The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  He stopped short of the spot where he had made camp to take yet another look at the sucking ivy. It was dead now, withered and blanched, but it had been a stealthy and fearsome predator last night, a most efficient hunter. It had almost killed Lusielle and him both, and it had given him a new respect for the Dismal Bog’s deadly creatures.

  His little fire was still burning brightly when he got back to his camp. A tilted plume of golden smoke floated like mist over the dark waters. Lusielle was awake now. Her body was newly washed, her face was clean and her hair was pulled back in a neat braid. Her clothing lay drying on one of the buttress roots. Her shift was hiked up to her thighs and folded down below her waist, revealing her shapely legs and the lines of her elegant back.

  It was an enjoyable sight … until he saw the mark blooming among the healing scars, the clear, unmistakable shape of small butterfly wings unfurled at either side of her spine.

  “What are you doing?” he barked. “Get dressed!”

  Startled, she clung to her shift, staring at him as if trying to confirm what she had suspected all along, that he was indeed a madman. “I was tending to the thorn punctures, my lord, making sure nothing festers.”

  “You’ve got nothing to put on those.”

  “I made a salve.” She showed him a bit of the paste she cupped in her palm. “Cattail roots mixed with golden-willow bark makes for an excellent cleansing potion.”

  Bren felt like a fool, but he wasn’t ready to let go of his anger yet. “You can’t possibly reach that puncture on your back.” He swiped some salve from her palm and rubbed it carefully over the yellow bruise around the puncture.

  An involuntary shudder shook her body when he touched her. Goosebumps traveled her skin in every direction, proof that despite her bravery, she feared him as much as the others.

  As soon as he was done, she dove for her clothes and got dressed.

  “I’m afraid this is breakfast.” Bren held up the lizard as if it were a peace offering and, breaking off a stick, began to sharpen the point.

  She flashed him a sideways glance. “Skullcap, I think.”

  “What?”

  “A tincture of fresh skullcap,” she repeated. “It can help, you know, to appease your mood swings.”

  “Oh.”

  “It also helps with anxiety, constipation and headaches. Do you suffer those often?”

  “Which one?”

  “I’m thinking all of them.”

  He felt like a wayward four-year-old.

  “I can’t promise a satisfying fare, but I think I can add to your catch.” She spread a handkerchief on the ground and, pulling out fistfuls of golden berries from her pockets, piled them on the linen, along with a couple of huge mushrooms with caps as large as his fists.

  “I don’t mean to be ungrateful.” Bren impaled the lizard on the stick and held it over the fire. “But I happen to know that some of those mushrooms could kill you.”

  “I didn’t know fancy highborn liked to play in the bog,” she said.

  “Not all highborn are the same.”

  She gave him another appraising glance. “You’re right to fear the mushrooms. They’re tricky to the eye and potentially deadly, but I have a sense for these things.”

  As she rinsed the berries and washed the mushrooms, Bren noticed her hands’ assured competency and the faint yellow stains discoloring her fingertips, no doubt the product of many years practicing her trade.

  “May I borrow your knife?” she asked.

  Bren looked up, startled. As long as she wasn’t planning on using it on him ….

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting the knife from him and applying it to the mushrooms instead. “You see, a taste of the stem as young growth kills quickly. A bite of the stem after it’s fully grown will also kill you, albeit slowly.”

  “How do you know how far along these are?”

  “I don’t.” With a sudden chop, she sliced off the mushrooms’ stems. “Now you have some edible fare. These are particularly delicious. They warm the belly and grant strength to the body. King Riva has been known to pay outrageous prices for these.”

  “Why?”

  She smirked, a half grin capable of unleashing all kinds of trouble. “Why do you think, my lord?”

  A thought occurred to Bren. “Nah.”

  “Aye.”

  “Riva thinks these might help him with his … vigor?”

  “Rumor is that, properly prepared, these critters make quite the difference.”

  Bren found himself laughing. “Let’s eat them, if only to spurn the old goat.”

