by Amy Little
“Weren’t you worried about the snakes?” she said, once she had the tunic off.
“What’s that?” Zak started coming around.
Annika couldn’t help shrieking when she heard his footsteps. “Stop!”
“I’m sorry.”
Annika emerged from behind the wardrobe door, doing up a button on the side and at the same time glaring at Zak. She hoped he would not notice how red she was. From his expression, she realized there was no chance of that, which made her blush even more.
Aware of her discomfort, Zak walked to the window and peered out. A group of boys ran by, chasing a squawking chook. Turning back, Zak said to himself that she was lovelier this morning than at any other time he had seen her. He did not know whether it was her healthy, rested glow, the thin nightie that hugged her body, the messy bed-hair, or anything else. Whatever it was, he had to expend an enormous effort to stop thinking about her red, full lips. “You look beautiful.”
Annika tried to grumble but could not quite pull it off.
“You do.” Coming close, Zak ran his fingers along her cheekbone, down to her lips. “I was hoping you would join me for a morning walk.”
She turned away, to straighten the bed, then having made up her mind, faced him. “I have other plans.”
“You can tell me all about them as we walk.”
“In opposite directions,” she said.
“I enjoy our time together, Annika,” Zak said.
Annika glared at him. “I don’t see why.”
“So what plans do you have?”
“I’m not obliged to tell you.”
“You didn’t have any,” he said, easily.
“I do,” she said, scrambling furiously for a plan. Right then, she had to admit to herself, her one plan now was to get rid of him. Before… before…. “I was going towards the Seesaw Market. There’s a herbal store not far from it I wanted to see.”
“I was just walking that way myself.”
“Must you be like that,” she said, suddenly feeling resigned at his persistence.
“I must,” he said firmly. “For a number of reasons.”
“Such as?”
“I like you, for one. It can’t be a secret to you that I’m attracted to you.”
Annika tried to be as cutting as she could. “There must be a shortage of eligible princesses for you to pursue.”
“There isn’t,” he disagreed. “But even if there were, I wouldn’t be interested.”
She could not resist asking, “Then what?”
“Maybe spending time with you will help me figure it out.”
The door to the room slammed shut after them. The staircase landing was dark.
The darkness gave her courage. “I hope you figure it out quickly,” she said. “So you can leave me for another one of your conquests.” That was what she wanted, she said to herself as they walked down the staircase… it would make things easier, would it not?
“You won’t have as good a time without me as you think,” he said.
She fought to refrain from a more cutting response. “I’m not looking for a good time.”
He stayed silent.
It seemed to her that his silence questioned her. “I need to establish myself, set up my healing practice. Although I was born here, right now this is like a new city to me. The setting-up will take time, as will developing my craft.”
“You can’t put the rest of your life on hold just because of that!”
She was pleased by the heat in his voice. “Just some things.”
“You can’t rule out the possibility of love!” he continued.
“Yes, I can,” she said, with a certainty she did not feel.
His voice was unequivocal. “That is a terrible way to live.”
“That’s the way I choose to live!”
“Why?”
“I don’t owe you a response!”
“Let’s put the questioning aside,” he said, conciliatory. He moved closer towards her.
“I will have none of that, either,” she said. “This seems to be a different response to that by most of the other women in your life!” She walked outside the inn and he followed
On the street, they were almost bowled over by a heavy, wide woman carrying three baskets in each hand. After the woman passed, Annika set off at a brisk pace. Zak kept up without difficulty, which irritated Annika. She tried to walk quicker yet.
“What other women in my life?” Zak said.
Annika had to slow so that she would not be puffed while answering. “That should be clear from your reputation!”
“Whatever that reputation is, it’s just words. There’s no truth to it,” he replied.
They had reached an intersection. In the middle of it was a fountain in the shape of a dolphin.
Annika stopped, partly to decide which direction to take, and partly to hear Zak’s response.
Zak laid his hands on her shoulders. He bent down towards her, pausing with his face above hers and their eyes locked. Annika held her breath as their lips came together.
Startled, she instinctively reached out to him, her desires playing out their dreams. Her lips sought out his. She felt herself weaken.
Zak pulled away for a breath.
Annika felt herself move after him, her eyes closed, her lips and face and body following him. “We need to keep our distance,” she said, dreamily, not believing a word of it.
Zak could sense her yield. This was the moment he had been waiting for. But he had also been waiting for her to trust him. It would not be right, not now, he said to himself. She had to choose him, fully, unconditionally, for his victory to have any significance. “I wish I could promise you to keep my distance, Annika. But I can’t do that. Nor can you make that promise to me.”
Annika’s eyes were wide open now. She felt herself flooded with irritation that threatened to spark into anger. “Maybe I can’t. But you can, and you must!”
Zak felt an overpowering need to hold her, caress her. He shook from the effort of holding back.
Annika tossed her head, as though in disappointment. She walked ahead. She must steel herself against this madness, she said to herself. It was the only way.
