7 August 1062 P.E. (Post Exodus)
Southeastern Quarter, City of Darnan
One Thousand and Sixty-two Years Later
The Repository Apotheca smelled of formaldehyde and wood oil and dust. Over the years, Quincy had grown used to it, and had even sort of come to like the sweet acridity. It was the smell of where he belonged. It was the smell of home.
Quincy whistled as he wiped the ever-present desert dust off the shelves of jars containing preserved organs and pickled creatures. He stopped to wipe his brow with the back of his hand. The apothecary shop was stuffy and hot as always, heated like a blast furnace by the afternoon sun blazing through the large glass storefront.
He made his way over to the large grandfather clock that stood to one side of the wooden counter and wiped the dust off of its elegant face. Then he pulled a tin of wood grease out of his pocket and, with a separate cloth, meticulously applied the grease to the wood so that it wouldn’t dry out in the murderously dry desert air.
A little bell rang as the door to the apothecary shop swung open, letting in a gust of dusty, hot air and a puff of sand that instantly coated the entire front room all over again. Quincy bit off a curse and rolled his eyes. He turned to greet the customer and squinted as the bright afternoon sun bit into his eyes. The man who had entered was naught but a dark silhouette against the blazing desert sun.
The newcomer let the door slam shut with another little jingle.
“Good afternoon, kind sir. How may I assist you?”
The man strode in and took his hat off, then placed his large hands on the counter like a sheriff come to interrogate the apothecary. Quincy could just make out a strange spidery scar on the man’s left wrist. He leaned forward enough that his shaggy salt and pepper head blocked out the sun and gave the apothecary a good view of the man’s lined, scruffy face, with a straight nose and those laughing amber eyes.
“Brand!” The apothecary’s face broke out in a grin. “Always a pleasure.”
“I still haven’t found a shop that can beat your quality and price, my friend.” The big newcomer’s deep voice was smooth and cultured, tinted with the affectations of the kashmari accent he spent so much time around.
“All of the credit goes to my father and his father before him,” Quincy said modestly. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.”
The newcomer smiled and fanned himself. With a smirk and a twinkle in his eye, his voice rising a little and taking on a goofy accent, he said, “Quincy, it’s hotter’n a kor’lac’s breath in here,” he drawled. “Haven’ I sold ya enough crud to hawk so you could buy a whole slew o’ fans yet? Maybe even one a those cooler things?” Brand screwed up his face in disgust. “How’d you put up wi’ that smell?”
Quincy snorted. “You barely bring me enough to keep your ingredients in stock as it is. What’s with the accent? You sound like a Duati farmer from the caves.”
Brand took a bag off of his shoulder and hoisted it onto the counter with a clank. He opened the bag and upended it. Gears, coils, tubes, and an assortment of screws clattered down onto the wood and skittered or rolled across the counter.
Brand dropped the colloquial drawl in favor of his original crisp dialect.
“My next fight in three days is with a Duati man sponsored by a Navari lady, so Kushchai had me hobnobbing with all of them the past few days. Public relations, raise spirits, that sort of thing. You know. Picked up the accent and thought I’d try it out in case I ever need it. The more famous I get, the harder it’s been to get around town without people noticing. Makes coming here…risky. But people don’t really see you when you talk like an idiot. They only see the accent.”
The apothecary shook his head in amazement. The big man had mentioned before how risky it was for anyone to know he regularly visited an apothecary. People might start asking what he was buying.
“Must have been a nightmare, escorting those Duati around.”
“The kashmari, yeah, but the humans were nice enough.” Brand drawled again, “Fer people short a few cars of a train, know wud I mean?”
Quincy chuckled. “I had an uncle who got sent down there. We’d see him over the holidays, but not much else. I remember each time he came up, it seemed like he got dumber and dumber. Once, he told us that the shadows were murdering people but that he’d made a deal with the shadows so they’d let him live.”
“Must be something in the air down there. Something’s not quite right with those folks.” The big man jutted his bearded chin at the jumble of parts. “How much?”
The apothecary pulled a pair of round glasses down from his head and poked around the mess, sorting items into piles with a slender, manicured finger. He sighed.
