Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Jerzy collected the messenger and they presented themselves in the study, Malech looked as though he had been there all morning, awaiting their arrival. More, the wall of bottles that had so overawed Jerzy on his first visit was back, and there was a small table set upon the corner with an open bottle that—Jerzy sneaked a second look—that yes, had faint trails of steam rising up from it. Malech himself had changed into a dark red tunic, and pulled his hair back into a severe braid that emphasized the sharp lines of his face and the hawk-intentness of his gaze.

  Despite the situation, Jerzy was amused. His master was as much a stage setter as any Player, when the occasion called for it.

  “Please. Be seated.”

  Jecq took the chair closest to Malech’s desk as a matter of right, while Malech seated himself behind it. Jerzy, unwilling to take up his usual bench, instead stood off to one side, behind the messenger but still with a clear line of sight of both Jecq and his master.

  He looked up, and was reassured to see the Guardian had taken up a space over the lintel, mirroring its usual post in the workroom. It didn’t fit the decor quite so well as it did downstairs, but its presence made him feel better, somehow.

  “So, messenger. You have a message for me that could not wait?”

  Jecq nodded, straightened his shoulders to board-stiffness, and began to speak.

  “From Prince Ranulf of The Berengia: greetings to Lord Vineart Malech of the Valle of Ivy. This messenger comes to you with a request for your immediate assistance. Two days ago a monster rose up out of the sea and destroyed the entire village of Darcen. The entire village, near one hundred souls, gone in the time it took my prince’s men to ride to their aid. Roofs were torn asunder, boats thrashed into kindling, nets ripped, and the people. . .” His voice didn’t change despite the falter: he was still reciting a message, if not as adeptly as a meme-courier would have. It was not a question of saving costs, Jerzy thought, not for Ranulf, who had riches to spare. No, this message was urgent enough that the princeling could not wait, and dared not send a messenger-bird.

  “The people were gone, Lord Malech. Not a corpse left, not even a babe in the cradle. Only blood, everywhere. And. . .”

  “And?”

  “And. . .chunks, Lord Malech. Chunks of some strange, fleshy matter, scattered over the remains of the village. As though whatever had come had also. . .left part of itself behind.”

  Jerzy, watching the messenger’s face, would have laid coin he did not own that the chunks had been far more disgusting and disturbing than the messenger was saying.

  “And your lord-prince would have me do what? I do not craft such spellwines as could be useful to you, if all are dead; I cannot defend your borders, or dispose of this. . .matter.” There was something strange in Malech’s voice, and Jerzy took a moment to puzzle it out. His master was not entirely taken by surprise, somehow, by this news. Malech wanted something, but was waiting to see if it was also what this prince wanted of him, and if not, how their desires might come together with the best advantage—or at least cost—to Malech. The dead could have been cows, or pigeons, for all the dismay his master showed.

  The messenger looked disgusted, his mouth twisting as though he tasted something sour. “We had spellwines of Atakus to protect our coasts, and they failed. My prince requested a message sent to Master Vineart Edon, only to discover that Atakus itself. . .has disappeared. No captain can sail there but be cast back into unfamiliar waters, the skies overcast above them. It is as though a hole in the world opened and swallowed them entire.”

  Jerzy swallowed hard at that news, thinking it some new and terrible disaster, but Malech looked concerned and yet somehow unsurprised. Jerzy had only a moment to spare to wonder how an entire island might disappear like that, and why, before Malech was speaking again.

  “Again, then, I ask: what is it you seek of me? To bury your dead? I do not craft spells of protection from weather nor beasts.”

  The messenger spoke, and Jerzy knew, somehow, that these were the man’s own words, not a formal message. “Since the attack. . .none can pass through that village without coming down ill. Not with chills or fever, but a stupor they cannot shake. Already every worker sent to clear the rubble has fallen thus, unable to rouse even for their loved ones or to find cheer in any moment. My prince would ask of you a spell to cleanse the lands of this. . .disaster. A healwine for the spirit. Please, Master Vineart.” He would not beg, not in so many words, but the tone was clear.

