The Cursed Blood, стр. 56
We ate our eggs, black pudding, beans, fried tomato slices, blood sausage, toast, and bacon in silence. Manx noisily lapped at the bowl of meaty broth the serving girl had kindly brought him, complements of the house, of course). Manx predictably getting more than a few choice treats from my plate as I tried to make sense of the odd fare while we talked.
Gramps talked and I listened as he regaled me with old stories of his time as a young knight and a bit of the more colorful history of the city, free of the trappings of literature.
To this day I say there is magic, real magic, in Gramps’ voice. It can soothe and reassure, and it cracks more viciously than a whip when he’s angry so that even the bravest take notice and tremble. It also has a strange, quiet way of making you listen, no matter how many times you’ve heard his story or how much you don’t want to hear it—it will still be taking you deep into it with him where you almost feel like you were actually there.
I swear I even saw it ensnare Aunt Milly once, and that is a true testament to its power. She stalwartly refuses to listen to anyone at times, even Wizards. Truly, it’s the best kind of magic I’ve yet to encounter, and one that has taught me a great many things.
He talked of the Great Betrayal (to the dulcet tunes of a handpipe and string band of brightly attired traveling jongleurs that had just started playing to earn their stay and meal), when the Vraad fell upon the families of Darklings. He told how the enraged and appalled Agnos Merlin had brought the survivors together in Camelot to protect them for a time, forming a noble Council of honor and justice—a haven, a sanctuary, a safe place for Darkling and Fey alike. That was the World he had grown up in.
Camelot had been the greatest of cities in the darkest of times (in his opinion). A true light on a hill during an age of savage war, hate, and wicked sorcery that plagued all Fey as each bitterly contested one another with swords, spears, tooth, claw, and all manner of deathly magics for resources, land, gold, to right perceived wrongs and most of all, beliefs and convictions of faith.
It was bitter, bloody days. But, with Merlin and his Noble First Darkling forming a knighthood of the blood of the three families survivors and standing firm against the rising dark those evil days weren’t without hope or justice or a vengeful sword to drive back the horrors and bring justice to the wicked.
He spoke of Orcs, Goblins, Weres, Vampires, and demons and pitiless wars fought with horrible magics, muscle, blade, fang, and claw by valiant Elf, Dwarf, and Witch until finally the dreaded Dark Lord that had conspired against the light and life itself was finally defeated, tragically at great and terrible cost by a hero King amid a great grove of fig trees in the last great battle of the races. His amassed dark Wizardly power returned to the ether of the arcane.
Sadly, he explained Merlin’s dream was short lived as the Vraad, angered by vengeful, merciless attacks of retribution by a disgraced and exiled darkling knight and his followers fell again upon Camelot, and Merlin himself was tragically struck down as he tried to end the terrible fighting. Gramps admonished that things had never been the same since, wondering what might have been had the arch Wizard lived.
The battle, he explained, left the knights’ Council broken, the round table sundered, its elders all dead, and the rest divided, and so more vanished in their anger and grief, vowing to join the exiled Forsaken of the blood in vengeance and in quest to end the Fey threat once and for all.
I noticed that more than a few were listening, a good number with tears brimming into their drinks, a couple dark looks, and a few more just enjoying the stories as we ate and talked. More even seemed to file in through the Rovers Rest great round door, as if word had somehow spread of the story telling, sitting close by and on old penny-pinching Mac’s insistence ordering tankards and food just to listen.
It was the longest breakfast of my life at that time as I shared bacon and blood sausage with Manx who lay beneath the table at our feet. But it flew past in the blink of the eye amid stories of blood feuds, heroism, and magic.
A Halfling of particularly dainty feature, slight of build but flashy in dress “bravo-d” and clapped when Gramps finished up a particularly riveting one about a predominantly awful hunt for a lost Roman Legion in the haunted forests of Gaul.
It was fascinatingly bursting with the excitement and intrigue of a kidnapped princess. Full of chases, tracking wicked things through dark forests, intrigue, and tragedy (through which the dapper suited Halfling even dabbed at a few tears as he raptly listened, his huge, expressive eyes glittering with wonder), finally climaxing with a bloody, heroic battle where a noble Dwarf king’s forces and the Darkling Lupine Legion put aside their insurmountable differences to defeat a coven of Blood Witches and their slave army beneath a bright full moon on a bridge over a raging torrent of a river.
It was a sad, exciting story that seemed even old fat Mac had bent an ear to listen carefully to, but the Halfling’s gleeful appreciation seemed to break the spell like a splash of icy water onto a sleeping man, and all at once the regular din of the tavern’s dining hall returned with the clink of cutlery and platter and low conversation.
“’Fazool, I didn’t see you there,” Gramps sighed in greeting, then smiled watching the little man pat Manx with obvious trepidation when he lumbered out panting from beneath the table to great him–the