by Jean Johnson
“I need water!” Saber gasped as she turned to him. Kelly saw that, though his arm was cut several times, it hadn’t even bled. The flesh was in fact beginning to wither and turn a sickly purple. Desiccating.
Whirling, Kelly grabbed one of the flower-filled vases he had taken to filling every couple of days while she wasn’t around. Flinging out the flowers, she shoved it at him. He thrust his arm into the pot. Kelly grabbed the second one and poured its contents into the first. Both were almost full of water, but the only water that spilled out of the first pot when she poured in the second was the small amount she splashed in her haste. Instead, something purplish had filled the pot.
“Thir…thirsty…”
Hanging on to the second vase, she sprinted for the nearest refreshing room; Saber lurched after her, gritting his teeth against the venom infecting him. She got there first, yanked out the upper cork, jammed the vase under the fall, and cursed impatiently while the thing filled. When it was full, she rushed outside again.
He had staggered almost to the door and was now leaning against the wall, looking about as sickly as she probably had when she had first arrived in this crazy realm. Tipping the vase to his mouth, she half drowned him while he did his best to swallow several mouthfuls, then she filled the first vase again. That revived him enough to get into the half-bath refreshing room.
When he pulled his hand out of the first jar, it was thick with purple slime. The venom-ichor of the watersnakes apparently latched on to the water in blood and other bodily fluids, Kelly realized sickly, making the blue venom and the red blood turn into that thick, purple substance. Too thick to allow his blood to flow. Only water diluted it enough, apparently. Scrubbing his arm under the flowing water, she got as much of it off of him as she could, while he used his good hand to scoop up mouthful after mouthful to swallow.
Kelly started feeling a little dry-mouthed and dizzy herself, as she worked. Soaping her hands quickly, afraid the stuff had been absorbed through her skin, she drank her fill, then drank again; both of them drank and drank and drank until they felt waterlogged and yet still dry at the same time. And then to the borderline point of heaving it back up again when the dryness finally eased.
Saber panted, flexing his injured left hand. Blood was beginning to flow sluggishly again, running more red than purple. “I think you saved my life.”
“You told me what to do,” Kelly panted back, feeling green from all the water she had drunk. Or rather, purple. She looked at her skin. It was dry, far drier than it should have been. Her feet felt sluggish and numb. A glance down showed her slippers soaked with blue. “God—!”
Kicking them off, she hitched herself onto the stone ledge of the sink and stuck her slightly purple-tinged feet under the water. Saber helped her scrub her soles and the sides of her feet, dousing his still purple-oozing arm at the same time. “It gets in through the skin and stays in the blood a long time. We need to get into a bath and soak in as full an immersion as possible, as quickly as possible,” Saber added between palmfuls of liquid. “Water is the only thing that flushes the poison out.”
“Great.” Already her mouth was beginning to feel dry. “Race you to the nearest bathtub?”
He managed half a laugh. “I think that would be your own, from here.”
“Well, it is big enough for two,” she pointed out, taking her feet out of the sink and scooping more water into her mouth. Rinsing out the second vase, she filled it with water and poured it over her head, soaking her loosely gathered, linen blouse and cotton trousers. Then filled it again and doused him, too, ignoring the cold of the water and the way it splattered over the wooden floor, coughing a little as the liquid dripped down her face. “Think that’ll do?”
“It’ll get us there. Fill it again,” he added between more mouthfuls, “just to be sure.”
She did, and both of them half squished, half staggered out into the hall and headed for the stairs. The sewing hall was in the western wing, on the north side to get the most light, right next to the central hall. It really didn’t that take long to climb to her chamber, the nearest source for bathing, since all other bathing chambers were farther away, in the bedchambers beyond the Y-junction of each longish wing of the castle.
They had almost drained the vase dry by the time they reached her door, however, and hurried to reach her bathtub for more.
“Saber? Kelly? Where are you?”
