Scarlet From Gold (Book 3)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “It feels like I’ve been traveling without a stop for the last half a year,” he said, as it struck him that he had been on the move constantly.

  “You went on the pilgrimage?” Mitment asked with interest. “I had an uncle who went on the pilgrimage when I was a little girl. He had his limp healed at the shrine. What happened to you on the pilgrimage?”

  “I met the spirit, Ophiuchus,” Marco answered. “And I learned a little bit about being patient,” he added after a moment’s though, recollecting Dex and Pivot and their lessons on the pilgrimage.

  “This is where she usually stays,” Mitment spoke up a moment later.

  Marco strode up beside the spirit, and looked around at the milling traffic of the restless spirits who inhabited that portion of the underworld. He set his load down then raised his hand, and caused it to glow brightly.

  “Lady Iasco!” he called. He kept his hand above his head and waited for a full minute, until he saw a distinctive spirit approach him among the others who were congregating towards him. The stripes of her face were like no other spirit he had seen.

  “Marco?” the lady’s spirit called. “Marco! What are you doing among the dead!” she asked as she approached him. “You’re not dead, I see, yet you walk where no living being can be. How comes this?”

  Marco placed his burden on the ground, then started to hold his hands out wide to invite a hug from the small figure, before he remembered the pain that such an interaction would cause.

  “I’ve come for you!” he said, and waited for the apparition to reach his immediate vicinity. “I was sent by Ophiuchus, the spirit of the island, to come to you and revive you. I’m here to restore you to life and take you back to the land of the living, so that you can fight the great evil that is out and spreading across the world.”

  “That’s extraordinary!” Iasco said, as a murmur of conversations and pleas rose around them in response. “How can that be? How is it possible? Only one has ever arisen from the dead, and I’m no Savior!” she said.

  “I will use alchemy,” Marco answered. “I think I know a formula; I’ve brought the ingredients, and I’ve even brought your body,” he bent down and patted his burden. “The spirit directed me in all this,” he reassured her. “She even escorted me from the island to Athens, in the flesh, right up to the gate of the underworld, at Persephone’s Gate,” he added the specific detail, hoping that somehow it would make his story more plausible to the skeptical spirit.

  “She said that you were the one who could defeat the evil, that we had to have you,” Marco said insistently.

  “We need you,” he added, knowing that the words really added nothing.

  “You have carried my body all the way here, and you have a formula to restore me to life?” Iasco repeated in astonishment. “Well then, Marco, go ahead and pull off this miracle, and restore my life! Do it, and the first thing I’ll do is kiss you!” the spirit smiled at him.

  “No my lady, don’t subject yourself to such torture!” Mitment spoke for the first time in the conversation.

  “Is all this true? Can it be true?” she asked.

  “The secret portions of the prophecy said some things that never made sense, but this would explain them,” Iasco answered. “I believe this is possible. I know that Marco wouldn’t come here for anything less important than this, and it was evident that the spirit of the island held him in high regard from the moment he first arrived on the isle, Mitment,” she explained, as she seemed to reason her way out loud through the facts of the matter.

  “I felt the knives stabbing my body,” she closed her eyes as she remembered the moment of her murder. “And I didn’t care about the pain – I only cared that I wasn’t going to be able to play my role in the battle. I was afraid that we were lost.

  “So this is the shell that my soul inhabited for so many years?” Iasco asked rhetorically, as she knelt by the fabric bundle. “Well, make it happen Marco; bring me back to life!”

  “I can’t do it here,” Marco answered. “We have to travel to the River Acheron, to use the waters there.”

  “The river of pain?” Mitment asked. “You have to use pain to bring life?”

  “Though you and I may not know it personally, that is a part of child birth, my gentle guard,” Iasco told Mitment. “There is pain in the giving of life.”

  “Shall we go to visit Charon then?” she asked, ready to move forward, as her spirit adapted to the notion of life being restored.

