I step into the pawn broker’s shop that sits where my apothecary shop had once stood. It’s an entirely new structure, the previous buildings all having been burned to the ground during Nodkis’s occupation by the Orc Hordes.
While interesting magical items, spells, or relics do sometimes find their way into pawn shops, the likelihood of stumbling upon exactly what I need is unlikely. I need more spells, but I won’t find what I want in a magic shop. Mundane, legal magic is all that’s for sale there. Boost one’s crops, increase the likelihood of conception, deep clean one’s hearth, and all that practical, everyday magic designed to make life easier. I need spells that will protect me from malicious magic, or that will harm the malefactor. I need to get in touch with underworld dealers.
I don’t expect I’ll find what I’m after perusing the stacks of books or papers along the back wall, but I look anyway. Not everyone knows the value or purpose of a spell when they see it, especially when its written down. The written language of magic is complicated and ornate, and takes years of practice to read, let alone write. It’s possible something interesting has slipped into the stacks.
Thumbing through the sheets of loose spells, I’m disappointed by the quantity. Repeats of many of the same everyday spells I could find at a magic shop litter the pile. Of the four advanced spells that are present, three are focused on the fire element—useless to me—and the last one is a disguise spell.
I make no apologies for who I am and what I look like, and have no interest in disguising myself. Even though it could be tactically advantageous, I would rather use a solution where disguise is unnecessary.
Still, it’s better to have options. I pluck the sheet from the stack, walk to the proprietor, and stare down at him.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” the gaunt, dark-haired man says, then adds, “What do you want?”
I’ve never seen him before, but he might remember seeing me, depending on how long he’s been in Nodkis. I respond coolly, “I’m in the market for spells.”
“Any I’ve got are along the back wall there,” he waves dismissively—though he’s watching me closely—toward the stacks I was just perusing. “Help yourself to look through them.”
Without turning to look, maintaining making eye contact, I say, “You haven’t got what I’m looking for out on display.” Hopefully that will be enough to indicate what I’m after: something more sensitive than what he’d display openly in his shop.
“Are you sure that what you’re looking for isn’t over there?,” he says slowly and deliberately. He seems to have caught my wavelength.
“What I want is not not out here. Perhaps it is in your back room,” I emphasize back room. If anyone else overheard, it would be ascertainable what was being discussed, but the shop is empty at the moment.
He looks as though he’s just remembered something and says, “Ah, I know. I’ll need to check with the warehouse. Can you come back tomorrow?”
I nod.
He sits forward and says quietly, “Then you’ll want to come ‘round at midnight. That’s when my stockworkers bring the new stuff from the warehouse. Savvy?”
I nod again.
We haggle for the disguising spell—I don’t barter too hard—purchase it, and leave.
So tomorrow night, I’ll be able to meet with some fence or grey-market merchant who might have some interesting magic wares. It could be dangerous. It could also be a trap, if he works with the Watch.
I decide to pay a street urchin to watch him and tell me where he goes that night. After swinging by the magic shop for a vial of enchanted ink—which costs a pretty penny—I return to my room to learn the spell I just bought and read the letter that came for me.
The letter is still sealed, but that doesn’t guarantee the innkeeper didn’t read it. The paper stock is unremarkable. The seal appears to be pressed by rolling the pen across the wax, leaving a rippled, but uninformative, surface. There is no indication who it is from out the outside. Across the folded surface it simply says, “Zer Khaldun”.
In an angular, Elysian script it reads: “My organization has been observing you. You are meant for greater things, and we can show you the way. You walk in darkness and it walks with you. We share this in common. If you would like to know more, come meet at the Third Moon Tavern tomorrow night.”
It is unsigned.
I stare at the letter for a few long moments. I did not expect something like this. It reeks of suspicion, of entrapment, or, worse, a death cult.
I hate death cultists. Idiots dancing in sheep’s blood around bonfires and beseeching the Keeper of Death to take their sacrifice and bestow wisdom or power unto them. They have no respect for the living, the dead, or the Divine forces that permeate our world.
Gods and goddesses look down upon us from their sanctums in the outer planes, every day deciding, on whim or fancy, who or what to meddle with. They are capricious and cruel. They are intrusive and oblivious. Our mortal lives are something they draw power from when we acknowledge them. It is in their best interest to make their presence known.
As far as I have studied, as far as I know, Ner Ngal does not participate in this kind of vain enterprise, as other gods do. He receives His power intrinsically from the entropy that grips reality. All men fear death and so, acknowledge His Great Power. Even gods and goddesses must fear eradication—they would not meddle so otherwise—and so they, too, fill His cup.
To make demands of such an entity after desecrating His property is beyond deranged. They are unworthy.
I have no intention of joining a death cult. I don’t like that they know my name. I don’t like that they think I’d join their stupid darkness club. Or that they presume to know me or my destiny. It angers me that I’ve been observed without my knowing. Perhaps these are the perpetrators behind the magic used on me last night. If I find them, they are dead.
I move to stow the letter back in my pouch, intending to keep it in case I need to compare the writing when I find who is responsible, but stop. I have enough to deal with right now and will be spending most of my time out in the field for the Adventurers Corps anyway. The worst thing that could happen is that someone find this letter in my possession and use it against me. I don’t need that kind of trouble.
I burn it instead.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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