A Cruel Tale

by Alex Sapegin

  Now the reason for his tirade outside was clear. The man who ran away from the narcotic cloud may not have breathed the filth in, but the dust that came into contact with his bare skin seemed to have had the effect of lowering his inhibitions somewhat.

  “Were the Informants with you?” Miduel asked.

  “Thank the Twins, the bloodhounds had left the catacombs by then. That’s what saved the rest. When they heard my cries, the Informants called up a gust of wind and blew the narcotic cloud away from people, saving them from death by overdose.”

  “That’s good. We’ll need the Informants today.”

  “Again something to investigate?” Drang asked, finishing his wine.

  “I’m afraid so,” Miduel picked up the pile of papers Andy had given him. “Read this and tell me what you both think of it.”

  “What have we here?”

  “Read it,” the ancient Rauu leaned back in his chair and closely watched his grandson and the Tantrian with half-closed eyelids.

  As the papers were being read, the man’s face grew more and more serious. The light stupor left him; wrinkles appeared on Drang’s forehead. The old elf saw how the duke sometimes pondered seemingly insignificant, at first glance, data for a long time. Drang’s mind, intricate in intrigues, analyzed every word and paragraph. Sometimes the head of the special services set aside one sheet and frantically began to look for another, and when he found it, compared what was written on another sheet and put the finds aside. An hour later, when it was completely dark outside, Drang read the last document.

  “There’s a map missing here,” he said, massaging his temples. “There are plenty of references to it in the text, but I could not find it with the papers. A few sheets indicating certain people who are important links in the helrat chain are missing also. And another discrepancy: certain extracts are obviously taken from other document folders. They’re fragments and incomplete or totally not connected to the general topic, and a few of them contain references to archival folders. I’m afraid to guess what’s there—probably it’s compromising material. But compromising for whom? I’m one hundred percent sure they’re somebody’s dirty laundry. The Servants of Death were afraid of their own archives because the mention of them was so veiled that if I didn’t have experience as an investigator, I wouldn’t have noticed them.”

  “That’s correct. I too came to just the same conclusion. I’m only afraid that we’ll never see that map, and we’ll learn of the deaths of the people noted in the missing papers from official obituaries,” Miduel said. “The dragon took the map and the papers. For some reason, I doubt he’ll be having any conversations with the dragon killers.”

  “I don’t know what the dragon will do, but all my bloodhounds are immediately heading out to search for the secret sheets,” the duke grabbed a few sheets that deviated from the general context. “So, we can take energy traces from these papers and check the geocaches of the residual background. They should lead us to the archives.”

  Drang called two mages into the tent. The Guild members, using instruments, measured and recorded the traces from the papers and, once they’d been assigned their task, set out.

  “Now we just have to wait for the results of the search,” Beriem summed up the situation.

  The search went on all night. The next morning, another squadron of bloodhounds was discharged from Kion, which had undergone special trace tracking courses and training in localizing the geocaches on the residual magical and energy background.

  Drang wanted to go back to the capital already when the mages found what they were looking for. It was three in the afternoon, and the duke and the pair of royal Rauu were dining on Kiki birds baked in a clay oven. In violation of all written and unwritten protocols, three Snow Elves entered the tent and put several boxes of numbered folders at Miduel’s feet.

  “Shall we read?” the old elf asked the other two.

  “I’ve suspected for a long time that the Imperial higher-ups were consorting with ‘ghouls,’ but I didn’t think they were doing it so often and with so many common interests involved. The dirt here can’t be wiped away before Hel’s court,” the duke lovingly stroked the archival Talmud. “With a treasure like this in our hands, we can seriously spoil the relationship of the Church to the Patskoi Empire, bring down important figures of the highest circles of the Imperial Court, and present the Emperor in the worst possible light. It’s very likely that the Patron can be forced to convene a local council of Cardinals or prepare a conclave, and then the head of the hierarchy of the One God will roll. I propose not opening the second and third boxes here, but waiting until we get to Kion….”