  Her laughter reminded him of chimes and peals, adding to the morning’s harmony. His laughter was equally novel to his ears. Maybe it was the chance to laugh that cued him in to the woman. Perhaps he had been spending too much time with only Hato and the Twenty. Mayhap the hunt’s forced isolation had taken its toll.

  Whatever the reason, he caught himself observing her with a sense akin to wonder. The color of her eyes reminded him of the tall summer grasses of his homeland’s vast steppes. The green tones shifted with her moods, chameleons to her emotions. Mossy green was quick to give way to lustrous olive when she was mad, worried or frightened.

  It was strange. He was eager to learn the subtle nuances of her expressions and curious about her life.

  “How did you come to know so much about mushrooms and things?” he asked.

  “My mother kept an extensive garden.” She skewered the mushrooms on the same stick he was using to cook the lizard. “She was trained in the use of ingredients. She taught me the mixing ways.”

  “That’s why you knew about the sucking vine last night, and about the leather leaves, the cattails, the cleansing potion, the mushrooms and … what was the name of that herb?”

  “Skullcap,” she said. “You might want to remember that one.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to be a secret practitioners of the odd arts, would you?”

  “Please.” Her eyes darkened. “Oddities were wiped out of the kingdom long ago. Between King Riva’s persecutions and Teos’s proscription, there’s none left. It’s why that inquiry was such a sham. Did you hear about—you know—the accusations against me?”

  He nodded, noncommittal.

  “I’m innocent, and yet they found me guilty all the same.”

  “That’s Riva’s justice for you.”

  “I can’t even imagine how they came up with the charges.” The little line between her brows deepened. “Spells and incantations are tricks, artifices and illusions created for the consumption of fools.”

  “So you don’t believe in sorcerers, charmers and conjurers? Not even a little?”

  “Hard work, lots of practice and good ingredients. That’s the only way to help people.”

  Ten years ago Bren would have agreed with her completely. These days, he wasn’t so sure. “Are you Izar sworn?”

  “Aponte would’ve never allowed me to take the oath, but I studied Izar and follow her ways.” She removed a container full of bark, leaves and boiling water from the fire. “Tea?”

  “How did you manage to make tea without a pot or a kettle?”

  “Pot lilies.” She handed him the curiously shaped purple vessel. “They are close cousins of the water lotus. They’re plentiful and they don’t burn. One just has to remove the petals around the floating edges to improvise a sturdy pitcher.”

  He beheld the flower-turned-pot. “Amazing.”

  “Izar’s first rule. There’s no waste in nature, only opportunity. Go ahead, drink.” Mischief sparkled in her gaze. “I promise I won’t poison you… yet.”

  He considered the drink in his hand. The gods knew, he had faced worse odds than a naughty wench with the skills to kill him. True, she was knowledgeable above the rest and not without cause to harm him, but he didn’t think she would want to trek the Dismal Bog alone after last night.

  He sampled the tea. He was surprised. It was quite flavorful. To think she had brewed it out of th
e Dismal Bog’s perils.

  “I’ve never seen a flower such as this.”

  “I can’t imagine my lord likes to spend a lot of time pondering flowers.”

  “You don’t think I like flowers?”

  “What would a mighty highborn know about flowers?”

  “You don’t like highborn, do you?”

  “My lord?”

  “There it is again.”

  “What?”

  “The way you say those words is so … insulting.”

  “You don’t like the way I say ‘my lord’?” She struck the same tone that irked him. “But, my lord,” she did it again, “I mean you no offense.”

  He had to chuckle. The wench had the balls of a bull and mischief to spare. “Why don’t you just call me Bren?”

  “As you wish, my lord—I mean, Bren.”

  “Now you’ve managed to do it to my name too.”

  “Could it be that your ears are faulty?”

  “Asters,” he said. “I like asters. They’re simple flowers, that’s true, but when they burst onto the Laonian steppes, they light up the grasslands like stars.”

  “Is my lord also a poet?”

  “Are you mocking me again?”

