IGMS Issue 7

by IGMS

  Baladji frowned at the crock. "What's in there? It smells putrid."

  Alberto's voice faltered as he dipped his fingers into what looked like brine. "Something I hope is not too horrible for a lady to look at."

  Iseau leaned forward. "I have a strong stomach," she lied, covering her nose with her hand.

  Alberto fished out a gray lump.

  "Ah, you brought it," Sharad's voice rang out as he strode across the deck and sat next to Iseau.

  Using the lid of the crock as a plate, Alberto set the lump down.

  Iseau's stomach lurched as she recognized it from the drawing in the scrolls Sharad had sent to her. It was a child's heart.

  "Don't worry." Alberto's hands fidgeted in his lap. "She was an alchemist's child who died a natural death from the same red fever that weakened the heart of the Doge's daughter."

  "Excellent. The physician-magus must have found this invaluable." Sharad took the heart in his fingers and examined it.

  "It's disgusting," Baladji said, pushing a bowl of tea toward Iseau.

  Sharad set the heart on the deck in front of her. "Iseau, you've seen the drawings. Now you need to study this -- commit the exact measurements to your mind."

  Taking a deep breath Iseau reached out. "Interesting," she said, swallowing hard. "It is the same size across as the width of my palm." She struggled to remain impassive as she closed her hand around the heart.

  "Would you like to cut it open, see the chambers?" Alberto asked Iseau, his thin lips parting in enthusiasm.

  It seemed her façade had fooled him, at least. "No, the drawings were explicit enough," she said. Feeling braver, she turned to Sharad. "I do, however, wish to hear more details about the braiding."

  Sharad smiled, showing perfect teeth. "I suppose there's no harm in telling you a little of the secret. But first we'll enjoy tea and perform a blessing."

  The tea was strong and unpleasant, but the ritual seemed important to Sharad, so Iseau sipped it.

  Sharad drank his in one gulp, thumped his bowl down and, while Iseau finished hers, he reached inside his doublet and pulled out a rolled piece of blue silk, half the size of a scroll.

  Closing his eyes, Sharad held his hands over the silk roll and mouthed the word: Persia. He unfastened the copper band that bound the roll. Inside were delicate silver tools: nippers, a needle -- thin and long, yet etched with faint symbols -- a curved blade with a twisted handle, and delicate star-shaped forceps. Iseau had never seen such fine silver work.

  Baladji and Alberto stared intently as Sharad picked up the nippers and palmed the needle. Alberto caught Iseau's eye. He shook his head at her as if in warning.

  Not sure she had interpreted his nod correctly, Iseau glanced away and then back at him. Alberto cradled the heart in his hands, examining it. She must have been mistaken -- he had nothing on his mind besides the heart.

  In a single motion, Sharad rose and stood behind Iseau.

  Her pulse quickened, a foreboding slithering through her body.

  "Stand for a moment." He reached down, helped her to her feet, and turned her so she faced toward him, away from the others.

  "Is this necessary?" she asked.

  "It's harmless -- a blessing, a bonding, that's all." He pushed the nippers into her hand.

  From his doublet, Sharad produced a silver vial and uncorked it. "Would be prettier if it were made of glass." A smile creased his face and his voice uplifted. "Clip your nails into the bottle, starting with your thumb -- only your left, your heart hand."

  Iseau hesitated.

  Sharad nudged her hand with the bottle. He arched an eyebrow.

  She took a deep breath. This blessing appeared similar to what Sharad and the captain had performed, and the captain seemed unharmed. And she had promised her grandfather she would cooperate.

  The nippers were sharp and in a moment she had all five clippings inside the bottle.

  Recorking the bottle, he slid it in his doublet, intoning the words "Explictum -- Sublicare -- Persia" as he did so.

  Iseau's shoulders tightened. Those words did not have the ring of a blessing. They were like the chants her mother used to babble. What had her mother called incantations that ended in a place name: blood-magic?

  All of a sudden, Iseau grew dizzy. Sharad grasped her by the elbow. "One more thing." His hand slid around her waist.

  Sharad's face wavered in and out of focus. "What sort of tea was that?" she muttered.

