The Wine of Dreams (19 page)

“You’re the only ally I have in this place,” Vaedecker pointed out. “If I
cannot trust you, I’m in trouble. I cannot help feeling that you might be in
more danger of suffering the dark wine’s worst effects than most, given your
family history, but I suppose I must hope that you’re your father’s son and that
he is the man he seems to be. I have been told a little more, and although I
dare not treat any item of information as certain, I’m prepared to act on the
assumption that what I know is true. There is one thing I certainly ought to
share with you. In spite of appearances, the girl might not have been dead.”

Reinmar felt that he had been struck. “If you thought that,” he said, in a
terribly dry voice, “why did you not say so before they set her in the ground.”

“If I am right,” said the sergeant, grimly, “she will not remain in the
ground for long. I think they will wait to see what you do before proceeding,
because they do not know as yet whether you are a potential ally or an enemy—and I suspect that they might consider you a prize worth capturing, even if
there is a certain risk involved. They cannot be certain, you see, whether the
girl was the only one who was guided here by a supernatural instinct. They may
suspect, given your family history, that you also might have heard a call of
sorts.”

“I didn’t,” Reinmar said, flatly.

“I believe you,” Vaedecker said. “But it might be a good idea to let the
monks think that you did, if they want to.”

“And why should they want to?”

“I have no more idea than you how the dark wine is made, or from what kind of
fruit,” the sergeant said, “but Machar von Spurzheim has had cause to
interrogate a good many gypsies during the last few years. The magic which
brings the chosen few to the valley is no mere matter of recruiting carriers to
bear it away into the world. The gypsies who hear the call are special children,
marked for some kind of sacrifice. They come here never to return, I have been
told, but not to die—at least, not as we normally understand death. They come
here to be transformed.”

“Into what?”

“Into things not human, or only partly so.”

“Like the beastmen we fought yesterday?” Reinmar asked, quickly—but the
image which had sprung immediately to mind was one of the creatures he had
glimpsed in his dreams.

“Worse, I think. Those seemed to me to be mere creatures, capable of fighting
but not much else. If they are daemonic at all, the daemonic part of their
natures is not very active. Von Spurzheim’s reluctant informants have spoken of
more terrible compounds of human and animal attributes, whose daemonic glue is
much more powerful. They also speak of a second stage of metamorphosis, which is
fundamental to the manufacture of the dark wine and other equally sinister
concoctions. Did you grandfather mention those?”

“He said that the makers of the wine of dreams produce other liquors, geared
to more esoteric tastes.”

“Esoteric? Is that how he put it? Did he offer any further explanation?”

“No.”

“Well,” said Vaedecker, “the wine that is so popular in certain quarters of
every town between Eilhart and Marienburg is peddled as the ultimate luxury of
consumption, and the bloom of youth which it preserves as the ultimate luxury of
life—but luxuries pall when they become familiar, and the greatest luxury of
all is the one which remains just out of reach. Some of those to whom the dark
wine becomes overfamiliar eventually demand more piquant sensations. Dreams are
not enough. Youth is not enough. The inner daemons which make them increasingly
avid for the dark wine eventually make them avid for something even darker.
Luxury never leads to satiation, but always to cruelty, and overindulgence in
dreaming always leads, in the end, to a love of horrors. For some of its consumers, at least,
the wine of dreams is but an introduction to its more demanding kin—but none
of the dark wines can be made without human sacrifice, and children like
Marcilla are part of the price the gypsies pay for the favour of darker gods
than are worshipped by civilised men.”

The longer Reinmar pondered this speech, the less clear its import became.
“What, exactly, are you saying?” he asked. “That the monks intend to disinter
Marcilla, and revive her from her deathlike trance in order that she might
complete her metamorphosis into some kind of half-human monster? That she will
then undergo some further transformation, in the course of which the dark wine
will somehow be extracted from the substance of her flesh and the essence of her
soul?”