  Marco bent and picked up the fabric that contained Iasco’s remains, feeling at once both a greater sense of the humanity of the flesh he carried, and also a greater repulsion at the thought of the fact that he had carried a dead body for so long. He began walking, carrying the load as he followed Mitment and Iasco through the crowd of spirits that were gathered around, all still whispering their entreaties and pleas while he passed them by.

  They journeyed on for hours, Marco asking for stops three times over the course of the travels, and he finally called a halt so that he could sleep. Iasco graciously agreed to his request, and Marco was asleep just seconds after he extinguished the light that came from his hand, feeling that he was well on his way to success in the task that Ophiuchus had laid upon him.

  Iasco let him sleep longer than Mitment had, so he awoke feeling refreshed and more energetic than he had since arriving in the underworld. He’d dreamt of people coming to life, and he’d found himself performing endless numbers of ceremonies to bring the dead back to life.

  He sat up when Iasco awoke him, and made his hand provide illumination, then started sucking on his left hand, drawing water to quench his thirst.

  “What are you doing?” Iasco asked curiously.

  “He can drink water from his finger,” Mitment answered for Marco, who still had his digit in his mouth. “Some spirit he romped with blessed him with a favor.”

  Iasco looked at Marco inquisitively.

  “Diotima,” he said as he removed his finger from his mouth, his thirst sated. “A spirit of a spring provided me with an unending source of water. She is a friend of Ophiuchus.”

  “See, there he goes listing off all his supernatural friends like he’s a big shot,” Mitment complained, as Marco rose to his feet.

  “He is a big shot dear,” Iasco replied, drawing a sour face from Mitment, who turned and began walking towards their next destination.

  They walked for three days, during which Marco told Iasco everything he could think of, perhaps more than he intended. He answered her questions about Ophiuchus; he told her the story of his quest to find the Echidna. He even worried to her about his absence from Mirra, and the strains in the relationship because of his activities.

  “She loves you, I’m sure,” Iasco replied. “I saw her heart on her sleeve that night at the palace; she was worried for you, young buck.”

  “And so you’re learning to be a sorcerer,” she commented another time, gesturing at the glowing hand.

  “I’ve had to do some things, and I’ve learned to do some things, but it’s never easy – I’m never completely sure it will do what I want it to,” he said, then recited some examples of the things he had managed to do.

  “For all intents you are a sorcerer. There is much more that you could do with proper training, but you’ve managed to figure out many important powers, and you’ve done it all from just one hand!” Iasco marveled.

  She began to lead him through lessons as they walked, instructing him on ways to use the power of the hand differently. “And if you truly restore me to my body, perhaps we’ll find time to work on ways to combine our abilities.

  “If your power is truly a result of my own powers applied to preserve your flesh, I would think we could work together more effectively than any other pair of sorcerers,” she speculated, and Marco could practically see the wheels of her mind spinning as she considered the possibilities.

  The following day they walked to the top of a rise in the ground, and saw the River Acheron laying n
earby, the ferry boat of Charon midway across the channel, empty as it headed to pick up another boat load of newly deceased souls waiting to cross into the true underworld.

  “Alright, here’s your river. Now what are you going to do?” Mitment asked.

  Marco’s chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath and looked at the river.

  He had an idea of what to do; from what he had heard about the water of the river, he knew that he was going to suffer pain in the process of preparing the treatment water that Iasco’s body would be bathed in. There seemed no possibility that he wouldn’t at least splash a few drops of the deadly water onto his body at some point, much as he wished it would not be the case. In all his past work in alchemy, he had always watched in amazement as something in every formula seemed to manage to spill or splatter or run too far, despite all precautions taken to avoid such problems.

  He had procured equipment while in Andikara; he hoped it worked as well as his plans at the time had imagined it could. He shrugged the bag on his shoulder, then started down the slope towards the water, and stopped when he was just ten feet from the river bank.