As she passed the fountain, the water spurting out of the dolphin suddenly dwindled to a trickle and then ceased. Three boys that were throwing sticks in the fountain basin walked away, pushing one another garrulously.
Annika vaguely recalled this part of town. It was an old quarter, built over a thousand years ago. Some of the stone houses dated from that era. The fountain was certainly from that time. Some said, it was a time before the first man came to the Empire. Others said, it was only before the Great Houses were formed. The House of the Dolphin was one of them. It was no more – the last of that line dying in a battle against the Imperial forces around five hundred years ago.
Will that be the fate of the House of the Tiger also, wondered Annika.
Then she wondered about the seven suns. If five of the suns were for the current five Houses, one for the emperor, and the last for the snakes, where was the sun for the House of the Dolphin?
Will the sun of the House of the Tiger also cease to shine?
It was a grim thought. Annika shifted her focus to her surroundings. They seemed to have been walking an awfully long time.
“Where is this shop?” asked Zak after another ten minutes.
“This way,” said Annika, with confidence she did not feel.
The streets in the old quarter were straight. All intersections were at 90 degrees. All houses were three stories and in the same shade of grey. There were no trees, not even a single blade of green grass. There was also little to orient a traveler.
Annika realized that they had passed the same intersection three times when she saw the same woman leaning out of a window on the third pass. She recalled turning right at least once before. She was no longer sure where she was. With desperation, she plunged left.
“Where did you learn about this shop?
” asked Zak, after they passed the intersection for the third time.
“The healer in the river lands,” Annika said, reluctantly at first, but then with more forthrightness as the memory resurfaced. “She had taught me the craft of healing with grasses. She had lived in Karrum for some years when she was young. She told me of it.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes.
“Was it around this intersection?”
“What intersection?” asked Annika.
“The one we’re about to pass it for the fourth time.”
And so they did. Zak made no further comment about it.
Annika was grateful for that, despite the embarrassed flush that took hold of her at the thought of her lack of ability to navigate.
At the bottom of a steep hill they came to a ditch filled with water. Two preachers in torn robes, with bare feet and heads, and with scabbed and ill faces, dangled their feet in it. “Mortify thy flesh,” one of them, with bulging eyes made cloudy by madness, called out to Zak and Annika.
“I shall leave the mortification to your kind,” Zak replied, which caused their curses to trail them until they passed out of earshot.
“Things have changed so much,” Annika quietly said when they were away from the two men.
“Strange things have been happening. Ancient ways have been creeping into the Empire, and not the good parts. People are scared. In times of fear, they seek certainty,” said Zak. “The preachers claim to offer them that.”
Although he spoke quietly, two women with lined, late-middle-age faces casually strolling in the opposite direction caught of snippet of his words. They bowed their heads lower and hurried ahead as though afraid of being tarred by association with such speech.
Annika thought back to the two preachers. Had she been on her own, she reflected, she would have been terrified. Yet any threat from the men barely registered for her when she was with Zak. She felt strong with him. She felt she could face anything and anyone. She had to be careful. It was an intoxicating feeling.
Further ahead, deep in the heart of the old quarter, the streets were narrower. There was enough traffic that it was impossible to walk more than a few steps without being jostled by someone’s shoulder or luggage, or being followed by a vile curse for inadvertently jostling someone else.
In a courtyard lined with sharp-looking stones, a gaggle of boys were busy chasing a wooden ball around. The game was popular. Too popular, given that one incorrect kick to the heavy ball could mangle a child’s feet.
Annika immediately thought of sprains and broken bones. She had healed a dozen or so children in the river lands. Most of them had broken toes or sprained ankles.
The herbs that she had learned to use in the riverlands worked within days, at least for the children. Yet now, she wondered if the herbs were as useful as she had believed. She had always felt the sense of energy streaming from her, through the herbal drinks and poultices she had prepared, and into her patients; this was the same energy, however, the same power, that she drew from the fiery lake in the Dragon’s Mouth.
Could she heal with the power alone?
Her thought were drawn on a different track as Zak took hold of her hand as they passed a shop.
“Could this be it?” Zak asked.
Annika stopped, frowning in indecision, before realizing that he must have been right. She had not seen another herbal shop in Karrum. The shop was in a tall, narrow building wedged between two others; it was so narrow that its width could be measured in no more than three strides. An open narrow door and a slit of a window above it showcased an interior that looked like the depth of a dense forest.
Annika inhaled the herby, woody smell coming from the shop. “How could I have missed it!”
“You were lost in thought for a while. We’ve in fact walked the length of this street twice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the first time!”
He smiled, the corners of his eyes creasing in pleasure at the thought, “Now we sound like an old couple.”
“How amusing,” she said, blushing.
He bent down to kiss her on the lips. “No couple ought to take leave of one another without a kiss.”
“Oh,” she said, the alarm she felt at the thought of his leaving overcoming her embarrassment of being kissed on the street.
