Chapter Thirty-Five

The soldiers and the townsmen had been busy all morning gathering everything that might be of further use, but there were far too many stinking corpses lying outside the barricades to have been properly examined. The blade that Reinmar eventually appropriated was crude, blunt and rusted, but he needed the reassurance of its weight far more than the keenness of its blade. He kept it in his hand while he marched steadfastly over the ridge and into the fir wood surrounding Albrecht Wieland’s house.

There was smoke above the wood, but it was coming from the chimney of the house, not the embers of its timbers. The enemy that had fallen upon the town with such reckless fury had not been here, and no remnants of the hideous army seemed to be lurking in the wood, even though von Spurzheim’s sentries had been withdrawn more than a day before. Reinmar never ceased to look about him as he went along the path, continually glancing over his shoulder to make sure that no one was sneaking up behind him, but the fir wood seemed utterly lifeless. No birds sang, no wind rattled the leaves, and the greenery seemed oddly faded.

When he came in sight of the door of the house, though, he saw that it stood open. That seemed to him to be a bad sign, and he gripped the hilt of his stolen sword more tightly. He approached stealthily, making sure that his boots made no sound as they trod on the soft leaf-litter beside the crudely-laid path that led to the door. When he came to the threshold he paused, listening intently, but he could not hear voices.

He slipped in quietly, and saw soon enough why no voices had been raised. For the time being, at least, the fighting was over.

If Albrecht’s sitting room had been a mess before, it was pure chaos now. The table had been overturned and the chairs flung aside. Wherever there had been a pile there was now a mere scattering of individual objects, some crushed and some shattered.

The five combatants in the struggle had separated now that its fury was done, seemingly to count its cost—although one was so still that he was more likely to be numbered among the counted than the counters, and one so well-confined that she probably ought not to have been reckoned a combatant at all.

Marguerite would probably have cried out when she saw Reinmar, had she not been gagged. She was trussed too, her hands tied behind her and her ankles roped together. She had been set in a corner, probably upright to begin with, but had sunk into a crouch. Albrecht, the apparent corpse, was lying to the left of her, not four feet away.

The man was huddled into an almost-foetal position, his hands having clutched at his belly when he was cut and his knees having been drawn up in agony, so that his hands and thighs shared the work of trying to confine his entrails to their proper place. His brother, Luther, still seemingly young and still seemingly mad—though perhaps no madder, now, than Wirnt—knelt beside him, displaying his empty hands as if appalled by their helplessness.

Reinmar had no doubt at all that the sword that had slit Albrecht’s abdomen was his own, wielded by Wirnt. Wirnt still held it, and still seemed ready to use it, but for the moment he had taken a defensive stance, setting his back against the other wall that extended from the corner where Marguerite crouched. He did not appear to have been injured, but he was panting hard. In his left hand he was holding a flask, which Reinmar recognised as the one that the monks had given to Valeria, and which Valeria had left behind half-full. It was not half-full now, but if Reinmar read the expression of Wirnt’s face correctly, the rest had been spilled rather than drunk.

Until Reinmar came in, Wirnt’s eyes had been fixed on Gottfried Wieland, who was supporting himself against the opposite wall, still upright but hurt by a long cut extending from his left shoulder almost to his midriff, which had leaked so much blood that Gottfried’s shirt and trousers were soaked. Reinmar judged that the cut had scored half a dozen ribs, and must be very painful, but even though the blood-loss seemed massive, it was probably not life-threatening in itself. If infection set in, then Gottfried would certainly have to fight for his life, but for now he was very much alive and fully conscious. Had he a weapon in his hand, he might have made a formidable opponent for Wirnt, who was smaller and less athletic, but he had been forced to drop his sword in the course of the brawl, and it lay beneath Wirnt’s foot. For that reason, if for no other, Gottfried was content to keep his back to the wall, offering no obvious threat to his mad nephew.

Marguerite and Gottfried both looked imploringly at Reinmar when they saw him, but neither spoke. Marguerite was silent because she had no option; Gottfried, presumably, because he did not know what to say.

Wirnt did.

