all he could think about was sinking back into his bed and sleeping until the pain went away and the council meeting was over. The keep staff clearly weren’t getting any new information out of the perpetrator, this… Talebot, and Beynon had ordered him executed as soon as the council would allow.

There were some new developments that surprised him during the meeting, though.

The men clustered around the emperor’s large bed, and Beynon sat up and supervised the proceedings from his current, less-than-powerful position.

Royal Secretary Longren explained that the emperor’s intelligence was investigating area potions purveyors.

“We need to be very careful at this point,” he said slowly, “to identify any insurrection. If we can trace the martial material to a particular vendor, we may find our uprising.”

“Uprising,” Pineas said with an incredulous scoff. “We don’t know that there’s any such group.”

“We don’t know that there isn’t,” Longren insisted seriously. “This man—Talebot—purchased the brew somewhere.”

Beynon cleared his throat. “If it helps, and Longren knows this already,” he said, “but I have suggested a minor ban on certain types of potions.”

The room was silent for a moment.

“Not a complete ban,” Longren clarified for them all. “The emperor would like to impose an amendment that limits the sale of immersions and martial materials and that ensures only elevated military leaders may procure them. Civilians cannot purchase them without permission anyway. If this passes, lower ranking members of the military will not be able to make any more mischief by buying up dangerous materials. I think it’s not a bad idea.”

Beynon was shocked to see several members of the council nodding. Actual common sense? From these men? he thought. It was too good to be true.

They voted in favor of the motion eight over seven, and Beynon breathed a sigh of relief.

When the meeting was nearly over, a page arrived to deliver a report to Longren. The man fiddled with his red beard for a moment as he read the message, then addressed the council.

“I’ve just received this report from Captain Reese. Of all of the potions vendors within a twenty-furlong radius, none have sold a Paralyze brew in the past two months. He guesses that the potion originated in another city or settlement.”

Odd, thought Beynon.

* * *

A few minutes late for work once again, a chagrined Evin entered the Wheel and Well to find Alon kneeling on the floor in the entryway. He was surrounded by a scattered pile of crystals and was trying frantically to pick them up.
Alon had worked at the Wheel and Well a little longer than Evin had. He was shorter than she was, and loved to joke and tease. His ready smile gleamed a bright white against his deep olive skin when he laughed. Just now his dark, curling hair had fallen into his eyes, and he shook it impatiently to one side.

Customers were dodging around him and giving surreptitious looks of disapproval.

“What happened?” she cried, kneeling to join him among the wreckage.

“I spilled them,” he said simply. “I must’ve slipped on something. Dropped them all right out of that crate.”

The wooden crate he referred to sat nearby, one of the sides smashed forlornly in where it had hit the floor.

Alon sighed, still picking at the rough stones and tossing them back into the receptacle. This was a particularly pretty shipment of ethereal pink Thulite. The Wheel and Well often crushed or ground them for use in different types of brews, especially Growth, Luck, and Prosperity.

“At least some of them broke apart when they fell,” Alon suggested enterprisingly. “That’s less work for us to do later.”

She smiled at him. “I suppose,” she said.

He gave her a wink.

The young man was rarely cowed by anything, and possessed the unique ability to find good fortune wherever he decided to look for it.

When the crystals were all deposited back in the crate, Alon stood and dusted off his hands. “Would you take these to the back?” he asked Evin. “I’m meant to have left nearly a bell ago.”

She winced. “Sorry I’m so late,” she offered.

He shrugged.

Evin bent to pick up the crate. It was dense, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

She carefully made her way toward the back storage room with her burden. Over the top of the piled crystals, she caught Stacia’s eye. The older woman stood behind the counter assisting customers. Evin gave her a nod of greeting, which she returned.

Suddenly, she remembered that she’d neglected to report the martial material she and Tak had given to that man—to Bane. She kept forgetting. She’d do it today and get it over with. Evin doubted the event was of any significance, but it was company policy to keep track of any martial materials sold. Probably Stacia had already noticed the entry in the log book, but she hadn’t addressed it with either of them.

When she finally reached the back room, Evin set the crate down. She was slightly breathless, and thin trickle of sweat ran from one of her armpits and down her side. She fanned at her flushed face in a vain attempt to cool off.

