The Dark Lord Read online

  Not for the first time, Eldrin’s words were an inadvertent revelation. How could I have been such a profound idiot?

  “Hold on,” I said. “Give me a second to consult with my colleague over here. I may have something.”

  I strode over to St. Drake. He was laid out in the mud, arms outstretched. Despite being passed out he still had a bottle grasped in each hand. I needed him to be awake. I pulled him upright and shook him. He ignored me and snored on. A trough of water stood in one corner of the stable. I lifted him in my arms, carried him over to it, and dropped him in.

  His reaction was immediate and satisfying. He shot up out of the water with a shouted, “Hell!”

  He was still coughing and spluttering when I took hold of his robe in my fist. I bent down so his eyes were level with mine. “You said the Dark One had returned, not the Dark Lord.”

  Eyes wide, he nodded.

  “Were you being prophetic or literal?” I asked.

  He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

  “One minute!” Eldrin’s voice rang out.

  Damn! I was either being too subtle or he hadn’t sobered up enough for this conversation. Either way I had only one solution available to me. I dunked his head back under for a few seconds before pulling him up again. Before he could catch his breath to start cursing me again, I asked, “Is the Dark One really back?”

  For a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer, but as I began to push him under for the third time he nodded vigorously.

  “Is the Dark One a Dark Queen?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he gasped.

  I felt an eerie calm come over me. I let go of his robes and he fell back into the trough with a splash. I didn’t need Eldrin or the DMG. I knew exactly what to do. This was a replay of my dissertation project, except that this time Vivian was the virus, the imbalance. That St. Drake knew this meant that my reality stabilization spell had already been activated. All I needed to do was trigger the initial conditions for Hero generation and the world would surround me with the tools I needed to defeat her.

  Par for the course, Eldrin ruined my moment of inspired revelation. “Did you know there’s a whole section in here on the ecology of dungeon creatures? Man, this is so messed up. How many different gelatinous polygons are there in your cosmos? Oh, ten seconds by the way.”

  What I needed now was a quiet place and some time to plan. “Nice talking to you, Eldrin, but I have to go.”

  “Wait, what? Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Table of Contents, Chapter 1.”

  Pages flipped in the background and there was an exhale of disbelief. “But all this says is ‘A Guy Walks into a Bar.’”

  “Exactly,” I replied just before the connection went dead.

  Chapter 7

  A WIZARD WALKS INTO A BAR

  A deafening pop, that Eldrin never bothered to warn me about, followed the end of our conversation. I still had fingers in both my ears to stop the ringing when St. Drake finally dragged himself out of the water. Sopping wet he marched to a dirty pile of straw, pulled out a long staff, and began mouthing something at me.

  “What?” I asked, and removed my fingers.

  “I said, do you know who I am?” he shouted.

  “Yes.” I shrugged. “You are, or were, St. Drake the Incorruptible, most revered servant of the Seven Gods, keeper of the Crystal of Righteousness, and wielder of the Staff of Flagellation. By the way, isn’t that it?”

  “What?”

  “The staff.” I pointed at the long carved stick he was holding.

  He stared morosely at it for a second and said, “More or less.”

  “What happened?” I looked significantly at his filthy robes and the half-dozen empty bottles at his feet.

  He sat heavily on the edge of the water trough. “I lost my faith and am now a fallen man. The Seven Gods stripped me of my powers for the blasphemy of doubt, and my order cast me out for the sacrilege of renunciation. All that remains of what I was is what you see. Now my companions are not the arm of might and the eye of truth, but the corruption of drink and the shadows of doubt.”

  I half listened while looking for a way out of this place and its stench. At last I spotted a gate in one of the walls. I put a hand on St. Drake’s shoulder and began leading him out of the paddock. If Vivian was the Dark Queen my reality matix stabilization spell would probably be active, and would be subtly and sometimes not so subtly influencing the actions of the Trelarians. But I had to be sure, which meant I needed to find a bar.

