The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  “My lord needed it,” Lusielle said to Khalia and it wasn’t an apology.

  As his eyes fell on Arnulf’s strip, Hato had to still his leaping heart. Judging by the ornate decorations that encased the verse on all sides but the bottom, this strip had been at the top of the page. Hato fitted the other two strips against the first. The bluntly cut edges of Lambage’s strips fitted perfectly against the bottom of Arnulf’s verse. Ripping the page out of his journal, Hato placed Robert’s verse in the empty space between Lambage’s and Hillisel’s strips.

  “I think there were five verses on the original page. If I’m correct, then the text would read as follows:

  In truth I dabble,

  In songs I trade,

  In fear supreme I reign.

  In dread I deal, with black I kill.

  Shiver when you hear my steps

  Doomed and damned are the souls of the wicked,

  Useless are their struggles.

  Few have the courage to endure me,

  None has the mettle to embrace me.

  The wicked will be upheld.

  The mighty will fight,

  The wealthy defy,

  The mark of the Goddess reveals:

  Hunt, test, trial? Tease, chance, fate?

  The wicked shall prevail.

  The highest will plummet,

  The lowliest will rise,

  A venomous battle decides.

  The damned can’t be free, but the free can be damned,

  Just as surely as the wicked will win.

  “It’s quite the proclamation,” Lusielle said. “If this were a curse, can you tell me, according to your research, which part of it would be which?”

  Khalia reread the strips quickly. “I’d have to guess that the first paragraph is a signature of sorts. In very old curses, the curse giver sometimes signs with an explanation of the trade and a boast. Wouldn’t you agree, Hato?”

  “Aye,” Hato said. “I’d venture to say that the second one is the affliction. The third paragraph is the provision. We know what it means for sure, because Robert gave us the meaning of it during his madness.”

  It struck Hato as strange that Lusielle didn’t ask about the specifics. Perhaps she already knew. Perhaps she didn’t want to know. In any case, she focused on the last verse.

  “What do you think this one means?”

  “It could be another provision,” Khalia offered.

  “Any interpretation we make of it is bound to be wrong,” Hato said.

  “Perhaps Bren’s madness will shed light on what it means,” Lusielle said.

  Hato didn’t know quite how to state the obvious, so he just said it. “Bren is already in the rigor. It comes after the madness. Pharseus said that he shouted and ranted but said nothing intelligible or logical. I’m afraid nothing helpful will come out of Bren’s madness.”

  “Harald never returned to his senses after he fell into the rigor,” Khalia said.

  “Neither did Ethan or Robert,” Hato said.

  “Bren is better than his brothers.” Lusielle fed him another sip. “He’s stronger, more dutiful, more determined. If the potion takes to his body, he could rally, at least for a time.”

  “He was the best of my lords.” Hato’s eyes filled with tears. “If only we could’ve found you earlier.”

  Lusielle caressed Bren’s hair. “He too is sort of an oddity, an oddity of the human heart. And he won’t give up easily, because he’s a dutiful soul.”

  “I can hear you, sweet.” Bren’s voice rose hoarse but clear from lips that had repelled some of the blue hue tinting his mouth. “Your potion is working.”

  Hato gasped. He watched as Lusielle smiled and held his lord’s hands, kissing him softly, cuddling against him as if she could lend strength to his body. His face was pale but animated with a new surge of life. His eyes were haunted.

  “I’ve been to the madness,” Bren said. “I’m afraid all of our efforts have been for naught.”

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  BREN HAD BEEN STRUGGLING AGAINST THE rigor for a while. His sense of taste had broken free first, awakened by the potion’s spicy jolt, which had warmed his body, breaking his muscles’ stiff resistance. He had been able to follow most of the conversation between Hato, Khalia and Lusielle, albeit with effort. Little of what he heard surprised him, and yet none of it mattered.

  It had taken time for the rest of his body to gather the potion’s strength, an excruciating and uncertain wait. Lusielle kept feeding him the potion, slowly improving his ability to fight the rigor. The wholesome scent of her was an incentive to breathe. Her voice was an urgent summons to his sputtering mind. His legs never regained function, but when his eyelids finally lifted, the sight of her was enough reward to forgive even the uncaring gods.

