The Healer Princess

by Amy Little

  The fact that it was called a “market” was misleading. No Memory Beasts have been bought or sold in hundreds of years. For one, their value was far too great for any but one of the five Houses. For another, they were considered too sacred to be transacted in that way. The beasts were brought to the market was to let them stand next to others of their kind. They did not make any sounds; they did not even seem to look at one another. But they did have a need for such gatherings. Those Memory Beasts that were not socialized in this way were said to slowly wither and die from sadness.

  They needed their families, people said.

  For Annika, remembering her own family, whom she thought to have rejected her, the thought was bitter-sweet. She pursed her lips and pushed these thoughts out of her mind.

  The entrance to the market that they wanted to use was barricaded by heavy barrels and cordoned off by a detachment of a dozen Imperial soldiers. “They’ve had trouble,” Zak said to Annika, without explaining, and led her on a detour through the back streets to the entrance at the north of the sacred market. The side street they took was filled with dirty children laughing, running, rolling around in wrestling matches on the sides of the street.

  “Where are their parents?” asked Annika.

  “Doing something unsavory,” said Zak, pulling a mop-haired boy’s hand out of the pocket of his mantle.

  The boy scurried away, a glint of gold in his hands.

  “He still got a gold coin from you!” exclaimed Annika, suppressing a laugh.

  “Have you no heart,” he said, jokingly.

  The joke cut too close: she had more than once said to herself that she needs to harden her heart, to stop herself from being hurt again. Annika frowned and hurried ahead.

  The north entrance was open, although just as well guarded; the Imperial soldiers waved them through. Annika walked among the beasts. They looked at her as though they could read her. Annika tried not to look in their eyes as she walked by them.

  “It is said they can remember everything,” said Zak, catching up to her. “And they live for hundreds of years.”

  “I wouldn’t want that.”

  “To remember that much, or to live that long?”

  Annika reflected on her seventeen years. She remembered the flight from her father’s castle five years ago, when she was bundled out despite her wishes. She remembered the stay in the river lands. “Neither,” she said.

  Zak continued to examine her.

  She felt uncomfortable, both at his scrutiny, how discomposed it made her feel, and at the same time at how much she craved it. “It was your idea to come here,” she said. “Yet you look at me rather than the beasts.”

  “Don’t take your sister’s and father’s reaction at their face value,” he finally said.

  “I don’t want to speak of them.”

  “They have reasons for acting as they did.”

  “I said don’t,” she said, her voice rising.

  “Stay calm, Annika,” he said, brushing her cheek. They were next to a very large Memory Best. Unlike the others, its long hair, which reached down to its hooves, was white. The beast was handled by a small man who drooped almost halfway down to the ground because of his hunched back.

  Annika tried to step back.

  Zak did not let her. Instead, he took her hand and offered it for the beast. The white-haired beast slowly sniffed at her.

  The beast’s breath was hot and moist on Annika’s hand. She yelped in alarm and yanked her hand back.

  Zak let her hand slip out.

  Flushed, and angry at him, she walked away.

  The turn she took on exiting the north entrance of the sacred market was taken up by the produce market. Annika pushed through the crowds beside the fruit and vegetable stalls. She was passing by a stall selling multiple shades of tomatoes, from red, to yellow, to purple, when Zak fell in step with her. He seemed pleased.

  Annika turned on him in fury. “Why did you do that?” she asked, trying to keep her voice low.

  “I had to be certain.”

  “Of what?”

  “That you are who you say you are.”

  That took her aback. She carefully sifted his words and as she did so a fleeting memory flashed before her, quicker than she could pin it down, as she said, “That white Memory Beast…”

  “It carried your luggage the night that you left Karrum five years ago,” said Zak. He reached out to take a lock of her hair that had fallen onto her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.

  “I don’t remember it.”

  “It remembers you.”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “A Memory Beast’s strongest connection after its fellow creatures are to its handler. The handlers look after the same animal for all of the handler’s life. They know its reactions. There are subtle cues you and I can’t see, but the beast recognized you,” said Zak. “A coin to the handler, and all those subtleties were revealed.”

  Annika felt rage seize her. “You’ve set it all up!” she exclaimed. “You, you!” She drew her hand back.

  He easily ducked her swing and then coming under her arm seized her and drew her in.

  In his embrace, she could barely breathe. The words that she wanted to yell at him fizzled.

  “You can say what you please to me,” he said, his eyes an inch away from hers, “But not here. Too many ears.” Then taking her by the hand he led her through the thinning crowds.

  They stopped at the second last stall from the end, which was selling baked goods. The smell of meat and herbs and freshly baked bread was irresistible.

  Despite her anger, Annika could not help but reflect that she had not eaten since breakfast.

  Zak bought two helpings of roast lamb baked inside a bread roll. He then motioned for her to join him at the side of the street.

  Feeling suddenly exhausted, she sat on a rough stone beside him and ate quietly.

  “The Memory Beasts also love bread,” he remarked. He grinned watching her devour her roll.

  “I thought they would just eat straw,” she said, ignoring his smile.

