The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice)

by Quyle, Jeffrey

  “Yes, my lady,” the other voice said deferentially. “I’ll show you to a room, and send a message to her eminence,” the other voice conveyed some doubt about communicating directly with Iasco, despite the polite words.

  Marco’s litter began to move again, and the material around him grew dim as they entered a building, then turned down a hall and came into a room, where Marco felt himself lowered to the floor.

  The material overhead was opened up, bringing a blessed taste of fresh air, cooler than what had been tented around Marco, and he saw Glaze thoughtfully bend down to wipe the sweat off his brow.

  There was a knock at the door, and then Marco heard it open before anyone within gave permission.

  “Folence, it’s good to see you, even under the circumstances,” Iasco’s voice sounded in Marco’s ears. “I’d like you to meet my acolyte, Porenn.”

  Marco didn’t hear Folence’s reply, as his mind realized what voice he had heard answer the door. It was Porenn, the pert girl who had walked down the mountain with him the first time he had arrived on Ophiuchus. She had been exiled away from the village to stay away from him, he recollected. Her exile had evidently ended, but he had returned to the island unexpectedly, and so now they were together again, in a sense.

  “So you’ve brought a surprise, have you?” Iasco’s face suddenly appeared in Marco’s field of vision, looking down at him with a look of momentary clinical detachment as she examined him. A sad smile abruptly appeared on her face, and she spoke.

  “I’d like you to meet an old friend, Porenn. Come over here,” she called, and the girl’s face also appeared a moment later.

  “Marco?” she exclaimed. “What are you doing back here?”

  “He’s here to be healed, dear,” Iasco answered before Marco could, as the two faces stared down at him. “We’ll need to accompany him up the Apex Temple of Asclepius starting tomorrow for a lengthy prayer vigil. Would you go and alert Alcyone, Asterope, and their sisters that they’ll accompany us? Tell them to pack for a week’s stay at the top.”

  Iasco’s face moved out of Marco’s vision, though Porenn continued to stare at him for a long moment more before she disappeared too.

  “As you command, your grace,” Marco heard Porenn say, and then he heard a door open and close.

  “I’ll have someone sent to arrange your lodging for this evening,” Iasco said. There was the sound of the door again, and then silence for several seconds, until Folence spoke.

  “Things are going well,” she said, just as a knock on the door sounded. Another servant began to make arrangements for them all, and soon Marco and Glaze were alone in the room, where they were to spend the night.

  “So this entire island is nothing but women?” Glaze asked when they were alone.

  “There are some sheep too,” Marco said dryly.

  “And you better stay as quiet as a sheep, or quieter,” he warned.

  The next morning they were away shortly after dawn, walking up the trail that climbed the mountainside. All the women who had accompanied Marco on his last trip up to the top of the mountain were along again, as were Glaze and Porenn, to Marco’s surprise.

  Folence joined the group in the stable yard before they departed. “I’ll return to Barcelon now, Marco. You will be in my prayers. I’ll send a message to your betrothed to let her know that we made it safely to the island and that you’re in good hands, and I’ll look forward to seeing you healthy and whole next time we meet,” she told him as she left.

  Marco’s litter was carried by the women, at a pace that he felt grow slower as the day passed. He was stoic as the time passed and he could do nothing but look upward; he had spent days and days in miserable isolation, unable to control his body or his reactions to the world around him. It was only the belief that Lady Iasco would be able to heal him that had prevented him from considering whether death would be preferable, something that would have been unthinkable before the terrible accident.

  The traveling group stopped late in the day, more than halfway up the side of the mountain, but not at any of the usual resting places for travelers, so that they were forced to stop at a spot without a built shelter, and set up sleeping arrangements under trees around a campfire. Not long after the group began to gather wood for their fire, Marco heard Porenn’s voice – which he recognized apart from all others – scream. He was anxious to find out what the cause of the alarm was, and he didn’t have long to wait.

  Iasco’s face appeared above him seconds later. “Did you knowingly bring a male companion with you to the island?” she asked, her eyes glittering with a hardness that was not pleasant to witness.

  “He came at my request,” Marco acknowledged, hoping to prevent Glaze from suffering.

  “Bring the boy over here,” Iasco ordered someone, and Glaze’s face appeared among several others in quick order.

  “I asked him to come; it’s my fault,” Marco spoke up. “I wanted a male companion, and Glaze is my betrothed’s brother. Don’t punish him,” Marco said.

  “You know our rules,” Iasco replied.

  “And you know how punishing your rules are, how unnatural they are, don’t you?” Marco shot back. “It doesn’t feel right.

  “But he is here for me, and only because of me, and he’s already here,” he added.

  Iasco pursed her lips, and glared at him. “Leave the two men together, and the rest of you finish setting up camp,” she ordered brusquely, and the other women scurried away quickly to escape the heat of their leader’s wraith.

  “What happened?” Marco asked when no one else was around.

  “The young one, Porenn, spotted me answering nature’s call,” Glaze said softly, his face turning red.

  One of the women came over later and wordlessly delivered food to the two men, then they were left alone for the remainder of the night.

