What happens in the Shadows
Ratcliff goes on a secret field trip and learns that things are worse than he'd known, and that what happens in the Shadows may not stay there long.
Previously in this story arc;
And if you are new here, check out my best approximation of a table of contents.
What happens in the Shadows
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Ratcliff said, as he walked past Sael into the open doorway. He held up the lantern into the darkened corridor as he did so, wondering how many other secrets the Exchequer held. The light rippled down the hallway, illuminating a decidedly rough stone interior. Only darkness greeted the end of his lantern light.
“How far does this go?” he asked, curious. He noted that this corridor would be running two stories beneath the street surface, and would likely be in parallel with the older part of the city's sewer system.
“Rather far,” Sael said. Ratcliff turned to see him pull the secret door closed. There was a loud ‘thunk’ as something slid back into place. He turned the lantern back to the secret door, and noticed something curious.
“How… do you open it again?” he asked, surprised there was no obvious lever or secret torch to pull on.
Sael shook his head, “There is no way to open it from this side. My guess is that whoever had it installed, and this goes back hundreds of years from what my records say, had it installed to escape the Exchequer. But baulked at the idea of installing a backdoor into the archives that anyone who uncovered the secret could use to pilfer the treasures of the Archives.”
Ratcliff snorted, “Treasures? It’s nothing but boxes and boxes of papers and books. I suppose some of them could be useful in lawsuits to determine lineage and inheritance, but I’m required by law to turn those documents over during relevant suits. So why would anyone sneak in?”
Sael shrugged, “How certain are you, that’s all that’s in there?” The old man began to walk down the hallway. He ran his hand along the left wall of the hallway, as though re-assuring himself it was really there.
Ratcliff looked back at the secret not-really-a-door-anymore wall that stood between him and the archives.
“I’m… not, actually. I’ve never had the time to search them,” he admitted. This admission annoyed him. He didn’t have time to search the Archives for treasure. His life was full of immediate problems, and didn’t need any additional mysteries to solve.
“If you ever decide to, let me know what you find,” Sael said, glancing back at him with a grin and a wink.
“Why?” Ratcliff snorted, following after the man. “It’s my archives.”
“As you might have suspected, I happen to enjoy secrets,” Sael said with a rueful laugh.
“That’s unexpectedly transparent of you,” Ratcliff said.
Sael laughed, “Is it?”
They walked in silence for some time before Sael began a different line of enquiry.
“So I understand why you’re pursuing the boys from a 'getting the crown's money back from them’ perspective. But I don’t really understand why you think they’d be an asset in your investigation. Aside from their clear knack for instigating trouble and then getting out of it, they’re quite young and you’d be putting them in an enormous amount of danger. The Fey aren’t known for pulling punches, even when it comes to human adolescents.”
Ratcliff grunted in response. [1]
1 - He had some concerns about the morality of his plans, but had done his best to ignore them in the same manner as you ignore the elephant in the room.
Acknowledging the elephant means that now you need to *do* something before it steps on your furniture or eats the rug.
“Granted, they *are* just street children, and that makes them somewhat disposable,” Sael said, pausing and turning to look at Ratcliff. “I just didn’t take *you* for that kind of man.”
Ratcliff stared at Sael without responding, marshalling his thoughts.
“Your *father* I imagine, is that kind of man…” Sael said, with a clear slow enunciation of each word, his eyes locked on Ratcliff as he spoke.
Ratcliff felt his whole body tense at the mention of his father, and his jaw clenched with a rising anger.
“My *father* would dispose of an entire street full of homeless children if it would help him catch a Sidhe spy. But -I- am not -my father-,” Ratcliff said, his tone infused with anger like the bitterest and blackest of teas.
Sael raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, simply watching Ratcliff’s expression. Emotions roiled through Ratcliff, and he forced himself to push them down, realising the old man was testing him.
“I am not disposing of them. I am, if anything, giving them an opportunity to choose an entirely different fate than the one currently unfolding for them,” Ratcliff said, after getting his anger back under control. “They have a track record of unusually daring heists for children of their age, and far more successful than they have any right to be. I thought this a curious anomaly, until I met them.”
