The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  Orell blocked the skillful blow. Bren jumped back just in time to avoid a slash to the ribs. Orell came at him with a powerful series of hacks. Bren braced himself and met the blows, stepping back to deflect the strikes, wearing out Orell in a deliberate chase around the shrine.

  But Lusielle must have thought he was in trouble, because she flung herself on Orell’s back, scratching his face and poking at his eyes like an eagle defending her nest. The Ascended entered the fray too, clinging to Orell’s leg.

  Damn fools. “Get out of the way!”

  Orell flung Lusielle over his head, hacking at the Ascended. The sound of metal colliding with bone announced a hit. Bren whirled, striking the sword out of Orell’s sweaty hands and landing both his feet on the brute’s broad chest.

  Orell shot backwards, crashing against the boarded gates, breaking through the boards. The back of his head collided with the horns of the stone-carved ram flanking the shrine across. Bren followed, ready to end Orell’s troubles once and for all.

  The Ascended yanked him back into the desecrated shrine. “You’ll die if you kill him on sacred soil. It’s a sentence you can’t commute, a fate you can’t escape.”

  “He’s right,” Lusielle said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  A small crowd of surprised bystanders were gathering around Orell. Death sentence or not, Bren’s chance to kill him had passed.

  He grabbed Lusielle’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “We can’t leave Vestor behind,” she said. “Orell saw him. He knows he helped us.”

  The Ascended had been helping Lusielle? That changed some things, but only a little.

  “Lusielle,” he said. “Be reasonable. We can’t take him with us. He can’t run with that slash on his leg.”

  “He’s right.” The Ascended limped to the window and peeked out. “The crowd is getting bigger. Orell is still senseless, but you need to go.”

  “I’m not leaving you behind,” Lusielle said with a certainty that irked Bren. “Once outside, we’ll find you a ride. I know where we can get one.”

  The Ascended stammered. “I-I haven’t been out of these walls since I got here!”

  “This is your chance,” Lusielle said. “Bren, put this on.”

  She tossed him a red robe, the same one she had been wearing when he had first spotted her going into the boarded shrine. Bren didn’t have time to argue. He sheathed his sword, put on the robe and hooked an arm under Vestor’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “There’s no way out of the temple but the main gates,” Vestor said.

  “That’s what you think.”

  As dusk overtook the day, they skirted the crowd and plunged into the poorly lit back alleys, avoiding the king’s men. The red robes prevented anyone they met from questioning them. Not even the limping Ascended elicited a challenge.

  The fierce Goddess would have to be in an indulgent mood if she was going to allow them out of the thirteenth temple. But then again, Brennus the First would not have let something as elemental as escape up to the capricious Goddess.

  * * *

  The scent of smoke perfumed the air. After hours of crawling through Brennus the First’s tunnels, the sight of a million stars blazing in the sky welcomed them into the night. The tunnel ended beneath a centenary oak in a little knoll at the edge of the forest. Bren was relieved. They were alive. They had thwarted Orell and his brutes. They had survived the Dismal Bog, the temple and the tunnel. It was only a matter of fleeing the kingdom now.

  “It won’t be long before Orell realizes we’re no longer in the temple,” Bren said. “We need to get out of here, find Hato and rejoin my men.”

  “You need to rejoin your men,” Vestor said. “Lusielle doesn’t.”

  “Don’t start with me,” Bren said.

  “You’re risking her life.”

  “And what is she to you?”

  “More than the sport she is to you.”

  So Lusielle had told the Ascended her version of the story and that did nothing to appease Bren’s temper.

  “You need to let her go,” Vestor said.

  Bren scoffed. “With you?”

  “Like you have the best intentions—”

  “And what do you have to offer?”

  “I can find refuge with my kin. She’s got a chance with me—”

  “Whereas she has none with me. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Can you deny it?” Vestor said. “She has plans, you know. She has dreams you’d kill for sport.”

