A Tailor's Son (Valadfar) (4 page)

The wagon of ale was waiting unattended by the opened cellar
hatch. Very few places could afford to leave things unattended
nowadays, but no one in this part of the city would steal from O'Brien.
Half the whores in the district worked for him, and most of the men he
called friends were more than a little disreputable. The few constables
that had been issued to this area of the city got more of their pay from
O'Brien than they did anywhere else. When William had first brought
back a city guard he had made the city safer than it had ever been, but
after he left the castle the budget for the safety of the common man
was sent upstream and didn’t make it past the last noble brick. If you
wanted anything O'Brien could get it for you and if you wanted anyone
disposed of, then he could do that as well and the guards knew that.
For the small pittance they were paid they turned a blind eye to anyone
whose allegiance lay with the O’Brien family. It was rumoured O’Brien
had connections to the pirates on the White Isle, and even as far as
Portse on Gologan, another one of the Drow pirate coves that dotted
the furthest reaches of the map.

The smell of spirits almost choked him as Harold approached
the trapdoor leading into the tavern’s cellar. Harold rolled the first keg
in front of him with relative ease making the most of the silence before
the city re-awoke. The sun had gone down and Harold was tempted to
light a match to see if he could shed some light down into the depths.
His hand was already sliding within his white sleeveless jacket for his
tin, but common sense took hold just in time. The fumes, that were
strong enough above the hatch to get a sailor pissed, would ignite, and
Harold did not fancy burning to death that night. He admitted that he
could really have used the lie down but he would rather have done it
above ground than below, and anyway, Harold had never been a fan of
worms. Pressing his sleeve against his face Harold had to wonder if one
of the barrels must have fallen from the racks and smashed. It if had
been a full keg, like the smell suggested, then half the rats in the
catacombs would be waking up with a hangover, if the eye watering
smell was anything to go by.

Harold gazed into the darkness trying to see what had
happened down there and reached gingerly for the rope. The last thing
Harold wanted to do was lower down onto broken fragments of keg,
so he hesitated. They could not afford two sick people in the family and
Harold had his good shoes on. They were red leather and decently
made – a favour from a local cobbler in return for a repair to his
daughter’s wedding dress the last year. Harold swung himself back
giving up on seeing anything by leaning over the dark hole, once up
onto the cold cobblestones of the street he laid the keg on the ground.
He still used his arm to cover his face as Harold tried to peer over the
edge again. It was no good. He would have to get down there and clear
up the debris before being able to lower the fresh keg in. Harold
couldn’t afford to lose any more money after giving everything he had
to that working girl. He doubted very much O’Brien would accept it
was a mistake if he broke the barrel by lowering down without clearing
the way first. As Harold had reached for the rope a second time, he
thought, just for a moment, that he’d seen something move down there
in the darkness. Harold took it to be nothing more than a large rat,
which was another one of the many plagues that littered the docks. It
did occur to him that the shadow had seemed too big for a rodent but
then, what else would it have likely been.

As Harold started to lower himself down he couldn’t help but
notice that, although he might not be an expert on spirits, the smell
down there was so potent that it had to be more than just one drum
that had split. The cellar was dark and Harold didn’t fancy staying in it
longer than needed. He took only a few moments to look around and it
was obvious that whatever had broken must have been cleared up.
There was no broken debris on the floor at all, only an ankle deep
puddle of liquid. Harold could not see any splintered wood or signs
that one of the kegs, barrels, or any other container had leaked. It
almost seemed like every keg had been emptied on purpose. Harold
thought about mentioning it to O’Brien once he’d loaded the new kegs
in. If someone was emptying alcohol into the cellar on purpose then
O’Brien should look into it. Harold pulled himself back onto the street,
glad of the fresher air. As he begun to tie the rope around the barrel and
slowly ushered it towards the opening, a sudden small flash from below
lit a figure in silhouette. Harold could see clearly that it had not been a
rat that he’d heard down below but it was in fact someone watching
him. Harold had barely enough time to realise that whoever it was had
just lit a match before a wall of heat forced him to turn his back to the
cellar door barely giving him time to scamper out. Another much
brighter flash shot into the air sweeping him clean off his feet as the
fumes caught ablaze.

