Comatose: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  “And now?”

  “He changed. Whatever happened then”—and Alec wasn’t going to tell Bastan the details of how his father argued about his mother’s treatment with the other master physickers—“changed him. He began to look at things differently. Now, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to provide the necessary healing to anyone. And he’s much more of a scholar.” Alec shook his head, unable to get the image of his father lying motionless out of his mind. “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters because your father is the reason that all of this is taking place.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know?”

  “I wasn’t sure, but after what happened with Kevin, I went in search of answers myself.”

  “You went yourself?”

  “You don’t think that I’m capable?”

  “That’s not it at all. It’s only that Sam has told me that you don’t like to put yourself out there and risk exposing yourself.”

  “For the right reason, I will.”

  “And having your colleague injured is the right reason?”

  “Is there any better reason?”

  Alec breathed out heavily. “What is it? Why do you think my father is tied to this?”

  “I asked your father to obtain something of value for me. And he did.”

  “The eel venom. I was there when you used it.”

  “And your father did not speak of it to anyone?”

  Alec shook his head. “I’ve already told you that he didn’t,” he said.

  “Which is why it is surprising that someone else discovered the venom. They are using it in a different way, but it is no less effective.”

  Alec’s eyes widened. “Eel venom is responsible for what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. From the information I’ve been able to collect, that is the only connection between those who have been taken ill.”

  “Wait. My father. Kara. Kevin. And Beckah?”

  “Beckah?”

  “When we were at the tavern. She was poisoned—or whatever it was. Stacia—the young girl with the vision problem—claims that we were likely poisoned out of mere suspicion, appearing highborn. Had we not asked about Ryn, we would have been treated with an antidote.”

  “An antidote. Your father made it sound as if there wasn’t an antidote.”

  Alec shrugged. “I don’t know anything about the venom.”

  “Then maybe it’s time for you to begin searching for answers.”

  “I don’t have any venom. I don’t have any way of testing it.”

  Bastan gave him a strange smile. “That, I think, I can help you with.”

  18

  Into the Swamp

  The barge moved through the canal, barely pausing as it drifted beyond the boundary of the city. Alec tried not to pay too much attention to the growing distance from the buildings as they moved out into the swamp. He had been out here one other time, and he had felt just as scared then as he did now. Only this time, he didn’t have Sam with him for support.

  A soft wind blew, sending in the stench from the deeper portions of the swamp, and Alec longed for some of the paste that he mixed to ignore some of the foul odors of the medicines he often had used when healing patients. It was silent other than the steady sound of the barge captain poling through the water, a rhythmic sort of splash as he pushed them forward. They moved slowly, and Alec tried not to think about the fact that they were heading toward a spawning ground for eels.

  “How is it that you know of this?” he asked Bastan.

  The older man stood next to him at the railing, staring out over the swamp. He had been mostly silent since they’d started out. “Your father.”

  “My father wouldn’t have shared, not if he knew.”

  “No. I don’t think he intended to share, but—”

  “You followed him.”

  “He was an unknown, much like you are. I wanted to ensure that the price I paid was worthwhile, and that he was completing the task that we set for him. Other than that, he has proven completely trustworthy. Had he not, I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

  “Even if it meant helping the others?”

  “The others mean nothing to me.”

  “None of them? Not even Kevin?”

  Bastan breathed out heavily. It was the most frustration that Alec had seen from him. “Well. Perhaps for Kevin I would have brought you here. Not for any of the others.”

  “You would have just let them die?”

  “We don’t know that they would have died. All we know is that they’re immobile.”

  “Immobile? We have a word for it at the university. Those who study such things call this comatose.”

  “And how many at the university study such things?”

  “Not enough. Not nearly enough.” Had there been others, Alec would have had someone he could have gone to, but there wasn’t, and he didn’t.

  “I followed your father when he left the city. He took a small skiff, not a full barge like this. And he navigated himself.”

  “My father had access to a skiff?”

  “I wasn’t able to determine whose it was, only that your father used it. He is… resourceful.”

  “There is much about my father that I haven’t known.”

  “There is a thicket of reeds not too far from here,” Bastan said. “That’s where we’re heading.”

  “And when we get there?”

  “Then we go fishing.”

  Even when they caught the eels, Alec wasn’t sure what they would be able to do with them. How was the venom extracted? His father must’ve had some technique, but Alec wasn’t privy to it. Had he thought about it, he might have gone to the apothecary and searched through his father’s notes.

  “Did you see how he withdrew the venom?”

  Bastan shook his head. “No. We’ve attempted to capture a few eels to see if we could do it ourselves, but we’ve never found a way. I was hopeful that with your knowledge…”

  “So that’s it. That’s why you revealed this secret to me?”

  “There is a price to knowledge,” Bastan said. “Your price is that you need to share with me. Mine is that I had to reveal to you something I would otherwise choose not to. I consider it a fair bargain. If you feel otherwise, we can turn back, and I will deposit you back near the university where you can continue to watch your father fade.”