“Double what I paid last. But it won’t do you much good, I’m afraid. With the storms out in the Wastes getting worse, it’s almost impossible to source some of the herbs. I’m down to about a quarter of my usual stock as it is. This—“ He poked at the pile of coils and gears, “—won’t be enough to cover much at all. Maybe an ounce of belladonna.”
Brand growled, an unsettling sound coming from a man of his stature. The apothecary’s eyes darted to the man’s veiny forearms bulging from his rolled-up sleeves. The linen shirt was the same color as the vial of blood on the counter near his elbow, the slender man noticed. Quincy shifted his weight to his other foot nervously.
Brand relaxed and waved a dismissive hand. “Alright. I was hoping to get a bit more off, but…Oh well. I’ll take as much of a complete pharmakon’s kit as you can manage, please, with two liters of alcohol and half a dozen vials. Plus your usual discretion, of course.”
The apothecary’s jaw dropped. A full kit would cost more than Quincy would see in a year. “A full kit?” he sputtered. “You only just one two months ago.”
The big man crossed his arms over his thick chest, his expression darkening. He glared at a jar of yellowish formaldehyde containing a severed hand.
“I know. Let’s just say it wasn’t worth my life to save the last one.”
“Ah.”
As Brand turned away to inspect a coiled intestine floating in a jar farther down the counter, Quincy scooped the pile of gizmos into a tray and retreated into the back room. There, his treasure trove of herbs, spices, tinctures, and medicines glittered at him from their orderly rows on shelves that reached to a high ceiling. He set the tray aside, picked up an empty one, and began collecting the requested ingredients, following a list he’d meticulously memorized and then burned decades ago. Capsaicin, toxic cinnabar, digitalis seeds, belladonna…
The apothecary couldn’t help but be amazed once more as the tray grew heavy with poisons, deadly herbs, and minerals. Once, many years ago, these poisons would have been used by a pharmakon to concoct near-magical elixirs that would kill a normal man but which would lend a pharmakon super-human powers. They’d been the heroes of the past, swooping in to save innocent humans from the injustices meted out to them by their kashmari overlords. Now, though, with the death of the last pharmakon nearly thirty years past, no one even knew how to brew them anymore.
“You always give Cadmus Brand whatever he asks for,” Quincy’s father had admonished. “And don’t ask questions.”
He’d asked his father if Brand was a pharmakon. The ailing apothecary had quietly shaken his head.
“No. There will never be a real pharmakon again, not like there used to be. Brand has other uses for the poisons. Just keep him supplied.”
Pulling his thoughts away from the past, Quincy placed a final vial of nutmeg seeds onto the tray, collected the extra empty vials and alcohol, and brought them out again to Brand.
Quincy froze. A pair of kashmari stood alongside the big man, elongated ears and slender fingers dripping with silver jewelry set against their bluish skin. Humanoid in appearance, the delicate-boned kashmari made up the upper classes of society. Humans were the servants, laborers, and skilled artisans who lived and worked at the pleasure of their kashmari lords.
This particular kashmari lord’s grayish-blue skin looked sickly next to Brand’s solid tan, and the three-piece suit he wore seemed a bit too tight around his middle. The lady, on the other hand, was laced up in a corseted gown that made her waist seem unnaturally narrow, and her sky-blue face was decorated with delicate white lines and ticking on her lips.
Their clothes were made of fine silk, but devoid of any gems or other embellishments save for a pair of matching brooches they wore that signified their rank as a baron and baroness. Minor kashmari nobles, then.
Brand towered more than a head above the creatures. He stood waiting silently, as was expected. But there was a tension in the set of his jaw and the way he held his shoulders that worried the apothecary.
Quincy frowned slightly. The kashmari didn’t seem at all suspicious of Brand. Perhaps they didn’t know who the gladiator was, though Quincy found that highly unlikely as Brand spent far more time among the kashmari nobility than he did among humans these days.
The kashmari baroness peered into a jar while she talked.
“The human I can understand—they’re so weak-willed—but even a lowborn ought to have enough self-control.”
“I could never do it,” the baron said with a snort. “Filthy things, humans. I’d rather go without than let a human into my bed. Just couldn’t do it.”
“Nor could I,” the baroness said, tapping the side of the jar. The tentacles inside wobbled. She pulled her gloved hand back with her lip curled. “Even if that weren’t enough, though, I would have thought the threat of punishment would be enough to stop them. Even these humans here know that the punishment for interracial sexual relations is death.”
