The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  Bren judged the distance from the window to the ground. Would he die for sure if he jumped?

  “My lord!” Hato shook him. “You can’t give up now. Do you hear me? We have a last chance!”

  A last chance for what?

  “Don’t you dare give up on me, lad.” Hato’s face dominated his vision. “Laonia matters. Will you remember that?”

  The old man was delusional. Hato couldn’t accept the end, even after the end had come. Bren didn’t care, would never care again.

  “I need you to listen to me,” Hato insisted. “We’ve toiled too hard to lose our nerve now. My lord, please! My tests revealed that two of the women’s marks are fakes as we suspected. I think they are definitively Riva’s doing. But the mark on the third one, Yadire of Irugay, it’s a true brand, my lord. For the Goddess’s sake, for Laonia, you must try to beat the curse!”

  “The curse, yes,” Bren mumbled. “I think it’s beat me.”

  “You mustn’t say that, my lord. You must try. Think of Laonia. Think of the Twenty.”

  Laonia, yes. The Twenty. Hato. They had been beyond faithful. It wasn’t their fault he had failed. He owed them something, his last breath maybe. The grief tormenting him coalesced into duty’s habitual numbness. It took a great effort to speak.

  “Bring her to me.”

  Chapter Seventy-five

  LUSIELLE TESTED THE ROPES BINDING HER wrists and scoured her surroundings, trying to find a way out. She was in a small, windowless room, a cellar probably, judging by the number of wine barrels piled in the corner. The room had a stone floor and no furnishings, except for the table where she sat and a small but sturdy door, the only way out of the room.

  Orell smiled his terrible smile. He reached out to caress her face, tracing the lines of her earlobe with his callous fingertips. A cold shiver traveled the length of Lusielle’s spine. His touch was more frightening than words or blows. She was wary of the man, weary of being singled out, harassed and tortured for no fault of her own. She twisted her wrists, testing the hastily knotted cords. She had to think of something and fast, before the brute got to work on her again.

  “You think you’re somehow defeating the Lord of Laonia if you hurt me,” she said, sensing the rope give a little. “You want to harm me, but only because you think it will hurt him.”

  “You think you know so much.” He pulled a strand of hair from her braid and fingered the silky curls, rubbing a fistful of hair against his nose, taking in her scent like a stag in rut.

  “Why do you want to hurt my lord Brennus?” Lusielle strained the ropes. “Why do you hate him so much? He didn’t kill your father. The mob did.”

  His head snapped up. “Is that what he told you?”

  “Did he slight you somehow? Did Bren slander your father’s name?”

  “My father wasn’t a man to mourn,” Orell said, returning his attention to her hair. “He loved us mostly with his fists. Now be quiet. I like you better when you’re mum.”

  Lusielle’s thoughts were flowing faster than the Nerpes. Orell didn’t seem to like his father much. Why then had Orell gone over to Riva?

  She found nothing but blankness in his dark stare, an inscrutability that was suddenly oddly familiar. Knowledge. Reason. Awareness. By the gods ….

  “Your eyes,” she said. “You are Edmund’s bastard son, aren’t you?”

  “Shut up!”

  The man shoved her aside as if she were a heap of trash, but not before Lusielle spotted the resentment in his eyes. She had guessed right. Orell’s mother must have been one of Edmund’s spurned lovers!

  He slumped against the wall, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and took a deep swig from his wine skin. “How am I supposed to do this with you babbling like this?”

  Do what? She wanted to ask, but babbling was looking like the better option, at least for as long as it was helpful.

  “That’s why you don’t care to mourn your father,” she said. “‘Cause he wasn’t your real father. That’s why you hate Bren so much, because he was the son to his father that you never got to be. How did you find out? When did your mother tell you the truth?”

  “The day my father died,” Orell said. “He would’ve killed her before that.”

  Violence comes from violence done. “Why didn’t you seek recognition from Edmund?” She kept working on the ropes, rubbing and stretching the cords. “Why didn’t you make a claim on Edmund’s inheritance?”

