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**The Lavender Tavern**

Come join us in the Lavender Tavern for original gay fairytales. Each story is about 30 minutes long.

You’re always welcome to sit by the tavern fire. There are many nights, and many stories.

Join us, won’t you? We’ll keep a light on in the window.

Latest Episodes:

Boulder in the Sky Aug 30, 2021

Show notes

For two powerful wizards, there is only one thing stronger than love: stubbornness.

Final episode of Season 1! If you like what you've heard, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

Auerbach's Destiny / Memorial Aug 23, 2021

Show notes

Auerbach's Destiny: Some people are born to greatness, destined to be saviors of their land. Others...not so much.

Memorial: A cottage in the woods built for two. Three perfect coneflowers. And a single, fresh grave.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

Forbidden / The Gods Above the Table Aug 16, 2021

Show notes

Forbidden: Don't go in the forest. Don't open your eyes after sunset. And don’t look behind the cellar door.... if you know what's good for you. (Trigger Warnings: Mental / emotional abuse & kidnapping)

The Gods Above the Table: Each week, two men play at being gods. And each week, millions of tiny people live and die by their hands...

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

The Silver Thread / Heart of a Soldier Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

The Silver Thread: If you wake up with a silver thread attached to you, of course you're going to look for the other end. But what are you going to find there?

Heart of a Soldier: Magic is remarkably good at putting injured soldiers back together. Even when the mages can't find all of the pieces.

Trigger Warnings: Violence (Heart of a Soldier).

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

The Arbiter's Ruling / Next Year in Elysium Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

The Arbiter's Ruling: All Ministers are equal, and all Ministers are as one. Except those who would keep magical spells for themselves. Set in the same world as Myer's Helping Hand.

Next Year in Elysium: Welcome to the wedding...Pour some ale, raise a glass, and join us in a toast. Next Year in Elysium!

Trigger Warnings: Emotional abuse (The Arbiter's Ruling).

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

Gallants in Distress / The Next Town Over Jul 26, 2021

Show notes

Gallants in Distress: Just as there are damsels in distress, there are gallants in distress. Hamlyn the street-ale vendor is about to find out how knights track down these distressed men.

The Next Town Over: The Collective has forsworn violence. But how then to deal with the People, who have not?

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

The King's Cup-Bearer / Merchant of Dreams Jul 19, 2021

Show notes

The King's Cup-Bearer: For five years, the king and his cup-bearer have been trapped in the king's chambers. Now, finally, his servant is going to venture forth and find out what is really going on in the kingdom...

The Merchant of Dreams: Every day Dimitri sold dreams to anyone who asked, but he could not dream himself.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen for the Lavender Tavern.

Narrated by: Ben Meredith

A Faustian Nonsense production.