Saber, hitching himself onto the top step next to the large bathing tub, answered as he pulled out the oversized cork stopper; the other cork was already stuck in the drain, thankfully. “Evanor!” he sang, activating his brother’s magical listening ability. “We had watersnakes in the sewing room. We both need to soak out the poison.”
“Both of you?” the unseen brother asked, shock carried in his Song.
“Yes, from bite and skin contact. We think we got them all in the sewing room, but we were a little distracted at the end.” He added as Kelly made it to the refreshing room ahead of him and refilled the vase from the waterfall spout there. “The wyverns were used to spot-scry. They may have done so elsewhere in the compound. Be careful!”
“We’re on it. Will you survive?”
Saber half-laughed again, though since he had scooped up a double handful of the warm water splashing into the tub, he half-choked. “Yes, we’ll survive. More or less, for the next few days.”
“You have my deepest, waterlogged sympathy for both of you.”
“What did he mean by that?” Kelly asked, coming back with the refilled jar. Evanor had projected that last part of their conversation to her ears as well. She poured a little of it over her face, then drank from the rim, not even waiting for a reply, she was that dry.
“The only cure is a long and wet one. Full submersion, anywhere from several hours to several days, depending on the severity. With short breaks for bouts of purple diarrhea, as the venom works its way out of the body,” he confessed with a grimace, trying to untie his boots with his one good hand and not quite making it. “Can you get that? I can’t heal my hand for another hour or two, to make sure the poison’s soaked out through these cuts as much as possible, first.”
While he scooped up water with his good hand and drank, Kelly removed his boots, then peeled off his socks. Her skin was beginning to hurt, it felt so dry. She removed her belt, yet another treasure found in a dusted chest somewhere, and crawled into the tub as soon as it was half-full, since it was a nice, broad, deep one. It even had a sloped back to rest against. Saber climbed in after her, his own belt also removed.
It wasn’t a matter of modesty that kept them clothed. Neither wanted to wait long enough to remove the rest of their garments. A touch of his bare toes on the handle upped the temperature a little, then he dropped his foot back underwater with a little splash, their elbows bumping. Kelly ducked under the surface, soaking her whole head, then surfaced with a sigh. Water soaked every needy pore.
“Ohhh, that feels good…”
He did the same and came up, blinking against the water dripping down his face. Then curved his mouth and laughed. “And to think I wanted to complain about cleaning this thing!”
She had to laugh at that, too. His arm slipped behind her shoulders as they rested side by side in the deepening water. She didn’t protest, in fact felt a little thrill at the companionly moment between them. “Aren’t you glad I bullied you into it?”
“Bullied?” Saber shot back, mock-narrowing his eyes, grinning at the same time. “You tricked me into it!”
“I was wondering if you’d ever notice.”
He looked at her; she looked at him. Both of them licked their drying lips at the same time, with identical little grimaces. And ducked under the water to fully wet their skin. When they came back up, both were laughing. Choking a little, Kelly floated free to the foot of the large, deep, two-person tub and wedged the cork back in the waterfall spout. For all that it delivered a very good volume of endless freshwater, it was surprisingly easy to cork an
d keep corked. Yet more magic, probably, she decided. I wonder what my friend Hope would say if she could see me now…
Ha. Probably something like, “You lucky woman!” She’d love to be stuck in a tub with a handsome man… But thinking about that would only lead to thoughts neither of them were in any condition to have her think about. Even with what seemed like his recent attempts to court her, it probably wasn’t a good idea. Kelly pulled her attention back to the water, a safer topic to think about, and wondered about its source. “Saber?”
“Mm-hmm?” Uncomfortable though his near-brush with death still was, he felt great to be alive.
“Where does all of this water come from? The mountains don’t seem high enough to be able to collect enough rainwater to sustain a building of this size, if it were fully inhabited.”
“From the sea, of course.”
“The sea? But it’s not salty,” Kelly pointed out, turning around to face him with a soft, puzzled frown. “By its very definition, a sea is usually salty.”
