by Daniel Ford
“Poison,” Allystaire suddenly yelled. He turned to where Idgen Marte and Torvul had come spilling out of the doorway. “Alchemist! What can you do for a man that’s been poisoned?”
The dwarf had unlimbered his crossbow and dropped to a knee, scanning the distant rise of hill and trees beyond. Idgen Marte’s sword was in her hand before the whisper of her draw reached Allystaire’s ears.
Allystaire lifted his hand, motioning toward the treeline. “It must have come,” he started to yell, when once again the air was sliced by a bolt.
His eyes widened in shock as he saw it pierce his left arm between the elbow and wrist. Its barbed, bloodstained end protruded an inch past his skin.
His mouth dropped open and his face blanched, and he held his hand up to his eyes, staring in disbelief as the blood began to pour from the wound. The shock didn’t last, though, for soon he was dropping to the ground and curling around the wound. Got to get that out, he was thinking. Clean through the muscle, I think. Good. That’s good. Not in the bone.
Idgen Marte and Torvul exploded into action around him. Idgen Marte leapt to his left, putting herself between him and the direction of the bolt, her sword held in a crosswise guard. The dwarf, meanwhile, rushed to Allystaire’s back and seized the shield that was hung there by a strap. Torvul slid a knife from one of his sleeves and he sawed quickly through the leather.
Idgen Marte’s feet shifted and her wrists tensed, then flicked, moving faster than the eye could follow, and there was a clang. A third bolt dropped to the ground a few feet away, deflected by her lightning-quick sword.
“Heal yourself, Allystaire,” she half-yelled. “Do it!”
Not even sure if I can, Allystaire was thinking, but then he tried to flex his wrist so that he might touch his fingertips to his palm, gritting his teeth against the expectation of pain, and found himself surprised that there was no pain.
But he could not move his hand.
He looked down at his arm; a purple-black cloud moved beneath his skin, and then his entire arm went limp. He heard Torvul shouting at Idgen Marte, felt the strap that kept his shield across his back give way, and the dwarf leapt in front of him, crouching beneath the shield and holding it across both of them.
“Go! Go! Find the archer! I’ll deal with this,” the dwarf shouted, and Allystaire looked up and saw Idgen Marte disappear in a bound. A dim shape flitted in his sight under the eaves of an outbuilding built into the side of a small hill on the farm, then again at a stand of trees.
“Cuisin,” Allystaire managed to say, though he felt his tongue growing thick and his head swimming. “Torvul…” He swallowed hard, swayed on his knees, felt the dwarf’s free hand seize the collar of his shirt and hold him in place. “Got to help him. Help Cuisin first.”
“You fall over boy, I can’t pick you up. Stay awake.” Torvul’s hand darted away from his collar and slapped him lightly across one cheek.
“P—poisoned…Torvul.” Allystaire used his right hand to lift up the deadweight that was his left, showing the dwarf the wound, the impossibly-fast moving blot beneath his skin. The blood flow was nearly stopped around the bolt. “Cannot heal him.”
The dwarf’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard. “Whore’s Kiss,” he breathed. “Priceless stuff, that,” but even as he said it, his hand had let go of Allystaire’s collar and was fumbling among his pouches. “I don’t…my potions haven’t…”
“Have to,” Allystaire mumbled, falling forward against Torvul’s shoulder, the dwarf grunting under his weight but managing to hold him up with one side of his body while continuing to rummage. “Have to, Torvul,” Allystaire muttered again, his eyes drooping and the flesh of his hand turning a vile purple.
“‘It’s a tough poison, lad. I’ve got…” The dwarf plucked from his pouches three small bottles and one wax-besmeared jar full of tiny, dried red filaments. “I—this might be beyond my art now.. And I haven’t enough for…” he added almost pitiably, his eyes flitting toward Cuisin, who lay crumpled on the ground a few paces away.
* * *
Idgen Marte ran as fast as the Goddess’s Gifts would carry her, faster than anyone who didn’t know how to look could possibly have seen. She moved from shadow to shadow at the speed of her own thoughts, and a wood, even a small wood, casts myriad shadows.