  “Why would she tell you that?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Bren didn’t know what bothered him more, that Lusielle had confided in the Ascended, a man she had just met, or that she had chosen to confide in Vestor over him.

  “She’s a good soul,” Vestor said. “Give her a chance.”

  “A chance to do what?”

  “A chance to go free. A chance to decide whether she wants to go with you or with me.”

  Something was building in Bren, a dangerous violence.

  “Where is she anyway?” Vestor looked around.

  Bren spotted Lusielle with her back straight and a sure step, marching at a good clip out of the forest.

  “Lusielle?” He took off after her, leaving the limping Ascended behind. “Lusielle!” he said when he caught up with her. “Where are you going?”

  “I thought I’d do something useful while you two argued,” she said. “I’m going to get a mule, so Vestor can ride and we can put some distance between us and Orell.”

  “You’re going to steal a mule from the camp?”

  “I’m not going to steal a mule. I’m going to collect the mule I earned when I mixed a potion earlier today. If you wait here along with Vestor, I should be back very soon.”

  Bren started to obey her—an impulse he couldn’t explain—then decided it would be safer if he accompanied her. “I’m coming with you,” he said, catching up.

  “Do try to stay out of sight and out of trouble, will you?”

  She had a way of making him feel like a naughty child. Half the time, he didn’t mind it anymore.

  The camp was a mismatch of tents, campfires and wagons. People gathered around cooking grills and steaming kettles, talking, laughing, singing, telling stories. Nobody took notice of them. The scent of traveling soup and fowl on the spits enticed the appetite. A merry flute added to the convivial atmosphere. A man could dream of lounging about the fire with a full belly and a pretty wench.

  Lusielle made her way to the river and beyond the camp, until at last she found the tent of the woman she was seeking in the far reaches of the campground. A hobbled mule grazed nearby on the bank. Nelia sat on a stump, drinking her supper alone. No longer red or swollen, the woman’s eye looked most improved.

  “You came!” Nelia jumped to her feet when she saw Lusielle. “I knew you’d want your mule. Would you like something to eat?”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Lusielle said.

  “This way.” She led Lusielle towards the hobbled beast. “She’s a bit stubborn, sometimes. She needs a strong hand. Did you come alone?”

  Lusielle said yes, but when she tried to take the ropes, the mule balked and tried to bite her. Bren came to her aid, taming the beast with a firm tug of the halter.

  “You might want to unknot the hobbling strap,” the woman suggested.

  Bren was bending over to do just that when pain seared through his body like the strike of fire. He jerked, but the pain increased along with the violence. Yanked from behind, his belt broke. The little pouch hanging from it plummeted to the ground. He reached out to catch it, but his arms barely twitched. He watched in helpless horror as the pouch containing the Laonian garnets he had worked so hard to retrieve bounced on the riverbank and dropped into the water with a final plunk.

  He tried to speak, but only a strangled hiss came out of his mouth. He stumbled, dropped to his knees and fell on the ground. Something warm and sticky was drenching the back
of his clothes. He heard a commotion. The mule was braying. Lusielle and Nelia were fighting over a bloody dirk, a thin, long, dripping blade.

  “Murderer!” Nelia was screaming. “Did you think her murder would go unpunished just because she didn’t have any men folk to avenge her? Did you think your filthy coin could atone for her murder?”

  “What have you done?” Lusielle was saying. “Why have you done this?”

  “He killed her,” Nelia said. “He killed my sister!”

  “Who?” Bren wanted to say, but his lips were slack and his throat bubbled with something thick and acrid. His vision began to sputter.

  Vestor stumbled out of the shadows to aid Lusielle, wrestling the other woman to the ground, grappling for the knife.

  When Bren next knew, Lusielle’s face hovered over him. Tears flowed from her eyes. Tears for him?

  As he lay on a pool of blood, the night took over, erasing Lusielle from his world, filling his head with a cold, merciful darkness. The last thing he heard was the old woman, crying a bitter name.