  “Edmund’s inheritance?” He laughed, a bitter cackle, echoing in the little room. “Why would anyone want it?”

  The curse. By the time Orell came of age, the house of Uras was battling the curse. There would have been no obvious advantages to joining a cursed house. On the contrary. She saw now why going over to Riva made so much sense to both the king and Orell. However tenuous, Orell might have some claim to rule when Bren died, and Riva intended to use that claim to strengthen his hold on Laonia. In exchange, Orell had regained the coin and status he had lost in Laonia when his father betrayed the house of Uras.

  It all made sense: Orell’s alliance with Riva, his hatred for Edmund and his sons, his determination to capture and kill Bren, the last of his line. And yet Lusielle sensed more in the man’s primal anger, a new hopelessness in Orell’s fury, despair not unlike that she had sensed from Bren the first time she saw him.

  “The curse was on Edmund’s line.” She gasped. “Are you also cursed?”

  The despair in his eyes contrasted with the leer twisting his mouth. “How’s that fair?” He said. “I got none of the advantages of being Edmund’s son and yet I got cursed also.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “It just started,” he said, deceptively calm. “I killed my first the day before yesterday. I killed another one last night. What’s King Riva going to do if he finds out? No, he won’t find out.”

  Orell was on her in two steps. His arm snaked around her waist, his hand pawed at her breasts and his teeth clashed against her mouth, raking her lips with painful ferocity.

  Lusielle struggled to dodge his fetid touch. “Stop! What are you doing?”

  Orell shoved her back on the table and threw her skirts aside.

  Lusielle reeled under Orell’s attack, suddenly understanding not just Orell’s stakes in the earlier hunt and his foul, inexplicable actions, but much more. Bren’s time was drawing to an end and the curse was moving on to affect the next in line. Orell had never expected to be cursed, and yet, as of the day before yesterday, he had begun to share in the curse’s legacy.

  The key pieces of knowledge she had been missing until this moment coalesced to reveal the mystery behind Bren’s turbulent grief, the bitter bane that soured his existence, the outrageous reason for the hunt and the shocking nature of the trial he had refused to impose on her.

  But even in her shock, even as she fought off Orell, Lusielle found the wherewithal to ache for Bren. He was a good man forced to make terrible choices. She understood the scope of his grief now, his guilt and self-loathing. She also realized that she had very little chance of surviving this latest encounter with Orell unless she managed to escape.

  The Strength came to her aid. The strained ropes finally gave way. She caught Orell by surprise with a knee to the groin. Bounding from the table, she lunged, grabbed her remedy case, and ran towards the door.

  Her body was simply not constructed to absorb the blow that took her down. Orell’s tackle squashed her on the ground like a trampled bug. The breath deserted her lungs, and in as much as she tried, it refused to come back.

  The door flew open. “Unhand her!”

  An invisible hand wrenched Orell away from her. A kick launched him against the wall. Lusielle forced her stunned lungs to draw in a breath and sat up. She couldn’t believe her eyes. For an instant, she traded looks with an old friend. “Vestor!”

  That instant was all the time Orell needed to spring to his feet and land a brutal blow. Vestor spun around. He stumbled like a teetering toddler bef
ore tripping over his feet and crashing on the floor. Orell’s rage focused on him.

  The remedy case lay open on the ground next to Lusielle. She searched frantically through it. Her fingers tripped over the small velvet pouch. She wrestled the object out. It was so small and modest, so pretty and harmless in principle. Pressing down of the single dark crystal, she attacked, stabbing Orell in the forearm with the comb he had given her to kill Bren.

  Orell swatted her and the comb as if they were nothing but gnats, yet the cut on his forearm was deep enough for him to notice. His eyes shifted from the blood trickling from the cut to Lusielle. Shoving Vestor aside, he snarled. “What did you do?”

  “You know,” Lusielle said. “You gave me that comb.”

  Orell’s eyes fell on the comb lying on the floor. His features darkened. “If I’m going to die, you’re coming with me.”