Myer's Helping Hand, Part 2 Feb 14, 2021

Show notes

There was one place where there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of magical ley lines that gathered and writhed like snakes. It was destiny that this should be the greatest city ever built: Frostford.Meet Myer, an absentminded young mage who works for the Ministry in Frostford. Now meet Myer's helping hand: Stepwise, the daemon he creates so that he can find the things he misplaces. Myer is about to discover that giving humanity the ability to search for anything, at any time, can lead to catastrophe. Part 2 of 2.Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Trevor SchechterA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/myers-helping-hand-part-2TranscriptAccording to Myer’s tracking spell, there were now nine Stepwises – eight of them outside of his control. Now it was time to panic.Myer tried to slow his breathing and thought of his lesson on Runaway Magic. How could he not think of it? It was the highlight of every Ministry student’s first year of study. The magister who taught the course showed them how a magic spell that simply doubled objects would lead to disaster. He started with a copper coin and kept doubling it with a simple incantation. The single coin became two coins, then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and by the tenth doubling the magister showered the podium in copper and told the students that there were now over a thousand coins…before he made all but one of them disappear with a flourish.Any magic that was not properly cast could lead to runaway magic. There were rumours that this was one of the reasons the Ministry had been formed in the first place, but the magister would neither confirm nor deny this. He had scraped the chalk across the large slate at the front of the class, then tapped each syllable, emphasizing the word: “Cat-tas-stro-phe!”Myer re-read the spell he’d written to conjure the first daemon. There were no flaws that he could see. No, Stepwise had been copied by human means, at least at first.He bit his lip. “Stepwise, double yourself,” he said with some dread.Stepwise stretched and split down the middle. Now there were two Stepwises in front of him. Eleven red spots on the line symbol. Cat-tas-stro-phe.He could duplicate enough Stepwises to catch the other Stepwises now, but since at least one other person knew how to duplicate the rogue daemons, there was no stopping them.And each daemon used a tiny bit of manna…unnoticeable at first, but once it became a case of Runaway Magic, the manna would start adding up.Myer was a clever young man. He often had many clever ideas and brought these clever ideas to Alastair or the lower magisters. This time, he felt that the cleverest thing he could do was to…say nothing.It would have been simple to deconstruct the Stepwises. All Myer needed to do to make them disappear was to reverse the spell inscribed on the sheet of parchment he now kept locked in the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers. He could even tear the parchment into pieces, if he did not mind the thought of every Stepwise suddenly deconstructing violently.But the moment Myer broke the spell, all of the accumulated manna that animated the daemons would instantly flow back into the manna reservoir at the end of the street, and from there into the neighborhood’s ley line. The Ministry would not fail to notice an *increase* in the supply of manna…especially when a young, clever minister resided only a short walk away.The next morning Myer noted with a dull resignation that there were fourteen red dots on the symbol. On his walk to the Ministry, he spotted at least two Stepwises flitting about the buildings above him: one had a hammer in its mouth, and the other carried an apple.If Alastair suspected anything, he remained mute. Sueanna claimed to be busy with solstice preparations. Even Getty was busy with what he called “temple business.”Raven, Myer noticed, had started to make elementary mistakes in the work room: using agate instead of tourmaline, trying to undo a spell by drawing a sigil in a clockwise rather than counter clockwise direction, even cracking her jade wand on the edge of her table as she attempted a particularly difficult incantation. She seemed newly preoccupied. Or, Myer thought, a bit ashamed, she had been preoccupied for a while and he had only now started to notice.Raven usually stole away every midday on their break, leaving Alastair and Myer to eat hand meals and commiserate. On one break, Myer followed Raven at a distance, and saw her enter the narrow winding staircases that flanked the tower. When he stepped into the staircase, he saw her some flights above, huffing and puffing her way up. Then she suddenly reversed direction and came towards him.She must have seen him, and Myer was trying to determine an appropriate excuse when Raven came upon him and expressed surprised. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.“The…same as you,” Myer said, tentatively.“I take exercise in these stairs every midday,” Raven said. “You are free to join me.” Then she turned from him and started back up the stairs.Myer was not much for exercise aside from the flight of stairs he had to climb to his lodging every night, so he struggled to keep pace with Raven. They climbed stairs in silence broken only by his wheezing. When they neared the top of the Ministry building, Myer asked her: “Are you all right?”“I’m fine,” Raven said, turning again down the stairs. “Completely fine.” She said this in the tone of one who is not at all fine.A minute later, Myer tried to bring the conversation back to life by saying, “I’m looking forward to the winter solstice. Are you?”Raven did not reply directly. Instead, she asked, “Will you spend it with your parents?” Myer had never discussed his parents with her, but he still wore the family emblem around his neck. Despite his distance from them, he was proud of the family history of spell work and service.“We no longer speak,” Myer breathed. The stairs were now causing his legs and lungs some distress. “I left them a long time ago.”“I never knew my parents,” she said, picking up her pace and marching ahead of him. “I am sure you had your reasons, but I would gladly spend solstice with mine every year.”Myer knew little of Raven, although they had worked side by side for two years. She was from a village in the east; she ate spicy food that smelled of cumin; and she sketched funny, distorted faces of himself and Alastair when she thought they were not looking. Had he known she missed her parents, he never would have spoken in so cavalier a fashion – But of course she missed them, he thought as they came to a final stop at the bottom of the stairs. And as he heaved and gasped for breath, Myer compared her to Getty, the foundling. Getty was happy to be apart from his parents: the temple elders were his parents now. But Raven – he had seen her looking unhappily at the higher-up magisters during Ministry celebrations. She had no surrogate parents among them. He had never heard her speak of friends, or other family. If anyone lived in shadows, it was her.Everyone, it seemed, was in search of something they did not – or could not – possess.The following morning, Myer could not find his ebony staff again, and as he was running late, he asked one of his Stepwises to locate it.He felt no guilt. The miniscule amount of manna this would use would go unnoticed among the total amount used by all Stepwises. And the daemon was so helpful!A Stepwise fetched him some freshwater from a nearby pond to aid in the Ministry work he brought home. A Stepwise quenched the light after Myer had gone to bed. A Stepwise even lit his way to the chamber pot in the middle of the night.What else could a Stepwise do? Myer spent a tipsy evening testing his daemons with queries. A Stepwise could predict the weather, with some degree of success – about the same success as any lay prognosticator. A Stepwise could determine the best path to take to reach the archives and warn if a horse-drawn barrow had upended and blocked the way. What else?The next night, Sueanna came up with some solstice pie of her own, claiming that Myer must be hungry. How had she known his pantry was bare? Could a Stepwise have…told her?Myer cringed and asked: “Stepwise, how much food is there in Sueanna’s pantry?” And Stepwise told him.Myer had always slept well, but now he stayed awake most nights. Not from the worry that consumed him – he had resigned himself to that – but to the fighting and shouts that started as a murmur and rose to a din each night as the days until the winter solstice ticked down.