IGMS Issue 19 Read online

  Chad quickly agreed. Connie's famous S&M skit, the one that had always ended up with her forgetting the safe word and getting stuck in the iron maiden, would be perfect. Or, better yet, forget the iron maiden. It was too enclosed. A medieval rack. Yes, that would be much better. The cameras would be able to pick up on the facial expressions as the straps tugged on the volunteer's wrists and ankles.

  Connie gave a huge sigh. "Okay. Count me in."

  Chad, thrilled, hugged her. "We'll start a whole new era of pain comedy." The two of them would put on a show that would never be forgotten.

  Because there would always be enough pain to go around for everyone.

  Deathsmith

  by Pete Aldin

  Artwork by Nicole Cardiff

  * * *

  Light twinkled from the coin as it spun. Aris watched the woman watching it, his hands splayed on the trestle table he had set up by the roadside in front of his home.

  He could set a coin spinning far longer than it should, much to the awe of customers, and without magick involved. Usually he enjoyed this part of the ritual of trade. Today he glanced at the copper circle turning on its edge with a hollow feeling, despite the obvious wonder on the face of the woman before him. The fact that he could think of no other natural talent in his possession but this . . . this parlor trick -- well, it took the shine off the moment.

  Lately he had been increasingly troubled by bitter thoughts such as this. Perhaps it had to do with all the gray he was finding in his hair since Summer. Perhaps it was the approaching Winter. Perhaps it was the lack of recent business . . .

  "How are you doing that?" the woman asked, her head pulled so far back that her jowls formed a second chin beneath the first.

  He slid the sleeve back from one wrist and waggled the fingers of that hand.

  "Madam. You sought a mage and a mage you have found." He snatched the coin from the table before it could begin wobbling. "You also seek a death, I take it."

  She popped her chin forward out of the grip of her jowls, and said, "I'm told you are a deathsmith." She said the word oddly, as if she were speaking it for the first time.

  "You are well-informed but for one detail. I am not a, rather I am the Deathsmith," he added when she didn't follow his verbal subtlety.

  "Oh."

  "You have paid me my attention fee." He opened his fingers briefly to display the copper coin one last time before pocketing it. "You have my attention. Whose death do you desire?"

  She smiled in a predatory way. "It's my husband, you see."

  Aris didn't see. Aris didn't care. But Aris nodded anyway, swallowing his impatience. His grain supplies were running low and he needed a good meal in his belly, which rumbled in response to his thoughts. He rubbed it like a man pacifying an attention-seeking cat.

  "Why do you want to kill your husband?"

  The new voice caused both Aris and the woman to jerk and twist to the right and left respectively. The girl was no more than seventeen, a waif in mismatched clothes and fur boots too big for her, thick blonde locks fused by grime and grit. Where had she come from?

  "Does he beat you?" the girl asked.

  The woman sputtered. Aris slapped his trestle.

  "Be gone, girl! We're at business here!"

  The girl smiled. "As am I. I'm here to see the deathsmith."

  Aris regarded her more closely. He saw a girl with no money. No money meant she had no business here.

  In response to his doubtful expression, the girl lifted a hand and a copper appeared between the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers as if conjured.

  "Alright," he sighed. Two customers were better than one after all, and it was the first time in years that two had arrived at the same time. He waved a hand. "Wait there, that log across the road. I'll summon you when the lady and I are concluded."

  "How do you want your husband to die?" the girl asked the woman instead.

  The woman turned red and looked to Aris imploringly. He stabbed a finger at the log and barked, "Now!"

  The girl shrugged and complied, skipping lightly across the wagon-rutted road.

  "Madam, though her presence is bothersome, the girl asks a pertinent question," Aris said. "What kind of end do you seek for this man?"

  The woman fussed with her hair as she thought. "I hadn't thought of that, not specifically. I really just . . . wanted him . . ."

