by Dora Machado
Chapter Ninety-three
EDMUND HAD BREN ON THE FLOOR, pinned down with a foot to the throat. The sinuous blade of the house of Uras nicked his sternum, aiming for the vulnerable spot where the rib cage yielded the angled path to the heart. Bren had been contemplating a slow death for ten years. He didn’t like the idea of dying any better today, but he preferred this kind of death to the alternative of languishing among his bed’s soft pillows.
A bubbling shriek startled the curse giver. Bren spotted Lusielle, surging up from the basin’s fluted bottom and like a dolphin, breaching over the side. Damn the woman. She was supposed to be getting away. Why had she returned?
“The lute,” she shouted as the basin’s delicate pedestal wobbled and toppled over.
Crystal shattered against the floor. Water spilled everywhere. The curse giver hesitated. Bren was out from under Edmund’s foot in an instant, scrambling towards the fire on all fours. The sword crashed too close to his foot, but Lusielle wedged herself in between Edmund’s legs. The curse giver tripped and fell.
The black lute was light and delicate to Bren’s grasp. He held it over the fire and shouted. “I swear, if you move, I’ll destroy it.”
The blade aiming for Lusielle froze in the air. Edmund’s face crumpled like the broken basin. Another face emerged from behind the mask, large brown eyes, long nose, generous lips, short dark hair, the features of the woman he had spotted once before during the madness.
“Edmund’s curse will seem like a nursery rhyme to you if you break my lute,” she said in a low, hissing voice.
Perhaps he was already mad, but Bren had to laugh. “I’m cursed, remember? I’m doomed.”
“Give him life.” Lusielle edged her way around the curse giver and stood next to him. “Give him his life and he’ll give your lute back.”
“I can’t do that,” the curse giver said.
“Why not?”
“The curse has long been cast and the soul chaser has been called.”
“The soul chaser?”
“He who comes to gather the souls of the cursed.”
“You can’t call him back?”
The curse giver gestured towards Bren. “It’s his cursed blood doing all the calling.”
“How can you ward off the soul chaser?” Lusielle asked.
“Life, awareness and freedom from the curse,” the creature said, “all conditions no longer viable for your boyfriend.”
“Call off the blight on Laonia and I’ll give you back your lute,” Bren said.
“Would you die to stop the blight?”
“We’re talking about millions of people who don’t deserve to suffer.”
“And you’ll give me the lute if I agree to free them from the blight?”
“You’ve got to let Lusielle go,” Bren said. “And Hato and the Twenty. Then we’re even.”
“Why don’t you give me the lute?” Lusielle said under her breath.
“I think I’ll keep it for the moment,” Bren said, “‘cause you’re both equally shrewd and capable of great deceit.”
“Doesn’t he trust you?” the curse giver said.
“You know men.” Lusielle shared a quick grin with the monster. “Will you please do as he asks?”
“The curse I can’t lift, but the blight and the Twenty, they’re just part of the provisions.”
“Then lift the provisions and be done with it.” Bren felt suddenly queasy.
The curse giver went to her desk and, picking up the lower half of the broken quill from the ground, dipped it in the ink. She wrote down ‘Laonia’s fee’ and ‘a crop and a sword,’ then flashed a demure smile. “Will you give me the lute now?”
“She’s not done yet,” Lusielle warned.
“You’re no fun,” the curse giver said.
“Her weapon is well disguised,” Lusielle said. “It’s not the quill and it’s not the ink. Her weapon is in the fusion between her writing and her mind’s music.”
“Finish it,” Bren said, moving the lute closer to the fire.
“Don’t!” the curse giver said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.”
She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and sang the words, a simple but pleasant melody. It took but a moment. When she was done, she drew a quick line over the words on the vellum, then looked expectantly at Lusielle. “Happy now?”
After ten years of well-worn terror, Bren’s mind couldn’t fathom that the horror dangling over Laonia could be so easily dismissed with a simple song and the quick stroke of a common quill.
