“Oh, I beg your pardon, I didn’t know you had a customer,” the girl said, looking briefly at Marco and then back at Algornia. “There’s a sorcerer loose in the city! Aren’t you frightened?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Do you know anything about this?” Algornia turned to Marco. “Somehow I suspect that you do.”
Teresa turned to look at Marco again, wondering what visitor would know about sorcerers, and suddenly her mind registered who she saw before her.
“Marco?” her voice rose. “Marco are you back? Did you come to fight the sorcerer? It’s good to see you!” she flung herself forward as though she were about to hug him, then stopped.
“What is that around your neck?” she asked suspiciously.
“It’s a marriage band,” Marco answered. “It’s a custom up in the north lands.”
“You married a girl from the north?” Teresa asked.
“You didn’t mention that in your story; congratulations,” Algornia said.
“No, I didn’t marry a girl from the north. I just had a wedding in the north,” Marco explained, and he realized the conversation was about to get confounding.
“Where’s your wife?” Teresa asked, probing for more information. “I’m dating a nice boy you know,” she immediately added, determined to assert her own position in society.
“Is that so?” Algornia said with a deceptive mildness.
“Oh yes, grandfather,” Teresa answered immediately, not recognizing the danger in the conversation. “And if I wanted to, I could get him to marry me at any time!”
“How would you do that?” Marco asked, knowing that the conversation had swung drastically, from being dangerous to him to being dangerous for her, and she hadn’t recognized it yet.
“You know, I’d just,” she stopped, on the edge of the precipice, her eyes swinging from Marco to her grandfather and her mouth shutting tight.
“You’d just do what, dear?” Algornia asked.
“So where is your wife, Marco?” Teresa switched topics.
“She’s at our palace,” Marco couldn’t resist getting a step up on Teresa. “The Duke of Barcelon made me a nobleman and gave me a palace.”
The girl had a sickly look on her face, and looked to her grandfather to refute the claim.
“I’ve heard the same thing from others, that our Marco became a hero in Barcelon. Now, don’t interrupt any more, dear. Marco was telling me his intriguing story. Please go on, my lord,” Algornia prompted Marco.
“I met the spirit of the Island,” Marco said.
“Who did you meet?” Teresa asked.
“Ophiuchus, the spirit of the island,” Marco repeated.
“A spirit, you met a spirit?” the girl asked incredulously. “Was she pretty? Did you dance with her? Hold her hand?”
Marco started to retort, when he suddenly had a flash of memory, a recollection of the face of Ophiuchus just before they had kissed at Persephone’s Gate. The spirit had been wistful while surrendering the right to take mortal form ever again, though she had clearly not ever attempted to taste the many joys of physical existence. It was too painful a memory to be made light of. “I did what she asked,” he said softly, “and I wish I had known to do more for her,” he added. “She has made sacrifices for us, and I have to make them meaningful.
“She sent me to the underworld, and I brought the Lady Iasco back to life; I needed the Echidna scale as part of the formula for that. And now I am running errands for the lady, as we enter a great battle against evil, master,” Marco looked at Algornia, and knew he had to cut to the chase. “I have great powers, and I’m learning to use them. The Lady Iasco says that I have a great role to play. There is a terrible evil coming, and we must fight it. The evil has conquered Athens, and Lady Iasco plans to take the city back by combining armies from Barcelon, the Lion City Nappanee, and Marseals.
“She has sent me here to ask the Doge to contribute his army to the war, but today I got off to a bad start in the Lion City, as Teresa said when she came in,” Marco boiled it down. “What am I to do?”
“You? You’re saying that you were the sorcerer who invaded the city?” Teresa laughed scornfully.
Marco raised his golden hand, and made each finger light up, one by one, then made the whole hand light up. He then made a globe of light grow in his palm and drift away from his hand, floating up into the air before it dissolved.
“I am called a sorcerer now,” Marco said softly. “But I think of myself as an alchemist.”
