90: A USELESS WIZARD

(Kihrin’s story)

It may sound strange coming from someone who grew up in a less-than-ideal part of town, but the Shattered Veil Club had always placed a high importance on keeping the place clean. Sure, mostly that was for business reasons, but even so. Ola had absolutely no tolerance for dirt, and Surdyeh liked everything to be in its place so he wouldn’t accidentally trip over it.

What I’m saying is that Grizzst’s workshop was a god-awful mess. The clutter offended me on a visceral level. I assume that there were tables, and probably some sort of floor, but it’s not like I could actually see them. I had to take it on faith that under great, giant stacks of books, papers, and weird junk, there was in fact the foundations of a house.

And given the way Grizzst pushed a huge stack of papers over and sat down on one of the benches, I also took it on faith that this was his house.

I set the harp down in a corner. “Seriously, what kind of person looks at a newborn baby and says, ‘I know just the place to hide him. Let’s raise him in a brothel’?”

The wizard squinted at me. “You turned out fine.”

Thurvishar blinked. “Wait, what? What is he talking about?”

“He’s the leader of the Gryphon Men, Thurvishar. Your father worked for him. My father Surdyeh worked for him. This is the bastard who was pulling all those strings. Why?” I stared him down. “What was the point of it all? The prophecies?”

Grizzst narrowed his eyes at both of us. “Where the fuck are you getting your information? I’ll own up to Surdyeh, but Gadrith D’Lorus absolutely did not work for me.”

Thurvishar sighed. “In my past life, I was Simillion. In this life, I was Cimillion. I hope you can appreciate the irony of my father Sandus naming me after myself.”¹

Grizzst stared, the shock to his system far worse than me showing up on his doorstep. Even worse than finding out the hero he’d so famously trained had been reincarnated.

“Shit. So that’s how you knew about my workshop.”

“Gahan, do you really expect me to believe you had no idea?” Thurvishar didn’t look angry exactly. Just … disappointed.

“Sandus was my apprentice, kid. If I’d known where you were, I’d have told him. I’m not a fucking monster.” Grizzst turned his head and began scanning the stacks around himself until he finally extricated a flagon and dumped its contents out on the floor. His expression tightened. “Surdyeh was my student too. Sorry about both of them. They were good men.”

I suddenly felt dizzy. This was … not what I’d expected. I’d have said that this was like finding family you never knew about, but I’d already done that, and this was somehow worse.

Thurvishar looked equally flustered. We’d both lost the trail of our purpose for being there.

Grizzst did something over his mug, and it filled with liquid. I wondered if it was water or something more intoxicating, and if the latter, why he’d been hanging out in a bar at a brothel in the first place. He leaned back against a stack of books. “All right. Spit it out. You didn’t show up for no reason.”

“We, uh…” Thurvishar started over. “We wanted your help figuring out how to stop Vol Karoth without using the Ritual of Night.”

Grizzst shrugged. “Then you’ve come a long way for nothing. Fuck if I know.”

“Well, then…” I glared at him. “Wait, why? Why any of this? Why Sandus and Surdyeh and all the rest of your strange little prophecy-hunting club? You must have been chasing some kind of point, right?”

He shrugged. “Mostly just pissing in Relos Var’s tea, to be honest.”

“You’re lying.”

Grizzst ignored me and made a shooing motion with his fingers. “Now run along, you two. You interrupted a twenty-year binge, and I have some catching up to do.”

“By all the gods,” Thurvishar murmured. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s just go. This was a mistake. Now I understand why the Eight Immortals didn’t ask this slug for help. Would you have if you were in their place?”

“No, probably not.” Clearly disgusted, Thurvishar opened up a new gate, this time back to what I suspected was Kishna-Farriga.

I couldn’t believe that this whole trip was ending so quickly and in complete, abject failure. We’d hardly even had a chance to explain. No, scratch that. There had been no explanation at all. But here we were being ushered out, because the man that even Thurvishar had admitted was usually a drunken wretch had managed to become even more especially useless than normal about it. Consulting the wise wizard living up in the mountains this was not.

I was about ready to step through the gate, when I stopped.

“I would rather not keep this open forever,” Thurvishar cautioned me. “One does become exhausted.”

“Close it,” I said absently. I turned back and regarded the House D’Lorus wizard. “Who fixed the broken warding crystal?”

Behind Thurvishar, still sitting on that bench, Grizzst raised his head and met my stare.

“I’m sorry?” Thurvishar said.

“Who repaired the warding crystal? I said it myself; the Eight didn’t ask this slug for help.”

“Hey, watch it with the slug comments. I’ve always consider myself more of a frog. Maybe a toad.”

I ignored Grizzst as I chewed on my lower lip for a minute, eyes distant. “I shattered the damn thing. Now if Thaena wants to redo the Ritual of Night and charge it up again, that’s all well and good, but there has to be something to recharge, doesn’t there? So who made a new warding crystal?” I pointed at Grizzst. “If he’s been on a drinking binge for the last two decades, he didn’t do it, so who did?”

Thurvishar stared blankly at me. “Argas? I mean, he’s the god of invention.”

Grizzst didn’t quite manage to stop himself from snorting.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not Argas. I mean, no offense, he’s a great guy. Good at taking orders. Really loyal. Will absolutely watch your back or get you home after a night of barhopping, but I’m pretty sure I’ve known hunting drakes with more capacity for original thought. Unless the voras left behind very specific instructions telling Argas exactly what to do to repair the crystals, I have a hard time believing that he would be capable of fixing that damage by himself. So who did?”

Thurvishar ran a hand over his bald pate and sighed. “I see your point. Honestly, I’ve wondered why Relos Var hasn’t been trying to stop us.”

“He went through all that effort to shatter the warding crystal, and now he just lets us fix it? That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

Thurvishar frowned. “He wants the vané to be mortal?”

“Does he? Why? What would that buy him? I’d bet good metal and a lot of it that Relos Var knew breaking the eighth crystal wouldn’t be enough to actually free Vol Karoth. Wake him, sure. But not free him. So what comes next? What would be the smart thing to do? After all, we both know Relos Var is very, very smart. You’re very, very smart, Thurvishar. What would you do?”

Thurvishar exhaled. “I’d trick my enemies—the people who would be trying to stop me—into doing it themselves.”

“Right. That. Think you could reach Khorsal’s palace again?”

He nodded. “Oh yes. I know the way.”