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[Laufey]

Chapter 9

If you want a rationale
It isn't very hard to see
Stop and think it over, pal
The guy sure looks like plant food to me.

‘Feed Me’, Little Shop Of Horrors

As the day of the Garden Fair dawned, Dekaras wished that such had indeed been the case. He hoped that his plan would work, and he was reasonably certain that it would, but there was no way to be completely certain of it, and he didn’t much like that. He always worked meticulously on the details on every plan he ever conceived, and he really hated depending on luck. A backup plan to slow Ravonar down, that was what he needed, and also a way of keeping the home front protected. Well, he had an idea about how to manage both of those, actually. The means of administration had been the trickiest part to figure out, but given that it was such a warm and sunny day, he should be able to choose the subtlest one. If everything went as it should, Rory Ravonar would never even guess that anything was wrong.

The Garden Fair was set on the grounds of the Tharchion’s own palace, a sprawling park that could easily have accommodated several smaller houses. Each participant in the contest had been instructed to bring a tent in which the plants participating in the contest could be housed. The idea was that they should remain secret and hidden from the other contestants until they were brought out and displayed in public. The Tharchion himself would do the judging of course, along with a few other high ranking Red Wizards who had elected to not compete, and the judges would be wandering among the tents before the main event took place. Dekaras had decided to do a little wandering of his own. Of course he wouldn’t be allowed into any of the tents, but that was a minor concern only. What he needed was to find Rory Ravonar, and then to incapacitate him. Not kill him…that would cause untold problems with the Tharchion after all.

Ravonar, as it happened, was perched on a broad chair in front of the big yellow silk tent that housed his contribution to the contest. The wizard was sweating heavily in the mid-morning sun, now and then pausing to wipe his face with an elegant handkerchief that he kept tucked into the sleeve of his robe for comfort. In between that, he chatted amiably with all who approached him, though he studiously avoided mentioning exactly what kind of plant he would be displaying to the Tharchion. Dekaras didn’t even bother to attempt to approach unseen – it was broad daylight and there were no good hiding places in sight. Besides, it wouldn’t be necessary. Ravonar’s smirk as he noticed the assassin made Dekaras momentarily think of a shark. A fat and rather obnoxious shark, but still a shark.

“Ah…” the wizard said. “My dear future servant. Thought you’d stop by to see your future Master, did you? How touching.”

Dekaras shrugged. “The matter is not yet settled,” he said. “I think I will not start packing just yet.” He carefully avoided making any sudden movements that might alert any of the five muscular bodyguards flanking the wizard. “But I have always been one to honor my contracts, so if you should win the contest I will be at your service.”

Ravonar’s smirk widened a little. “Not ‘if’, ‘when’. My victory is inevitable. I think I will very much enjoy watching you grovel before me, almost as much as seeing Elvira Odesseiron fuming at the mouth as I have you work against her.”

This was the tricky part, of course. Dekaras knew that he couldn’t afford to show any particular emotion, and he thought he managed it, although he got a brief and interesting visual of Ravonar’s decapitated head with an apple stuffed into its gaping mouth. “That I can easily imagine,” he said. “And I see no reason why any future collaboration between the two of us should need to be…unpleasant in any way. Not when it could be mutually beneficial instead.” He managed to instill just a little bit of unease into his voice, just enough that he hoped it would make Ravonar think he was flustered enough to want to ingratiate himself. Typical Red Wizard arrogance. He seriously thinks that his magic and social position are enough to make me fear him.

“You mean I shouldn’t have you whipped for your previous impertinence? Hm…perhaps I might be persuaded to do otherwise. Properly respectful you could be very useful to me.”

“So kind of you, Master Ravonar,” Dekaras murmured, and he bowed deeply over the wizard’s imperiously outstretched arm with its be-ringed fingers. “May I?”

Ravonar nodded, looking about ready to burst with satisfaction. Had he been able to read the assassin’s mind as he briefly touched his lips to the Ravonar Signet Ring, he would have felt far less confident about the future than he did.

-*-

Inside a vast, purple tent decorated with glittering silver stars, Edwin Odesseiron sat on a small wooden stool, sulking. After his experiment with Simulacrums had been revealed, both his teacher and his mother had decided that he needed to be carefully supervised so he couldn’t cause further mischief. His mother hadn’t let him or the clones out of her sight since they had got here, and in fact she hadn’t even let him out of the tent. No fair. I wanted to go with Teacher Dekaras and look at the fair. There were all sorts of interesting stands and stalls about, and performers of many kinds, including a puppet theatre with a very fascinating dragon puppet. But no, he was stuck here, with his stupid Simulacrums, watching that stupid plant.

The boy glared at Elvira 2, and then stuck his tongue out at it. At once there was a sharp yet feminine clearing of a throat. “Manners, darling,” his mother said. She hadn’t even turned around from her scrutiny of a treatise on the ideal corpses to be used for zombie creation.

