Flamecaster

by Cinda Williams Chima

  “Now what’s this all about?” Merrill looked them over and chose Marc as the one in charge. “I am in the middle of a complicated extraction, and I don’t care to be interrupted.”

  “This is a new healer, Adam Freeman,” Marc said, nodding at Ash.

  “Healer! I choose my own apprentices, and I don’t know this boy.” He looked Ash up and down, his face a storm cloud. “Where did you steal those clothes?” Then his gaze fastened on the silver collar, and he made the sign of Malthus. “You’ve brought me a mage?” He poked a finger into DeJardin’s face. “I won’t have your kind in my service. I’m not in need of any more help, anyway. I’ve trouble enough with the apprentices I have.”

  “King Gerard has ordered that Freeman be admitted to the Royal Guild of Healers,” DeJardin said evenly. “Do you wish me to carry your objections to His Majesty?”

  The commotion had disturbed the patient in the bed. He stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes. They went wide when they lit on Ash. “Adam! By the Maker, you’re here! I can’t believe what they’ve been telling me.” It was Hamon.

  The night baker stretched out his arms toward Ash, and a big tear rolled down his face. “They say I was dead for sure, and you saved my life. They say you rescued me from the fire, and then you healed me. They say it was a miracle. Come here, my boy, so I can feel of you, for surely you were the instrument of Holy Malthus in this.”

  Reluctantly, Ash moved to the bedside, and endured the baker’s embrace.

  Now that Merrill understood who Ash was, he looked even less happy. “You’re the stable boy!” he snapped, as if it were an accusation.

  Hamon was still babbling. “I remember bringing the oil up from the cellar. I must have let it slip. I just don’t remember. But things are going to be different from now on, praise the Maker. I’ve sworn off it, I tell you. I’m a changed man.”

  Ash realized that Hamon was blaming himself and his drinking for the fire.

  “You’ll be fortunate if His Majesty doesn’t throw you in prison,” Merrill said sourly.

  Hamon ignored him. “All day long people have been coming in to see me, to look at my back. I’m famous. And to think I was healed by a stable boy. Wait till they hear that you’re working here.”

  Ash was beginning to understand the source of Merrill’s murderous bad humor.

  The master fixed Ash with the haughty gaze of a saint confronting a sinner. “From what I heard, it was sorcery.” He pointed a warning finger at the baker. “’Tis a poor bargain if you’ve traded the integrity of your body for the future of your immortal soul.” That was when Ash noticed the emblem of the rising sun of Malthus dangling from a chain about the master’s neck. So the healer was a churchman, a not uncommon wedding of professions in Arden.

  “No, no! It was a blessing, Master Merrill!” Hamon insisted. “I have never felt so close to the faith as I do now.”

  “It couldn’t have been much of a burn,” Merrill said, scowling. “It is nearly healed.”

  “It was monstrous big,” Hamon said, leaning forward. “Rolley, he said I was burnt to the bone. He saw it with his own eyes.”

  “His Majesty would like you to put together a kit for Freeman,” Marc said, “and provide a place for him to stay.”

  “The boy won’t need a kit,” Merrill grumbled. “He’s not qualified to do any actual healing.”

  Ash was accustomed to working with oversized egos from his time with Master Vega in the Fells. “I know you’re busy, Master Merrill,” he said, holding up his list. “I just need a few things to get started. I can put it together myself, if you tell me where things are. And I’ll be happy to do any necessary extractions, as well.”

  Merrill snatched the list from Ash. “I don’t want a stable boy mucking around in my formulary.” He scanned the list and looked up, surprised. “How did you . . .”

  “My mother taught me about herbs and medicinals. And I had some training at the academy.”

  “It will take a while to put this together.” The healer seemed resigned to it. “Wait here.” He disappeared into the rear.

  Ash returned to Hamon’s bedside. “As long as I’m here, why don’t I take a look at your back. Are you still in any pain?” He thought it better to examine his patient in Merrill’s absence.

