Invocation

by Nicole Warner

  The two left standing rushed at me. I leapt back to my feet and threw my dagger at one, burying it high in his thigh. He was big and clearly too stupid to feel pain. He pulled the weapon out with a manic grin and kept coming.

  I ducked the sword whistling towards my head from behind and twisted to cut low across his belly. He wore a hardened leather jacket, thick enough to protect him from the blade. Keeping my momentum, I stepped around and slashed his hamstring, crippling him. With a guttural scream, half pained, half surprised, he fell against the alley wall, clutching at his wounded leg.

  The last fellow, still brandishing my dagger, advanced. He blocked my first strike with a stunningly hard blow that knocked the sword from my grip. I barely stopped the blade arcing towards my middle. We grappled for agonisingly long seconds. At every chance I pushed it closer to his side. Each time the man countered with a forceful shove.

  The other men were dragging themselves to their feet. I had to act fast. I twisted my torso, allowing his momentum to drive the dagger to where my stomach had been only moments before. Off balance, he lurched forward. I released the weapon, grabbed the back of his head, and used his impetus to smash my knee into his face. He fell to the ground.

  Every ounce of my frustration and anger was behind the kick I aimed at his gut. Coughing and gasping, blood gushing from his nose, he begged me to let him go. The other men held up their hands, telling me they wanted no more trouble.

  “I only wished to talk,” I reminded them, picking up my weapons. “Remember that.”

  They supported each other as they staggered their way out, leaving the body of their leader sprawled upon the dirty ground of the alley. Before they were out of sight I yelled to them, “And stop going around shooting at people or I’ll come find you again.”

  They didn’t look back.

  I walked to the local garrison, informing the town wardens on duty of the attack and what I’d done to protect myself. They followed me to the alley. The body was gone, only large splashes of drying blood providing any evidence of our fight. At my description, they both nodded their heads. The criminal and his gang were well known to them. The older warden spat against the wall, telling me the dead man wouldn’t be missed.

  It didn’t make me feel any better for what I’d done. I truly believed there were peaceful ways to end such violence, to speak as men of reason, trying to find common ground. That it had gone down that way didn’t destroy all my hopes, but it left a growing emptiness inside of me.

  Giving in to the basest of weaknesses, needing something to relieve those hollow feelings, I returned to the fourth level of the university and knocked on a door at the far end of the hallway.

  Lilliana rubbed at sleepy eyes, her nightdress half hanging from her shoulder, exposing an inviting expanse of bronzed skin. She invited me in with a sultry grin. The girls from the midwifery department were lucky enough to have separate rooms. From time to time, we made the most of the privacy it afforded us.

  Her fingers found the scar high on my thigh. “Any closer and you wouldn’t be able to do this.” She stroked, and my body responded. “You are a fortunate man, Lord Eadred.”

  “I am,” I agreed with a small smile.

  “How did you survive such an injury?”

  “Shh … let’s not talk about it.”

  Soon, Lilliana was well distracted and that hollow sensation of emptiness was filled, if only temporarily.

  Hours later, I crept through the university hall back to my dormitory and somehow still beat Shen. I stuffed my pillow over my ears when he made his stumbling and drunken entrance, attempting to be quiet and failing utterly.

  Over the following two days, Arnil Wale was abuzz with excitement that King Edmund and his court were visiting the small town. I tried not to dwell on it, or the thought of seeing Anais. Ludlow helped, keeping us busy and testing our knowledge with an almost manic energy. When our responses didn’t meet his approval, he inflicted humiliating insults until even the Dunst brothers were pale faced with dejection. Some of his challenges were too theoretical for any of us to provide suitable answers. Without more information about the details of each case, it was like swimming in the dark.

  He found my response on how I would treat a woman with a swollen stomach infuriating. Instead of answering, I threw back ten more questions. How did the patient present? Was she in pain? Bloated with gases? How many days since the onset of swelling? Was there a possibility of pregnancy?

  Ludlow’s pale face flushed red in his fury, and his verbal abuse towards me was even more incoherent than usual.

  Annoyed with the lot of us, he set his students to studying poisonous substances and their indicators in one of the study rooms on the lower level of the university building.

  Ludlow brought in Abbot William to assist with preparing antidotes, as he was the most experienced with these, and abandoned us for the rest of the day.

  It was too perfect an opportunity to miss.

  I pulled the abbot to the far end of the large room and shared a few of my more scathing observations about Ludlow. The lack of washing. His barbaric methods. The same tools used on multiple operations. His brusque manner with both patients and students.

  Abbot William listened in that nervous way of his and I could see he was worried about offending me. “Speak your mind, please,” I said.

  “Lord Eadred, you told me of your plan to be a medic in the army. Do you think you’ll have easy access to hot baths? That you won’t be sleeping in dirt, eating food with fingers covered in blood, or worse? On a field of war …”

  “War? I’m more likely to be dealing with training accidents.”