“Is it really done?” he asked.
“She has recalled the provision with a song and struck it down on her witching vellum,” Lusielle said. “It should be sufficient, but she’s hardly known for telling the truth. We’ll have no way of knowing for sure until sunrise.”
Considering that Laonia’s future was in the balance, Bren would’ve preferred a better assurance.
The curse giver wiggled her crafty fingers. “The lute?”
Lusielle landed a hand on the instrument. “If you can’t call off the curse, can you at least tell us why you cursed Edmund?”
“I already did.”
Blessed be Lusielle, she was still trying to redeem the curse, but the fiend was intent on her games and Bren was getting tired of it. The curse giver had come into his mind during the madness and tortured him by impairing his memory. She had said that he wouldn’t remember the verse as long as he was conscious.
But what was the definition of conscious when his body lay senseless on his bed and his mind had journeyed to this place? Had she counted on him crashing into her world? Had she taken precautions to impair him while he was in her territory?
He summoned the memory of his last encounter with the fiend and forced himself to remember. The words resisted him at first. It was as if he were drawing an endless net out of the sea’s dark depths. With each new attempt, his memory’s reach stretched, taking hold of something concrete, words dropping into sentences like newly netted fish tumbling onto his mind’s slippery hull, until, at last, slowly, painfully, he remembered the entire verse.
He uttered it aloud in defiance, but also to share the knowledge with Lusielle, since according to his plan, she was going to be leaving this place before him.
“God or foe,
Friend or mortal.
Steal not my shield, forget not my words.
A deed undone does not a wrong reverse.
A wrong reversed does not a theft prevent.”
“You remembered!” Lusielle said. “The last verse! You broke through her spell and removed her block!”
“A shield?” Bren spat the word between clenched teeth, digging his nails into the lute’s soundboard until the precious ebony grated beneath his fingers. “What by the turd of the gods were you thinking? What kind of petty monstrosity are you? You conjured an evil blight on Laonia, cursed my father, and destroyed the line of Uras, all because you think my father stole something as common as a shield from you?”
“It wasn’t just any shield,” the curse giver said. “It was my shield!”
“Why would my father want to steal a shield from you?” Bren said. “We’ve got hundreds of thousands of shields in Laonia. There are millions of shields in the territories!”
“Where is it?” Lusielle said. “We’ll fetch it. We’ll give it back to you.”
“Edmund destroyed it,” the curse giver said sullenly. “And even if it hadn’t been destroyed, the warning was clear. Your father cursed himself the day he stole it from me.”
The wrong couldn’t be righted. The object of such a virulent curse had been destroyed. The curse couldn’t be redeemed after all.
The lute was suddenly very heavy in Bren’s hands. His legs buckled under his weight. It was all very physical, considering he was lying in his bed at the Laonian hall. It was also quite concerning.
“I think I’m—”
“I know, love.” Lusielle relieved him of the lute. “Take
your medicine. Good-bye.”
Chapter Ninety-four
HIS LORD CAME OUT OF THE rigor cursing like a man possessed. Hato tried to explain, pointing out the time, the men gathered in the room, Severo; but it was to no avail.
“How dare you disobey my orders?” Bren shouted. “I’m still Laonia’s lord and you’re pledged to me! And you!” He turned to Vestor like a snarling beast. “Do you want her to die? Is that why you allowed them to feed me the potion? Did I not tell you to keep Hato and the rest away from me?”
“She sent a message. With him.” Vestor pointed to Severo. “I trust her.”
“She knows what she’s doing, my lord,” Severo said. “I know it in my heart.”
“I didn’t pick you ‘cause you had a damn heart. I picked you ‘cause you could follow orders!” Bren took another swipe from the potion and, pushing himself out of the bed, hooked an arm over Severo’s shoulder. “Take me to her.”
“My lord, please.” Hato threw aside the shutters and opened the window. “The sun.”