  Aris took charge. If he didn't, this kind of awkwardness was likely to go on for an hour. "Very well. Answer me one more question, then I shall offer a suggestion. Can you bear for him to suffer?"

  A hard look flowed over her face to set there like resin. "Yes. Yes, I can."

  Aris rubbed his hands together, considering the objects spread on the table before him. "I think a mauling will do nicely. I hear they hurt quite a lot. This will only take a moment. The fee will be twelve sovereigns."

  "Twelve!" The word came out in a kind of strangled shriek.

  Aris pursed his lips and played on that look he had seen in her eye when she had considered the prospect of her husband suffering. "If that is too much, I can do a swift killing more cheaply. Perhaps a death-in-his-sleep for three --"

  "Twelve for the mauling will be fine," she said hurriedly. With a backwards glance at the girl, the woman fished about in her purse, then counted out coins on her side of the trestle. Aris' own eyes flicked to the girl for a moment, wondering if she were really a thief.

  "Actually," he lied to the woman as she counted, "the mauling is my cheapest painful death."

  The woman thanked him and he inclined his head before returning his attention to the table top.

  Yes, those two, he decided. The thorn and the tuft of wolf fur held in place by a pebble. Using thumb and forefinger, he dropped each carefully into a tiny rabbitskin pouch, raised it to his mouth and mumbled his incantation into it. Across the road the girl shifted so as to see him better around the woman's bulk. His irritation at her nosiness almost caused him to stumble in his spell, which would have undone the entire rite, rendering that particular combination of words useless until sunset. When the final syllable was spoken, Aris tugged the drawstring tight and plopped the pouch on the table. He pushed it across to the woman as she pushed the pile of coin his way.

  "And what do I do with this?" Her eyes almost glowed with anticipation.

  She must really hate the fellow, Aris told himself. "Empty the pouch onto his seat -- the seat of his cart, his seat at dinner, it matters not. As long as he sits on it and is pricked by the thorn. I would keep my distance from him thereafter, for he will be set upon by wolves. Possibly eaten," he added, as if this were value-adding to the transaction.

  "And . . . how long will it . . . take?"

  "As long as it takes for a wolf or wolves to heed the spell. A day, a week, certainly no more than a month."

  She turned away, sweeping up the pouch, disappointment melting her hard expression. Apparently, a month was a long time to wait.

  "Handle it carefully," the girl called out, rising and stretching. "Be a shame if the wolves took you instead."

  The woman paled, gathered her skirts, and scuttled back to the small two-wheeled cart, whipping her donkey into action.

  "No sense of humor," said the girl, taking up the woman's station at the table.

  Aris hoped that her acid wit hadn't cost him repeat business with the woman. "What can I do for a girl like yourself?" he asked evenly. "You say you have business here? Place your copper on the table and you'll have my attention."

  The girl produced the coin, caressing it for a moment before settling it on its edge and giving it a spin. She watched it absently, the tiniest of furrows between her eyebrows the only hint that it hurt her to part with it.

  Aris focused on the copper. With growing agitation he watched it revolve without sign of slowing. Eventually he snatched it up, repressing the urge to ask how she had done that.

  That's my trick, he complained to himself. No one had ever stolen from him, but watching som
eone use his talent, he felt the way others must feel when robbed.

  I could kill her. Then only I would have this talent again. The thought was infantile, petulant, but he dismissed it for a different reason.

  He didn't know much about the gods who had endowed him with his death magick -- if the glowing silver wisps who'd visited him that evening had even been gods. What he did know was the rules they had laid down that night, including the express warning that using the magick to slay another person on his own behalf was an imbalance they would return to punish. Defensive spells were allowed, offensive were not.

  He swallowed his irritation, pocketed her coin, and fixed her with an expectant look.

  "How do you do it?"

  He blinked. "Do what?"

  "How do you mumble sounds into a bag of rubbish and cause the death of someone miles away?"

  "Do you wish to purchase a death or to ask me foolish questions I will not answer?" The girl stared back. Aris grunted. "I'm a mage. You're not. I will not divulge the secrets of my art. You are fast losing my attention and with it, your copper."

