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Part 1
“You’re a thief,” Malus said to the young man seated cross the table from him. The light of late morning shone through the adjacent window, illuminating a slow-motion blizzard of dust particles inside the Milking Maid, right over their table. Malus casually put his hand over his mug, as if to ward the dust from his ale.
His tablemate finished drawing imaginary images on one of the window’s panes, turned to Malus and shrugged. “I’m also a liar, a cheat, a shoulder-thumper and a whore when I need to be. Just like every other orphan in Shygo. What of it? Are you thinking of renting my company tonight?”
“How much?” Malus asked, his face expressionless.
For a quick moment, a mild expression of surprise crossed the lad’s face, then was gone almost before it registered. Malus was paying attention though. “Ah, well. You see if that part of you is as big as the rest of you, I’ll have to charge double. Three silver. I’ll be sore the whole next day.”
Malus smiled down at the table, as if at a private joke. “The only part of you that will be sore afterward will be your purse if you turn me down, Mosley. You don’t mind if I call you Mosley, do you?” A sly, subtle grin played across the big man’s face as he pressed a shiney, new gold crown on the table.
Mosley snorted. “What kind of clown coin is that? The monarch of the midden?” Malus observed that his scoffing didn’t keep him from snatching the newly minted crown from the table and putting it between his teeth to verify its content. The coin vanished once Mosley was satisfied.
‘The kid is good,’ Malus mused to himself, but didn’t let it show on his face. “The coin is of King Rupert, first of his name, and defender of the realm.”
The young man laughed out loud at that. “Next thing you’ll tell me he’s the majester of Tra-la-la and slayer of kittens.”
“Now that you mention it,” Malus trailed off. “But the gold is good.”
“The gold is good,” Mosley agreed. “What do I have to do to earn it?”
“Just sit there and let me buy you ale and food for the rest of the afternoon while I explain my proposition to you. Then you can decline my offer, and the gold is yours. Or you can accept, and the real fun begins.”
Mosley tapped his finger on the table, looking sideways as if in thought. “Okay well, I didn’t have anything better to do today anyway, what ya got for me?”
“First, some lunch,” Malus said, motioning for the wench. The food wasn’t particularly good at the Milking Maid, but it wasn’t named for the wenches’ skill at dairy farming either. It turned out to be a pleasant afternoon, as Malus always knew it would.
Part 2
“Your mind is changing, and not for the better,” the voice inside Malus’ head could be the most soothing thing in his life, or the most irritating. At present, it was leaning more toward the latter.
“I’m a grown man, Megan, and I’m just becoming less playful and mischievous as part of that. We’ve discussed this before when I started getting interested in girls in… that way. This is the same thing.”
“No, that’s not it at all, Mal. While I am glad that you are becoming better able to control access to your mind by the dead, and I’m acutely aware of the potential within myself to become resentful that you don’t need me anymore, it’s not that. Well, it’s not just that. Maybe I’m imagining it, but sometimes it feels like you’ve shut yourself off from me intentionally. Now I wonder what’s going through your mind when you do that. And when you open back up, it feels like you’ve been somewhere dark, and you feel maybe a little ashamed.”
“Oh, for Fates’ sake, Megan. You have been my best friend for so long that you take for granted the confidences we share. No man and wife have ever been as intimate as we are, in spite of the spiritual limitations of our relationship. I have no secrets from you.”
“You can’t lie to me, but you can lie to yourself and I can’t always tell for sure if you’re doing it. That’s what it feels like right now. If feels like you’ve convinced yourself of something and now you’re trying to validate that by trying to convince me.”
“I think you’re just making things more complicated than they are. And even if I could hide my thoughts from you consciously, why would that be so bad? You can and do hide your thoughts from me effortlessly and always could. I trust you. Why can’t you trust me?”
“Malus Ossium, I have shared the most awful and dreadful parts of my life and death with you in living color and in great detail. The only thing I keep from you is the voices that would doom you to a certain death. I LIVE for you, I exist for you.”
“Ah my precious, precious Megan. I know you do, and I would die a thousand deaths to protect you. And frankly, that’s just it. There are things I’m delving into that are very, very dark. Things that would evoke feelings in you and memories that are too painful. Is it any surprise that I would instinctively try to shield you from that, or that it would cast a shadow over me for a time, while I try to come to grips with the deepest evils of sentient life?”