“It was not my fault,” was what he said first, and he was quick to amplify his claim. “I had no intention of causing injury to anyone, my father least of all—but he would not give me the wine. It was a purely private dispute, between father and son, that would never have turned to bloodshed if those who had no right to interfere had not thrown themselves into the quarrel. First this maniac arrives, calling my father brother, insisting that my father should take the draught himself. He was the one who forced me, in the end, to draw my sword, precisely because he had none of his own, and required a show of force to be controlled—except, of course, that he was too furious to be controlled, even by the sight of a naked blade. In time, I dare say, he would have seen sense—but then this perfect fool arrives, no sooner seeing my blade than he draws his own, and his opinion is that no one should touch the wine. Even then, we might have settled the argument as civilised men, if he would only have consented to sheath his blade while we talked—all the more so given that the real object of his ire was this creature that he called father—but he insisted on keeping the weapon handy.

“As soon as I realised the full truth of the situation I became conciliatory—a peacemaker, through and through—but my attempts to calm the situation were fruitless. There was a point, I assure you, when I almost ceased to care whether my father let me have the little measure of wine he had, because I realised how negligible it was by comparison with the other supply—the one that my Uncle Luther swore that he had hidden in the cellar. Far better, I told them, that we should all join forces in order that one or two of us could move to intercept the gypsy girl before she could make much headway southwards, while someone waited here for your arrival, in case you had managed to retain the prize. It was all so very simple… so very simple… except that your father and his father could not be quiet, and Albrecht simply would not surrender that trivial draught. And so it came to blows, with the result that you see. I wounded them both, I will confess, but it was not my fault.”

Reinmar listened until Wirnt had finished, because he knew that he had to understand what had happened, but as soon as the torrent of words sputtered and dried up, he addressed his grandfather. “Is he dead?” he asked, meaning Albrecht.

“Not yet,” Luther replied, dolefully, meaning that it would take a miracle to save him.

“Father?” was Reinmar’s next enquiry.

“It’s a shallow cut for all the gore,” Gottfried reported, grimly. “I won’t die, but I can’t deny that I’m weak and all-but-useless. If anyone kills him, it will have to be you. If you weren’t my son, I’d say have at him and the best of luck, but if you have what he wants, it might save a deal of trouble if you gave it to him and let him go.”

“Do you have what I need?” Wirnt wanted to know.

“Yes I have,” Reinmar said, seeing no need at all to prove it. “Perhaps you should try to take it, if you dare.”

Luther smiled at that, but the smile was humourless.

“This is the family business, after all,” Wirnt said. “Even now, there is no reason for us to be enemies. I did not mean to hurt him. Even now, what I want is reconciliation, and harmony. I need the nectar, but once I have it, I am more than willing to make treaties and contracts. Von Spurzheim is dead, and half his entourage. There will be soldiers in Eilhart for years to come, and witch hunters in the hills, but nothing fundamental has changed. There are other battles to be fought, other crusades to be mounted, and the soldiers and witch hunters will see soon enough that they will be more profitably employed elsewhere. We are businessmen, are we not? Let us behave like honest tradesmen.”

“If you can kill him,” Gottfried Wieland said to his son, “I’d be obliged if you’d do it soon.”

“I believe that I can,” Reinmar said—but his opportunity to try had already vanished. It had been easy enough for him to enter the house unheard even while its occupants were temporarily silent. It was even easier for those who had come after him. He had not the slightest idea that anyone was behind him until he felt an arm slide over his shoulder like a snake and the edge of a dagger laid upon his windpipe.

It was not the man who held the knife to his throat who spoke, though; it was the woman who had come in behind him and now stepped past him.

“My son is right in what he says,” she said, “no matter how far his actions have put him in the wrong. No matter what disasters have caught us up or how badly we are hurt, we are a civilised family. Those of us who are scholars have been long estranged from those of us who are tradesmen, but that was always petty foolishness. Our aim now should be reconciliation.”

Valeria did what no one else had dared to do, placing herself casually at the very centre of the room, so that she could look regally around at all its other occupants, drawn back against its various walls.

All Reinmar could see of the man behind him was the sleeve of his robe, but he guessed that it was Brother Noel before he heard the murmured instruction to drop his weapon. He had no choice but to obey.

Valeria did not seem quite as young as she had when Reinmar had last seen her, although she was still more vibrant than she had been when he first caught sight of her.

“I thought you had gone to the secret valley,” Reinmar said bitterly. “The attack on Eilhart was supposedly not your concern.”

“I had a dream,” was the lady’s reply. She seemed to think it adequate.

Luther stood up and turned his back on his unconscious brother. “Did you come for me?” he asked.

“She came for me,” Wirnt was quick to say. “I am her son.”

“I think you will find that she came for the nectar,” Reinmar said quietly.

