The Warden's Tale

A mundane, a magocrat and a mapmaker approached the main gates of the Flasten stronghold. Two guards waited to block their path.

The mundane, Plin, stepped forward first. The guards stood in non-threatening positions. The gates remained wide open. He stepped back.

"Send Percy," he said, motioning to the mapmaker, who wore bright green robes and cringed. "He actually works here."

The magocrat, Duk, stepped forward next. The guards seemed a little more alert, their eyes watching the threesome. The great maw of the entrance gaped toothlessly. He stepped back.

"Percy, onward!" he cried, causing everyone to jump. "Fulfill your purpose for existence!"

"I'm gonna vomit," the mapmaker said, his face going pale.

Plin took evasive action, grabbing everyone's arms and pulling them into a huddle.

"Percy, you work here. We need to get in. So you need to get us in," he said.
"I ... I don't want to go back," Percy said, swallowing hard. Sweat beaded his forehead.

"Don't want to go back?" Plin said incredulously. "Why, I've half a mind ..."

"We know," Duk interrupted smoothly. "You could inform us as to the travails of the remainder of your thought-inducing organ, but time presses against us like the unwanted bosom of a lusty wench." He smirked as Plin spluttered, then he looked Percy. "Whatever desires you have against commencing through those steely portals, these will not refrain you from penetrating them, as the security personnel stationed at the towering walls will comprehend no shame when you melt under the greasy brimstone I will summon within your soul."

Percy's jaw dropped farther with each word, and finally, he closed it and swallowed, his great Adam's apple bobbing fearfully up and down his throat. He nodded.

The magocrat turned mapmaker, Percy, stepped forward. The guards, entirely suspicious now, blocked his path with a pair of wooden spears.
"Halt. Who goes there?" said one.

"Hey, guys, it's me, Percy," Percy said. He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I've come back to report what I've learned about the drug dealers."

The guards looked past him at Duk and Plin, standing not too far away and watching the exchange closely.

"Aren't those them?"

"Aren't who what?" Percy said.

"Aren't they those?"

"What are you talking about?"

The guard cleared his throat, and the other guard spoke. "Are not those two people standing over there the same two people who were accused of being drug dealers and then set free due to the technicality that while they did indeed try to sell ill-gotten metals they were charged with trying to sell illegal narcotics?"

"He speaks like you," Plin stage-whispered to Duk.

"False!" Duk returned the whisper. "Lies! This wordiness which he attends is far greater than any clause or sentence I have uttered and makes no sense."

Percy and the guards returned each others stares.

"No," Percy said, finally, grinning like a madman.

"No?" The guard remained skeptical.

"No," Percy said, wiping his brow with his sleeve. "No, no no. These ... two ... are witnesses ..." He faltered, and Plin and Duk stepped in.

"To the deaths ..."

"To the demises of the culprits."

"... of those idiots," Plin finished, glaring at Duk, who opened his mouth again. Plin clapped his hand over it.

"So, they're not criminals in any fashion?" the guard asked.

"We have committed no crimes," Duk said forcefully.

"Not in the past 10 minutes, at least," Plin said under his breath.

"Look, let us in," said Percy, who had heard Plin. He patted the guards' shoulders and pushed the spears aside. "There's far more guards in there, right? So if I'm lying, then you'll be the last line of defense, not the first. Makes more sense to let us in, then, I'd think, right? Because ..."

"He's right," said the first guard.

"All right," said the other one, and they stepped back. "Enter."

The mundane and the magocrat hauled the mapmaker through the gates, and the three walked purposefully toward what at least one of them thought was a death sentence.

"This is Tejun's office," Percy said, knocking on a door. Plin looked around uneasily, and Duk stood up straight and proud. "This is who you want to see, right?"

"For truth," Duk said.

"For starters," Plin said. "Tejun's signed order will set us free, but the dux himself needs to get that order."

No one answered the door.

Percy turned away. "Well, I guess no one is home ..."

Plin reached past him and pushed the door open. Inside was a sparsely furnished room, but an open door led to another room. They could hear something that sounded like an constipated moose moaning back there.

Duk walked in, and Plin followed, dragging Percy.

"I didn't know you could fit moose down here," Plin said. "The ceiling seems too low."