“The one named Klem has talent.”
“Interesting,” Sael said, looking very interested indeed, “In what way?”
“I’m not sure. I can only tell there is magic in him, and it’s mostly awakened,” Ratcliff said, frustrated that his senses didn’t give him more information other than here be magic. “But he’s more than a Mutt, I’m sure of that.”
Sael nodded. “This is why you shouldn’t look down on being a Mutt, Ratcliff. Knowing the presence of magic can be enormously useful for all manner of reasons. This is a clear example of it.”
He paused for a moment, “And the other? Iatr?”
Ratcliff frowned, “There’s something there, though I can’t tell if he has magic, or if magic has been done TO him. The smell of it is on him, but it’s subtle.”
“Is it a result of his proximity with Klem?” Sael asked.
“Perhaps, if Klem is even aware of his magic. Which… I don’t think that he is,” Ratcliff said, shrugging.
“No?” Sael asked.
“Why would he choose to live on the streets, when he could walk up to the College and ask to be let in? He’d have to leave Iatr behind, I imagine, but the College recruits anyone with talent sufficient to wield magic, and I suspect Klem falls under that umbrella,” Ratcliff responded.
“They aren’t as picky as they used to be,” Sael acknowledged. “For the best. I remember the days when they were elitist bastards and it really did the college’s reputation - and all Rundellian wizards - no favours.”
“They aren’t elitist bastards now?” Ratcliff said with a distracted laugh.
“They have been thoroughly reminded of their own mortality, having to face the Sidhe for these last three decades,” Sael said with a twist in his smile. “Most wizards have lost loved ones and colleagues in the war. It’s not like wizards grow on trees.”
“Didn’t Odin sacrifice his eye on Yggdrasil for wisdom and magical powers?” Ratcliff asked.
Sael snorted, “Alright, I suppose wizards might grow on the world tree, but where is Yggdrasil? That’s not even a secret I know.”
“Would you admit it if you did?” Ratcliff asked, half sincerely.
Sael looked at him with a raised eyebrow, “No, I wouldn’t. And I would probably murder anyone who found out. The last thing this world needs is a caravan of power hungry men trying to follow in Odin’s footsteps. Half blind wizards would be the ruin of us all.”
The stone hallway ended abruptly in a dead end. Ratcliff shone his lantern around the hallway looking for any obvious levers and saw nothing. He turned to Sael, raising his eyebrow.
“Did we take the wrong escape tunnel?” Ratcliff asked, adding just a hint of sarcasm.
Sael smiled, “No, we’re in the right place. This is a redundancy measure, I gather. In case anyone ‘follows’ after whomever so cleverly used their personal escape tunnel. If they can’t find the right way to open this door, then they starve inside of an empty stone corridor. Or at the very least, they’re slowed down while they search for the door latch.”
“So whoever built this, expected to have to escape in a hurry, with pursuit from inside the Exchequer,” Ratcliff said, with wonder. “Who… who would they have had in mind?”
“Who knows? Perhaps an angry mob. Perhaps the king’s guard. I imagine that if your predecessor was a smarter and luckier man, he may have tried using this tunnel to escape the consequences of his actions,” Sael said with a laugh.
The old man walked up to the wall on the left side of the dead end, and started feeling in between the cracks of the large stone bricks that made up the walls. Ratcliff noticed that the mortar in between the stones wasn’t completely filled in, creating an even rougher appearance than earlier parts of the tunnel.
“What… consequences?” Ratcliff asked. His impression of the consequences to his predecessor was ‘woefully inadequate’ and amounted to an ‘early retirement with an unknown hoard of coins.’ Last he had heard, Lord Cecil Graves was living out on his country estate in northern Rundell, far from the city he had robbed or the war he had compromised with his greed.
“The thing about the Lords of Rundell is that they like to believe they are immune to the consequences of their actions, and it’s better for everyone if they continue to believe so. It makes them more complacent, and less likely to collaborate with each other to directly undermine the kingdom,” Sael said, while hunching forward, as though he was trying to peer between the cracks of the stones he was searching. “I seem to be having trouble locating the switch. I could have sworn it was right here. We may need to flip a coin on who gets to eat who first.”
