Chapter 4 - The Batsel and the Alchemist

After the two merchants, nothing even remotely approaching excitement had transpired for more than three bells. Sil had left him to do a round of the Tower perimeter immediately, the collusion having put her past Sefton’s scheduled start time. Only a handful of travelers had passed by in the meantime, all departing without arousing any need for alarm or even presenting an interesting distraction from watching the fog burn off to cobblestones. He found the solitude unsettling after life in Throne-home and the Academy.

The latest travelers arrived just before noon and called up to him with a sharp bone whistle. He took the toll from the pair of trappers, heading south with their haul of hides, if only the stench had left as quickly as the men. The strong odor of blood and decay followed him from the courtyard all the way back to the second story of the Guard Post.

Cadryn trudged up the final steps for the fifth time that morning, distracted by recounting the toll, it took a moment to realize the room was occupied. Some sort of tiny monster sat perched on the table, eating what remained of the cheese. It took the form of a large weasel, white furred, whose forelimbs had been replaced with the wings of a bat. He recognized the animal as the offspring of magic, a Batsel, and felt a visceral response to its unnatural combination of traits.

He barely had a chance to even look at the creature before it whirled in his direction, body arching into an angry fighting stance.

“Who, the hell, are you?” the creature asked in a high pitched voice, lending the normally guttural enunciation of the Throne-home dialect a comedic air.

Cadryn chuckled reflexively at the absurdity of a talking weasel . . . thing, and the creature discarded the cheese, taking flight with small shriek. His amusement faded as the beast dove for his head, tiny claws scratching for his eyes.

“Stop that!” he yelped, batting it away. “I’m a member of the Guard!”

“A likely story!” the creature squeaked. “I’ve heard it before.”

Before Cadryn could lose his patience; the door to the rampart walkway, located opposite the stairs from the first floor, swung inward and Sil returned from her patrol.

Confusion at the two flailing at one another gave way to amusement on Sil’s features as she took in the pair of them. “Leave off him Gita!” She called, “He’s telling the truth.”

The creature immediately flitted across the span of the room to drape itself over the woman’s shoulder. “Well, I didn’t know that.” Gita said, like it had been left out of some great secret.

“I said it right off.” Cadryn muttered, dabbing at his scratched up arm. “Is that your familiar?”

“No,” Sil answered, “my arts are limited to Healing; the Living Contradiction did not see fit to gift me with other abilities.”

“I’m nobody’s familiar!” Gita piped up from the safety of Silence’s shoulders. “You’d do well to remember it, boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Cadryn replied, “I saw a Batsel, it responded to Sil’s commands and I assumed . . .”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you did,” Gita replied, annoyed by his misdirected apology to Sil, “everyone does. That’s what the bastards who did this to me wanted!”

Sil rolled her eyes and shrugged the creature off. “Now that’s a story for another time Gita. What are you doing back? I sent you to patrol the road.”

Gliding to a chair back, Gita twisted around to look at her. “I guess a rockslide isn’t a good enough reason to come back from a patrol?”

“How bad,” Sil asked, examining what was supposed to be her lunch, and seeing the small bite marks, removed the eaten-on portion. “I hope you didn’t return for a few pebbles. Like that ‘Great Cat’ last week that turned out to be a fat mouser.”

Gita made a sound that could have been laughter. “No, No, whole road’s blocked! You need to clear it.”

“Not me,” Sil said, shaking her head, “you and Cadryn. Go fetch Korbinian, see if he has something to clear the rocks.”

“How dare you-”

“That’s an order, Gita,” she said waving the Batsel off. Turning to Cadryn she added, “Maybe it’ll be more exciting than tally duty?”

Cadryn bowed, grateful for the distraction, before following an undulating Gita’s flight out the open door. No sooner than he had emerged did the Batsel practically crash-land onto his shoulder and cling on.

“You walk, just follow this walkway for now, I’ll talk. Hey, what’s your name?”

Caught of guard by its sudden reversal of attitude, and resisting the urge to fling the creature off Cadryn obliged on both counts, heading along the walkway back to the tollhouse. “Cadryn,” he answered.

“Nice, can I call you Cady?”

“You may not.”

“Alright, Cadryn. I meant no disrespect, it's just, well, you seem nice enough. Sorry about mistaking you for a bandit, you see a smelly guy with a sword and it's on.”

“Not much harm done,” Cadryn said, rubbing at a scratch. “You get a lot of that?”

“Humans? Yes all the time, lots of them.”

“Bandits.”

“Oh, No, not too many, but it only takes the one you know?” Gita shifted her weight, brushing a soft leather wing across Cadryn’s ear with the movement. “You’ll want to keep going, behind the toll house, into the Neeft itself.”

Cadryn considered that bit of information, a lack of bandits, even with a lack of Imperial forces, meant a truly quiet place. Which boded poorly for his ideas of winning any acclaim or glory. Following Gita’s instructions, he ascended a narrow, bowing, gangway from the upper wall of the toll house compound, to a landing on the lowest battlement of the Citadel itself. The whole construction seemed designed to be destroyed in a hurry if needed.