  This time, Lusielle had a better idea about how to fight him. “You’ve got a few hours, four or five at the most,” she said. “I can help you, but you’ve got to help me.”

  Orell hesitated. “What?”

  “Dragon’s breath,” she said. “It’s a powerful substance, but it kills silently over a certain amount of time. Some poisons can be cured, although very few mixers know how to defeat dragon’s breath. I know how.”

  “Are you blackmailing me with my own life?”

  “I’m the only one who can brew you a cure.”

  Vestor groaned on the floor. Edging around Orell, Lusielle went to him and, cradling his head on her lap, peered into his eyes. His face was swelling quickly, but his stare was lucid and his pupils reacted to the light.

  “Don’t say anything,” she mouthed as she used a corner of her cloak to wipe the blood from his face.

  Orell paced the room like a caged beast. “I don’t feel sick.”

  “I told you, dragon’s breath works stealthily,” Lusielle said. “By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s usually too late; but in your case, you’ve got a chance.”

  “A chance to survive this,” Orell said, “a chance to survive that. When did my life become a game of odds? What if you’re lying about the poison?”

  Lusielle picked up the comb from the floor and held it up. “Take it to any one of Teos’s famous healers. They’ll tell you what the poison is and how it works, exactly as I just told you. The only difference will be that none of them will know how to cure it. On the other hand, some of the healers will want to know where the comb came from. I’m sure you can answer their questions.”

  Orell considered the comb, but didn’t take it. “I should just finish you off. What if you’re lying about the cure?”

  She drew on the Strength to bolster her poise. “Will you kill the only person capable of saving your life?”

  Orell glared, unconvinced.

  “Fire, water, pots and a kettle,” she said. “I’ll need myrrh, saffron, ginger and cloves.”

  “Those should be easy enough to find.”

  “I’ll need the wet gills of a suckerfish and the warm heart of a rainbow-tailed crow.”

  Orell stared at her as if she was mad.

  “Remedy mixing is not a tidy art,” Lusielle said. “It’s not for the faint of heart either. Do you want to live another day? We need to get going. Even in Teos’s exotic market, suckerfish and crows won’t be so easy to find.”

  “You’re going to pay for this.”

  “Time’s running,” Lusielle picked up her remedy case. “Come on, Vestor. Can you walk? We’ve got just a few hours, maybe less.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Orell said.

  “Why, to help you find the ingredients.”

  “Do you take me for a fool?” He stomped to the door. “I’m not letting you out of here. One way or another, you’re going to serve your purpose. I’ll go find the damn ingredients. You two are staying here.” The door slammed and the padlock on the other side clicked with the turn of a key.

  Lusielle let out a long sigh.

  “Well done,” Vestor lisped through a broken lip.

  “I haven’t gotten us out of here yet.”

  “I gather you have a plan and it has something to do with your ingredients.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Dragon breath doesn’t kill in hours, it kills in days.”

  “I needed to create a sense of urgency.”

  “A nasty fish and an ornery bird,” Vestor said. “He’s gonna get bit and pecked for sure.”

  “I didn’t feel like being nice.”

  He tried to stand up, but he wobbled on his knees.

  “Sit.” Lusielle helped him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’ll live, although my nose will know a different shape.” He smiled a bloody grin.

  “I’m sorry, Vestor. It seems that every time we meet you end up the worse for it.”

  “You do attract an unordinary amount of trouble.” He reached out and took her hand. “A fellow might hope to have some of that trouble in his life—”

  “Maybe not this much.” Lusielle reclaimed her hand and stood up, surveying the door and the walls. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I’ve been watching the docks for the last three days. I knew you’d come with or around the White Tide procession. I made friends with the port guards and asked them to call me if they saw a woman bearing your description. I told them you were my sister and I was eager to see you. Everyone in Teos longs for those they left behind. When they called, I was but a few blocks away. I was trailing behind you and your escort when those gates came down.”

  Lusielle shook her head. “I thought we’d be safe here.”

  “If memory serves me right, those gates are only used to manage the crowds during the festivals and close certain streets while preserving the passage between halls.”