  “No. Let’s keep moving.”

  Bastan nodded.

  The barge traveled onward, turning away from the city as it went, heading deeper and deeper into the swamp. He thought about how Sam had used her canal staff to come out into the swamp. He couldn’t imagine how she had done it. How was she able to come this way without a barge—or even a skiff as his father had traveled?

  It was late when the captain brought the barge to a stop. Much as Bastan had claimed, there was a thicket of reeds, all growing densely together. Alec doubted he would have been able to find it on his own and was impressed that Bastan had managed, though he suspected it was more about the captain than about anything Bastan had done.

  “Here?” he asked.

  “Now we fish,” Bastan said.

  Fishing turned out to be nothing more than setting out nets and sweeping them through the water. It was nothing like fishing as he would have expected. Then again, Alec had never known anyone who actually tried to capture one of the eels. Why would they?

  It took nearly thirty minutes before they caught anything.

  “Pull it in,” one of the men with them said urgently. He was a large man, but he spoke rapidly, and there was tension in his voice. It seemed as if he wanted nothing to do with the eel.

  “It’s moving too much,” one of the others said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Pull it in.”

  As they started to pull, one of the men slipped.

  “Kyza!” the smaller of the two said, reaching for the other. The man pin-wheeled as he started to fall off the edge of the barge.

  With
a loud splash that disrupted the quiet of the night, he fell in.

  “Grab him,” Bastan roared.

  The other men on the deck hurried over to him and yanked on his shirt, pulling him up.

  “Hurry!” the man said. “I can feel something on me.”

  Alec started forward, wanting to do anything he could to help, but he stepped in a puddle of water and slipped, falling backward. He landed hard and winced.

  By the time he managed to stand again, the other man had been pulled back onto the barge. Bastan glanced over at Alec before waving him over. “Is he injured?”

  Alec tried to shake off the pain from his fall and scanned the man. He was lying on the deck, soaked and lying in a growing puddle of the pungent swamp water, but he saw no sign of injury.

  “I’m fine,” the man said. “I felt something near my leg…”

  Alec turned his attention to the man’s leg. There were parts of the fabric of his pants that were missing, almost as if chewed through, but the skin was unharmed.

  “He’s…”

  Alec frowned. That wasn’t entirely true. There were two puncture marks on the man’s leg. With better lighting, he would not have missed them, but he almost had.

  “What is it?” Bastan asked as he crouched next to Alec.

  “Do you see those?” Alec pointed to the puncture marks.

  “I see two small points of blood. Puncture wounds.”

  Alec ran his hand along the man’s leg and felt a slight ridging, possible swelling.

  It formed a half circle, and he could make out the outline of the eel’s teeth.

  “Is that it? Did he get me?”

  Bastan looked over at Alec, who nodded once. “You were bit,” Bastan said. “But seeing as how you’re still alive, I don’t know how much to make of it.”

  “I got lucky,” the man said, sitting up.

  “Tanis, I don’t know that anyone would ever call you lucky,” the large man said.

  Tanis grunted and pulled up his pant leg, looking at the injury. He stared at the chewed fabric for a moment before he examined the flesh of his leg, running his hand over it much the same way that Alec had. “That’s it?”

  “We must’ve pulled you free before the creature had a chance to fully clamp on,” Bastan said.

  “It felt like it was trying to tear my leg off,” Tanis said.

  Alec frowned. If they were after eel venom, where would the creature have it? Many animals had venom in their fangs. There were plenty of snakes that were milked for their venom, though that venom had beneficial characteristics. Especially the choran snake. They were found in the deeper areas of the canals, and they were rare, but when they were able to be caught, the venom was used to create a high-quality anesthetic.

  If not the teeth, then what?

  Unless the eel had to intentionally inject the venom.

  “What is it?” Bastan asked.

  “It’s him. We have to assume a bite is how the eel injects its venom. We should have seen it working on him by now. There’s no mistaking the fact that he was bitten.”

  “We don’t know that it was an eel,” Bastan said.

  That was true. “I thought you said this was a breeding ground.”

  “It is a breeding ground.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Alec said.

  “What?”

  Alec shrugged. “There are some animals that don’t have the same toxicity when immature. Maybe the youngest of the eels don’t carry venom.”

  He looked over at Tanis. How large would that eel’s mouth need to have been to have made a mark like that? It seemed as if it would have been a sizable creature, but Alec didn’t know enough—or anything, really—about eels, so he had no way to determine if it was an immature eel.

  That left the other possibility that there was something else in the swamp that had attacked him, and either wasn’t poisonous, or it had chosen not to harm Tanis.

  “Let’s get back at it,” Bastan said.

  Tanis and the other man had gotten to their feet, and they grabbed the net, tossing it back into the water. “This time, you’re going to be the one who goes in,” Tanis said.

  “Let’s not have anyone go in,” Bastan said.

  Tanis looked back with a smile. “Well, if someone has to go in, at least let it be him. I already had my shot and gave them a little snack. We can let Orbal be the one to give them the next snack.”