  “Look,” I said to the man as we emerged onto the street. “It sounds, and frankly smells, like you’ve had some hard times lately.” He started to reply, but I didn’t give him the chance. “The point is not to dwell on your many, many lapses and failures, but to right them. And you happen to be in luck. I am going to gather a group of mighty heroes to defeat the Dark Queen. For some it will be their first adventure. For you, well, think of it as a quest for . . . for . . .” I struggled for the right word.

  “Redemption?” he offered.

  I completely missed the sarcasm in his voice. “Exactly! Don’t you feel better already?”

  I was busy trying to decipher the various signs that lined the street and so missed his mumbled reply. One had the image of a rooster in an ermine robe wearing a golden crown. I wondered what that could possibly mean when I realized that there was no one better to direct me to a bar than St. Drake.

  “Say,” I said brightly, “you are obviously a . . .” I nearly said drunk, but managed to stop myself. “A fellow who likes to enjoy a drink now and then—” he burped “—or perhaps a bit more frequently than that. Where would you go for a drink? You know, an inn or a tavern or something.”

  “Well, if you want a drink . . .” he began, but at that moment I spotted a promising-looking place across the street. It was not very imaginatively called the Traveler’s Inn.

  “Ha! There’s one.” I gave him a solid clap on the shoulder. He started to say something else, but I was beyond listening. I strode briskly into the Traveler’s Inn, and he followed. I was in total command of the situation.

  A matronly barmaid wearing an apron and carrying a broom greeted us as we stepped inside. “Good day, gentlemen,” she said sweetly, while eyeing our mud stained clothes with suspicion. “How can I help you?”

  I glanced about the room. It wasn’t what I had expected. There were a few groups in twos or threes scattered about eating dinner, but I couldn’t see any of your classic adventuring types. These people seemed to be more farmer than warrior, more merchant than rogue. Still, it was early. Maybe the crowd got livelier as the evening wore on.

  “We are adventurers,” I pronounced, and swept my arm grandly about. “Famed throughout the land. We will be sitting in the back, and will buy anyone who wishes to join us on our quest for glory a bottle of their choice.”

  I hadn’t expected a roar of affirmation, but I also hadn’t expected dead silence. Nor had I anticipated the sour expression that the barmaid gave me. She pursed her lips and put a hand to her hip. “Not here, you won’t.”

  “What?” I leaned in close and tried to give her a winning smile. “Look, if this is about the mud . . .”

  “The mud doesn’t enter into it,” she said sternly. “This is an inn.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering if we weren’t speaking the same language. “All I want is a table in the back and your strongest drink.”

  “You can have the table, you can have the drink,” she said, counting off her fingers, “but the strongest you’ll get here is sour milk.”

  “I tried to warn you, kid,” said St. Drake.

  “Warn me about what?” I asked.

  “This is an inn!” both he and the barmaid said at once.

  “What you’d be wantin’ is a pub,” said a rough voice from a nearby table.

  I looked over and saw a man who appeared to be one continuous callus staring at me from beneath a tangle of brown hair. Before I could respond a
n equally rough-looking woman with a startlingly red face sitting across from him laughed violently, and said, “You’re twice the fool, Amos. Everyone knows there haven’t been no pubs in Blightsbury since before the Dark Lord.”

  “I know that, woman.” The man pounded a fist on the table. “I was just sayin’ that if there were a pub, then that’d be the place to get a good strong drink.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but then if tarts were leprechauns and the sky were filled with rainbows we’d all be swimmin’ in gold.” The room erupted in laughter.

  “Wait, there aren’t any pubs in this town?” I asked.

  There were a lot of shaking heads and the barmaid (who I was beginning to realize wasn’t a barmaid at all) said, “No.”

  I turned to St. Drake. “Where do you drink?”

  “Drake?” the innkeeper woman, or whatever it was she was, chortled. “He always drinks down at the Boiled Badger.”

  “Yeah!” roared the rough man. “Cheapest place in town. Right, Drake?”