“I’m pretty sure that only one of us gets to eat the other,” Ratcliff replied.
“Nonsense. I could just eat your arm, they look reasonably thick. That should last me a few days until I can find this switch,” Sael said jovially. [2]
2 - There are roughly 3,250 calories in the average human arm.
A lean two to three days of food, but two to three days of food nonetheless.
Though if the arm belonged to a fat wealthy merchant…
“Did you really lead us into a trapped box without knowing the way out?” Ratcliff asked the older man in disbelief. “I thought you were the master of secrets?”
Sael didn’t reply, looking very intent at the fourth long crack between stones. “Could you shine your lantern here? My night vision isn’t what it used to be.” Ratcliff sighed and held the lantern up to where Sael was searching.
“Ah ha!” Sael said with a grin. He pulled out a knife from inside of his long coat and pressed it deep into the crack. There was a click, and then the wall at the end of the corridor slid forward and to the side. Sael put away his knife and looked at Ratcliff with a smirk.
“It’s been a while since I’ve used this tunnel. I’d forgotten there is no way for a human finger to get to the button directly. You should remember that if you ever need to flee the Exchequer, and don’t want to eat yourself to death,” Sael said with a wink, and gestured towards the door at the end of the hallway. The two men stepped into the sewers of Rundell, and the door sealed itself behind them as it shut.
“I’m glad you remembered. I happen to love my arms and are incredibly possessive of them,” Ratcliff said as Sael led him down the dark sewer tunnels.
The trip through the sewers was a long and twisting affair. Sael was clearly leading Ratcliff on a journey that was not meant to make sense, and his tired mind did not aid him in keeping track of where they were going. After what felt like a long time, but likely wasn’t, Sael stopped them at a sewer wall that was much the same as any other that they had passed over the last hour.
Except for the secret door that revealed a lavishly furnished study on the other side.
Magical ever-burning lanterns hung on the walls, casting mixed colours of red, yellow and green about the room. Several luxuriously upholstered chairs and couches set around a magnificently carved round low table of dark stained mahogany wood. Bookshelves ringed the room, with cupboards and tables between them, creating space for several heraldic displays with crossed swords behind a shield that bore the Lord Sael’s coat of arms. [3]
3 - A Black Raven in flight above a castle, a key held in its claws and a scroll in its beak. His house motto, “Mounam Gnanam” emblazoned on the bottom.
Ratcliff thought the motto ‘wisdom in silence’ was ironic considering Sael’s rather chatty demeanour.
It was a beautiful study, and Ratcliff thought with some nostalgia for his own study at his home. A study full of books that he had no time to read anymore, since his investigations into the Fey subterfuge began. It was a beautiful study, with sophisticated artwork, furniture and luxuries on display. A perfect nobleman’s private den - except for the one glaring object that pulled his attention away from all this luxury.
A dead body lying on the table.
“That… is a very unusual centrepiece, Sael,” Ratcliff said, feeling a complex mix of emotions at the sight of the grotesque corpse.
“Yes, I’m aware. As far as we can tell, it isn’t infectious in any way, so you needn't concern yourself about approaching. It’s quite fascinating when you examine it up close,” Sael said, taking a seat in one of his plush chairs. He gestured to the body, “What do you make of it?”
“Well it’s… decomposing,” Ratcliff said.
Sael nodded, and gestured for Ratcliff to continue.
“And growing quite a lot of mushrooms,” Ratcliff said with a frown, taking stock of the sheer number of them.
His frown deepened when his senses picked up the odor of the occult, “And they stink of magic.”
Ratcliff crouched beside the table, and looked closely at the “body.” It was probably once a human though any recognizable facial features had been destroyed in its unusual decomposition. The overall width of it made it less likely to be Fey, those creatures naturally taller and leaner than most humans. Any identifiable characteristics were overwhelmed by a multitude of colourful mushrooms growing all over the person’s body.
These mushrooms had a dark blood red cap with bright green spots, and a light grey stalk connecting the cap to the dead human’s body. The largest concentration of mushrooms were on the person’s chest, having burst out from within, leaving behind craters in their skin. Hundreds of these mushrooms covered the body, most of them no larger than Ratcliff’s thumb.