  "If you are seasick and don't have the strength to finish, we might as well turn around." Letting go of her, he scowled. "I really thought as independent as you seem, a master glassblower, educated, a free woman -- that you would be less . . . fragile."

  She knew he had said those words on purpose, that despite her faintness, her boiling blood would compel her to prove she was more than he expected. "I'll do what you require," she said, trying to regain her bearings.

  "Good, because now I'm going to show you one of those details you wanted." With a gesture, Sharad indicated her back. "I need to touch you, just there," he said.

  She glanced at Alberto and Baladji.

  Their eyes widened --

  "Would you two give us a moment?" Sharad commanded.

  Baladji muttered something in a foreign tongue. Alberto grabbed the older man by his arm, hauled him to his feet, and walked him to the rail.

  Without warning, one of Sharad's hands tightened on her waist.

  She pulled against his grip.

  Sharad held her tighter. "You've never felt a man's touch?" His other hand brushed her buttocks.

  "None so bold as you," she said, her voice a weak challenge.

  She closed her eyes.

  Sharad's fingers moved slowly, pressing gently against her lower spine. Numbness crept up her legs. Sparks swirled though the darkness of her mind. Inexplicably she found herself breathless and thinking about her lover: the tautness of his stomach, the eagerness of his hands, but her lover was nothing compared to the burn of this magus's touch.

  Sharad's breath warmed her ear. "This is where the magic will enter you," he whispered, touching the small of her back.

  As his words sank in, she felt a stabbing pain, and an inhuman sear encompassed her with viselike cramps.

  Iseau yanked away from his grip. "For all the saints!" She swung around, and froze.

  Sharad was dropping the etched needle he had palmed into the silver vial, its point red with her blood.

  His smile twisted.

  "You bastard!" she shouted, and even the oarsmen went silent.

  Sharad lowered himself onto a cushion and sat splayed-legged, beaming at her. "Baladji, more tea," he called out.

  Her jaw set, Iseau stood over Sharad. "Explain yourself." She stared into the steel of his eyes. "I am not stupid. There's no need to insult me with provocative trickery. Tell me what you just did, why you need my fingernails and blood. Explain the braiding. I know it's not simple or safe. It is no secret what happened to my parents."

  He ran his finger around the edge of his tea bowl.

  She struggled to control her fury. "What makes you so sure you can do it? That we won't end up like my parents? What makes you think your magic is stronger than my mother's was?"

  "You know nothing of me." He rose, and stared at the billowing sail.

  "Answer my questions." She seized his arm. "You never saw my parents: my father's talent useless without his eyesight, my mother gone mad."

  Sharad's voice became low. "The source of my magic rises from the oldest blood and the deepest cisterns of Persia. I do not wish to insult your mother. But I suspect that the fountainhead of her alchemist's magic was some peat-infested quagmire."

  The heat drained from her face. How he had said it infuriated her, yet it was what she had always suspected. Her mother's inborn art was slight, perhaps tainted.

  Sharad continued. "Iseau, you must work the glass, pretend I am not in the room. When my magic enters you in the same place as the needle did, you must put the fee
ling from your thoughts. Separation of our actions and minds, until that last second when I will guide you -- that is how it must be."

  Iseau listened as he went on explaining the details. The braiding would start just before she completed the heart, the infusion of magic plaiting with, and cooling and curing, the glass. He told her that, if the braiding was done correctly, the pain should be slight and her subsequent blindness short-lived . . . When he finished talking, other than being concerned about the blindness, she felt satisfied.

  It was not until later, as she stood alone watching the outer islands of the Venetian lagoon waver into sight that she realized Sharad had told her nothing of importance.

  She knew she should go find him and question him further. But the vertigo was just subsiding and she hadn't the strength to confront him. So she stood listening to the snap of the lowering sail and the grind of chain as the anchor was set.

  Creeping into her mind, deeper than those ship-born sounds, came the memory of voices, which Sharad had unwittingly awakened.

  She was a child of ten, standing on the northern tip of Carpus, looking out at the smooth sea. Her mother had set a basket of thorn apples on a rock. "Iseau, look at the horizon," her mother said.