The baron shrugged. “Exceptions to the rule are made, providing the female is properly disposed of afterward. I’ve heard Fafnir himself breeds human females for that specific purpose. And, well, we are speaking of Ivan, after all. He’d sleep with an Apida if he could figure out how.”
The baroness’s lip curled further in distaste.
Quincy quietly placed the tray with the alchemy kit under the counter and pulled out a handful of brown paper bags full of loose herbal tea. He saw Brand gesture over to him.
“Excuse me, good sir,” the gladiator drawled. “The teas are to die fer, sir, so ev’ry time I come up here, I grab some for my granny.” Brand turned and Quincy saw that the gladiator was wearing a half-faced monocle mask and a tinkerer’s gauntlet he’d grabbed from a table. The effect was startling and indeed quite distracting. No wonder the kashmari didn’t recognize him. Quincy sighed in relief.
Both Brand and the kashmari leaned on the counter. The kashmari lady gestured to Quincy with a long blue hand draped in slender silver chains hooked onto her many rings.
“Let me smell those teas.”
The apothecary obliged, and the kashmari sniffed. Her eyes closed and a smile crept onto her painted face.
“I’ll take a few bags of these as well. Also one box of crystal vials.”
Quincy bobbed his head. “Of course, m’lady. One moment.”
She picked at her long nails. “Our apothecary in New Braunen has little experience in crystal blowing. His vials are useless. I have to restock whenever I visit Darnan,” the kashmari lady said in response to Brand’s quizzical look.
“Oh. Are ya here fer the fight?”
The baron smiled. “Of course. The fight between Brand of Darnan and Percy of Duat promises to be the fight of the century.”
“I do hope the fuss from last week won’t interfere with this week’s fight,” the baroness said, turning to Quincy. “Tell me, as an apothecary: Is it true that the herbs left behind in the arena belonged to a pharmakon?”
Quincy smiled apologetically and shrugged. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. I’ve never heard of a real pharmakon in Darnan. Every so often, some idiots come in asking for special herbs they think will give them magical powers, but I always turn them away before they kill themselves or someone they love.”
It was true, save for Brand. Quincy wondered what exactly the gladiator used the poisons for. For just a second, he envisioned the big man erupting in light and burning these two kashmari lords to ash.
But Brand just stood there leaning against the counter with a tight smile plastered on his lined face. The pharmakons are all dead, Quincy reminded himself. There’s no one to fight for us humans anymore.
The kashmari lord snorted. “Wise, very wise indeed. I think the apothecary is right, dear. Lord Fafnir did away with their kind decades ago.”
He turned back to Brand. His eyes narrowed as he took in Brand’s large, muscled frame. “You seem…familiar. Have we met before?”
Quincy’s heart stopped.
Brand cleared his throat and shrugged nonchalantly. “Brand of Darnan is my cousin. Second cousin, really. People say we look a lot alike, y’know?”
“Ah, yes,” the baron said. “I saw him earlier this year when he came down to the coast. You do look quite alike. Are you here to watch the fight as well then?”
Brand nodded with a smile. “I don’ get ta see ‘im that offen. Never met him, truthfully; too famous, y’know? We still go on about him plenny at home, though.”
“You are from Duat?”
“Yep.”
The baroness squinted at Brand. “You don’t look Duati.”
Brand shrugged. “Most people don’ realize some o’ us are darker skinned. Not many of us are, but some.”
“Is Brand from Duat as well?”
“Naw. He was born up here. Can’t remember exactly how, since I thought his ma and pa were from Duat too.”
She smiled tightly. “Well. Let us both pray to the Guardian that Brand will find success in his fight.”
Brand smiled broadly. Quincy was sure the smile was genuine. “Thank ye kindly, ma’am. I’m sure he’d appreciate yer consideration.”
Quincy finished collecting the kashmari’s order. “That will be two gold pieces, sir.”
The baroness examined the crystal vials with pursed lips. “These vials are hardly any better than the ones back in New Braunen.”
“I assure you, these are the finest crystal vials in Darnan,” Quincy said, his face falling. It was a game he knew he wouldn’t win.
“I will not pay for inferior vials,” the baron said, turning to leave. “Come, dear. Surely we can find another apothecary.”
“Can I offer them to you for half price, m’lord?” Quincy said desperately.