  Hamon obligingly lifted up his shirt and turned his back to Ash. “It’s still tender, like a scald, maybe. Not much worse than that.”

  Ash pushed lightly on the skin and watched with satisfaction as the blood returned. “Have they put anything on it?”

  “Some kind of ointment,” the baker said, over his shoulder.

  Aloe, probably. That’s what it smelled like.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any scarring. Make sure you drink plenty of water. Keep a pitcher by your bed and empty four before the day is over. Eat as much as you can. No alcohol at all for now. If it suddenly seems worse, or there’s any new drainage, or swelling, any fever, get word to me.” Years of training were reasserting themselves. “I’ll be here, instead of the stable, from now on.”

  Hamon nodded solemnly, committing the instructions to memory. Ash hesitated, then said, “Hamon, do you know if they found . . . if anyone else was hurt in the fire?”

  He was immediately sorry, because the big man teared up again. “I don’t know. I hope not. Nobody told me, if they were.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s all my fault.”

  Ash put a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t be sure you had anything to do with the fire. Fires break out all the time, especially in a kitchen, and there were flammables stored in the basement. Maybe you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Maybe,” Hamon said grudgingly. “And you happened to be in the right place. I see you burned your face, rescuing me. I’ll pray to Saint Malthus for you, every night.” Ash’s discomfort grew as the baker went on.

  Merrill made them wait another good long time. Finally he returned with a tray and a cloth sack. The tray held numerous small bags and glass bottles. There was also linen for bandaging and small surgical tools.

  Ash set the tray down on a table. Then he took the list and ran through the items on the tray, matching them, and putting them into the cloth sack. He uncorked the bottles and sniffed them and tasted some, and opened the drawstring bags, sometimes shaking a bit of dried herb onto his palm. Merrill waited impatiently, clearly annoyed that his new apprentice was rechecking his work. Finally, Ash looked up at Merrill and extended his palm toward him, with a bit of brown, rootlike material.

  “This is water hemlock. I asked for chamomile.”

  Merrill stared at him, his mouth opening and closing. Then he snatched back the bag. “Those blasted apprentices! I’ll have their hides for this.”

  “If you’d like, I can go into the garden and find it,” Ash offered.

  The healer furiously shook his head. “I’ll be back.”

  “The leaves and flowers, not the root,” Ash called after him.

  “What’s water hemlock?” Marc whispered.

  “Poison,” Ash replied calmly.

  The master healer was quick this time. Ash finished putting his bag together and thanked him.

  “We don’t have any rooms to spare, boy,” the master healer warned. “You’ll have to share.”

  “That’s all right,” Ash replied. “I’m used to that.” Frankly, he would have felt more at ease in the stable than in the palace, between the Darian brother and his hostile new master. “My name is Adam,” he added, with little hope that Merrill would ever actually use it.

  Merrill ignored him. “You can bring your things over any time. You’ll be sharing with Harold and Boyd. I’ll expect you to be ready to work this afternoon.”

  “I don’t really have anything to bring. I can start to work now.”

  “As you wish,” Merrill said. “You can start in the garden, since you fancy yourself an expert at telling one plant from another.”

  24

  AN EARLY MORNING SUMMONSr />
  Ash shared a tiny room in back of the extraction laboratory with two other apprentices, both much younger than him. Harold and Boyd seemed surprised to be teamed with someone who was nearly grown. Over a period of days, as they realized how knowledgeable he was, they began turning to him for guidance when they had a question. Merrill wasn’t much of a teacher. He seemed to be threatened by anyone with a smattering of talent or skill.

  Ash was happy to help them, but only when Merrill wasn’t around.

  The apprentices were expected to clean the extraction lab and set up materials for the master healers. When the lab was in use, their sleeping room was almost unbearable because of the odors. So Ash spent very little time there.

  Since the healers’ quarters were out of the way, it was more difficult to keep track of events in and around the palace. But Ash was just as happy to lay low, in case more Darian brothers came looking for him. After days passed and there was no sign of them, he began to relax a little. It was possible the priest who’d spotted him had kept it to himself, not wanting to share with his brothers.