“Only for a few minutes,” Zak said, magnanimously not acknowledging her fluster. He pointed to the shop across the road where in a dark, dingy basement barely lit by whatever light filtered in from the street level a bald armorer was arranging a display table of swords and daggers.
“Take your time!” She evaded Zak’s kiss this time with a deftness that she did not think she had.
Zak wove through the fast-moving stream of laborers hauling wooden planks to a nearby construction site and entered the armorer’s shop.
Annika looked after him with a sudden feeling of emptiness that left her somewhat deflated. Healing plants, she said to herself, trying to refocus.
The odor of dried and fresh herbs and forest flowers overflowed the front steps of the herbal shop.
Annika felt herself perk up. This was just like the healer’s hut in the river lands. The memory made her smile.
Once Annika stepped inside, an old woman came out from the darkness, holding a branch of silvery-purple-leafed plant before her carefully by the long stem. The woman was heading to another part of the shop, and she passed Annika without a glance.
As the woman approached, it took Annika a few moments to realize what the plant was. Annika leaped back and nearly crashed into the pots and pans that hung on the wall behind.
“You know this plant,” said the old woman, walking by, and making sure that the plant is positioned well away from Annika and herself. The woman’s voice was grating, like two stone boulders grinding against one another.
“You should not wave that so,” said Annika. Although she had the antidote to it in her travel bag, the bag was at the inn, a good hour’s walk away. “Its leaves are poisonous on contact.”
“So they are,” said the old woman. She stopped to deposit the plant carefully in the by the doorway and then returned to face Annika. The woman examined Annika’s face in minute detail. “What do you want here?”
“A healer told me that this shop will have every plant that we used in the riverlands,” said Annika.
“What healer?”
“Leonie,” said Annika, without hesitation, for she felt she should not hold back from the woman before her. “From the river lands.”
The old woman stared at Annika for some time. Annika bore the gaze, trying not to flinch at the woman’s earthy, mossy smell.
Then the woman nodded. “Choose what you want, young lady, and then be on your way. It will not do for you to be around if the preachers come. They’ve been putting on a regular show here. Dancing and flaying and praying, as though that alone could drive me out…. The neighbors have never warmed to me, and now they loathe me for the unwelcome attention, for while they won’t say it outright, few want the preachers around them. It will not be long before this shop is burned!”
Annika felt pity for the woman, thinking of the landlady who had shut down Annika’s own stall and considering how much of an irreparable loss it would be to lose a store like this. Still, the woman’s face and voice called for caution. Annika edged around the woman, which was difficult in the narrow room.
The old woman stepped back into the shadows cast by overhanging deep shelves. Bunches of herbs were stacked on the shelves and hanging off the walls, forming a dense, lush cover. The ceiling, low overhead, was covered in a trellis along which grew various types of night plants, their leaves and stems long and droopy and vaguely fluorescent, providing what little light there was inside.
Annika took all of this in with wonder.
“Don’t spend long,” the old woman warned her.
Annika had no intention of doing so. She quickly chose a bunch of green-red ivy, wrapped with a cotton string. S
he could combine this with the other herbs she already had to give strength to her potions. Given the strong, muscular men she will need to heal, she felt she needed extra potency. Annika gave the woman the asking price, a silver coin, which seemed a huge sum for a plant that grew freely in the river delta.
On her way to the door, Annika’s consciousness suddenly felt something threatening. She stopped. Within seconds, she could feel something dark and vile reaching out towards her like grasping tentacles. The sensation was coming from the back of the shop.
The woman stepped forward, coming between Annika and the sensation, and looking at Annika intently, as though trying to decipher Annika’s change of mood.
It took Annika a few more seconds to realize what vileness she had sensed. “Murlock root! You hold it here? It’s no surprise the preachers are after you, they seek to destroy it!”
The woman’s rasping laugh turned into a cough. “You’re partly right, but more mistaken than you know, young lady. The preachers seek that root for themselves. It was that which attracted them here in the first place.”
“But it’s abhorrent!”
“So are the preachers.”
Annika shook her head. “In a different way.” The presence of the murlock root troubled her more than anything in this shop. She backed to the doorway, just in case.
“Whoever taught you did well,” the woman said, grudgingly. “But did they tell you that to defeat the darkness, you sometimes need a way in. Like is attracted to like. By using darkness as part of your spell, you offer it to the evil as a bait. And when the evil takes it, you have a method to sunder it and defeat it.”
“I’d rather not use it at all,” said Annika. She knew that what the woman was telling her was important. But she could not imagine bringing herself to deal with murlock. She had reached the door and inhaled the sooty outside air with relief.
“I was like that once, before I have seen… things,” the old woman said, softly, remaining in the shadows. The woman’s face was changing. Now that Annika was almost out of her shop, the suspicious glare and the angular, hate-filled face suddenly dissolved into a comely, worn look. “Let the light be with you.”
The words were so soft that Annika barely heard her. Annika replied, almost automatically, as Leonie had taught her, “Let it warm you too.”