“So we have been led to believe,” the soldier confirmed. “It might be that
those we questioned had no real knowledge, but had to invent something under the
pressure of our questions. There was talk of a monastery too, and of a secret in
its cellars, but nothing explicit.”

“My grandfather said that he had heard some such talk,” Reinmar admitted.

“We have heard his name mentioned more than once,” Vaedecker admitted in his
turn. “When Luther Wieland became too fond of the dark wine, it is said, and
subsequently fell ill for lack of it, his father and his son conspired to break
an important link in the supply-line which led from this valley to Marienburg.
The missing link was by-passed soon enough, but the whole chain has now been
shattered by von Spurzheim and his allies, working back upriver from Marienburg.
If the monks hope to rebuild the traffic they can only begin from here—and
Eilhart is a ready-made site for a first base. Luther’s father is long dead, and
the monks must be attracted to the notion of instituting a new conspiracy of
grandfather and grandson to undo the work of the old.

“I think they will come to you again, Reinmar, if you do not go to them—and
they will take far more interest than they appeared to do last night. They will
probably flatter you, and make what appears to be a generous proposition. If you
will trust my judgement you will appear to be tempted—but you must go along
with them just so far, and no further. You must win their confidence, as far as
you can, and then you must betray it. Our real purpose must be to find out everything we can about what
goes on here, and then to escape, marking our path as we go, so that no mere
spell of concealment can blind us to its approaches when we return with an army
at our backs.”

“You don’t ask much,” Reinmar observed, sarcastically. “I’m my own man, not a
servant of the witch hunter.”

“I ask what was asked of me, if the chance arose,” Vaedecker told him,
sharply. “The chance has arisen, far more readily than I could ever have hoped.
I must make the most of it, or fail in my duty—and I am not the kind of man
who is given to failing in his duty. I need your help, and I am asking for it as
one virtuous man to another. You are your own man, but you are also your
father’s son, and a citizen of the Empire. I’m very sorry that you grew to like
the girl so much, and then saw her die, but I have a mission to fulfil and so
have you. Are you with me, or against me?”

Reinmar hesitated, but not for long. “If this is the source of the wine of
dreams,” he said, “we must find out what we can. And if there is the slightest
chance that Marcilla is not really dead, we must certainly find out.”

“Good,” said Vaedecker. “Go now, while I hide myself again—but when they
come for you, keep your wits about you. Wear your sword.”

When Reinmar eventually returned to the farmhouse Zygmund and his wife did
not ask him whether he would soon be on his way. They seemed to assume, in fact,
that he would be with them a while longer. The woman gave him food, somewhat
better than the bread and meat they had provided when he and Marcilla had
arrived, and a jug of the same good wine.

While he was still eating, the two monks came in again and sat down with him.
“Well,” said Brother Noel, “we have now offered our prayers to the god of death
and dreams for the safe deliverance and good care of the gypsy girl. We are very
sorry for your misfortune.”

“The girl obviously made a deep impression on you, and you must have thought
that you had saved her life,” Almeric added. “Saved her for a better kind of
life, perhaps.” He spoke lightly enough, but he was plainly curious to see how
Reinmar would respond to the tantalising hint. Reinmar concluded that Vaedecker
was right. They did not know quite what to make of him and were anxious to take his measure. They had not waited long to see
whether he would accept Noel’s invitation.

“I would have taken the girl with me to Eilhart if she had been agreeable,”
Reinmar informed them. “I would have continued to protect her. I loved her.”

“I’m sure you did,” Noel said.

“Have you come to offer me a cargo of your precious wine?” Reinmar asked the
monk, sounding a slight but carefully-calculated note of interest. “I admit that
it had a good odour and an unusual sweetness, but the promise that it would ease
my sleep and make my dreams pleasant was unfulfilled.”

“You did not take enough to obtain that effect,” Noel told him.

“Perhaps not,” Reinmar admitted. “Having thought about the matter, though, I
realise that there is not much demand for sweet wine in Eilhart and Holthusen.
Were I to buy a couple of casks of your wine I would probably have to trade them
on, at least as far as the Reik—perhaps as far as Marienburg.”