“I did not come to hear you play guessing games,” Valeria informed them, impatiently. “I am the only one here who knows what this is all about, and the only one who knows how matters should proceed. I am the trusted one—the only trusted one.”

Reinmar was surprised, but only slightly, by the distinct note of anxiety in her voice. She had been in control of the situation when she had last visited the house, but she knew that things were different now. “None of you is trusted, or ever was, or ever shall be,” he said, boldly. “Yours is a game in which trust has no part, and lust is everything.”

The dagger was drawn more insistently against his throat, but the edge did not break the skin.

“Now the whelp knows everything!” Valeria exclaimed, raising her hand in a languid gesture of contempt. “He is his father’s son, it seems. What a fool you were, Luther, to subject yourself to such as these.”

“Give them what they want, Reinmar,” Gottfried said. “They have all the advantages now. Give them what they want and take Marguerite back to Eilhart. I can walk behind you, while they all find their own road to Hell. My father has had his last chance. From now on, we are our own masters, without obligation.” Reinmar knew that he was speaking hopefully, trying to persuade himself that all might yet be well.

Reinmar knew, however, that all was not well.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why didn’t you bring the nectar when you had the chance, grandfather? And why did Marcilla put it back where you found it? Why does it keep coming back to me?”

“You stole it,” Noel murmured in his ear, jut loud enough for the others to hear. “Thieves must be careful what they steal, lest the objects of their desire should steal them in return. You are ours now, Master Wieland, whether you know it or not.”

“That’s a lie!” Gottfried was quick to say. “All of these are slaves already, but you are not. You should have smashed the phial when you found it, or spilled the liquor into the town sewer to mingle with all the blood it has spilled. Even now, it is not too late.”

“But it is,” Brother Noel insisted.

“Be quiet,” Valeria said, to Gottfried as well as the monk. “I say again, we should not be quarrelling over this. This is a family affair, after all—I include the girl, of course, since she seems so enthusiastic to join our little clan. What you have in your pouch, Reinmar, is what has brought us together after so long apart, and may keep us together in spite of our cuts and bruises. It can make us strong again, after far too many years of weakness.”

“I fought last night to defend the town against monsters out of a nightmare,” Reinmar told her. “I saw my friends killed, and barely escaped death myself. Do you think I am ready now to become part of that nightmare?”

“What better time could there be?” Valeria countered. “But that is not what anyone asks of you, Reinmar. No one here was fighting on the other side last night. We had better things to do with our time, and with our youth. The young do not know the value of youth, Reinmar, but I can assure you that I know it as well as anyone else alive. You might think I use it recklessly, but you will understand one day—as Albrecht understood, though he tried so hard to forget, and as Luther understands again, though he could not always remember it. We all know that it is best to stand aside from the battle that is mundane existence, let alone the kind of battle that you fought last night. Perhaps it is good that you did that, because you need to learn—but there is so much more that you might learn, if you would only seize the opportunity.”

“This is nonsense,” Wirnt said, impatiently. “You may play whatever games you want, mother, but I came here to get the wine of dreams for myself, and I still mean to have it. I can take it, if I must.” He stepped forward, raising his arm slightly, to remind everyone that he still held Reinmar’s sword, and that it was by far the best weapon on display.

The forward step was a mistake, because it brought him close enough to his mother to allow her to reach out and take his wrist—the right wrist—in her own delicate hand. The casual act could have been mistaken for a gesture of affection and reassurance, but it was not.

Wirnt immediately tried to break free, but he could not, and while he struggled, his face grew somewhat older and the grey in his hair increased its dominion over the black. Flesh seemed to melt away from his overgenerous belly, leaving him almost as thin as his father had been. In the meantime, Valeria recovered the tiny fraction of her renewed youth that she had lost since she drank from the flask that Wirnt still held in his left hand.

“Don’t be silly, Wirnt,” Valeria said. Then, to Reinmar, she said: “Sons can be so unruly, but their mothers always have the measure of them, even when their fathers retain no authority at all.”

Reinmar heard Marguerite’s muffled gasp of astonishment, but no one else seemed even faintly surprised by what had happened. As she had openly declared, Valeria was the one who best understood what this was all about, and how it should go—but there was audible anxiety in every sentence that she spoke, no matter how contemptuous the words might be. She knew how the confrontation ought to go, but she was far from certain that it would.

“I will not be your apprentice, lady,” he said.

“Nor I yours,” she replied. “But there is a business to be run and a trade to be organised, and it requires a trusted man. You are a trusted man, now, in every sense of the word.”

