Soulgatherer, Chapter 4 of 6

Soulgatherer, Chapter 4

Chapter 4, Data Clusters

Distant figures speaking, voices muted yet still somehow audible, as if they were in the next room instead of in a distant, murky field standing in the shadow of a mountain. Voices audible but devoid of meaning. The words washed over him. Just tiny faraway faces, mouths moving moving. One man with a stubbled chin facing a crowd. He reached out to them. He couldn’t touch them. But they were touching him somehow. Sharp little jabs, pulling, poking. His cheek. His lips. His eyelids.
He opened his eyes to find a bird pecking at his face. That was immediate enough to delay any further details about his situation.
“Hellfire and ash,” the man said, waving a groggy arm across his face. “What are you trying to do, eat my eyes? I’m not dead yet, you disgusting turncoat.”
Bartleby. The bird’s name was Bartleby. His pet. His familiar. And he, the man, was... McDurgle.
But Bartleby didn’t look like he'd been interrupted in a meal. He looked inquisitive and alert, head cocked to one side. “I see,” said McDurgle. “You were trying to wake me up. All right, fair play to you, lad.” Bartleby croaked.
Now some other details were seeping in. He was on the floor of the living room in his apartment at Ravendish. His living quarters were closed as usual. He climbed unsteadily to his feet.
“Yes, yes, ok,” he said as Bartleby flapped up onto a table beside him. He shuffled into the kitchen, took the lid off a brown glazed jar on the bench, took out a handful of peanuts, and crushed them in his hand. He dropped the mixture of shell and nut onto the bench, and Bartleby joined him once again and began pecking through the fragments.
What had just happened? He took a breath and tried to concentrate. Calthor. He had just tried to peek inside Calthor’s head. And what had he seen? There had been something, so briefly, but it had immediately been overpowered by thaumic countermeasure.
The boy... had he seen the boy, Goodwill? He didn’t remember seeing him, but he remembered thinking that he had seen him before everything turned to flame and oblivion. There had been a boy, yes... he remembered now. A crowd of boys. He had been searching for a boy and so that is where his focus had gone, but when he thought now about what he had seen, it hadn’t just been a boy, or even a group of boys. The boys had been part of a group of people. A crowd of people, which was more or less the official emblem of the citystate. Crowds of people flocked the streets outside as well as the halls of Ravendish, day and night. This crowd had not been moving, though. They had seemed... stuck, somehow. Not physically restrained, but unable to move. Like they were sleeping while standing up, exhausted somehow. And on the other side, as if balancing a scale, there had been one man. There was a kind of groove or channel connecting the crowd to the man. He had a shaved head and a face of stubble. Stubble... the dream he had been having just before he woke up now. The dream had almost evaporated, but he held onto it now. The man from his dream and the man from Calthor’s mind were the same man. The man had been talking to the crowd on the field in his dream. That man... he knew him.
Okasto. Derrick Okasto, court wizard to the king.
He was linked to Calthor somehow, abusing large groups of people for his own benefit. And now Calthor knew that he knew. McDurgle spilled the rest of the peanuts onto the table and smashed them with the jar. Bartleby flapped his wings in astonishment but was soon drawn back to the staggering bounty spread before him once the banging stopped.
“Don’t eat it all at once, now,” McDurgle said. “You’ll make yourself sick. Take care, my friend. I’ll try to come back for you. I hope I can come back for you.”
He hurriedly packed some things in a satchel, took his staff and went out of the apartment. There were people walking up and down the hallway as usual, but as he scanned the faces of the people going by, two men at the far end of the hall on the left made eye contact with him and stopped. He went back inside quickly and locked the door. As he went back into the kitchen, he heard several people yelling outside. He yanked open his kitchen window. The fetid smells of sweat and garbage wafted in. He put his staff through the window and climbed out after it. He heard his door being thumped, then violently shaken. McDurgle stepped awkwardly onto the tiny ledge below his window and then hopped out into the air, twenty seven floors above the ground, just as he heard the booming smash of what was presumably his door being blasted in. He hoped Bartleby was ok. He mumbled a few words, gripped the haft of his staff, and a strong wind rose up to meet him, slowing his fall.
He landed on the cloth roof of a fruit vendor, bounced off and into the arms and backs of a number of people. They all stumbled but no one fell due to the press of humanity keeping him upright. There were some grumbles but no one was really hurt and it wasn’t worth the effort of stopping amidst the continuous flow. He got his footing, entered into that flow and was whisked away. He cast another spell to sweep away his thaumic signature from anyone who might try to trace him from his apartment, and by the time anyone might have thought to look out his window for him, he was a droplet in the ocean, and gone.
