Arthurian Cultivation

I was glad I was hungry, as the feast that Phischer put on was so elaborate and vast that merely looking at it was enough to make me feel full. We had been to a lot of feasts over the last couple of months, and none could compare to the full platters before us. I almost feared for the table’s integrity, such was the weight.

And no table was fuller than the one upon which I was sat. We were placed at the high table along with Sephy, Tristan, and Maeve. I was sat next to Phischer.

Our audience had continued for a short while. The King teasing out more details. He’d been utterly delighted to know that my horse had actually tricked the man, and had even floated the idea of buying Elphin from me. Only Tristan saying that it was a gift from House Artoss had curbed his enthusiasm.

The king’s tone had shifted at that point. No longer a monarch, he’d shifted into a gnarled old man with a bluntness that one could use to hammer steel.

“What a fat fucking pig, what the Unseelie are they feeding it.” The old man picked at the food. His cultivation had preserved him, but the march of time was absolute, and like many older folk his appetite was not what it was. His plate was assembled sparingly given the feast before us. A man in the regalia of Cup Bearer tasted the food and checked his wine before giving a nod and leaving us to it.

The hall had filled over several minutes and now all the seats were filled. The food waited for us, and Phischer seemed to take pleasure in drawing out the start of festivities. I caught him chuckling as he watched a particularly portly courtier fiddle with his cutlery as he desperately fought temptation. The room was filled with mirth and cheer.

A few seconds more passed and then, creakily, the King began to stand. He dragged himself up with a cane until he stood above the entire hall. All about, the laughter and fun was squashed. Those in the depths of conversation were silenced by friends without hesitation, and their attention fixed on the grey-haired figure.

Silence throttled the room.

“We are here tonight to celebrate the death of a most vile betrayer. A worthless bottom feeder of society. He killed innocents, he created monstrosities, he did not dabble but drowned himself in dark magics. And most importantly, he made an enemy of me! Justice is done, the rat bastard dead, his bounty called in!”

“I have called this feast so all may hear this news, and spread it wide. Let everyone know that none are beyond my reach. I call upon his killer. The Bard Taliesin of the Round Table, to share with the hall how that wretch died. Sing your song, Bard Taliesin!”

Nodding, I stood to sing my part. My fingers itched, I felt the absence of my music keenly. In the throne room my voice had felt right, but in this festive hall the lack of accompaniment hurt me more than the ache in my arm. I wanted to get my lute out, but all I’d do was mangle the song, and I cursed that I didn’t have the time to teach others the tune.

Still, there was a power to just the spoken word. Just like back in the throne room, I felt it was subtly different to the power I normally exercised. There was a potency as my words landed. I saw faces drawn to sharp attention. A reflection of Phischer’s grasp on them, but I felt there was also something more than the power of resonance that I’d come to know.

The song wasn’t long enough to pick up on the difference and I didn’t dare split my attention too much, focusing on my performance, yet I knew I had to spend time dissecting this when I next had the opportunity.

Oh Vermald, Vermald, hear it sung,

From courtly hall to tavern smoke,

You thought yourself a tale for kings,

But died a joke beneath the Oak.

As I finished the last line, the King laughed, and with him so did the rest of the tables. They applauded and whooped their appreciation, taking their cue from their mercurial monarch. Or perhaps they laughed to cover up the hacking, sucking sound of his chest as his breath caught. The King remained alive and upright, but I was certain it was only out of spite.

“Eat and be merry. Know your King’s kindness as you witness the full reach of his ire. Know none who insult my throne shall sleep soundly. I’m coming for those fuckers!”

With Phischer’s last words the feast kicked off in full. We collectively dived into the food. I was relentless, the void in my stomach demanded action.

I found my eating consistently interrupted though by the King, who merely toyed with the food on his plate. I got the feeling the old bastard timed his questions to only after I’d taken a particularly big mouthful. The topic was of course his revenge. He asked questions ranging from how he fought to how Vermald looked, taking great pleasure in hearing of his adversary’s pathetic showing.

“And how did he mention me? The little rat bastard actually believed I’d forgotten him?” Phischer asked, rolling wine around in his glass as he slumped back in his throne-like chair.

“He did mention you. He arrogantly believed to have outlasted your ire, implying that you wouldn’t dare send more after him,” I said after gulping down a chunk of suckling pig roasted in honey at an insulting speed.

“As if he could ever escape my ire! Even if you’d not stuck your noses in I’d have eventually gathered some together to burn out those hateful caves he’d slunk into. For I am a King, and we do not allow traitorous scum to live.” The King growled, his hand searching for a fresh goblet. Behind him the same stern grey-haired man who’d introduced us in the hall appeared and refilled it.