She moved in a circle around the clumps of trees, darting from the shade of one to another in a blur. The outline of the swordswoman would appear and then vanish, her passage marked by the puff of yellowing leaves pulled from their branches by the force of her advance. She remained in each spot just long enough to orient herself, then darted to another shadow.
Eventually her outline must’ve made a tempting enough target, for suddenly the solid sound of a crossbow discharging rang out, followed straightaway by a shattering of bark as the bolt skidded across a trunk. Idgen Marte paused, her right hand still holding her sword, but her left had darted to the back of her belt and produced a compact knife, the tip of the blade held between her first finger and her thumb. Her arm, straight as a board, cocked back and then came down; the blade left her hands, and she grimaced in an angry satisfaction when she heard a muffled grunt as the blade struck home.
Then she was under the tree she had thrown toward. The bowman, stretched out across a limb above, scarcely had time to register her presence when, with both feet and one hand, she bounded up the limbs until she reached him and launched a sharp kick to his face. He tumbled out of the tree to the ground, his bow clattering away, and she dropped lithely from the trunk, rolling on one shoulder to break the fall.
She came up on her feet, and the sword whipped to the edge of the man’s neck as he was just starting to roll over and reach for the thick-bladed shortsword on his belt. Her knife protruded from one of his shoulders, and she placed the tip of one boot upon the hilt and pressed lightly.
“Come with me peacefully, answer every question put you, and you’ll get a clean death, at least. Touch one finger to that hilt and I’ll see how long it takes me to make my knife and my sword meet in the middle.” To add weight to her claim she leaned forward ever so slightly on the knife’s hilt, and the man groaned in pain and threw his arms to the sides.
“I yield,” he moaned. “Not that it’ll do y’any good. Whore’s Kiss’ll have done its work by now.”
Idgen Marte’s eyes widened, and she rammed her foot down on knife-hilt until the sole of her boot pressed against his chest. He screamed and tried to roll away as the knife plunged into his shoulder. “You have a purgative, or, or an answer for it?”
The man’s face blanched beneath its layer of dark stubble and sweat and he shook his head side to side. “No. I was ordered not to carry one.”
Idgen Marte leaned down over him, bending her arm at the elbow so that her sword still lay lightly across his neck. “By who? Remember what I said about answering questions.”
CHAPTER 35
Power, of a Kind
Torvul set down the bottles he’d pulled from his pouches, turned and seized the rim of the shield in both hands and pressed it into the dirt, silently thanking the rain that had softened it. With the shield standing on its own and giving the slumped over Allystaire some cover, Torvul rose from his knees into a deep squat.
His old knees protested, and he grimaced in pain as, hunched over, he walked to Cuisin’s side, grabbed his collar, and dragged him over to lie next to Allystaire beneath whatever cover the paladin’s shield offered.
When Torvul felt the shield bump against his back he slumped back to his knees and reached for his bottles, palming them all in one huge, long-fingered hand. He got one uncorked, his hands moving steady and true, and poured it over Allystaire’s wound. The flesh sizzled where the yellowish liquid met his blood, and the paladin let out a low moan.
“Him first,” he repeated, his words mumbled into the dwarf’s leather-clad shoulder. “Potion worked last night,�
� he mouthed. “Faith, Torvul,” he groaned out. “Faith.”
With a deep sigh, the dwarf slipped his sleeve-knife back into one hand and quickly cut away the homespun trews Cuisin wore, exposing his wound. While the farmhand bled freely, and the wound in his leg was angry and raw, there was no matching cloud of purple moving beneath the skin. The scent that rose from it, reminiscent of berry-wine gone to vinegar and then something worse, told Torvul what he needed to know.
“Moon Shadow’s Dust,” the dwarf muttered aloud. Then, suddenly frowning, “Ah, freeze—“
Cuisin began to spasm, his arms and legs punching and kicking forcefully at the air. Torvul curled instinctively around the bottles he held and let Allystaire slide to the ground. He fumbled in his palm, came out with a blue cut-glass bottle, then threw himself onto the farmhand’s thrashing chest and managed to wedge his elbow under the man’s chin, pinning his head to the ground.
