of Codesh, when his new apprentice arrived fresh out of the forest and with no more sense than a leaf in the wind.
He’d wanted to send Cerk back. Bloody leaves of the bloody Black-Tree! He’d wanted to kill the youngster on the spot. But without the resources of House Escrissar behind him, Kakzim discovered he could use an extra set of hands, eyes, and feet—so long as he didn’t delude himself that those appendages were attached to a sentient mind.
“Brother Kakzim? Brother Kakzim—did you—? Have you—? Are you having one of your fits? Should I guide you to your bed?”
Fits! Fits of boredom! Fits of frustration! He was surrounded by fools and personally served by the greatest fool of all!
“Don’t be ridiculous. Stop wasting my time. Tonight’s an important night, you know. Tell me whatever it is you think I must know, then leave me alone and stop this infernal chatter about fits! You’re the one with fits.”
“Yes, Brother Kakzim. Of course. I merely wanted to tell you that the men have begun to assemble. They’re ready—armed exactly as you requested—but, Brother, they wish to be paid.”
“Then pay them, Brother Cerk!” Kakzim’s voice rose into a shrill shout as he spun around on his companion. The cowl slid back, dusting his flesh with excruciation as it did. “We’re so close. So close. And you torment me!” He grabbed the youngster’s robe and shook it violently. “If we fail, it will be your fault!”
* * *
Cerk staggered backward, lucky to keep his balance—lucky to be alive at all.
The elders of the Black-Tree had warned him Brother Kakzim would not be an easy master, but that he should be grateful for the opportunity. They said Brother Kakzim was a genius in the alchemic arts. There was no halfling alive who knew what Brother Kakzim knew about the old ways of manipulation and transformation. Brother Kakzim had decrypted the ancient knowledge the Brethren guarded at the Black-Tree. He knew what the ancestors knew, and he’d begun to use it. The elders wanted to know more about how Brother Kakzim was applying his knowledge. They wanted Cerk to be their eyes and ears in Urik.
An apprentice should be grateful for such an opportunity, for such trust, and Cerk supposed he was. Brother Kakzim was a master beyond reckoning where alchemy was concerned; Cerk had learned things in this foul-smelling village he could never have learned in the Black-Tree Forest. But Cerk wished the elder brothers had mentioned that Brother Kakzim was completely mad. Those white-rimmed eyes above the ruined cheeks looked out from another plane and had the power to cloud another man’s thoughts, even another halfling’s thoughts.
Cerk was careful not to look straight at Brother Kakzim when the madness was on him, as it was now. He kept his head down and filled his mind with thoughts of home: lush green trees dripping water day and night, an endless chorus of birds and insects, the warm, sweet taste of ripe bellberries fresh off the vine. Then Cerk waited for the danger to pass. He judged it had when Brother Kakzim adjusted his robe’s sleeves and cowl again, but he was careful to stay out of reach.
“It is not just the men who want to be paid, Brother Kakzim. The dwarves who own this place want to be paid for its use tonight, and for the rooms where we’ve lived. And the joiners say we owe them for the scaffolding they’ve already constructed. We owe the knackers and the elven gleaner, Rosu. She says she’s found an inix fistula with the abscess still attached, but she won’t sell it—”
“Pay them!” Brother Kakzim repeated, though without the raving intensity of a few moments past. “You have the coins. I’ve given you all our coins.”
“Yes,” Cerk agreed, thinking of the sack he kept under his bed. Money had no place in the Black-Tree Forest. The notion that a broken ceramic disk could be exchanged for food, goods, or a man’s service—indeed, that such bits, disks, or the far rarer metal coins must be exchanged—was still difficult for him to understand. He grappled with the sack nightly, arranging its contents in similar piles, watching as the piles grew steadily smaller. “I keep careful count of them, Brother Kakzim, but if I give these folk all that they claim is theirs, we ourselves will have very little left.”
“Is that the problem. Brother Cerk?”
Reluctantly, Cerk bobbed his head.
“Pay them,” Brother Kakzim said calmly. “Look at me, Brother Cerk—”