Time froze, and for what seemed to him like a lifetime,
Harold sailed through the air in the explosion before he came crashing
down into the centre of the street, barely missing the cart that held the
rest of his workload. The horses fled in fear of the sudden noise,
sending loose barrels rolling towards the river’s edge. Dazed and
confused, his breath stolen from his lungs, all Harold could do was lay
there and watch as the flames danced their very own Drow jig to
O'Brien’s song. The fire did not dwindle in the slightest as it spread, the
blaze feeding on the fuels inside. The whisky, rum, and ales gave it
speed as it riddled the aged woodwork of the walls. Flames leapt out of
the small hatch with burning fingers that searched for a way to escape.
As one of these long red fingers wrapped around the barrel that Harold
had held in his arms only moments before, it shot into the air before
exploding and showering down burning timbers setting the roof
ablaze. Within seconds, the song inside the Queens stopped and
screams echoed out. Harold could see from his resting place in the now
frozen street that the flames had made it to the door before the first
person could escape. Smoke poured out from the doorframe like rivers
carving their way through the sky. The inside of the tavern echoed with
the explosions as more kegs, barrels and bottles joined the massacre
from the ground floor. The explosions so loud caused Harold’s hearing
to vanish, replaced with a continuous whistle. Cries faded as smoke
pushed its way out of the second-storey window. The music had gone,
the singers dead yet the flames danced on. His head was sore and
pounding from his flight and Harold could feel himself begin to lose
consciousness. Harold raised his hand shakily to his bleeding forehead
where some of the debris must have hit him. His body shook and
Harold felt cold even through all the heat. Shock filled every pore in his
body, a coppery taste of blood in his throat, and he was sure he could
feel death calling to him. The horror that was unravelling in front of
him became little more than a dream as his eyes lost focus and
whitened. The sound of the sea and the sight of brilliant sandy beaches
filled his mind. Falling in between the dream and the living nightmare,
Harold swore just before his head fell back against the cobbles, that he
had seen a man crawl from the flaming hatch in the street. His clothing
still smouldered and his flesh was bright red like a lobster, yet Harold
heard no yells of pain. He turned and gazed at him, this stranger’s flesh
blistered and raw, hung from him like a decaying corpse. The zombie
like vision, something out of a nightmare, took to running off away
from the blaze leaving Harold to his fate.

The flames had barely missed him as Dante had darted into
the hole just below the bucket that had been left at the eastern corner
of the cellar for weeks. The little hairs that had once been on his tail
were singed in the heat and the smell of burnt hair followed him down
into the cold dampness of the crack that ran between the brickwork all
the way to the sewers. Dante had crawled up through the same crack
just a week before, on the hopes of finding something tasty to eat, and
thought he’d struck gold with all the fine meats and bread and cheese
that had been left out once the tall ones left the pub at night. He had
got used to the odd interruption as one of the Drow came down to
carry up a keg back into the bar. For the most part they didn’t notice
him as long as he stayed still but if they did, they’d just throw
something at him, but Dante just darted under the shelves and
vanished until they were gone. It was still safer than on the streets with
the rat catchers and there was no sign of a cat to be found within the
Queens. Dante had planned to grow old and fat there. Maybe start a
family of his own, but as the smoke made its way down behind him as
he escaped, it was clear that was not going to happen. Dante was a
renegade rodent; in so much that he had jumped ship away from his
flee ridden relations in search of a better life on dry land. Life on the
boardwalk by the ships hadn’t been easy and the local black rat
population had chased him further into the city and into the path of the
rat catchers. It had been that human that had taken away his safe haven
beneath the Queens. Something had smelt different about the one that
had set the fire. All humans smelt dirty, a mix between souring milk and
lustful regret, but the one that started the fire smelt like soiled meat. He
smelt more like the corpses some of the less refined rodents chose to
feast upon in the darkest alleyways of the harbour. There was the way
he moved to. Dante has seen the bipeds walking funny if they smelled
of the spirits but that one didn’t smell like he’d consumed any, and yet
he still moved like his actions were laboured. Some of the sailors on the
Cassandra had moved in a similar way after consuming a keg of dark
black rum brought in from the Green Stone Isles, Dante’s homeland.
Even when the tall and presumably walking dead, humanoid had
almost stood on Dante, he hadn’t seemed to notice him. Dante had
never known a creature with two legs not try to kick him or scream
when they saw him. It was strange really why they seemed so scared of
Dante. He was around the size of their feet, and wanted nothing more
than a quiet life somewhere warm with enough food to feed his fluff
covered belly, but for some reason all humans hated him. That was
aside from the fire-starter; he was different, he oblivious as if in a
dream. So strong too; he hadn’t needed a hammer to break the kegs like
the rest of the humans that came into the cellar. He’d done it with his
hands. Dante had barely managed to avoid getting wet as he clambered
up onto the loose cobblestone slab next to the bucket he’d made his
escape near. The weird smelling one let the alcohol poor out over the
floor while he just stood there motionlessly, staring off straight ahead
like he was entranced. Dante had seen the patrons upstairs do the same
from time to time, the odd tankard being spilt onto the floor but that
normally sparked off a brawl, and he couldn’t understand what the
human was doing down here in his home. Dante would remember that
one’s smell. He was more dangerous than the rest. Dante didn’t know
why but his nose just told him to stick clear of that one. He would do
his best to avoid ever coming across his smell as he made his way back
to the harbour in the hopes his ship was back docked with his kin at the
wharf. The pickings aboard the Cassandra weren’t as nice as the
Queens, but at least it was safe. The ship’s old tom cat was as likely to
catch a rat as he was to take a bath. The fire was the final straw that sent
Dante heading home.

