by Emma Fenton
As predicted, the two guards passed quickly, and Ria ran for the hole in the wall. She slid through without a problem, though the hem of her dress dragged through the mud. She crept through the servant’s entrance—thank you Sofi for leaving it unlocked—and slid into the kitchens. It only took a few more flights of stairs and several turns for her to make it back to her chambers. She closed the door behind her and peeled the cloak and dress from her body, slipping into her nightdress.
As Ria slid under her bedcovers, she felt, for the first time since the Council had announced the fight, like there might be a way to win. She still didn’t have a plan, and she knew her chances were slim. But something warm and light tickled in her chest, something that that felt suspiciously like hope.
***
Ria slammed shut the fourth book on her desk and rubbed her temples. Finding the right poison was proving harder than she’d initially imagined. As it turned out, the library had a whole bookshelf full of texts on plants and animal physiology, but there was no specific book on poisons. She was forced to read through them all to find what she was looking for, and even when she came across a potentially useful plant or animal, few of them were feasible options.
Gorfum weed, for example, was extremely toxic when ingested, but had such a strong, bitter scent that almost nothing could cover it up. Ria knew she would never be able to slip it into Jaya’s food unnoticed, and she did not want to risk a failed assassination attempt. Thaw Moss was in season and readily available, but two separate texts suggested that you’d have to eat half your own weight of it for it to do anything other than make you vomit. Impractical, Ria thought as she flipped through the book. She would have liked to use thistleberries—they were sweet and just a small handful could kill a grown man—but the footnote at the bottom of the page said they could only be found in southern Pesh.
A dozen other plants were considered and discarded, either because they were not subtle enough, not potent enough, or impossible to come by. In desperation, Ria had briefly considered using some type of venom, but that presented its own problems. Ingesting snake venom would do very little, so she would have to figure out how to get it into Jaya’s bloodstream directly if she wanted it to work. I could lace a blade with it and pray that I get lucky enough to strike her, she thought. But that, too, was problematic. If the venom didn’t work instantly, Jaya would still kill her, and then Helhath would be left without an heir.
And besides, even if she could find a snake whose venom was almost instantaneously deadly—like the Seawater Silt Snake—how would she even get it? She couldn’t exactly go to her local market to buy snake venom, or at least, not the type that could kill someone, and she didn’t know anyone except perhaps the Elder Scholar who could acquire that for her under the table. Ria assumed that would take time that she didn’t have. Some scholars offered instructions on how to collect it yourself—something about holding the snake’s head still and milking the glands—but Ria had no desire to get that close to a snake who could kill her with a single bite. That would defeat the whole purpose.
With a sigh, Ria laid her head on the table. She’d spent so much time reading in the hopes of finding a solution that would allow her to win that the days were slipping away from her. How many do I have left before I face Jaya? Six? Five? Even less? She knew it was soon, and yet she was no closer to winning. Siraj’s suggestion that she cheat had given her a burst of hope, a new path to success that she hadn’t thought of before. But now she was stuck yet again.
Ria hauled herself up from the chair and collected the books she had taken to her table. She returned them to the shelf, and as she slid the last book into its slot, she rested her head against the bookcase. She’d skimmed through them all and come up with nothing. Not a single thing to save her life. What other way of cheating was there? She supposed she could hide a small bag of sand under her armor and throw it in Jaya’s eyes in the middle of the fight.
Unreliable at best, Ria thought. Her aim wasn’t that good anyway, and Jaya would probably still fight better blind than Ria could with all of her senses intact. She could tamper with the armor beforehand, weaken the straps or steal Jaya’s armor altogether and hide it. She probably sleeps in it. Ria snorted at the image. I’ll never get it away from her without her noticing. And besides, Jaya was good enough that not having armor would hardly hinder her ability to fight. It wouldn’t even begin to level the playing field.
No, Ria needed a poison, and if the library wouldn’t help her, maybe the Elder Scholar would. She made her way out of the library and down towards the antique armor, careful to make sure that nobody was watching. She pulled on the sword handle as she’d done the other night, and the wall cracked open wide enough for her to slip through. Once again, she found herself in the small study. The Elder Scholar looked up from his workbench where another frog was being dissected.
“Ah, Ria,” he greeted as he wiped his hands on the grungy apron he was wearing. “I thought you’d be preparing for the fight.”
“I am, in a fashion.” Since the last time she’d been in this room, she had barely seen the Elder Scholar and had been so busy with her research that she had not had time to tell him what she was doing. “I was actually hoping that you could help.”
Master Ameer raised his eyebrows. “Oh? I must confess that the future is very unsure at the moment, Ria. There are too many variables, too much that depends on you, I think. And you are not yet decided in your path.”
Ria filed away that information for later. Unsure meant that she still had a chance, and that’s what she was here for.
“I am relieved to hear that it’s not guaranteed I will die,” she said. “Which means my plan has merit.”
“You do have a plan, then.” The Elder Scholar turned back to his frog and made a quick incision. “I was beginning to wonder.”
Ria thought she should have felt insulted but given the fact that she had not really had plan until recently, she chose to let it go.