  Unimpressed, he folded his hands across his protruding stomach. “If I may continue?” I inclined my head, already regretting the interruption. “If we were unfortunate enough to find our country involved in a war, you, Lord Eadred, would be right in the thick of it, your skills sorely needed. In conditions such as that, without access to clean water, the dead piling up and the injured lying on the ground begging for help, you’ll be lucky to have five minutes with each patient. Hard choices will need to be made, and quickly at that. The decision to cut off a man’s leg, if it means saving his life, may prove to be the only feasible course. One you’ll take every time.”

  I hissed back, “I refuse to believe that.”

  “Why? Because you think you’ll be able to put your hands on them, healing every injured soldier, and not draw unwanted attention to yourself?”

  “Why not? God didn’t give me this gift for it to go to waste!”

  “Don’t be foolish,” the abbot scolded, glancing around anxiously for fear the other students might hear. They continued to work at the high tables, measuring and mixing ingredients to make the antidotes. Not a one looked up from his study.

  Abbot William drew in a deep breath, collecting himself, and explained, “There’s so much we don’t know. About how the body works to heal itself. Where disease comes from or how it spreads. Why one patient dies and another lives. Why some people’s hearts just stop. Or how a few fortunate souls never seem to become ill, living until a ripe old age. Even for those of us with the gift of healing, these are questions we have no answers for.”

  He gave me a pointed look. “You must remember, most of the students here do not possess your advantage. When they leave this university to tend to their patients, they do so with only the skills and knowledge we’re able to pass on to them.

  “While you and I may sense bleeding patients with leeches to treat a blood disease isn’t always the best course, we’ve also witnessed the many times when it resulted in a patient’s improvement. The same can be said for Ludlow’s method of not washing between patients. He tells us it strengthens their constitution. That those who are meant to live, will live. We’ve both seen how some people fight off infection or illness, becoming all the stronger for it.”

 
“And those who die?”

  The abbot sighed. “We can’t save everyone. Not even you. In Birne they study the human body, trying out new methods, discovering what works and what doesn’t. We can learn a lot from their innovations. Because, if we don’t take bold steps, we’ll never discover which treatments work.”

  Head shaking in negation, unwilling to believe it, I demanded, “How do you know anything of Birne? Our borders are closed and have been for centuries. Ludlow could be just making all of this up!”

  He lanced me with a disbelieving stare. “Lord Eadred, do you need to ask that? There are more things within the Church, more gifts than you’ll ever be given cause to learn. Such abilities are used to peer, from time to time, into our neighbouring countries. That’s how we learnt of their discoveries, and it’s the basis for why we invited Ludlow here.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “Did we? Tell me, what reason would you give Tergen to convince him of the need to wash hands between patients. Or to clean a tool between amputations.”

  I opened my mouth, but every explanation relied on the senses given to me by my gift. There were no words to convey what I knew so instinctively. “Because it’s not right. It’s dirty.”

  “So says the young lord who has been reared having baths every day of his life, your every need attended to. Your clothing and socks washed by someone else. The chamber pot emptied where it will not offend your noble sensibilities.”

  “I can’t change my past or how I was raised.”

  His small eyes narrowed to slits, no longer caring if he caused me offence with his abrasive reminders of my affluence. “Remember, your fellow students have grown up in towns where chamber pots are splashed onto the streets. Lucky if it doesn’t get thrown on their head as they pass underfoot, stepping on excrement while they’re at it.” The image was distasteful and my lip curled. “I only urge you to consider that cleanliness is a privilege of the upper classes, here and in Birne. The conditions you disdain are what the majority of your fellows endure every day. You must resign yourself to working in circumstances more aligned to the real world. For that reason, I ask you to bear with Professor Ludlow a while longer.”

  “Even though his teachings are flawed?”

  My stubbornness wouldn’t sway him. “I see merit in them.”

  “But why? The man’s a fool. Give me leave to show you and the other teachers what I’m truly capable of.”

  “Impossible! How you go about treating your patients will one day be up to you, but you’ll face the censure of the Triune if you let our secret out and, believe me, that’s the last thing you ever want to do.”

  The implication shocked me. Enough to be distracted from concerns about Ludlow. “Or what?”

  Abbot William started, worried he’d said too much. “Never mind, Lord Eadred. Never mind.” He left the room, a deep frown wrinkling his brow.

  It made little sense. Any of it.

  There were other men and women at the university with gifts, every one of them marked for service within the Holy Path. Bishop Richard and Father Tyrell had long before explained why I was excluded from the same duty but, as a result, I was cut off from the others. They too spent many years honing their skills before their devotion began, yet I couldn’t seek them out or share any of my concerns.

  Now the abbot indicated the Triune were a force to be feared rather than revered. A threat to me if I should ever reveal their damn secrets. It was bad enough that the Triune wouldn’t do anything about the black-haired woman who seemed set on my death, not even granting me an audience to make my case for their help.

  I threw an empty vial at the wall in sheer frustration, smashing it to pieces.

  The triplets scurried from the broken glass while my friends provided unhelpful commentary. “He dinna get laed last night, did he?” Tergen observed.