The two kashmari turned, smiles back on their faces. They paid the apothecary and left.
Brand quietly moved over to the glass windows at the front of the shop and watched the kashmari walk down the street. Then he sauntered back over and cast a keen eye over the contents of the tray Quincy had pulled back out and set on the counter. Satisfied, he fished a coin pouch out of a pocket.
“Is it really worth all this trouble?” Quincy asked as he gingerly placed the contents of the tray into a sack.
Brand looked up from counting coins. “Is what worth it?”
“You know. Is it worth dodging half the city just to get these poisons? What if they catch you and assume it means you’re a pharmakon?”
“Is it worth it to still be in business even though you get fleeced by three-quarters of your clientèle?” the gladiator responded.
Quincy said, “I’ve learned to compensate. I raise my prices for them so that when they think they’re cutting me off at the knees, they’re really just paying normal prices.”
Brand chuckled and said cryptically, “We all compensate in our own ways. These are mine. And yes, it’s worth it to me, even if it means I hafta put on a show fer em.”
The big gladiator pulled the monocle mask and gauntlet off and set them carefully on the counter. The skin on the right side of Brand’s face had red creases where the mask had suctioned onto it.
He flexed his hand, then fished a small piece of thick paper from his pocket and unfolded it, placing it on the counter between them. On it was a photograph of Brand, bare-chested and smirking, in the midst of several scantily clad women. A title had been scrawled across the top in big garish letters:
The Bodacious Brand of Darnan!
Versus
The Powerful Percy from Duat!
A Once in a Lifetime Experience You Won’t Want to Miss!
He tapped a finger on his likeness. “You ever been to see a fight?”
The apothecary shook his head.
“All these years, you’ve been my friend, supplying me, but never knowing why and never asking,” Brand mused. “Come in three days and find me after the match. I’ll explain everything.”
“It’s just a couple of men pounding each other,” Quincy said. “I’ve never seen the point.”
Brand smiled knowingly. “There’s a bit more to it than that.”
Quincy hesitated, frowning at the sack of poisons he’d collected. What could the gladiator want with them, anyway? They were useless to anyone but a pharmakon, and if Brand really was one of them, the entire city would know.
Even though Quincy had been a young child when the last pharmakon had died, he remembered how the kashmari coming into the shop had whispered in fear to his father, making him swear to turn the pharmakon in if he ever saw the man. He’d held the kashmari in terrified thrall for decades, stalking the streets of Darnan at night, protecting the innocent and raining down vengeance upon any kashmari bold enough to step outside their gilded estates. The day the pharmakon had died, the kashmari had paraded his corpse through the streets with great fanfare.
If Brand had the abilities of a pharmakon and used them in a fight, High Lord Fafnir would have killed the gladiator in a heartbeat.
Quincy looked up at Brand. No, Brand might be a fighter, but only for his own gain. Still, if the old gladiator somehow used pharmakon herbs in his fights, it might be worth seeing.
Curiosity got the better of Quincy, who sighed and held out a hand, which Brand took. “Alright. I’ll be there.”
“Until then,” Brand said, his deep voice resonating in his barrel chest. “And thank you. It means the world to me that I can always count on you. If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
The gigantic man then dropped a few coins on the counter and picked up the sack. Brand pulled up the bandana around his neck so that it covered his nose and mouth, pulled on a pair of dark sunglasses, and donned his hat, effectively covering up his face. Then he stepped out into the harsh afternoon sunlight.
* * *
Even with dark glasses, Brand had to squint in the harsh sunlight. He stared down the packed gravel road lined on either side with tall shops built with sand-colored bricks, the garish paint peeling and bleached by the sun to a mere suggestion of their former color. Cables loosely stitched the two rows of buildings together like a corset, occasionally serving as a clothesline for someone who lived above their shop. Palms swayed high above the rooftops, lending no shade to the street below.
Besides the dust that scoured Brand’s nose and throat with every breath, the air carried a delicious aroma of roasting meat and the sharp stench of overused cooking oil.
He glanced around at the various pedestrians. None seemed even the slightest bit interested in him. Most wore wide-brimmed hats and kept their heads down to keep the murderous sunlight out of their eyes.
This district was too poor for impractical suits or dresses; threadbare, loose linen shirts reigned regardless of gender.
