The rain had eased a little and so the
minders were able to hurry their charge out of the safe house, along the damp
street and into The Tattered Dragon. The rain helped anyway, as there were few
people milling around. The sun was close
to setting, but it had been a dull day, and so no-one had noticed anything much.
Hardacre appeared on
the same streets a few minutes later. He had teleported to the prearranged
mark, which had been left by Julian, the Hybitor agent, an hour or so before.
He ducked immediately into an alleyway and stared out at the pub. He was here,
but he didn’t yet know exactly what he was going to do.
To start with,
however, he needed a disguise.
This was a nasty
spell and one that no-one would cast unless they really needed to. It was
painful and temporarily scarring; it also required some concentration to
maintain. It blurred the face and made it indistinct; however if anyone looked
closely at the distorted face they would detect something odd about it and
later, they would not be able to describe the features. Among a crowd of CRS
supporters it was particularly dangerous, as they would recognise the spelzl
almost immediately. However, Hardacre had no intention of hanging around to talk
to his enemies.
‘Hysmotyn’ he whispered, holding his hand up to his face. A wave of
light passed over it and his features softened into banality. He had to try
hard to resist scratching – his face now felt itchy from chin to hairline.
He walked back out into
the street in front of the pub. He had never been in the place before, although
he knew Ponwy reasonably well – he had grown up in High March, only about fifty
miles to the east. The Tattered Dragon
was known to be a moderately separatist pub, but not so bad that an easterner
couldn’t drink there safely. Hardacre guessed that getting into the place would
be straightforward. After that he’d just have to trust his instincts.
The interior of the pub is what his
father would have called ‘spit and sawdust’; that was probably one of the
reasons he had never been inside it before. There was only a single drinking
area, with a long wooden bar from which at least a dozen people could be
served.
He walked up to the
bar, making his way to the friendliest looking barmaid. It was a long time
since he’d done this.
‘Pint of Hen’s Leg,
my dear, if it’s not too much trouble’ he said in his best marcher accent. Several decades ago this was how he actually
spoke, but a lot had happened to his voice since then.
‘It’s no trouble at
all’ said the barmaid, smiling at him. She began to draw the pint, with a
well-practised hand. The lukewarm brown liquid
nestled in the bottom of the pint glass. A flood of memories poured over
Hardacre. He had to shake himself free of them.
The barmaid noticed
his involuntary shudder.
‘Are you okay?’ she
said
‘I’m fine’ he said,
suddenly remembering another one of his parent’s expressions, ‘I think
someone’s just walked over my grave’
The barmaid laughed
and shivered herself, slightly theatrically.
‘Well, some might say
this is a witches’ town, so anything is possible’
Hardacre nodded. The
barmaid handed him his drink and he paid.
‘What brings you here,
then?’ she asked, as he picked up his change.
‘I’m here for a
meeting’ he said, ‘one that I believe is being held here tonight’
The barmaid’s
eyebrows were raised slightly, but she was still smiling.
‘Well, you’ll need to
be asking someone else about that, I’m thinking’ she said, turning to her next
customer.
Hardacre wondered who
it was that he should ask. He made his way to the back of the pub, sat down,
and waited.
***
Hardacre had always been able to make a
pint of beer last a long time. This time he had to wait about an hour before
people began to drift in. They came in
ones and twos, and they were clearly not locals. Each time that they came
through the door, a solemn young man approached them and ushered them through a
side door and away from the bar.
The greeter seemed to
have no list or any other way of recognising the visitors. Hardacre tried to
watch how they interacted as closely as possible, but he could see nothing
unusual. Perhaps he could just walk in like everyone else?
He got up and moved
as quietly as he could round the inside perimeter of the room. Beyond the
steady flow of shady looking visitors there were few drinkers. Once he got to
the door Hardacre left as quickly as possible and walked quietly down the street
for a few minutes until he found a another alley to shelter in. It had stopped
raining but now it was dark.
Inside the alleyway
he was finally able to scratch his face, which had been itching badly for the
last half-an-hour or so. He knew he shouldn’t do this – many witches had ended
up seriously scarred by overzealous scratching – but it was impossible to resist. He would have to keep the spell going for a little
while yet.
He shivered in the
damp for ten minutes or so and then retraced his steps back to the Dragon. He walked in behind two men and
watched them closely as they approached the greeter, making sure that he stood
at an angle that allowed him to glance up at their faces. Was there a nod or a
hand gesture? He couldn’t see anything. This was it then – he was now committed
to going in.
He looked up at the
greeter without changing his expression. The man looked completely uninterested
and ushered him through just like all the others.
The doorway led into
a short corridor and then on to a large room filled with tobacco smoke. The
place was half full and filling up rapidly. Hardacre sat about two thirds of the way back
towards the entrance end of the rows of seats.
He knew that he might well have to get out in a hurry.
He had been to these
sorts of meetings before – polemical lectures in farmhouses and drinking dens –
but this one was clearly a bit different. Most of the meetings were nationalist
anti-easterner rants but without any obvious CRS connection. However, this one,
the Hybitor intelligence report suggested, was sponsored by them. or an allied
group, and was billed as more of a philosophical talk. What was behind bringing
an old elven scholar to this out-of-the-way place was not entirely clear – yet.
Eventually the room
was full of bodies and noise. There appeared to be a mixture of the usual
dissident westerners and some better organised, slightly better dressed, people
who Hardacre assumed were CRS members, although he dare not look round to see
if he recognised any of them. He knew that for many of them it would only take
a few seconds of snooping round him to realise that he didn’t belong here, and
perhaps to identify exactly who he was. He stared intently at the small raised
dais at the end of the room, and tried not to think of what might happen if his
mask slipped in any way.
A tall, thin, sandy-haired man swept into the
room. He stepped in front of the dais and held his hands up. He didn’t seem at
all surprised when the room didn’t immediately hush. His next action was to
clap his hands, which was equally ineffective.
His sighed heavily and then shouted, rather too loudly.
‘Quiet! Quiet, now, have
some respect! Mage Macrocephalos is a very eminent scholar’
The silence was
sudden and profound. The speaker blushed, and seemed to sense that he had been
a bit rude. He lowered the volume and
harshness of his voice a notch.
‘Please!’
There was a more
measured silence. The speaker filled it
with some pre-prepared words of introduction.
‘You are all very
welcome to this extraordinary meeting of the Radical Numerology Society…’
The speaker’s
grinned. This was a moment of theatre that he had clearly been looking forward
to greatly.
‘I can tell from the
turnout that you are all as intrigued as I am by the speaker and his topic…’
Hardacre felt his
hackles rise slightly, but he wasn’t quite sure why. He set himself to concentrate with all his
might.
‘So – let me
introduce the most learned and wise, Mage Macrocephalos of Pelagia; former
professor at the University of Kinspit, and now visiting Scholar Emeritus in
the newly formed Radical Numerology Institute’
An ancient elf began
to make his way across to the dais. Applause splashed over him. The sandy
haired man waited patiently for the clapping to stop.
‘Tonight Mage
Macrocephalos will give a short lecture entitled “The root primes and the
limits of the world”. The talk will last for twenty minutes and I’m afraid that
there will be no questions’.
Macrocephalos made
his way to the dais. He shuffled his notes on the lectern, looked up at his
audience and began.
No comments:
Post a Comment