The Wine of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

uncommonly neat and his manner equally crisp.
His gnarled hands lay quite still upon the coverlet, the fingers relaxed.
    “They found none, of course,” Luther said.
    “Of course,” Reinmar echoed. “Nor did they expect to—unlike the man who
came to the shop this afternoon. The witch hunter appears to be chasing him,
although he did not tell me what the fellow is supposed to have done and the man
would not tell us his own news because he thought we were being unhelpful. There
is wild talk of necromancers from the Cursed Marshes and daemonologists from the
Howling Hills, but the man seemed perfectly ordinary to me—except, of course,
that he claimed to be your nephew.”
    Luther did not seem surprised by that either. The servants of the household
were obviously better informed than they had any right to be, and the kitchen
maid clearly had not hesitated to share her knowledge with the man who still
desired to be thought of as her ultimate master.
    “Did you tell the witch hunter that the other man claimed to be my nephew?”
Luther asked.
    “No,” said Reinmar, “but he will find out eventually. If they find him at
Great-Uncle Albrecht’s house the witch hunter will come back here again, and his
men might not be so careful to avoid spillage next time.”
    “Albrecht’s got more sense than to keep the boy in his house,” Luther assured
him. “He’ll find some sort of hidey-hole for him, if he can’t persuade him to go
away.”
    “According to my father,” Reinmar observed, “Albrecht never had a son.”
    “I never found it convenient, let alone rewarding, to tell your father
everything,” Luther admitted. “He has the kind of mind which cannot tolerate
overmuch confusion. You, on the other hand, are probably cursed with far too
much imagination. Yes, Albrecht had a son, although he was never wed. As to
whether this man is really him… that’s another question. Did you tell him
where to find Albrecht?”
    “My father did. Was he wrong?”
    “No. If he is who he says he is, I suppose Albrecht might be glad to see
him.”
    Reinmar took note of his grandfather’s use of “might”, but he had more urgent
matters on his mind than the likely emotions of his Great-Uncle Albrecht on
being confronted by his long-lost bastard son.
    “What’s dark wine, grandfather?” Reinmar asked. “Father says that we used to
stock it, twenty years ago.”
    “So we did,” Luther admitted. “A very tidy profit we made from it, too. A
delightful vintage, taken in moderation—although there were few men hereabouts
with pockets deep enough to take it in anything but extreme moderation. In times
long gone it had generated a healthy westward flow of Marienburger gold, but
that flow stuttered in the confusion that followed the secession and never fully
recovered. My father never tired of telling me how that storm in a soup ladle had
ruined everything. There was still a demand, of course, but the chain of supply
was disrupted.
    “The dark wine became a pawn in a political game, charged with being an agent
of evil on account of the dreams it nurtured. According to the priests of law it
stimulated an appetite for unnatural luxury that ought to be stamped out. Can
you believe that? All wine intoxicates, and all liquor stimulates an appetite
for more—and why should anyone object? Dreams enrich life, no matter what
hard-faced men like your father may think, and while there never was a man who
did not take delight in luxury how can anyone possibly charge luxury with being
unnatural? Believe me, Reinmar, there is no folly like the folly of excessive
reason!”
    Luther’s voice had grown faint with effort, and his head sank back upon the
pillow, but Reinmar was determined to hear more while he had the chance. He
poured water from the pitcher beside the bed into his grandfather’s cup, and put
it to the old man’s cracked lips.
    “Thank you,” Luther said. “What a curse age is! Had I but known,