Notes: On we go! Let's have some tea and backstory, shall we?
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Ch. 10 Pt. 1
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Chapter Ten, Part One
A 360º View
They rode for long enough that Hiram wasn’t even really sure they were still in “town” when they finally stopped. The horse had confidently made its way through the heart of Lollop and out a smaller street, past several tanneries from the smell of it, then a few farms—one rabbit, one pig—and finally up a trail that climbed a sweet, round little hill to a cottage at the top of it. The hill really wasn’t that high, but Hiram found he could see for miles in every direction up there. “What a lovely spot,” he said as Avery finally reined his mare in.
Avery smiled. “Thank you. I find I like the solitude of it.” He dismounted and patted his horse on the nose, then gestured toward the small building at the back of the cottage that must be his barn. “I’m going to put her away, but you’re welcome to go in—”
“No, no.” Hiram held up his hands, smiling to take the sting out of his refusal of hospitality. He did want to go in, but he wasn’t going to take that step without his host’s presence. It just seemed rude to do otherwise, and he knew he’d made the right choice when Avery’s shoulders relaxed. “I prefer to take in the view.”
“I’ll be back in a moment.” Avery left with the mare, and Hiram looked back down the way they’d come. The trail led westward, back toward Lollop and his own home on the far side of it. A day’s ride beyond that was the imperial highway, where his doom would come from if it ever caught up to him.
He grimaced and looked south, where he could see the cut in the fields that indicated the main road into and out of Lollop. That road stretched across the entirety of Oribel, connecting it from north to south and running right through Orivode, the capital, some hundred miles hence. The next closest towns were around the size of Lollop, though, small country villages. East was more farmland, forest, and the sluggishly winding Plunkett River that fed most of the streams and fields nearby, and north…
Hmm. Hiram squinted into the distance at the stick-like speck on the horizon. It was too slender to be a mountain, too dark to be a temple—at least a temple of Melemor—and too straight to be anything but purposeful.
“That’s Gemmel’s Tower.”
Hiram didn’t jump, but it was a near thing. He turned to face Avery, who walked up beside him with a pensive expression. “Who was Gemmel that they built such a tower?”
Avery raised one eyebrow. “You’ve never heard of him before?”
Should I have? Hiram had come across a lot of towers in his day, most of them built either by overly arrogant wizards, dark lords looking for trouble, or the occasional dwarven magnate who decided to built up instead of down. “I’m afraid I haven’t.” He glanced out at it again. “It must be immense, though.”
“It is,” Avery confirmed. “It’s almost three hundred feet high.”
Damn. That was tall even for a wizard. “What’s it made of?”
“Blackstone.”
Holy hell. Blackstone was the hardest rock in the world, one that could only be worked by dwarves or trolls. Actually, there was a higher proportion of dwarves in Lollop than Hiram had expected, given that Oribel’s population largely consisted of humans and gnomes. “Who in the hells could afford to bring in that much blackstone?”
Avery nodded toward the house. “I’ll tell you about it over a cup of tea.”
Hiram wasn’t about to refuse hospitality a second time. “Thank you.” He followed his host to the front door of the cottage, which bore a rather thick lock, and then inside. It was a small building, a single story tall, and with three rooms to it—a good place for a bachelor. The front room was large enough for a table and two chairs, a rather roomy fireplace, and a food cabinet. Two windows were enough to let a good amount of light in, and it was surprisingly warm.
Avery stoked the embers in the fireplace until he had flames going, added a few logs, then hung a kettle on the hob. “My tea selection is rather poor compared to yours,” he said in apology as he got down a teapot, two small ceramic cups, and a jar of honey. “All I can offer is raspberry or lemonmint.”
“Lemonmint would be welcome.” Something to soothe the senses after the morning he’d had. “Thank you.”
“The kettle should be boiling soon,” Avery assured him, then sat down and gestured to the other chair. “Please, sit.”
Hiram joined him at the table, the floor creaking rather noticeable with every step. The chair was comfortable, though, and when Avery uncovered a bowl of roasted nuts and offered them to him, he accepted. “It was kind of you to help me back there,” he said before popping a hazelnut into his mouth.
