Disenchanted (21 page)

There was a sound of grunting and the pulling of chains and the whole room jerked upward a few inches, nearly causing Boric to lose his balance. After the initial jolt the room moved more smoothly, and if it weren’t for the sight of floors passing behind the metal gate and the clinking of chains, he might not have even known they were moving. The other wraiths and the goblin seemed to find the situation perfectly normal, so Boric decided not to make a fool of himself by exclaiming about the strange moving room. It was an ingenious invention, he thought; many times he had wished for some sort of magical device to transport him to the top of the eighty-foot guard towers of Kra’al Brobdingdon. Presumably the moving room was a variation on the sort of hoist used by builders to move materials to the upper levels of scaffolds, but he had never heard of such a thing being constructed inside a building — or being used to move people.

At last the room stopped at what Boric assumed was the top level of the castle. The wraiths prodded Boric forward, following close behind him. The goblin attendant remained behind in the movable room, closing the gate behind them. The three wraiths strode through a long, narrow hall, stopping at the end to knock on a heavy wooden door. From within, a soft voice said, “Come.”

The wraiths opened the door. A breathtakingly beautiful woman in a green dress stood just inside. The slightest hints of wrinkles were visible at the corners of her mouth, and her long red hair was streaked with gray. “Leave us,” she said to the two wraiths. Boric stepped inside and she closed the door behind him.

“Milah,” said Boric. “You look beautiful. Just as you did twenty years ago.”

“Thank you, Boric,” said Milah. “I wish I could say the same about you.”

“In fairness, I’ve been dead for over two weeks.”

“Yes, I heard,” said Milah. “I’m so sorry about that.”

“You’re
sorry
? Milah, your beloved Brand did this to me. How could you betray me this way?”

“How could
I
betray
you
?” asked Milah with a laugh. “Boric, you denied knowing me. You let me make a fool of myself. You left me alone in Brobdingdon with nothing!”

“I saved your life!” Boric spat. “And I gave you all the money I had on me. What would you have me do, Milah? Try to sell my father on your crazy mirror scheme? On my wedding day?”

“Yes!” screamed Milah. “Yes, that’s
exactly
what I expected you to do. Of course at the time I was under the impression that you were a decent human being.”

“Ha!” cried Boric. “This from the woman who is sleeping with Brand, the man who plots to conquer all of Dis with an army of the undead!”

Milah shot Boric a puzzled look, then burst into laughter. “That’s what you think Brand is up to? Conquering the Six Kingdoms with an army of wraiths? What would be the point of
that
?”

Boric was taken aback by this response. “What do you mean? The point would be to, you know, conquer all of Dis and rule it with an iron fist.”

“But what kind of world would that be?” asked Milah. “Mass killing, thousands in slavery, and walking corpses running rampant across the land? Do you think Brand is some sort of monster?”

“Of
course
he’s a monster!” Boric cried, baffled at Milah’s denseness. “Have you not seen the goblin army he’s assembled outside?”

Milah’s hand went to her forehead. “Oh, Boric. Poor, silly, deluded Boric.”

“Mock me if you wish, woman,” growled Boric, “but your lover Brand is a madman bent on conquest. Beware the day your beauty fades, woman, because Brand will cast you aside the moment you are no longer of use to him.”

Milah raised her hand as if to slap Boric, but thought better of it. “You wouldn’t even feel it, would you?” she said. “You feel no pain, much less shame. Any humanity that you once had is rapidly slipping away. You aren’t yourself. And for that reason, I forgive you your insult. I wish your mother had the comfort of knowing you weren’t in your right mind.”

Boric was now even more baffled. Milah was making no sense at all. “My mother?” he asked. “My mother has been dead for eight years. And I never showed her anything but respect.”

Milah burst into laughter again, then stopped abruptly. “By Varnoth,” she gasped. “You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.”

“What in Dis are you talking about, Milah? Don’t know what?”

“Did you never wonder why you don’t look like either of your brothers? Why they were such ugly, bumbling dolts, and you…were not? Or, for that matter, why the Witch of Twyllic happened to be found guilty of practicing ‘dark magic’ just days after you were born?”