All at once, a spectacular smash! sounded from one of the back windows.

Evin thought at first that she had inadvertently knocked something over—that certainly was a regular enough occurrence for her. But then she tripped on a fist-sized rock surrounded by broken bits of glass and realized what had happened.

Someone had deliberately thrown a stone through their window.

“Hey!” she screamed, dashing out through the back door, her heart pounding.

She didn’t allow herself to think about what would happen if she were to catch up to the wretch. And who might that be, even? she wondered. The Wheel and Well was almost universally adored in Liminey. Who wished them harm?

Her heavy footfalls slowing, she found herself in the back alleyway. Evin peered about, searching for—anything, really. A retreating back, a lone figure standing on a roof nearby.

There was nothing. All was eerily quiet. There was a sizeable heap of broken glass on the cobbles below the smashed-in window, but the perpetrator had fled.

She swore in frustration.

Poor Stacia had enough to handle without this new irritation. Now she would have to pay a builder to come in and repair the stupid thing, and though Evin knew it was irrational, she felt responsible somehow.

She turned to go back inside and begin her workday, but then froze in alarm.

There, messily scrawled across the back wall of her beloved Wheel and Well, was a message, probably done over in khol.

It read, DAMNATION TAKE YOU DEATH-BREWERS DIE DIE DIE.

And someone else had taken the time to write out the word DIE at least two dozen more times all over the back of the building and including the door.

Evin’s blood ran cold.

* * *

“I will see all of you tomorrow. Please don’t forget to double and triple check all of those dates,” called Bricot softly. He raked his fingers through his wavy brown hair, then added as an afterthought, “In general, I was very pleased with your tests, but several of you missed some important questions!”

The students were gathering their things and leaving Bricot’s history class for the day.

“Also, please stop asking me about specific blast distance, circumferences, and attack velocity. Those are questions best answered by a master bombardier. If you truly burn for this knowledge, please approach Master Ola. Honestly, I do not know the answers. Thank you.”

Pikkia and Bela left together, giving Bricot a wave.

He gave them a stiff smile and raised a hand in farewell, calling, “Very nice on the test, Bela.”

“Thank you, Master Bricot.”

As the students filed out, Ger picked up his things and moved slowly up to the front of the room.

Just then, Farax led a class of eight or nine students passed the open door, all of them talking and laughing, mingling with the students Bricot had just dismissed.

He waved at her, but she seemed caught up in everything else and didn’t notice him.

Mortified, Bricot used his active hand to smooth his hair and pretend nothing had happened.

Ger had reached him. “Hullo, Master Bricot,” he said, grinning and feigning formality.

Bricot shook his head as if to clear it, then smiled at the younger man. “Hello,” he answered. “Do you have some results for me?”

Ger nodded.

“Good. Let’s just wait for everyone else to clear out and then we’ll take a look.”

A few moments later, when the last student had left and the last sound of casual conversation had died away, Ger pulled out a small eborel notebook.

“I think you’ll be surprised,” he told Bricot. “I was.”

The two sat down at the long wooden table, and Ger spread out his things before them.

“I understand that this isn’t a perfect test,” he said, “because even though I ran as fast as I could each time, I’m still a human man. There are some uncontrolled variables. But I definitely saw some rough results.”

“Good,” said Bricot encouragingly, and was surprised to notice that he felt a palpable excitement and curiosity rising within himself regarding the project.

Ger continued, “I had a friend time me, and I ran from that carel tree outside the south corridor all the way to the archway on the north side. The trek without aid of any potions took me ninety-four heartbeats. Honestly,” and he laughed, “I was most excited about the brew that we threatened, so I tried that one on the first day of the experiment.”

“And?”

“And I reached it in sixty-eight heartbeats.”

Bricot nodded. “That’s quite good,” he said. “That’s about what I would expect. What about the others?”

“The request and congenial request got me the same distance in seventy-nine heartbeats and seventy-six heartbeats respectively. Not as impressive.”

Bricot looked over the hastily scrawled information. Ger had drawn a crude table that included the potion names and times.

“The command resulted in a time of sixty-three heartbeats,” Ger continued. “The begging almost wasn’t worth trying at eighty-five heartbeats. The simple words got me a time of seventy-nine heartbeats, same as the request. The last two, however, yielded the best results by far.”