  “Godivina!”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  LUSIELLE STARED IN HORROR AS THE life drained from the Lord of Laonia. The expression on his face shifted from pain to oblivion. She had to staunch the bleeding, but how? She pressed her hands against his side, shocked by the sheer amount of blood pouring from the puncture.

  “Vestor,” she cried out. “Over here! He’s been wounded!”

  Vestor had just managed to whack Nelia unconscious. She was senseless but breathing. He hobbled over to Lusielle, and kneeling next to her, examined the gruesome injury.

  “This is bad,” he said. “Deep. If the wound doesn’t kill him outright, the festering will.”

  “I can fight the festering,” Lusielle said with a lot more conviction that she felt. “As long as we can keep him alive—”

  “There’s nothing I can do if the blade lacerated the liver—”

  “Maybe it didn’t.”

  “He’d be a lucky bastard if it didn’t.” Vestor ripped the sleeve from his mantle and, folding it many times over, pressed it against the wound. “All we can do is try to stop the bleeding, keep him warm and feed him some drink if he’ll take it.”

  “We can do more than that.”

  Lusielle rummaged through her remedy case. What could have incited an otherwise nice woman to attack Bren as savagely as she had? Murder, she had said. Revenge. Even if that was the case, how had Nelia found Bren? And who by the gods was Godivina?

  She found the little bottle she had filled with her cleansing decoction. She poured some of it on a clean rag she snatched from Nelia’s line and handed it over to Vestor. If Bren lived, the potion would help stave off the infection.

  Old Nelia’s water pot was steaming over the fire. Lusielle selected four of the labeled little packets from her remedy case. To slow the bleeding, she dumped the whole packet of dry cocklebur into the boiling water, adding a measure of white lianas. To double the potion’s effectiveness, she added a generous pinch of Pyrigian dust and a fistful of calendula powder for good measure. She searched Nelia’s cooking bag for something to serve as a better delivery means than water and was thankful to find a honey jar.

  “Look what I found!”

  “We don’t have time to mix remedies,” Vestor said. “People in the camp are likely to get curious if Nelia doesn’t show up. She’ll be hard to keep quiet once she wakes. And Orell is going to take to the road as soon as the sun comes up.”

  As if she didn’t know all that. “Just this one remedy, to staunch off the bleeding.” She stirred the mixture. “Then we go.”

  “Go where?”

  Lusielle had to think about that. She removed the brew from the fire. Most of the water had evaporated during the boil, leaving a mushy mixture at the bottom. She added a stream of honey—a much more effective means to deliver her ingredients’ blood clotting properties—which was also known to prevent festering and help healing, swelling and scarring.

  It was by far the fastest remedy she had ever mixed. After stirring it all together and reciting her little prayer, she dipped a strip of yellowed linen in the poultice and applied the honey-soaked bandage to the wound, pressing it lightly to allow the enabled ingredients to seep into the narrow wound.

  “His respiration is ragged,” Vestor said. “I can barely feel a pulse. Laonia’s lord won’t survive weeks on the road. You, on the other hand, could outrun Orell if we leave now. We could go to my kinfolk. They’re far to the north. Or else—”

  “What are the closest towns to here?”

  “You’ve got Askana, some twenty leagues to the west; Revston maybe ten leagues to the north; Tosania, Belitania and Bovair are along the Nerpes—”

  “Bovair? How far is it from here?”

  “Some sixteen leagues or so.”

  It wasn’t the nearest town, which gave them an advantage, because Orell was likely to sprint for the nearest settlements.

  “You’ll be better off leaving him behind,” Vestor said.

  “How can you consider such a thing?”

  “I’m thinking about what’s best for you.”

  Lusielle fought a surge of frustration. “I can think for myself!”

  “The bleeding is slowing down.”

  “What?”

  “The bleeding,” Vestor said. “It has stopped. Your poultice is working.”

  Thank the Thousand Gods. “You might want to put some of that on your leg too.”

