by JA Andrews
Saren’s brow contracted. “To go to Evangeline?”
“No, where I am going now affects the whole country.” Alaric pushed his plate away. “Mallon was not killed by the elves.”
Saren sat, pale-faced, while Alaric told her of Gustav and Mallon and the elves. When he told her of the gathering nomads, her eyes hardened and she rang a bell that sat on the table. The door opened and a guard appeared.
“Summon General Viso and the map keeper. Have the quartermaster begin preparations for a full army supply and deployment.”
The guard bowed and left.
The queen smiled tightly at Alaric. “There’s not much I can do against Mallon, but I will not be unprepared with a nomad army on my border.”
The queen shoved papers off her table and began to unroll another large map.
“This news needs to be acted on. I’m moving the full council meeting to this afternoon. We’ll convene in two hours.” She glanced at him. “If—When you stop Gustav and heal Evangeline, you will come back to court.”
He bit back irritation at the imperiousness of her demand. She waited for his agreement, but he couldn’t bring himself to nod. He’d been too long on his own to have a knee-jerk agreement with the crown.
Saren turned her full gaze on him. “You were my closest advisor, Alaric. You were the one with the most influence over the nobles, the other council members, the people. And you left. The void you left in the court was swarmed by every power-hungry parasite that could reach it.” The queen’s voice shook slightly. “You have no idea the mess you left me in. There has always been a Keeper at court, Alaric. And with Will gone, there are no other Keepers the Shield can send to me.”
Alaric shook his head. “You don’t know the things I’ve done. I’m not sure I can be the court Keeper anymore.”
“The world is falling apart, Alaric,” Saren snapped. “We don’t have the luxury of you falling apart as well. If you’re not a Keeper anymore, you are the closest thing I have to one. And I need a Keeper. So whatever doubts you have, deal with them.”
He opened his mouth, but she raised a hand to silence him.
Her eyes glittered with anger. “There is a full council meeting in two hours. I don’t care if you feel like a Keeper, Alaric. Act like one.”
Chapter 28
Alaric left the queen’s room and strode toward the apothecary.
There was a grim satisfaction in finding out that his return to court was as frustrating as he had expected. He’d spent too long making his own decisions and choosing his own path. He chaffed against the commands of the queen.
Alaric took a calming breath. None of this mattered right now, anyway. He just needed to deal with Gustav. And he needed this blasted storm to end.
The rain had settled into a drenching downpour. Alaric pulled up his hood and dashed across the courtyard to reach the apothecary.
Ewan’s door stood open, as always, and Alaric paused on the threshold, letting the water drip off of his cloak. The mossy smell of drying plants wafted out past him. Ewan, his white hair rumpled and his long beard braided to keep it out of his work, was hunched down on a spindly stool. Candlelight glinted off a honey-colored liquid as Ewan meticulously dripped it into a small clay bowl.
Alaric held himself still, not wanting to interrupt. He glanced around at the familiar chaos of the room. The table was littered with pages covered in tightly packed writing and peppered with diagrams. A fire burning in the large fireplace reflected off hundreds of glass vials and bottles.
Ewan set down his dropper and peered into the bowl. For a long moment, the only sound was the rain hammering on the roof, then a thin wisp of reddish smoke rose from the bowl. Ewan let out a whoop and grabbed for a nearby pile of papers.
Alaric laughed, and Ewan spun about to face the door.
“Alaric!” Ewan sprang to his feet and reached the Keeper in two long strides.
Alaric hugged his friend fiercely. The old apothecary’s shoulders were nothing but bones.
“Everyone who’s stepped through my door this afternoon has been giddy with the rumor of a Keeper in the palace.”
“I didn’t know it’d cause such a fuss.”
“Yes, well, you always did underestimate yourself.” Ewan motioned toward the corner of the room. “I hear you travel with an interesting group.”