Bricot’s mind had begun to piece together the imbued potions left over and nearly rejected the information in disbelief. Was Ger joking? He peered at the young man, who looked up at him, deadly serious.

“Is everything alright, Master?” Ger asked. “Only you look like you’re about to sneeze.”

Bricot gave a short bark of laughter. “I’m fine; I just want to be sure I’m hearing you correctly. Do you mean to tell me that the poem and the prayer to Calumn ended up being the most potent imbuements?”

Ger nodded at his master, saying, “That’s right. The imbuement where I recited a poem got me a result of sixty-six heartbeats, slightly better than the threat.”

“So the best potion…”

“The prayer, Master Bricot. I reached the North archway in thirty-three heartbeats.”

Bricot’s jaw dropped.

The two men talked about the experiment for a few minutes longer and then Bricot shook his head in amazement. “All I can tell you, Ger, is that if this is the way imbuements work best for you, by all means, keep using it. Don’t stop practicing the other methods, obviously, but this isn’t to be scoffed at. And—actually,” he said, suddenly taken with a new idea, “There’s something else I want to try.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re going to make all of these again. The exact same potions with the same imbuements. Tomorrow, if you can. I’ll help you. Then I want you to run the trials again. I have an idea. I doubt it will help you with your imbuement technique, which is why we did this in first place, but please indulge me. There’s something I’ve got to know.”

* * *

“Follow me! We’re headed out to the green today.”

Farax led her class of eight students from the main hall and outside onto the green where the university gardens were located. She had a woven eborel blanket folded and tucked under one arm.

Craestor only had two groundskeepers, so the layout of the outdoor beds was very simple. In the crevices and corners of the sturdy stone structure, bushes and herbs and a few vegetables and flowers grew all commingled with each other. Most of the plants the staff at Craestor cultivated were very hardy, and all of them could be used in potions brewing.

Farax enjoyed any and all practical sessions she was able to teach. Students seemed to light up when they encountered new concepts they could experience by smell, taste, or touch.

“Sit,” she said pleasantly to her charges. She had a ratio of five older students to three younger this time. Good. Maybe everyone would listen a little more closely during this particular lecture and she wouldn’t have to raise her voice.

She unfolded the blanket, shook it out, and spread it out on the ground.

The master alchemist walked over to the nearest garden bed and plucked out a stem from a silvery-green, waist-height plant. Then she plucked a pair of faint violet blooms with dark, nearly black centers. As she picked the fresh ingredients, the students watched her, craning their necks curiously. Rounding out the selection with a few pieces of a leafy green squatty plant and a handful of berries she harvested from a bush, she returned to the group of students.

Bela’s little friend Pikkia happened to be in this class, but without her sidekick. Her elfin face stared seriously up at Farax, her ginger hair stirred by a gentle breeze.

Farax laid each specimen down on the blanket, one by one, and then motioned at her class, urging them to come closer. They did so.

“Now,” she said, pointing to the violet blossoms. “Who can tell me what this plant is?”

Several of the students raised their hands, and she pointed to one of the older students. “Tuck?”

He peered over at the flowers again and answered, “That’s valley posy.”

“Correct,” replied Farax. “Valley posy. Can you tell me what it’s generally used for?”

“Oh, everything, I guess,” Tuck said. “Potions, and cooking, and lady’s face paint, I think.”

Farax nodded, impressed. “Yes,” she said. “Valley posy is often utilized in crafting cosmetics. Its petals also make quite a delicious jam. Which potions, specifically?”

The man bit his lip and stayed silent, shaking his head.

Pikkia raised her hand this time.

“Yes?” Farax asked her.

“I believe it’s used as a detoxifying supplement,” the girl said, “And sparingly in some Glamours.”

“That’s right,” Farax told her. “There are myriad other uses, of course, but not notably, Valley posy is used nutritionally and in certain Glamours. Very good. It grows during warm seasons in temperate climates. Too much water will drown the plant, so gardeners often skip it, allowing the rain to take care of it.”

Pikkia nodded and looked down at her lap, where she was engaged in note-taking.

Farax moved on. “What about this plant?” she asked. “Who can identify this?”

Several students answered at once without raising their hands, “Lady’s grace!”