“A very wise and long dead philosopher told me something the other day that I think you would benefit from. He said ‘You do well when contemplating the blackness of the outer darkness to remember that the outer darkness is most likely contemplating you, as you have opened the door to it.’ I worry about what your fascination with counter-necromancy is doing to you in ways you can’t possibly see until it’s too late.”
“It’s more than a fascination. It is my calling and a necessity to stop the fate-rending taint of necromancy. It has always been a disruptive force among men, but with the ascendency of the Drow and their lust for power combined with their lack of self control in obtaining it, it has become a plague that may well unbalance the world. As you know, this world is the nexus of physical reality across the planes. If it should fail, all things fail.”
“I know, and I believe in the necessity of your cause. I just don’t want they sweet boy that I have known and loved all these years to be a casualty of the fight. I know what you do is dangerous. But what good would it do to defeat the tyrant if you lose the goodness and humanity that made you want to try in the first place?”
“Ha, you worry too much Megs. Your sweet boy isn’t going anywhere. I would never risk losing you.”
“Fine Mal. But consider yourself on notice. I won’t let you go without a fight.”
Part 3
Ellis stared directly at Malus, his eyebrows slightly raised.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before, at least unironically.” He rotated his head slightly to the side, looking at the taller man as one would look at a dog that might be rabid.
Malus sighed heavily. “Don’t take this the wrong way Ellis, but you’re the only one here who hasn’t known me that long. You’re also a military man who has seen the horrors of war and the horrors of the things we face. I guess, maybe subconsciously, I decided to trust you because you are the least likely to judge me harshly when I show my real self.”
“I reserve the right to judge you harshly,” Ellis replied with a minimalist grin. It was his dry humor that first attracted Malus to the man. Abnormally tall and an exotic blend of the best parts of his orcish and elvish parents, people had recognized Malus as Hand of the King within a day of Rupert’s ascension. He never had a minute to be anyone but Hand from that moment, and it was exhausting.
“Well then you should know that Megan fears there is a darkness growing in me. I denied it, but since she said it I have been looking at everything I say and do for warning signs of a desire to switch sides to team evil. I guess it’s an occupational hazard for a necromancer to be seduced by the dark side.”
“I always thought it was a prerequisite, and I also thought you were a counter-necromancer.”
“Let me ask you something Commander Ellis. As a soldier, what is the difference between a soldier of the evil queen, and a soldier of the good king? They both have the same skills, and both apply them the same way.”
“The difference is one of motivation. Devotion and love as opposed to fear and hatred.”
“Precisely, sir. And how often do men have a change of heart? I have the skills of a necromancer, yet my motives are to protect the people of the realm and their King, all of whom I love. But what if something changed, and I found something I loved more than Megan and more than you guys and more than the Kingdom? One thing I’ve learned through a thousand conversations with a thousand dead people is that death changes people.”
“It certainly changes their body temperature.”
“Many don’t want to admit it. They think their sudden morbidity is the result of the injustice of their demise, whether it was gods or men or a spooked horse that authored it. But those who cling to this place are almost always those who deeply believe it was not their time. That sense of being wronged too often makes them aggrieved. And being aggrieved is not a palette that paints a rosy picture.”
“Sounds like a dreary bunch. You shouldn’t spend so much time talking to them.”
“I try not to, but it’s a habit as old as me, and I don’t seem to mind having them in my head as much as when I was a lad. But that’s just another something that worries me now. What if my exposure is darkening my heart, making me irritable and calloused?”
“We’re tighter than two recruits on latrine duty these days, and as far as I can see, the only thing getting darker about you is your flesh.”
“What? Am I getting a tan? I never could tan. Does it look good on me?”
“It looks more like someone worked you over a week ago and you still have a lot of deep bruising.”
“Oh, great. Now the eternal struggle between good and evil is manifesting it self in my skin.”
“I don’t know. It seems more likely that you have some serious and deadly disease that will eat you away from the inside out.”
“See? This is why I like you. You always know how to put a happy face on things.”
“Mmm,” Ellis responded.
*Vigorous clapping*, well done Mr. Holmes. These little write ups really help bring characters to life. I wish we could get more to join in the fun. Malus is certainly complex in many ways. One of my favorite Tom characters for sure.
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