I’ll See What I Can Do
by Jared Buck
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
As soon as I had finished, I sent off Orty to fetch Garno. This time, when he arrived, I made it a point to fill my cup with water instead of wine. Garno noticed, and nodded with approval.
“You have results, then?” asked the tavern-keeper as he strode briskly through the door, Orty following after him, hardly able to keep up with Garno’s pace, despite being the longer-legged of the two.
“I do, friend. Please sit.”
“I’ll hear no explanations. Either it will work, or it won’t, so save your breath.”
In such cases as that, one should never argue with a customer. I had Orty ready the carriage, and we accompanied Garno, who refused my offer of a carriage ride but rather insisted on following along on foot, back to the tavern.
In short order, I cast the spell upon the tavern after coating it inside and out with ensorcelled powders and pastes. And then I left, leaving the spell to do its work. I instructed Garno to wait the allotted time for the spell to take its effect, to which he replied with a grunt and a sharp nod.
* * *
I did not hear from him for almost a week. My hopes were raised at last! Another feather added to my humble cap, the embarrassment of failure avoided. Or so I led myself to believe.
I deceived myself thusly until one day, as I was workiing in my garden, pruning some Myrlish roses, playing around with ideas for a new spell in my head, I was startled by Orty.
“Master,” he said, “he’s back.”
“Back? Who? Oh, not him again! It can’t be!”
“It is, Master Velmore. The tavern-keeper.”
I was quickly coming to dislike tavern-keepers as much as I already disliked adventurers.
Garno stormed into my garden, not even having the good grace to allow me time to make myself presentable; I was still in my gardening clothes and would not have allowed myself to be seen in such a state by anyone, king or ploughman, save Orty.
“A fine mess you’ve made this time, wizard,” bellowed Garno. “A fine, fine mess you’ve made.”
It had been a pacification spell, the perfect antidote, I had believed, to smooth away the rough edges of cutthroat adventurers. Under the effects of this spell, violence and aggression were impossible. Their violent impulses dulled, they should have been as pacific as lambs.
“Pacific? Oh, yes, they were pacific, all right. Mighty pacific,” growled Garno.
He laid it out in blunt terms I shall not be so indelicate as to repeat verbatim. Suffice it to say, the spell did work, only it worked too well, as Garno had noted. It pacified the adventurers, so much so that not only were they incapable of fighting or quarreling, but after a few days, as the effects grew in strength, they became incapable of doing anything at all. Too passive to eat or to drink. Too passive to get up to relieve the call of nature. One man had even become too passive to breathe!
“Try explaining that to the magistrate, wizard.” Now, he had not only a terrible mess of filth to clean up, but a death on his hands, for which he could be potentially liable. “It’s one thing if one of them kills somebody, but this is on my hands, wizard!”
I assured him I would help him explain it to the magistrate. But how could this be? It should not have been possible. My calculations, they had been perfect, or so I had thought. I had taken into account the number of customers at the tavern daily on average, and the fact that some were more or less aggressive than others. I had even taken into account the size and layout of the tavern, so that its effects should be spread evenly. Of course, I had provided Garno and his kin the necessary immunity potion.
Of what had gone wrong, I could make neither heads nor tails, but that seems a faraway consideration when an angry tavern-keeper is staring down at you while you are on your knees pruning Myrlish roses.
“What will you do to make things right this time?” questioned Garno. “If you can make things right”
I assured him that I could if he would only leave me time to consider a new remedy.
“Have at it then. But don’t expect another copper out of me. You owe me, wizard.” Orty followed him out, and I was left alone in my garden, on my knees, trowel in hand. I looked down at the Mrylish roses, and envied them even more that I had previously envied Hoot.
* * *
I tried everything I could think of, but nothing seemed to work out the way I intended. So desperate did I grow that I even wrote to an old colleague of mine, an old sorcerer named Parancis Mollo, who was a petty, sniveling, jealous old lout but talented, even I am willing to admit. He was of little help, alas. He wrote back a long, rambling letter which told me little aside from how highly he esteemed himself and how much he pitied me for having grown so weak in my talents that I could not even help a lowly barkeep. I burned the parchment before I finished it halfway through.