  “Did he hurt you very badly?” he asked, tracing the bruise on her jaw with his fingers.

  “How did you know?” Lusielle said.

  “I saw it, in the madness, and I wanted to kill Aponte Rummins.”

  “The bastard will see justice, my lord,” Hato promised.

  “The madness,” Lusielle said. “What did you see?”

  “The curse giver.” Bren remembered. “It gave me no name and no reason for the curse. The fiend granted me the last verse of the vellum we found and then erased it from my mind.”

  “How cruel can that creature be?” Khalia said. “How much death is enough for it?”

  “Death is nourishment,” Bren said, “craft is breath, work is life, grief is gold.”

  “The fiend said that?” Lusielle said.

  “Aye.”

  “This is very good, my lord,” Hato said, with unusual optimism. “If the potion can sustain your strength, then we still have time to defeat the curse. Isn’t that so, Lusielle?”

  “Every potion has a range and every range has a limit,” she said. “What works today might not work tomorrow. Maladies adapt. Bodies react. The potion aims to increase Bren’s strength. It might continue do so for the next few days, improving his condition. But the potion isn’t a cure for the curse. It will not help forever.”

  “There’s no way out,” Bren said, “no way to defuse the curse.”

  “How do you know?” Hato said.

  “The curse giver said I had to die. It also said that any attempt at delaying my death would only speed the coming of Laonia’s blight. If I’m not dead by sunrise tomorrow, the blight will descend upon Laonia with the light. So you see, inasmuch as I’m glad to have the chance to see all of you again, you’ve got to let me die.”

  The silence in the room was shock’s loud expression. The glint Bren spied in Lusielle’s eyes alarmed him. The way her back straightened and her chin came up frightened him more than the curse giver.

  “You promised me you’d fight for each moment,” she said. “On the barge, on the Nerpes, you said you’d fight for our time together regardless of how short it may be.”

  “I remember, but—”

  “We’ve earned this moment,” she said. “We have to be willing to fight for the next one.”

  “If it were in my power—”

  “Promise me you’ll fight to survive,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Swear it. You’ll drink the potion. You’ll stay alive for as long as you can.”

  “I can’t forsake Laonia—”

  “Promise me!”

  He had little defense against her eyes’ green glare. “As long as it doesn’t entail surrendering Laonia to the blight, I swear, I’ll try to last for as long as I can. But I must ask you for an oath, too. If I live when morning comes, you’ll give me a poison that will kill me quickly.”

  “I won’t brew your death.”

  “An oath for an oath,” Bren said. “If you refuse me, I’ll have no choice but to stop taking your potion and return to the rigor. It will be a worse death for me and it’ll give us no time at all.”

  She didn’t say yes outright, but she didn’t say no either. A grimace of pain twisted her face.
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  “Is your arm hurting?” Bren said.

  “A little.”

  “Go find Vestor,” Bren said.

  “I don’t want to leave your side.”

  “I won’t have you hurting for naught.”

  “You could still try, you know, to run me by the trial and see what happens.”

  “No.”

  “I’m willing to try, Bren. Ask Khalia. I’m fate in the riddle. She saw it. I know it.”

  “No, Lusielle, no,” Bren said adamantly. “I made up my mind a while back. I was right all along. The curse giver is a trickster. The verses were just riddles the fiend composed to amuse itself. The hunt, the test, the trial, it was all for naught. There was never any way to defuse the curse except death.”

  “Are you sure?” she said with such sadness in her eyes.

  “I’m sure.”

  He kissed her before she left. She tasted like tears. She looked weary, fragile and resigned as she got up from the bed and, wincing, slung her remedy case over her shoulder.

  “Have him drink the potion every quarter of the hour,” she said to Hato. “No matter what he says, he must drink it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She turned to Khalia. “Will you lead me to the healing quarter?”

  “Surely.”