The King quaffed the wine clumsily, dribbles pouring down his beard and staining his shirt, but Phischer didn’t care. His sharp eyes locked onto me. “He and other traitors are to blame for my illness. I could be a cultivator, living an eternity, facing the fae in their courts, yet I have been robbed of that future. If he and others hadn’t been so cruel, hadn’t filled me full of poison, I would’ve risen to great heights! Yet it is the cruelty of lesser men to drag down their betters.”

“A true villain. A tale of treachery most foul. To have brought low one such as you with their duplicity,” I soothed the man, ignoring the demented twinkle in his eyes. The fact he still believed it was wholly their fault he hadn’t advanced spoke to an almost pitiful arrogance.

If you cut the king’s head off, I’m not sure if blood or impurities would drip out. I could feel the unstable flow of his glamour, the stuttering flow through the pathways of the body. Even I’d not had so many impurities before my rebirth as Taliesin. Whatever he’d consumed with the impurities had brought him to the pinnacle of Bronze, yet still he languished in the lower reaches of power. My suspicion was that he’d never formed an intent, and instead kept trying to push his cultivation over the line through snake oil and mystery elixir.

As Phischer ranted about everything he’d invested to grow stronger, all the trainers he’d paid, and brews he’d commissioned, I felt I understood why I rarely heard of kings and queens reaching Iron.

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I doubted such a resourceful man was ignorant of intent. It wasn’t hidden knowledge, so he must’ve been like the many cultivators who stumbled at this hurdle. Their mettle never being tested by adversity and challenge, limited by a comfortable and safe life that failed to give them the chance for introspection, and the intelligence to forge an identity beyond that.

Phischer expected the world to come to him, and when it didn’t he’d never challenged himself to go out and find it.

Those of ‘royal blood’ who reached Iron were like the former Princess Kovax of the Golden Keep. Koko, while born to royalty, had risen through the ranks, a burning part of her connecting with cultivation that pushed her towards battle and challenge. She quickly hit Iron long before any chance of inheriting the responsibilities and associated wealth of her kingdom could drag her down.

It also made sense why the few historical accounts of Iron level kings trying to hold onto their power were swift, bloody tales.

The only king allowed above Bronze was the King of Albion, and that was mostly just a quirk of tradition that gave him a specific title rather than a statement that he actually commanded the entirety of Albion. From everything I’d heard from the Albion cultivators, and Arthur on the rare occasions he talked of family, Uthar Quilvern would rather spend as little time managing the mortals as feasibly possible.

Phischer was the opposite, the perfect representation of why such rules existed. Even if he’d announced a successor I could think of no worse fate for a country than to have the bitter old man looking over its shoulder for centuries to come.

A fresh course interrupted my musing. Platters of sweet food replaced meats and tubers. It was harvest time, and while I might personally find Phischer loathsome, his lands were amongst the most fertile and abundant across the whole mountains. He had capable hunters and farmers whose bounty was on full display.

Maeve and Sephy made polite conversation with several courtiers. Like most of these meals, the mortals were a little uncomfortable around us. We were outside the normal politics of their world, and in most cases I’d found that the politicians used their monarch as the gauge by which to understand how to engage with us.

Phischer didn’t make this easy on them. The man bounced between muttering angrily to himself and joking in excess.

As such the whole table was at his mercy. No one wanting to risk offending their king, and yet equally concerned with offending the multiple Iron Rank cultivators spread between them. Tristan was doing a lot of heavy lifting in defusing the tension.

In a frankly scandalously tight doublet and hose, he flirted and joked with one end of the table. His constant merriment and utter indifference to the squalls of silence the king kicked up was doing wonders to ease the rest of the table. Maeve and Sephy were making conversation with the women, who were happy to have something other than their husbands prattling to pay attention to.

That just left me, in the seat of honour, with my arm still in a sling, trying to sweeten up a king who seemed like he was desperate to pickle himself, if the sheer amount of wine he’d consumed was anything to go by.

“So you’re a Bard, not heard that before. I’d assume it was a trick, but then I’d figure you’d pick something less damned silly. Then you sang and I got it.” The old man didn’t seem to have any fear of myself or the other cultivators. I couldn’t tell if it was arrogance or if he just didn’t care. Sometimes he felt like he was daring us to take a swing at him, to put him out of his misery.

“I write songs about my fellows. I believe my calling is not in combat, alchemy, or other academic pursuits, but in music and tales.”

“Sounds cowardly, but as you killed that bastard you can’t be too bad. I trust you’ll be singing that song plenty while you’re wandering about,” the king said, and I smiled despite the insult. I finally had an in.