  “Sounds like you miss those Laonian steppes of yours.” She motioned for him to eat some of the berries while she retrieved the food from the fire, unloaded the fare on a flat stone and sliced it like an accomplished cook in a fancy kitchen. “How long have you been gone?”

  “A while.”

  The berries were tart in his mouth, but his body welcomed the flavor. The mushrooms were moist, savory and easy to swallow, unlike the toughened chunks of charred lizard, which he ate anyways because he needed the nourishment to keep up his strength.

  “Look!” Lusielle said. “A sign of the Goddess’s favor. They’re golden monarchs!”

  A host of golden butterflies swarmed about them, riding the gentle breeze. A drizzle of delicate wings sparkled in the air, shimmering like little flames.

  Lusielle offered her hand with the trust of a creature intimately connected with the land. A single butterfly answered her summons and perched on the cusp of her wrist. Lusielle reveled in the moment with the delight of a child who had just been granted a gift. In her smile, he glimpsed a different world, a foreign realm, absent of strife and rich with miracles.

  “Why don’t you try it?” she said.

  Bren stretched out his hand and was surprised when a couple of butterflies landed on his knuckles. The feat lasted but an instant. As he leaned closer to examine the creatures, the butterflies disappeared with a sudden puff.

  “What happened?” he said. “Did I harm them?”

  “Don’t you know? Golden monarchs are plain creatures, but they have this curious habit of dressing in the sparkling pollen of the flowers they frequent. When they’re startled, they shed the pollen and fly away. They’re around. You just can’t see them anymore.”

  “So those two just went naked and I missed it?”

  She laughed, as if she were a silly girl and he was funny.

  It occurred to him that those little butterflies were not unlike her, nature’s artful sketches, beautiful and clever, insubstantial yet commanding, present but also quickly gone.

  Something about the analogy disturbed him. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got a bog to cross.”

  Her eyes went from light green to olive in a blink. “Do you think Orell will follow us here?”

  “Orell would never dare the Dismal Bog, but he’ll try to beat us to the other side. By now, he’s probably guessed where we are going. Don’t worry. I plan to get there first.”

  Bren recognized the fear in her eyes, survivor’s terror, arousing from knowing pain firsthand. For a moment, he had a mind to avenge her grief on Orell’s damned flesh. But as they smothered the fire, cleaned up the remains of their meal and resumed the difficult trek through the bog, he confronted his inescapable reality: How could he ever become her avenger when he was fated to kill her?

  Chapter Thirteen

  HATO SCOURED THE ROAD WITH ATTENTION akin to desperation. His lord’s tracks had been difficult if not impossible to follow. The rain had erased most traces of his passing, but for the past few days, Hato had been painstakingly reconstructing the events that had led to Bren’s disappearance from Tolone’s seed house. He recalled the strange sequence.

  A few days ago, as Hato had mounted those dreaded steps, he had been afraid of what he was about to find. Bren had not been seen for a full day by the time Hato dared to knock on the door to his lord’s quarters. The house was ablaze in murmurs, that Bren had killed the woman, that he had killed himself, that he had been a coward and that she still lived. All of the rumors were bad, but some were worse than others. Hato didn’t know if he had the strength in him to nurse his lord back from yet another failure.

  Hato was puzzled when he entered the empty chamber. Bren wasn’t there. Neither was the woman. Where had they gone?

  The room was cold. The fire had died many hours ago. It was strange. The bed was unmade and he could see remnants of the burned bed sheet among the ashes in the fireplace. Bren couldn’t have gone very far without his wares. His saddlebags lay unpacked by the window. On the other hand, his wine skin and his flints were nowhere to be found. His sword was also missing. That in itself wasn’t strange. Bren carried his sword wherever he went, to his bed, to his leisure, to the privy sometimes.

  Hato started to track his lord right away. An old cook napping in the kitchens said that Bren had passed his way the night before. He said he thought the lord looked mad and affronted, but then again, Bren wore his frustration like a grim mask all over his face. Hato inspected the grounds. He spoke to a guard who swore he had found the bar on the back gate removed the morning after the night in question. Hato sent Severo, Bren’s best and most determined tracker, a native of Bren’s own steppes, to scour the surroundings.