With Cuisin still spasming below him, Torvul pulled out the bottle’s stopper with his teeth and upended it into the man’s open mouth. Then he jumped back, knocking the shield askew in the process.
Cuisin’s spasms slowed and slowed until they were simply twitches rippling down his limbs, and Torvul turned his attention back to the more gravely poisoned Allystaire.
His eyes had closed and his cheeks grown even paler; flecks of spit gathered in the corners of his mouth as he mumbled incomprehensibly into the ground. Torvul had a job of hauling the heavy, armored man back up to lean him against his chest.
He began a steady stream of dwarfish cursing, all thick guttural sounds crashing into and rolling over one another, and eyed the hissing steam that had risen from Allystaire’s wound where he had poured the first potion over it. The purple stain, lurking under the paladin’s muscled, bristly-haired forearm like a brooding sea monster, now extended almost from elbow to wrist.
Torvul took a deep breath and said, “Sorry lad. This’ll hurt. If it works. Even if it doesn’t.” He seized Allystaire’s wrist in one hand and lifted his arm, using the other to push the bolt forward into the wound. Allystaire moaned and his body shook violently, almost knocking the dwarf to his haunches. When enough of the shaft was clear, Torvul wrapped one hand around the base of it, then the other atop the first, careful to keep his hand clear of the bloody steel tip, then clenched his teeth and began to pull his hands in opposite directions.
Dense muscles rippled along the dwarf’s thick arms and the bolt head snapped; Torvul left the top lying at his feet, then reached for the fletchings and pulled it free. Blood glugged from the wound, but not much. The Whore’s Kiss was squeezing shut the veins and deadening the muscles, and Torvul knew that even on his greatest day as an alchemist, with his finest equipment in a workshop of clean marble and silver instruments, he might not have been able to do this.
Yet he pushed aside the thought and tried to replace it; Faith, he thought. The lad’s got it in me or he wouldn’t have let me hang about. Time t’stop lying to myself about what he is. Faith—at least in him, if naught else.
He added aloud, “Lady or Mother or Goddess, if you’re real, which I have my doubts on, and you’ve taken a shine to this man, mayhap you could do him a favor now, eh?”
Torvul selected the third jar. The oldest one he carried, the one he wasn’t sure why he still kept. Behind its clouded glass and beneath its ancient, crumbling cork, it was hard to say what it contained. It appeared to be a small pile of reddish-brown dirt.
He tried to unstopper the jar, but couldn’t, so he bent down, seized a rock, and chipped at the top until it cracked and broke free. He upended the bottle into his other palm and stared hard at it.
Dirt, dark red and smelling of mold, settled coldly in his palm. He narrowed his dark, deepset eyes, hunting for something amidst its granules and clumps. Using the tip of one finger, he stirred it around until the loosely packed earth revealed a half-dozen tiny filaments, curled and withered and brown.
Torvul closed his eyes and began to sing.
The song was not in a language Allystaire or Cuisin or Idgen Marte or anyone in the village would’ve known. It was the same low-pitched and guttural tongue the alchemist had cursed in just moments ago, but no one would’ve mistaken this song for something vulgar. The first few words were halting, his voice stilted and unused to it. Then he took in a deep breath and tried with renewed vigor. The song flowed like water over stone, the words forming an unbroken line of sound, the dwarf’s voice a low and rumbling and not unpleasing bass.
His singing voice could’ve filled the hall of the largest castle Allystaire had ever known. Even deep in the torture of the poison coursing through him, the paladin’s eyes flickered and his head lifted feebly, so powerful was the call of the dwarf’s song.
Torvul’s eyes remained shut, but the song grew steadier, stronger, as something began to stir within the dirt on his palm.
Slowly, the tiny filaments uncurled and lengthened. As they grew, their color began to shift from a dark and dry brown to a vivid red. They lightened to orange, then finally to a delicate, glinting gold.