“It looks as though the mushrooms… pushed their way out of his body,” Ratcliff said cautiously.
“His?” Sael asked.
Ratcliff paused for a moment before replying, “It’s a guess. But ‘he’ seems to have a squarer chin, and a narrower hip to waist line. The decay and mushrooms makes it hard to tell, but my first guess would be male.”
“Good guess. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize him. His name is Loren Pendeghast,” Sael said, with a wry smile, “I believe you two were acquainted?”
Ratcliff looked up from the body to Sael in shock, “Of the Pendeghast noble family?” Sael nodded. Ratcliff looked back at the body and frowned, “I saw Loren… four months ago when he’d returned on leave from the war. I know his elder brother Aron better, as we used to duel rather frequently in our youth. Loren would often watch us, but was more reserved back then, so we never became close.”
“He was a battle mage of some repute,” Ratcliff stated. The old man nodded.
“He… was a wizard, yes, trained in Kinetics and Dynamistics. He served several terms in the war, receiving multiple medals for bravery in battle. Including, to my understanding, the Battle of Varenville, where he was injured quite badly but acquitted himself bravely in defence of Rundell,” Sael said. [4]
4 - Every veteran of the Battle of Varenville received a medal for bravery and injury in the face of the most pyrrhic victory that the Rundellian forces had ever ‘achieved.’
Achievement is a loaded word with the veterans of that battle, as Varenville was burned to the ground in the same firestorm that halted the Sidhe army from conquering the city outright and marching on to the capital.
There were only twenty-three survivors. Nearly all of them are magicians.
Only one of them was a citizen of Varenville.
“Ah… that… was a hard fight, as I understand it,” Ratcliff said, “I didn’t know that Loren was a veteran of that affair.” Ratcliff sat back on one of the chairs and examined the body of his former colleague. “But that would explain why he always seemed even more distant these last ten years, than he was in his youth.”
“Veterans don’t tend to brag about that battle. They may have saved the country from disaster, but it cost us our fourth most populous city and every living person still in it,” Sael replied. Sael pulled out a long ornate pipe from a small cupboard beside the chair he was sitting on, and was in the process of packing it with dried tanbâku leaves. Ratcliff eyed the pipe, noticing the craving rising up inside him at the sight of his most beloved and hated vice.
Forcing his attention away from the pipe and its contents, he looked back at the body and really examined it. Loren and he weren’t friends, but he’d never held any animosity or irritation with the man. And Aron was friendly enough. “Does Aron know his brother is dead?” Ratcliff asked. Sael shook his head.
“No, not yet. This only happened two days ago, and was deemed a security issue so it’s been kept secret for the time being. I will need to let Aron and his family know of Loren’s death soon enough, but…” Sael trailed off, “Well I’d like to tell them something more than ‘Your son died of mushrooms.’”
“You can’t keep this secret from them for long. The Pendeghast’s are an influential family, and they’ll want to know what happened to their son. They’ll probably call for an inquiry,” Ratcliff said, frowning.
“Yes. Hence why they haven’t been told. Loren does appear to have developed a habit of disappearing on them for weeks at a time without telling anyone what he was doing, so that gives me a bit of time to come up with answers as to why he died of ‘treoraí an mhuisiriúin bháis’,” Sael said sourly. He lit up the pipe, and the smell of burning tanbâku leaves filled the room. Usually Ratcliff was the one smoking, and so he had never noticed how strong the smell of the leaves were when someone -else- was smoking in an enclosed space. He closed his eyes.
“Treoraí,” Ratcliff said, “That’s… sidhe for… what… the mushroom guide to the dying?”
“Close enough,” Sael said.
“I’ve heard of Treoraí,” Ratcliff continued, the smell of the tanbâku was really getting to him, he opened up his eyes and looked at Sael, then at the pipe, “May I?” holding out his hand. Sael smiled, his expression unreadable, and handed Ratcliff the pipe. He took a long drag of the pipe, holding in the smoke for as long as he could, then blew it out gradually. Sael just watched him patiently.