Despite their obvious poverty, the dusty street was neat and free of trash. An old woman, her eyes milky white, sat on a little wooden stool outside a flower shop, smiling and chatting with the baker who’d stopped by. Bougainvillea cascaded like a magenta waterfall from every window box. Puddles of fallen pink bracts pooled along the gutters. A young man and woman wearing threadbare but clean clothes played a pair of wooden flutes, nodding their thanks to passersby who dropped a few coins into the instrument case at their feet.
Satisfied, Brand stepped out into the street, dodging a mechanohorse carriage with its gears and cogs clicking and squeaking. He made his way down the street for about a mile.
Brand paused in front of a poster pasted up against a whitewashed brick building. It was a larger copy of the advertisement he’d shown the apothecary. Two young boys were standing there, pretending the punch each other in the face and narrating their antics.
“I take a swing at you—”
“You missed! I pick up a staff and swing it at you! It hits your arm! You can’t use your arm now!”
“If I were someone else, that would be true—but I’m Brand the Magnificent! I can use my arm anyway!”
“He’s not Brand the Magnificent. He’s Brand the Barbaric.”
“They change it every time. See the poster? He’s Brand the Bodacious this time.”
“What’s ‘bodacious’ mean?”
“It’s another word for awesome.”
Brand chuckled to himself. Then his smile faded. Darnan had its problems, but the city was his home and he loved it. If he didn’t win this fight…Brand shoved that thought aside. He just had to win. Somehow.
Brand ducked down a short alley, then stepped out onto a much wider street paved with smooth sandstone and lined with cafes and market stalls. Looking south, down the street, Brand could see the steam from the trains of the Southern Depot billowing up over the top of the steep copper roofs. A deep, sonorous bell tolled four times.
Something heavy and mechanical slammed into Brand’s back, sending him flying forward into a flimsy table. He staggered, then pulled himself up and turned in time to duck as a massive mechanical arm shattered the glass window right where his head had been a moment before. A million shards of glass exploded around him in a shower of stars, biting into his skin as he flung his arms up to protect his eyes.
He then dove into a roll, shoulder first, as the mechanical arm slammed down once more, cracking the brick sidewalk.
Brand rolled into a sprint that carried him several meters away, then spun, getting his first real look at the monster.
It was a man in a heavy mechanical suit. Tubes sprouted from massive claw hands and heavy mechanical feet, fed by a thick battery backpack. Gears clanked as the machine thundered toward Brand, pistons firing and steaming. It closed the distance between them frighteningly fast and swung at Brand with a massive metal claw.
Brand scrambled out of the way and felt the air as the claw barely missed him. It took another step and swung its other arm, sending Brand flying to the pavement again.
“Who are you?” Brand growled in exasperation at the machine suit. He couldn’t see a face behind the bronze-tinted faceplate.
In response, the mechanical claw facing Brand opened wide to reveal a muzzle between the two claw halves. Brand rolled quickly to one side just as the muzzle fired off a shot. It hit the brick, sending red chips flying up into Brand’s face. The claw twisted towards Brand. He rolled back the other way, the next shot nearly catching him in the shoulder.
If he let this thing keep knocking him around, Brand wasn’t going to be alive to make it to the gladiatorial fight. His mind flashed to his customized gauntlet sitting safe and useless in a drawer in his office at home. He cursed. He’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.
He rolled forward between the machine suit’s legs and gave the butt of the suit a hard kick.
The machine suit staggered but didn’t fall.
Brand darted to the side sprinted up another road lined with more shops, searching frantically for some way to escape. Great long strides carried him through a cloud of smoke from a restaurant roasting meat on an outside patio. He then vaulted over a low planter spilling over with sweet jasmine, brushing it and releasing its scent.
Brand heard the stomping of the machine behind him, closing fast. To his right was another alley, much narrower and twisted than the one he stood in. An awful stench leeched out of it. He glanced back at the machine, then plunged into the alley.
A Note from Jillian: I decided to upload Muspell’s Sons in its entirety to my website to test whether an author can be successful without charging for their ebooks. This is a completely free fantasy ebook available to read online and I do not use ads to support this website since I personally despise ads. I make no money off of this free fantasy ebook. If you like the book, please consider leaving a review for me on Goodreads. That will greatly help more people find my stories. Thanks!