“I know you were with that woman!” a man yelled to his partner from across the way. “You didn’t go to work today; you went to the tavern!” a woman scolded her partner. “You have been taking a potion, so you need not conceive!” a husband sobbed to his wife. Every question had an answer, and every Stepwise could find out any reasonably-accessible information, even if it would normally remain a secret. The red dots multiplied along the line on the tracking parchment.The saga of Stepwise took some unusual turns. On a day when he felt little like cooking, Myer went by Ogden the street vendor’s stall to pick up some rabbit-on-a-stick, but the old man was under a cloud.Literally: Several Stepwises floated in the air above his stall, each holding a banner reading: “Terrible food,” “Bad service,” “Don’t eat here,” and so on. They were just high enough to be out of reach, but low enough that anyone in the street could see them.Ogden batted at the sky in futility. “Do you see them?” he demanded. “I have tried to move my stall, but no matter where in Frostford I go, they follow me with their infernal banners.”Myer did not know what to say, being the source of Ogden’s problems, in some way. “Do you know why they are here?” he asked finally.Ogden shrugged. “Well…perhaps the rabbit was not as fresh as it could have been…ONE NIGHT. One night. But does such a lapse merit this kind of retribution?”Myer promised he would dispatch a Stepwise with a positive message once he reached his lodgings and took the rabbit-on-a-stick with him.In times past, had he bought take-away food from a street vendor, Myer would have had little recourse if it had been spoiled or lacked flavour. But now, anyone could challenge the vendors…and at least one person had had the idea to do so.In his lodgings, Myer took one of his Stepwises out of the cage and wrote a message on a long strip of cloth: “Reliable, tasty food.” It occurred to him that the negative banners he’d seen did not have to be truthful. They could be from someone who bore a grudge against Ogden, or even a competing street vendor who wished to destroy the man’s business.He tied the banner to the Stepwise’s left foot and commanded it to fly to Ogden’s stall. There was no way, Myer thought, that anyone who saw those banners could know if they were true at all. Anyone could say anything. Myer himself could start a campaign of whispers against someone, without anyone being able to track it back to him.By the time he had released this last Stepwise, the tracker parchment was a solid red line.The tracker had given Myer another idea: he took a smaller strip of cloth and imbued it with a distance spell, then wrapped it around his left wrist like a bracelet.Now he could summon and command his Stepwise when he was away from his lodgings, even when he was in the work room. All he needed to do was to speak his command into the wristband, and a Stepwise would obey.Raven had been even more withdrawn than usual as the solstice finally approached. Myer went to the staircase at lunch to look for her, but it was empty and silent. He commanded his Stepwise to search for her, and when the daemon flew to him, Myer followed it to one of the side doorways of the Ministry, where he saw Raven from a distance, eating lunch alone.Myer could imagine some of the pain she felt; he knew what it was like to miss someone with all of your heart.He contemplated his Stepwise, now safe and hidden within his robes. A daemon could not search for something connected that distantly to the present, though…could it?“Stepwise,” Myer whispered to the daemon, “can you find Raven’s parents?”The daemon did not reply. Was this a problem too difficult for his creation?Then he pulled back his robe and observed the glyph inscribed on the back of Stepwise’s head. The symbol was rotating, as if the daemon were thinking. Daemons could not think of course – but something was happening.Myer imagined the skies of Frostford darkened with Stepwises flitting to and fro on their errands. Seeking information, delivering packages, pilfering valuables, and spying on neighbours, friends, lovers.Not only Frostford. From his figures, Myer knew there were more Stepwises than humans in the city. The daemons must be spreading to neighboring towns.His suspicions were confirmed when, the day before the winter solstice, a Stepwise flew in through his window and dropped a note onto his table. Myer knew it was not one of ‘his’ Stepwises; he’d daubed a bit of red paint on their backs so he could tell them apart from the others.The note was from his parents, wishing him a happy winter solstice. They had not written it themselves; it was a ready-made greeting that could be bought at any stall in any small town. He was angry at the impersonal nature of it but touched at the same time. They were a hundred leagues away, and yet they could wish him a merry solstice as if they lived next door.He dropped off a fat suckling pig at Sueanna’s lodgings that afternoon. She had the same seamed face and button eyes, but she was lighter, happier. “I’ve been writing back and forth with old friends,” Sueanna told him. “We had lost touch so many years ago.” Her Stepwise sat proudly on the table by the hearth; clearly, she saw no need to conceal it.Everyone, it seemed, was having their wishes granted in some way. Except for Raven...and his own half-whispered wish that night so many weeks ago. He was ashamed to think of what he had wished for, and ashamed that he still wanted it to come true. In his Ministerial training, Myer had often heard the metaphor of the mage who was impotent to grant his own wishes. Perhaps in the shadows of his mind, he did not truly want Stepwise to fulfil his heart’s desire.Candles hung from the trees that lined Frostford, and a gentle snow fell on the day of the solstice. Peace and calm, Myer thought – although the fighting and the wishing and the spying continued.He locked his red-daubed Stepwises in the tiny cage, hung it far from Bedlam’s reach, and went for a walk by the light of the candles. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the previous year’s solstice. Laughter and company and –It was then that a hand clamped down on each of Myer’s shoulders. He knew the insignia on the black gloves at once. There was no point in struggling.The Ministry was quiet on this solstice day. He had never been this high up in the building; the room was vast, cavernous. The woman who spoke to him was mild and ordinary; this frightened him more than anything else.He did not remember the words. He did not have to. Myer was to stop all of the daemons, immediately. There were to be no more requests, or wishes, or messages. He was the only one who could reverse the spell. Of course, they knew he had created them. The contours of the spell he had used marked him as clearly as if he had stamped each Stepwise with his own sigil.If he did not stop the daemons that evening, he would be dismissed from the Ministry. Blacklisted. Banned from the city. And the Ministry would use every Stepwise it could muster to hound Myer for the rest of his days.“You are a clever young man,” the woman concluded. “Surely you can see that there is no other way.”The gloved hands marched him downstairs. Stepwise had fulfilled many requests. And now there was only Raven’s wish, and the wish he had m…