“Veterans first brought it back from the war, and the House of Lords quickly determined this was a problem, and had it added to the controlled substances list. The college controls the supply of it for research purposes only, but my inspectors intercepted several smuggling operations trying to bring it into the city,” Ratcliff trailed off, “Or at least… they… used to.” Sael nodded at this. Ratcliff took another drag on the pipe.
“Indeed. Treoraí has been showing up in greater quantities in the city, and in recent months, people have started to die from it. In most cases, they go to sleep and simply never wake up. They’re mostly the poor, refugees or criminals, and their bodies are shuffled off. I would imagine that the watch or the coroner don’t always correctly identify the cause of death, and simply chalk it up to ‘starvation, accident or grief.’” Sael said.
“In most cases,” Ratcliff said, looking at the mushroom farm that used to be a body.
“Indeed,” Sael said, “In the cases where someone with magical potential dies from it… the mushroom explodes out of them like a rotting tree trunk.”
There was silence for a time as this information sank in.
“There are fey monsters in Rundell, disappearing inspectors and bailiffs, a Sidhe plot to bring about economic ruin, and now a magical mushroom that feeds on the corpses of wizards,” Ratcliff said, “Perhaps they don’t care about the bailiffs, and that’s just incidental to trying to remove my inspectors so we can’t properly search inbound cargo, so they can keep smuggling their mushrooms into Rundell.”
“I would imagine that the mushrooms aren’t the only thing they’re smuggling into or out of the city,” Sael said with a frown, and held out his hand to Ratcliff for the pipe. Ratcliff passed it back, relieved to have smoked, and relieved to not be holding it any longer. “Knowing Sylvanus, I would imagine that undermining the city’s finances is on his list of ‘to dos,’ but may only be a secondary objective to THIS plot.” He waved his hand at Loren’s body.
“Treoraí didn’t always kill people?” Ratcliff asked.
Sael eyed the corpse thoughtfully while he packed more dried leaves into the pipe and took his time about responding. Ratcliff could see a frown on his face, like there was a deeper puzzle to this mystery that the old spymaster was confounded by.
“No. The Coven of the Cedar Grove assures me that they’ve been using Treoraí as a sacred medicine for hundreds of years, and most of them have consumed it at some time or another as part of their rituals of communing with their ancestor spirits. They say that it is possible to consume enough of it that the spirit and soul would simply leave the body and never return…” Sael said, and then gestured at the body, “But they assure me that THIS should never happen. The Sidhe have done something to Treoraí, and now it’s killing people at an alarming rate.”
“And they’re using it to kill our wizards.”
fin
Next Chapter;
Editorial Note;
Sometimes the writing comes easy, and sometimes it comes hard.
I’ve been reading this old book called, “The Master Key System,” by Charles F. Haanel, which I have been told was a precursor to books like The Alchemist and The Secret. It’s interesting reading books that are a century old, how differently they describe the world, assumptions that are made about reality and how it operates, and the language they use to describe that reality.
Now I can imagine that this book was pretty wonky back then as well, but that’s just a story I’m telling myself as there is no way for me to know.
I’m still fairly early on in the book, so I can’t tell you if it’s revolutionized my life or not - but it has got me thinking about the nature of “what are our thoughts” and how they influence life, shaping the stories and habits we create as a result of them. I definitely found myself struggling to find inspiration for writing these last few weeks as my mind has been preoccupied with relational and logistical challenges.
Every time I’d sit down to write, there was no space for the words to unfold. At least three times I sat down to write, only to get up and leave fifteen minutes later. And so, when I’d be sitting in meditation in the evenings, I would instead try to imagine what it was like to have a finished book before me.
Well a week of that didn’t result in a book appearing before me - so the master-key system is clearly complete bullshit.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration.
Sitting with that mental space didn’t make it emotionally -easier- for me to finish this writing project… it still felt like pulling my own teeth out with a rusty nail… but it did create a “I have to do this anyways” push that resulted in this post.
So I guess that’s something?
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Cheers,
Robin George
A night time shot of a model pirate ship in the fog-filled field at Freezerburn 2024
I have been looking forward to reading your writing the last week or so.