Boric’s mind reeled. “But that’s not…how could they have…”

“Gulbayna and the Witch…that is, Anna, were pregnant at the same time. Anna was the head midwife at Kra’al Brobdingdon at the time. Gulbayna’s baby was stillborn, and she blamed Anna. Two days later, Anna gave birth to a strapping, ten-pound baby that uncannily resembled your father, King Toric. Gulbayna’s baby was buried quietly and Anna was brought up on charges of using dark magic. She was given the choice of being exiled and giving up the baby or being burned alive with her son in her arms. She chose exile. Everyone in Ytrisk knows the rumors, Boric. Well, everyone but you, apparently. I’m sorry to have to tell you this way.”

Boric stood in silent shock. What Milah said made perfect sense. How had he not figured this out sooner? Had he just not wanted to know?

“I’m sorry, Boric,” said Milah. “I really thought you knew. And I’m sorry for thinking you were a monster all these years. Despite the way you treated me, I don’t think you’re a monster. You’re just really, really dense. You probably actually thought you were protecting me by disavowing any knowledge of me or the mirrors.”

Boric raised his hands in supplication. “Of course I was,” he protested weakly, still trying to come to terms with what she had told him. “If I’d have let my father set you up with a laboratory with money from the royal treasury and you failed…”

“Ah, there’s the Boric I know,” said Milah. “Condescending even in defeat. Didn’t I tell you once that you talk too much? Come with me, Boric. I want to show you something.”

TWENTY-THREE

Boric stood with Milah on a scaffold overlooking a cavernous room beneath Kra’al Brandskelt. Below them, hundreds of workers toiled at workbenches and operated large, strange-looking machines. The room was hot and stuffy and filled with the clanging of tools and machines. But the most startling thing was the workers themselves: they were of virtually every race in Dis. There were elves, dwarves, humans, and goblins, all working side by side. Boric was amazed to see that some of the larger machines were actually operated by ogres, who seemed perfectly content to use their brute strength to pull levers or turn wheels rather than tear people limb from limb. Boric never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes — or what was left of his eyes, anyway.

“How do you…” Boric started.

“How do we what?”

“How do you keep them from killing each other?”

Milah shook her head, smiling. “Why would they kill each other? This is a cooperative enterprise. They all need each other to get the work done. And they’re paid on a piece rate, so the more work they do, the more they get paid. This may surprise you, Boric, but there are ways of dealing with problems besides killing things. Even the ogres understand that.”

Boric stared silently out at the work-room for some time. He couldn’t begin to make sense of the complex operations taking place down there. Finally, he said, “So what are they making? Weapons?”

Milah laughed. “No, Boric. They’re making mirrors. Like the kind that I showed you twenty years ago, but much improved.”

“But why? What do you need so many mirrors for?”

“All sorts of things,” Milah replied. “Communicating with Leto at the Buren-Gandt, signaling commands to the goblin army units, coordinating the trains…But we sell most of them. We’ve sold dozens of them to kings of the Six Kingdoms and other noblemen. I don’t think we’ve sold any in Ytrisk yet, because it’s so far away, but I’m sure we soon will. Merchants use them for communicating orders to their suppliers and taking orders from customers. In fact, the merchant class is our biggest customer base. They’re starting to resell the mirrors at a profit.”

“What? How can you let them do that? They’re pocketing money that rightly belongs to you!”

“We don’t mind,” said Milah. “The merchants can go places we can’t. What is it to us if they mark up the price a bit? The customer gets what they want, we get what we want, and the merchants make a little money off the deal. What you fail to understand, Boric, is that life doesn’t have to be all about killing people and taking their stuff. These mirrors have the potential to make Dis a better place.”

“How’s that?”

“They can help us communicate with each other. More communication means less misunderstanding. And just imagine what could happen if a Quirini merchant could instantly know what an Ytriskian customer wants? Whole new routes of trade will open up. Everyone will be doing business with everyone else, all across Dis. The Six Kingdoms will be united in a way they never were under the Old Realm.”

“And if that fails, there’s always the goblin army, right?” said Boric.

Milah sighed. “Boric, this entire area is overrun with goblins. You know what they were doing before Brand arrived? Killing each other and occasionally sending raiding parties out to murder travelers on the road to Quirin. We put as many of them to work in the castle as we can, but we just don’t have enough zelaznium ore to keep them all busy making mirrors. So yes, we have a few thousand goblins marching around in front of the castle. What else are we going to do with them?”