  “I’m guessing he didn’t,” Shen agreed with a broad grin. “Our lord needs to take his edge off, if you ask me.”

  “No one asked you!” I growled and used Tergen’s favourite swear word before storming out.

  The next day my mood remained dark, and it had little to do with Ludlow or the Triune this time. It had everything to do with the letter I’d received early that morning from Anais. She was coming to Arnil Wale with Edmund and hadn’t told me any earlier because she wanted it to be a surprise, imagining we could somehow find the opportunity to meet up. A foolish idea, and one I prayed she didn’t try to fulfil.

  We spent the first half of the day cutting up a cadaver, describing to Ludlow what we saw and extending on our knowledge of the human body. The smell was something I’d never become used to. It got up the nose and lingered for the longest time, that sweet and sickening stench of rotting flesh. This one wasn’t too bad, the man dying only the evening before. Sometimes we were tasked with dissecting a corpse a week after death, then it wasn’t uncommon for at least two of us to vomit from the stomach-churning odour.

  That afternoon, Ludlow left to assess those patients he planned to perform amputations on the following day. Of his potential amputees, there were twenty, all with limbs in various stages of necrosis. He wouldn’t allow his students to examine any of them, sending us away to help in the wards.

  Assigned to the central ward, I checked the pulse of a patient with a high fever from a congested chest. Her breath was rattly and uneven, heart beating too fast. I sat her over a bowl of steaming water infused with garlic, ginger and honey. At the advice of a teacher, I applied two leeches to either side of her rib cage to remove unhealthy blood. The steam treatment was effective in easing her breathing, but I knew the leeches helped not at all.

  When an assistant came over with a small bowl of chicken broth, I sent trickles of healing into the patient as I fed her every spoonful. When I finished, she was sitting up, her airway free of obstruction. She patted my hand, smiling for likely the first time in days. I told her I’d come by to check on her later and, if she kept up her fluids, we’d be able to send her home soon.

  An idea was forming, a way to heal people without raising too many suspicions, the steam bath providing the inspiration.

  If I informed my patients I was giving them herbs or lotions to cure their illnesses while I performed the true miracle unbeknownst, perhaps I could get away with it. Apothecaries had used potions and such with poor results for centuries, and yet people continued to believe their concoctions worked. Why not use the groundwork they’d laid to my advantage?

  Shen came running over, distracting me from exploring the idea further. “They’re nearly here,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The King and Queen!” he exclaimed, shocked I’d forgotten the most exciting thing to happen in Arnil Wale in years.

  “I’ll be right there,” I told him, needing a moment to prepare myself.

  When I found my way to the plaza, I hung back, hiding in the crowd that had come out to watch. He stepped from the carriage first and held out his hand for her. They made a show of it, Edmund bringing her forward to the adulation of the excited throng and waving at the people.

  Anais was … no words could do her justice. She wore a dress of green velvet, with golden embroidery on the bodice and in twirling patterns down the billowing skirt. Her blonde strands were piled high in an abundance of curls and braids. When she turned her head to wave at those on the far side, I thought I saw two silver butterflies peeking out from within that mass of hair and couldn’t prevent my small smile.

  Anais found me, in that unerring way of hers, those emerald eyes pinpointing my location and meeting mine. Edmund chose that moment to play to the wishes of the crowd and pulled her face towards his, planting a lusty kiss upon her lips while the people screamed their joy.

  I walked away, not caring to witness any more.

  The following morning a servant delivered an order from Edmund to present myself for Ludlow’s ex
hibition.

  I refused to dress in a doublet as protocol demanded, arriving in the gallery around the small amphitheatre in my simple tunic and pants.

  The courtiers took their seats and waited for Edmund and Anais to arrive. Below, Ludlow brought the first patient in, asking Hart and Hank to lift him onto the narrow operating table.

  There was a rustle of movement and the royal couple entered. Her hand was held within Edmund’s as he led her to the two chairs set aside for their use. We gave obeisance and this time I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, almost afraid of what the sight of her would do to me, well aware her eyes rested on me, burning hot, begging me to meet her gaze. Cravenly, I refused.

  The first amputation was soon underway, the man’s screams louder somehow in the amphitheatre. When the cries stopped, for they always passed out at some point, the only sound left was the scraping, wet movement of the saw going back and forth. The lower part of his arm dropped to the table, exposing the inner workings of his body in all its gruesome glory. They transferred him onto the stretcher before bringing in the next patient.

  I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over for her reaction, unsurprised to find her head bent low and her hand, holding a handkerchief, held clasped to her mouth.

  Ludlow was in his element, in his thick brogue explaining what he was doing and how effective he believed such treatment to be. His white tunic was covered in blood, gore and even thin slivers of bone, his hands red past the wrists. Ludlow used the same blade on every necrotic limb. It turned my stomach to see it. All the male courtiers, plus some women, leant forward with fascination, watching avidly each time Ludlow sawed off an arm or leg.

  While a large part of their interest was because of the professor’s foreignness, it was the gruesome operations he performed that left them gasping and crying in shock, enjoying the titillating horror of such a display.