“Remind me never again to contact that foolish old codger!” I shouted at Hoot, who looked on me with wide-eyed sympathy as I poured more wine.
As I brought the cup up to my lips, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dark purple liquid. The man staring back at me was a stranger: thin, sunken cheeks, hair more white than brown, a stubble-covered face. A defeated old man.
I put the wine down. No, I would not be a defeated old man. There was still plenty of life ahead of me, and had I not known success in the past? I would know it again in the future, too. I shall know it now!
I got to work, trying spell after spell. None of them worked, but I pushed through these abortive attempts, I ignored the snide remarks and mockery of Garno and his ungrateful family. I was not doing this for them, not really, nor for any of my past clients, for that matter. I was doing this for myself, and I always had been. I needed to challenge myself, to push myself. Only then could I be certain that I was alive; only then could I be certain that my existence had value to the world.
I tried a love spell, such that all who entered into the tavern would fall into a state of unbreakable brotherly love. However, the love soon proved somewhat more than brotherly, and led to, shall we say, results of an excessively amorous nature. Now, this would not have been so bad itself, but it led to jealousies, and jealousies led to drawn swords and thrown daggers.
“Six broken tables in one day! Would you believe it?” was Garno’s comment on the matter.
I remained undaunted. A griffin I summoned to guard the tavern only attracted more adventurers intent on slaying it for glory. I next enchanted the tavern’s food and drink with a weakness spell. If everyone was too weak to fight, Garno’s problems would be solved, would they not? Only it turned that the spell made the customers too weak not only to fight, but to stand, to lift their ale cups, or the coins to pay for their fare. Some became too weak to control their bodily functions.
“Even worse than that foolish love spell you tried,” Garno informed me.
This was a matter of pride and prestige. We sorcerers may not spend much time in one another’s company, and we may be spread out all over the known world, but we are a small community, nonetheless. Word spreads fast. If only you knew how often any given sorcerer used his crystal ball or, say, his enchanted owl, to communicate the latest gossip and rumors to his fellows. I admit, I have sometimes been surprised at myself, for wine is a lubricant for the tongue.
In any case, after days of poring over scrolls, codices, grimoires, old letters of correspondence, and much experimentation, I thought that I might be onto something. The problem was not with any particular spell, but with my approach. I had been trying to address these miscreant adventurers’ actions or abilities to act, which was an attempt of mine to intervene in their free will.
Foolishness! Adventurers are stubborn people, and to try to bend their will, even with magic, is like trying to change the course of a river: not impossible, but far from an easy task. In fact, it had been even more difficult than that, for I had been trying to alter the will of not one or two, but dozens.
The key was not to attack their free will, but to address the consequences of their actions. When I explained this to Garno he found it all a lot of philosophical mumbo-jumbo.
“Let’s see the results,” was all he had to say on the matter. I suppose I couldn’t blame him too much at that point.
Despite Garno’s impatience, I took my time with this spell. I based my work partly on some old classic spells, and partly on a few of my own innovations. Orty assisted me as I worked.
“You see, Orty, this spell will not attack anyone’s free will at all,” I explained patiently. “They will be free to act however they please, but the tavern, as well as Garno and his family, shall be protected from the consequences. It’s brilliant! It’s foolproof!”
“But Master Velmore,” objected Orty, “what if some knight tries to chop off someone’s head? Or an archer looses an arrow?”
I shook my head. I would never before have expected such skepticism from Orty. “They may as well slash at each other with pillows, or throw turnips at one another, for all the harm it will do. The tavern and all who enter into it at any time shall be ensorcelled so that they are totally protected from any harm at all.”
“Oh, well... That’s good, I suppose, Master Velmore.”