***
Rachael was already glad to be back at her desk at Golden Shield. She had been craving the variety of field work, but in the last few days she had seen enough horror and sadness to last her a decade. Now she had a small hill of paperwork piled up on her table, the culmination of all that field work, which she would have to sort through and refine to write her report.
The documents represented the notes she had taken from interviews and investigations of the customers of Farebrook and Sons, Metalworkers. It turns out, cutlery is big business. And who tends to buy cutlery? It’s not something you buy regularly. You buy a small set if you live by yourself, a larger set if you start a family. The purchase of cutlery is a rite to be performed upon entering a new phase of life. And so that was who she had been interviewing: young people recently moved out of home. Newlyweds. Young men who had finished their apprenticeships and were now masters of their own small but hopeful homes and hearths. Young wives leaving the skirts of their mothers to become mothers themselves. Babies. Little kids.
Numbers, Rachael thought. In here it can just be numbers. Leave all that terrible stuff out there.
The numbers:
Unexplained physical deformities occurring within previous two months in vicinity of Farebrook cutlery: 5,749
Adult males: 684
Adult females: 2,232
Children: 2,833
Unexplained mental aberrations occurring within previous two months in vicinity of Farebrook cutlery: 10,349
Adult males: 3,780
Adult females: 641
Children: 5,928
Victims of injuries by Farebrook cutlery within previous 2 months (non-lethal/lethal): 851/1,363
Adult males: 789/26
Adult females: 52/248
Children: 10/1089
Of course she hadn’t visited every one of those cases herself. She had spent many hours talking with various branches of the city watch and reading their records. It was in a cramped archives room full of boxes and shelves that she found a crystal memory shard that showed a picture of a baby, no more than a month old, lying still on a kitchen table with a fork driven so deeply into her left eye that the tines were not visible.
The evidence seemed clear: Farebook cutlery was cursed. So why had no one noticed? Why was there no outrage, no hue and cry? Why no angry mobs tearing that hot, sweaty building down around the ears of its wizened old proprietor?
Because it wasn’t just happening with Farebrook products.
When Rachael had asked around at the constabularies and the hospitals about any unusual events surrounding Farebrook cutlery over the past few months, no one had been able to single out that business in particular. The last few months had seen “unusual events” on a massive scale from a range of sources, many of them with no possible connection to Farebrook or any of its suppliers.
Data cluster: a fruit vendor on Haredale Street.
Data cluster: a tavern in Wattledown Avenue.
Data cluster, with an extra dimension of horror: a maternity clinic.
Each one with similar tales of deformities, derangements and deaths. Each cluster statistically significant, but swallowed up in the massive, exponentially growing population of the kingdom.
She put her head in her hands. What the hell was going on here? Was the city-state in danger? Hadn’t the days of evil wizards taking over the world been long put behind them? Now the wizards and the adventurers ruled hand in hand. What would be the point of tearing it all down? Or was it just some kind of structural flaw that hadn’t been noticed? Who was she to even make these kinds of evaluations? She was just an office worker. So she would do her office work. She would write her report, process the Farebrook claim. Then there would be documentation filed on the public record that she could present to the local magistrates. That could be a first step towards...
She took her face out of her hands at the sound of someone walking to her desk. It was Allayard.
“Hale met, trooper,” he said. “How fare thee on the front?”
“Not great,” she said. “The front is kind of kicking me in the back right about now. Listen to this.” She beckoned him closer and briefly told him what she had learned over the past few days.
“That’s terrifying,” he said, chin in hand. “It sounds like it could strike anywhere, any time. What do you plan to do about it?”
“Share my findings, once I’ve put them into something unlike the current ramblings of a madwoman that they seem to be. I just don’t know where to start. And I don’t know how to go back to some of the... incidents waiting for me in there,” she said, pointing at her paper pile.
“Hmm. Will this help?” He held a pink crystal between the thumb and index finger of his other hand, hidden by his body so that no one else could see.
Her mouth went dry. She had never pinked out at work before. It was an obvious line that one did not cross if one wished to remain off the streets. But this wasn’t a typical situation. She just needed to get this done, then she could be finished with it, and then she could also let people know who could do something about it. It was the right thing to do, really. And anyway, she needed it.
She nodded and held out her hand under the table. “Yes, please,” she whispered.
***
Lizel stayed for the funeral rites. Some of the folks were grateful, some were resentful, but all were glad that it was over, and there was a sense that her final blessing over the girl’s sad little grave with the wooden headpiece might help the affair to remain over.
