by Resa Nelson
Thurid matched her husband’s whisper. “I’m telling you the power is all in the blood. Meat has some blood in it, and that’s why the villagers who eat it can shapeshift. But when a slayer drinks blood fresh from the body that’s still warm, that gives him the greatest power imaginable.” She winked. “I’m an experienced alchemist. I know about these things.”
“I wager your Scalding berserkers aren’t shifting their bodies,” Claude said. “But if they’re eating dragon meat, then they can change their faces.”
The gravity of Claude’s words weighed on Benzel. “That’s why I can’t find them. I can’t recognize them because they’ve all changed the way they look.”
“And if they’ve changed their names as well,” Thurid said, “then there’s no way you or anyone else could find them.”
Benzel rested his elbows on the tabletop and sank his head into his hands. “Then what am I to do?”
“I can help,” Thurid said.
Benzel looked up and watched the alchemist drain the last bit of soup from her bread trencher. She then ripped off a piece of the soup-drenched bread and nibbled at it. “How?” Benzel said.
“There’s a way to mark your berserkers,” Thurid said. “A way to see who they truly are.”
“Take caution,” Claude said. “It sounds like dangerous territory.”
Benzel looked from Thurid to Claude. “Danger?”
Thurid brushed away the thought into thin air with her free hand. “There’s nothing treacherous about it. Just a simple herb.” She took another bite of bread and mumbled. “Thrush-foot moss.”
“Never heard of it,” Benzel said.
“It’s rare,” Thurid said. “I’ve only ever found it in the Southlands.” She brightened. “We’ve got a home in the Southlands now. Near Bellesguard. We’re setting sail for home tomorrow. Come with us, and I’ll fix you up so you can find your berserkers at last.”
Worry furrowed Claude’s forehead, but he said nothing.
Anxiety made Benzel impatient. “Can’t you fix me up now?”
Thurid shook her head. “Uses for thrush-foot moss are so rare that I never travel with it. I have a plentiful stash back home in my workshop. For the way you should use it, I’ll need to crush it and remove the stems. And give it some direction, of course. Once I whip up a batch, all you need do is put a pinch in someone’s meal or drink, and it’ll do the trick.”
Claude kept his voice low. “What exactly is the trick it will do?”
Thurid grinned. “I’ll direct it to expose anyone who has murdered another for selfish reasons.”
Claude scoffed. “Isn’t that most Northlanders?”
“Not at all,” Thurid said. She kept her gaze on Benzel. “Plenty of Northlanders have killed in self-defense or while protecting their family or village. Only berserkers murder because they want to take what doesn’t belong to them.”
“How does it expose them?” Benzel said.
“Once ingested, thrush-foot moss will detect one’s actions of the past. If innocent of murder, there will be no change.”
“And if guilty?”
Thurid’s smile widened. “The eyes of the guilty will change to the color of the moss. In the case of the moss I have on hand, it will change their eyes to lavender.”
“Lavender.” Excitement sparked throughout Benzel’s body. For the first time in his life, he knew why he’d failed to find the berserkers who killed his family and now how to identify them, no matter how hard they tried to hide. “That means all I have to do is make sure they eat or drink something containing the moss and then look at their eyes.”
“That isn’t even the beauty of it,” Thurid said. “The change is permanent and will be passed down to their children and their children’s children. Even if those who are innocent ingest it today, if they commit murder tomorrow, their eyes will then change to lavender. Even if they’re innocent today and then have children who one day commit murder, the eyes of the children will then turn to lavender. That means forever more you can recognize a berserker Scalding when you meet anyone whose eyes are lavender.”
“I see one problem,” Claude said. “How do you determine the ones who should ingest your potion if Benzel can’t identify them to begin with?”
Thurid shrugged. “Keep it on hand. Be on the ready. If any of us ever has suspicions about a bunch of people who might be Scaldings, put the potion in their food or drink. The potion will keep for a long time, so there’s no hurry.”
Benzel smiled. “I accept your invitation to go to the Southlands.”
CHAPTER 24
When they arrived at the home of the weapon merchant and alchemist near Bellesguard in the Southlands, Thurid discovered her supply of thrush-foot moss had run low.
“No matter,” she told Benzel. “It’s still growing in season. There’s a glen a short walk from here where we should find plenty. I’ll show you how to look for it, then we’ll cover different ground to find it faster.”
Happy to do whatever he could to identify the Scaldings, Benzel paid rapt attention when Thurid told him the best places to look for thrush-foot moss and how to identify it. She then disappeared over the crest of a tree-lined hill to search on the other side.
Benzel had become so accustomed to failing that he felt giddy at the thought of finding a way to succeed. He whistled cheerfully while searching for moss.
A commotion of shattering branches made him look up to see a large lizard plummet through the tree line on the hill and race toward him.
Dragon!
Benzel fumbled for the sword at his side, only to remember that he’d seen no reason to wear it in the safe and peaceful country of the Southlands. He’d taken the sheathed sword off his belt and left it at Thurid’s home.
The ground shook as the lizard thundered closer.