  Melancholia was one of Malech’s lesser known craftings, made from the fruit of a healvine, but richer and more delicate all at once than most body-healing wines, requiring the skills of a Master Vineart to craft. Jerzy had handled the grapes as they grew, learning their temperament, but it would be years yet before he would be able to craft such a decantation, if he was even capable of it.

  “Indeed.” Malech studied the messenger, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “I cannot think of anything else that might do the trick. However, without knowing the nature of the melancholia it would be difficult to assign the proper bottling. . ..Ah.” Malech leaned forward with the air of a man who has solved a knotty problem. “My student, Jerzy. He will travel with you, bearing a number of flasks, and once there will be able to determine the proper decantation, and thus instruct your prince in the usage thereof.”

  The messenger’s back stiffened, and Jerzy had to quickly school his features to not give away his shock or excitement, lest the man look back at him. If Malech thought he was ready, then he would be ready!

  “Lord Malech, are you certain this youth. . .” The messenger saw the look on Malech’s face change from pleased satisfaction to a clouded sort of outrage, and backtracked quickly. Malech’s reputation was not as a particularly harsh man, or a vindictive one, as Vinearts went, but neither was he to be trifled with or second-guessed, most especially by a lowly messenger, no matter how much money he was prepared to pour into the Vineart’s coffers. If the Master felt the need to send his student with the messenger, then his student would go.

  * * *

  WITHIN THE HOUR, Jerzy was dressed and ready for travel, a horse—one of Malech’s three riding animals, as opposed to the wagon-beasts—saddled and waiting next to Jecq’s beast. Master Malech was affixing four wineskins to the saddle via a series of complicated straps.

  “The decantations are ones you already know”—he glared at Jerzy, his stern expression no longer quite so terrifying—“or should, if your head has retained anything at all. Do not offer to explain anything; princes dislike being instructed.

  “I do not know what you will encounter,” he continued more quietly, this not for the messenger’s hearing. “But what I have given you should cover all possibilities. You have never dealt with this part of our craft before: the magic-less think there must be ceremony. They do not understand that decantation has nothing to do with them, that magic is released from within the flesh of the grape only by our skills; that the spell-structure is merely a means, not the magic itself. Safer that way, to make them believe that they are part of it, to keep them from wondering too intently how we might be different from themselves, how we might indeed be the prince-mages’ inheritors. This has always been our way, to protect ourselves.”

  Jerzy nodded, listening intently. One last lesson, one more thing to learn. He did not understand all of Master Malech’s words, but the meaning came through: give Prince Ranulf the spellwines needed, teach him how to use them, and nothing more.

  “Now go,” his master said, stepping back. “And come home safe.”

  ONE OF JERZY’S few vague memories of his life before the slavers was of being thrown on horseback and galloping into the wind, the feel of great muscles carrying him far and long. But he had been a child then, and the memory of how much his legs and arms and back ached after such a ride had long since faded. Cai’s lessons had helped return some skill, but he was still no horseman.

  It had not helped a
ny that Jecq had pushed their pace to the fastest the horses could handle, a steady walk broken by occasional runs, allowing only a quick break to eat and then a few hours overnight to sleep, when it became dark enough that the horses could not pick their way along the road safely.

  If he had been in less agony, and less concerned for the four wine-skins slung onto the heavy saddle, Jerzy might have enjoyed the journey more: it was the first time since he had been sold that he had been off his master’s lands, and back then he had traveled in an enclosed wagon with twenty or more others—there had been no view from inside the wagon, no scenery save the bodies of his fellow slaves and the rough hands and cool voices of the slavers.

  Jerzy refused to allow those memories to resurface. That was a life that had happened to someone else, a story told and retold until he knew all the twists and turns but felt little of the emotions the players must have felt. It was Then. This, the aches and pains of his backside, the jostle and slosh of the spellwines on his saddle, the creak of the leathers and the clodding noises of the horses’ hooves on the packed dirt road, this was the Now. Now he was no slave, but an apprentice Vineart on a mission of great importance for his master.

