Death After Death-Chapter 325 - Always an Outsider

Despite the inroads Simon made with the people of lesser clans and the sick and desperate, it did little to improve his standing in the wider society of Adonan. It certainly did him no favors with Eddek’s father when the man finally arrived in the city after the spring thaw. That was a little frustrating, but the worst part was having to redo all the names in his head. Suddenly, Eddek was no longer Eddek because there were now several Eddeks, including the Karl and several others.

Now, he was Eddek Farel, or more commonly, Erben, neither of which Simon cared for. In mixed company, he addressed him by his title, but in his mind, the backward names were something he’d never really get used to, and he called the kid by his surname as he’d done up until now whenever they were alone.

None of that mattered compared to the Karl’s presence, though. While he praised his son for surviving his perilous encounter with the owlbear and the work he’d done to rehabilitate their clan’s hall in the capital, he had nothing but disapproval for Simon. While he thanked him for saving his son’s life, he offered him no reward for it.

“I’d planned to,” he said, “I am grateful that you saved my son's life, but those gifts will have to go toward Himar now in an attempt to salvage our relationship after the stunt you pulled.”

Simon’s days were numbered there after that. The Karl didn’t dismiss Simon immediately, but he and his son argued loudly in private for three nights running before the boy was forced to do it.

“My father insists,” he pleaded, as he apologized to Simon more than he commanded him. “It’s the price of making peace with some of the clans that your actions have alienated.”

“How can you be sure they won’t retaliate when I’m gone?” Simon asked. He wasn’t angry. He was just curious if his young charge had thought this through after all their discussions on strategy and the law.

“It’s possible,” he admitted. “I told my father as much, but he feels the risk of keeping you in our service greatly outweighs the risks of letting you go.”

Simon nodded. He was forced to agree with that logic. While he didn’t fear any man, he could see why the Karl did. Truthfully, this isn’t how Simon had wanted things to go at all. He’d wanted to get to know the man and better understand the problems at their clanhold next, but the way things were now, he didn’t think that was very likely.

Still, he didn’t try to force the issue and accepted his young friend’s judgment; he would not try to pit father against son. That was simply too cruel. When word got out that he was leaving soon, though, Kayla seemed to be the most affected. Whereas Simon and Eddek had developed more of a student-teacher association, the girl viewed him almost as a surrogate father, and he could hardly blame her. Not only did he save her life, but he also doted on her whenever he had the chance.

Simon considered it an effort to make her the sort of person who would never work together with warlocks to massacre innocents, but she didn’t know that. She just loved the attention. So, she was heartbroken by the news.

“What will you do now?” she asked.

“That’s a good question,” Simon answered. Truthfully, he hadn’t decided. He’d planned on spending a couple more years here. At the very least, he’d planned to make sure that Eddek graduated from the academy he attended happy and healthy.

After that, he should probably go back to the bridge and see if the portal to the troll still worked and take care of that. If that wasn’t an option, he had some ideas about spending a few years in Liepzen, the capital of Brin, to learn a bit more about their political fault lines.

However, rather than tell Kayla any of that or express uncertainty, he merely said, “I’ll find somewhere else to stay for a while, I think before I leave Adonan.”

“Really?” the girl asked, as her eyes lit up.

“Why not. At least through the summer,” Simon offered. “I stayed here all winter. I might as well get to see what the mountains look like when it’s nice out.”

“Well, if you’re going to start a new household, you’ll need a servant or two…” she hinted. The implication was very clear, and Simon politely but firmly turned her down. While he wanted to be there for her and Eddek both, the last thing he needed was this blossoming into a juvenile crush.

Simon stayed there in Eddek’s clanhall for another week before he arranged for alternative lodgings. Despite all of his good works when the white fever was raging, not many were willing to take him in. In the end, he was forced to go to clan Aldor, a minor family that already hated the Himar and were hated by them in turn.

They wouldn’t accept money for that service, either. Instead, they required him to go on a little monster hunt for an ogre that was troubling one of their clanholds.

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“If that’s too much trouble for an outlander, then perhaps you weren’t meant to stay here anyway,” Erben Aldor told him with a smirk on his face when they were discussing terms.

“Who’d be afraid of a mere ogre?” Simon answered after draining and slamming down his drinking horn. “You just tell me where its lair is and what proof you want that the deed is done, and I’ll have it for you within a fortnight.”

In the end, they agreed on decent enough terms, and Simon left the city with most of his things, along with a writ that would guarantee him reentry and hospitality anywhere within valleys controlled by clan Aldor. It wasn’t the adventure he’d expected to take, and the nights were still a bit chill, but he had magic for dealing with that. The bigger problem was that the monsters of the region were no longer stuck in their lairs waiting for spring.