Full show notes at the publisher

Myer's Helping Hand, Part 1 Feb 14, 2021

Show notes

Every world in this realm is crisscrossed by ley lines; filaments of earth energy that connect places of worship, monuments, and historical sites. You have passed through innumerable ley lines in your life: think of any desolate place you have been where the hair on the back of your neck stood up for no reason you could fathom...Meet Myer, an absentminded young mage who works for the Ministry in Frostford. Now meet Myer's helping hand: Stepwise, the daemon he creates so that he can find the things he misplaces. Myer is about to discover that giving humanity the ability to search for anything, at any time, can lead to catastrophe. Part 1 of 2.Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Trevor SchechterA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/myers-helping-hand-part-1TranscriptEvery world in this realm is crisscrossed by ley lines; filaments of earth energy that connect places of worship, monuments, and historical sites. You have passed through innumerable ley lines in your life: think of any desolate place you have been where the hair on the back of your neck stood up for no reason you could fathom.The more ley lines that intersect in an area, the more magically powerful that area is. Some unfortunate towns only have a single ley line passing through – barely enough to allow a local mystic to dowse for water. Other towns are gifted with an abundance of ley lines.And of course, once the men and women of this world understood ley lines and how they could work to their advantage, they built towns and villages at the great crossroads of these lines. A mage might wander an unspoiled land, with enchanted spectacles on his nose, until he found a spot that burned with a grid of reddish-gold ley lines arcing across each other. Then he would send back word to those who had sponsored his expedition: here shall be a great city.There was one place where there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of ley lines that gathered and writhed like snakes. It was destiny that this should be the greatest city ever built. Those of temperaments sensitive to magic had already settled it as a village, but with the ley lines to power their efforts, it grew into a city of spires and minarets, columns and porticos. Frostford: The largest city in the known world.One cannot simply dip a wand or a staff into a ley line and extract the magic needed for a spell or incantation; it takes training and skill to handle the ley lines. It takes a Minister.And so, it came to pass, in a section of Frostford that was neither too poor nor too wealthy, that a young junior minister named Myer was late for his work.Myer was no more than twenty, with a shock of black wavy hair that never quite stayed where it should. He had hazel eyes and the babyish curious face of a child, and at this moment he stood among a pile of his clothes, looking for his staff.He could summon the staff, of course; this was a trifling cantrip for any minister. But Myer had nearly expended his allotment of magic for the thirty-days, and he did not want the Ministry to sanction him.Thomas would know where the staff was. But Thomas was not here, Myer thought.The staff was ebony. Why had he chosen ebony? With his black robes and furniture of dark wood, and black walls, the staff was nearly impossible to find. The only spot of light in his chambers was –And here he turned to his cat, Bedlam. Bedlam was officially a familiar, as far as the Ministry knew, but the luminous white cat with light green eyes, pink nose and ears spent his time sleeping or looking on with disdain. As Myer now saw, the cat had his paws wrapped around the ebony staff.“Give that to me!” Myer said, leaping for the cat. In a flash, Bedlam picked up the staff in his mouth and dropped it at Myer’s feet. “Now,” Myer sighed. “Now you provide me with it after an hour of searching.”Bedlam looked up with innocent eyes and began to lick his paw. There would be no useful argument with a cat, Myer thought, hurrying from the house with his staff tucked in his belt. Arguments were for his employer.Myer was late to the Ministry, the largest building in the city, at the center of all traffic and all commerce, with multiple spires that soared into the sky. He ducked his head and rushed past the rows of desks where men and women copied papers and scrolls by hand.The Ministry was arranged in the manner of the heavens: the higher a room was to the building’s top, the more important it was. Myer’s work room was in the basement, next to a wall that dripped water and the Scrap Heap.His stomach spoke to him: Thomas had not made him a morning meal to take to work. He pushed the thought aside and entered the work room.There stood his two collaborators: Raven, a short, stout woman with red hair and green lip tint, gesturing angrily with a sheaf of papers. And Alastair, the subject of her wrath, tall and lean and fidgety, with cropped brown hair, caramel skin and a finicky mustache. They were the least of the Ministry, and it made them angry…even if the anger ended up directed at each other.“I do not want to make copies of these papers,” Raven said, slamming them onto a table. “I have written them and that should be enough.”Alastair had the bored look of the magister. Which was only fair, as he had once been a magister before being demoted. “All requests for supplies must be presented with three copies to the Supply Magister.” He saw Myer come in and welcomed him to his cause. “What say you, junior minister?”Myer sat on his wooden stool and started to lay out his work: leather blotter, rune blocks and ink, staff holder, bottles and papers of his own. The Ministry was said to produce all of the magic and the motive energy that drove Frostford, but it occurred to Myer often that their primary output must surely be papers. “I say that there should be a magical way to duplicate such papers,” Myer said, sliding into the groove of a discussion they had had many times. “Hand copying always leads to the introduction of errors into a work.”Raven pursed her green lips at Alastair, who simply shook his head. “Not allowed,” Alastair told Myer. “It simply is not allowed.”Myer did not tell Alastair that taking gold from the Ministry coffers was not allowed; this is what had led Alastair to leave his exalted position as magister and come to work in the basement. “There are some Ministry rules which should be broken,” he said instead. The former magister could not argue with that.Raven nodded. “I stand with Myer,” she said. “If we were free of these papers, we could spend our time serving the public.”Alastair wiggled his mustache at her. “How have you served the public today?”“Once I have copied these papers,” she replied, “I shall send manna along the Ardium sector ley line to power their water wheel.”“They have been without water for some time,” Myer pointed out.“Ardium,” Alastair also pointed out, “pays the least taxation of all of the sectors in Frostford. They have the lowest average income in the city. It stands to reason that they may wait some time longer.” He put down his own sheaf of papers on top of Raven’s. “Bix sector is planning a harvest merchant festival for next week.”