They walked into the back room, where they found Tejun, collapsed on the floor, holding his stomach and groaning.

Percy ran up to Flasten's senior warden of security.

"Sir!" he said. "Are you all right?"

"The weard-killer is among us!" the man cried, his hands clutching his side. "He has poisoned me!"

Plin and Duk exchanged glances.

"Weard-killer?" Plin said skeptically. "You mean, another weard?"

Percy helped Tejun to a resting position.

"Your story, mister warden," Duk said. "Prevaricate."

Tejun stared at him. "Lie?"

Duk's smile was poisonous. "If you must, but the truth would be preferred. Death will surely be swifter if such untruths are uttered."

"Oh, a swift death!" Tejun said. "This poison courses slowly around my blood, and will in time reach my heart. But the pain is unbearable. A swift death I would much prefer."

Duk stared at him, his eyes speaking oceans of incredulity. No one had ever taken him up on his threats. He cleared his throat.

"Speak," he said. "Just freaking speak."

********

I can't understand why mapmakers are so stupid. You've had two mapmakers in your little crime ring, and each of them willingly sacrificed themselves in a vain attempt to prove their intelligence. Your first one walked barefoot into a swamp. Your second one tried to dig a tunnel through the peat and got bitten by a snake. Mapmakers are supposed to know this stuff. That's why they're mapmakers. Yet they consistently perform these feats of idiocy.

I would say that I am a retired mapmaker, but that could hardly be the case. The road to Domus is well known. Many people have traveled it. Not everyone takes the same route, for reasons involving drakes and water, but everyone knows how to get there. When I reached fourth-degree at the academy, I knew I wanted to go into security. I had always been a protector anyway.

They say the road to Domus is paved with mapmakers. Being a protector of mapmakers though? It seemed silly to my friends. Mapmakers could be chained to the tops of healthy trees and still find ways to die by konig worm. But what if I made the main route to Domus, the main route that everyone wanted a mapmaker for, what if I made that route safe as the streets of Flasten? Then fewer mapmakers would die.

Someone said it'd be like making drugs illegal, though. The mapmakers would just go someplace else to die.

I made the effort though, as a fourth-degree. I arranged the finances with the dux of Flasten and the mardux. I had a nominal superior in Merflatug, then a seventh-degree with aspirations, of course. But Merflatug, while brilliant in certain ways, is not a logistical genius. Thus I maintained control.
We built towers. We built dikes. We drained large sections of the swamp, and raised the land. We held campaigns against the drakes. You see, essentially we were building a wall through their territory, dividing them in half. Those stupid beasts would not allow themselves to all be herded to one side, so we constantly divided their tribes. The towers were manned, and reflecting mirrors placed on top of them. Communications could thus be eased between the two powerful states.

For years, we worked on this. We built the road to Flasten, me, Merflatug, a thousand students at the academy and a hundred thousand slaves. The cost in materials was enormous. The cost in lives was bitter. But I kept saying to myself, the greater good, Tejun, remember the greater good.

We never finished it. We were halfway through when the mardux was deposed, and his successor cut our funding. He didn't want an easy road for Flasten to invade him on. We were close enough to the border of Flasten that we thought we could finish to that point anyway. But then the dux of Flasten, an old man in any case, died. And his successor, Bragan, withdrew all of our slaves for some project within the city.

Merflatug, myself and a bunch of young wizards were stranded with the half-completed road. It was at this time that I came into contact with a promising young accountant from Domus, whom you know as Flasten's minister of finance and taxation, Haile. She had garnered interest from several rich weards who would pay to finish the road — as a tollway, to reimburse themselves. She sold the idea to us.

So the road crawled forward. The drakes attacks wore down, eventually. They learned to cross the road secretly, in the darkness. We put up signs, "Drake crossing next 15 miles." We used symbols, so people would know, since not everyone can read. Finally, it seemed we would pass into Domus lands and soon be finished.

In celebration, Merflatug made me sixth degree and finished his own training to be eighth degree. He would never let me forget he outranked me, and I would never dream of attempting to usurp his authority over me. We made a great team.

We had controlled the swamps. We had controlled the drakes. We had beaten the mardux and the dux of Flasten. We had succeeded in every respect.