  As the two women left, Hato took a stool by Bren’s side.

  “The Twenty,” Bren said. “None of them ever betrayed us. It was the curse giver who ripped our sails and disabled the tillers. It conspired against us, using its means and perhaps even the occasional unsuspecting fool to prevent us from defeating the curse. It planted all of those fake brands to confuse us. It tried to drown Lusielle.”

  Hato shook his head and handed him the flask.

  Bren lifted it in the air. “To the good battles fought.”

  “And to the victories still to come.” Hato’s attempt to sound cheerful failed miserably.

  Bren started to take a swig then stopped. Why had Lusielle asked Khalia to lead her to the healing quarter?

  Vestor had been in the Laonian hall earlier. He was probably still here, tending to Elfu. A cold knot tightened in his belly. Had she been hurting, she could’ve brewed herself a soothing potion. Instead, she had chosen to leave when he knew she didn’t want to do so. All of a sudden, he recognized the expression he had seen in her face.

  Reckless strength.

  By the Twins. Bren threw the blankets aside but found his legs devoid of initiative. “Stop her, Hato. Bring her back. She’s not going for healing. She’s going to battle!”

  Hato’s expression managed to be sad and apologetic at the same time. “Sorry, my lord. She doesn’t want to be stopped and, for your sake—for Laonia’s sake—I can’t stop her, either.”

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  LUSIELLE DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TIME TO think through her plan. Everything she had learned, everything she had deduced had an important place in her designs. The gods would have to help her if she was going to accomplish the deed, because only a desperate woman or a suicidal fool would attempt what she was about to try.

  “Do you have any more of the vermilion shells on you?” she asked Khalia as they rushed down the hall with Severo at their heels.

  “These days, I always carry a spare pair.” Khalia pulled them out of her pocket.

  Lusielle grabbed one of the shells and strung it upside down next to her amulet, indicating for Khalia to do the same with the second shell. Khalia hooked the shell on the bejeweled torque she wore around her neck.

  “Do you think this will work?”

  “We’re about to find out.” With the shells in place, Lusielle took a deep breath and looked down on her amulet. “I can’t have the curse giver listening in today.”

  To her relief, the crystal in the amulet didn’t change color. With Khalia in tow, she entered the chamber where Vestor was ministering to Elfu. She and Khalia went around the room, methodically picking up every basin, pitcher and cup of pure water they could find and setting it outside before shutting the door.

  “Oh, oh,” Vestor said. “What kind of trouble are you courting now?”

  “I need a name,” Lusielle said, setting her annotation book on the desk and borrowing a quill.

  “Whose name?”

  “Remember the desecrated shrine where we hid when we were at the thirteenth temple? I need to know the name of the fallen Goddess to whom the shrine was once dedicated.”

  “Jalenia?”

  She dipped the quill in the ink and wrote the name down. “What’s her story?”

  “I think she was a minor Goddess,” Vestor said, “a younger daughter, one of her mother’s favorites. That in itself is a bit of a problem, since jealousy runs high among gods and humans. Jalenia was famous for speaking in riddles and mixing truth with lies. She loved music and singing and was said to have a beautiful voice.”

  “Did she play the lute?”

  “Yes, a gift from her mother, constructed of sacred ebony.” Vestor shook his head in confusion. “How did you know?”

  Lusielle ignored the question. “What else do you know about her?”

  “Her favorite offering was animal guts, the small intestine of sheep, if I remember correctly, to make strings for her precious lute. She was also known for her incomparable sewing skills. She used to make the gods’ seamless robes. Her stitches were known to be invisible to the eyes.”

  Khalia gasped. “The silver needle speared on Edmund’s face. The stitched lips Hato spoke about. Do you think they were the way in which she—”

  “She signed Edmund’s curse with her needle and stitches,” Lusielle said. “Now we know the curse giver’s name. If we can find out the reason for the curse and right the wrong, we still have a chance.” Lusielle had to still her runaway heart. “Vestor, why was Jalenia pushed out of the divine realm?”