  The next morning they walked up the rest of the mountain without comment or incident, or any interaction with the others in the group. They passed another group of women who were coming down the mountains, and by mid-afternoon they reached the summit of the mountain.

  “We will place Marco in the temple, and hold a pray vigil over him every night for seven nights,” Iasco explained to Marco and Glaze when they were settled into the hostel that accompanied the temple. “A different member of our party will pray over him each night, and we will perform various healing practices during the days.

  “We’ll start with prayers tonight. I’ll be the intercessor on your behalf tonight, Marco,” Iasco told the two men. She seemed to have accepted Glaze’s presence, and said no more about it.

  Marco was carried into the temple, and silently laid on top of the altar. He heard the door close, and the shuffling of feet momentarily, before Lady Iasco’s voice began to murmur from a location nearby. He felt her hand touch his right hand, the golden hand she had re-attached to his body when he had last been in that very same temple, and he squeezed those fingers around hers, making her gasp.

  “Marco! Are you healing?” she asked.

  “That hand, the hand that was cut off and then you re-attached, it did not become paralyzed,” he explained.

  “Ah,” she said softly, then began to murmur her prayers to God, calling for healing for Marco. The disk of sky that Marco could view through the opening in the dome overhead grew red, then darkened, then became the night sky, sprinkled with bright stars, as Iasco’s voice continued to offer comfort in the sound of its repeated prayers for healing and mercy.

  He fell asleep to the sound of Iasco’s voice offering ceaseless prayers, as he felt her hands grasp his golden fingers, and when he awoke in the morning the circumstances were the same, except for the weariness that had entered Iasco’s voice as it huskily continued to pray.

  He heard the door open, and the prayers stopped, then he was carried out and taken to the room where Glaze awaited him.

  “What did you do while I was gone?” Marco asked conversationally when his bearers had left the two
men alone.

  “I went outside and looked at the stars from the balcony,” Glaze replied. “Porenn was there and we talked for a long time. She told me stories about when you came here before, and how angry all the women were.”

  “They were angry,” Marco admitted. “I had to have a guard to protect me.”

  “Porenn said you killed someone,” Glaze commented in a low voice.

  “I did,” Marco said evenly, just before there was a knock on the door.

  “The lady Iasco has commanded us to work on the champion’s left leg today, to prepare him for tonight’s vigil,” a voice said, and Marco was summarily carried out of the room to another chamber, where he received hours of attention to one of his legs, as he was laid sometimes on his stomach and sometimes on his back, or on one side or the other, as the women did things that he did not feel to his leg.

  That night he was taken to the temple again. “I am Electra,” said the woman who prayed over him that night as he lay and stared up at the hole in the dome above him.

  The next morning Glaze told him that he and Porenn had climbed around the mountaintop together while Marco had been prayed over. Marco’s right leg was treated that day, and prayed over that night by Celaeno, and the pattern repeated itself for the next three days; a part of his body was treated each day, and then a different woman prayed a long, lonely vigil with him each night.

  After the sixth night of the prayers, Iasco came to see him in the morning. “There will be no treatments today, but when you receive your prayer vigil tonight, you will be healed, and ready to move on,” she told him as she held his right hand.

  “I wish you the best of luck, Marco,” she said with an intensity that he noted.

  “Is everything going to be alright, my lady?” he asked.

  “I think so, Marco, but it will be a trial before we find out,” she answered reflectively.

  “Why? What is it that worries you?” he asked.

  “The prophecy,” she began, then paused. “You don’t need to worry about it right now; you just need to be healed,” she told him. She straightened up. “I will not see you again on this trip, I can tell you that. So travel wisely and well, my young champion,” she gave his fingers a squeeze, then released them and left his room, leaving him to ponder the portentous tone of the conversation, and to feel an inexplicable sadness for Iasco.

  Late that afternoon, as sunset began to approach, Porenn led two other women into the room. “I will be your intercessor tonight,” she explained, as the women picked up the stretcher Marco rested upon. “Glaze, you will join us in the temple this evening, by the Lady Iasco’s command,” she added as she sensed the unrest of the other women at the insertion of the unnecessary man into their holy temple.

  That night the three of them heard the door shut, and then Porenn knelt by Marco, as she began her earnest recitation of the prayers that asked for miracles, healing, and salvation.

  Marco looked up at the stars, and observed them in the same locations they had occupied after sunset every night he had been in the temple, and he watched the infinitesimally slow rotation through which they wheeled out of the narrow scope of vision that the opening in the dome provided.

  There was a sudden shooting star that crossed the sky above, and before it had disappeared, another followed in its wake, and then another.

  “Wow!” Marco murmured unconsciously, struck by the impossibility of seeing three such events in the same part of the sky virtually simultaneously.

  There was another flurry of the celestial phenomenon. “Glaze, did you see that?” Marco asked aloud.

  And then the room flared with an intense flash of bright light, so bright that Marco shut his eyes, and heard the other two shout in surprise. Porenn’s prayers stopped. And all three occupants of the temple passed out.

  Chapter 4 – The Caverns Below

  “Glaze? Marco?” Porenn called out in the darkened temple, the first sounds Marco heard when he awoke.

  “Porenn?” he replied as he began to sit up.

