Disenchanted (22 page)

“Liar!” howled Boric. “You bribed Captain Randor to kill me!”

“What? No! Why would I do that?”

“To turn me into a wraith, of course.”

“Twenty years after giving you Brakslaagt? If I’d wanted you dead, you’d have died long ago, Boric.”

Boric pulled the sword back just a hair. “Then who had me killed?”

“My best guess is that it was your brother, Yoric.”

“Yoric is dead!”

“Apparently not. He reappeared shortly after your death, leading a ragtag band of Vorgals into Brobdingdon. Evidently he faked his death on Bjill. He produced a will that indicated you had selected him as your heir. It was widely believed to be forged, but no one dared oppose him for fear that the Vorgals would lay waste to the city. And that clubfooted nitwit you had placed on the throne didn’t exactly rally a lot of popular support. Yoric is now King of Ytrisk. I understand he even married your widow, Urgulana, to help secure his claim.”

“Lies!” cried Boric, pressing the sword again to Brand’s throat. Brand’s whole story was preposterous, particularly the part about Yoric willingly marrying that beast Urgulana. “This is your last chance. Tell me how to break the curse or die!”

“Boric, please,” pleaded Milah. “Don’t kill him. If not for my sake, then for Leto’s.”

This gave Boric pause. He was having trouble keeping up with the number of bizarre nonsequiturs in this exchange. “Leto? What does your son have to do with any of this?”

“It’s what I was trying to tell you before you attacked me,” Brand said. “I’m a half-breed. Like a mule. Half-human and half-elf. As a result, I’m sterile. I can’t have children of my own.”

“But then how…?” Boric began.

“I was already pregnant when I met Brand,” said Milah. “Brand is the only father he has ever known, but we’ve never withheld the truth from Leto. He’s your son, Boric.”

Boric stumbled backward, bracing himself against the railing of the scaffold. His meeting with Brand was not turning out at all the way he had planned. If he could have dropped his sword, he would have. “Is this…are there any more familial revelations you’d care to make, Milah?”

“I think that’s pretty much it,” said Milah, rubbing her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Leto is your son, the Witch of Twyllic is your mother, and your brother Yoric is King of Ytrisk. That about covers it.” Boric looked at Brand, who nodded. Brand was mopping the blood from his throat with his handkerchief.

“He’s the best of both of us, Boric,” Milah said. “He’s brave and clever and handsome like you, and he has my genius for inventing things. And with Brand’s influence, he has become a master of administration and organization. Very soon, in fact, I think he’s going to begin chafing at Brand’s control over him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sets off on some enterprise of his own. You should be very proud.”

Proud? thought Boric. Of a son I never knew I had? He reflected that Leto had known when they met that Boric was his true father. And yet he spoke condescendingly, even dismissively to Boric. Not to mention that he had Boric tied up and thrown in a cart for three days. What had Boric done to deserve such treatment? Another question nagged at him as well: “What did you mean that the swords serve the same purpose as the mirrors?”

“Long-range communication,” answered Brand. “It might help if I start at the beginning.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Shortly after Brand was left on the side of the Avaressian Road by his mother, a traveling merchant found him and brought him to an orphanage in Avaressa. He was badly treated at the orphanage and ran away when he was fourteen, living as a pickpocket on the streets of Avaressa. One day he lifted a small bag of silvery dust from an emissary of the court who had just returned from a summit with the dwarves to the north. Brand was fascinated by the substance: it was finer and lighter than silver and possessed some very strange properties. He noticed, for instance, that he could separate the dust into two piles and then form the first pile into some figure, such as a circle, and the second pile would mimic the first. Even if he put a box over the second pile, when he lifted the box he would see that the pile had formed the same shape as the first. Suspecting that some sort of magic was at work, Brand brought the dust to a local alchemist, telling him he could keep the dust if he could tell Brand where it had come from and what its secret was. The alchemist’s name was Zelaznus.