  The truth was that he couldn't answer the question even if he wanted to. He had no idea how the magick worked, though it stemmed from the amulet he wore beneath his tunic. He had found the silver charm in his youth while exploring a cave in woods near his home and had rushed it outside into the scant afternoon sunlight to study the odd workmanship and symbols, fascinated. He had almost leapt from his own skin later that night when the silver wisps appeared, oozing from the very air of his bedchamber. They spoke in breathy tones, outlining the amulet's powers before vanishing as inexplicably as they had arrived.

  Since then, the amulet sort of whispered to him, its voice like the nagging ache of tendon pain. It guided his magick, taught him combinations of words and tones that worked in concert with the objects he chose, lead him to more objects which he could use to perpetuate his art.

  "Alright." The girl showed both her palms in a gesture of appeasement. "Sir, I may want you to help me kill someone."

  "You 'may'? Well, who is it then?"

  "I don't know yet."

  "You don't know?"

  She pointed east. "I heard about you in the village a day's walk that way. I was raised in the mountains, you see, and left my home a year ago to seek my fortune."

  Ah, a mountain girl. That explained her lack of manners and her flat vowel-sounds, if not her physique, for mountain folk were stockier. Perhaps the year's walking had trimmed her down.

  Aris cleared his throat, began packing his things away in a polished wooden box. If he left now, he could make it to the Gammerstedt inn just as the pork and potatoes were coming out of the oven. His mouth watered at the thought of it. "You've wandered around for a year. Yes, that certainly explains your interest in killing a random person and paying for the pleasure of it."

  "Sir, you're packing your trinkets. Am I to take it you refuse to help me?"

  "They're not trinkets, they're --" He'd never really had a name for the objects he used. But they certainly weren't trinkets! He let that sentence drop and started another. "I'm hungry, I'm tired, and you are wasting my time."

  "But I paid your fee. One copper, the village folk said. One copper and the deathsmith will help."

  "One copper and the deathsmith will listen," he corrected. "At least until he is bored or irritated by you. I am both. But I'll offer some advice. You could stab some poor soul to death in an alley in Amramak. You'll have your killing without further wearying me with questions. And you'll have the profit of looting the corpse."

  "I'm surprised that the King has not hired you," the girl said then.

  Her words stopped Aris' hands as memories surfaced. The King hadn't always ignored the strange mage loose in his kingdom. In the early days of Aris' work, word of it had obviously caused the ruler great concern. He'd thrice sent assassins to finish Aris. It took that many attempts before it occurred to him that Aris was on the dealing end of death, not the receiving end.

  After that, the King invited him to his palace to offer him a deal: Continue trading unmolested as long as you swear not to venture into the King's City ever again or to cast a spell against the Royal Family. A gift of a hundred sovereigns had sweetened Aris' humor and he had accepted.

  He'd settled here soon after, largely content to live in the empty space between Amramak and Gammerstedt on the route to the border. Customers had still found him when they had need. Although over the last few years, they seemed to find him less and less . . .

  He shook his head to clear it and fastened the clasp on the box. "Are you going to stand here all afternoon?"

  She dipped her head. "Sir, if I might return to the subject of our trade before you completely dismiss me and close shop for the day . . . I did wish to make a purchase; I merely wanted to find out more about you and your methods first."

  He sighed. "If you seek my help, you must ask questions related to your purchase, not how I do this and why I do that. Lay a silver florin upon this table and I'll happily help you choose a mark and even suggest a death for him. Or her. For a few more coins, I will craft it here and now."

  "I have no more money. The people in the village said --"

  "You were misinformed." He started toward his front door, box wedged beneath his armpit.

  "Wait." A note entered the girl's tone, somewhere between plaintive and angry. He half turned. She said, "I'm hungry. I spent my last coin on your services and have nothing for food."

  Not a thief then, but a beggar.