“I wasn’t doing anything!”

“Not that tone with me, Edwin. Now behave yourself.”

Edwin sulked some more, but he did it silently. Elvira 2 seemed to be looking back at him, and he got the uncomfortable sensation that the plant was smirking. It was even larger than before, far larger than a horse, almost the size of an elephant. Now and then the creeping vines would creep tentatively in Edwin’s direction, but then they would pause before the wards erected around it. Edwin’s mother had put them up herself this morning, declaring that while she didn’t mean to let Edwin run about unsupervised, she also didn’t mean to let him close to Elvira 2 again. The same went for the clones, who were sitting on identical stools on either side of Edwin, wearing identically pouting expressions.

“At least she’s big enough,” Edwin 2 whispered, looking up at Elvira 2.

“I think Mother fed her some more blood last night,” Edwin replied, his own eyes fixed upon the grinning maw of the plant.

“Human?” Edwin 3 said, his eyes big and round. His nose had been healed by now, making him able to speak normally.

“Ogre. She summoned one in, and the plant just swallowed it.” Edwin bit his lip a little nervously, looking at Elvira 2. The vines were lashing now. “But I think it’s still hungry…the ogre would have gone away when the spell ran out, wouldn’t it? I don’t think it’ll stop eating any time soon.”

All three Edwins looked at Elvira 2, and silently agreed. The plant wouldn’t stop eating, of course it wouldn’t. It would want more blood, and more, and more. And where would that come from? “Well,” Edwin 2 said. “it just has to win the competition, right? Then maybe it can be…” He paused, unwilling to use the word ‘destroyed’ in front of the plant. Elvira 2 was still looking back, ominously silent.

“Maybe,” Edwin 3 said. “Or maybe it’ll eat all of Thay!”

“Oh, shut up,” Edwin said. “Mother and Teacher Dekaras won’t let that happen, you know that.” Then he paused, and shot a worried glance in the direction of his father. Galen was humming happily as he walked around Elvira 2, admiring her. Now and then he poured a little water onto her, from a small green watering pail. “Hope nobody else will either.”

Galen noticed him paying attention, and gave a cheerful wave. “Good to see you taking an interest in botany, son! Isn’t it wonderful what can be achieved with a bit of water, some plant food, and proper stimulation?”

Edwin and the Simulacrums looked at each other. They didn’t tell him? Might be better that way – think what he might have done if they had. “Yes father,” Edwin said in a monotonous voice. “It’s great. Really great.”

“Yes,” Edwin 2 echoed.

“Really great,” Edwin 3 chimed in.

“I’m quite sure she’ll win too,” Galen beamed. “Though a bit of friendly competition is always welcome, of course.” Then he turned his head a little and noticed the way his wife’s back had suddenly gone very rigid and that she had stopped unrolling her scroll. “Er…not that there is any danger whatsoever of me losing that bet of course. Heh…not at all.”

“So I hope,” Elvira said, not turning around to look at him. “And you had better hope the same, husband. If you do fail, then I will take over the feeding of that plant, and I will make certain it is done properly.”

-*-

Once he had set his plan in motion, Dekaras retreated back into the crowd, not wanting to have Rory Ravonar’s attention focused on him. He made certain to stay close enough to keep an eye on the tent though, and on the wizard. Quite a few people kept coming and going, but Ravonar stayed put. Over the next hour or so, the assassin patiently watched, and then he noticed something curious. A tall Red Wizard, his bald head decorated with a swirling pattern of spiral tattoos, was walking out of Ravonar’s tent, presumably having viewed whatever plant was being displayed inside. There was something about the man that seemed a little off though. Dekaras had happened to pay particular attention to him as he went inside, because he had observed that the tattoos were actually somewhat similar to a pattern he had seen on the berserkers of Rasheman, and had found some amusement in the irony of that. The wizard’s skin was unusually tanned for a native Thayvian – or rather, it had been, when he went inside the tent. Now it was paler, and there was a strange yellow tint to it. Also, the man’s gait was stiffer than before, and a little jerky. Something was definitely wrong with him.

Now that he had noticed it, Dekaras could observe the same phenomenon elsewhere. Certain of the faces in the crowd had taken on that same yellowish hue, and invariable the eyes of the people owning those faces were distant and a little glassy, as if they were deep in thought. Mind control? Dekaras wondered. But at least some of them are fairly powerful wizards, and would likely be protected. And there are too many of them, Ravonar couldn’t possibly have cast that many charm spells on his own. Some sort of enchanted device? Poison? Something related to Ravonar’s mysterious plant, perhaps? It seemed a very good idea to find out, and soon. A slow but steady stream of people passed into Ravonar’s tent, and there seemed to be more going in there than into any of the others. Not all who went in came out with yellow skin and glassy eyes, but far too many.