Dawn illuminated Bren’s worn-out face as he stumbled to the window. The light revealed the reminder of the Twenty’s somber faces, the end of their dreams, the moment’s soul-consuming terror. Hato’s knotted heart plummeted to his gut. Perhaps he should have killed Bren himself. Perhaps he should have executed the Twenty before the sun rose to avoid this moment. It was too late now. He had failed in his duty.
Now Laonia would die, too.
He examined his hands for the pox that would obliterate all Laonians, scouring his skin for signs of the smoldering sores that meant his people’s sudden incineration had begun. When he didn’t find sings of an immediate plague, he looked at the others and was surprised to find them alive.
He imagined Laonia’s sea rising above the steppes, or Laonia’s crooked mountains crumbling under a monstrous earthquake. He wished he was there, by the sea where he was born; but he was beside his lord instead, with the Twenty, as he had wanted to be. He reached out, clasped Bren’s shoulder and stared into his lord’s dark eyes.
The Lord of Laonia met the sunlight with a defiant smile. “Laonia is free from the curse,” he said. “You and the Twenty will live to see many more sunrises.”
“What?” Hato said, clutching his chest to keep his heart from jumping out.
“We tangled with the fiend and won over the provisions,” Bren said. “Your fate was averted with a lute.”
Chapter Ninety-five
LUSIELLE WATCHED BREN DISAPPEAR LIKE A puff of steam. To have a chance at success, battles had to be fought by likely warriors and forces had to be evenly pitched. He had to be alive and aware to ward off the soul chaser. He needed the potion’s Strength to fight death’s steady pull. He also needed to witness a sunrise where Laonia, Hato and the Twenty were free of the curse in order to feed his hopes. Otherwise, he could very well kill himself before the curse killed him.
She realized that her own life was on a tight timeline. Surviving the curse giver was going to be as difficult as surviving for much longer under the water. In the shrine, Khalia was doing what she could, but Lusielle’s lungs were strained. Any moment, her body would follow suit and quit. She called on the Strength to help her. She needed a different kind of fusion today, a fusion of wits, intellect and imagination.
The lute whined when Lusielle plucked a discordant note from one of the strings. The curse giver winced, tortured by the sound.
“Jalenia—”
“No one has called me that in … centuries.”
“You’ve got to help me,” Lusielle said.
“Give me my lute back.”
“You’ll kill me if I do.”
“So?”
“You’re evil,” Lusielle said. “Of that I have no doubt. If you could, you’d kill me without remorse. You’re like a spoiled mare, quick tempered, self-indulgent, capricious, bitter, ruthless and vindictive.”
Jalenia smiled. “Glad to be of such appeal.”
“You’d curse me too, if only I had done you wrong.”
“I’d enjoy that.”
“The Lord of Laonia must not die,” Lusielle said.
“Doomed and damned are the souls of the wicked.”
“The last of the curse must be defeated.”
“Useless are their struggles.”
“He’s had the courage to endure you,” Lusielle said. “What if I had the mettle to embrace you?”
“You?” The curse giver scoffed. “You understand very little about me.”
“Perhaps I understand a little bit more than you think,” Lusielle said. “You think the gods threw you out because you followed in your mother’s footsteps. You wanted to do good, to promote peace like Suriek, but ended up doing evil instead.”
“I like doing evil.”
“You were thrown into the abyss.” Lusielle continued. “You think you have memories of being divine and you have retained impressive powers which are rare in this realm. But I wonder: How does that throwing-gods-into-the-abyss-thing work? What does it mean? How did you arrive here?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“You were born, weren’t you? You were born into the world like the rest of us.” Lusielle strummed a dissonant note on the lute.
The curse giver growled. “It’s an insult to be baked like a cheap loaf in a common woman’s womb, to be spat like a stinking turd into the world. The wretch who birthed me was but a gutter running with filth. I’m glad I killed her.”
Lusielle swallowed a dry gulp. “You mean your mother?”