“My father runs the business,” Reinmar said. “I have no ambition to replace him before he is ready to be replaced.”

“Take out the nectar, Reinmar,” Valeria said. “Let us all see what this is about.”

“Don’t,” Gottfried said—but Reinmar knew that there was no point in leaving it where it was. He took out the phial, and held it up.

“There is more than enough for all of us to take a sip,” Valeria observed. “The girl too, if she will. It will calm us all, and smooth our negotiations. It will revive those who need reviving—it may even have power enough to save Albrecht’s life.”

It occurred to Reinmar when the sorceress spoke of taking “a sip” that even she had no idea how powerful the nectar was. Luther knew, if he still had enough self-possession to know anything at all, and Noel presumably knew, but Wirnt and his mother did not.

“The last thing I need is medicine of that kind,” Gottfried growled. “I shall not drink, and nor shall my son. Nor will Marguerite.”

“I’ll gladly take your share,” Luther told his son roughly. “Gladly.”

Wirnt opened his mouth as if to advance his own claim, but nothing came out but a croak. He seemed astonished by his sudden weakness, appalled by the consciousness that he had tried to speak to some effect but had only been able to utter a wordless sound that might have been the dying breath of a carrion crow.

Reinmar was still certain that he had never been meant to find his way into the underworld, but he understood now that not everything that he had done there had been his own move in the continuing game. When he had taken up the phial he had yielded to temptation, and had never been free of it since. Even this was not an opportunity to free himself from that temptation, but only to postpone the conflict until another time. He was marked now, and the wine of dreams would follow him wherever he went, because he had penetrated its most precious secret. The events of the previous night might only be a sample of things to come, if he would not join Valeria’s conspiracy.

Valeria was smiling now, but her smile was uneasy. “This is a great day,” she said, although the falseness of her confidence was obvious. “The reunion of a family; the healing of wounds old and new; the beginning of a new enterprise.”

“I will not be part of it,” Gottfried insisted. “Reinmar—”

“Don’t be a fool, Gottfried,” Luther interrupted. “You were young and stubborn when you set your face against this trade—as young as Reinmar is now—but you’re not so young now. You need the wine more than any of us, else you’ll die screaming when that wound turns septic.”

“I will not die screaming,” Gottfried told his father, blending rage and outrage in his tone. “All flesh must wither and die, and all spirit too. Nothing can set that inevitability aside. There is nothing in that phial but delusion, and brief delusion at that. I have seen its promises, and I have seen them fail. I am an honest trader, and I intend to remain one for many years to come. You must make your own choice, Reinmar, but you’ve seen what life has made of me and you’ve seen what life has made of your grandfather.”

“I’ve seen far more than that, father,” Reinmar said. I’ve seen the source of the wine, both the flower and the root of its temptations.”

“You could not save the gypsy,” Valeria told him, although he already knew it, “because she never had the least desire to be saved. She was made to be a dreamer, and nothing could have kept her long awake once she had been called to her dream. Nothing. What could any mere man offer her, when she already had the love of a god?”

“Let me go,” Reinmar said to Brother Noel. “Take the knife away, and I’ll open the phial.”

The monk hesitated, but he had to look to Valeria for instruction.

She nodded, and Noel removed his arm. He even took a step backwards, fully convinced that if things went awry he would have every opportunity to stab Reinmar in the back.

Reinmar transferred the phial from his right hand to his left, but he made no move to open the seal. Instead, he looked at Wirnt. “I believe that you have my sword,” he said.

Wirnt hesitated, and Reinmar saw a sharp glint enter the eyes that gleamed within his cousin’s suddenly-aged face. Wirnt freed his right hand from Valeria’s grip, and made a show of reaching out towards Reinmar—but it was the point that he extended, not the hilt.

“Don’t be silly, Wirnt,” Valeria said, again—but it seemed that Wirnt had heard that particular injunction once too often. He slashed sideways with the blade, seemingly with all the force he could muster—not at Reinmar, but at his mother. The blade sliced into her throat, severing her windpipe and causing blood to fountain from her arteries at either side of her neck.

The expression on her face was one of the utmost astonishment.

As Valeria crumpled to the litter-strewn floor, Wirnt freed the blade again with a sudden wrench, and moved the tip in a slow arc, threatening to cut anyone else who moved.

“Sons can be so unruly,” he said, mockingly, “but mothers must learn to let go. Do you not agree, Cousin Reinmar? Will you not agree with me that I had no choice? She really shouldn’t have tried to favour you over her own son, should she? That wasn’t right. You don’t really want that phial, do you? I shan’t be robbing you by taking it off your hands.”