  “Was my lord in a good state of mind the last time you saw him?” Severo asked.

  “He was no less troubled than usual.” Hato measured his words carefully. “He gave me no pause to think that he was intent on anything other than his duty.”

  Severo galloped away with a worried frown on his face. Hato knew what Severo was thinking. Perhaps Bren had finally given up. Perhaps he had fallen prey to the darkness again. Perhaps the end had begun and he had gone away to die in peace as most men would want to do.

  His lord had reason to be concerned. Bren’s oldest brother, Ethan, had lasted exactly a year after his father’s death. His second brother, Robert, had died two years after Ethan. The third brother, Harald, had died precisely three years to the date of Robert’s death.

  So far, Bren had lasted longer than all his brothers, going on almost four years. However, the curse’s calculated precision didn’t bode well for his lord. The fourth anniversary of Harald’s death was quickly approaching. It coincided to the day with the tenth anniversary of Edmund’s death, which marked the beginning of the curse in Hato’s mind.

  Neither Bren nor Hato liked to talk about the grim deadline and yet Hato had reasons to wonder: How much longer could his lord last?

  The Lady of Tolone met Hato at the gates. “Anything?”

  Hato shook his head. There was nothing but concern in the woman’s blue eyes, nothing but dignified and reserved grief on the discreet frown gracing her unlined forehead.

  “We can help,” she said.

  Hato would have been hard pressed to accept anything from Eleanor, least of all help, and yet today marked an exception. “Perhaps you and your men could scour the north fields?”

  “Right away.” Eleanor called for her horse and commanded her men into action.

  Hato dallied in the courtyard, until the lady and her retinue left.

  “We don’t need her to find our lord,” a sullen Cirillo said.

  Grunts of agreement echoed from the other men, the balance of Bren’s force. The Twenty were the best of Laonia’s well-practice
d highborn fighters, the fiercest of an already fierce people, chosen not just by the purity of their lines, but also by their personal strength, loyalty, wits and character.

  Casualties had been high among the Twenty since its inception. Only one man was a veteran from Robert’s time. Three were survivors of Harald’s frantic quest. The rest had been trained and honed by Bren himself. All of them had sweated with their lord, shivered with their lord, journeyed, battled, and toiled with their lord. They were part of a cursed legacy, and as such, they were part of Bren.

  Still, they were far from appeased at the moment, uneasy and troubled, because even during the toughest of times, Bren had never left them behind without orders, never betrayed them, Laonia, or his duty.

  “We’ll find our lord,” Hato said with a lot more assurance than he felt. “Go to it, lads. Join Severo and scour the wood thoroughly. Bring back news of any findings right away.”

  “You’re not coming, my lord?” Clio, the youngest of the lot, asked.

  “My knee,” Hato said and he wasn’t lying. His swollen joint throbbed like a pulsing heart. That’s all he needed, an attack of the gout to add to his troubles. He watched the men go, looking a lot more dejected than he felt. His knee might be giving him trouble, but it wasn’t going to stop him from doing what he had to do.

  With the search parties gone, the courtyard looked deceptively empty. Hato knew better. Eleanor might be self-serving, but she wasn’t incompetent. He spotted the lady’s bodyguard watching him from behind the angled louvers of one of the kitchen windows. It looked like he was her entertainment for the day.

  He limped to his room and, slumping on the bed, summoned the servants, demanding a tub, hot water and rubbing oils. When the water was slow to come, he raved and complained, until Tatyene herself had to be summoned to appease the enraged lord.

  “Be patient, my lord.” Tatyene gestured for the servants to hurry. “Relief is almost ready. Should I call the healers for you?”

  “Those quacks? Save yourself the trouble. They’re but a bunch of fools. They’ve been at me with no result whatsoever. The tub is my only relief. I should soak for the better part of an hour.” Hato began to undress, dropping his pants right before the woman.