“It was the least I could do, after giving you such poor advice,” Avery replied.
Hiram frowned. “What do you mean? Your advice was perfectly sound.”
“But it clearly didn’t work for you, since you had to relive such a tragic moment in your life in order to satisfy Melemor.”
Ah. “Don’t worry,” Hiram said. “That was far from the worst thing I’ve been through. I do hope the High Priest recovers soon, though.”
Avery’s eyes were wide. “Are you being—are you serious?”
“Yeeees,” Hiram said cautiously. “Why is that a problem?”
“Because that was—Hiram, cleansings, even for people who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one or who’ve been badly hurt, never feel like that. Not in Lollop, at least. Nor in Orivash, from what I remember of services there, or in—other places.”
There was little Hiram could say to that except shrug. “I’ve lived an eventful life,” he said.
“You say that like you’re an old man.”
“I am an old man.”
“Please.” Avery scoffed. “You can’t be more than fifty.”
Hiram smiled. “Forty-eight.”
“Barely into your middle years, then. You’ve got a lot of life left ahead of you.”
“And I hope it will be much less eventful than the life I left behind,” he said in a tone of finality.
Avery, thankfully, took the hint. “I think the water is beginning to boil, give me a moment.” He got up and fussed with the kettle and the teapot for a bit, then set down their mugs, two small plates, and tiny, delicate spoons for the tea. They were slightly tarnished, but…
“Silver?” Hiram asked.
Avery smiled tightly. “A gift from a friend.”
Either his friend was very wealthy, compared to the area, or they had a fear of being poisoned. Spelled silver spoons were commonplace among the powerful, one more way to evade assassins, but Hiram would never have expected to see something like that here. He spooned a little honey into his cup, then poured the tea. The smell of lemonmint rose up in a cloud, wreathing his face in comforting warmth, and Hiram closed his eyes and sighed with satisfaction at the scent of it. When he opened his eyes, he saw Avery looking at him like he was trying to decipher a forgotten language.
“The tower,” he said after a moment. “It belonged to a dwarven wizard named Gemmel. He fought in the Deyrian heights during their war with the serpentkin for decades, apparently, but eventually he was driven out of their homelands. He, and many other dwarves, settled into these lands about a century ago. Oribel was a new member of the Vordurian Empire at the time, and that made resettling easier than it might have been otherwise.”
Because so many people were lost to the ambitions of Andurion’s great-grandfather. “I see.”
“Gemmel’s magic was unique,” Avery went on, “in that it was almost entirely limited to transubstantiation.”
Hiram blinked. “That’s an unusual specialty—from what I understand,” he tacked on to the end.
“I wouldn’t know,” Avery said with a shrug. “But I do know that’s how he got the blackstone. It was originally built out of wood, I think, and he changed it layer after layer after layer.”
Oh hells. Wood to blackstone? Hiram wasn’t an expert in transubstantiation, but even he knew that wood to blackstone was a bad idea. The two substances were different in every way—most successful transformations happened between two things that had similar origins, like granite to marble, or carrots to turnips. Wood to blackstone…what was that tower truly made of?
“Gemmel began a magic academy, but it only lasted a few years. Written sources reference him as a dwarf who seemed to be slowly going mad—perfectly sane one day, confused the next, frothing with rage a third.” Avery swirled the tea in his cup. “He drove everyone who ever tried to help him away, but several of them reported that his tower was full of treasures he’d created—mostly gold, but also magical items, gems, and some heritage pieces from his clan as well.”
Hiram saw where this was going. “He was targeted for his wealth, I suppose?”
Avery nodded. “Imperial troops, led by their own powerful wizard, laid siege to the tower. They weren’t able to make a dent in the blackstone, but the wizard managed to do something to get them a way inside. They attacked during the night, but none of them ever emerged from the tower again, and neither did Gemmel. He laid some sort of spell on it to keep anyone from being able to get inside, whether they’re trying to go through a door, a window, or even all the way to the top and going through the roof. After a few decades, people stopped trying.”
“Fascinating,” Hiram said. “And tragic for everyone involved.”
“It is.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Avery nudged Hiram’s foot under the table. “Drink your tea.”
Hiram drank. It tasted like sunshine.
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