  Usually Iseau ignored her mother's babbling, but this time there was something in her mother's tone, something odd: sanity. And like the sun on the waves, her mother's eyes sparkled as she spoke. "That's where I came from -- out there beyond the reach of Venice, beyond the threats of the assassin's knife and the church's whim. Tintagel: it is the place of your ancestors and the word for strength, for freedom, for magic. Iseau, it is all I wish for you."

  Until midday Iseau sat, while her mother gazed out over the sea, watching cormorants disappearing under the waves and then rising, flying from the water like phoenixes from ash.

  "We should go home now," Iseau said.

  Suddenly, her mother clasped her arm so tight Iseau was sure it would leave a bruise. "We did it, your father and I, because we wanted the glory, the mythic-power of clear glass infused with magic. But we failed and the magic humbled us. It tore and bonded us in so many ways; no human could ever understand it. How we live now, no human should have to."

  Her mother released Iseau's arm, scrambled to her feet and fled toward the glassworks.

  Not wanting to return without the thorn apples they had come for, Iseau retrieved the gathering basket, and with her mother's words swirling in her mind, she finished filling it.

  A few moments later, she walked up to the doorway of the glassworks and hesitated. An apprentice brushed by her on his way out to get wood for the furnace. Her mother sat on a workbench fingering a string of beads and her father took a pouch from his apron. He opened it and sprinkled a black powder into the crucible -- into the fierce heat of the molten glass.

  "What's that?" Iseau asked.

  Her father's blank eyes glared in the direction of her voice. "Get out of here. Run, now!"

  Then there was an explosion. Shards of glass. Bricks pushing her into the damp grass. And towers of endless flame.

  Iseau stood motionless on the ship's sloped deck, drained by the memory of her parent's suicide and her own daylong pretense of strength. Was there nothing left in her but weariness? Perhaps a few more moments of calm and cool air and she'd feel like herself again.

  "The city is alive tonight with celebration." Alberto came beside her. "I just pray the Doge's daughter is alive as well. No night could be more right than this -- every eye in Venice has turned to the consecration of the basilica of San Marcos. All the festivities make it easy for the Church to ignore this magic."

  Iseau stared at the black water and the flicker of lanterns as the gondolas come toward the host of galleys. No matter how many times she had come to Venice, the sight of the city across the haze of the lagoon gave her pause.

  Alberto put his hand on her arm. "Frightened?"

  "Either we will succeed or fail," she said, trying to sound confident.

  Although she said nothing to warrant it, Alberto laughed as if they were enthralled in light conversation. Then he spoke, barely audible. "My master, the physician-magus, is a wise and charitable man. That is why I willingly completed the braiding with him."

  For a moment Iseau couldn't believe what she had heard. Other than her parents, she hadn't heard of anyone who had even attempted the braiding. She started to turn toward Alberto, but he put his hand on her arm, warning against any movement.

  "Sharad does not tell half the truth. As I was not always a manservant, neither was Baladji. He was Sharad's own mentor, a gifted Persian magus -- until the student overpowered the master." Alberto paused, his hand trembling. "The Doge's daughter must have a heart, to that end I am sworn, but do not let Sharad do more than that. Once his powers have flowed through your hands to infuse the glass, do not let his magic remain within you a second longer. If you do, Sharad will plait his magic with your art so tight that when he withdraws his magic, your art will be withdrawn as well. Do not let him take the braiding to its fullest extent or even the Doge will be in danger."

  Speechless, Iseau stared at Alberto. Then she managed to ask, "And you, before you were a manservant?"

  "I was a physician. A man devoted to the Doge and to my sister, the Doge's wife." His head shook as he lowered it. "I do not regret that I am now incapable of being anything more than a simple servant, for at least the physician-magus left my memory intact. Sharad did not do the same for poor Baladji; neither did he do it for others whose arts he's stolen: the silversmith, the swordsman, the warrior, and who knows how many more talents he possesses. The Doge refuses to think ill of Sharad. But the physician-magus has had Sharad watched. He is dangerous, Iseau."