  He pointed west, the opposite direction from where the girl had come. "I'm heading into the next town. You may follow me and there you can ask for alms."

  "Or I could do a job for you and you could bring back food. Perhaps I could watch your house for you, protect it from bandits."

  Aris laughed. For the first time in ages, he really laughed. The idea was absurd on so many levels. He laughed all the way inside his house. He kept laughing as he put his box on the shelf and donned his coat in preparation for the evening air. He was still chuckling as he closed the door behind him and spoke the incantation that would protect his home from break-in and fire in his absence.

  The girl hadn't moved and was clearly unimpressed with his laughter. "What is so funny?" she asked, teeth clenched.

  Now who has no sense of humor? he thought.

  He took a breath and counted on his fingers. "One, I don't need your protection. The house is well-protected, thank you very much for your concern. Two, you are but a girl and no match for bandits. Three, you are but a girl with only the smallest dagger -- I can see the hilt beneath your tunic. You are clearly under-equipped for combat. Four, who's to say that you are not the bandit?"

  "I don't steal. I pride myself on earning my bread. Or my chicken leg, should you choose to be so generous." She allowed a puppy-like pathos to enter her expression.

  Aris had never been accused of being compassionate. But something about the girl gave him pause. It reminded him of that injured blue-jay that fluttered around his yard the morning after the silver wisps' visit, stalked by a feral cat. A small child had been distraught at its plight and he'd conjured a merciful falling-asleep death for the creature from a pinch of valerian and a feather it had left in the gravel.

  He narrowed his eyes toward the girl. Perhaps if he offered her one kindness, she would leave him be. "Do you know how to milk a goat, repair a window shutter?"

  "I am skilled at both."

  "Then go ahead. You'll find both at the rear of the house. Don't enter the house. I'll return in three or four hours with something for you to eat. Agreed?"

  She nodded, then performed a curtsy. "You're too kind, sir mage."

  He scowled, climbed onto his horse without further comment, and rode toward the town and a hearty dinner, sovereigns rattling in his pocket.

  Upon his return, Aris expected to find the girl dead of mystical causes by the front door, having attempted to rob him. Instead he found her asleep, half submerge
d in his haystack. The tasks had been performed to his satisfaction, the shutter repaired especially well.

  He woke her and passed her a rough sackcloth napkin containing a chicken leg and a small wedge of cheese. He watched her eating noisily in the graying post-sunset light, the thin grime on her face smeared worse with chicken fat. She smiled at him and pieces of chicken-skin peeked at him from between her teeth.

  "Very well, never let it be said that I'm not a fair man. You've worked well for me. I permit you to remain in the hay for the night. In the morning, I expect you to be gone, so that I may be about my work and you may be about a dozen miles from here by nightfall."

  She nodded, looking unhappy. Her body language said she found him interesting and was in no hurry to leave. He hoped his body language radiated his desire that their short-lived relationship be just that. On a whim, he fished into his pocket, plucked out her copper and dropped in the soil by her feet. "Here. You may need this."

  She was gone in the morning.

  Aris shrugged off the memory of her presence and spent the day searching the nearby vicinity for objects he could use, and even purchased a polished wooden button from a passing merchant. He had never seen this peddler before; it was his first time traversing this stretch of highway. After some small talk, the peddler thanked him and headed west. For the remainder of the afternoon Aris chopped wood against the coming Winter.

  The next day the peddler returned, making small talk until eventually admitting he wanted to purchase a death. His target was the tax collector who manned the road between the village to the east -- where the girl had been told of Aris -- and the town of Amramak ten miles further on.

  Aris had traveled to Amramak the year before and knew the tax collector from that encounter and from the frequent complaints of other passing travelers: a grim, unjust individual who made theft a lawful pursuit.

  The peddler told Aris that the toll for the use of the road was the highest he'd ever encountered; he didn't look forward to paying it again on his way home. But there was no other route from this part of the country back towards the King's City.