Reinmar saw Almeric’s eyes narrow in response to the mention of Marienburg,
and noticed once again the peculiar quality of their radiance. When he looked
back at Noel he saw the same strange glow in his eyes, but Noel forced a smile.

“Our agents have found new customers since your grandfather lost interest in
us,” Noel said, in a neutral tone, “but our order has always valued tradition.
This is a sad time for you, I know, but it might be best for you to put your
loss behind you and find what distraction you can in matters of business.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Reinmar observed, “but not so easy for me to
do.”

Brother Noel was not so easily put off. “We have consulted our fellows at the
monastery,” he said, gently, “and we have been authorised to sell you a little
of our stock, if you are prepared to take it. The name of Wieland is fondly
remembered by the older brothers, and our superior was attracted by the notion
that we might be able to rebuild one of our oldest bridges to the outside world.
We enjoy our seclusion, to be sure, but it is not good even for men of our kind
to be entirely isolated from the greater society of men. If the price were
right, we would be prepared to let you take a sample case of our wine,
ready-bottled in good crystal glass. We have our own glass-blowing shop, you
know, and were almost as famous at one time for our bottles as for the wares they contained. You are, of course, very welcome to
taste our produce again if you wish to make sure of its quality. But if you are
not interested…”

“I suppose I might be,” Reinmar said, with a contrived sigh. “But I am acting
at present solely as my father’s agent. He instructed me to be very careful with
his money, and to stick very carefully to the route which he had planned. He
might not be pleased to hear that I had deviated from his scheme and bought wine
from someone other than our regular suppliers.”

“We were numbered among your regular suppliers once,” Brother Almeric pointed
out. “Were we not, Brother Noel?”

“We remember your grandfather’s name very well,” Noel confirmed. “He never
came here, but we used to send our emissaries to deal with him. Zygmund’s father
knew him, I think—perhaps Zygmund met him, as a boy.”

“The farmer appeared to recognise the name of Wieland,” Reinmar agreed,
reflectively. “My steward will be worried about me, though, and I really ought
to try to get back to the wagon before nightfall. I really ought to…”

He trailed off, hoping to leave the impression that he really did not know
what he ought to do, and did not quite understand his own motives.

“Any business we do could be concluded before sunset,” Brother Almeric
observed. “The day is not so very far advanced. Perhaps you should give the wine
another chance. When you tasted it last night the circumstances were far from
ideal, and the girl’s unfortunate death has obviously unsettled you. If you will
come to the monastery, you may sample a number of the vintages we have in store.
You are obviously a man who knows the value of wine.”

Reinmar continued his show of hesitation. “If only my steward were here,” he
said, eventually, “I would feel much happier. I don’t even know that my wagon is
safe. We were attacked by monstrous beasts, and it was damaged. Although they
ran off they might have returned. Are the environs of the valley always haunted
by monsters?”

“Not usually,” Almeric said. “Zygmund told us that he had heard rumours, but
we did not take them seriously.”

“Should you wish to purchase some wine,” Brother Noel assured him, “we could
instruct Zygmund and one of his men to carry it safely to your wagon. They are
skilled men, and would be pleased to help with any necessary repairs. It should not take us
long to conclude our business—and this is an opportunity that you might never
have again.”

“Well,” Reinmar said softly, “I suppose that is true.”

While he walked back to the monastery in the company of Brother Noel and
Brother Almeric, Reinmar tried to take more careful note of his surroundings and
of the buildings towards which they were moving. Because they were walking along
the valley floor his vantage was not ideal, but he had a reasonably good view of
the slopes on either side of the lake. They were heavily wooded, and there was
no sign of a vineyard.

The temple by the burial ground was not so very different from the Temple of
Morr in Eilhart. The main part of the building was surmounted by a rounded dome.
Its narrow windows were filled with leaded lights, so that the interior might be
invisible from without while being softly illuminated within by the
colour-stained rays of the sun.