“I believe that poisoning Jaya either directly before the fight or perhaps even during the fight will give me the best chance of survival. In a weakened state, she will be easier to kill. Better yet if the poison will do the work for me.”
The Elder Scholar did not look surprised. “I assume you are having difficulty finding an appropriate poison.”
Ria nodded. “The library ultimately proved useless.”
Master Ameer looked around thoughtfully before his gaze settled on Ria. “Poisons are not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. But in that corner, there is a small section on potions and medicine-making which was left by a previous Elder Scholar who I believe was some sort of apothecary. I have not had a chance to read through them myself, but if there is a solution to your problem, it will likely be in those books.”
“Thank you.”
Ria scanned through the shelves. All of the titles were in an antiquated form of Helish, dating back at least three or four-hundred years, and most were very strange. Secrets of the Foryste: An Apothecary’s Guide to Collecting Herbs was the only title that seemed like it could be helpful, and so Ria took it back to the table, leaving behind books such as Medicinal Magicks and Venturing into the Beyond.
But even as she sat down and began to read, she had doubts about the sanity of the man who had written the book. It looked more like a journal than anything, and Ria wondered if the former Elder Scholar had penned it himself. She flipped to the first page and tried to find something useful:
As any good apothecary knows, the Foryste is a budding spring of plants ripe for use in both potions and salves, but I was curious if a man could live off the land without any comforts of society. I took to the Foryste for the duration of one Thaw to see if I could thus enrich my life by returning wholesomely to nature and shed the corrupt morality of my peers who so desperately cling to their stone walls and warm hearths. Make no mistake, dear reader. I think no better of myself, for I too have indulged in such luxuries. But it is now my belief that a man needs nothing more than a f
lask of wine and the dirt beneath his feet to be happy.
Ria skipped ahead several pages only to find that the man was still rambling about the purity of his journey and how every soul ought to seek such closeness with the earth. She fought back a yawn and flipped through the book until she came across some rudimentary sketches of plants. She recognized several, such as gorfum weed and Thaw moss, but most were unfamiliar to her. She stopped on a page with a small drawing of a flower underneath a Whitewood tree.
The frost lily, which turns a pale pink only during the Thaw, is perhaps the most interesting of all the lilies. Not only are they absolutely stunning in the Thaw, they are also more adaptable than their cousins, capable of turning pure white in the winter months and living off the nutrients from the roots of the Whitewoods they rest under. These lilies never wilt so long as they remain in the ground and are ideal for potions regarding health and longevity. Harvesting them is a delicate matter, however. One must be careful not to simply pluck the flower, for it will wither and become useless within the hour. Dig up the roots and re-pot for transport. Frost lilies must be added at the last stages of a potion for optimal effect.
Ria’s head throbbed from muddling through the text. Not only was the man drier than the dirt he so loved to talk about, but the language itself was a headache. Sometimes a single sentence took her half an hour to translate properly. It was Helish, but it was old, and though Ria could make sense of it, it took time that she simply didn’t have. At the same time, she had no other choice. She kept flipping through the book, stopping where plants were clearly mentioned and trying to read a few sentences to see if there was anything valuable to be salvaged from the wreckage of this man’s writing.
Harvesting drumpknot weed is a complex twelve step process which I will detail here. I urge the reader to take care. The leaves of the drumpknot weed are sharp enough to slice a man’s finger clean off.
A small bell above the Elder Scholar’s workbench chimed, and Ria jumped.
“That would be the reminder I set for myself to eat dinner,” he said, completely unperturbed. He smiled at Ria. “I have devised a way to be alerted to the time while I am in this room. It is easy to forget the necessary human functions when one is so wrapped up in a project.”
Ria nodded and moved to stand, but the Elder Scholar waved his hand dismissively. “Stay as long as you like, Ria. It seems you have quite a bit of reading to get through.”
She grimaced at the book. “Yes, I suppose. Thank you.”
He disappeared through the bookcase tunnel that she had used last time. Ria closed the book and put it back on the shelf. It wasn’t going to tell her what she needed to know, but maybe one of the other books would. She browsed the selection, occasionally skimming through the table of contents in some of the books that had a little more potential. There were chapters on starting your own herb greenhouse, how to properly transplant Whitewood saplings, and one accidental flip to a page with a diagram on how to disembowel a pig so as not to damage their organs.
Ria reached the bottom shelf. The books down here were older and in a state of disrepair. Some of them had the covers half ripped off, others were falling apart at the binding, and most of the titles weren’t even legible anymore, the ink having long ago faded away. There was one thick, boxy tome, however, which seemed in slightly better shape than the others, and as Ria leaned closer to get a better view of the half-rubbed off ink on the spine, she said a silent prayer that this one would at least be half useful.
Unable to make out the title, she pulled the book from the shelf. It must have looked sturdier than it actually was, for the spine of the book fell off as soon as it was tugged free from the bookcase, and the bindings, which were clearly rotting, split. The front half of the book tumbled to the floor, pages flying everywhere. Ria grabbed at them but couldn’t catch them all without dropping the other half of the book. She took it over to the table to set it down while she cleaned up the mess but froze halfway there.