“Of course it’s good. It’s excellent! It shall be impossible to kill anyone within the Mermaid. In fact, it shall be impossible to inflict so much as a scratch upon anyone who enters.”
Orty looked at me quizzically. “But what if a dragon enters, master?”
“A dragon? Enter the tavern?”
“Yes. How will they slay it?”
I sighed. “Orty, there are no more dragons. Not for over a hundred years. Besides, even if there were dragons, why in the world would one enter a tavern, of all places? That is not in their nature.”
“Where would they enter, then?”
I waved him away. “Enough thought for you today, Orty! There is still much to be done. I shall not be made a fool of this time. When this succeeds, I shall have to write of it. We’ll see what old Parancis Mollo has to say then!”
* * *
My plan, I am somewhat pleased to say, went well for nearly a week, and should have, in theory worked perfectly. Life, however, always sends flies into our ointment which not even the wisest or most far-sighted of us can foresee.
The adventurers — knights and noblemen, thieves and men-at-arms — got into their drunken brawls as often as was to their hearts’ content, but it was no skin off Garno’s nose. Their maces could do little more than crack an egg. Their swords may as well have been butter knives. A toothpick was as threatening as their arrows, so long as the arrows remained within the tavern.
Garno finally seemed satisfied. No tables were broken. No chairs splintered. Not a drop of blood spilled. Old Garno was bringing in the coppers and the silver, even a little gold. His business hadn’t gone so well in years, he told me.
Had it not been for the ogre, that rather large fly in my ointment, it should have all gone well for years to come.
The ogre had lived in the hills outside of town for years — probably longer than I had lived in Xim-on-the-Ormo. He was a big green brute of a fellow, but had seldom been seen in recent years, and so I had paid him no mind at all. Adventurers didn’t even bother to go questing after him, it seemed. Where was the glory, or coin, in slaying a senile old ogre, after all?
But I shall now let you in on a little secret that is not well known even to many an erudite sorcerer but is now very well known to yours truly: ogres are not nearly so dull or dim-witted as they seem. One would not be justified in calling them smart, but they are in most cases quite clever and crafty, and this particular ogre, was particularly clever, for somehow he learned of the situation at the tavern — word travels even to ogres I suppose — and, seeing a situation which could be taken advantage of, he pounced upon it.
Late one night, when all in the tavern were so drunk they were hardly able to stand, the ogre ambled into town. By that time, the street lamps had already been extinguished, so not a soul noticed the ogre in the pitch darkness. Once the ogre was in the tavern, he could not be harmed. Knights, stupefied with drink, tried to subdue him, but to no avail. He fended off all attacks and, though the ogre could do no more harm to the adventurers than they could to him, he could fend them off much more easily than they could him. Even if no real harm can be done, it is, I am told, not very pleasant to be flung across a room by an ogre.
Soon, the adventurers had had enough. The ogre was not only a nuisance to them, but he reeked. The adventurers left en masse, yet the ogre stayed and ate and drank his fill of Garno’s food. There was nothing he could do to dislodge him so long as the spell was in effect.
Once the spell was broken, Garno was able to hire a few of the adventurers to dislodge the ogre, who fled back to the hills. I paid for this, of course. It was the least I could do for poor Garno.
I heard little from Garno after that. I returned his money, but I entrusted Orty with that shameful task. Orty returned with the purse in hand. Garno’s tavern was deserted and still carried the ogre’s rank stench. I smiled wanly at that; it seemed I had indeed freed him of the troublesome adventurers after all, though not in the way I intended.
It was not long after that the Mermaid burned down late one night. There were no injuries, for no one had been present. Garno and his family were never seen in Xim-on-the-Ormo again, but I did hear curious reports of a portly bearded man in his fifties who, along with his wife and three daughters, had taken up the trade of adventuring, and despite their status as novices, were proving quite apt at their new profession. Their first quest, I heard tell, had been to slay a certain ogre out in the hills.
Copyright © 2024 by Jared Buck