“The original creators of Nightfall Castle knew there was no way to find enough freshwater on the island to support a duchy-sized population—the island is fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, and the castle sits in the center of the two mountain ranges that form its two lobes,” Saber informed her, sketching on the surface of the water between them. “Nightfall has enough rainfall to keep its streams running more or less year-round…but only enough for the local plants and wildlife, and maybe about fifty, sixty people more, without having to ration during the driest parts of the year.
“So the duke-to-be called in several large favors with one of the most powerful Mages of the day—someone Morganen’s equal, maybe even his superior—and that man created a permanent saltwater conversion facility on one of the low rises nearest the bay that lies directly west of here, plus pipelines across the isle to the homes that used to be here.
“Permanent magic is extremely rare,” Saber added, enlightening her as he scooped water over his face to moisten it. “Only the most powerful can cast it, and it usually takes a full year of preparation and many costly materials, the gathering and preparing of which sometimes takes even longer, beforehand…so you can see it was a very big favor to the original settlers, creating a system that could process a lot of fresh, drinkable water.”
“So, where did all of the original inhabitants go?”
Saber wrinkled his nose. “They were Cursed off the island.”
Kelly rolled her eyes.
“Groan all you want, Kelly; it’s true. This Curse, however, was deliberately set by the original inhabitants.”
“Deliberately?” That caught her attention. “How so? Why?”
“It happened with the fall of Aiar, an ancient and once-powerful empire far to the north of here. I don’t know all of the details,” he cautioned her, “but they say that Gods and Mortals waged war over the Truth, many years ago. One of the northern Gods died in the confrontation, and the entire empire was cracked asunder. There used to be a Portal here on Nightfall, linking the duchy to Aiar—there used to be a lot of them, across Katan,” he added. “There was a Seer living at that time who warned that the Portals and the land for a day’s ride around them would be destroyed if they were not shut down beforehand, but it takes a lot of power to shut down a Portal safely.
“Nightfall was the last one the Mage Council was scheduled to visit. They arrived, began the process…but the battle had already been engaged in Aiar even as they started, and the last bit of destructive force tried to come through the Portal. They couldn’t stop the power, only transmute it, so the duchess who ruled the isle—a powerful Seer herself—transformed the energies into a Curse that basically forbade any permanent settlement larger than one hundred people from living successfully here. If she hadn’t done so, of course…the center of the island would have been destroyed, killing everyone.
“As it was, the inhabitants had to hurry and migrate to the mainland, for the water turned sour, the animals stopped eating, the crops withered in the fields…all manner of disasters. After they left…Nightfall became perfect for exiling people. I think the conditions for the Curse being lifted were something about ‘when sound becomes silence,’ among other things. I haven’t looked at it in a while.”
“Charming.” She frowned at him, ducking briefly under the water to keep her face wet and blinking from the streams of soothing moisture. “How did you learn all of this? I thought you and your brothers only came here a few years ago.”
“You cleaned out the castle library, what, eighteen, twenty days ago? There’s a set of several thick books of Nightfall Island history in there, bound in white leather; you may have seen them. They cover the past two thousand years. Plus a new one that’s had a few pages written in it about the last group to be exiled here, and about ourselves that I’ve tried to keep updated. Though nothing much ever really happens here, aside from our occasional attacks from our unknown enemy. We’d probably know who it was by now,” he added wryly, “if we weren’t forced to stay here. But we are.”
She wanted to ask if she had been written into the books by now, but the original topic was safer. There was still the bit about her presence foreshadowing some unspecified disaster, after all. “So…this fountain-thing draws water from the sea?”
“Yes. It draws water from somewhere deep in the bay, purifies it of salt and plankton and other things, until it is sweet and clear and perfectly safe to drink, and pumps it to the palace,” Saber confirmed, pausing politely as she dunked herself again. “Some of it also goes to a freshwater lagoon that used to be a part of the original Nightfall port city, back when this island was a duchy.