Farax smiled. “Lady’s grace,” she answered. “Lady’s grace is used in Glamour philters. There happens to be a myth associated with lady’s grace. Do you all know it?”

A couple of the older students nodded their heads, but the rest regarded her blankly.

“Would you like to hear it?”

Everyone nodded enthusiastically, and several answered with a collective, “Yes!”

“Alright,” she said. “Pay attention. It’ll be on the next test.” She rolled her shoulders a little and worked her mouth, then took a breath and began.

“Once, when trees could speak, Ydos the God of Protection found that he needed a governess for his five young daughters, Orea, Udea, Ceftyx, Seltia, and Dota. This was before they grew up and became the Five Deities of Healing. He was much away and didn’t have time to see to them, and his wife had died during childbirth with Dota.

Qikera was a young demi-Goddess in the Divine Pantheon. She was niece to Pikyia, the Goddess of Chastity—”

Farax looked up brightly, pausing for a moment. “In fact, we have a student right here named for the Goddess Pikyia, unless I’m mistaken.” She looked down at Pikkia, who nodded shyly. “What an honor,” added Farax.

The other students turned to look at Pikkia, who turned faintly pink. “It’s overrated, believe me,” she murmured with an embarrassed smile.

Farax took another deep breath and got back to her story.

“Anyway. Qikera was niece to Pikyia, the Goddess of Chastity. This young woman was beautiful, kind, generous, knowledgeable, and perhaps most importantly, highly trained in all womanly arts. She applied to become governess for his five daughters, and Ydos, relieved to find so qualified a candidate, agreed.

Qikera began her work right away.

She taught the daughters of Ydos how to stand, sit, walk, and how to address people. She taught them basic healing arts, how to care for a household, and how to read the sky. Orea, Udea, Ceftyx, Seltia, and Dota all responded beautifully to the training, and others in the Divine Pantheon began to notice their improvement.

One evening as Qikera was teaching them how to dance, Ydos arrived at their quarters. He was delighted to find his daughters practicing with Qikera, and charmed by their beauty and grace filling his home.

Qikera remarked artlessly and offhandedly that she wished she could demonstrate this particular movement with a male partner, and Ydos offered to step in. The young governess was embarrassed but agreed, and to her dismay, the two danced so beautifully and so perfectly together that she fell in love with Ydos instantly. This is why today, if someone is particularly good at dancing, we compare them to Ydos.

From then on, Qikera’s training grew very odd. The young demi-Goddess was distracted and nervous, and the Divine Pantheon began to wonder if she had lost her wits.

Ydos confronted her about her behavior one day, and she confessed her feelings to him.

He did not return them.

Ydos urged her to forget this silly fancy and to move on with her occupation and her life, even offering to help find her a suitable mate.

Qikera was inconsolable. She did her best to continue training Ydos’ daughters, but each time one of them looked at her, she saw him peering out of their little faces. She grew resolved to try something new.

Ko, the Beauty Goddess, happened to possess an amulet with innate magical qualities. It was said that this amulet would render its wearer completely irresistible.

Qikera decided to try and steal the amulet. She would put it on and approach Ydos, and hopefully he would finally return her feelings.

One night, she crept from her own home in the Pantheon to Ko’s beautiful villa.

Qikera entered the villa, which was unlocked. No one in the Divine Pantheon locked their doors—ever—and this is why today when someone leaves their home without protecting their belongings, we say, ‘Are you a Divine that you can leave your doors unlocked?’

Once inside, Qikera located the amulet and gathered it up in her hands.

What she didn’t know was that Ko had gone out to perform her nighttime rituals, and was only just returning. Ko caught poor Qikera trying to flee the villa, and reported her theft to the Pantheon.

Qikera was found guilty, and since stealing in the Divine Pantheon is punishable by death, the young demi-Goddess was placed in a metal cage affixed to the top of a cliff, the bars bolted down into the craggy rock.

She died quickly.

And where she lay, shortly after her body had been removed, a small, silver-green plant sprang up from between a crack in the stone. When it matured, the healers in the Divine Pantheon and especially Eena, the Goddess of Mysteries, utilized it for many things. The plant was named Lady’s Grace, and to this day, it is as beautiful, as multifaceted, as useful, and as perfect as the demi-Goddess it was named to honor.”