by Wilf Jones
The servant shrugged his assent and it was only as the man turned away that Bliss caught the look of frustration and quiet anger on his face.
‘Carl,’ he said softly and the servant froze, ‘Do be very careful. You know that I carry the King’s baton.’
The servant took a deep breath. Bliss wondered which way he would jump.
‘Well Carl?’
The servant, without turning, nodded curtly. ‘Yes sir, as you command it,’ he said and then left the room, taking the food with him.
As I command, indeed! The doctor’s habitual smile became a plump grin. All as I command. It is so easy, he thought, even with the Chancellor. Not one of them has the guts to face me. Much safer this way than having Acchulpa copy him. Better to let her loose on the Partians than waste her talents here. And besides, one really cannot trust her. Especially when she’s hungry! Bliss shuddered at the thought. Her tastes were not to his liking: too much blood and too much pain were involved. Bliss was somewhat squeamish for a Doctor.
He giggled aloud this time. It was hard for him to credit how easily people could be taken in. In this country people with great minds and tremendous energy were changing the world around them as though they were demigods. Science was their byword, unravelling the mysteries of the universe their aim for the profit of all. And yet there was not one of them who could see past all the hokum. They all wanted to believe. Any crackpot philosophy, any quackery that came along, so long as it promised health and long life, was embraced like a new bride. They had to have it, they would plumb its depths and the more they had, the more they wanted, right up until the point that the medicine killed them. That was the interesting thing about these new scientists: they so needed affirmation that anything merely dressed up as science automatically gained their allegiance. Idiotically, they had a corresponding dislike of magic and magicians. As if science was something different! ‘Dr. Bliss’ the medical expert suited them an awful lot better than ‘Tarangananda uh Bib, the Wizard Balipurum’. So be it! The Smiling One would use their preferences against them.
The King had been very welcoming when Bliss managed to get himself introduced as ‘the greatest medical scientist of the age.’ Keen, in fact, to beg treatment for the powerful headaches that had plagued him for a month or more. Not that Sirl was as foolish as the rest. He knew and understood the power of Errensea and would never dismiss the idea of magic. But surrounded by all these scientists and engineers, who filled his court with petitions for grants, bursaries and royal warrants for their various endeavours, there was very little chance of Sirl making the right connection. That the headaches might have been anything out of the ordinary never occurred to him. The thing about magic was that, if done properly, the victim rarely realised what was happening to him. The best magic did not show its hand: it wasn’t called ‘the occult’ for nothing.
The Doctor took a quick look into the King’s bedchamber. Sirl was motionless on the bed, his face grey with the poison he had just taken, so frail now it was no wonder that the servants were upset. Tomorrow he would have to give the King something to make it seem that he might actually be getting better at last, something to put a bit of colour in his cheeks. For today however he would have to suffer a little more.
Back in the antechamber one of Sirl’s clocks clanged out the ninth hour. Bliss closed the door and locked it. He picked up a small hand bell from the table beside the door and rang it to summon a guard. While he was waiting for the man to arrive Bliss passed his hands up over the doorjambs and lintel, humming a small tune as he did so. The guard would doubtless be very trustworthy but Doctor Bliss was not the trusting type. Nobody would be going in and nobody would be coming out. Not for a while yet.
Some time later a stout figure, silhouetted by the light of one of the new gas lights over on the Market Road, rapped on the iron-studded door of a large terrace house in the ‘merchants part’ close by the Stralli market, an in-between sort of place that was not quite respectable but certainly not rough. It was a suitable destination: the plump man was an in-between sort of character too. Bliss looked up and down the street. Nothing. He had been tracked along the genteel avenues surrounding the palace by two ill-disguised policemen. Their incompetence had made him sigh. He had taken them down into the Lanes, a labyrinth of small shops and studios. What chance did they have? Here were jewellers and glassmakers, painters and printers, carpenters and joiners; here were dressmakers and shoemakers, milliners and drapers, devisers and builders: craftsmen and merchants of every imaginable persuasion. Bliss was entranced by their variety, impressed by their constant endeavour and amazed by their energy. It was already past the tenth hour and yet lights still shone in all the windows, the alleys were full of comings and goings, and the calls of the bobyboys and the whirr of their wheels filled the air. Did these people never stop working? Still, this dedication to labour and enterprise proved to be most helpful. With just a little magic, in such lively surroundings, it was a simple matter to confuse any inquisitive eye. The Doctor had lost his markers in a matter of minutes. Of course, he would have preferred more of a challenge but it was just as well the Chancellor’s men were such poor spies: Tys Heald was looking for anything he could use to damage the Doctor’s standing with the King. Making a connection between Bliss and the extremely dubious resident of this house could be just what he needed.
The door remained unopened. Bliss reached for the knocker and the sound of it echoed through the street. There was still no reply and the Doctor was becoming quite irritated. In a sudden fit of fury he had raised a hand to force the door but at the last moment held back: inside the bolts were pulled, a mortise lock turned. His fingers curled into a fist as the door opened.