After ascending three stories from the top of the toll house, the creaking wood of the gangway ended at the smashed off top of what had once been the great ramped approach to the Citadel’s main gate. Two more stories of stonework rose atop the constructed cliff, beyond he could feel the mass of the Neeft towering upward above the Citadel, it felt like standing at the bottom of a vast cliff face. Following Gita’s nosed directions, Cadryn ascended a narrow stairway that ended in a thick bronzed gate. The gate yielding entrance with a brief grinding. Beyond, lay the marshaling yard of a keep.

“Welcome to Citadel Obedient,” Gita beamed, “the contribution of one of the Neeft’s most recent occupants.”

Seeking any sign of habitation, Cadryn found only the yawning emptiness awaiting them from the smaller passages leading off the marshalling yard. “Who was that?”

“Belligerent Peace, High Militant of the Assemblage, six centuries ago . . . She came north with an army to pacify the mountain tribes, built this citadel around the Neeft’s base.” Gita related this information with pleasure, clambering from one shoulder to the other, clearly enjoying the chance to show itself superior in knowledge.

“What happened to them?” Cadryn asked, keeping his back to a barren stretch of wall, as if the warriors of the faith would come pouring out of the barracks.

“I don’t know,” Gita said, “You’ll have to ask Encara sometime-”

“Encara?” Cadryn asked.

“Historian, Night Shift, pretty hair . . . anyway, over there is Korbinian’s laboratory.”

As Cadryn’s eyes adjusted to the light of the marshaling yard, a stooped doorway lit from within caught his attention on the far side of the walled area. Feeling an unnatural need to be around other people, he set off at a jog, forcing Gita to take flight.

This feeling was something that had been growing since his separation from the continuous cohabitation of the Academy and dense throngs of the capital. He felt cut off from the rest of the Empire, in this strange place at the fringes. As he ducked inside the chamber, the feeling did not abate.

Korbinian’s laboratory was an exercise in madness. Tomes of every shape and size occupied shelves, tables, chairs, and even spelling onto the floor in an absentminded jumble. Vials and jugs of constantly moving and brightly colored liquids filled the rest of the flat spaces. From the roof, hung a menagerie of animals in various states of preservation, and an equal number of exotic plants. The smell was a noxious blending of charnel house and herb garden.

Cadryn coughed loudly, catching the attention of an onyx skinned man in pocked and singed clothing slid into view.

“Korbinian, I got a newbie here!” Gita squeaked, diving across the bottom of the doorway.

Korbinian’s hair hung in unnaturally hued braids of red, green, and blue, to his mid-back as he backed into the room, arms wrapped around a small cask. He bore no less than three injuries in various states of healing that were visible. As he turned to set down the cask, it was his eyes, the color of the ever lurking fog outside, that drew Cadryn’s own.

The alchemist smiled with those eyes, even if his lips remained locked in a pensive expression of assessment. His complexion gave him away as being from across the vast sand sea in the extreme south, beyond even the Gravanik States that even now challenged the Empire. That, of course, was unlikely, no one from that distant land came north in centuries. Southerner living in the Empire were older immigrants, members of the Alchemists Guild, one and all. A scrambling sound near his feet drew Cadryn back to the present.

Gita crawled up Cadryn’s back, to peer over the edge of one shoulder at the man, shaking lightly.

“Don’t mind Gita,” Korbinian murmured while dusting off a hand, he offered it to Cadryn in the usual Provalian greeting. “She’s a little bit of a coward, thinks I engage in unsafe experimentation . . . Name’s Korbinian Drast, pleasure to meet you.”

“Cadryn Bence,” he answered, shaking it.

“Ah, Bence, so you’re from our side of the war then.”

Cadryn’s jaw bunched, Korbinian meant that his father was Provalian, that he was a bastard, of the conqueror, not the conquered. He was having flashbacks to meeting Wazo for the first time. “Yes, my father served with the Emperor, and fell in service to the cause.” The last part was a lie; but Cadryn learned from his experiences in the Academy that it went a long way to avoiding awkward follow up questions.

“And what cause is that, I wonder,” Korbinian whispered aside, as if to someone just over his own shoulder. “What cause brings you my humble abode then? Son of the Emperor’s man,” he asked with an almost conspiratorial air.

“Rockslide,” Gita chirped, eyeing a skinned weasel hanging from a nearby rafter. “Sil wants you to help us clear it.”

“She would,” replied the wizened man, cracking his knuckles, “How bad is it?”

“Oh, about a two-banger I’d say.” Gita replied.

A slightly mad gleam came over the Alchemist’s face and he slapped Cadryn on the shoulder, shattering his festering ire over the discriminations of the past. “Come on then, lad, we’ve got some explosives to haul!”

*****

As he marched along behind the cart carrying the bulk of the supplies Korbinian had decided they might need to clear the rockslide, Cadryn adjusted the straps of the large, clay vessel he carried across his shoulders. It contained something the alchemist had referred to merely as ‘the catalyst’ and had repeatedly warned him should not come anywhere near what was in the cart, unless Cadryn desired a ‘violent and tragically avoidable end’, something he did not, so far, desire.