The tent was carefully guarded still – but perhaps there was another way to find out. If he could get a closer look at one of the afflicted people, he might be able to determine what was causing the problem. Dekaras hesitated briefly. It would mean turning his back on Ravonar – but the wizard was still in the same spot he had been for the past hour. And what else could he do? He couldn’t remain inactive, or whatever was happening would get worse. He could go back to the Odesseiron tent, but that seemed a premature action, since he had no solid information to help form a battle plan and Elvira was certainly capable of providing all the defense that might be necessary for the moment. He knew which spells she had memorized last night, and they were invariably nasty ones.

That decided, the assassin silently followed one of the yellow-skinned people, one of the Tharchion’s own guards, no less. Now that he was closer, and knew what to watch for, the discoloration was even more visible. This wasn’t anything even remotely resembling a healthy human variant, this looked more like what you’d see in an aging drunk finally betrayed by his abused body. The guard was walking slowly, not looking anywhere but straight ahead, and it was very easy to follow. He headed in a more or less straight line for the large red tent that had been set aside for the judges, a little apart from the others. Currently it would be empty, so there were only two guards outside it. The yellow-skinned man walked calmly up to them, raised his hand as if in a salute, and then rammed his fingers violently up the nose of one of the guards. When he pulled his fist back, wet clumps of gray matter were pulled out along with it, and his victim gave a moist, gurgling moan, dropped to the ground and lay there, arms and legs twitching. That didn’t last for long though. The yellow-skinned man jumped onto him, both feet first, there was a terrible crunching sound as of breaking sticks, and he was still. The surviving guard didn’t waste time with screaming, or getting a panic attack. Instead, he stabbed the yellow-skinned man with his short sword, straight through the belly – and stared with horror as his opponent simply looked at the sword embedded in his body, shrugged, and then proceeded to twist his head off. There was a loud and sharp crack, and it was all over.

Dekaras blinked. He himself was fast, very fast, but whatever the creature in front of him was, it was likely to be a match for him. For all its apparent clumsiness earlier, it was deadly in combat, and impervious to normal harm. Some form of undead, it would seem. A zombie, perhaps? But how could he possibly turn so many people into zombies, so swiftly?

This wasn’t the time or the place for lengthy cogitation, however. Whatever Rory Ravonar’s exact plans were, they needed to be stopped, zombies or no zombies, and a good first step would be dealing with this one. Now, regular weapons clearly wouldn’t work, but perhaps something else… The assassin pulled a small bottle, made from red glass, out of a protectively padded container he carried on his belt. It wouldn’t do to let it break accidentally, after all. Then he threw the bottle, straight at the zombie warrior, and it broke open with a faint tinkling sound.

WHOOOMPH! The explosion was pretty small, but very intense, and Dekaras was glad that he had taken the precaution of shielding his eyes against the bright light. When he lowered his hand again, the zombie was still standing before him, looking down in surprise at what had previously been its chest. By now there was only a large, smoking hole. Oddly enough, the expected smell of overcooked bacon was absent, and instead there was a stench as of burning compost. Also, there were no human organs visible in the wound, not even burnt ones. Only solid, greenish-yellow plant matter.

“Urrrgh?” the zombie remarked, and then it collapsed into a silent heap. Dekaras waited a few seconds until he was certain it wouldn’t stir again, and then carefully approached. Yes, definitely plant matter. Then he noticed a small movement, and a slender green tendril, covered with yellow buds came creeping out of the zombie’s nose and gingerly felt its way across the ground before Dekaras tread it into a slimy green lump. A parasitical plant of some kind, then. And unless I am entirely mistaken, this would be Ravonar’s ‘yellow’ one. The mother plant will most likely be in his tent. Hopefully he has done as he said he would regarding its care…but I cannot know for certain, so I’d better try to get to it as soon as possible. In the distance he could hear a faint scream, suddenly cut off. Presumably, this wasn’t the only zombie with a mission. But before I do anything else, Edwin must be away from this place.

A faint creak behind him, so soft it was almost inaudible, made warning bells go off inside the assassin’s head, and even before his brain had time to process the information being sent to it he threw himself to the side, rolling and then jumping to his feet again. A second zombie had appeared, and its fist had narrowly missed his head. Dull yellow eyes looked blankly back at him as the creature started to move forward. And there was a second one coming from around the corner of the tent…and a third…and then three more. Whatever else you might say about Rory Ravonar, he certainly is an industrious person. Six zombies. Could he fight them all at once? Possibly, if he was lucky enough. But it would only take one blow hitting him if they were as strong as the first one, and six zombies meant twelve fists. Not the best possible odds. But perhaps I can improve on those odds a little. As the zombies closed in around him, Dekaras made his move.