  Ash had hoped that a position in the healing halls would give him better access to the king, but that didn’t happen. When he asked Harold and Boyd who took care of the king, they said Montaigne hadn’t called for a healer since they’d been there.

  “He’s never sick?” Ash asked.

  “If he is, he don’t call on us,” Harold said.

  The nobility, including the Ardenine thanes, were treated in their own quarters by the master healers. Apprentices often went along to assist, but Ash was never invited. The other healers gave him a wide berth, making the sign of Malthus if he got too close.

  Much of Ash’s assigned work consisted of cleanup, the harvesting and drying of plants, the chopping of roots and grinding of herbs with a mortar and pestle. Tasks he’d been doing for Taliesin since he was twelve. Sometimes he was allowed to pour off and label extractions after they were made. He suspected that Merrill didn’t want to give Ash another chance to demonstrate what he could do.

  Once Hamon was released from the infirmary, however, there came a steady stream of servants, soldiers, and minor officials with illnesses and injuries, asking for “Adam Freeman.” Apparently now that the baker was on the loose, he was spreading the good news. Master Merrill’s annoyance was tempered by the fact that he had no interest in treating the riffraff.

  Eventually, a patient was admitted with dysentery, and Ash was assigned to bathe the unfortunate and change his bed. Merrill seemed to delight in finding menial tasks to keep him busy. So, unless the king of Arden needed his toenails trimmed, they were unlikely to meet again.

  Ash had retrieved his death-dealing formulary from the stables. He hid it carefully under a stone in the garden and protected it with a charm. He was at a loss for how to use it. He could tamper with the food down in the kitchens, but there was no guarantee any of it would make its way to his target. The king had a taster—those who shared the palace with him did not. Innocent people would die, the kitchen staff would pay the price, and the king would go on living.

  The same applied to the herbs and medicinals in the healers’ formulary. Unless he could get his hands on an order specifically for the king, he was unlikely to succeed by that route. Taliesin always said that using poison in a crowd was like shooting a bolt into the sky, not knowing where it would land. Anyway, Merrill kept a hawk’s eye on Ash, waiting for him to make a misstep. Ash had no doubt that any problem would be laid directly at his door.

  One morning about a fortnight after Ash had moved to the healers’ quarters, he was setting up and labeling the solvents and diluents using the compounding recipes while the two younger boys gathered materials from the storeroom in the rear. Master Merrill was away and the two apprentices were eager to tell him why.

  “Did you hear what happened last night?” Harold said, dumping an armload of herbs onto the table. “With Lady Estelle and all?”

  Ash shook his head, distracted. He was counting out measures of willow bark. “No. I didn’t hear.” Lady Estelle was the king’s current favorite, and Harold and Boyd were unrepentant gossips. Ash really didn’t care who was carrying the king’s chance-child.

  “Last night the king all but climbed in bed with a viper.”

  That caught Ash’s interest. “A viper? How could that happen?”

  “From all I heard, it was a deathsting adder,” Harold went on. “They’re only big around as your little finger, but if one bites you, you’re a goner.”

  “A snake was in his rooms?”

  Harold shook his head. “Like I said. It was in the Lady Estelle’s suite.”

  Ash abandoned all pretense of working. “Was the king bitten?” he asked with a spark of hope.

  “I don’t think so. King Gerard, he ran out of the room, shouting for his guard. Five blackbirds went in and tore the bed apart looking for it, and finally killed it. Lady Estelle and all her ladies, they were hysterical.”

  Ash sat down on the bed, heart thumping. “How do you know all this?”

  “Master Merrill took me with him, to help carry. He thought he’d need help, what with five women all carrying on.” Harold was beside himself with delight at being the bearer of such important news, while Boyd looked glum at being left out.

  “Master Merrill is treating the king?” Ha! No danger of a cure there.