  “Now what?” Mitment asked.

  “I need to set all the equipment up. This will take some time,” Marco explained, as he gently laid Iasco’s body on the ground between his position and the river. He pulled the knapsack off his back, and pulled out the set of bowls he had carried with him. Two were wooden and lighter in weight, but two were stone, to better withstand the caustic elements he was going to subject them to in the process of mixing the mythical, complex solution he had in mind.

  He pulled out the tiny container of Gorgon’s blood, and the handful of Echidna scales he had so painfully collected. He also placed his bundle of flowers beside the other two items, then added the salts and crystals and elements that were more standard elements of alchemy, using up the last of the supplies Algornia had given him so long ago.

  When he had all the elements he needed laid out along the ground he paused.

  “What’s the matter?” Mitment asked.

  “Don’t bother him dear, he’s very focused right now,” Marco heard Iasco say quietly. He went back to his pack and pulled out the extra waterskin he had brought along; it had proved unnecessary after Diotima had given him her boon. Then he sat down on the ground and started pulling sticks out of his bag, and lay them together in front of him.

  He unraveled some of the fabric of his tattered knap sack, and used the tough fibers to start to tie the sticks together into three longer sticks, then he tied two of them together at one end. He tied the third stick to the first two, then carefully propped the three together to form a short tripod.

  “What’s that for?” Mitment asked. “Are you going to cook something?”

  “I suppose I am, in a manner of speaking,” Marco said absently, as he carefully lodged the water skin atop the tripod to make sure it would fit in place.

  Once satisfied that the tripod would hold the skin, he removed the stopper and carried the skin to the edge of the water, then pulled out his sword. Holding the strap of the water skin, Marco gingerly lowered it into the river, then pressed it under the water’s surface with his sword, so that the skin would fill with the deadly water.

  He momentarily jerked back in surprise when the river water started fuming and popping and hissing where the sword blade made contact with it. After just a few moments the skin filled, and he lifted it by the strap, put his sword down, and cautiously tapped the stopper back into place to keep the water contained within.

  Marco carried the now-heavier skin back to the tripod, and carefully placed it on the top of his flimsy structure. He watched the skin settle into place, then gave a sigh of relief as it stayed right where he wanted it.

  “What’s that for?” Mitment asked.

  “I have to grate a scale under the flow of this water,” Marco answered.

  “Don’t bother him with questions. This is a delicate performance,” Iasco scolded Mitment.

  “This better work – I don’t want him building up your hopes and then hurting you,” Mitment made Marco nervous by saying in response.

  Marco focused on mixing several ingredients together in the wooden bowl, then set it aside. The flowers, the Savior’s Rays, the pretty little yellow flower that had red seeds to provide the mysterious ‘scarlet squeezed from gold’ he set in a separate pile as the last element he would add to the mixture to catalyze the final reaction. He picked up the smaller stone bowl, then opened the container of the Gorgon’s blood and looked inside at the shiny, crystalline flakes. They sparkled, and seemed to virtually glow with internal power. Marco gently tilted the small jar, then delicately tapped the jar against the side of the bowl, and watched as a few small flakes fell, then settled into the bottom of the impervious bowl.

  He lifted the jar away from the bowl with his right hand, and as he did, a small fragment of the Gorgon’s blood flipped off the lip of the jar, and landed on the bare skin of his left hand. Marco slammed the jar to the ground as his left hand erupted in pain; he flailed the hand out wildly, and it struck one of the legs of the tripod, knocking the water skin loose so that it flew into the air while its cap popped open, and causing a cascade of the water to drench his leg as the skin tumbled to the ground and created a deadly pool of pain.

  Marco screamed at the incredible level of intolerable pain that overwhelmed his nervous system. He arched his back as his hands grabbed at the leg, making the hands wet as well, and increasing the unbearable pain he felt. He rolled over onto his side, away from the puddle, then writhed for several seconds before he passed out.