  “They eat much as we do, except no meat.”

  “What else do they like?”

  “From what I’ve seen, honey, milk, berries.” He ate unhurriedly, savoring each mouthful.

  “How did you come to know so much about them?”

  “My family owns a herd, as does yours,” he answered. “I took a few on my campaigns.”

  “You rode them into battle? Aren’t they far too valuable for that?”

  “I’d let them nowhere near a battle,” Zak said. “They can’t stand the smell of blood, although there is one exception….”

  A commotion that started at the one end of the produce market neared. The flailing of arms and the wild shouts drew near and then turned into a procession of penitents. The penitents chanted with rising voices, a priest at the center of the procession jumped on the spot ever three steps, and three of the penitent brothers at the end of the procession clanged hollow metal tubes wrapped at the handle end in leather. The sound was deafening.

  Annika and Zak watched the procession pass by. Zak had a look of distaste.

  When Annika followed Zak’s glance, she saw what disgusted him – a handful of the penitents near the priest wore nothing but a wire studded with spikes that tore their skin into bleeding shreds. “A curse upon all mortal appetites,” a woman penitent screamed in a crazed voice at Annika and Zak as they passed them by.

  Annika thought she heard Zak mutter with a full mouth, “And a curse on you,” to the woman, but she could not be sure.

  When the sound of the procession died off, Zak glanced at Annika. “At the first sound of a horn, or the clang of steel, the Memory Beasts would run. No, they are never taken into battle.”

  “I suppose you would know all about battles,” said Annika, half paying attention to Zak and half disturbed by the sight of the bleeding penitents.

  Zak picked every last crumb from
the bread roll that had fallen on the mantle draped across his knees, examined his greasy hands, and then unselfconsciously licked his fingers one by one.

  Annika looked on with vague unease. He looked the picture of a sated wolf.

  After Zak finished, he looked up at her again. “Having been stripped of my rank as general, I won’t be charging into a battlefield any time soon. Never mind. There’s plenty of danger inside this city.”

  “For all your talk, I’ve not seen anything to concern me so far,” she said.

  “Nor are you likely to, near the sacred market.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “The Memory Beasts sniff out evil,” Zak explained. “It drives them wild. No being whose core is evil can come face to face with a Memory Beast and walk away unscathed.”

  “Didn’t you say that the Memory Beasts run at the smell of blood?”

  “Human blood, or their blood, yes. But if they sniff out the blood of the snake men or…. Well, it’s different then.”

  “The snake men are just in stories used to scare silly children!” Annika exclaimed.

  Zak waved at her to speak softer. Passing by them, a young woman with a red headscarf and a young boy wrapped up in layers of wool trailing after her looked at Annika in alarm and nearly ran away, dragging her child after her.

  “Fairy tales for some, reality for others,” Zak said, drily.

  Annika looked after the child who tottered after his mother. The snake men were known to snatch children. “Then all the children on the streets leading up to the market….”

  Zak nodded. “This is the safest place for them. If the child is not at home, then every parent in the vicinity wants their child to play here.”

  Annika thought back to the small flock of Memory Beasts at her father’s castle. Snake men… she shuddered. She preferred for them to stay in fairy tales.

  As they stood up, Zak casually said, “I wouldn’t recommend it personally, but if a noble of your house were to live outside of the castle, which is never a good idea, then anywhere within a few blocks of the sacred market would be the safest place in the city.” He shot her a quick glance.

  She looked at him in surprise, then felt a flush of pleasure that he had considered what she had sought. “So you brought me here….”

  “To see if evil has infected you, which it had not. Come on, it’s getting dark.” He moved away at a brisk pace.

  The city looked less and less familiar in the semi-dark that descended on the city in the early afternoon. Strange shadows seemed to be lurking in the shadows along the streets. “Keep close to me,” Zak said.

  He did not need to remind her. Despite trying not to, she felt the closeness of his body, each of his movements, as though he were up against her. She was not sure what she was afraid of more: her insatiable craving for him, or the city’s dangerous streets.

  And yet, she had not achieved what she had come here for. “I want to see some possible lodgings around here.”

  “It will be dark soon. The street lamps won’t be lit,” he said.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked, trying to taut him.

  “For your sake, yes,” he replied, his face serious.

  Annika shook her head. “I will need to find lodgings. If not now, I don’t know when else I will be able to find my way back into the city.”

  “I won’t help you with that,” said Zak. “For one, your father would not be happy if I helped. And then, I do think it would be safer for you within the castle.”

  Annika looked around with defiance.

  People passing by had unpleasant, harsh faces. She was conscious how much strength she derived from Zak’s presence. Yet she could not let herself rely on him. She said, “Thanks for showing me this far. I will manage on my own from here.”

  “Stay with me,” he said. “You won’t make it back alone.”

  He turned and walked off ahead, seemingly confident that she would follow.

  It was his confidence that she will not manage that decided the issue. Annika looked after him with a mix of annoyance and dread. I’ll be fine, she said to herself, not believing a word she said.