Zelaznus was fascinated with the strange dust and spent several weeks trying to discover its properties. He found that the remote action of the dust worked even when the two piles were over a hundred feet apart — even when buildings were in between them. Zelaznus also found impurities in the dust — a reddish powder that indicated the sample came from somewhere in the Feldspaal Mountains. Before he had been able to discover any more, however, a warrant was issued for Brand’s capture on several counts of theft from public officials. Brand fled the city, traveling through Peraltia to Feldspaal. After several months of searching, he found the mine where the dwarves had uncovered the strange mineral. The dwarves considered the mineral to be a curiosity of no particular importance; they had given some of it to human emissaries, knowing that humans tended to be fascinated by natural oddities (the dwarves being, in general, a far more practical people).

Brand suspected that the dust had the potential to serve a purpose much more valuable than the entertainment of idle nobles, but the zelaznium (as it would come to be called) was rare and nobody was mining it — the dwarves had only found a few tiny pockets of it while looking for veins of iron. Brand had quite a stash of gold socked away from his pickpocketing days — he had never planned on being a thief forever — but he didn’t have enough to pay the dwarves to begin mining for the mineral in earnest. He bought all the zelaznium the dwarves had (which fit easily in his backpack) and then took a huge gamble: he traveled deep into the Thick Forest to meet the elves, demanding his inheritance as a pretext for getting their help to uncover the secrets of the strange mineral. The elves agreed to send three of their most knowledgeable craftsmen with Brand. Being a wanted man in Avaress and needing secrecy for his experiments (lest someone else start mining zelaznium, increasing the demand and raising the price), Brand and the three elves made their way across the Wastes of Preel and set up shop in the valley now known as Brandsveid. At first any practical use for the magical properties of zelaznium eluded them, but they found that the metallurgical properties of the mineral were astounding: adding a small amount to steel made it far stronger, resistant to rust, and able to keep an edge. Brand began selling swords to anyone who would buy them. The swords were of only average craftsmanship — elves not being the best blacksmiths — but the quality of the steel made them more than a match for most blades. Eventually Brand had made enough money to hire dwarven craftsmen to forge the blades.

The elves and dwarves did not at first work very well together. They spoke different languages and evinced the mutual antipathy that was typical between the two races. Additionally, the elves were trying to move on to creating something with zelaznium that was not a weapon and they didn’t appreciate being interrupted with questions about swordmaking. It was this combination of miscommunication, general confusion, and outright hostility that resulted in the Seven Blades of Brakboorn — Brakboorn being an ancient Dwarvish word meaning something like “colossal screwup.”

But the Blades of Brakboorn turned out better than anyone expected. The dwarf who had forged them realized that the proportions of iron, carbon, chrome, and zelaznium were off when he saw that he had misread instructions that had been written using Elvish numerals. As soon as the blades were cool, he lay one across an anvil and struck it with a hammer, thinking it would shatter and he could reuse the metal for something else. But the blade wouldn’t shatter. Nor would it bend without great exertion, and the blade would snap completely straight as soon as he took his weight off it. Further experiments showed that the blades wouldn’t rust and could slice though bricks without dulling.

Brand discovered that the blades possessed an even more remarkable property: when one blade was pointed at another, it acted like one of Milah’s mirrors, reflecting the surroundings of the other mirror rather than its own. Brand obsessed with trying to find a practical purpose for the swords, and finally came up with one: by distributing them to some of the most powerful men in the Six Kingdoms — and holding onto one himself — he could receive glimpses of what was happening across the land of Dis. Of course, the holders of the other swords would have this power as well, so he ordered the dwarves to deface the blades with Elvish characters. When they were done, it was nearly impossible to see that the sword was sometimes reflecting events from hundreds of miles away. Only Brand’s sword, Orthslaagt, was allowed to keep its mirror-like sheen.

Brand traveled the Six Kingdoms with the swords, giving one to each king — or, when more practical, the prince who was most likely to become king. Most of the recipients were at first skeptical, but were won over by the obvious superiority of the blades. Boric had been the recipient of the last of the six, Brakslaagt.