  As the thin outline of a gondola pulled along side the galley, Iseau shuddered with apprehension.

  "The physician-magus and I will help you if we can, but there is no guarantee. We have our own safety . . ." Alberto touched Iseau's hand.

  From behind them came the solid steps of Sharad. "The Doge has been prompt in sending a boat for us."

  "I was just saying the same thing myself," Alberto's lips twitched, as he bowed and stood aside so Sharad and Iseau could descend into the gondola first.

  As they approached the city, Iseau tried to appear calm by letting herself be drawn into the excitement: the water undulating from the throngs of boats, the piazza flushed with the light of bonfires, and revelers laughing as they waited for the basilica doors to open and the consecration to begin.

  But when they disembarked and entered the Doge's Palace, the contrast made it impossible for her not to shiver. Unlike the lively piazza, the dark palace seemed occupied only by the echoes of their footsteps and the unsettling shadows of the few remaining guards.

  "It appears the Doge has declared a convenient evening holiday," Sharad grinned as he took Iseau's arm.

  She thought about pulling away, but she didn't want Sharad to sense that her fear intensified with every step. So she forced a smile and matched his quick pace as Alberto led them down long hallways, past pots of citrus, up a wide staircase to the Doge's quarters, and into the girl's chamber.

  As they entered the room, Iseau's eyes were drawn to the sparkle of a thousand glass ornaments hanging from the vaulted ceiling. Only as a second thought did she glance at the vast bed and notice the ashen-faced child lying motionless in the sea of yellow pillows.

  The girl was frail, her face aged from battling disease. Iseau sucked in her breath. When had her desire to please her grandfather, and her fears of Sharad and the braiding pushed her concerns for the dying child so far aside that mere baubles of glass could distract her?

  She stared at the child, only able to look away when the physician-magus shuffled in from the antechamber. His eyes widened when he saw them, then narrowed on Alberto. "You should not have wasted time bringing them here."

  Sharad moved to touch the girl's wrist. "You're right," he said to the physician-magus. "We should have gone directly to the furnaces. Sh
e's barely alive."

  Iseau's heart quickened. "Are the furnaces close by? My toolbox?" she asked.

  "The furnaces are hidden within the palace -- close to the girl, yet discreet enough that the church can overlook them," Alberto replied. "Your tools and apprentice should have been brought from the galley by now." He motioned for Iseau and Sharad to follow him.

  Alberto led them quickly through a maze of passageways and staircases to the cool dark wine cellar. Removing a torch from its wall-bracket he rushed inside a narrow tunnel, and in a moment they were ascending a steep set of stairs into what, on the exterior, must have looked like an out-building used for smoking fish.

  As Iseau stepped into the chamber, the smell of the wood smoke and the crack of the fires filled her with a sudden flush of confidence. This was her world and all was ready for her: her tools laid in order on the workbench, Petro soaking cloths, and the heat from the furnaces dampening every brow.

  In this realm of fire she wore sweat like crystal beads and her tunics clung to her as if she knelt before the hot mouth of the god Vesuvius. She'd had such fantasies as a child when she stood in the glassworks watching the artisans ply their magic. She had achieved her dreams and she vowed that the Doge's daughter would have a chance to live her dreams as well.

  Honor and power were fine for her grandfather and Sharad, but for her, this heart-making was about the child.

  Iseau drew a deep breath and cleared her mind.

  She picked up a knife from the workbench and, starting at the hem, cut her tunic up and around so its length fell just below her knees. Next she took off her string of beads, placed them on the workbench, and put on her leather apron. She waited for Sharad to make a remark about the ruined tunic, perhaps a spoiled spell. But he was speaking with Alberto and it wasn't until she heard Alberto leave that she felt Sharad wordlessly turn his eyes on her.

  It was time to put Sharad out of her mind, time to focus on her work. But that was difficult to do, especially now as she took the pouch from the toolbox. This was the part she had dreaded. This was the first time anyone outside her family would see the secret to clarifying glass. She was sure the man about to see it could not be trusted. Would he sell the secret? Had the Doge already paid him for it?