“So you need to see the Doge quickly?” Algornia asked.
“I told the Guard that I would visit him at his palace tomorrow morning,” Marco affirmed. “But I haven’t made the best first impression.”
Algornia stood up. “Let me go visit Sty and some of the others. Perhaps we can help you,” the master alchemist said. “If the entire Guild of Alchemy in the Lion City were to appear at the Palace gates tomorrow morning along with you, the Doge would have to admit you to his presence.
“Teresa, you take care of Marco. Give the boy something to eat,” Algornia instructed his granddaughter, then he stalked out of the shop’s front door and was gone with surprising alacrity.
Teresa looked at Marco in surprise, and Marco read in her eyes that she had no desire to serve him in any way.
“I’ll go help myself,” he offered, picking up his pack and starting to walk around the counter.
“What? You don’t think I can handle this?” Teresa protested. “Go put your belongings up in the guest room, then come down to the kitchen. I’ll take care of this,” she directed. Marco looked at her, surprised by the sudden change in attitude the girl displayed, and then momentarily suspicious when he saw a crafty look flash across her face.
“Go on,” she directed, and with a shrug, Marco took his items and went upstairs to find an empty guestroom. He’d never slept in such a highly-regarded spot in Algornia’s home before; he’d always had his apprentice’s pallet to rest on before, and that had been adequate.
He unpacked some of the items from his pack, airing them out after their time inside the leather bag he had carried so far, then casually sauntered downstairs. As he reached the bottom of the stairs he heard a crashing noise.
“Teresa! Oh no!” a high-pitched voice cried, and Marco dashed down the hallway to the alchemy work room, where he found a young boy standing over a violently-shivering, unconscious Teresa.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Marco asked, stepping into the room and kneeling next to the fallen girl.
The boy looked terrified, unable to speak.
“Did something happen?” Marco asked. He looked at the nearby work bench and saw opened chemical containers. “Did she take something?” Marco demanded, making the boy nod his head.
“Tell me what happened!” Marco insisted, staring at the boy so intimidatingly that the young apprentice cried and fled.
Marco looked down and saw that Teresa was convulsing, and her face was red, flushed in an unhealthy way. Frantically, Marco stepped over to the counter and looked at the jars there – antimony, salts of arsenic, mercury, cobalt. There was no logic to them, yet they all were open, and Marco suddenly spotted a small dish on the floor not far from Teresa; he stepped over to pick it up and sniffed the remnants of its contents. She, or the boy, had mixed several toxic elements together in the dish.
If she had swallowed such a mixture, she was on her way to death’s door, Marco realized. He knelt down next to her, feeling panic start to rise. Algornia could not come home and find his beloved granddaughter dead – the old man’s heart would be broken, Marco feared.
What sovereign cure could purge so much poison from Teresa’s system immediately, Marco tried to think. Nothing known to alchemy, he realized as he failed to ferret some answer from the vast store of knowledge in his mind.
“Remember me,” a faint whisper of a feminine voice seemed to float into the room, and Marco looked around. There was no one in sight. The voice was familiar somehow, he knew. It was no
t Iasco, it was not Ophiuchus, but it was related somehow, he was sure.
Diotima! The spirit from the holy spring near Athens! That voice was the voice of the spirit of the spring. Her water was healing water he remembered, and he had a supply of it, available to him at all times from the finger that Diotima had blessed.
Marco stuck his finger into Teresa’s mouth. “Suck on this, Teresa!” he urged. “You need this water,” he told the girl. In her state of convulsions and unconsciousness she was unaware of his pleading, and instead her teeth clenched tightly on his finger, making him cry out in pain and jerk the finger quickly away from her.
He looked at the finger and saw deep, dark bite marks from her teeth. The water from the spring was in there, and all he needed to do was find a way to get it from his finger to her mouth; there had to be a way. It was the only solution he knew, and yet even such a simple task was impossible to achieve.