“Bix has had three festivals in the last month,” Raven protested, and she and Alastair were off again. Myer bent his head of unruly hair to his own work and paid them no mind. He too would spend much of his day writing papers, copying papers, and ferrying papers upstairs to those who read the papers, stored the papers, and no doubt burned the papers.The next item he needed was his peridot stone, but where was it? How could he infuse the vitality glyphs for the city gardens without the peridot stone?Thomas would have told him he was absent-minded, that he could only keep his head by virtue of having a scarf around his neck. But everyone lost things at one time or another, Myer thought. It was not his fault that the things he owned were simply easier to lose.There had to be a solution.That night, in his quiet and echoing chambers, Myer put a pot of soup on the hearth for dinner and thought about the ebony staff, and the peridot stone, and all of the other things he had misplaced of late. A spell to retrieve them would not suffice: that type of ritual would draw enough manna from the ley lines to bring attention to him.He scratched a purring Bedlam behind the ears and thought of the Scrap Heap. The Scrap Heap was a room next to his work room where the bits and scraps of magical materials ended up after the materials themselves had been consumed: fragments of milky opals, strips of fairy cloth, splinters and shards of warm golden amber.Nobody was supposed to remove anything from the Scrap Heap without signing the correct papers. But six months earlier, Warren, the old man who had overseen the Scrap Heap had found wine more to his liking than papers, and the ministers were told to manage the access to the Scrap Heap themselves – “to economize on behalf of the Ministry,” as the paper announcing the change had read.It was a temptation. Perhaps not a temptation for the average minister, but Myer was not average. He lay alone in the large bedding that night, thinking and scheming.He needn’t have schemed. Myer discovered that he could have pulled a barrow into the Scrap Heap room and taken anything he wished. Even then, he was sure to rearrange the piles of materials just so, to cover what he had taken, and to scrawl illegible entries in the Scrap Heap’s ledger book.If Alastair or Raven noticed that his minister robes bulged a bit more than usual, they said nothing. He had a moment’s panic when he was leaving the Ministry that evening and a marble of polished topaz slipped from his robe, bouncing and clicking across the tiled floor, but at that hour, nobody noticed.The theft made him giddy, exhilarated. Not theft, he corrected himself – borrowing. His spirits were so high that he stopped at his favorite street vendor.Ogden, an elderly man who was cheerful despite his hunched back, welcomed one of his best customers: “The usual, my friend?”Myer held up two fingers. “Special occasion tonight.”Ogden raised an eyebrow as he packaged up two servings of rabbit-on-a-stick with potatoes. “A…special friend?”“No, no,” Myer replied, shaking his head. “Just a regular friend.”He walked home in the waning dusk.Wait until I tell Thomas what Ogden said, Myer thought, and then he remembered. It was an ongoing process, it seemed: gradual forgetting and sudden remembering.He knocked on the door of the rooms below him, and Sueanna came to the door after a time. Matronly and solid, her long gray hair was in a braid and curled up under a kerchief. She looked at him with button eyes in a seamed face but smiled when he offered her the second meal he’d bought.“I remember when I worked at the Ministry,” Sueanna said as they ate the rabbit-on-a-stick in Myer’s rooms. “Long before you. Probably before you were born.”“Was it very different?” he asked politely, his mind on what he had looted from the Scrap Heap.“We ran wild like children,” Sueanna said, then smiled at her own memory. “No supervision, few restrictions. We were the ones who made the city move, all on our own.”Myer wondered if that Ministry had been looser and freer, or simply more negligent. Sueanna misunderstood his silence.“Do you miss him?” she asked at last.“Of course not,” Myer said, and glanced involuntarily at the spot on the wall where one of Thomas’ paintings had hung, a watercolor of the city in mists of rain. Now there was only a light rectangle to mark where it had been. “There is nothing to miss.”When the meal was done and Sueanna had gone, Myer spread his takings from the Scrap Heap on the table in the same way he would lay out his work surface. Then he pondered.Finding what was lost: a location spell would not use much manna. But a location spell only worked within a couple of feet of the spellcaster. Myer had the tendency to leave things all about his rooms. A location spell to cover the entire property would expend more manna than he was paid in a week.There would have to be a rudimentary mind at the heart of the spell, an intelligence that could search the areas that Myer instructed, look for the object he requested, and locate it. To bring the object back…he could use apportation – the transmission of an object through the air, but that was also expensive. If something were to carry the object in a manner similar to how Bedlam carried mice, then it might be doable.It was a complex problem, and Myer spent many evenings with the gems and woods and cloths from the Scrap Heap, alongside his ebony staff and runes and glyphs. Then he discovered an obstacle.He could speak the usual incantations that he used every day in his work as minister. The more complex ones he would need for this task, however, were beyond his vocal range – both too high and too low. He tried the chants for a week but ended up with a sore throat and needed nettle tea to soothe it.The path he took to and from the Ministry each day passed a temple framed by columns and greenery. He had heard the singing of vespers many evenings when he had been late coming home. Oh, how Thomas had begged him not to come home late when he was cooking dinner...Those singers had the range he needed. Perhaps they could also teach him to sing.The fall weather had turned the air cold, and Myer was glad that he’d worn his winter robes into the temple; the marble rooms were even chillier. At that late hour, there was only one acolyte tending to the vestal fires, and Myer went over to warm himself by the flames.The acolyte had long, copper-brown hair and a bushy beard; the flickering dim light made him look as if his head was on fire. He was banking the coals with a distracted expression but turned to Myer with inquisitive eyes and a wry smile once he’d neatly finished his task.“Are you looking for something?” he asked.“No,” Myer said. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m not in need of any prayers.”The acolyte barked a laugh. “I think we could all use a prayer now and then. My name is Getty.”“Myer.” They shook hands; Getty’s were dry and warm.“I’ve heard your choir sing vespers in the evenings,” Myer said. “They’re quite good, aren’t they?” Getty asked. “When I started teaching them, they sounded like a thunderstorm in a cooking pot.”Myer explained his problem. He did not, could not say that he wanted to extend his vocal range so that he could create more powerful spells. Getty looked at his Ministry robes and listened to his vague explanation and seemed to make the connection himself. “I can get you up one octave and down two octaves from where you are now,” he proclaimed after listening to Myer sing a verse of a well-known song. “That should help you with your…project.”“And in return?” Myer asked. “A donation to the temple?” Such arrangements were common in Frostford.Getty smiled his canny smile. “As you can no doubt tell, we have been having issues with the heating system. One of the vestal girls tells me there’s a partial blockage with the manna in the temple’s ley line.” These arrangements, too, were common in Frostford.Myer promised to look into it; it was in fact his job to do so. By order of the Ministry, ministers lived in the neighborhoods they supported. The Ministry claimed that this policy brought ministers closer to the people, but Myer and Alastair both felt it more likely that those ministers who were inconvenienced by a district’s manna issues were more motivated to solve them.As with the spell design, it was slow going. Getty had Myer open his mouth wide while singing, point his chin downward toward the floor, and press his tongue down onto the floor of his mouth. This, Getty explained, would help him to sing higher notes. Myer thought that the expression he wore during this exercise made him look like someone who had been caught doing something wrong, but he said nothing and continued to prac…