“I have no mother but Suriek.”
“So you believe that when gods and goddesses are thrown into the abyss, they are born to human mothers?”
The curse giver spat on the floor. “You said it, not me.”
“Was it your birth mother who named you Jalenia?”
“She didn’t name me after a fallen Goddess, if that’s what you mean. I am Jalenia.”
“Growing up must have been difficult for you,” Lusielle said cautiously. “You must have been quite an extraordinary child.”
“Extraordinary?’ The curse giver laughed. “More like the neighborhood freak.”
“Oddities, curse givers, gods, all those creatures of unknown powers who we fear,” Lusielle said. “We all struggle to understand who we are.”
“Not me.”
“But what’s the definition of being odd if not having to thrive in a realm different from that which we claim as ours?” Lusielle said. “What’s true punishment if not being ejected out of one realm and forced to survive in another?”
“Boring.”
“What did you do when you couldn’t live among your folk any longer? Did they turn you out? Did you run away?”
The curse giver pretended to yawn.
“I think you must have found someone to train you,” Lusielle said. “Power like yours had to be honed and harnessed. You must have had a teacher or a mentor, someone to bring you along, to help you make the connections, someone who instructed you about The Tale and the mythology of the divine realm.”
“So now you think I’m a myth?”
“You? A myth? Nay. I think you’re real.”
“How many oddities do you know that wield power like mine?” the curse giver said. “How many have you met who can straddle the realms and command water like I do?”
“I don’t know many oddities,” Lusielle said. “But if Khalia can command the airs as she does, and if I can command some of my ingredients the way I do, why wouldn’t someone of your power and skill be able to command a simple means like water?”
“A simple means?” The curse giver huffed. “I can destroy whole lines and unleash catastrophic blights. You can’t explain power like mine.”
“I heard a story the other day,” Lusielle said. “It was about a little girl who was sickly and lame, whose parents threw her into the Lake of Tears during the yearlings’ spawning. She survived the yearlings and lived for some time thereafter. The lake’s daughte
r, they used to call her. Years later, she went back to the lake and was never seen again.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The legend said she joined with the water. Have you ever wondered why the yearlings—those efficient little killers—have always been called Suriek’s life-giving gift in The Tale?”
“No.”
“You’re lying,” Lusielle said. “I wonder, Jalenia, when your family thought to get rid of you ‘cause you were odd, did they throw you out to the yearlings as was the old custom? You may not be the lake’s daughter, but could you’ve been a similar case? Is that scar at the base of your neck proof that you tangled with the yearlings and won?”
Jalenia glared. “You think you’re so smart.”
“I think you were naturally talented and somehow enhanced by the yearlings’ bites,” Lusielle said. “But the person who trained you must have been powerful in her own right, highly skilled, learned in the ways of the Odd God and very proficient with the Strength. My guess is, she taught you more than knowledge, reason and awareness. I think she taught you fusion and helped you take it to a new level.”
“Why don’t you end this useless conjecture and give me my lute back?”
“Your tutor taught you the curse craft, which leads me to believe she was very ancient and had perhaps toyed with the art of long-life trading.” Lusielle paused for a moment. “Was her name by any chance Shehana?”
The curse giver frowned. “What could you possibly know about Shehana?”
“It’s no wonder Shehana knew so much about curses,” Lusielle said. “She was a curse giver herself. Wasn’t she? A good one, if her pupil is a reflection of her skills. I wonder: Why did she go to the trouble of writing the manuscript?”
“Maybe she was an old crone seeking attention at the end of her miserable life,” Jalenia suggested off-handedly.
“Maybe,” Lusielle said. “But maybe she had other reasons.”
“I take it you like guessing games.”
“I doubt Shehana wanted to bring the curse craft into the mainstream. I happen to think she wrote out of fear, to instruct others on curses and to teach them how to defeat a virulent curse. I find it fascinating she never got to that part. She never finished her treatise.”