Time is a funny old thing. Even with all the magic that swirled
around Valadfar like freshly splashed milk into a mug of black coffee,
there had been very few mages that had ever managed to travel through
time. This was a shame, for had Harold known earlier his part, and
those of others in the acts that were to come, he could have stopped so
many deaths. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Harold, just as many
others, had passed Saint Anne’s chapel so many times in his life. His
father’s tailors had used to deliver repaired frocks there for the priest
occasionally. It was also the place his parents married shortly after its
construction was complete in 112ab. It held some happy memories for
his family, but Harold knew little else that had gone on there, as few
who were not part of the inner Sacellum did and his family, although
religious, were far from devout. The massive stone and brick churches
were a new thing for the city; they had started sprouting up a few years
after the war when the Brilanka monks first came to Neeskmouth. It
seemed they were integral for the Sacellum religion and their priests to
spread the belief through the city. In the years after Malcolm Benedict
took the seat as governor of the city, the old religions were all but
banished. With the old teachings fading in book burning, Harold’s
mother and father remarried under the eyes of the great creator, the
god of the Sacellum religion, in fear that they would not be allowed into
the holy city of gold when they died, if they did not. It was fear
mongering like that which had allowed the Brilanka monks to take over
almost every position of power within the city in less than two decades.
It gave them access to more of the city’s funds than any other guild.
With their riches they built massive structures to impose their beliefs
even further. Saint Anne’s was by far the biggest and had taken twenty
one years to complete. A blink of the eye compared to what it would
have taken before the Dwarfen machines with their steam driven belts
had been released from the mountains. It had been built in stages, first
as a small stone church, and wings and floors had been added as the
flock that congregated grew. It now stood taller than any other building
in the city aside from the castle, which once belonged to the royalty of
Neeskmouth and now served as the governmental halls. It was said that
the foundations for Saint Anne’s had been dug so deep that they broke
into the catacombs and the hidden labyrinth that ran below the city.
The plot of earth it sat on was almost as spacious as Handson Castle
and showed the true power in the city had shifted from the once
powerful royal line of the Handson’s to that of the Brilanka monks.
The fear of the demons that the battle with the dragons had brought
into the world fuelled the religions growth. It was this fear, and this
need of the presence of something greater than the standing army to
face them, which led to the humble beginnings of Saint Anne’s to turn
into the stone gargantuan it was today. This fear also pushed many of
the priests past the boundaries of normal men. They had begun to be
seen as demigods themselves and people begun to follow their word as
gospel, despite the fact that behind the mask of their religion they were
merely normal men and women, and some with just as dark a secret as
any dockyard thug. It was one such secret that lead to the fire at the
Queens that had changed Harold’s life for good.