Tad Williams - A Stark And Wormy Knight

“You sell dubious cures to the peasantry.”

“In a nutshell, good shopkeeper, in a nutshell, although I might take exception to the word ‘dubious’. By certain measures life itself is dubious. However, generally speaking, your perception is admirable. Now, because my part in this organization is a portrayal of magicianship, at times I am approached by members of the buying public separately from the rest of the cast, customers who believe the illusions they have seen are real. Many of them wish only to know whether the silver coin I produced had truly been lodged in their ear in the first place, and if so should it not then belong to them.” Lixal shook his head ruefully. “Others, though, have requests for magical assistance of a more precise nature, usually concering some petty problem in their lives — a failure of certain human apparatus of a privy nature being the most common. Then there are those who would like to see a family member hastened to peace so that the division of his or her possessions might be practiced sooner rather than later.” Lixal held up his finger. “These commissions I would not take, I hasten to assure you, even had I the means, and not only because of my naturally ethical composition. Our rural folk tend to carry both grudges and sharp hand tools, so I have no urge to excite malice.” He cleared his throat. “Other supplicants have desired lost objects found, unpleasant creatures or relatives confined, and so on — in short, a galaxy of requests, most of which I am unable to fulfill, and so a healthy sum remains dispersed in the pockets of the rustic population instead of concentrated in my own where it might form the foundation of a burgeoning fortune.” Lixal shook his head sadly. “I have come to tire of this woefully imbalanced state of affairs. So I come to you, good shopkeeper.”

Twitterel looked back at Lixal with more consternation than the casual observer might have expected. “I still do not grasp with certainty your desires, sir,” the old man said nervously. “Perhaps you would be better off visiting the shop of my good friend and colleague Dekionas Kroon a scant four leagues away in the pleasant hamlet of Blixingby Crown Gate — he also specializes in fine acoutrements for the performing of magic to discerning audiences…”

“You tease me, sir,” said Lixal sternly. “You must have grasped by now that I am not interested in the acoutrements of the magical arts, not in elaborate stage artifices or even the potware and piping of alchemy or other scholarly but unsatisfying pursuits. I wish to buy actual spells. There — I can make it no clearer. Just a few, selected for one like myself who has no magical training — although, it must be said, I do have a wonderful, firm voice that any magician might envy, and a certain physical presence concomitant with a true thaumaturge, as you must have noticed yourself.” Lixal Laqavee stroked his full brown beard slowly, as if comparing its lushness to the sparse clump of yellowed whiskers which decorated the shopkeeper’s receding chin.

“Why would I, a mere merchant, have such things?” Twitterel questioned in what was almost a squeak. “And why, even if I did possess such objects of powerful wisdom, would I share them with someone whose only claim to wizardly dessert is a velvet robe and an admittedly handsome beard? Sooner would I put a flaming brand into the hands of a child residing in a house made of twigs and dry leaves!”

“You misunderstand me again, good Twitterel,” Lixal replied. “You protest that you are a mere merchant, and yet unless I much mistake things, the name etched above your door does not conform to your true identity. In other words, I believe you are in fact not ‘Twitterel’ at all, but rather Eliastre of Octorus, who was once reknowned in the most powerful circles as ‘The Scarlet Sorceror’ — a pleasantly dramatic name, by the way, that I would quickly adopt for my own performances were it not that I make a better appearance in dark colors such as blacks and moody, late-evening blues.” Lixal smiled. “You see, it happens that by mere chance I studied your career while honing my impersonation of someone in your line of endeavor. That is also how I recognized you when I saw you drinking in the tavern up the road yesterday and began to conceive of my current plan. What a piece of luck!”

“I…I do not understand.” Twitterel, or Eliastre, if that was indeed his name, retreated a little farther from the countertop behind which he stood. “Why would such an unlikely set of affairs mean luck for you?”

“Step back in this direction, please. Do not think to escape me,” Lixal said. “And neither should you attempt to bluff me with the powers you once so famously owned. I know full well that after you failed in an attempt to seize leadership among your fellow magicians and wizards, the Council of Thaumaturgic Practitioners removed said powers and placed you under a ban of trying to regain them or in any other way dabbling in the profession of wizardry, under pain of humiliating, excruciating and lingering death. Please understand that I will happily inform the Council of your whereabouts and your current occupation if you resist me. I am inclined to believe your current profession, peddling alembics and flash-dust, might well fall within the scope of their ban.”

Twitterel seemed to have aged twenty years — decades he could ill-afford to add to his tally — in a matter of moments. “I could find no other way to make a living,” he admitted sadly. “It is the only craft I know. The Council did not take that into account. Better they should have executed me outright than condemn me to starve. In any case, I wished only to reform certain insufficiencies of the transubstantive oversight process — what was once a mere prophylactic has become a hideous, grinding bureaucracy…”

Lixal held up his hand. “Spare me. I care not for the details of your rebellion but only for what you will do next — namely, provide me with several easily-learned spells that will allow me to supplement my performing income by rendering assistance to those pastorals who seek my aid. I am not a greedy man — I do not wish to raise the dead or render gold from dry leaves and river mud. Rather I ask only a few simple nostrums that will put me in good odor with the country-folk — perhaps a charm for the locating of lost livestock…” He considered. “And surely there is some minor malediction which would allow the sending of a plague of boils to unpleasant neighbors. Such a thing has been requested of me many times but heretofore I had no means of answering the call.”

Eliastre, or Twitterel as was, rubbed his hands together in what looked like genuine unease. “But even such minor spells can be dangerous when improperly used — not to mention expensive!”

“Never fear,” said Lixal, with a certain air of noblesse oblige. “When I have begun to earn the money I so richly deserve by employing these spells, I will most certainly return and pay you their full worth.”

“So,” the shopkeeper said bitterly. “You would extort me and rob me.”

“Not at all.” Lixal shook his head. “But lest such an ill-considered notion set you scheming to punish me somehow for merely trying to better my situation in this uncertain life, let show you the warding bracelet on my wrist, an object of true power.” He flourished the twist of copper he wore around his arm, which indeed seemed to have a glow greater than the ordinary reflection of metal. It had been given to Lixal by a young lady of the troop during a time of pleasurable intimacy — a charm that she swore would protect him from premature death, inherited by her from her aunt at the time of that elderly lady’s quite timely demise. “Oh, by the by,” Lixal continued, made uneasy by the speculative way Eliastre was examining his wrist jewelry, “if in your misdirected bitterness you decide that some knowledge or stratagem of yours could overcome the efficacy of this ornament, I would like you to be aware that the bracelet is not my only protection. Should anything untoward happen to me an associate of mine unknown to you will immediately dispatch to the Council of Thaumatrugic Practitioners a letter I have prepared, detailing both your recent crimes and your exact location. Remember that as I choose my spells and you guide me in their recommended usages.”