Benzel finally realized he never went anywhere without his dagger tucked under his belt. Shaking, he pulled it free, ready to face the lizard. Thirty-five years had passed since he’d trained with dragonslayers at Bellesguard, and the only dragon he’d seen until now was the one that gave a fatal bite to the dragonslayer Sinchetto decades ago. The dagger trembled in Benzel’s hand.
A galloping horse burst through the tree line on the hill and caught up with the lizard before Benzel knew what happened. A woman dressed in a dark shirt and pants leapt from the horse’s back and landed on the ground in a full running stride in pursuit of the lizard.
When the beast made an abrupt change to its course, the woman anticipated its actions and closed the distance between them. She pounced on the lizard and tumbled on the ground with it until she pinned its chest against the grass. She unfurled a coil of rope from her belt and made quick work of hog-tying the animal. She tested her knotwork by pulling at different points. Satisfied, she stood away from the lizard and acknowledged Benzel’s presence. “No need to fear. I’ve got everything under control.”
Miffed by her words, Benzel stood and approached her with dagger still in hand. “I’ve trained at Bellesguard with the best dragonslayers.”
The woman in black laughed. “But you’re no dragonslayer. Anyone can see that.”
Benzel slashed at the empty air between them with the dagger blade to demonstrate his technique.
“That’s very basic, you know,” she said. “And better suited toward fighting men than dragons.” Unlike any Northlander, her eyes and hair were black. Her hair appeared to be long and streaked with grey, but she had tied it up high on top of her head. The wrinkles lining her face suggested she might be ten years younger than Benzel. He suspected she’d been a dragonslayer for a good 20 years or more.
“I’m Rayna,” she said.
Intrigued, Benzel put his dagger back under his belt. “Southlander?”
Rayna shook her head and whistled to her horse. “Midlander.”
The horse trotted obediently to her side.
She squatted and spoke directly to the lizard. “Enough play time. It’s time to go back to work. Be good.”
To Benzel, she said, “Help me with this thing.”
First, Rayna held the lizard’s mouth shut with one hand and then bound it with a leather tie. She removed thick leather booties from the pouch hanging from her belt and instructed Benzel on the fine art of placing those booties on the lizard’s feet so its claws could do no harm. By the time he’d wrestled a bootie onto one foot and tied it in place, he saw that Rayna had covered all its other feet and stood waiting for him to finish. Together, they hauled the small lizard onto the horse’s back and then tied its bound mouth to its tail under the horse’s belly.
“There,” Rayna said to the lizard. “Just behave yourself and we’ll be home before you know it.” She shook a reprimanding finger at it. “No more nonsense from you!”
“You know this creature?” With every passing moment, Benzel felt more intrigued.
“We keep a young dragon on hand for training at Bellesguard,” Rayna said. “Every so often it runs away.” She patted her horse’s shoulder.
The horse gave a soft neigh, as if retrieving an escaped lizard happened often enough to be a normal occurrence.
Sunlight struck a silver pin in the shape of a tree on Rayna’s shirt, and Benzel noticed it for the first time.
He pointed at it. “I’ve heard of that temple called Limru. It’s where people worship trees.”
“Tree spirits,” Rayna said. “I’m the dragonslayer of Limru.”
This is the woman I must marry.
The abrupt thought startled Benzel.
What?
He’d spent his life so focused on seeking revenge against the Scaldings that he never gave much thought to marriage. He often enjoyed the company of different women in different villages and cities but had never experienced serious feelings about any of them.
The thought of marriage made no sense. And yet something inside persisted.
This is the woman I must marry.
The next few moments felt like hours as Benzel wrestled with making sense of that thought and his life until now. Did he feel lonely now that he stood on the verge of his twilight years? Did some part of him want to give up what felt like an impossible task of avenging his family and protecting others?
Before dying, the dragonslayer Sinchetto had advised Benzel that the berserkers were berserkers no more.
The past decades proved Sinchetto right. Berserkers no longer threatened anyone.
And if berserkers—the Scaldings—were no longer a threat, then why did Benzel feel such a compelling need to kill them?
Now, in the last stage of his life, would it make sense for Benzel to spend it with someone he loved?
Would it be giving up? Would it make him a failure?
This is the woman I must marry.
Or would it give meaning to his life where all previous meaning seemed to have evaporated?
Benzel’s thoughts confounded him.
One moment he didn’t know what to make of them.
The next moment, he realized that looking into Rayna’s eyes gave him the deepest sense of peace he’d ever known.
But why this woman? Why Rayna?
Benzel remembered how helpless his mother had been on the day the berserkers killed her. He thought about all the times he’d worried about Snip, desperate to protect her.
Rayna is a dragonslayer. She knows how to protect herself.
Benzel had trained with dragonslayers. He knew their strengths. He knew their courage. The thought of marrying one thrilled him.
Even better, Benzel knew the dragonslayer of the temple of Limru had to be special. He knew little of tree spirits and the people who worshipped them, but he believed that a dragonslayer chosen to protect those spirits had to be someone special.
Benzel thought about how his life had been filled with anguish and hatred.