After giving him Brakslaagt, Brand followed Boric to Brobdingdon, having heard that there was a possibility of a Peraltia-Ytrisk alliance forged through Boric’s marriage of Urgulana. He witnessed the ceremony — and more importantly, Boric’s public rejection of Milah. Brand suspected that Milah was the daughter of Zelaznus (she was only a little girl when Brand came to Zelasnus’s laboratory years earlier), and that the mirrors she carried were infused with zelaznium. He approached her after her rejection and offered her a job. She traveled with him back to his workshop and soon they were married. A few months later she gave birth to Leto, whom she knew was Boric’s child, and they raised the boy together.

Brand’s workmen produced many more swords but were never able to replicate the Blades of Brakslaagt. Still, they made a hefty profit selling swords to the noblemen of the Six Kingdoms. Brand was proud to learn very recently that the sword Clovis had used to slay the Dragon of Kalvan was one of their making.

“
I
killed the dragon!” Boric growled in response to this. “The dragon just happened to fall on Clovis’s sword.”

“Well, then I suppose Brakslaagt deserves some of the credit as well,” agreed Brand.

“Brakslaagt!” Boric hissed. “A man is more than his sword!”

Brand nodded, smiling. “Well said, Boric.”

“So you’re just a businessman, is that it?” asked Boric. “You have no plans to conquer all of Dis? You’re just a well-meaning guy who has five walking corpses who do your bidding. And the goblin army, that’s just to give the goblins something to do, right?”

“It does keep the goblins out of trouble,” Brand said. “But I’m afraid the army is going to serve another purpose soon.”

“Aha!” Boric exclaimed. “You
are
planning an attack! Where? Quirin? Peraltia?”

Brand shook his head grimly. “We’re not attacking anyone,” he said. “We’re
being
attacked.”

“Attacked?” Boric asked. “By whom? Who would traverse the Wastes of Preel or the Vast Desert to attack you?”

Brand sighed. “The combined armies of the Six Kingdoms of Dis.”

Episode Six

TWENTY-FIVE

Boric stood on the balcony of the room at the top of Kra’al Brandskelt looking across the valley toward the small watchtower guarding the Salarat Pass. Beyond the pass, extending as far as Boric could see into the Wastes of Preel, was what looked like an undulating sea flecked with tiny colorful dots — the banners of the Six Kingdoms of Dis. There was the yellow-and-black banner of the desert kingdom of Quirin; the red banner of Blinsk; the golden banner of Avaress; the green-and-blue banner of Peraltia; the silver banner of Skaal; and right up in front, the blue-and-white banner of Ytrisk. Somewhere down there was that treacherous coward Yoric. The Six Kingdoms of Dis, which never agreed on anything, had combined their armies to wage war on Brand.

“I can’t believe that Yoric has aligned himself with the Skaal,” said Boric. “They’ve been our mortal enemies for decades.”

Brand replied, “My spies tell me that just after your death Yoric received ambassadors from Skaal and Avaress who convinced him of the threat of my new kingdom. He signed a truce with Skaal declaring peace between the two kingdoms until the supposed threat of Brandsveid is dealt with. I’m sure they’ll be back at each other’s throats once I’m dead.”

“But why send their armies here to kill you?” asked Boric. “I mean, I obviously have my own reasons for wanting to kill you, but what do the rulers of the Six Kingdoms have against you? I thought you said noblemen in most of the kingdoms had bought mirrors from you.”

“Oh, yes, individually they are all big fans of our work. They love to be able to spy on their neighbors and communicate with their troops over long distances. But they aren’t so big on their neighbors being able to better spy on
them
and communicate with
their
troops over long distances. They feel that they are shelling out a lot of money for no net gain.”

“Hmm,” said Boric. “Perhaps they have a point.”

“Absolutely,” said Brand. “They pay good money for an advantage over their rivals but they get nowhere, because their rivals are paying for the same advantage. But that’s the problem with running a kingdom in Dis, Boric, as you well know. When you’re constantly at war or under the threat of war with all your neighbors, every gain is someone else’s loss. That’s not the fault of the mirrors; it’s the fault of the idiotic way the kingdoms are run. I mean, look at those armies, Boric! Imagine if such a spirit of unity could be invoked for peace! But no, the only thing they can agree on is that my enterprise needs to be destroyed.”

“I don’t buy it,” said Boric. “They sent their armies marching across the Wastes because they think they’re paying too much for their mirrors?”