She asked the villagers which way Okastio had gone after laying his curse upon them, and they had pointed towards the mountains to the north. Copper had confirmed this as, her whiskers wet from her grisly beverage of Lizel blood-water, she had also started hopping towards the towering distant mountains. Before they had left, the girl’s father, Tarn had taken her aside.
His eyes stared at her from dark tunnels, and he smelled of his inn’s brandy. “Do you mean to go into those mountains? Or through them?”
“I mean to go wherever Okastio goes,” she said. “To catch him. And stop him.”
“It seems to me you’ve wasted a measure of time already cleaning up his mess,” Tarn said. “Do you really think you can catch him, going at the rate you are?”
He had a point. Every obstacle he put in her path was taking her far longer to deal with than it no doubt cost him to place it.
“If he plans on stopping in the mountains,” Tarn said, “then I cannot help you, and in truth you may never catch him, for those mountains are treacherous, tricksy places full of shifting rocks, secret paths and hidden caves. The ground can turn under your feet or the walls of the cliffs crumble down upon you. If you chase after him into that place, he may be able to set the very mountain against you in a trap that you won’t be able to overcome.
“But,” his breath wafted sourly into her face, “if he intends on going through to what’s on the other side of the mountains, you might be able to get there ahead of him. There’s a path, underground.”
He gave her directions, told her about landmarks and dangers on the path. He finished by gripping her arm with fingers of iron. “You have to do this,” he said. “There’s no room for mistakes. Get him. Make him pay.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.” He was going to fucking pay, all right.
And so, as she had spent hour after hour walking towards the mountains, Copper, more or less resigned to her fate, hopping along in front of her, Lizel had pondered the question: over or through?
To be sure, Okastio probably was laying his greatest trap for her in the mountains. It made sense, and it was how he thought. But was that his ultimate destination? Would he stay there if he wasn’t being pursued? What was his ultimate goal?
“I’m going to tell you a story,” Lizel said to Copper, “about the man who twisted your mind.”
“Whatever, woman,” said Copper.
“You know, you are a woman, too,” said Lizel. “You could show some solidarity.” But this was cruel. Copper couldn’t help what had been done to her. In fact, Lizel could help, but she was delaying that help so that she could get what she wanted from the rabbit. Copper kept hopping along, silent.
“So, Derrick Okastio,” said Lizel, “is a wizardly member of Ravendish Academy, a senior member of the Applied Thaumic Research department and court wizard to his majesty Roderick the Fifth. Or at least he was. He was my teacher.”
She went on:
After graduating from the academy, I got a job as a claims investigator. The work was dull if not outright depressing, but I was using the magic I had learned, and without the supervision of my teachers: I was my own mistress, out in the world. It was thrilling, the sense of liberation. And my investigative partner was fun, too. He helped to make the down times bearable.
But then my sister got sick. Her hands started turning black one day. Then her arms were black, too. Her shoulders. It was gradual, but within a few months her whole body was black and scaly, and movement caused her great pain. She still had her beautiful blue eyes, but they stared out of a face of cracked leather. She took to her bed and stayed there.
Of course, we asked the magical healers to help, but they were useless. They said that her symptoms seemed to indicate a magical curse of some kind, but there was no trace of worldly magic to be found. And these were people who had studied healing magic and restorative magic for decades, whereas that hadn’t even been my speciality. Nonetheless, my family expected me, the only wizard they were related to, to do something about this.
All I could think to do was to use the training and experience of the only job I had ever had. So I investigated. I eventually looked into her gloves. Bought from the same glover who made these, in fact [she held up the hand not holding Copper’s leash. Copper didn’t turn to look.] He eventually admitted that he had heard of similar events happening elsewhere.
Now, he made some items by hand and some with sewing machines, and it turned out that only machine-made items were linked to any strange occurrences. I had his machine inspected. He tried to argue with me about it and I’m afraid I became... emotional. I had friends currently or recently at the academy who pitied me and wanted to help. One of them looked inside the machine and found that its stator, the part that receives thaumic energy and transfers it to the machine, was corroded somehow. As if it had been exposed to some kind of unhealthy environment for an extended period of time.
It was the power source, Copper. The power being delivered to the machine had gone bad, somehow, and flowed from the machine to the gloves to my sister, and the gods know how many other people. I quickly found that this was happening with other products in other parts of the city, and once I knew what to look for I found it everywhere. Machines with damaged stators. Bad magic.