“The lagoon is actually a giant stone basin that the water used to be stored in and piped to all of the various buildings and homes,” he added, pausing to dip under the water himself. He continued when he came up again. “Even when there isn’t anyone in exile here, mainlanders always come out as close to the new and full of Brother Moon as the weather allows. That’s to pick up the compressed blocks of salt the fountain produces, extracted from the tons of water purified every day.
“To keep the magic permanently active, the water must always be in the middle of being processed,” he explained at her look of curiosity. “The algae blocks make good fertilizer, too, so nothing’s wasted in the system. Both types of blocks by law belong to the duchy of Nightfall, but since there hasn’t been a duke or duchess of this island in hundreds of years…”
He shrugged, so she filled in the rest. “So…those who are exiled here are doubly punished, because they can’t profit from the salt trade. And if your world is anything like mine was back in its medieval-style period, salt can be worth quite a bit.”
“Med-what?”
“Medieval—it means ‘middle ages,’” Kelly explained. “Back in my world, between our ancient empires, when everything was still fairly new, ideas, inventions, and such, and our modern era, where everything is being reinvented all over again and new ideas flood the world every day, there was a lengthy period of almost a thousand years where everything pretty much stayed the same. The people wore clothing very much like you wear, for the most part,” Kelly confessed. Then frowned slightly. “Though your furniture is more Queen Anne than medieval—a couple hundred years old instead of several hundred, according to the timeline of my world.
“Personally, I like sitting down on a cushioned surface, instead of a hard wooden one like my people used a thousand years ago, so don’t think I’m complaining,” she added quickly. “I’m just…observing.”
Saber regarded her, sunk nearly to his nose in the water. He doused himself, waited politely for her to dunk as well, then lifted his mouth out of the water and spoke, studying her. “You actually like it here, don’t you?”
“Well…now that everyone’s stopped yelling at me, yes,” she agreed candidly, making him flush. “But then I was rather stressed out, too, at the beginning. Mind you, watersnakes and wyverns and mekha-whatsits aren�
�t exactly restful to experience, but they’re a lot better than hate mail, hangman’s nooses, and burning to death in your own bed.”
She smiled a little, drifting back to stretch out beside him, smiling a little more when he extended his arm to give her head a cushion support against the stone of the tub.
“You have good brothers, Saber. A little weird, but then I am in a magic-soaked realm, and that does still take a little getting used to.” She flashed him a grin.
“You certainly look healthier than you did when you first arrived a month ago,” he pointed out, eyeing her. Then smiled wryly. “Well, you did look better…”
She splashed him a little. “Thanks a lot!”
He splashed her back.
She started to get into a water fight with him, and someone knocked on the door. Breaking off, she clutched the rim of the solid granite tub. “Come in!”
Trevan and Koranen entered, both carrying trays. They slowed at the sight of both Saber and Kelly up to their necks in steaming water, then blinked and stopped. Thankfully, both men realized the pair were still more or less fully clothed under the water and finished their approach. Trevan with a cat-spotted-the-canary grin, and Koranen with a small smile of his own. And slightly flushed cheeks.
“Well…Glad to see the two of you fishies are enjoying the ducal suite’s hospitality,” Trevan purred, setting his tray down on the broad stone shelf at the foot of the tub. “You managed to kill all of the watersnakes, at least. But our unknown assailant used one of the other two wyverns before we destroyed them all to Gate three demonlings from the Netherhells into one of the empty guest rooms.”
“Your efforts at slave-driving us in cleaning and tidying that particular chamber have gone to waste,” Koranen explained to Kelly, setting his own tray on the shelf at the head of the stone tub. “Morganen caught the teleportation as it was happening and managed to send the fourth and following demonlings back on their master, but the portal was shut too quickly for him to get a location fix. Even Morg has trouble doing all of that on top of rebounding demonlings back on their original summoners, and fighting off the wyverns. But the other three were captured and banished back to their plane of existence the moment he was free to deal with them, so we’re safe for a little while.”