“Brand is clever, I’ll give him that,” said Boric. “He seems to have thought of everything.”

Milah shook her head. “The goblin army wasn’t Brand’s idea. He wanted to exterminate them. It was Leto who thought of putting them to work. Leto organized the work-room as well. And I guess you saw his operation at Burn-Gandt. Impressive, isn’t it?”

“More like terrifying,” replied Boric. “Dwarves crawling all over in the hellish glow from that furnace…what is that infernal machine anyway?”

“One of Leto’s inventions,” Milah said proudly. “You see, the dwarves dug too deep in the mountains — ”

“I knew it!” cried Boric. “They released some unspeakable evil from deep inside of Dis, didn’t they? That machine is the only thing containing it. I’m telling you, Milah, I could feel the evil pouring out of that thing.”

Milah laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Boric. There’s no evil in it. It’s just a machine. Leto calls it a steam engine. You see, the dwarves dug below the water table and the mines kept flooding. They had been using hand pumps to pull the water out, but they aren’t practical on a large scale. Leto had read about an alchemist who had experimented with a spinning wheel that was powered by steam. You put the water in a tank and heat it, and the escaping steam makes the wheel spin. He applied that principle to a water pump, first on a small scale, and then on a much bigger scale at Buren-Gandt. Right now he’s experimenting with trying to make an engine that’s small enough and light enough to fit on a rail car. He thinks eventually we’ll be able to replace mules with steam engines that can run all day and night. Can you imagine?”

“It sounds awful,” said Boric. “And what’s wrong with mules anyway?”

“There’s nothing
wrong
with them,” said Milah. “But they do need to eat and sleep, and they can be a bit ornery. And of course they’re difficult to breed, because, well, being of two different species — ”

“What my lovely wife is trying to tell you, Boric, is that mules are half-breeds.”

Boric turned to see a man walking toward them on the scaffold. Brand. He looked the same as he did twenty years earlier. Boric drew his sword and advanced.

“Boric, stop!” cried Milah.

But Boric could think only of his curse — of what Brand had taken from him, and the monster Boric had become.

“Tell me how to break the curse, Brand, or die where you stand!” Immediately regretting this couplet, Boric tried again. “Tell me the secret or die!”

Brand drew his own sword. It was identical to Brakslaagt, but without the Elvish markings. “There is no secret!” Brand protested. “Or if there is, I don’t know it. I never meant for you to turn into a wraith, Boric. It was an accident!”

Boric fell upon Brand, swinging his sword at Brand’s side. Brand parried. “An accident!” Boric cried. “It was an accident that you gave me a cursed sword?”

“I didn’t know about the curse,” insisted Brand, parrying another blow. “Those seven blades were an experiment. The elves were still trying to figure out how to control the power of the mineral. Obviously something went wrong.”

Boric sliced from the right and then feinted left, throwing Brand off balance. Brand was a decent swordsman, but no match for Boric. Boric wedged his blade between Brand’s cross-guard and blade and twisted. Brand’s sword fell to the scaffold. Boric took a step forward and raised his blade to Brand’s throat. “You lie,” Boric hissed.

“Please, Boric,” said Milah, behind him. “He’s telling the truth. Zelaznium is very tricky to work with.”

“Zelaznium?” Boric asked, trying to remember where he had heard the word. “The stuff the mirrors are made of? Why would you put that in swords?”

“Because the swords serve the same purpose,” said Milah.

“Nonsense,” said Boric, pressing the tip of Brakslaagt against Brand’s throat. A trickle of blood ran to Brand’s collarbone. “Tell me how to break the enchantment!”

“It’s the truth, Boric,” gasped Brand. “I don’t know any more about the curse than you do. When the first wraith showed up here ten years ago, he frightened me nearly to death. That was King Loren of Avaress. He had been run out of a dozen towns and finally came here because he had no place else to go. They kept coming every few years after that. I try to keep them busy, bossing the goblins around and whatnot, but it’s not an easy existence, being a wraith. They were ecstatic when I sent them to chase after you. I hope they weren’t too aggressive.”