  Vestor tended to his own wound while Lusielle dressed Bren’s. After laying Nelia on her pallet, they loaded the lord onto the mule. It wasn’t easy. Unable to walk for long distances, Vestor rode behind Bren, bracing the senseless man. Lusielle led the balking mule down the forest track, avoiding the main road.

  Part of her was too frightened to think about anything but her next step. Part of her was set on her dubious plan with unshakable resolve. The smartest part of her kept mocking her choices. Not content with her tribulations, she had added a few more difficulties to her already troubled situation: a stubborn mule, a wounded Ascended and a dying lord.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  THE MAIN HALL OF BELTANIA’S MOST senior magistrate was clad with copious bunches of sweet-smelling roses and fresh evergreen garlands. Hato could barely keep his compulsive sneezing under control. Beltania’s most fashionable highborn were in full attendance, and so were the area’s wealthiest merchants, strutting their finest silks for each other’s benefit.

  King Riva was sitting on the dais, surrounded by a crowd of social climbers shamelessly competing for royal attention. Good. Hato had no desire to commune with the king. He just wanted to make his inquiries and get out.

  Standing by the doors, Hato wiped off the rust from his tarnished Chamber Lord’s medals and straightened his rumpled overcoat. A saddlebag was hardly the place to store formal attire and a groom would have been helpful in rehabilitating his dress. But he didn’t have the conveniences of a traveling trunk or an attendant these days. You vain fool.

  He strolled into the crowded room, leaning as discreetly as possible on his bejeweled walking staff. On the day Edmund had become Lord of Laonia, he had gifted Hato the staff as a symbol of his appointment as Chamber Lord. These days, it served more for function than for form, bearing the weight of his stubbornly swollen knee.

  He spotted Bausto all the way across the room, by the food table, of course. Ernilda, his statuesque giant of a wife stood by his side, a fine example of authentic but graceful aging. Both looked down their noses, completely out of place among Beltania’s richest tradesmen. Hato experienced a sudden surge of kinship with his fellow highborn. Mixing high and baseborn served Riva’s purposes well, but it never made for a merry gathering.

  Hato approached Bausto. “My lord.” He nodded formally. “My lady.” After so many months on the saddle, he felt a bit out of form.

  “Hato, my friend, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” Bausto said. “It’s good to know that y
ou’re ….”

  “Alive?” Ernilda said, blunt as always. “Is your lord also of this world?”

  “My lord endures,” or so Hato hoped.

  “I’m glad to see a familiar face in this rabble.” Bausto wrinkled his prominent nose. “How many new men do you suppose people this hall? Hundreds? Thousands?”

  Ernilda rolled her eyes. “The future belongs to these wretches.”

  “Look,” Bausto said, “Konia’s lord is here.”

  “He’s coming this way.” Ernilda waved.

  “Poor man,” Bausto said. “All he has left now is a grandson still in the cradle. He lost his son last summer in a hunting accident.”

  Ernilda scoffed.

  “You don’t think Konia’s lordling died as a result of a hunting accident?” Hato said.

  “Not even his dogs believe it was an accident.”

  “Forgive my conspiracy-obsessed wife, my lord. She has a wild imagination.”

  “Forgive my spineless husband, my lord. He has less balls than imagination.”

  Konia’s lord reached the little group just in time to prevent an all-out battle between the warring spouses.

  “My lords and lady,” Arnulf said in greeting, “a respite from the common and the crass.”

  “Indeed,” Hato said. “I was surprised to hear you’d be attending Riva’s banquet.”

  “At times like these, one must strive to pursue a flexible strategy,” Arnulf said.

  “These parties are an occupational peril,” Bausto said.

  “Fear is a powerful invitation,” Ernilda said, “and highborn never balk at fashionable trends.”

  “Stand down, wife,” Bausto said. “I surrender.”

  “And well you should.” Ernilda turned to Hato. “Tell us, my lord, what brings you to this fine reunion?”

  “Riva’s invitation was open to all highborn.”

  “True, but your lord isn’t here, Laonia is barely at peace with the kingdom, and I can’t imagine you enjoy this banquet any more than we do.”