  The Valley of a Thousand Streams. Karegar and Jagirra. Two weeks and five days ago…

  “Charda!” Jaga looked at her pupil and shook her head judgmentally. “Charda, how many times do I have to tell you that your hair should be tied up in a handkerchief when you’re sorting the harvest into bags? Not a single hair can fall into the herbs—not one!”

  The girl looked down guiltily. She was ashamed, but what could she do with that mop growing on her head? No kerchief could hold her wild red locks. She pulled her hair back into tight braids and tied two scarves around her head, but it was all in vain. Single strands first escaped from the braids, and then somehow got out of the scarves. The Mistress had it easy: her hair didn’t have a life of its own. They were tightly bound in a beautiful thick braid that hung below the waist. Shining like pure mountain snow, it did not at all resemble the red serpent that had taken up residence behind Charda’s back.

  “Sorry, Mistress.”

  Her mentor sighed, then immediately smiled, and set a small chopped block of wood up vertically. It seemed a bone comb appeared out of nowhere in the Rauu’s hand.

  “Come here,” Jagirra called the girl over. “Sit down.” The elf’s finger poked the small block of wood. Charda obediently sat down on the surface Jagirra indicated.

  Singing a long drawn-out ditty in some unknown language, Jagirra re-braided her student’s hair. Charda listened to her pretty, well-trained voice. The curly red mop became soft and workable under the elf’s exacting fingers. Overflowing with a copper sheen, they were twisted into thin braids, whimsically intertwined with one another, and the five flowing brooks flowed into one braid, gathered by a wide green ribbon. The comb in the old herbalist’s hand did not poke into her scalp, tearing hairs out from the roots, but gently combed along them, which made Charda squeeze her eyes shut tightly. She felt like a house cat ready to start purring at any moment under her Mistress’s warm hands.

  “Now that’s better,” Jaga said, rubbing her palm over Charda’s head and throwing a handkerchief around her shoulders. “

  “Tie it up. Tell me what the “Sial” recipe is used for and why hair can’t get in it?”

  “For creating love spells, Mistress.”

  “Mmm-hmm, and what else?” the elf prompted the girl.

  “If any contaminants or foreign matter gets into the mix, such as a hair, then the owner of the hair might fall under the magical recoil of the spell that’s cast to activate the herbs,” she said quietly and blushed.

  “That’s correct, and then you’ll be suffering from unrequited love from some unknown person, or hate him with all your heart, depending on what kind of potion it is. Now you understand why it’s so important to be vigilant and careful about the components?” Charda nodded. “Even in herbs, every detail matters! Now that you understand that, go back to work and try not to let your hair get in the herb mix,” she said, smiling.

  “Thank you, Mistress,” Charda said, tying the kerchief on her head.

  Charda went back to the dried herbs laid out under an awning. She once again checked the paper packets containing the crushed leaves. She couldn’t find a single hair or contaminant in any of the packets. Sighing in relief, she picked up a knife and placed tiny, thin weights on a special scale. Working under the shade of the awning, she periodically glanced at her mentor. The Rauu
brought a few trunks out of the house and was airing out and folding the clothes in them. In between every heap of aired-out laundry, she placed bunches of fragrant red leaves which maintained the freshness of the material and did not allow ants, moths, or other insects into the trunk. Then the elf opened a new trunk, took out a man’s shirt and sat motionless for a long time, looking at the intricate design embroidered on the collar. Smoothing the folds of the shirt, Jaga hung it on a clothesline, next to a pair of canvas pants. Quietly humming the “Song of the Sky,” which was sung in temples to the Twins as a prayer of blessing on family and loved ones, the elf sat back on the stump Charda had been sitting on just twenty minutes ago. The herbalist’s right hand rubbed her left shoulder, where, under the thin material of her modest summer house dress, the skin bore a tattoo of a little dragon surrounded by runes. Jagirra had drawn the exact same tattoo on Kerr a week before his departure to Orten. Charda turned away. It wasn’t nice to watch her mentor when her soul was missing her son. The girl knew that the elf had not carried Kerr under her heart or given birth to him, but the thin plaque with his name on it in the “ancestors’ corner” told her so much.