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The Knight and the Dragon Feb 14, 2021

Show notes

It had been decades since the last dragon had been sighted in the region; Goodwife Bayliss was the oldest Baravian, and even she could only dimly recollect her grandparents telling tales of an ice dragon spraying the countryside with frost and icicles, freezing the cattle and sheep where they stood.Nobody had seen a dragon since then. Until now.Every town menaced by a dragon could use a knight. Every lonely wizard could also use a knight. What happens to a love affair when the dragon has been defeated?Written by: Jonathan CohenNarrated by: Joe CruzA Faustian Nonsense production.To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/the-knight-and-the-dragonTranscriptOnce, there was a quiet town called Baravia that was nestled in between two hills on the eastern edge of the continent. Baravia was well-situated: it had a river that brought water, and fish, and boats with trade from other villages down the coast. The plain it stood upon was high enough that the temperature was moderate. It was considered the friendliest town in the region.The Baravians prided themselves on being friendly. At the entrance to the town stood a statue of the town’s founder with open arms, and an inscription in several languages reading, “Welcome to Baravia, all strangers who seek it!”Baravia was also known throughout the region to welcome travel from visitors, commerce from visitors, and certainly gold from visitors. But there was one type of visitor that Baravians did not like at all.It had been decades since the last dragon had been sighted in the region; Goodwife Bayliss was the oldest Baravian, and even she could only dimly recollect her grandparents telling tales of an ice dragon spraying the countryside with frost and icicles, freezing the cattle and sheep where they stood.Nobody had seen a dragon since then. Until now.The farm animals smelled the sulfur and fled, spooked. The farmers also smelled the sulfur, but they did not know to run until a shadow fell across their land. With a wingspan several yards wide, orange-red scales, and yellow slitted eyes, the dragon swooped and soared and buzzed the tops of the farmhouses until the farmers cowered in their cellars.Then came the fire: magical fire, green and blue and orange, straight from the dragon’s mouth, scorching the thatched roofs and searing the rows of corn, and somehow miraculously missing the animals which stood fearfully at the edge of the river, trying to decide which was a worse fate: to enter the river, or be burned by the dragon.Goodwife Bayliss was not afraid; at the age of ninety-six years, she was only afraid of the aches that afflicted her hips. She stood in the largest scorched cornfield with her non-magical scythe and her non-magical voice and shouted at the dragon. “Get away!” she cried. “Leave Baravia alone!”The dragon made a long swooping arc downwards, and the one farmer who could see Goodwife Bayliss later said it looked as if the dragon was coming straight for her, fire lashing the field in a straight line. At the last moment, the dragon pulled up, but Goodwife Bayliss’s arms were more agile than her hips, and she reached up and hooked the dragon’s head, which spun down towards her and incinerated her.“Our beloved Goodwife Bayliss has been slain,” Olliver, the council leader said at the hastily-assembled council meeting. There were a few murmurs at the use of the word “beloved,” but nobody wanted to be a person who would speak ill of the dead, especially one who was still standing in scorched-carbon form in the field where she had been struck. “We must do something.”“Our crops are in danger,” one farmer said.“Tradesmen are avoiding our town,” a merchant added.They sent soldiers to fight the dragon. Baravia had a small contingent of friendly soldiers who spent their time guarding the bank and the merchants, and greeting visiting tradesmen. The soldiers were not familiar with battle.They returned, scorched and singed and smelling of smoke and sulfur. “We could not get close!” one of them gasped, and the others nodded in unison. Then they went to change their garments and returned to their patrol of the bank.“We must approach Wynn,” Olliver said at the next town meeting. There were more murmurs. Wynn was Baravia’s new wizard, and he had only been in the town a few months. That led to suspicion, particularly since he had yet to make a deposit at the town bank.It was Olliver’s opinion against the group of farmers and merchants, none of whom would take a firm position for or against. And so Olliver won the day, and he went to see Wynn.Wynn had a thatched hut on the edge of town. The hut had belonged to the previous wizard, a disreputable soul who had been ‘asked’ to leave Baravia when it had been discovered that he was laying trances upon the townspeople that caused them to withdraw their gold from the bank and give it to him.Wynn had not changed anything about the hut. His clothes still lay in a box at the foot of the bed. His books and papers were in the box he’d brought with him months ago. His only additions to the hut were the vials and phials and philtres and potions on the far wall. When Olliver entered through the open door, Wynn, a tall stooped man with red hair and freckles, was taking stock of the potions and muttering to himself: “Attar of roses, turmeric, sage…”“Friend Wynn,” Olliver said.