Chapter Twenty-Nine

There was a stranger in Reinmar’s bedroom, standing in front of the mirror on the wall and studying himself carefully. More remarkably still, the stranger had put on Reinmar’s best suit of clothes. The man was taller and better-proportioned than Wirnt, although his features were not entirely dissimilar—but they were no more similar to Wirnt’s than they were to Gottfried’s, or even Reinmar’s own. The stranger seemed much younger than Wirnt, though not as young as Reinmar, but the gleam in his eye was as bright and as startling as the luminosity that Reinmar had seen in the eyes of the aged priest in the underworld as he offered Marcilla’s comatose body to the avid flower.

The hectic nature of that brightness did not reveal itself fully until the stranger turned to look Reinmar in the face. It was as if the intelligence behind the eyes had caught fire, burning out of control. This is a madman, Reinmar thought—which seemed to make it all the more remarkable that the man might have been mistaken for his father’s younger brother, had his father had a brother.

It was not until the sweetly cloying odour that saturated the atmosphere of the room released its grip on his thoughts that Reinmar realised that the resemblance might be less remarkable than it seemed.

“Damn you, child,” the stranger said. “Have you nothing in your wardrobe that a man might wear with pride?”

“Grandfather?” Reinmar asked, falteringly.

He could not quite believe it, no matter how likely it had seemed as a matter of calculation. He was too accustomed to seeing Luther Wieland as a frail old man, as broken in spirit as he was in body. This man was not merely hale, but keen and poised in spite of the uncanny fervour in his eyes. He still seemed mad, but he also seemed a man of action, a man of real power.

“You’re a liar as well as a fool,” Luther Wieland said, accusingly. “Were you saving the draught for your pretty plaything? Was not your first loyalty to me? And why should you worry, when you had such a powerful potion? Did you not know what you had? You could have diluted it a hundred times and filled a rack in the cellar with the produce. Well, it’s mine now. Did you really think that your hiding-place was safe, when you knew full well that this room belonged to me when I was a boy like you?”

The stranger stabbed a stern finger in the direction of the slit in the wall, from which the mortar had been snatched. The questions poured out of him, glorying in their own profusion; it was as if a rusted tap had finally been freed to turn. There was nothing loving in the stranger’s expression. His eyes were darker as well as brighter than the old Luther Wieland’s, and the darkness was not merely a matter of colour. Reinmar did not doubt that this man was as dangerous as his enfeebled grandfather had been harmless.

“Monsters are coming, grandfather,” Reinmar said, swiftly. “An entire legion of them. There are men of a sort, albeit deformed, but there are half-men too, whose human flesh is mixed with animal. There will be worse, if Sergeant Vaedecker’s judgement can be trusted. All Eilhart is panic-stricken. This is not a good time to make yourself manifest as a sorcerer.”

“Sorcerer!” the rejuvenated Luther’s laugh was bitterly sarcastic. “Is that what you think, child? I thought you had more sense than that ungrateful whelp of mine. I thought that you and I had an understanding. I am no magician, but I am a man. I am everything that a man is supposed to be—which is to say that I am not a wasted, helpless, fatuous cripple, victimised by cruel time. I am a man, Reinmar, alive and capable of feeling. All the pain is gone, and all the ignominy. Gods, what a fool I was! To consent to become what my vile son made of me! What a wreck of a man I was miserably content to be, when all that I needed to restore myself was an occasional goblet of wine. How could I be so stupid? I have always tried to give you better advice than that snake, Gottfried, but I was never capable of giving strength to it till now. Listen to me Reinmar, and listen well: time is the ultimate traitor, the worst of all curses. Today you have the gift of youth, but through all your tomorrows you will pay an extortionate price for that fleeting privilege. Fight, Reinmar—fight the tyranny of time with every last vestige of your strength and spirit. Never consent to be bound by its curses. Fight, with every magic that the world can offer!”

“Grandfather,” Reinmar said, feeling quite weak now that the odour of the nectar of dreams had vanished from the air, “you do not understand how that liquor you have drunk is fed and formed. It is the produce of living human flesh.”

“Of course it is!” the restored man answered, throwing his arms up flamboyantly. “And how is your own youth any different? Is its origin any more comfortable to contemplate, when seen with an analytical eye? All flesh is the product of flesh, all youth the product of youth. Our mothers are diminished by the childbirth that makes us, and we accept their willing sacrifice as the price of our own virility. What real difference is there between the sacrifice of maternal flesh and the one that you saw? We are men, child, and we must sustain our manhood against the vicious ravages of time by any means we find. If we must fight to do it, we must fight with all our strength—and we ought to love the battle with all the fury of our hearts.”