Alaric stepped around a silver apparatus and piles of papers on the floor to drop into the same smooth wooden chair that he always sat in. He leaned back in the chair and felt himself relax. How long had it been since he’d sat somewhere comfortable? Settling back, he told Ewan about his traveling companions.
Ewan’s gaze searched Alaric’s face. Whatever he saw there, the apothecary’s face showed only warmth. “It is good to see you, Alaric.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” Alaric answered. The apothecary had aged as Saren had. Not physically, it was something in his eyes. Something weary. “I know I’ve been gone too long.”
Ewan’s mouth twitched into a half smile, and he shook his head. “You were gone as long as you needed to be. There’s no changing it now.”
Alaric looked up at his friend, but he could find no reproach. Ewan wasn’t the queen, wanting to bend him to her will. He saw only friendship. Something deep inside him loosened. A thread that had been twisted around his failures and doubts unwound, and the snarled mass relaxed the slightest bit.
“You don’t look like a man who found what he was looking for,” Ewan said. “What brought you back?”
“The most immediate reason I’m here is this blasted storm. But the reason I’m passing through Queenstown at all is rather troubling.” Alaric told him of Gustav and Mallon and the elves. The apothecary’s frown deepened as the story continued. “And so now I am here, trapped because of the storm and at the beck and call of the queen.”
Ewan let the words hang in the air for a moment before he said, “Your absence has been hard on the queen. I’m afraid you’ll have some more bitterness to wade through before she’s done.” There was no judgment in the words, just truth. “In the months after you left, a handful of nobles, led by Lord Leuthro, staged a coup.”
“Leuthro? He’s always supported the queen.”
Ewan nodded. “That’s one of the many things that made the situation even worse. Leuthro had positioned himself as Saren’s closest advisor.” Ewan shook his head. “When the truth came out about the planned coup, Saren had to charge him with treason.”
Alaric sank back into the chair. “She had to execute him?”
Ewan nodded. “It changed something in her.”
Alaric groaned. “And if I had been here, Leuthro wouldn’t have been so bold. My entire absence has been a series of failures, each greater than the last.”
Ewan shrugged. “I have no idea what your presence would have accomplished. But I know the queen felt very alone and very unsure of herself. It shook the foundation of her rule. Even today, there are pockets of trouble in the kingdom.”
Alaric looked up at him sharply. “Who?”
“Currently, the most troublesome are a pack of southern dukes led by Duke Thornton of the Black Hills. No matter what Saren does, Thornton is in the middle of it, stirring up dissent and maneuvering to gain more power for the southern duchies.”
“I met Thornton already.” Alaric ran his hand through his hair. “He doesn’t have the power to cause Saren much trouble.”
“Maybe not on his own, but he’s gained the loyalty of the southern duchies. He claims there are problems with bandits, but Saren suspects that he’s just creating a stranglehold on the gold trade between Queensland and the south. He keeps demanding money for training more troops. Unless Saren complies, the trade routes stagnate. Gold prices are astronomically high and merchants and nobles are up in arms.”
“Still, Thornton is in no position to make demands like that of the queen.”
“Saren thinks he is. And he’s blackmailed or bribed enough of the court to have gained himself an unreason
able amount of power.”
Alaric shook his head and smiled. Here was something he could fix. “That’s one problem I can easily solve for Saren. How long has this been going on with Thornton?”
“Since early last winter.”
Alaric closed his eyes. “I should have come back sooner. There is so much Saren doesn’t know. There’s a treaty with the Black Hills duchy, but she probably doesn’t know about it.”
Anyone could have found the treaty with some research, if they had known to look for it. The problem was, no one but King Kendren and Gerone, who had been the court Keeper at the time, had witnessed the treaty. It would be stored in the royal library, but such an insignificant document would have been easily overlooked.
Ewan shook his head. “You have a ridiculous amount of knowledge stuffed into that head of yours. The Keepers were right to send you here to court.”
“I wish I’d come back sooner…” Alaric looked at Ewan and felt desperation rise, “but I couldn’t.”