‘Do you really think they are so stupid,’ he hissed, ‘that you may let me stand openly at your door?’
The masked man before him made the slightest of shrugs.
‘You can stand where you please, uh Bib. It is no matter to me whether you are seen or unseen. Come in.’
Zaras turned stiffly and led the way into the house.
‘I have not fed for some time, Doctor, and this body is suffering the consequence. Have you brought me anything?’
They entered a well-lit drawing room.
‘Yes, but my supply is running low. Can you not use more traditional means?’
‘It is difficult without Franner and Creel. I had thought they would be here by now. It was… inconvenient to me that they had to go.’
Bliss was in no mood to be rebuked. ‘It was important at the time and I had no one else.’
‘But seven days, uh Bib! See what it does: this atmosphere is ruining me.’
Zaras removed his mask. Bliss examined his host more closely. The face revealed had the pallor of death; King Sirl looked healthy by comparison. Of course Zaras had never looked anything like normal, nor any of the Exiled, but he looked better than most. Now, however, Bliss could see that if something were not done soon the damage to the skin would be irreparable.
‘The Necromancer has promised me a new batch, Zaras, but it seems to me that the General is pressing his claim for all they can bleed. It may take some time.’
‘I do not have time. Seven days without anything…’
‘Yes, yes, I see. Words will be spoken. I would go myself but I cannot leave just now. The Chancellor is waiting for the slightest chance. Take this.’
A glass phial had appeared in Bliss’s hand. It contained a thick brownish liquid. ‘I am amazed that it works. The Necromancer claims it has lost none of its potency since the first drop. The Halfi were very lucky to find her. It is just a pity it does not work so well for the Exiled.’
‘A pity indeed. Though I prefer the other way. There is nothing like fresh blood.’ Zaras took the phial and moved over to a small table. An odd looking contraption stood there, a combination of leather straps, a tapering bottle with a bla
dder at the wide end and a spike at the other. Using the straps, Zaras attached the bottle to his left arm with the spike poised over the dark green vein at his wrist. Bliss noticed that without the need of a ligature the vein was already hugely distended. The flesh around it looked like putty. Zaras removed the bladder, tipped in the liquid from the phial, so thick that it took a minute to transfer completely, and then reattached the sump to the bottle.
‘Let us make ourselves more comfortable. This will take some time.’
They sat in chairs before a cold, unmade fireplace. Bliss was already feeling queasy and had to look away when Zaras plunged the spike into the vein and tied off the top of the bladder with the one remaining strap. Over the course of the next hour he would progressively tighten the strap to maintain the pressure until the bottle was empty, and each time he did so Bliss found himself contemplating his fingernails or the pictures on the walls. Zaras, too caught up in the process, did not appear to notice the wizard’s discomfort.
‘Have you had word from them, my procurers?’
Bliss felt almost regretful he had thought of using the pair. They were Zaras’ men, not his, but when the word came that someone or something important was expected in such a backwater as Fletton he had to know what was going on. Creel and Franner were at hand, attending to Zaras as the Kumite made his regular report. Bliss hadn’t realised fully what they did for him.
‘Yes. It is partly the reason I am here. They claim there was nothing, no one. It was a rather garbled message I had from Franner. I wish I had never given him a stone: he has no skill – not in communication at any rate.’
‘He has other talents.’
‘So you say.’ Bliss paused to consider the innuendo. Franner’s talents were certainly useful but the Doctor felt at liberty to find them distasteful. ‘I have sent them on to Slaney, and that is where you should meet them. Ekstrom remains elusive but there is someone there I would like you to meet and, shall we say, engage.’
‘More agents?’
‘Zaras, you are hardly the perfect spy. I have a man who would sell his mother, daughter and wife to finance his ambitions and he knows our mark full well. More than that, he claims to have run into him in Pars.’
Zaras paused before replying. His hand pulled on the strap. Even on such an un-expressive face it was possible to discern a certain hunger. ‘You’re sure Ekstrom has the answer?’
‘If anyone has. He is well motivated and has the skill. I think it is only a matter of time before this atmosphere of ours will begin to suit you better.’ Bliss favoured Zaras with a pleasant smile, almost as though he liked him. ‘It is difficult, sometimes, to correctly understand people, to identify their problems and needs. We are all too caught up in our own concerns. For example, I had until now surmised that the problem of the Exiled, your problem, derived from the poisonous air of that hidden land and not from the good clean air of this existence.’
‘Water is death to men and air death to fish.’
‘A simple matter of mechanics then.’
‘There is nothing simple regarding this mechanic. According to the science I was taught, fish and men both need the same thing: a gas, you would say, called Oxygen. They exist in different mediums but Oxygen is everywhere on this Earth, this Earnor as you call it. Each has developed a means of extracting the oxygen from the fluids they travel through. But the strange thing is that as much as they, man or fish, need this oxygen that they might live, the same thing is steadily killing them. I believe that our bodies in Exile have been made to continue without Oxygen, or that they have learned to exist without it. And now this life giving gas has become a poison to us.’
