To read the previous adventures of Sabine (we know it’s been a while!) click here. The story continues below. *** Silfde Struct sat in a great chair and swirled a goblet of mead around in
To read the previous adventures of Sabine (we know it’s been a while!) click here. The story continues below.
***
Silfde Struct sat in a great chair and swirled a goblet of mead around in his hand. He’d downed two others like it already, as had the nearly unconscious young woman on his right. With a happy little buzz in his head, Silfde pushed up from his seat, and nearly lost the cheaply produced novelty helmet he wore. He thought briefly of how much his nan hated that helmet style, she called its adornments offensive to their ancestry and historically inaccurate. But without them, he couldn’t use the line, “Lookit me, I’m a horny Viking.”
He threw open his arms and addressed the two dozen who danced and drank in the bright lit courtyard of his father’s mansion. “Everybody having fun tonight?”
From much of his audience came a great cheer. Though one of his friends by a large barrel in one corner yelled, “Oy, Silfde, looks like we’re going dry over here!”
Silfde groaned as he fumbled around his seat, eventually reached for a large tome at his side and tried to pick it up by the pages in the center. The book’s pale cover was made of the rended skin of a once beloved court jester, a thought that creeped the young man out. His father mentioned once that the people he hung out with, “Have to know how to take apart the things everyone else enjoys—” or something like that. Silfde did not care, he just wanted the magic within.
In a drunken slur, Silfde recited, “Suluk bizzen veran ram, culuuk sweetum, ven rabas,” several times over, a phrase in the old language of magic that meant something like, “I want the bees without the stab/Gimmie their honey, cause I am a scab.”
A loud “Woo!” sounded off as the barrel refilled with mead and Silfde’s guests cheered and toasted their gracious host. In the midst of the cheer there suddenly came a rumble that shook the whole courtyard. Silfde slipped and spilled his mead, tipped up his helmet, and shouted, “Flailock! Whatin‘ the hell is that?”
The enormous, curly haired mass of muscle who worked the front door stepped in with a parchment at his side. Before he could say anything, the rumbling subsided.
Silfde and his guests exchanged looks as they waited for more tremors. When they didn’t come, he looked to his doorman. “False alarm, Flailock, go back to the door.”
Atop the tall hill that overlooked the fjord house, an enormous, devil-horned mole burrowed to the surface. The massive creature squinted its eyes at the bright moon overhead before it began to hack and wheeze. Eventually, the creature spat up a pair of bodies soaked in its saliva.
One of them, with a trio of red scars glimmering in the night air, wiped the bile from his person and patted the beast on its nose. “That’s a good boy, Derry, thank you very much.”
His companion shuddered in disgust as she struggled to shake slime from her red hair. “What—the hell—was the point of that?!”
Within a ring on her left hand, a tiny jellyfish crossed its tentacles. And, at the same time inside her mind, a warlock’s gravelly voice said, don’t get him started, Sabine. Men like Struct love to hear themselves talk.
“Devil moles are sacred animals and invaluable means of transportation in my faith,” Deacon Struct said. “You see, it’s appropriate because he lives so far beneath the surface—”
“All right, stow it. Any reason you couldn’t have just dug us straight into the courtyard?”
“And risk damage to the property? Not on your life. Do you have any idea how many plenary indulgences it cost?”
Sabine had already stopped listening. She stepped up to the edge of the hill and glared down at the mansion. Absentmindedly, she drew the athame from her belt and gave it a flick. Out from the end of the metal blazed a longer, bright red blade of ethereal magic.
In the back of her head, Sabine reviewed the odd meeting that led her to that moment. Earlier that day, in the Stubborn Ass tavern, she shared a stare down with the scarred, smirking deacon across from her.
“What do you want?” Underneath the table Sabine fingered the athame she’d stolen from him. Fae blood was within the weapon, so even if Struct was something more than human, the blade might kill him. The tavern was dimly lit and noisy with laughter and song in the corner, she might be able to take him out without anyone getting a clear view of what was happening.
“Well, you can start by letting go of that knife.” Deacon Struct pulled out the chair across from her. The three fiery scars across his face did not just sit like scratches on flesh, a faint glow emanated off each and they seemed occasionally to pulsate. “Rest assured, little friend, you don’t want to kill me.”
