The Wine of Dreams (29 page)

“The false monks who grow these murderous flowers attempted to sell Reinmar
some of their most recent vintages,” von Spurzheim added, when it became clear
that Albrecht still had nothing to say. “He refused them, even before he knew
what they were. But when he found the storeroom, he did know. What did you do
then, Reinmar? Even Matthias seems uncertain.”

“Had I been able to upset the stone vats and spill their contents, I would
have done it,” Reinmar said. “I could not—but I smashed every vessel I could
lay my hands on and emptied the contents of those I could carry into a channel
that drained into the depths of the world. I can’t be sure what proportion of
their stocks I spoiled there, but I suspect that the shortages in the river
towns and Marienburg will grow far worse before they can begin to improve.”

“I had hoped, Magister,” von Spurzheim said, in seeming imitation of the
softness of Reinmar’s voice, “that you might be able to advise us as to the
possible effects of that scarcity.”

When Albrecht spoke at last, it was to say: “I have no idea. I have been out
of touch for far too long.”

“But you have seen men driven to distraction and madness by lack of the wine,
have you not?” von Spurzheim persisted. “You, of course, are possessed of an
enviable strength of mind and body—more so than your brother Luther, I dare
say—but you have seen others whose dependency was greater. Have you not seen
men driven to self-mutilation, suicide and murder, and others reduced to mere
gibbering wreckage while their nightmares marked their flesh with agonising
scars?”

“I have seen men distressed,” Albrecht admitted, dully, “who blamed their
distress on thirst for the wine and dreams that had turned from good to bad.
Some men are less able to tolerate nightmares than others—but those who were
driven to violence were violent before they ever took a sip of the wine.”

“Do you think so?” von Spurzheim said. “I am not so sure.”

“You seem to have discussed the matter with at least as many people as I ever did,” Albrecht
replied, stonily, “and more persuasively too. I dare say that you are better
placed to guess than I am, even though you have never deigned to put your own
tastes to the test.”

Von Spurzheim laughed, but the lightness of the laugh was contrived. “Perhaps
I am,” he said. “At any rate, I have plans to make. I dare say that you have
private matters to discuss with your nephew, so I’ll leave you alone. Matthias
will collect you in a little while, Reinmar—I have a few questions still to
ask you, if you aren’t too tired.” He did not wait for a reply but left the cell
with Vaedecker, who opened the door and then closed it behind them.

Reinmar was not fool enough to believe that it was safe to talk. Someone
would undoubtedly be listening—but the door was thick, and Albrecht was by no
means hard of hearing. He drew his great-uncle to the corner of the cell that
was farthest from the door, and lifted his lips close to the old man’s ear
before he said: “Are you all right? Have they hurt you?”

“They had no need,” Albrecht murmured. “They have already found out more than
I can tell them as they came from Marienburg. They have kept me here to make
sure that I do not talk to Luther, who is prisoner enough in his own home, with
a very dutiful jailer. Not that I blame Gottfried. It is all true, then? I
suppose the witch hunter would not have let you come here otherwise.”

“It’s all true,” Reinmar confirmed. “The magic of the dark wine is rooted in
horrors. It has to be stopped. Von Spurzheim is right about that.” Not for a
moment did he contemplate the possibility of confiding to his great-uncle that
he had a portion of the active ingredient of the wine of dreams—or one of its
darker kin—in his possession.

Albrecht did not seem to know what to say next, but he decided in the end.
“It’s probably too late for advice, but you must be careful,” he murmured very
softly. “Whatever you might think, I cannot believe it was luck or cleverness
that guided you to a place that no man of Eilhart has ever been able to find.
There is a clash of schemes here, and von Spurzheim’s coming will surely prompt
a response of some sort. Be very, very careful, else you be crushed or cut to
shreds in the collision. If they will let you go, go—to Holthusen, at least.
Those who are fleeing the town are the wise ones. Follow them if you can.”