  “Someone made good use of them to violate Teos’s peace and trap us,” Lusielle said. “Did you see what happened to Severo and Elfu?”

  “They were dragged in through the little door, that’s all I saw—”

  “But were they hurt?”

  “I’m sorry, Lusielle. I didn’t see any of the two moving when they took them.”

  “They can’t kill them, right?” She felt like crying. “Because we’re in Teos?”

  “Teos’s peace is law,” Vestor said, “but whoever did this has extraordinary gall. It was a fast attack, planned to the place and the moment. The gates were lifted as you were removed, and no sign of struggle was left behind.”

  By the gods. Nobody would be looking for them. “Do you know where we are?”

  “One of the great halls, I think, but since I got here the back way, I don’t know which one.”

  “Riva’s, probably.”

  “Very likely.”

  She groaned. “I need to get out of here.”

  “The Tale counsels patience.”

  Vestor was right. She had to keep it together, although her sense of urgency was reaching a new height. She picked out a small jar of balm from her remedy case and handed it to Vestor. “Put some of that on the cuts on your face.”

  The spent torch on the bracket sputtered. The little room went dark. Lusielle huffed in frustration. What else could go wrong? She sat down next to Vestor and rested her forehead on her knees. She wondered how Bren was faring. “Were you able to persuade Teos’s high Chosen of Bren’s innocence?”

  “I told my story and took in the airs to prove it. I was believed. It appears that some other inquiries have been conducted elsewhere which cleared your lord as well.”

  At least Khalia had reported the truth. One less problem for Bren to face. Now, if she could only figure out the rest.

  “Vestor,” she said. “In the temple’s version of The Tale, how do gods fall?”

  “Fall? Gods never fall. They’re pushed. That’s what happens. They’re caught by surprise by a conniving sibling or a deceitful faction and hurled right out of the divine realm into the abyss.”

&
nbsp; “The abyss?”

  “You know, outside of the divine realm.”

  “You mean out of existence?”

  “No, that’s not what The Tale says. It just talks about ‘the abyss.’”

  “Where exactly is the abyss?”

  “I’ve never asked that question.”

  “How many realms are there in Suriek’s Tale?”

  “Just two, the divine and the mortal realms.”

  “So if you’re pushed out of one, you have to end up in the other one. Am I right?”

  “I guess,” Vestor said. “I didn’t think you were very interested in divine theory.”

  “I wasn’t.” Until recently.

  “Why the sudden interest?”

  Lusielle smiled in the darkness. “I’m looking for an address, and I think I might have found it.”

  Chapter Seventy-six

  BREN STARED AT THE WOMAN WITH empty eyes. He couldn’t have said if she was tall or short, stout or skinny. All he knew was that Yadire of Irugay was a spiteful wench and that her shrill voice made the pain behind his eye swell to agony. His vision blurred and flickered. He squinted, trying to look at her through one eye only.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the woman asked. “Are you blind or something?”

  “Almost.” Bren shuddered as the ague rattled his body. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The woman laughed. “You don’t seem in quite the right condition. And my uncle is going to come to kill you, very soon, I think.” She waved a stern finger before his nose. “You can’t go around abducting heiresses, thinking you’re going to get away with it. What are you? A greedy bastard, looking for an easy way into money?”

  Bren wished he was a greedy bastard. In his admittedly skewed rating of vices, greed was the better choice to murder. However, he had made a promise and he owed Laonia his best effort to the end. He wasn’t hopeful. He wasn’t even afraid anymore. He groped for his sword, trying to gather strength from the hilt’s grip, but it was cold, like his insides.

  He took a step towards the haughty woman. She smirked with scorn that promised battle. The next step proved to be a problem. One leg was too heavy. The other one refused to move. The pain gathered behind his eye and bolted through his head, punching through his spine and radiating to his limbs like a strike of lightning. The shriek was even worse, glass screeching against metal inside his skull. The chamber spun. He leaned against the wall, waiting for the episode to pass, only this time, it didn’t go away. It tortured him with increasing intensity until he couldn’t breathe any longer.