“Councilman Olliver,” Wynn replied. Olliver was a man courageous in council, and yet fearful in private. Wynn waited.“A dragon has attacked Baravia,” Olliver said finally, as if that should explain his presence in Wynn’s hut.“I have heard,” Wynn said drily. More silence.“Goodwife Bayliss has been slain,” Olliver added.“No doubt her kinsmen will mourn.” Goodwife Bayliss had no kinsmen or kinswomen.Olliver stepped from side to side, and appeared to Wynn as if he needed to relieve himself. “The council has asked me to come here.”Wynn moved his right hand in a circle as if to speed the conversation. “…to ask me to defeat the dragon?”“Yes!” Olliver burst out in relief, then caught himself. “As the town wizard, it is your sworn duty to rid Baravia of this scourge.” He blushed. “The payment shall be the usual amount of gold.”Wynn mused. “I suppose this falls within my responsibilities,” he said.“What will you need to accomplish this?” Olliver asked.“I will need to collect information,” Wynn said, looking at his shelf of potions. “Read up on dragons, perform research…”Olliver sighed and nodded. For any request the council had, Wynn needed to read and read – as if there was time for reading when there was a dragon on the loose!A small archive of books and papers and scrolls stood at the south edge of Baravia, where Wynn had spent many an afternoon reading and thinking in the intense haze of sputtering candle smoke. The archivist, a wizened woman named Clydia, collected the admission fee for the archive and showed him where the material on dragons was. There was very little of it. A troupe had passed through Baravia fifteen years ago with a poorly-received play about a dragon. A youth had drawn a dragon in chalk on the council chambers’ door and had been flogged. There were history books about dragons from long ago, but no dragons had been seen since before Goodwife Bayliss had been born. Even so, Wynn paged idly through the tomes, reading to himself such fascinating words as: “The dragon is known to shed skin twice a day, and such skin mayhap be used for clothing and other crafts…”Baravia’s archive held no clues to this particular dragon, unless it was on the verge of shedding skin and crafts were needed. When Clydia closed the archives for the day, Wynn took the long route past the welcome gate of the town toward his hut. As he passed the gate, he saw a dusty man in traveling leathers. A knight, Wynn thought. The man had a sword and a bow and quiver, but he did not need any special garb for Wynn to know him to be a knight. Even through the dust, the man held himself straight and proud, though he walked slowly towards the gate, looking very tired.Several townspeople were present: a young woman was carrying a basket of reeds, two men were talking commerce, and a boy was pulling a wagon filled with round smooth river stones. They each glanced at the knight, but none said a word or approached him.Welcome to Baravia, Wynn thought. This had been the same greeting he had received when he had arrived at the town several months ago. Despite the statue, despite the sign, the people had not greeted him or taken him in…until he had cured a councilwoman’s son of a sleeping sickness. It was fear, he thought, fear of the unknown, or perhaps fear of losing their gold to the unknown.So Wynn stepped forward, and came up to the knight, who stopped in front of him. Wynn was taller than the knight by a good foot, but the knight was well-built and smelled faintly of sweat and the road. “Well-met, traveller to Baravia,” Wynn said.The knight lifted his helmet, and Wynn saw his dark, dark eyes. Intense and curious and wary. “Thanks,” the knight said, looking pointedly around at the other townspeople who had stopped to watch them, but continued to keep their distance.“Would you like a drink?” Wynn asked.The knight seemed to relax as if the burden of his trip had suddenly come down around him. “Thank you,” he said. “Call me Tristan.”Wynn’s hut was already too small for him, and with the knight, there was barely enough room for them to sit at the low wooden table with glasses of wine between them. “You are a knight,” Wynn said, stating and not asking.Tristan downed the wine in a single gulp, then coughed and sputtered. “Yes, an honorable profession.” He shook his head. “Or rather, it was an honorable one until our mission disbanded. Now I work for hire.”A mischievous thought flashed through Wynn’s head, thinking of hiring Tristan for something related to ‘knightly’ duties, but he dismissed it. “Have you been hired much of late?”The sun was setting outside, and the orange rays illuminated Tristan’s dark brown eyes as he poured another cup. “Here and there. I make enough gold to get by.” Then, looking at the potions and vials on the wall of the hut, Tristan asked, “And you? Does Baravia pay its wizard well?”“I am yet on probation,” Wynn said. “They remain unconvinced that I am a fine enough wizard for such a fine town.” At his tone, Tristan looked at him more sharply, then smiled.“Yes, I see. What must you do to convince them of your worth?”Wynn sighed heavily. “I am afraid that I am about to fail at that task.” He took a book out of his pack that he had borrowed from the archives and laid it on the table, opening it to a drawing of a winged, fire-breathing creature. “A dragon is threatening Baravia.”Tristan smiled, and it occurred to Wynn that he liked that smile a great deal. “Did I not mention that I am a slayer of dragons?”