He could, he realized in a burst of hope, suck the water out himself and then provide it to her. He thrust the finger into his mouth and tasted the spring water immediately flow across his teeth. The sweet coolness touched his tongue, bringing a refreshing taste that almost lifted his spirits even in such a stressful situation. He immediately lowered his head and grabbed Teresa’s jaws, then planted his mouth on hers and released the liquid into her mouth.
Marco lifted his head and placed his finger back in his mouth to repeat the procedure, while he looked at Teresa intently. He could see no change in her condition as he filled his mouth with more of the spring water, and he hastily shared his second refreshing mouthful of water with the girl, tilting her head back to make sure she quickly swallowed the water.
Her convulsions seemed to diminish in strength, giving Marco hope that what he was doing was working. He sucked on his finger a third time, and then shared that water with Teresa as well, and noticed that the bright red hue of her face was fading, while the convulsions were weakening. He repeated his treatment again, and then again, and by the time he finished the fifth transfer of spring water, a significant amount of the fluid he realized, Teresa had grown calm and her body relaxed, as her complexion returned to her normal color.
Marco decided that the girl could be put in bed and allowed to recuperate. He gently reached beneath her and lifted her in his arms, then carefully carried her out of the workshop, down the hallway, and up the stairs. He would put her in his guestroom bed he decided, because he would be able to move himself back down to the apprentice cot he had used before.
Her pallor was still slightly pink he observed as he reached the top of the stairs. He would give her one more mouthful of the water once she was in bed, and then wait to see if the supernatural powers of the water were enough to resolve her problems. At least the water would address her physical problems, as he wondered for the first time what had prompted the girl to ingest such a lethal cocktail of alchemy ingredients.
Marco laid her on the bed, then sat down next to her as he filled his mouth for the last time with the water that flowed from his finger, then gently pressed his lips to her, and pressed her jaws apart so that the water would flow from him to her. He felt the water begin to fall into her, and his hands on her jaws felt her throat act to swallow. Then her tongue moved with a flicker that tickled his lips, and then Teresa opened her eyes, and the two of them looked at one another as they continued the open-mouthed process that became a kiss.
Startled, Marco immediately lifted his head.
“Marco, what are we doing?” Teresa’s voice was soft and dreamy.
“I was trying to revive you,” he mumbled. “You took some ingredients downstairs in the alchemy lab, and I was trying to,” he stumbled, “I was giving you water to cure you.”
Teresa seemed to suddenly realize where she was and what appeared to be happening, and she blushed bright red again.
“You put me in bed and you were kissing me!” she said. She reached up and pushed Marco back, then sat up. Her hands patted her clothing, checking to make sure she was still dressed.
“You were going to live out your fantasy, weren’t you, even though you’re married, or you say you’re married,” Teresa was suddenly full of energy. “You’ve always liked me, I know it.”
“Teresa,” Marco was aghast, “No! You’ve got it all wrong. You were down there on the floor in the work room convulsing and dying when I found you. I just saved your life!”
“Saved my life by taking me to your bed? That hardly seems like what a doctor would order,” Teresa answered tartly.
“Here,” Marco held his enchanted finger up in front of Teresa’s face. “Suck on this,” he told her.
She responded by trying to slap his face, but he caught her wrist in midair.
“I’m serious,” he told her. “Just suck on this finger for five seconds, and you’ll understand what I did.” He gave her little choice as he suddenly poked his finger into her mouth.
He felt the suction as she took a draw on the finger, then he watched as her eyes widened. Teresa reached up and pulled his finger free from her mouth, twisting his hand to look at it from multiple sides.
“How’d you do that? What are you up to?” she asked. She pulled the finger back into her mouth and sucked on it again, swallowing another accumulation of the refreshing liquid.
“What is this Marco?” she asked in a less suspicion tone.
“I received a blessing from the spirit of a spring that provides healing powers, and the spirit gave me this water from my finger to use when needed. This is the healing water from that spring! When you were dying downstairs, the water was the only thing I could think of to heal you; the spirit herself reminded me!