  While the messenger had been checking the saddle strap of his own horse, Malech had lowered his voice ever further and given one last set of instructions. “Make an excuse, any excuse, to look over that village, to inspect those chunks, or whatever it is, left in the creature’s wake if you have opportunity. But be careful—I don’t want you falling victim to whatever malaise grips their villagers! A Vineart must always stand apart and never show weakness. Not ever.”

  Jerzy remembered those words as they came to the end of the two-day journey through the wooded hills outside his master’s lands, the terrain slowly changing from the green rolling fields and tree-covered ridges of home to a rougher landscape of downward-sloping hills and marshy fields, studded with the occasional streamside mill. In the distance he saw darker splotches that might have been towns, but the road they followed cut sharply to the west, toward the horizon.

  He heard the sea, a softly relentless roar, before he saw it, and smelled it before either, a sweet, salty mist that tickled the inside of his nose and made him think of green grapes, not quite yet ripe. His first sight of the sea itself came as they rode over a ridge and found themselves on the narrow cuff of a cliff. Behind them there was solid earth and rock. Before them, open sky and soaring birds and an endless expanse of ever-moving waters stretching out into a barely visible horizon.

  It was magnificent, and terrifying, like falling and soaring all at once, and Jerzy fought off a sudden wave of dizziness, clutching the reins as though the horse would keep him in place.

  Jecq paused just long enough to check the sun’s placement against some marker in the distance, and then spurred his beast on along the path. Reluctantly, aware of the need, Jerzy followed.

  Soon enough they were riding through a fisher village on the way to where Jecq said Ranulf and his men had camped while inspecting the damage in Darcen, a few hours’ ride up the coastline. Here, the dirt road gave way to irregularly laid brown cobblestones and one-story stone buildings. It would have been attractive save that the streets were filthy with muck and the roofs coated with bird shit streaking the dark red tile roofs. Worse, the clean smell of the sea gave way to one more to do with flesh and sweat, although still tinged with the same salty mist. Jecq kicked his horse to a faster walk, and Jerzy gladly followed suit. Despite the recent attack nearby, the old men were sitting on benches with their net-mending, and old women were at their washing at the single stone fountain. As the two men rode through the town’s upper level, they all stopped to stare, their dark gazes watching them pass by without a single word.

  Even though his body ached, Jerzy forced himself to ride easily, sitting upright and strong, remembering Malech’s parting words. He was a Vineart, bred of the stressed soil and blazing sun. He did not show weakness.

  They had just left the village, with its low stone huts and the overwhelming stink of fish, to ride up the path and into the encampment’s gates, when a scream sounded from the rocky shore behind them.

  “It comes! It comes again!”

  THE WISE THING would have been to head for the princeling’s camp and let his men—trained fighters—deal with whatever “it” might be. A Vineart did not partake of battle any more than they did of politics. But Jerzy, a sinking feeling in his gut and the tang of something foul—far more foul than old fish—hitting his nostrils, already knew that he, and what he carried, would be needed down on the shoreline, not up the hill behind canvas walls. Jecq was already wheeling his horse around, having to saw heavily on the reins to get the beast turned away from home and stable, so close to its destination. Thankfully, Jerzy’s smaller brown mare was willing to follow without fuss.

  They hadn’t gotten more than a few strides back into town before the old men and not a few of the older women had dropped their chores and grabbed makeshift weapons—long metal poles with hooks and sharpened ends—and headed in the direction of the scream. They, too, knew what had happened to the people of Darcen.

  “To the beach,” Jecq directed them—needlessly, so far as Jerzy could see, and indeed they paid him no more heed than if he had been one of the nets now cast aside on the ground. Jerzy started to follow, when something tugged at his awareness. Not a smell, exactly, although his nose twitched at it. A scent. An aroma. A familiar residue that tapped at the side of his skull and beckoned him in a different direction.