A tiny tap tap tap that only Sabine could sense came from her left finger. I hate to say it, but hear him out, Dahkhal said from the ring. He knows you want to gut him at this point, he probably needs a good reason for seeking you out.
Sabine loosened, though did not release, her grip on the athame. “How’d you know about the knife?”
“My latest blessing here has given me a sixth sense for the supernatural.” Struct raised a hand and waved it across his scarred visage. “You offered Queen Orchid up with that blade after all, so I can sense its power just begging to come unsheathed again.”
“Yeah, well, your crimes against nature so far include trying to sacrifice a bunch of girls, a bunk disease cure, those damned zom-trees…you ever work with the Mystics?”
“The Mystics?” Struct frowned. “Those raving conspiracy theorists who went on about a guild of musical projectionists putting a man on the moon? I thought they died out centuries ago.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “All right, nevermind… I’ll ask again, what the hell do you want?”
The playful malice Struct had come in with hadn’t returned, and with a dour look on his face, he said, “I need your help dealing with my son.”
Sabine balked. “Your son? Someone like you has a son?”
Struct raised a hand over his mouth, his eyes went wide, and he imitated her flinch. “Your husband? Someone like you has a husband?” He then glared. “Or is that not what all those rings signify?”
Inside Sabine’s head came a deep, raucous roar of laughter. That was good! Dahkhal said. Damn the bastard, that was good—
Sabine repeatedly beat the back of her left hand against the table. “… Moving on, what’s the deal with your son? Is he a pious monster worshipping a slothful god like you?”
Struct broke their eye contact and sighed. A little of the red in his scars seemed to leach into his cheeks. “He’s… err… no. He says he isn’t religious. He’s just spiritual.”
“… Spiritual about an ancient, indolent monster god? You’re joking.”
When Struct spoke again, he began in a falsetto. “‘Let the boy go to a public university,’ my wife said. ‘He’ll have all kinds of new experiences. It’ll teach him respect for viewpoints beyond his own.’” The deacon let out a wretch. “You ever see a drunken fool rip open his jerkin and dance on a table at a wedding? That’s most likely to be my pride and joy.”
Sabine was about to respond but paused to think for a moment. As a matter of fact, there had been a dark haired, shirtless man making an ass of himself at her tenth wedding, an event notable enough to be about all she could recall from the many measures of wine she drank that night. She’d occasionally forgotten that her husband Wallon belonged to the deacon’s church, and the same foolish son Struct was going on about may well have been in attendance.
When she returned to herself, Sabine asked, “What’s your point?”
“Silfde was home for the solstice holiday earlier this week and he stole one of my sacred texts before he ran out.” Struct laid a fist on the table and leaned in close, his glare now slim and fierce. “He left us a note, saying he was going to throw ‘the ultimate party.’”
Sabine raised an eyebrow. “The ultimate party?”
Within her ring, Sabine sensed Dahkhal’s body stiffen. Oh gods, the fool.
“The Ultimate Party is a rite within my book of rituals,” Struct said. “It is not a party in the sense of a laughing and drinking affair. It means an adventuring party.”
“What difference would that make?” Sabine kept her voice stable, but Dahkhal’s reaction kept her on edge.
“The Ultimate Party will turn all of son’s fellow merry-makers into an unstoppable, undead legion at his beck and call.” Struct’s mocking smile slowly crossed his lips again. “So however evil and destructive you think I am, imagine that power being in the hands of my irresponsible brat instead.”
Back in the present, Sabine looked down the hill at the mansion, the flames that blazed in the courtyard, and the muscular guard out front. She double-checked the athame was secured to her belt and gave Struct a last half-glance. “So, I’m gonna go in there, kill your son, and get the book out, right?”
Struct gave a half-hearted wince. “Well, you know. Don’t kill him if you can avoid it. I don’t want to hear about it from my wife.” He waffled on it for another moment before he said, “But do what you have to do. Of course.”
We’ll need to keep the tome away from him once we have it, Dahkhal said.
“I know, I know.” Sabine started down the hill. “One step at a time.”
To Be Continued…