The bottom half of the book she was carrying had the pages hollowed out. Nestled in the ancient, crackling pages of the book sat another, this one a thinner leather-bound journal. Without thinking about what she was doing, Ria reached out to touch the journal. A tingle raced through her fingertips, and she yanked her hand away. Magic, Ria thought. It was just like the feeling in the air when she’d seen the two men under an illusion spell, though slightly less prickly. Almost as if calling out to her, the tingling rushed over her skin again, this time without her touching the book.
I should tell the Elder Scholar, she thought. Just looking at the book sent a chill down her spine. Something about it was just…wrong. Unnatural. Dangerous. And yet, at the same time she felt a strong desire to open the book. She knew nothing good could come of it, but…well, it was just a book. Reading it would cause no harm. Maybe just a peek.
Gingerly, she removed the journal from its hiding place and set it on the table in front of her, loose papers on the floor long forgotten. There was a thin leather strap wrapped around the book, buckled shut to keep it closed. Ria unbuckled it and carefully turned the cover over. She had been correct in identifying it as a journal of sorts. It was handwritten in a messy scrawl, clearly not the kind of thing that anyone would make copies of. The language was, once again, ancient Helish, but Ria did not let the language barrier impede her. She read slowly over the first entry, translating to the best of her ability:
Wart Curse:
- Skin of a frog
- Hair of thine enemy
- Fire
On the night of a new moon, when the sky is clear, stand by an open window with a manageable flame nearby. First light the hair of thine enemy and cast it out the window. Then light the frog skin and cast it out the window. Burn the flame all night. Results may vary.
Ria frowned at the curse. That wouldn’t really work, would it? She didn’t think it seemed very realistic. Lighting a few things on fire and expecting that to curse your enemy with warts seemed…well, crazy. Sure, she had seen the Elder Scholar give his prophecy, and she had seen the illusion spell the other night, but it just seemed like there would be more to it than this. She flipped to another page.
Protection Warding: a basic ceremony to protect you from your worst foes
- Rosevine sap
- Citrine oil
- Whitewood ash
- A drop of blood
Mix the rosevine sap, citrine oil, and Whitewood ash in a small bowl. Smear them in the sigil of protection (see on page 52) on your door. Prick your thumb with a small pin and press your thumbprint into the sigil. Repeat once a month on the full moon.
That was more like what Ria was expecting. Still, it wasn’t exactly what she was looking for. She wanted a poison potion, or maybe a reference to a plant that could kill you. Not that protection warding would be a bad thing right now, she thought. She continued flipping through the book. The further she got into it, the darker it seemed to get. There was a curse to bring a plague upon a whole city. There was a spell that could make your unrequited love obsess over you. There were pages upon pages of rituals involving animal sacrifices, and more than one that called for a human sacrifice. Raising the dead. Removing a soul from a body. Trapping a person within a cursed object. Each page was more horrific than the last, but Ria couldn’t seem to stop reading. The dark magic itself seemed to crawl up from the pages, wrap itself around her arms. It crept across her skin, and yet there was something compelling about the book, something that made her want to read on.
Then, on one of the last pages, Ria stopped dead in her tracks.
Demon-Spirit Summoning
Summoning a great spirit from the beyond is risky even for the practiced witch. Demons are known for their cunning and for the lack of mortality which marks them as inhuman. It is in their nature to be deceitful. But the witch who traps a demon may seek to make a deal with them, and for a price, any desire can be granted.
She stared at the words, turning them over in her mind. It couldn�
�t really mean any desire, could it? She shook her head. How was she even considering that this spell was real? Demons were the terrors of childhood stories and nothing more. There was nothing dangerous lurking in the shadows; she’d spent enough time in them lately to know. And yet, if she could believe that the Elder Scholar saw the future or that those men at the library could use illusion magic to disguise themselves, why draw the line at demons?
You can be such a child, Ria, Mikhael’s words echoed at her. She scowled at the memory. Mikhael would have had a logical explanation for all of this. He would have said that the Elder Scholar was probably just well-informed and intuitive enough to guess what would happen. He would have said that the shadowed faces were just a trick of the light and Ria’s overactive imagination. He would have said that this book was clearly just the ramblings of a madman.
Maybe none of it was real. Ria hadn’t slept well in weeks, and even she could admit that the stress was getting to her. She could have imagined the whole thing. Maybe the Elder Scholar knew that the physicians were at a loss with her parents and inferred they would die soon. Maybe her parents had not been murdered, and she had only been fumbling to find an explanation for their sudden deaths. Maybe there had been no men searching the library. The only thing not in question was Jaya’s desire to kill her.
But if none of what she’d witnessed was real, then Ria was going mad herself, and she wasn’t quite ready to admit that. Besides, Mikhael was not infallible. She had no reason to trust him or his beliefs over her own gut. Not anymore. And now, her gut was telling her that the spell in front of her could give her the edge she needed to best Jaya. Her gut was also telling her to close the book, take it out to the woods, and light it on fire before anyone got hurt. She couldn’t shake off the bad feeling she had every time she looked at it.
It’s just a book, she reminded herself, but the voice in the back of her mind that always seemed to tell her what she least wanted to hear disagreed.