  Drake didn’t reply.

  “So, the Boiled Badger is a pub?” I asked, again feeling that I was losing something in translation.

  “No!” the woman who would not, or could not, give me a drink shouted.

  “What are ye,” cackled the red-faced woman, “a half-wit?”

  “But you can get a drink there?” I persisted.

  “Yes!” the rough man bellowed.

  “But it isn’t a pub?”

  “No!” the entire room roared.

  Drake stepped forward and rapped his staff on the floor of the . . . the . . . well, the place where we were. He drew his thin frame upward and swept his hood back off his jet-black hair. In his dark eyes there was a fierce light, and the room grew silent beneath his gaze. “You stand in an ‘inn,’” he solemnly intoned. “A term that comes from the old language and refers to a simple lodging house.”

  “Simple?” the innkeeper woman protested.

  Drake (who I was starting to think of in nonsaintly terms) shot her a glare, but continued as though he had never been interrupted. “The Boiled Badger, which I frequent—on occasion—is a tavern, a term which is borrowed from the ancient taberna and literally means ‘a hut,’ and refers to a place where wine and spirits are sold. Coincidentally, taberna is also the root of the word tabernacle, a place I used to frequent more than occasionally, and now no longer even infrequent.”

  Everyone looked a bit confused at this last point.

  Drake cleared his throat and plowed on. “By contrast, the term pub or public house is reserved for an establishment that is specially licensed by the crown to sell alcohol to the public. Thus, while Blightsbury has no pub, it does have two taverns.”

  I thought I’d heard enough, but Drake disagreed and, without even a pause for breath, said, “Much of this confusion might have been alleviated if you had asked for a ‘bar,’ which is the most basic term for an establishment that serves alcohol and references the counter or barrier over which drinks are passed. Both taverns and pubs have bars, although inns do not.”

  The entire inn (I can now safely say that is the correct term) was staring at him in rapt attention. Don’t ask me why, but I felt compelled to sum up. “So, in the Venn diagram of places to get refreshments, a pub could be called a tavern, but a tavern might not be a pub, both places could be called bars, but none of them could be called an inn, which also could not be called a tavern or a pub as it doesn’t have a bar?”

  Drake raised one of his distinctively arched eyebrows. “Obviously. But, kid, what’s a Venn diagram?”

  “Never mind,” I grunted.

  In hindsight, I should have stopped to consider what it meant that I, Avery Stewart, self-professed expert of subworld 2A7C, had fouled up something as simple as the difference between an inn and a tavern, but I didn’t. What I did was grab Drake by the elbow and march him back outside.

  He shook my hand off and asked, “Where are we going now?”

  “To the Boiled Badger,” I said. “After the speech you just made, don’t you need a drink?”

  He sighed. “I suppose.”

  We made our way across the street to a disreputable-looking building over which hung a sign painted with a grinning badger bathing in a cook pot. We pushed our way inside. As soon as the stale, smoky air hit my nose, I knew we were in the right place, and the scene was equally promising. Along one wall stretched a long bar at which six or seven rough-looking customers were nursing drinks. The opposite wall held a hearth in which was set a blazing fire over that roasted several unidentifiable animal carcasses. Between the bar and fire were a sprinkling of tables, long and short, where a variety of gambling games were being played and whispered plots were being hatched.

  I turned to Drake. “Now this is more like it!”

  The barman, an enormously obese man who might have actually been trapped behind the bar, called out, “Drake!”

  A number of heads came up at this and took up the call. “Drake!”

  “So, how ‘occasionally’ do you come in here?” I asked.

  He ignored my question, raised two fingers at the barman, and headed toward a table near one of the corners. I sized up the talent as we made our way across the room. There were certainly a lot of swords, staves, and knives being displayed, and each of the booths seemed to be populated by one or more mysterious hooded figures. The question was how to separate the wheat from the people who would just as soon stab you in the back as give you the time of day.