The leather belt that Luther had fastened about his waist was not Reinmar’s, nor was the pouch attached to it. Those had come from his own trunk. Reinmar assumed that the phial he had stolen from the underworld was now in that pouch. He wondered how much Luther had drunk. Even a single sip might qualify as an overdose.

“You won’t find it easy to leave the town, grandfather,” Reinmar said stubbornly, “And if you stay, you’ll be recognised soon enough as an enemy. Our neighbours are in a mood to turn on anyone they can blame for their plight.”

“How will I be recognised? Will you denounce me as a sorcerer, even though I swear to you that I am a man like any other? Is there any man in Eilhart who would recognise me, if I were in any room but this, regarded by any eye but yours? Why should you or anyone think me an enemy? Why did you bring me the dark wine, if you did not want to see me as a man?”

As before, there were far too many questions in this torrent for Reinmar to formulate any coherent reply to any one of them. They were well enough formed, and challenging, but they were too abundant and too inconsequential to form part of any rational conversation. Reinmar looked more closely at his grandfather’s fine new features, and saw that they had something of the same reckless quality. Luther Wieland rejuvenated was a handsome man—considerably more handsome than his son, Gottfried—but there was a profoundly unnatural extravagance in the colour of his cheeks and the heat of his gaze. The life restored to Luther by the nectar of the underworld was too feverish, too assertive in its grip upon his soul—but how could he possibly have resisted the temptation to take too generous a dose of the concentrated essence, when he had been so weak and tremulous before?

“What will you do, grandfather?” Reinmar asked, struggling to keep his voice quiet and even. “Will you fight for Eilhart, or against it?”

“Am I a man or a monster?” Luther retorted.

“At this moment, I am not entirely sure,” Reinmar told him. “That is why I ask.”

“If I fight at all, I shall fight for glory,” the handsome man assured him. “If I condescend to fight, I shall fight for love of conflict, because I am a man.”

“It seems to me,” Reinmar said, pensively, “that a surfeit of humanity might be almost as dangerous and almost as daemonic, in its way, as a lack of it.”

“Then you’re a fool and a coward, child,” Luther snapped back at him. “Human life is sensation, and the best sensation is luxury. There is no higher end.” He moved away from the mirror at last, and made as if to push past Reinmar and leave the room.

Reinmar stood where he was, and would not be thrust aside. “What will you do with the phial and its contents, grandfather?” he asked.

“Keep it and use it, what else?” the other informed him, scornfully. “You matched your wits against mine and you lost. The girl can fend for herself, and you must let her go her own way. In the end, she’ll heed the summons graved within her flesh, and there’s nothing you can do to hold her back. Now stand aside—and never get in my way again. Never.”

Reinmar hesitated, but he could hardly draw his blade against his own grandfather, so he stood aside and let Luther stride from the room. As he listened to the retreating footsteps, as Luther bounded down the steps two at a time, he felt an odd thrill within his own limbs. It was as if some slight leakage of the rejuvenated man’s joy in the recovery of his power had entered into him.

Reinmar found the stray piece of mortar on the floor, and replaced it in the slot in the wall. Perhaps it was a good thing, he thought, that the nectar had been taken out of his hands. Perhaps the responsibility had been too much to bear. But his hands were trembling when he heard footsteps ascending the stair again, in a much more sedate fashion.

When Gottfried Wieland appeared in the doorway of his son’s room his expression seemed incredibly tired and drained by comparison with Luther’s. It was also pained, and accusing.

“You brought him dark wine,” Gottfried said dully. “In spite of everything you saw, you brought him the wine of dreams.”

“It’s worse than that,” Reinmar confessed. “I stole a little of the nectar from which the dark wine is made. I would not have given it to him, but he found it. I think he has taken too much.”

“The slightest sip would be too much for him,” Gottfried replied, acidly. “He’s been too long unhinged to gain anything from luxury but recklessness.”

“He seemed a little more clear-headed when he left,” Reinmar suggested. “The madness was less intense than it was while the odour lingered.”

“Why didn’t you give it to the witch hunter?” Gottfried demanded.

“I don’t know,” Reinmar said, defensively. “I don’t even know why I took it in the first place.”