  “Marco? Porenn?” Glaze replied as well, also coming to his senses.

  “I’m up!” Marco suddenly cried in excitement. “Porenn! I’m healed! I’m up,” he shouted as he slipped off the altar and looked around in the darkened temple. He saw Porenn standing on the other side of the altar, and Glaze off to his right, shadows that were visible in the starlight that came through the opening in the dome.

  The three of them met in a hug in which they all wrapped arms around each other and she squeezed tightly, as Marco felt tears running on his cheek, tears of joy at his extraordinary recovery.

  “Look at me!” he said after moments of their three-way embrace. “I’m whole again!”

  “We can go home,” Glaze said softly, happily as they broke their clinch. “Porenn, you should come with us to see Marco’s castle!” he impulsively declared.

  She shook her head ruefully. “I’m sure it’s a wonderful place, but I’m not supposed to leave the island, as you may not know,” she told him.

  “But I can certainly leave the temple and go back down to the village with you,” she told him with a smile.

  Marco felt a note of something peculiar tickle the back of his mind. He looked around the temple, thinking of the times he had been in the temple before, and how he had left when he had last been healed there. He remembered the Lady Iasco’s words of farewell, her prophecy that she would not see him upon his departure. “Can you tell me how we’ll leave the temple?” he asked Porenn.

  “We’ll go down the trail on the mountainside, just as we did when I walked you down, holding that sword between us,” she grinned. “Except I don’t imagine we have to hold the sword this time, do we?”

  “Can you tell me how we’ll get out of the temple itself?” he asked.

  She looked at him, puzzled, and pointed in the direction of one side of the temple. “Through the door,” she glanced over.

  “Glaze, go see if there’s a door to open,” Marco said as he leaned back against the altar. He felt a reckless surety that he knew what was going to happen, his spirits buoyed by his return to health.

  “Of course there’s a door,” the young man retorted, as he stepped lightly across the floor. “The way we came in, remember?” he said, his words trailing off in confusion as he stood close to the shadowed white marble wall, his hand running across the stone in search of evidence of the doorway he knew had existed.

  “Where is it?” he asked softly, as he slowly stepped both left and then right, searching for some seam or crack or evidence of what he could not find.

  There was a grinding sound on the far side of the temple, and all heads turned.

  “The last time I was here and healed,” Marco said softly, brushing past Porenn as he circled around the altar to approach the back wall of the temple, “I did not go out a doorway.

  “I had to climb down through a cave to leave by the same way I initially came here, when I met Porenn the first time,” he explained as he reached the spot where a dark line outlined a panel that was ready to be opened. He pressed against the marble stone and made the crack widen as the panel easily slipped to the side.

  “This is the way we need to leave,” he told them.

  “Where does it go?” Porenn asked in astonishment, as she and Glaze walked over to Marco together. “Does it go to the underwater temple you told me about? I didn’t really think it existed,” she admitted with a sly smile at him.

  “Come down with me and I’ll show you,” Marco answered as he stooped to pass through the low opening, and left the temple behind. Glaze and Porenn stood momentarily together in the temple, and looked at one another, then Glaze shrugged his shoulders, and motioned for Porenn to go first.

  She stooped down and went into the cavern, followed by Glaze, and they cautiously stepped over to where they could vaguely see Marco sitting on the edge of the opening to the chute that led downward through the rocky mountain.

  “I don’t know if I should do th
is,” she spoke tentatively. “I think that maybe I should just wait for the temple to be opened in the morning.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Glaze replied. He gestured back to where the opening to the temple had been; the pale square of marble had closed while they had their backs to it.

  “No!” Porenn cried in surprise, and she dashed back to the wall and began to feel it with her hands, searching for a way to open the wall and return to the temple.

  Glaze looked at Marco in shock. “What happens to her?” he asked.

  “I think she has to come with us,” Marco answered softly.

  Glaze stared at Marco, then jogged over to Porenn. He put his arm around her shoulders as he spoke softly to her for several seconds. She glanced over at Marco, then she looked up at Glaze’s face. A moment later she slumped her shoulders in defeat, and moved out of Glaze’s comforting embrace to approach Marco in the dim cavern.

  “Where are you taking me? Why are you making me leave the temple?” she asked as she stood very close, her face just inches from his. “Do I have to leave the Isle?”

  “I am not making you leave, Porenn,” he answered gently, moved by the emotion he heard in her voice. “The spirit of your island has opened this door for us to leave. I can’t tell you any more than that, except that this way out of the temple has some extraordinary experiences of its own. The spirit seems to have plans for you.

  “Let’s go this way and see what happens. You can still get back to the village from here, I promise,” he assured her. He was confident that the local dolphins would be willing to transport them around the island to any place they wanted to go.

  Which made him wonder, as he looked up at Porenn and Glaze, where did he want to go? Should he go back to the village too, to face the hostile women? Should he have dolphins carry he and Glaze directly back to Barcelon, going all the distance through the water? It was sure to be a colder journey during this time of the year, and he doubted Glaze had ever spent multiple days immersed in seawater, which would be extremely uncomfortable, but at the same time it was a sure way to travel without facing the village disapproval.