Excerpt: The Wizards hat

Prologue

The legendary heroes of Avalar are many and varied. Many a great man has strode the green fields of the mighty kingdom and carved a bloody name for himself on the backs of his slain foes. The many heroes and villains of Avalar possessed enormous power. There was the legendary Knight, Sir Krestvan who single-handedly slew the great dragon Vibraxus and freed the town of Alandor from its reign of terror. There were the mighty wizards Gorthandor and Kobrilus, whose mastery of the arcane arts were such that when their rivalry turned into a feud which then devolved into a battle that destroyed them both, the site of that duel is nothing but a crater that still smokes to this day, nearly 500 years later. There are many many more, and even a simple recounting of the deeds of any of them would occupy a book to itself. This story isn’t about them.

Mighty and powerful heroes are still the exception, rather than the rule in the kingdom of Avalar. Though the land has produced many a mighty warrior and powerful wizard, like anywhere else it is still composed mostly of farmers and candle-makers and that guy who empties the chamber pots at night. And it is with one of these ordinary folk, a simple blacksmith who never dreamed that he too would one day rise to the status of hero, as a result of a drunken bet no less, that our story starts.

Sven Nothlisson was the blacksmith for the village of Threever, a small village sitting on the coast near Avalar’s northern border with the hated Grand Duchy of Freen. Sven was a simple man, he had no great skill at his craft but he was adequate to the sort of work that was demanded of him; the crafting of nails, pots, horse shoes, that sort of thing. No one would ever say that he was the best blacksmith in all the land, no one who knew what they were talking about anyway, but his simple basic work met the needs of the fishermen and farmers who lived in the village and he was actually quite busy, after all, he was the only blacksmith their tiny village had and no one wanted to travel all the way to Culverton simply to get to a pot made just because the Master Smith there could make it look prettier. Well, okay, Old Lady Morda would, actually she would send a servant to do it, but everyone knew she was a pretentious old biddy anyway, so she didn’t really count.

Sven was in his mid-thirties. He was as well muscled as one would expect a man who hammers steel for a living to be. He had a thick head of curly black heair and a black beard that was already beginning to see the first bits of grey. He was a simple man and as a simple man, Sven had simple tastes. His foremost pleasure was strong drink. Strong drink also ranked as numbers two, three and four on his list, followed by pretty women at number five, with the top ten rounded out by strong drink, strong drink, strong drink, strong drink and strong drink in that order. His days were filled with his work, shaping metal to meet the needs of his fellow villagers and evenings usually found him at the Green Rooster Tavern, tipping back a few, having a few laughs, and listen to the Wandering Minstrels who would stop by the tavern frequently, since the town lay on the main road between Avalar’s capital City of Zolonium and the major port city of Kreel, where the Mages of Kreel’s famous were known to be quite fond of minstrels and paid them quite well. Though he was generally friendly with nearly everyone in the town (except for Old lady Morda, the bitchy old hag, and most of her snooty family) his favorite drinking companion was his old friend Brastec. Brastec was a huntsman for Lord Drelnan, the nobleman who owned Threever and the surrounding countryside. Lord Drelnan was very fond of the hunt, so Brastec was away from town very often, but Brastec was just about the only person whose appetite for drink matched Sven’s own. And their drinking contests were something of a legend in the town, with local gossips claiming such outrageous things as that Brastec had once out drank a fully grown bear, or that one of their contests ended in a draw when the tavern ran out of ale, or how Sven had once consumed an entire barrel of mead at a single sitting. Local gossips were idiots, of course, and none of those things really happened, well, except for the bear thing, but that is a whole story unto itself. Nonetheless, Brastec and Sven were great friends and both men could drink just about anyone else in Threever under the table.

There was another story about Sven and his drinking that was true, however. It was said that Sven did his best work while drunk. No one knew why, not even Sven. A simple kettle might be a plain utilitarian piece if he made it while sober, but if he was drunk it would have fancy scrollwork around the rim, and many other fine touches when he was drunk. He once went on a three day bender and for no reason made the most beautiful wrought iron fencing anyone in the village had ever seen. He had no memory of doing it or why, but he gave it to old Widow Kratia as a gift, to keep animals out of her garden. He soon regretted doing this because Old Widow Kratia was quite adept at growing onions and, out of gratitude, she had kept him knee deep in onions ever since. He hated onions but he never had the heart to tell her this because, frankly, she was so damned proud of them. Thus onions had been piling up in his house ever since. He had made the mistake of trying to bury some behind his shop, but all that meant was that he now had his very own patch of onions growing out there. This convinced Kratia that he liked onions all the more and that she wasn’t sending him enough, so she started sending him twice what she used to. Such was Sven’s life.

Despite his status as a drunken savant, he seldom worked drunk. He was afraid to because the previous blacksmith, his father, used to work drunk all the time and this led to the tragic bellows accident that cost him his life. Still, he would sometimes just wake up in his shop after a particularly rough night at the tavern, hung over and with some work he could never hope to replicate when he was sober lying on his work table.

It was on the morning after such an incident, when a drinking contest with Brastec resulted in him overnight creating a beautifully ornamented ladle in the village that the incident occurred that would lead to the stupid drunken bar room bet that would change his life and the face of Avalar itself forever.