Ewan waited patiently. Alaric let the words spill out for the second time that day, telling of Evangeline and the poisoning.
Ewan listened as Alaric listed Evangeline’s symptoms and the progression of the sickness. “There was no antidote.” It was a statement, not a question.
“For each individual poison, yes there was. But not for the rock snake venom.” Alaric pulled a small vial from inside his robe, a slip of paper that listed the poisons the villagers had used wrapped tightly around it. He handed both to his friend.
Ewan unrolled the paper and read the list. “May I use a bit of it?”
Alaric nodded.
Ewan held the small glass vial up before a candle and peered at it through bushy eyebrows. The liquid inside was a murky grey.
Perching on the stool by his workbench, he placed six separate drops on a large tray. Then with a clatter of glass and much muttering and clucking, he dripped, scooped, and mixed things into the poison. He soaked a small cloth with a white liquid then touched the corner to the poison. Black, rancid smoke rose from the point of contact.
“Remarkable,” Ewan said, waving the smoke away. “These woodsmen created a masterpiece of a poison.” He glanced at Alaric. “Her leg? The poisoned one?”
“Black and cold.” Alaric squeezed his eyes shut against the image. “She has no feeling left in her foot. The blackness seeps up into her side.”
“Lungs?”
“Full. It pains her to breathe.”
“The blackroot would infect her spine.”
Alaric nodded. “Her left side is weaker. Or it was back when she had the strength to move.”
Ewan looked down at the tray before him. “The symptoms didn’t appear until a day had passed because the blackroot weakened the rock snake venom. Neither would affect her until the looseweed had exhausted her body. She didn’t seem poisoned at first because she wasn’t. Just lethargic. But the looseweed would have weakened her body enough to let all the other poisons begin to work.
“The exhaustion could be treated with lionsroot, but once the symptoms of the other poisons appeared…” Ewan leaned back and peered at a dark, empty corner of the ceiling. He scratched absently at his beard. He shook his head and looked back at Alaric. “I can treat everything but the venom. For that I know of no cure.”
“I’m on the trail of one,” Alaric said, telling Ewan of Kordan.
When he finished, Ewan picked up the vial again. “Do the villagers make this often?”
Alaric shook his head. “They made it just for the fire lizard. They mixed every poison they could find. They had trouble even reproducing a list of the ingredients.”
“Good. The thought of this poison being around is unsettling. Whenever you are done with it, it should be destroyed.”
Alaric looked at the grey liquid. He was tired of carrying it. There was nothing left to learn from it. “I have no more need of it.”
Ewan nodded briskly. He picked up a large glass vial full of a milky white fluid. Uncorking the poison again, he poured it in. The mixture fizzed, and Ewan held it at arms’ length, turning his face away from the smoke. In a moment, the bubbles subsided, and he was left holding a vial of dark brown sludge.
Ewan walked to the fire, stoked it, then tossed the vial into the back of the fire place. The mixture spluttered and hissed before it caught fire. In moments, it was gone.
Silence filled the room like a heavy blanket.
Ewan sat back down across from Alaric. “With such a sickness, how is it that she still lives?” he asked quietly.
Alaric thought of the darkness that had spread up her leg, the way her skin had burned with fever.
He whispered, “She lives because I have done terrible things.”
Chapter 29
Alaric stared into the fireplace, watching the flames sweep across the surface of the wood, curling and burning the edges slowly and inexorably. He didn’t want to remember it all, didn’t want to voice the words, didn’t want to taint this room. Those things were better locked deep inside.
Ewan sat silent and still.
Alaric let his gaze flick to the face of his old friend. There was still no judgment, just an invitation to unburden himself.
The words swelled, pushing their way up his throat, telling Ewan how he had traveled south looking for the antidote.
“I sent word to you here,” he said to Ewan, “but heard you were in a small village at the southeast edge of the realm. After King Kendren’s poisoning, I knew every book the library here had on the subject, so it wouldn’t have been worthwhile to come back if you weren’t here.