In that moment, Benzel considered the possibility of replacing that anguish and hatred with love.
He could no longer look at Rayna as an interesting woman he met in passing.
He could only see her as the woman he wanted to live with for the rest of his life.
Benzel didn’t understand why he saw her that way. He only knew that he felt it so deep in his bones that he trusted everything he felt to be true and right.
Rayna peered at him with curiosity in her eyes. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Benzel stuttered, not knowing what to do with the new desire rolling around inside him.
Thurid appeared from the tree line and shouted, “Rayna!”
Rayna gave one more inquisitive glance at Benzel and then turned toward the hill. “The dragon got away again. It’s under control now.”
Thurid trotted toward them. She held her skirt up with both hands so that the lap of it acted like a bowl-like container. When she joined their sides, Benzel saw it filled with pale lavender moss.
Rayna looked at it, too. “Thrush-foot moss?” She raised a questioning eyebrow. “That’s powerful stuff, Thurid. Why do you need so much?”
Thurid hesitated.
“It’s alright,” Benzel said. “I don’t mind if Rayna knows.”
She peered even closer at him. “You never told me your name.”
Thurid piped up before Benzel could speak. “He’s Benzel of the Wolf. You’ve heard me and Claude talk about him.”
Rayna’s lower eyebrow lifted to join the other. “You’re the one determined to rid the world of berserkers?”
“That’s the reason for the thrush-foot moss,” Benzel said. “We think they’ve been shapeshifting their faces to hide from me. I’ve spent my life looking for them everywhere and haven’t found a single one yet.”
Thurid nodded toward the pile of moss she carried in her dress. “It’ll turn their eyes lavender.”
“I see,” Rayna said. “Good luck with that.” She picked up the horse’s reins and gave them a tug. She led the horse back toward Bellesguard.
Benzel stared as she walked away. His heart fell at the disdain in Rayna’s voice when she wished him luck. Clearly, she hadn’t meant it. Clearly, she thought little of him for aspiring to kill berserkers, even though he couldn’t imagine why.
I have to find a way to convince Rayna to be mine. But how?
CHAPTER 25
Ten-year-old Pingzi Po wore her fine black hair in pigtails and skipped down one of the many long hallways of the royal palace in the city of Zangcheen in the province of Wulong in the Far East. Her lonely footsteps echoed in the empty space.
Although a member of the royal family, Pingzi was merely a cousin to the Emperor Renzong Po. By royal decree, her family had the right to live inside the royal palace, but Pingzi wished they didn’t.
She came to a stop when her hallway intersected with another. Looking both ways, Pingzi smiled with delight at the sight of a window at the end of the hallway to her left. She ran to it. The bottom of the window stood as high as her chest. Pingzi rested her crossed arms on the windowsill and sighed. From here, she could look across the royal complex and over the low wall establishing its perimeter to glimpse the city outside.
Pingzi found living inside the royal palace to be excruciatingly boring. She had no need for servants to help her dress. Pingzi could choose her outfit each day and put it on all by herself, thank you very much. She didn’t like servants telling her what to do. She didn’t like how her parents or the emperor or even the royal magician expected her to be wherever they wanted her to be at any given moment.
She looked back to make sure the hallway still stood empty. Pingzi then opened the window and took a deep breath of the air outside.
More than anything else, Pingzi Po longed to live outside the royal complex in the city of Zangcheen and live an everyday life. But her deepest wish of all was to travel throughout the Far East and maybe even to other countries.
That would be a true adventure.
Living in the palace was the furthest thing from an adventure that Pingzi could envisage.
Until the walls around her began to shimmer
.
At first, Pingzi rubbed her eyes, thinking she must be imagining things. But when she looked again, pale blue walls of sparkling light surrounded her like sheets of rain.
She gripped the windowsill with terror and considered calling out for the servants or her mother.
But then Pingzi thought that crying out for help was something a baby would do. She didn’t want to be weak and helpless.
She wanted to be an adventuress.
Pingzi decided her best course of action might be to address the strange walls of light directly. “I’m Pingzi Po,” she said. “Who are you?”
The pale blue walls swirled around Pingzi like a dust devil, spinning and spinning, faster and faster.
But instead of becoming dizzy, Pingzi felt balanced. She let go of the windowsill and stood on her own. “I’m very confounded,” she said. “Can you please tell me what is happening?”
The spinning walls of light closed in around the girl and grazed her skin with such a light touch that she giggled from the tickling sensation.
In the next moment, the air outside reached in through the open window and scooped her up in its arms.
Pingzi cried out in surprise when the air lifted her as high as the rooftop of the palace and carried her across the royal complex.
“They knew you would be born someday,” the voice of an invisible woman said. “But they don’t yet know it’s you.”
The sense of flying thrilled Pingzi, but at the same time every nerve in her body tingled with the fear of falling.
The air swooped Pingzi to rest on the red-tile slanted roof of the Hall of Justice. Although Pingzi had never been allowed inside the hall, she knew that’s where Emperor Po sat and listened to complaints and problems from everyday people who had traveled from wherever they lived in the Wulong Province to ask for the emperor’s help.