When Reinmar came out of Albrecht’s cell, Matthias Vaedecker locked the door
behind him. The sergeant stayed behind in the blockhouse while Machar von
Spurzheim took Reinmar out of the constables’ lair and led him across the square
to the town hall. Once they had arrived there, the witch hunter led the way to a
room that presented as dramatic a contrast as could possibly be imagined to the
one Reinmar had just been in. Its walls were hidden by velvet hangings and the
floor was thickly carpeted. All the chairs had lavishly-upholstered seats and
the enormous leather-topped oaken table at which Reinmar was invited to sit was
piled with more pieces of parchment than he had ever seen in one place.

Von Spurzheim sat opposite, moving his hands on the table top in such a way
as to part the scraps of parchment into two roughly-equal heaps, one to each
side. Then he leaned forward, planting his elbows in the space he had cleared.
“Well, Master Wieland,” he said. “It seems that I have something for which to
thank you.”

“You should let my uncle go now,” Reinmar said. “He’s harmless.”

“Perhaps he is,” the witch hunter answered. “Your father has made me the same
assurances about your grandfather. But we have not quite cleared out the nest of vipers that was lodged in Holthusen,
so there are others free with whom he might join up, possibly forming a company
that would be stronger for his presence. Your cousin Wirnt warned them of our
approach, you see, as he had earlier warned others, including your grandfather
and your great-uncle—unless, of course, that was you.”

Reinmar said nothing to that, and von Spurzheim spread his hands
dismissively. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m sure now that you have only
done what you thought was right. You’re a man who knows the meaning of duty,
Matthias says. He also says that you’re a fool, but that may be too harsh a
judgement. There are matters I’m bound to keep secret even from him. I confess
that I don’t quite understand why, but I too am a man of duty and when I am
forbidden to speak of things I do not speak of them. It makes my job more
difficult, but I am also bound not to complain. If I asked you to go to
Holthusen for me, to help smoke out Wirnt’s friends, would you do it?”

“I have been advised to leave Eilhart,” Reinmar replied, cautiously, “but I
doubt that my family would approve of my doing so as a spy. I don’t think I
ought to leave my father—and I can’t leave the gypsy girl.”

Von Spurzheim frowned slightly at that, but he did not seem surprised. “Your
loyalties are still confused,” he observed. “That is natural. Even if I could
tell you everything that I know, you might not see the situation any more
clearly. But you will listen, I suppose, to what I can tell you.”

“Of course,” Reinmar said.

Very well. When you went into that strange underworld with Matthias
Vaedecker, you caught a glimpse of something that very few innocent men have
ever been unlucky enough to see. I do not simply mean the underworld itself but
something far greater, of which it is but a tiny part. The world you know is not
nearly as safe and secure as it seems; it exists in the shadow of a terrible
threat, which manifests itself in many different ways. Matthias knows far more
of this evil than most men, but he has only faced its most direct and brutal
manifestations. Men like me are commissioned to deal with subtler threats—threats which do not crowd upon civilised lands from their unruly borders,
seeking to diminish us by crude force of arms, but which emerge by stealth even
in the best strongholds of order and humanity.

“Even in Eilhart, Master Wieland, you must have heard rumours saying that all
is not well in the cities of the Empire. Even in Altdorf, in the very heart of
the greatest Empire of men that there has ever been, there have been eruptions
of horror and violence. The appetites that men possess are part of our precious
humanity, but they are also portals to the heart and mind through which subtle
invaders may pass. Some men are vulnerable because of their pride and their
propensity to wrath, some because of their love of luxury and intoxication.
Others are betrayed by their own inquisitiveness and hunger for strange
sensations. The health of humankind is always under siege, from diseases of the
body and diseases of the spirit—and great cities make fine breeding grounds
for all manner of sicknesses.

“The phases of decay are easy to see, for those who are educated to see them.
First, self-indulgence; second, addiction; third, desperation. All men begin by
thinking, as your grandfather once thought and your great-uncle still professes
to believe, that they can taste such temptations as the wine of dreams without
becoming dependent on them—but all men find, as your grandfather did, that
once they are increased such appetites can never be diminished to what they were
before, nor abandoned without painful cost. Once men become slaves to the wine
of dreams their thirst becomes so magnified that it requires stronger and
stranger liquors to slake it. It has the reputation of being the indulgence of
superior scholars and arrogant aristocrats—something which confers an enviable
status on its users—but its purpose is to spread a cancer within the highest
ranks and wisest enclaves of human civilization.