  “It was something silly, as it often is; something about a cloak.” Vestor tried to remember. “Ah, yes, she once tried to stitch together a cloak that would fit all her brothers and sisters as well as Onisious’s Twins. For a crowd that takes pride in their differences, it was a great offense. They ambushed her in her sewing room and hurled her out of the window.”

  “That’s it?” Lusielle said. “That’s all they had to do to get rid of her?”

  “Ronerus’s children aren’t very strong when they stand alone, but on those rare occasions when they get together and turn on one of their own, they can’t be stopped.”

  Lusielle understood the anger that could come with the experience of being discarded like that. One day, you’re minding your business, practicing your craft as best you can; the next day, you’re on the pyre or hurled out of a divine window.

  She added a few words to the page.

  Vestor cleared his throat. “You do realize that these are all legends, stories taken from The Tales, right?”

  “I do,” Lusielle said, slamming her notebook shut and sliding it back into the case. “But I’ve always wondered: What’s the difference between legend and belief, stories and history?”

  Vestor opened his mouth and closed it. “I-I don’t know.”

  “Thank you, Vestor,” she said, patting his shoulder. “You’ve been very helpful. Please take good care of Elfu.” Ignoring all of his questions, she swept down the stairs as fast as her bruised ribs allowed.

  “How can we find Jalenia’s shrine at Teos?” she asked.

  “There’s a map by the main fountain.” Khalia took the lead.

  “Will the shrine be desecrated here as well?”

  “I should hope not,” Khalia said. “Teos takes pride in preserving the original monuments.”

  “Mistress!” Severo caught up with them. “There you are. You can’t just leave me behind.”

  “You’re not needed in this,” Khalia said.

  “Wait,” Lusielle said. “You could be helpful. You might come, but only if you swear to do exactly as I ask.”

  Thanks to Teos’s accurate map, Jalenia’s shrine wasn’t difficult to find. T
he shrine was locked, but Khalia had her formidable pack of keys with her.

  “Hurry, please.” Dawn was not long approaching.

  Khalia unlocked the padlock and opened the gate. “How did you make the connection?”

  With the tip of her boot, Lusielle pointed out the words etched on the floor by the entrance. “In truth I dabble. This sentence was inlaid in the floor of the desecrated shrine at the thirteenth temple. I recognized the words again in the verse we retrieved from Arnulf’s box. Vestor’s story filled in the gaps. The needle was the final part of the puzzle.”

  “Do you really think the gods are somehow involved with this?”

  “Just one,” Lusielle said, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach. “A Goddess who’s no longer a Goddess.”

  The shrine at Teos was a bigger and more elaborate version of the one she had visited at the Temple of the Lesser Gods. It was also clean and well preserved. The shallow pool with the mirrored eye above it stood in the center of the chamber. The water in the pool was clear and cool, no doubt kept fresh by Teos’s flowing aqueduct.

  Ignoring Khalia and Severo’s startled looks, Lusielle stepped into the pool, waded to the middle, where the water was up to her knees, and sat down. “I’m going to need you to hold me under.”

  Severo stared at her in horror. “Mistress, I can’t do that. If I hold you under, I’ll drown you. I’m charged with preserving your life!”

  “You have to hold me down,” she said. “There’s no way around it.”

  “Do you want to die?” Khalia said.

  “Not particularly,” Lusielle said, “but I’ve got to do this and you must help me if you want Laonia and your lord to survive.”

  Severo hesitated then stepped into the pool and splashed to her side. “I’ve seen what you’ve done for my lord and I know he’s at the end.”

  Khalia hesitated as well, before tucking her skirts around her waist and kicking off her shoes. “The Twins will have to help us. You’ll have to be quick. You have but moments to try this.”

  Lusielle took in a deep breath and plunged backwards into the water. Water. The fiend’s preferred means, Elfu had said. Sounds were muted underwater. Movement seemed careful and defined. Time slowed down and reflection provided ample advantages for deflection. It was a stealth mode for traveling, listening and watching, a cunning if subtle approach, a fitting strategy. Could it also be used in a reverse ambush?