I went to the ATR. They told me they sympathized with my family tragedy but there was no possible connection with their department. In a city full of people and magical usage, accidents were bound to happen. I knew that! It was my job to distinguish the accident from the intentional. So I told my investigative partner all about it, and he helped me.
We determined that the department of Applied Thaumics that was most directly involved with running the city-state’s power grid was run by Derrick Okastio, a man who had lectured me in my student days. He had to know what was going on. We went to his office. He refused to see us.
The next day, my manager called me to his office when I arrived at work. Okastio was there. So was my partner. My manager told me that I was wasting company time and resources on an unsanctioned case, and furthermore that I was harassing an important member of society who had vital work to do for the running of the city-state and who had been severely inconvenienced by having to come here this morning to deal with it. And thirdly, that the issue was all in my mind and a waste of time, and in fact the ATR was in perfect control of the city’s energy supply and didn’t require the assistance of an amatuer sleuth, thank you very much.
On this last point, at least, I could fight back. I told my manager that my partner knew all about this, too. He had seen the reports, the evidence. My partner looked at my manager and said that he had no idea what I was talking about. He said I had been under stress due to my sister’s sickness and that I may be having difficulty coping with the strain.
The bottom fell out of my world. I sat there numbly as Okastio said he would be willing to take my family tragedy into account and forget about pressing charges if I agreed to cease my “silliness.” My manager agreed that if I returned to normal duties we could put the affair behind us. Of course, I would also be required to take additional compliance training courses.
I told him not to bother, stumbled to my cubicle, gathered my belongings and left Golden Shield forever.
The constant crowd of the streets buffeted and carried me all the way back to my tiny apartment. I honestly have no idea what I would have done when I got there, except that two people were waiting for me in front of my door. Wizards. They said they had something to say that I would be very interested to hear, regarding Derrick Okastio. They asked if I could let them in to talk, but I’m pretty sure the asking was just a formality.
So we talked. They were there on behalf of ATR, although they claimed not to work for that department and would deny any connection with it if I told anyone about them. Not that I even knew who they were, and they never offered their names. But wizard knows wizard. It’s like you can smell it, like ozone in the air.
So anyway, the two mystery wizards told me that Derrick Okastio was a member of ATR, but he had grossly overreached his authority. He had been a very bad boy, and he needed to be removed. I said, so why don’t you remove him? They said that it was complicated. He had friends in high places, among the king’s courtiers and the council of wizards. They gave me this seashell amulet, which is far more powerful than anything I had used before. They told me where he lived.
I knew I was being used by these people, but at the same time I was grateful to be given this opportunity. All I could think about was my sister and the countless others around the city who were suffering due to whatever he was doing... what was he doing exactly?
We believe, said one of the mystery wizards, that he is stealing thaumic energy from the grid and replacing it with something from the infernal planes, which is why so many people were being adversely affected.
Anyway, Cotton, anyway... long story short. I went to his home. I broke into his house. When he came home, I unleashed magic upon him. I almost got him, but he escaped. I chased him to the gates of the city, but he had a pass to leave. Of course, I didn’t. I had to contact the mystery wizards, and they probably had to talk to someone else. It took two long hours, but finally I was out of the city for the first time in my life. Open spaces! I couldn’t let it distract me, though. I asked people at the gates which way he had gone, went in that direction, came into an open field, and met you.
“And you know better than I what he did before I got there,” Lizel said. Cotton stopped hopping. Her nose twitched.
“It hurt,” Cotton said. The sun was vanished below the horizon and the sky was hazing into purple-blue.
“I know it did,” Lizel said.
They made camp. When Lizel had been lying on her bed roll for some minutes, Cotton ran at her to the end of her lead, which was long enough to reach Lizel. Cotton bit and scratched, trying to get at Lizel’s neck. Lizel grabbed the rabbit and held it down with one hand, pulling her knife from her belt with the other.
“Shh,” Lizel said. “Shh.”
Lizel pricked her finger and put it in Cotton’s mouth. Cotton sucked on it like a lamb sucking at its mother’s teat. Or like a rabbit sucking at its mother’s teat, for that matter. After a while, the tension went out of Cotton’s body. Lizel withdrew her finger and lay back down. Cotton lay down beside her, just touching her shoulder, tucked her legs under her, laid her long ears back behind her, and closed her eyes.
Lizel waited until Cotton was sleeping deeply, or as deeply as any wild creature with a brain deranging magical hex can sleep, and probed Cotton’s mind and the rotten connection to Derrick Okastio. Yes, she was certain. He meant to move beyond the mountain. And she would be waiting for him.