“Imagine, Reinmar, if you will, the magnitude of the conspiracy required to
convey the wine of dreams and its darker kin from the underworld beneath the
Grey Mountains to a city somewhere in the Empire. Imagine, too, that that is
merely one part of a greater conspiracy, which has all the Empire’s cities in
its sights—not merely Marienburg and Altdorf but Nuln and Talabheim, and even
far Middenheim, despite the distances involved. But imagine too a
counter-conspiracy, directed by the defenders of all that is good in humankind
and Empire: a conspiracy which attacks the cancer as it grows in a city and
begins to squeeze the evil life out of it, while painstakingly tracing its
extension along the Talabec, the Stir or the Reik itself.

The conspiracy has been the work of centuries, and the counter-conspiracy
likewise the work of generations. The principal arena of concern has shifted
half a dozen times, as has the balance of the contest, but in the present
generation there has been a crucial shift in that balance, at least in respect
of the wine of dreams.

“The present artery of the dark wine’s supply is by no means the first to
have been cut, but we have believed for some time that it is the most direct,
and the one which has brought us closest to the source. We have not merely
mapped the line along the Reik to the Schilder, to Holthusen and then to
Eilhart, but each link in the chain has been so carefully broken that the
supply-line has been decisively severed. I would dearly like to say irrevocably
instead of decisively, but I dare not. Such hopes have been entertained before,
and have failed. This may be the closest we have ever come to the source, and
might well be the best opportunity we have ever had to destroy that source,
but… do you see my difficulty, Reinmar? Can you see why I dare not take what
you and Matthias have told me entirely at face value?”

Reinmar was puzzled, at first, and quite at a loss to see what von Spurzheim
was driving at—but then he began to understand.

“It is far too convenient,” he said. “The timing is too perfect. My
grandfather and Albrecht have searched long and hard for the source of the wine
of dreams—and other men like you have done so, for their own reasons—but
none ever found it, until the day when you arrived in Eilhart, having erased
almost every element of the supply-line. You think that a trap was being laid
for you—a snare, carefully loaded with bait.” It was an idea that had not
occurred to him before, but now that it had he saw exactly how monstrous the
coincidence was. Could it be, he wondered, that Marcilla had led him into the
hidden valley? Had she been placed against the wall of that barn in the village
merely so that he might rescue her? If so, she could have been more than a pawn,
with no inkling of the plot… but if Matthias Vaedecker and Machar von
Spurzheim were right about the slyly playful nature of their enemy, it was
certainly conceivable. And how, after what he had seen in that awful underworld,
could he doubt the awful subtlety of its designer?

But even if Marcilla had led him to the valley, Reinmar thought, how much of
what happened thereafter had been included in the plan? Surely the architects of the trap could not have
expected him to find his way into the underworld itself? That must have been the
point at which the carefully-laid plan began to go badly awry. There was no way
that any one could have anticipated that he would find the storeroom and destroy
its stocks. If he had been drawn into a trap—as even Albrecht had thought
likely—then he had contrived to turn the tables on those who had laid down the
lure, and had turned the advantage they hoped to win into a disaster.

“I was supposed to find the valley,” Reinmar said, trying to think the matter
through. “I was supposed to follow the girl on my own—Sergeant Vaedecker was
an unexpected complication. The monks were supposed to test my attitude to the
wine very carefully, winning me to their cause if I could be won—but when the
gypsies sent word that the sergeant had come into the valley with me Brother
Noel decided that it would be best to let us leave as soon as possible. He did
not know, of course, that Vaedecker had seen Marcilla disinterred and that I
would insist on following her. I saw the astonishment on his face when he saw
Marcilla and realised what Vaedecker and I had done, and I am perfectly certain
that he had never imagined for a moment that we would do what we did—but even
then, he thought that the bare bones of the plan were still in place. He wanted
you to think that the valley could be found, and that Ulick and I could lead you
to it. Why?”