‘I see.’ Bliss paused to reflect. He was something of an expert with poisons but he had never considered that the good air itself could be pernicious. ‘And what is this poison actually doing to you?’
‘Everything becomes slow for us. In exile we seem able to move and react more quickly. The blood we have is more suited to the atmosphere of eternity. Instead of bringing us energy Oxygen burns in our veins. I am no chemist and was never any sort of scientist but this seems to be the truth.’
‘But you have the antidote in your… procurements. And in this drug from the Necromancer’s spider woman.’
‘Antidote would be too strong a word.’
‘What surprises me—’
At this moment Zaras noticed that the ‘antidote’ was seeping out over his arm and he reached down to force the spike deeper into the vein. Bliss winced and looked away.
‘Yes? You were saying?’
Bliss stared at the floor. ‘Well, you are a magician of no mean ability and some power. As your body cannot cope with this atmosphere, I have wondered that you have not thought to find yourself a new body.’
Zaras looked up from adjusting his strap. His movements were already becoming quicker and more natural. The look he gave Uh Bib was almost understandable. Uh Bib seemed to have caught his train of thought.
‘It is something alike to the questioning technique I taught you. I suspect—’
‘Something alike but not the same and even that is difficult? It does not sound very promising. You should understand that when I say we become sluggish here, that also is the case with our minds. The blood helps, but live bodies, live minds they are so… The speed is frightening.’
‘Frightening?’
‘At first I was like a man caught in the sands with a tide racing in. It was unnerving. I am not sure I have the courage to go further.’
‘But what is there to lose?’
‘Everything. This carcass I inhabit may seem a poor thing to you but the thought of losing it and then failing to gain another… I have no wish for death, I have no wish to be a ghost. You may say that I have the ability, but if I get it wrong what would become of me then?’
Uh Bib was momentarily lost for words.
‘What more can I say. I can easily explain the method and I consider it quite straightforward. I have worked on it most carefully.’
‘If it is so straightforward why have you not used it yourself? Surely you too could find something better than you have?’
Uh Bib was horrified at the notion. He had worked on the technique partly because the notion intrigued him and partly because he thought that it might be useful to him some day far in the future. But not now. He liked his body. And it worked.
‘I am quite happy with what I have, thank you.’
‘And of course I am not at all happy with this.’ Zaras indicated the contraption strapped to his arm. ‘And you would think that I would jump at the chance, but I tell you: I will not do this except in the last resort. It is simply a matter of balancing risks and I consider the risk too great.’
‘In that case I will instruct you – our business here is far from free of risk and last resorts may threaten us all. Trust me, you will come round to the idea in the end. It is an option more certain than anything I can promise your peers. With a new body you will be renewed in vigour and yet still be yourself.’
‘And mortal.’
‘If you can do it once…’
‘So that is your plan for the future?’
‘I am not sure I desire immortality just now but my opinion may well change as age begins to tell and my mind falters. I could not bear to lose the power of thought and the memory of who I am.’
‘Pity then the Exiled. They are practically immortal and yet they live only for the moment. Most of them cannot remember who they are – or were. Any name they give themselves has little connection to the lives they have led; they know nothing now of their true identity.’
Bliss looked at Zaras. He was removing the phial. It was empty and Zaras was almost a different man, his glance sharp, his thoughts delivered crisply and coherently. Bliss thought it a little ironic.
‘We are what w
e are at the time the question is asked. Sometimes that will be all to do with our past, sometimes only to do with our present. Think of a Corayan galley slave. Once he might have been a baker or a soldier, a teacher or a lord, with family, with wealth. He had memories: falling in love on a summer’s night, the birth of a child, a first home, the death of a loved one – a thousand events that helped to make him what he was. And then a stroke of ill fortune puts him in the hands of the Corayans. In a very short time he is no longer the baker or the Lord. All he is, and all he will be is an oar slave –there is no escape, no hope of redemption except in death, no chance of regaining anything that has been lost. For such a man memory is a curse. If you speak to a Corayan slave, not a common experience I will grant, you will soon realize that his sanity is dependent on how well he can discard his past. His former life can mean nothing – he is a slave and that is that.’
Zaras was silent for a little while. He appeared to be mulling over what the doctor had said. Eventually he grinned, though to the average observer it might have seemed a grimace of pain.
‘I am astounded Doctor Bliss, if that is what I must call you here, not only by the callous presentation of such pain, but by the fact that you seem somehow to understand something of the trauma of our exile. But we do not all lack memory and some of us haven’t the least desire to discard the past, even in the extremity of our condition.’
‘I do not offer the example as an exact parallel: the Exiled are not slaves, Corayan or otherwise. But that desperate need I see in their eyes is corrosive to them. And you all share that need. Even in those who, as you say, have no recollection of who they are, the lust to reclaim life remains. And this lust governs you all, and it becomes what you are.’