“I spent months traveling all over the south in increasingly desperate searches for anything that would help, but I found nothing. I was about to set out in search of you when I discovered that the mayor of Bortaine had an unusual interest in Shade Seekers. He had a small library of histories and writings of some of the lesser Shade Seekers. In several of the scrolls, there were mentions of revivals of those almost dead. I had exhausted every other place I could think of, so I went back to the Stronghold to see if they had any insight into the Shade Seekers’ work. They were… unwilling to help with what I needed.” Alaric paused. “So I left.”
Ewan sank back in his seat, a slight nod the only sign that he understood the permanence of that sentence.
“I went to the library at Sidion.”
Ewan’s eyes widened. “The Shade Seekers let you in?”
Alaric shook his head. “There weren’t any there. I don’t know if there usually are, but I found it empty. Their library is in a tower at the southern end of a valley. They have a keep somewhere beyond it, but I didn’t go that far.”
It had taken all morning to direct a vine in between the library door and the wall, then swell it until the wood cracked. “I could only get into the ground floor. I didn’t even see a way to go higher, although I’m sure there were more rooms above me.
“But the books I was looking for were all on the first floor. Their records of poisons were extensive and well organized, with antidotes listed and cross-referenced, but still I didn’t find an antidote to the venom. But it didn’t matter because what I was looking for didn’t have anything to do with poison.”
In that tower, he had pulled the dark blue book down from the shelf where it sat alone. The cover was lined with iron, and the volume felt heavier than it should have. The pages smelled of decay and unwholesome things. He had drawn back from the book for a moment. In the Stronghold, this would be locked behind the warning gate. Maybe locked up more than that. When he flipped open the book, he had found thick paper pages with ink that had sunk into the paper, as though it had corroded it.
Alaric glanced up at Ewan. “Keeper magic involves transferring energy between living things. Shade Seekers have no problem transferring energy across the boundary between living and inanimate things.
“But the balance between life and… not life always favors the dead. When the boundary is crossed, the living thing is always depl
eted, but the dead thing cannot be made alive. Keepers are leery of moving energy over that boundary because they value the living over the dead. Shade Seekers value power over both.
“I found a book explaining how Shade Seekers pull the energy out of a living thing. When they do, a stone is formed to hold the energy. Not quite a living thing, but not quite dead.
“They call it a Reservoir Stone and use it as storage for vitalle. They create these… monsters that guard their valley. The creatures are a crossbreed of human and animal. They store the vitalle of a human in one of these Reservoir Stones until they press it into a living animal.” He grimaced at the memory of a bear he had seen from the library. It was dragging itself through the woods on misshapen legs, while it chewed on the hind leg of a small deer. The deer was still alive.
“Their use for it was repulsive, but the idea itself was fascinating. It was similar, in a way, to what Keepers do with runes. We infuse them with energy and store it there until the rune needs to work. Except instead of forcing the energy into something, the Shade Seekers allowed the energy to create a vessel for itself.
“I spent a week in Sidion and never saw another soul. When I returned to Evangeline, I found that, despite the trance I had put her in, the poison had progressed.” Her face had been so pale he had thought her dead. The desperation of that day caught in his breath. There had been no hesitation, no debate as to the rightness of it.
Alaric pulled the ruby from the pouch at his neck. It filled his palm with a rich, red light. He fisted his hand and squeezed, letting its warmth seep into his fingers, then opened his hand and held it out toward his friend.
Ewan drew in a breath and leaned forward. He stared at the swirling light, his face a mix of horror and amazement. “Where is her body?” The apothecary’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“The body lives when the vitalle is removed, but it lacks a will. It will neither eat nor sleep. And if I had left her body alone, the poison would have just continued to spread.
“The knowledge from the Shade Seekers opened up new ways of using vitalle that I had never considered. I created a crystal to encase her body, to merge with her, keeping her alive while it kept her from changing.”