Except there was one thing we could not control.

There was a storm. One of the great hurricanes that often rolls south into the bay was pushed north by the remnants of an earlier storm that was sitting there. A smaller storm over the north sea clipped back over Marrishland from the opposite direction. The two slammed into each other above Flasten, after dumping plenty of rain into the river.

Our road, made of packed earth, dissolved. The dikes, also make of packed earth, collapsed. The drakes, generally immune to Dinah's Curse — the water we were afraid to tread — took advantage of the situation and attacked the towers. Cut off from each other, the towers fell.

All our efforts, in two nights, were destroyed.

Merflatug sought to become dux after that, to rebuild the road. Haile and I followed him. The rest you know.

********

"The rest we don't know," Plin said. "What does any of that have to do with the weard-killer?"

Tejun looked surprised. "You talked about a man in a multi-colored cloak in your story to us," he said. "Your mapmaker spoke of a giant looking for Flasten who wore a multi-colored cloak, sewn from the colors of the weards it had killed. We thought the two stories were lies. But Merflatug had me dig around, and I found him."

"Found who?" Plin said, glancing at Duk, who looked uneasy.

"You found him?" Percy said, shaking. "You found the weard-killer?"

Tejun nodded, gasping. "I had him apprehended and brought here. I had him bound, chained to the chair. I had the cloak stripped from him. He is no giant. He is a man like anyone else. But he escaped and poisoned me."

"How did he escape?" Duk said quietly.

Tejun looked embarassed. "I ... let him go."

"You let him go?"

"I had to! There was no evidence in the end! He told me he was a rag man! He swore he had never even come near a wizard! He liked the colors on the cloaks! He was an idiot!" He paused, swallowed, coughed. "I was an idiot. I should have seen the mad gleam in his eye. I can see it now. As soon as he was free, he grabbed me and rammed his fingers down my throat, startling me. He threw me down, and as I choked, trying to summon the myst, he spat on me. His spit ... poison. Torutsen. No magic, and I'm dying."

He coughed again.

"Is there something we can do?" Percy asked.

Plin looked away, staring out the door.

Duk stared at the warden, lying helplessly on the floor.

"Isn't there something we can do?" Percy asked again, louder. He turned to the warden. "Where did he go?"

"To the dux," Tejun said, sighing. "He went to claim his prize."

"Duk! Do something to help him!"

The magocrat stared at the mapmaker. "I ... am helpless."

"Plin!"

"Don't look at me. This is a magic job."

Percy stared at them. He shivered and turned. As he did, Tejun gave one final sigh and died.

"This is no longer a joke," Percy said. "I thought it was, but it's not funny anymore."

"Percy," Plin began, but the mapmaker wheeled on him.

"Your lies ... would this man have died if not for your lies?"

"They weren't ..." Plin saw the look in Percy's eyes. "All right, some of them were lies. A good lie, Percy, has a lot of truth in it. And two things were true in my story: The cloaked man, and the hemp bag."

"Two things," Percy said, turning to Duk, "that you didn't mention."

Duk smiled nervously, then gathered himself up and made his face stern. "Indeed. Such trivial matters seemed unimportant to your masters, whose interest lay in the minor aspects of a false accusation."

"Twist the words however you like," Percy said bitterly. "But your failure to warn the dux killed this man."

Duk glared back at the green guard. "What arcane or mundane means have you to remove us from this time and carry us to where I can make true recompense for this perceived error?"

Percy glared at him.

"Time travel?" Plin said. "You're joking!"

"No, good Plin, my truest friend," Duk said calmly, putting his hand on Percy's shoulder. "Percy would be well advised to know that the past cannot be altered by mere human hands, and to dwell upon such perfect backward vision is only to engender bitterness and hatred in places where they do not belong. A forward-thinking mapmaker would seek not to place blame, but to avert further impending disaster."

"You mean, traveling forward in time?"

"He means," Percy said, knocking Duk's hand off his shoulder, "that we need to find the dux before this weard-killer does."

"Let us depart then, before this death dealer strikes again."

Copyright 2005-2006 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
This site has features best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Download today!
Contact us at seruvus@caligrean.com or marrish@caligrean.com.