  Harold shook his head, as if Ash were a little thick. “Nah. I told you, the king—it’s like he don’t believe in healers. I mean the ladies. They was in a frenzy, and we had no lady’s tonic made up, so we give ’em enough brandy to put a sapper on his back. Then the King’s Guard, they come in, and they have at Lady Estelle and the ladies, asking ’em all kinds of questions. Only they wasn’t making much sense by this time, and the Guard, they want us to sober ’em up again.” Harold lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “See, they’re thinking the snake was meant for the king.”

  “Who would want to hurt the king?” Ash might have sounded a little sarcastic, but it went right by Harold and Boyd. “Do they have any suspects?”

  “Well, I don’t guess they’d tell Harold if they did,” Boyd broke in, eager to participate.

  “Well, after the guards left, Lady Estelle and her ladies were all in a panic, because it seemed like the blackbirds thought maybe they was in on it.”

  “Where was the king all this time?”

  “He went back to his suite, far as I know.”

  Just then, they heard a footstep in the hallway. Boyd and Harold hurried to look busy, thinking maybe it was Master Merrill. But it was Marc DeJardin.

  “Freeman, get your kit and come with me. The king has asked for you.”

  Ash tried to read Marc’s face but got nothing. “He asked for me specifically?”

  The mage nodded.

  Was it possible the king had been bitten after all? With mingled apprehension and anticipation, Ash set his work aside and washed his hands. He retrieved his kit from under his bed. “Wait here,” he said. “I need to get something from the garden. Just in case I need it.”

  Blessedly, they didn’t follow him out there. He knelt behind a low wall, lifted the stone, and pulled out his hidden saddlebag. Running his fingers over the packets and bottles inside, he chose two small bottles. The first he tucked it into a pocket he’d sewn into his sleeve. The other he slid into a mesh pouch he’d attached to the inside of his silver collar. Even if he came under suspicion, they were unlikely to take the collar off.

  On his way back inside, he plucked a fistful of snakebite weed.

  Harold was eagerly filling a visibly uncomfortable Marc in on the events in Lady Estelle’s suite.

  “You’d best watch yourself, Harold,” Marc said. “It seems to me they’re trying to keep that whole thing quiet. You don’t want the king to hear that you’re spreading that story.”

  It was almost comical, the way Harold’s mouth snapped shut and a look of panic crowded onto his face. Almost.

  “Can
you two finish setting up?” Ash asked his two young colleagues. They both nodded, staring at him, wide-eyed, unsure whether Ash was in trouble or in luck. “If Master Merrill is looking for me, tell him I’ve been summoned by the king. I don’t know how long I’ll be.” Ash figured he might as well take his time. Merrill would make his life miserable for the next week regardless.

  “What’s this all about?” Ash demanded as they hurried back toward the center of the castle.

  Marc shook his head. “I don’t really know, but the entire palace is crawling with the King’s Guard. I’ve never seen anything like it. If what Harold says is true, they’re taking the snake episode seriously.”

  That was certainly true—as they approached the king’s apartments, the blackbirds flocked thicker.

  “The only other rumor I’ve heard is about plague,” Marc said.

  “Plague! Here in Ardenscourt?”

  Marc shook his head. “Delphi. Word is that riders came in from the north a few hours ago, blackbirds escorting a closed carriage. Nobody knows anything, also unusual. Maybe some visitor needs healing.”

  “Why would they bring plague to Ardenscourt?”

  “Maybe it’s someone really important. That’s why it’s such a secret.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense.” Ash thought of the city, teeming with people, and the consequences if the plague were loosed here with no gifted healers to treat it.

  “All I know is, this morning he sent for me early and told me to fetch you, that it was urgent.”

  This might be the opportunity I’ve been looking for, Ash thought. Unless they just need somebody to make the beds.

  The guards seemed to be expecting them, and admitted them quickly after the usual search. Ash saw immediate signs of heightened security. There were ten fully armed blackbirds inside, along with Montaigne, Lila, and another man Ash had never seen before. An uncollared mage. He and Lila had their heads together over a map spread out on the hearth.