Torvul carefully plucked one filament with two fingers, grimacing as he did, his song drawing to a close. Ought to be plucked from crystal bottles with pure silver tweezers, the alchemist thought, as he carefully lifted the tiny golden thread to Allystaire’s wound.
As if drawn to the wound and the poison within, the shining fiber suddenly straightened, pulling Torvul’s hand to the wound. He let it go, and it flew straight into the wound, dissolving as soon as it touched the paladin’s skin.
He slowed his song, coughing a bit for breath, careful to angle his face away from the hand on which he still held a few precious golden threads.
“Could be the last dwarfish medicine in all the world, lad,” the alchemist croaked, his voice gone a bit hollow. “It had better work.”
With his free hand, Torvul pulled a silver flask free from a pouch on his belt, unscrewing it with the finger and thumb of the same hand he held it in. He lifted it to his own lips and took a quick swig, then poured a measure of it over both wounds.
After a faint hissing, another voice, hoarse and weak, suddenly intruded on the dwarf’s thoughts.
“Last in the world, eh? Must have been worth…worth a fortune.” Torvul’s eyes lifted sharply from the wound and met Allystaire’s hard blue eyes, bloodshot and wearied, but alive and aware.
Torvul’s hand immediately shot out and grasped Allystaire’s left wrist. The paladin winced sharply, groaning as the dwarf, fingers pressing none too gently, lifted his arm up to eye level. The cloud of purple beneath his skin was visibly retreating. Torvul bent even closer and sniffed carefully.
He released Allystaire’s hand more gently and sat back on his haunches, practically collapsing, and lifted his dark, deepset eyes, mystification quickly overcome by joy.
“Well I’ll be dipped in shit,” Torvul said, dazed. “It worked.”
“What worked?” Allystaire fell, slumping forward over his legs, holding his left arm out awkwardly. Suddenly, he forced himself back up on his knees. “Cuisin? Where is—”
“Already dealing with him,” Torvul said. Leaning over the lanky farmhand’s outstretched leg, carefully slid another tiny gleaming thread into the poisoned wound. “His wasn’t quite as critical as yours. The poison, anyway. I haven’t done for his bolt yet but I’d like some help with that.”
“I can handle it once I have my arm back,” Allystaire croaked.
“And as to your first question,” the dwarf grunted, pushing himself cautiously back to his feet, “this.” He held out his carefully cupped hand. “This is what worked. The hluriankathaum. Ah, in your tongue: the sovereign antidote, proof against all poisons, infections, and rot.” He stared in wonderment at his palm for a moment, then said, “Ask me later, I’ll explain more.”
The dwarf carefully pulled free one of the last few bottles that remained pou
ched on his jerkin, flicked it open, poured out its contents, and delicately slid the remaining few filaments into the emptied bottle, along with the few grainy clumps of dirt that had clung to his palm during the healing. “Never thought t’see its like again,” he muttered. He carefully secreted the bottle.
Meanwhile, Cuisin had sat up, hands reaching for the wound on his leg. Torvul moved to his side, placed his huge hands on the man’s chest, and guided him back toward the ground. The farmhand made no fight of it. “I dosed him pretty well for the pain and constricted the bleeding. He won’t know for an turn or two that he’s got a bolt in his leg.”
“What was done to us?”
“You were poisoned.” Torvul regained his feet, bent down and gingerly retrieved the top half of the bolt he’d snapped off, holding its broken shaft by thumb and forefinger. He raised it—beneath the blood, the barbed steel head bore a veneer of thin but sticky blue liquid. “Whore’s Kiss, we call it in the trade. A right nasty mixture of things, expensive, known to few, and not, to your luck, an instant killer. A paralytic. He,” the dwarf pointed, to the dazed Cuisin, “was shot with Moon Shadow’s Dust. Causes strong and violent convulsions. An odd combination. Our man has exotic tastes and deep pockets.”
Allystaire sat absorbing the information while forcing himself to look at his blood-smeared wound. Not the first time you’ve been shot, old man, he thought, but there was something disconcerting about the lingering weakness in his hand. He could move his fingers again, lightly, but trying to curl his arm resulted in a stab of pain.