“Have you eaten?”

Reinmar, slightly startled by the change of subject, put his hand reflexively to his belly. “No,” he admitted.

“You must. Everyone now seems certain that there’ll be fighting tonight, even if the worst of it is some days off. Who’s your commander and where’s your station?”

“Vaedecker—I think he asked for me. The storehouse at the neck of the river.”

Reinmar saw Gottfried’s eyes grow slightly wider. “That’s a compliment you might regret,” he said, “but he demanded Sigurd too and I had to send him, not an hour ago. If that’s where you are there’s all the more need to fill your belly. You haven’t much time, I suppose?”

“Less than half an hour now,” Reinmar admitted.

Gottfried was already drawing him out of the room and down the stair. “All the servants have gone to their families,” the wine merchant said. “Godrich asked for a station at the warehouse, and got it, but it would not have been diplomatic for me to do likewise. I’m on the western approach—difficult ground, but tenable. We’ll eat what we can in the kitchen, and then make parcels of anything left over. We’ll split a bottle of hock now, and we’ll each take another with us—but you’ll have to share what you eat and drink at your post.”

When they got to the kitchen they found that its supplies had already been severely depleted by the servants, but a man as careful as Gottfried always kept good reserves. There was no bread left, but there were various salted meats and pickled vegetables, a few bruised apples, a little butter and some sugar. Reinmar and his father ate while they packed up what they could.

“If there are no servants here,” Reinmar dared to ask, “who will tend to Marcilla?”

“Marguerite might look in, if I leave a key with her father,” Gottfried said. “If not, the gypsy will have to fend for herself if and when she wakes.”

“Where’s Ulick?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Reinmar paused before saying: “This impending battle really isn’t my fault, father.”

Gottfried looked genuinely startled by that. “Of course it’s not.” he said. “I told you before not to blame yourself. It was inevitable from the moment the witch hunter arrived. The monsters began massing before you left in the wagon—I was a fool to send you out, but I was afraid that we might all be thrown in jail if Luther or Albrecht said the wrong thing, or nothing at all. This is a settlement of debts that were contracted long before you and I were born, when Eilhart first became involved in the trade in dark wine. I always knew that I couldn’t stop the trade, but I hoped to postpone the reckoning a while, and I did. None of this is your fault. None of it.”

“I tried to destroy the supplies of wine stored in the underworld—but I stole a measure of the nectar too. That, I fear, was twice a provocation.”

“These things need no provocation,” Gottfried assured him. “Their only intent is harm and their subtler sorceries are worse, in the long run, than brute assault. They have raised an army to fight von Spurzheim, not to punish you. If they desire to do that too—and they might—they’ll use subtler means than cold iron and brute force. Eilhart is under threat because the world is under threat, and the world is under threat because there is malice abroad, not because of anything that you or I, or even that old fool Luther, has done. Don’t blame yourself for giving Luther what he wanted so desperately—the desire was his, after all, and the craving was all that was keeping him alive.”

Reinmar could not remember his father ever delivering such a calculated and uncritical speech. It scared him, for it let him know how desperate the situation was. If Gottfried Wieland had been intimidated into giving his generosity free rein, the world must indeed be on the brink of disaster.

“I’m glad Sigurd will be close by, when the battle starts,” Reinmar said, as he finished the dregs of wine from the jar that he and his father had been passing back and forth.

“So am I,” said Gottfried. “If you have to stand back-to-back with anyone, choose him. If you have to slip past Vaedecker to seize the position, do it.”

“And who will you stand back-to-back with, if the fighting comes to that?” Reinmar asked.

“I’ll make up my mind about that when I’ve seen how the fighting goes,” Gottfried told him, dourly. “Some hardened infantryman, I suppose. Not one of my fellow tradesmen, if I can help it—and not one of von Spurzheim’s zealots. With luck, all I’ll have to do is stand and cheer while the Reiksguard cavalry charges from the marketplace and the bowmen let fly. You’d best go now. I have to make sure that the shop and the cellars are locked up as tightly as possible—there’s something about a battle that loosens people’s respect for their neighbours’ property.” “But you’ll leave a key for Marguerite?” Reinmar said. “If you insist. Go. Take an extra jar for Sigurd.” Reinmar obediently picked up an extra jar of wine, although he was already more than amply burdened. Then he said goodbye, hoping as he said it that it would not be the last goodbye he ever had to offer, and that it would not be the last that his father ever had to receive.