In any other life and any other place, he would have simply slept in the wild and fought what came, but the nights here were too dangerous for that, and he had to move between the clanholds judiciously. Sometimes, he even had to help in their defense. Once, that meant fighting off a pack of goblins that had managed to claw their way into a large dairy barn, and another time, that meant hunting down an actual werewolf.

While the former task was trivial, the latter task was made dangerous only by not knowing which member of the community was so afflicted while he was at the Lake Grinell Clanhold. “I’m just here for the night before I go off to fight an ogre,” Simon told the community when they asked for his help.

He only said that because of how rude they’d been to him at first, though. He was happy to help, and after he made a big show of looking for clues as to who it might be, he used his diving rod to find the culprit.

That was a frustrating experience; the thing didn’t detect werewolves at all on his first few attempts because, he realized, the creature didn’t actually exist during daylight hours. When he looked for someone bearing the curse of lycanthropy instead, though, he found them quickly enough.

The gruff wood cutter denied everything at first. He even threatened Simon with an axe, but when the man couldn’t so much as hold a silver coin without pain, he finally admitted it. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. It’s not my fault I have this curse!”

He proceeded to give Simon a litany of excuses and justifications, but it changed nothing. “I don’t doubt any of that,” Simon agreed, “But you’re still a terrible danger to your community. You might not have killed anyone yet, but you will.”

“Please don't tell anyone. They’ll kill me!” the woodsman pleaded. “I’ll flee… I’ll go into exile… I’ll”

Kill people wherever you go, Simon thought.

He didn’t say that, though. It was clear that he was already panicked enough. Instead, he said, “You won’t go anywhere. We will cure you here and now or kill you to put you out of everyone’s misery. There is no third option.”

“But there is no cure,” the woodsman protested. “Perhaps witchcraft, but that’s a cure that’s worse than the disease.”

Simon nodded in feigned agreement. “I would never resort to such dark magics,” he lied. “Still, I think with the right herbs and prayer, we can remove this curse from you.”

The prayer was a lie, of course. It would just be an excuse to lay his holy symbol-shaped medallion on the man for hours at a time. The herbs were a different story. Simon could have gone for something that would boost his immune system, but instead, he chose purgative herbs that left his patient as sick as a dog for their week together. That wasn’t because he enjoyed making the man suffer, though. It was because he knew that he wasn’t ready to accept the idea that he could be healed and that for such a miracle to happen, it would require a great deal of suffering.

He even made sure to do a similar, though less awful, version of this ritual with a few other villagers, including the chief’s prime suspects, just to make sure that no one would be pilloried when this was all done. That was cruel, too, but given how xenophobic these people were, it was entirely necessary. Those who wouldn’t cooperate and insisted they weren’t werewolves were compelled to do so by their own leaders.

For so long, I hated the way the few grimoires I found hid real magic beneath pointless rituals and infantile prayers, and now here I am, doing the same thing, Simon thought, chastizing himself as he went through the process.

While he would have loved to take a more measured approach and level with the guy like a doctor might, that was impossible. Instead, he made the man vomit and sweat for five days and nights leading up to the next full moon. It was the cruelest kindness that Simon had ever done, but the bonfires powered the magic of his amulet, and that amulet stripped the curse as well as any other ailments that the woodcutter's body had. By the time the full moon rose, Simon had not just cured his lycanthropy; he’d cured his vision and his arthritis as well.

“It’s a miracle,” the woodcutter breathed, gazing at the full moon in the sky for the first time in more than a year without transforming. “I didn’t think such things were possible.”

“Through the divine, all things are possible,” Simon answered, spouting a platitude that seemed appropriate.

Two nights after the full moon, the elders of the clanhold agreed that the problem had been dealt with. For his good deed, he was given no parade or even a feast; because he refused to tell the clanhold’s leader who the werewolf had been, he wasn’t even given a reward.

“You might have merely scared it off with your rituals,” the headman said. “Who can say if it will return?”

While that was true, the point was to cheat Simon, not to be cautious. Still, he didn’t let that bother him; he would have done the same thing for nothing at all. In this case, the good was its own reward.

“Well, the next time you face a problem, do not send for me,” he answered with a shrug. “You will clearly deserve whatever retribution is due an honorless host.”

“You take that back,” the headman growled, but Simon merely smiled.

“If you take issue with my words, then challenge me to a duel for them, as is your right, or take it up with your Karl,” Simon countered. “I’m on his business with this ogre hunt, not yours.”

The man did nothing but spout insults as Simon left the hall and the hold. Really, though, Simon hadn’t expected anything else.