  His back receded.

  Annika glanced around.

  On her left, a small bald man was selling apple pies from a green colored stall. On the right, four children were playing hopscotch under the overhanging eve of a large townhouse, while the housekeeper screamed obscenities on them from up above while the baggage handlers carrying the luggage of some lord laughed as they hauled the heavy bundles with short but steady steps.

  Annika glanced back where she last saw Zak. He was gone.

  Suddenly feeling a whole lot less secure, Annika plunged ahead, hoping to find her way to the grand avenues again. She was sure that the direction she took was generally correct, so it was only a matter of time before she arrived at a suitable inn or private lodgings.

  The streets widened and narrowed, looped and turned.

  She did not know how long she walked but it was darker than before, so dark that she had trouble reading the plaques hanging above shops. The street she was on was lined with tall and handsome buildings. There were notaries, bookkeepers, wool and wine and precious stone merchants, all different types of craftsmen, but no inns where she could stay.

  All too soon the handsome three and four storied houses painted in bright and cheery blues and pinks gave way to a more ramshackle collection of slope-roofed huts.

  Annika looked around with curiosity mixed, increasingly, with a degree of fear.

  The movement of people here was slower. The streets here were the narrowest that she had yet seen, and no one seemed to be in any hurry. An old man sat under the awning of a shop selling some dark, twisted roots.

  On coming closer, Annika shuddered.

  The roots were the dreaded murlock. Murlock was used to reduce fever and heal wounds and infections. At least some of the time, the treatment went well, if it didn’t kill the patient. But the problem was that even if the patient recovered, sometimes, the patient was never quite the same. No one could quite put their finger on what the difference was, but it was there.

  Annika felt that difference in her patients as a darkness.

  Darkness radiated from this shop.

  Annika hurried by.

  Further along a group of younger men was playing a game, throwing knives at a board affixed to a post the height of a man.

  Annika carefully kept her eyes on the ground.

  The taller man said something to her.

  She did not hear what was said, but having some idea of what it may be, blushed and tried to walk faster.

  The man silently slid up behind her and grabbed her arm. His fingers were coarse and hard like wood.

  She spun around, crying out but somehow finding herself unable to formulate clear words. She tried to scratch him.

  Her fingernails seemed to glide off the man’s hand.

  She felt it then – the same kind of darkness that emanated from the murlock shop. The darkness seemed to seep from the man’s hand and onto her, heavy, filling her with dread. She gasped.

  The man leaned in. His eyes were black, his skin deathly white. He opened his mouth. Out came a snake-like hiss followed by a long, forked tongue.

  Annika tried to scream but found that the darkness radiating from the creature had settled around her, constricting her breathing.

  The creature’s hiss suddenly turned to a screech and it seemed to fold double, like a knife. Its grip on Annika loosened.

  Annika shook the hand off and ran. She felt her heart thud heavily in her ears.

  Steel clanged against steel behind.

  As she reached the corner of the deserted street, she glanced back.

  Zak, with his sword drawn, was cutting through the creature’s companions. They were fending him off with long, thin rapiers that glinted like thin lines of steel. The creature who had grabbed her lay on the ground. Blood, when it oozed out of it, turned green. It bubbled, as thou
gh boiling, despite the cold.

  Annika held on to the wall, suppressing her nausea.

  Once all four were despatched, Zak wiped his sword on the cloak of a fallen attacker and then sheathed it. He carefully stepped around the bubbling puddles. The four bodies seemed to shrink into their robes until it looked like only four wet, steaming garments lay on the ground.

  Zak’s hand grasped her arm as he drew her after him. She followed, feeling dazed. “How did you—“

  “You can save your gratitude for later.” He led her onto the next street, turned at a fountain, then plunged into a dark alley.

  Annika felt her head spin from the multiple turns they were taking. She was truly lost now. Being some distance away now from where the snake-men had accosted her, she felt a little more confident. “How did you know where I would be?”

  They were in an alley the width of a dining table. Houses on either side had no windows on the ground floors and the windows above were shut. Figures flickered by at either side of the alley as they hurried by.

  “It really wasn’t that difficult,” Zak said. “I knew you would seek accommodation somewhere near the grand avenues. And five or six years ago, the direction you went in would have taken you there.” His hand on hers felt soft, yet hard and strong. “The streets you remember are no longer there. Some were razed to make way for chapels that are so in demand these days. Some were burned during the last coup and re-erected without any plan. Let’s hurry. We don’t want to chance on another group of these creatures.”

  Some time later, she sighed with relief when they entered the castle again.

  At the entrance to the guest wing, he brushed her cheek.

  She felt his warmth close to her and wondered if he would kiss her again. She tried to dismiss the thought of how much she craved that kiss.

  “When will I see you again?” he asked.

  She tried to consider his question as dispassionately as she could. She did not want to be cruel.

  But it would be more cruel to not say the truth.

  “If it were up to me, you would not,” she finally said. She had to force herself to be firm.

  His hand brushed her hair back from her face, before he bent down to kiss her.

  She evaded his kiss.