Reinmar smiled, as if to agree, and held out the object of the other’s fierce desire as if to surrender it.

That was when Brother Noel—who had come late to his vocation—hurled his dagger with all the force he could muster. The blade buried itself to the hilt in Wirnt’s chest, cutting deep into his heart. While Wirnt was falling, Reinmar stepped forward, using his left hand to pluck the sword from the dead man’s nerveless fingers.

The compound stink of blood and shit filled the room, but Reinmar was used to that by now and did not feel the need of a stronger perfume to cloak its vileness. He was now a man to whom the sight and nearness of death came naturally: a man who could anticipate the malice of others and make them pay the price of folly. And why should he not extract such prices in full, given that he was not merely a man who had fought and killed beastmen, and matched wits with fiends, but an honest tradesman?

“The Lady Valeria should have known, if anyone did, how weak the bonds of family affection become, when they are strained by the wine of dreams,” he observed. “You must go away now, grandfather. There is no safety for you here. If you manage to reach Marienburg, tell anyone who asks that there will be no dark wine to be had for a year and more, and none to be had in Eilhart at any future time—not, at least, from the Wieland shop.”

Having said that, he suddenly felt quite tired, but he knew that it was not a decision he would regret within the next few years, so long as he was awake and free of dreams.

“One day, Reinmar,” Luther said, in a low voice, “you will understand. You are too young now, but you will never have Gottfried’s gift of utter insensitivity, no matter how you may try to cultivate it. One day, you will understand.”

Reinmar turned briefly to look for Brother Noel, but the monk had seen Reinmar take back his sword, and he knew the havoc that blade had already wreaked among his brethren. He was running away as fast as his legs would carry him. Reinmar did not expect to see him again. Luther had not moved to follow him as yet, and his attitude suggested that he was in no hurry, but his awkward stance betrayed his deep anxiety.

Reinmar looked down at the fallen bodies of Wirnt and Valeria—which seemed older now than they had before they suffered the fatal blows—before looking up at his grandfather.

“Don’t ask me to give you the nectar, grandfather,” he said. “Don’t try to take it, either. You’ve had your share. Just go.”

Luther seemed to be on the point of arguing, but he was not as mad now as he had been. Recent events had overlaid a new sobriety upon his hard-won youth. He looked hard at his son, but Gottfried was deliberately looking the other way, refusing to see him.

In the end, Luther took one more look at the condition of the flesh on his once-wrinkled hands, and decided that Reinmar was right. He darted a glance in Albrecht’s direction before he left, but did not take the trouble to check whether there was any life remaining in the fallen man.

It was left to Gottfried to haul himself painfully to his feet and make his way to where his uncle lay. His verdict was succinct. “Dead. We can only hope that he lived long enough to know that he was properly avenged.”

When Reinmar looked down again, he saw that Valeria’s corpse was still mutating, although Wirnt’s had settled. Her flesh had shrivelled considerably, so that the skin lay upon her bones like parchment. The blood that had spilled from her gaping wound was now as black as ancient ink, and every bit as dry.

Valeria must have hoped that she was invulnerable, Reinmar supposed, because she knew some petty sorceries. In fact, she had been as vulnerable as anything alive to the whim of the mysterious creature that she worshipped: the dark and playful god whose name he had not yet contrived to discover and probably never would. She had died anxious, perhaps because she understood how capriciously vindictive that whim had become.

Reinmar remembered something that Matthias Vaedecker had said to him. The greatest power our enemies have is not that they can release daemons upon the world, but that they can twist their knives inside the hearts of those we know and love, turning cousin against cousin, brother against brother.

Foremost in his mind, however, was one of the slogans that his father had been so enthusiastic to teach him.

Good wine matures.

“We have to go back now, father,” he said to Gottfried, as he went to free Marguerite and help her to her feet. “The battle is finished, but the war goes on. Eilhart will not be rebuilt in a year—and from now until we all die, there will be people in the town who shudder every time they hear tales of monsters in the hills.”

“There will always be monsters in the hills,” Gottfried said weakly. “We must all learn to live honestly and carefully with our fears, as we must all learn to live honestly and carefully with our lusts and appetites.”

“And with our dreams,” Reinmar said, as he replaced the phial in his pouch, taking great care to ensure that the stopper was secure and that the glass was in no danger of breaking.

He knew exactly where he would hide it, once he was home.