  As we sat down I decided to pose the question to my companion, but as was becoming his habit, he beat me to the punch. “So, kid, what exactly do you mean you’re planning to go and battle the Dark Queen?”

  A serving wench cut off my answer by dropping two tankards on the table. I started to reach for one, but Drake took an ale in each hand and dragged them across the table. “Talk first. Drink second. And if you don’t want a knife in your back, never baptize me again.”

  Judging by the look in his eyes, this was no idle threat. I realized for the first but certainly not the last time that it might take a literal miracle to reform Drake.

  Drake drained one of the tankards and leaned in close. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you have no idea what you’ll be facing if you go against the Dark Queen.”

  In many respects he was absolutely right; in other respects I may be the only person in the world that knew exactly what I was up against. At the time, I decided that projecting confidence during the recruiting process was better than admitting that everyone that went with me was probably doomed. I leaned back in my chair and laced my fingers behind my head. “I think I know what I’m up against, Drake. All I need is the right group of companions and I know I can take her down. Fact is, I got lucky stumbling onto you so quickly. With the wizard and priest roles taken care of, I only need a warrior to do the fighting, a thief to do the stealing, and a token elf and dwarf.”

  “Are you the wizard, kid?”

  “Yes, and I’m not a kid,” I replied irritably. “You aren’t that much older than I am.”

  “It’s not about age, it’s about experience,” he said with a twisted grin. “You look like a noble of some sort. Straight teeth. Soft hands. No scars. Like you’ve never seen a day of hard work or a tough fight in your whole life.”

  “I’m a wizard, Drake. We aren’t exactly known for manual labor or fistfights.”

  Drake took another deep draught, draining half of the second tankard. “Maybe, but I’ve never met a wizard worth the title that still had all his fingers. Either way, you’re wasting your time. I’m not going with you.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said with a confidence that I’m sure baffled him. “You need to.”

  In response, Drake set down his empty mug and threw two fingers into the air. At this pace he would soon be useless to me. I needed to get as much information out of him as I could while he was still upright.

  “Drake, let’s ignore the question of you for a moment. It occurs to me tha
t if you’re here, then you might know where the other Heroes may be. It would make it so much easier to face down the Dark Queen if I didn’t have to train new heroes from scratch. So, what about it? Do you know where the others are? Like, what about Mad Jarl?”

  “Mad,” he responded. “Last we heard of Jarl he had become convinced that the world was an enormous hard-boiled egg, and that if he mined deep enough and far enough into its center, he would eventually get to the yolk.”

  He took a deep drink from his third ale, which had been delivered with a wink from the serving girl and a decidedly unholy leer from Drake.

  “Well,” I said as the girl went giggling away, “Jarl was always a little unstable, but how about Feldane, scion of the elves?”

  “He retired. Somewhere out west,” Drake slurred, and gestured vaguely over his shoulder to the north.

  “Retired?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Drake said with a burp. “It’s supposed to be nice. I used to get a letter now and then. Sounds sunny.”

  “That makes no sense. Elves are immortal. For them retiring is basically committing to do nothing for forever.”

  “All the more reason to get started early,” he said, and began on his fourth ale. “How do you know so much about all of us anyway?”

  “I’ve just heard the legends,” I answered quickly, not wanting the conversation to wander too far in that direction.

  “Legends?” he said with an explosive laugh. “We aren’t legends. We’re failures.”

  “Failures?” I said in disbelief. “You defeated the Dark Lord! My only question is why the five of you aren’t already going after this new maniac? You and Valdara and the rest are supposed to be the Heroes of the Ages.”

  He thumped his mug back down on the table and, shoving his face in mine, hissed, “Don’t you get it? We’re all done! Washed up! We failed. We thought we’d defeated the Dark Lord, but we hadn’t. He was playing with us the whole time. Our quest, his life, his death, our victory, nothing but lies. The peace we won was supposed to last a thousand years, but less than five after we brought down the Dark Lord, a dark queen arose, a dark queen against whom we were powerless.”