“But you wouldn’t suck on the finger – you bit me,” he showed her the still-visible marks. “So I had to suck the water out myself, and then give it to you, and that’s what I was doing when you woke up,” he concluded.
Teresa looked at him skeptically, but didn’t immediately contradict him. “Well,” she said at length, “let me get out of your bed.” She swung her legs over the side of the thin mattress and arose.
“What were you doing down there? Why did you take those things?” Marco asked.
Teresa blushed again. “It doesn’t matter. I learned a lesson the hard way. I’ll fix some food for you; come down in a few minutes,” she told him in a more business-like tone, and she swept out of the room.
Marco sat on the bed and shook his head. He stayed there alone for several minutes, anxious to not intrude on Teresa too quickly, though his stomach was starting to churn anxiously at the thought of something to eat. The sky outside his window was growing darker, and Marco decided to go downstairs.
There were voices in the work room, and Marco entered to find that Algornia had returned, and was talking to the young boy who had run away earlier.
“Ah, Marco, this is my brand new apprentice, Boyd. I’m just asking him why so many of the elements are out and opened here on the work bench. You weren’t trying your hand at some exotic composition were you? This is a most formidable collection assembled here,” Algornia swept his hand towards the jars and containers clustered atop the workbench.
Marco looked at the silent boy, who had a pale, frightened expression on his face.
“You could kill someone with these things,” Marco said. “I didn’t get them out.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing with alchemy, don’t do anything. You have to learn what Master Algornia has to teach you before you try to do anything, absolutely anything, on your own,” Marco lectured the boy, feeling like a hypocrite given his own lackadaisical beginnings as an apprentice.
“I thought they were the right items,” Boyd burst out. “I’m sorry. She said she wanted a formula that would make her irresistible to someone, and I tried to read a love potion description, but,” he paused, “I don’t know what happened, and then, when she was on the ground like that, I panicked.”
Algornia looked at Marco with an arched eyebrow. “Boyd, go clean out the stab
les, and then clean the neighbor’s stables too,” the master ordered his shaken apprentice. The boy promptly turned and ran from the room.
“Let’s go visit Teresa, shall we?” Algornia asked Marco. “I thought I heard her in the kitchen, and nothing sounded amiss.”
“Master,” Marco spoke up. He would tell Algornia what had happened, and avoid having an embarrassing scene play out in the kitchen, though the thought of embarrassing the spoiled girl was appealing.
“I found Teresa on the floor, convulsing from all the poisons she had taken,” Marco explained, “and so I used sovereign remedy that was given to me by Diotima, the spirit of a spring near Athens.”
“A sovereign remedy? “ Algornia repeated in disbelief.
“It seems to be,” Marco asserted.
“May I see it?” Algornia asked.
Marco smiled, then held his finger up. “If you suck on my finger, water from the spirit’s spring comes out. I gave Teresa six or seven mouthfuls of the water, and she stopped convulsing, then regained consciousness.”
Algornia looked at him skeptically. “I’ll take your word on it. Why was Teresa taking those items in the first place?” he asked Marco.
“I have no idea,” the former apprentice replied. “Did your trip go well?” he asked, as they started towards the kitchen.
“The journey was very productive. I spoke to Masters Sty – you remember him, don’t you? – and four others. They will spread the word among the other members of the Guild, and we’re all to meet at the gate to the Doge’s palace immediately after breakfast, to accompany you in to see the Doge,” Algornia explained. “The rumors about your activities at the harbor front had reached everyone’s ears already, of course, and they’re all eager to see you.”
Algornia opened the kitchen door as he finished talking, and he led Marco over to sit at the small table that was usually used by the servants. “Thank you for filling in while Sarah is away.”
“Yes, thank you Teri,” Marco couldn’t resist teasing her, calling her by the nickname she insisted he not use.
She whirled about from the stove top, a wooden spatula in hand. “How many times have I told you not to call me that?” she said indignantly.
Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) Page 25