But if they kept marching through the seemingly endless fogbanks, he might change his mind. The fog kept playing tricks on the mind, he’d see movements that weren’t, shapes that vanished. Considering it, he waved down Gita, who had taken to swooping in and out of the fog at random intervals.

“What did you mean before? About the bastards that did this to you?” he asked.

“Gita landed on a boulder near the road and gestured with her wings at herself. “Did ‘this’, turned me into a gods damned Batsel.”

“What were you before?”

“A Unicorn, what do you think? I was human, a Seneschal in Throne-home, I had a future.”

“Right,” Cadryn replied, finding Sil’s eye roll more justified by the second. “A chosen of the Emperor himself, no doubt.”

“You don’t believe it, I get it, hell, and I understand it.” Gita flapped into the air, careened in to land on his shoulder, then added in a whisper. “But you got to think about it. What better way to get rid of a rival?”

A knife in the ribs? Cadryn thought.

As if sensing the notion, Gita hissed. “Killing someone’s easy, especially in the capital, but getting away with it? Well that’s another matter, bodies can be located, ghosts summoned to answer . . . but if you just vanish? Well, maybe you lost your nerve. Now that’s a lot easier to hide.”

The idea cast new light on Cadryn’s own situation, and his conversation with Sefton. A whoop from ahead snapped him out of it. Korbinian had pulled the cart’s horse to a halt and was clambering down from the bench. “Set that down for now,” he called out to Cadryn. “Gita, go be a dear and check the cliff face for more loose rocks, don’t want to make this worse instead of better.”

“Right away, Alchemist Drast,” Gita replied, and took flight.

Cadryn set down the Catalyst, gently, and joined Korbinian. The man looked to be in the midst of his fourth decade of life, but there were tells in his movements that betrayed older bones within the flesh. “I could guess at your reason for being sent out here.” He said.

Korbinian chuckled, “you’d be wrong. Besides, immortality isn’t a crime to the Alchemist’s Guild. There is a standing reward for anyone bringing the collective closer. No, son, my crimes are of a different nature.”

Cadryn chewed on his words, looked up the broken cliff for any sign of the Batsel. “Do you think—“

“That Gita’s telling the truth? No, I don’t. She turned up in a shipment of supplies one day, with a note telling us to take good care of ‘the annoying pest’. Sefton, never one to argue with instructions, assigned the beast to the day shift as a spire inspector. Maybe that’s his sense of humor showing, maybe, he’s just that literal. Either way, none of that should have a bearing on your own conclusions.” He grabbed a pick from the cart and handed it to Cadryn, “Now come along and help an old man move some rocks.”

As they worked, digging a pair of holes, one in the center of the fall, the other in the edge of the slide. Gita did not return, and after they’d finished, and waited several minutes, Korbinian paused in lighting his pipe to kick a rock off the edge of the road. “Damn beast should have been back by now, we don’t have all day.”

“We don’t? Cadryn asked, enjoying the break from the digging.

“I, don’t have all day then,” Korbinian corrected, then, with a shrug, began to climb the rock fall. “Come on then, let’s go see what’s keeping her.”

A short time later, the pair stood, much more winded, atop the overlooking ridge the rock fall had been birthed from. Splitting up, they each completed a quick survey of half of the ridge, turning up no sign of the Batsel. As he walked back to where they’d climbed up, Cadryn found Korbinian staring at a large hole in the ground.

“She’s not in there, I looked,” he said.

“No shit,” the Alchemist replied, “I’m not looking for something, I’m looking at something.”

Cadryn joined him, and looking where the alchemist’s eyes roamed he saw it too, and felt stupid for having missed it. “There was something buried here.”

“Was, being the operative term.” Korbinian added, pointing to the highly regular edges of the hole, “Someone dug it up, and from the looks of it dragged it off into the woods.”

Cadryn could barely make out the line of trees in the distance, then, movement. Gita was returning, flying at speed, loud calls of distress proceeding her. “Well, that doesn’t look good,” he said.

“Oh no, rarely is,” Korbinian replied.

Gita crashed down beside them on the grassy back of the ridge, fur lathered with mist, panting. It took her some time to recover enough to actually get out words. “There . . . digging . . . relics . . . cultists!”

“Cultists?” Cadryn asked, fear, and excitement, filling him in equal measure.

“It’s probably just barrow raiders, we see them all the time on the frontier.” Korbinian drawled.

Cadryn poured out some of his canteen on Gita, and, filling his palm, held it for her to drink.

Recovering quickly, she fixed the alchemist with glinting eyes. “Do Barrow Raiders arranged their finding in patterns, and chant creepy litanies?”

Korbinian cursed, and made the sign of the Upright Man. “No, I better get back and alert the others. You two keep an eye on them till we return?”

“Will do,” Cadryn said, trying to contain himself.

“See that you do,” Korbinian said, icy promise edging into his voice. “Hate for you to die on your first day.”