  Chapter 13 – The Resurrection

  Marco awoke sometime later, as Mitment sat near him and Iasco fretted over him. The level of pain had diminished, though it was still incredibly high, and he moaned and gasped before he said a word.

  “Oh Marco,” Iasco said softly. “Use the water; if it comes from a spirit’s spring, it may help relieve the pain.”

  Groggily, without fully understanding the words, Marco accepted the direction and put his shaking finger in his mouth, and began to suck on it. The water was cool and refreshing, and seemed to diminish the pain as he drank more and more of the liquid.

  “Now, spit some out on your injuries,” Iasco directed.

  Marco rolled his eyes to look at her, then held a mouthful of the water as he released his finger, and raised his wounded left hand in front of his face. He sprayed the spring water upon the wound, and felt substantial relief immediately.

  “Take your pants off Marco,” Mitment chimed in. “Your pants still have the water of the river on them,” she explained when he stared at her.

  Painfully, Marco removed his pants, then sat spread-legged, constantly sucking water from his finger and spitting in onto his legs, making progress measured in small patches of diminished agony. When he finished treating all the parts of his body that he could reach, he lay back on the ground and closed his eyes.

  “I’ve never felt so much pain in my life,” he said. “Thank you,” he told the two spirits. He rested for several minutes, then opened his eyes and sat up. He looked at the objects that lay about the site, and saw that there was no significant harm done to the materials he had prepared.

  He stood awkwardly, looking down at his two bare legs, then shrugged. He found a dry portion of strap for the water skin, and carried it and his sword down to the river, and refilled the skin. He carried and returned it to its spot atop the tripod,

  The next step would be delicate and difficult, he knew. He crouched motionlessly for a long time studying the tripod and its position carefully, to make sure he knew what steps he would take. He finally picked up two of the Echidna scales in one hand, then used his sword to poke a hole in the bottom of the water skin, so that a small dribble of water started to fall.

  Carefully, he held one end of the scales as the water ran over them, then he scraped the edge of his blade back and forth over the surface of the scales, grating the rock-
hard substance with the enchanted metal of his sword.

  The water turned bright green as his blade scratched across the scale and carried small flakes of the monster’s fragment down into the bowl beneath the tripod, glowing with an unhealthy light. Marco gingerly carried out his efforts until the bowl was three quarters full of the liquid. He flicked the scales away, and pulled the appalling bowlful of transformed liquid away from the tripod.

  “It should get easier after this,” Marco said. He mixed the contents of the wooden bowl into the green water from Acheron, and used one of the legs of the no-longer-needed tripod to mix the liquid thoroughly.

  “We might as well get you ready,” Marco said next, looking up at Iasco.

  “What are you going to do to her?” Mitment asked, challengingly.

  “To the spirit of Iasco? Nothing,” Marco answered. He picked up his sword and then knelt by the fabric wrapping that he had carried so far. “But the body of Iasco? I need to get it ready for what we’ll do next.” He carefully slit the bottom of the fabric open, then pulled the sword up the length of the thick, floral material, opening it to reveal the shrouded figure inside.

  As gently as he could – fully aware that there were two very watchful pairs of eyes observing him – Marco lifted Iasco’s body free, and then removed the linen shroud, laying bare the desiccated, wounded shell that Iasco’s soul had inhabited during her tenure on earth. He stood up and backed away, as her spirit stepped over and knelt, to examine the body closely.

  “No wonder I never had a date,” she said at last, trying to make light of the appearance of her body.

  “Oh my lady, you are a great beauty,” Mitment said immediately.

  “Thank you for your love, my dear,” Iasco smiled at her devoted guard. “Well Marco, shall you finish what you’ve begun?” she asked.

  Marco turned and carried over the two bowls and the sprig of flowers. He carefully held the Gorgon’s blood mix above the River Acheron’s converted waters, and slowly poured the contents of the two together, making a fizzing, steaming liquid potion.