“Surely there cannot be enough dragons in this world for you to specialize in such a profession,” Wynn said, running his index finger around the rim of his cup. The wine had traveled from his stomach to his head.“I have been far and wide across this country,” Tristan said. “Even in the last few months, I have slain dragons of fire and dragons of ice.” The wine was touching the knight’s tongue as well, Wynn thought.“Let us speak of this tomorrow,” Wynn said. “Will you sleep here tonight?” That last, he said with more bluntness in his voice than he had wished.Tristan looked at the narrow single bed and shook his head, getting to his feet unsteadily. “As is my custom, I shall sleep under the stars.”Wynn saw him to the door. “Perhaps I shall join you under the stars one day, knight.”Tristan’s breath, scented with wine, was very light on Wynn’s cheek. “Perhaps, wizard. You may always follow me.”Alone, Wynn paced in his hut. There was no doubt that Tristan claimed to be a slayer of dragons for hire. There was no doubt that he could slay this dragon, if what he said were true. And there was no doubt that Wynn himself could not slay or enchant or magick the dragon on his own.Wynn had collected the information, and read about dragons, and done his studying, despite Olliver’s sighing. Wynn knew that he could craft a weapon that would defeat the dragon…but he could not get close enough to strike it.But conceivably, Tristan could.“You would entrust the defence of our town to a…stranger?” Olliver asked Wynn the following morning. Olliver and his group of farmers and merchants were in the town council building, and Olliver sat underneath the portrait of the town’s founder, the famous painting depicting the man standing with open arms and a welcoming smile.Tristan stood next to Wynn, but said nothing. A bowl of fresh water and a rag had transformed him from a dusty stranger into a proud and confident young man with a broad chest and massive arms, sword at his side.“Am I not still a stranger in Baravia as well?” Wynn asked quietly.Olliver coughed. “Yes, but…well, we need your assistance. We have been blessed to have had your help on several occasions over the last few months. You are known to us.” He pointed to Tristan. “He could be a fraud. Or a common thief.”Wynn felt Tristan bristle beside him, and heard the slight clip-clip of his leather-clad fingers gripping the handle of the sword. “I vouch for him,” Wynn said simply. “He has told me his story, and I have investigated it.” At the word ‘investigated,’ Olliver gave a heavy sigh, but Wynn did not stop. “He is the man who shall defeat our dragon.”That evening, in Wynn’s thatched hut, Tristan scooped meat and vegetables from a bowl. He eats like a man starving, Wynn thought, though he has the broad shoulders and heft of a man who is well-fed. Wynn had already finished his meager dinner, and he was looking at potions and philtres and making notes while Tristan finished his meal. “You did not do any investigation of me,” Tristan said, smiling as he surfaced for air at last.Wynn reached over with a cloth and dabbed the knight’s beard. “I investigate in my own way,” he said.Tristan indicated the bottles and vials with an inclination of his head. “What are these?”Wynn picked up a purple vial and hefted it in his hands. “I gathered this last winter, on the shortest day of the year, just as the sun set.” He handed it to Tristan, who looked at it in surprise.“It is cold – like ice,” Tristan said.Wynn smiled. “It is the distillate of winter – Winter’s Bane.” He took the vial back and looked at it reverently. “This shall be the base of the weapon you will use against the dragon.”Tristan looked confused, then nodded. “A weapon of ice. I see…I have slain dragons with sword and bow and arrow, but never by magical means.”“We shall dip your sword in the potion once it is complete, and the tips of your arrows.” Wynn looked him directly in the eyes. “If your aim is true, the dragon cannot help but fall.”“My aim is always true,” Tristan replied.And Wynn saw this for himself, as Tristan practiced in the clearing behind the hut over the next days while Wynn mixed potions, read recipes from scrolls, and boiled various liquids over the hearth-fire. Whenever he stopped to rest, Wynn saw Tristan slashing at a makeshift fighting figure made of straw and clay, the knight’s muscles taut, glistening with sweat.Tristan spent each night under the stars, until the day a heavy storm fell upon Baravia. Then, shivering and shaking the water from his leathers, he came indoors and allowed Wynn to dry him off.“You do not like to accept hospitality when it is offered,” Wynn suggested, toweling Tristan’s hair roughly and playfully until Tristan pulled the cloth away from him.Tristan’s face was ruddy. “I have learned,” he said, “that there is a price to be paid for hospitality. And of course, I do not stay in any one town for very long.”“I have lived in Baravia for eight months,” Wynn said. “The longest I have stayed anywhere, in many years.”Tristan grinned, pointing at the open box on the floor. “And yet you keep your…

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