  Orbal shook his head. “How about no one is a snack this time?”

  They turned their attention back to holding on to the net, sweeping it through the water with steady slow strokes.

  Alec started drifting off as he watched, waiting. His mind wandered, thinking about what Sam might be doing and wondering what Master Helen had meant when she said Sam was preoccupied with some assignment.

  He needed to get to her so he could tell her what had been happening, especially what had happened to his father and now Kevin and Beckah. She probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for Beckah, since Sam had a strange sort of jealousy regarding Beckah that Alec didn’t fully understand.

  He lost track of time. It could have been minutes or hours before the men began talking excitedly.

  “We got one,” Tanis said.

  They both jerked, pulling on the net, but whatever was within it fought, threatening to pull them into the water. The barge moved with it, and the captain used the pole to resist, trying to hold them in place.

  “This one is a fighter,” Orbal said.

  “Stay with it,” Bastan said.

  “Just make sure we don’t go in,” Tanis said.

  “You won’t go in if you keep pulling on it,” Bastan said.

  The two men heaved on the net and finally managed to drag it onto the barge. Alec stayed back, giving them space, not wanting to be too close to whatever they had caught.

  When they tossed it onto the deck, foul-smelling water streamed away.

  There was a thumping as the eel attempted to escape.

  “Hold it down,” Bastan said.

  “With what?” Tanis asked.

  “With your hands,” Bastan said.

  “Hands?” Alec asked. “If they get bit—”

  “Then stay away from its mouth,” Bastan said without looking over at Alec.

  Tanis lunged forward, surprising considering he’d already been attacked, though he probably felt that he’d survived one attack so another wouldn’t be nearly as bad. He threw himself on top of the eel, spreading his hands out so he could flatten it onto the deck. The creature continued to thrash.

  “It’s too slick!” Tanis said.

  “You could try spearing it,” Alec said, watching with a horrid sort of fascination. The eel continued to try to twist its mouth around and bite, forcing Tanis to release his grip and shift, using the netting to hold the eel down.

  “I thought we didn’t want to kill it.” Bastan glanced over at him.

  “If you spear it along the body, and you keep away from the vital organs, it’s possible that you won’t kill it, and might be able to hold it in place so that we can study it.”

  Bastan glanced over at the captain, and the man only shrugged. He turned and disappeared into the cabin of the barge before returning with a long, slender pole that reminded Alec of Sam’s canal staff. The end of it was sharpened, and the captain handed it to Bastan who shook his head.

  “Not me. Him.”

  He indicated Alec.

  “Me? I don’t think I’m the right person for this—”

  “You’re the one who had the idea.”

  Alec took the spear and held it. It was not as heavy as Sam’s canal staff. At least if this failed and the eel died, there was the possibility that they could capture another one. It’d only taken thirty or so minutes to capture this one, but he would rather it not come to that.

  He approached carefully. Tanis got to his knees and started to shift away.

  “Get it before this one gets me too, Kyza claim you. I already have one bite
on my leg, I don’t need a matching one.”

  The eel snapped.

  It happened quickly—far too quickly—and the creature sank its teeth into the man’s arm, and surprisingly, swung its pointed tail at the same time, poking into Tanis’s stomach.

  He grunted and stopped moving.

  Bastan grabbed him and tossed him back. “Spear the damned creature!”

  Alec stabbed down with the spear, catching the eel in the middle of its body. He pinned it to the deck, and it thrashed against the spear, but held in that way, it couldn’t go anywhere.

  “Hold this,” he said to Orbal.

  When the man grabbed the spear, Alec hurried over to Tanis. He looked at the arm wound. It was a bite, not much different from the one on his leg. Skin was torn, but the wound was deeper than the one that had punctured his leg, and though blood poured from it, there was nothing remarkable about it.

  Alec turned to the place in the man’s stomach where he’d been punctured by the tail. The flesh around it was already starting to blacken.

  That was the poison.

  What was the purpose of the bite?

  Alec looked down at the eel. It was long and slender, with a massive head and an enormous jaw filled with double rows of super-sharp teeth. The creature had eyes that were black as night, and it watched him, almost as if trying to gauge how it would snap free from the spear through his body. The creature’s lower half was long and slender, and ended in a barbed tail.

  How had he never known that before?

  There was probably quite a bit that no one knew about canal eels.

  Sam had shared with him how they had bitten her staff when she attempted to come through the swamp. It was possible the bite was little more than a diversion, a way of holding its prey as it punctured it with the tail.

  “That’s it,” he said in a whisper.

  “What’s it?” Bastan asked, looking up from where he still knelt beside Tanis. He held the man’s hand and squeezed as he lay there unmoving.

  Alec returned to examine Tanis. He checked his pulse, and it was already starting to slow. Now, it was slow enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if his heart stopped. Without any supplies, Alec didn’t think there was anything he could do, and even if he had supplies, there might not have been anything for him to do. The blackening around the man’s stomach had continued and had now worked up into his chest.