“I’m working to refine it. It should have a musical accompaniment. I also wanted to expand on the Sorcerer’s crippling defeat. I would like to know more of your history with him. He mentioned a theft of some nature. If he stole something from you then I would know what it is to properly exhibit his infamy!”

“We recovered little of his holdings, but we could also check and see if we found it?” Sephy chimed in on the conversation, adding further bait to the hook.

“That death-addled freak. He was always looking down on others. How dare he! I am a king. I didn’t realise it for years until we raided his tower that he had aided another foul deceiver of my court.” The man swept up a fresh goblet, his grizzled hands moving with unexpected swiftness as he quaffed down a heavy measure of wine. The King then slammed the cup back down on the table, glaring at it.

“It was not him who stole from me but Merlin!”

“Merlin?” I asked. Beside me I felt Maeve go stiff.

“A confidence trickster, a foul silver-tongued pissant who raided my treasury and made off with items most ancient.”

“This man was called Merlin?” Maeve asked, her tone less polished than normal. Her eyes were intense.

“That was the name he went by. Doubt it was his real one.” As Phischer said that, Maeve notably eased, a look of relief washing across her face. “He was a schiester! He claimed to be helping me cultivate but all he wanted was into my vault. He stole such things. Ah, even cultivators such as yourselves would be humbled before the bounty that Corbinec long guarded. There is truly no man I loathe more than that lying sage. Vermald came a close second, but now he is dead so I can hate Merlin twice as much.”

“Perhaps you could tell us more? We could hunt him for you?” I tried not to sound too keen.

“Hah, so you’re joining the many who have offered to hunt him! He’s a bloody ghost.” The man stared into his goblet. For a moment he was lost, muttering to himself.

“What was his crime?” Sephy asked faintly.

“He stole an item entrusted to my family untold generations ago, a relic of Atlantis’ fall. My family back then were mortal Governors under their old empire. A passing sage, a true sage not a liar like Merlin, found my kin worthy. He came to the palace, wounded and dying. He charged my ancient grandsire with the protection of a strong box most ornate. None could open it, and it was said only the truly worthy would be able to gain entry. Well, we never did find anyone worthwhile. Only liars and charlatans.”

The man slumped into a mumbling pile, a sudden malaise consuming him. I saw the courtiers around us turn away, pretending that their king didn’t exist. Their conversation became frantic, as if to prove they were distracted from his condition.

Maeve seemed about to ask something, but I stopped her with a look. The man was clearly reliving some manner of trauma, and the whispered words that issued from his lips were all manner of curses and vitriol, mostly aimed at ‘a box’.

Given what surprises had come from the last box we’d opened, I wasn’t about to ignore this one.

After a minute or so the King dragged himself out of whatever pit he’d lost himself to. His glass was filled again, and he sat up, his face pulled into a snarl.

“We were promised boons most exquisite for shepherding the strong box through the ages. Yet none came to claim it, a worthless waste of our time, and yet one we faithfully maintained. We waited for the promised bastards to come, patiently guarding it and its contents.” I could feel the lies on his lips. Phischer didn’t strike me as the patient type, yet there was a grain of truth to the beginning of his statement.

“A thousand plus years of stewardship came to an end a decade past. I employed ‘Merlin’ to help.” He turned to one side to spit on the floor, his fingers going white as they dug into the chair’s arms. “Fucking traitorous scum he was. His only job was to look at the strong box for me, to check it for magic to ensure it was secure.” I could feel the exact shape of his lie. I’d bet good money on the King seeking to find a way to crack it open and get at the bounty within.

“He said it was impossible for anyone in the mountains to breach it beyond the owners.” That was true, the conman had told him that. “He weaselled his way into my court for years, claiming he had insights for me. He was a Bronze cultivator and of some use, he aided me, built trust. But it was all so he could rob me! One day the alarms sounded. I ran down to the vaults only to find the great strong box empty, its bounty stolen and Merlin gone! For years I believed he worked alone, but when Vermald’s vileness was exposed we found notes that said he’d worked with Merlin to allow the man to escape in exchange for some prize. A pair of motherless dogs in the guise of men, right under my nose. Traitors to the crown!” He shouted the last line before barking for another glass of wine, quickly knocking it back once poured.

The table went quiet before bursting into desperate conversation.

“In these notes, did you find any inkling as to what was stolen?” I managed to ask, aiming to sound as natural and smooth as I could manage.

“No, but I know what the sage said. He claimed it was a panacea. A cure for any illness. A tool to help one reach immortality.” The man’s eyes turned wistful, his hands twitched, the claws opening and closing at the imagined bounty. He became lost in memory. “We looked after this boon for generations, and then it was cruelly snatched away before it could cure me of my sickness.”

All four of us at the table shared a subtle look.

“Could we see this strong box?” Sephy purred next to the king.