  Magic. Someone was casting a spell. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. It was inside him, drawing him down.

  That pull led him not down to the rocky shoreline where the villagers—younger men and women pouring from shallow fishing barques to join their elders—were bracing for battle, but upward, onto a slight rise over the water. There, an older, close-shaven man stood, dressed in wear-darkened leathers and braced by three fighting men, bareheaded like their prince, each with long bows aimed up at the sky, faces set in ugly determination.

  “My lord!” Jerzy didn’t know how he knew, but there was no one else it could be, with bowmen at his side. “My lord, I am come from Master Vineart—”

  “Have you anything of use?” The princeling demanded, turning on him even as Jerzy slid from the horse’s side and rummaged for the nearest wineskin.

  “My lord, I don’t know—”

  A roar filled the air around them, and Jerzy’s hands faltered. He turned, as the bowmen swore and let fly the first round of arrows. The stink intensified, and the sky was blotted out until the pale blue surface became a distant backdrop for the nightmare that rose out of the sea in front of them.

  Jerzy had looked through some of Malech’s illustrated texts before they left. “Sea serpent” did not do the monster justice. A serpent was sleek, smooth, and supple. Sea serpents were supposed to glisten, to inspire as much awe as fear. This. . .thing was muddy brown and bulky, its scales mottled even under the afternoon sunlight, and the long neck was filled with odd lumps, like. . .

  It took only that one look, seeing the lumps move, for Jerzy to realize that they were people, fishermen out on their boats, swallowed whole by that great, oxlike head. The thing did not tear or rend, but instead dipped its long neck to grab a terrified fisherman in its black-lipped maw and consume him in one gulp. Jerzy felt dizzy, his gaze sliding down the length of neck to the body, only partially visible under the waves. It had to be the size of a cottage—Jerzy watched it come forward, and revised his guess to twice the size of a cottage, impossibly large and muscled, and moving with a seemingly unstoppable if slow pace up onto the beach.

  It was a monster, a sickening, terrifying monster. Where arrows struck it, bits of gray-brown flesh—the “chunks” the messenger had described, Jerzy guessed, dropped off and fell to the water, the waves boiling around each piece before it sank into the depths. And yet, that did not halt the beast. The villagers gathered on the sand, their metal hooks and fis
h spears at the ready, but clearly unwilling to enter the water where the beast was at an advantage.

  “Boy, a spellwine, if you have one!” the prince demanded, even as two bowmen rearmed, and the third withdrew a sword and tried to urge the princeling to retreat back behind a large white rock that, despite its size, even Jerzy could see would be no defense at all.

  His hand fell on one wineskin, even as his horse snorted and reared in fear, and then his hand slipped to a different one, taking it off the saddle hook without conscious thought. The moment he dropped the reins, the horse bolted, stopping, its sides heaving with effort, by the road, as though asking its rider why he wasn’t mounting up and getting the hell out of there like a sensible creature.

  The skin he grabbed had a dark blue band around the mouthpiece. Not the melancholia, then. What had blue been for? The trip had fogged his brain, and fear made it slow, and for an agonizing moment he could not remember what the spellwine in the blue-marked skin was for. Heal-aid, that was it: meant to soothe a wounded man or animal and send it into a deep sleep so that it could be safely treated by non-magical means. Why had he chosen that skin, of all the choices?

  The prince, impatient, grabbed it from his hands. “How do I work it?” he demanded. “Tell me how to command it!”

  Arrows sang again, soaring into the air toward the beast, landing and dispatching chunks of flesh, but with little effect on the monster, which continued its way toward the shore.

  Jerzy couldn’t take his eyes off the creature, but answered the question without hesitation. “‘To the flesh,’ then ‘calm the flesh,’ then the command.” Malech’s words echoed in his mind: the spell was a basic command-structure, yet important-sounding enough to make the user think the words were potent in and of themselves. The illusion of control. Yes, Jerzy understood a little better now.