  Jagirra was aware of the pupil’s careful gaze but didn’t turn around. A few seconds later, the feeling of being watched subsided. She stood up from the stump and walked over to the shirt. She’d been tormented with worry for her adopted son for ten whole days already. The tattoo worn by Kerr on his shoulder, besides being beautiful and a sign of his heritage, had one more quality that the boy never suspected. Through the dragon and the runes, which were magically connected to their copy on Jaga’s shoulder, she could know whether the recipient of the other tattoo were dead or alive at any moment. The elf looked at the enchanted shirt she’d made for Kerr and couldn’t stand it. Ten days ago, she’d felt a sharp pain pierce her whole being. She was flying on Karegar at the time, and she almost fell off. That is, she did fall, but the dragon darted downward and caught the herbalist in his front paws. Going unconscious from the pain, she couldn’t activate a levitation spell and, if it hadn’t been for Karegar, she would have certainly fallen the four leagues to her death. Managing to tell the dragon to fly her home, she asked him to leave her be and walked up to the entrance with a heavy step. She waved at her winged husband, so he would fly away and not trample the lawn, slammed the door behind her, and without any strength, slid down the wall to the floor. Charda jumped over and caught her mentor, then dragged her to her bed, and sat up all night with the suffering elf, who was tormented by nightmares in a restless sleep. That night Jaga dreamt of wings torn to shreds, a wide river, and the drone of a hard rain. Blurry vague images flashed before her, but she could not understand a single one.

  In the morning she had a serious conversation with Karegar. The dragon had not flown away, but laid under the huge oak tree the whole time. The black monster interrogated her passionately. The dragon nervously twitched the tips of his wings and inquired scrupulously about her fall from his neck. He wouldn’t hear a word of her excuses, saying she simply got tired out and dozed off. She had to tell him the truth that she suddenly felt very ill, and then she let out some excuse. She tactfully and cunningly avoided telling him why exactly she felt so bad. Karegar did not know about the tattoo. He hadn’t paid attention to the herbalist’s shoulder in three thousand years; he wasn’t about to start now. But even if he had, he wouldn’t have seen anything. Jaga had the ability to hide the tattoo on her skin from others’ eyes. Charda knew about it. She had noticed it on her mentor’s shoulder when they were bathing in a bathhouse located at the hot springs that flowed from underground half a league from Jaga’s house. The elf forgot to control it, relaxing in the hot water, and realized something was up when she felt her student’s eyes on her. What was “up” showed up on her shoulder and grew bright with various colors. Charda got strict orders not to tell anyone what she had seen and promised to keep quiet about it, even if threatened with death. The actual image of the dragon wasn’t that rare, but the intricate pattern of runes around it and the colorful background would have stirred up a lot of questions with anyone well-versed in ancient heraldry. Karegar, for one. The tailed dad hadn’t seen the artwork on his son’s shoulder either, as Kerr got the same instructions not to show it to his father until Jaga gave him the go-ahead. She had no time to teach Kerr how to hide the tattoo as she could, but the herbalist hoped that by the time he came back from his studies, she would have found the courage to tell her de-facto husband the whole truth. Jagirra knew that the ancient secrets would come to light sooner or later and that when they did, it would not be good. Enira had warned her about this in the letter she wrote before her passing.

  “I’m done,” she heard Charda say from the awning.

  Charda deftly stacked the packets of herbs into a basket. The apothecary scales she used to measure the weight of the herbs were neatly folded into a special box.

  “Great job, hon.”

  Jagirra walked up to the girl and helped her tie up the unused herbs into packets, after which she hung them under the awning roof. It was true, she’d found a great apprentice. The deceased Larga was a good judge of character. She could very easily see into a person’s soul. Charda’s soul and thoughts were pure.

  Enira had selected the red-haired young lady in a village that had been devastated by “greenies.” The orcs attacked a border human settlement, killed all the adults, and taken the children as prisoners. The girl was five at the time, and she had been lucky: her mother, before dying by the non-humans’ swords, managed to hide her daughter in the basement. The ambulance wagon arrived at the outskirts of the settlement three hours after the last orc left. The “greenies” didn’t burn houses—smoke was fine signal to the royal guards and could possibly let them know which direction to organize the chase. The Larga walked along the streets filled with blood and looked at the bodies with true vision—what if someone was still alive and needed help? No one was around. Enira passed between the houses and in one of them noticed the slight glow of an aura. Soon she heard a child crying. That’s how Charda met her “grandmother.”

  When she got to the valley, the girl was truly worried how her granny would fare without her. When she asked to go to the city, Jagirra said no and told her that Enira was no longer alive. She offered her shelter at her house. Jaga had not once regretted that decision. The girl remembered each herb from the first time she was shown it. Jaga never had to explain what each one was for ten times over. Charda also did an excellent job at memorizing the best gathering times, conservation methods, and preparation techniques for each one. If things kept up like this, in a year, Jaga would have nothing more to teach.

  The red-headed beauty truly came into her own during the course of the months she had lived in the valley. She blossomed like a rose in the morning. The village inhabitants began to visit the herbalist’s house quite often for various drugs. Especially the young men. It seemed they’d been struck with the plague. Jagirra, smiling on the inside, asked her pupil to give patients this or that medicine.

  The “malady” infected Dita worse than anyone else, the son of the leather-tanner, who had a cough one week and a bruise the next. A week ago, the invalid’s father, Duke, paid a visit to Jagirra. The big healthy guy timidly called Jaga aside and bowing low, began to discuss the fact that the source of his son’s illnesses was residing in her home, and if the Mistress didn’t object, then for the sake of his offspring’s spiritual recovery, he would send matchmakers. The Mistress had no objection, of course. She could see very well that Dita’s “malady” was contagious, that Charda had caught it too, that she looked at the hunky guy with goo-goo eyes. Let the matchmakers come, but wait at least half a year. When Charda turned eighteen, they would be welcome at our doorstep. But for now, she lived under Karegar and Jagirra’s roof. There was one other condition as well: Dita’s beloved must not give up her studies or herbalism either before or after the wedding. The tanner nodded slightly in agreement to the elf’s terms, whistled to Gma
r who was hiding behind the bushes thinking the Mistress didn’t see him and headed off to the village with the good news. When she found out about the subject of their conversation, the pupil fell down at the Mistress’s feet and tried to kiss her hand, for which she was punished and sent to gather clover. Barely able to contain her joy at the punishment selected, the girl immediately recovered her dignity and went out to the woods where a certain helper joined her. Jaga was glad that the orphan’s fate was turning out so well. She went on worrying about her adopted son.

  “Mistress, will Kerr come back to the valley before my wedding?” Charda asked, smashing the elf’s whirling thoughts into shards.

  “He should,” Jaga answered. “Why do you care about that, honey?”

  “Dita and I want him to walk us up to the Twins’ hands,” she said, smiling.

  Jagirra smiled too. They were getting ahead of themselves—thought of everything already—who would walk them to the Twins, and how to ask Gorn for his blessing.

  Interrupting that vital conversation for every bride, the sound of beating wings rang out in the sky. Raising a small cloud of dust from the earth with the stream of air, Karegar landed in the field. The elf left Charda under the awning and went to meet the dragon.

  She hadn’t yet taken two steps when she felt a strange discomfort. First, the tattoo on her shoulder began to itch incredibly, and then a wave of inexplicable heat swept over the herbalist. Mana gushed like a river into her inner storage space. Karegar also felt something was off. He saw the magic overflowing around the elf and sensed its influx into himself as well. He hadn’t felt anything like that in a long time.