The Apothecary's Curse

by Barbara Barnett

  He’d been to this area as a boy, he’d thought, though much had changed. Feeling freer than he had in centuries, he knew he would be released from his burden soon enough—and then what? He felt for the small vial in his pocket. Medicine, he’d told the TSA agent at O’Hare, needed for seizures when in flight.

  The book had never been his to give away or to keep. Lord Thomas Learmont of Erceldoune had been but a steward, keeping Airmid’s powerful book of healing until such a time came when it might be used—with wisdom. A time that never would come in all the ages thenceforth.

  Perhaps there had been a time once when true enlightenment might have come to pass, when a nexus was possible, formed of knowledge tempered by understanding, technology bounded by empathy. Gaelan wondered if that had been Airmid’s idealistic hope when she handed the book to his ancestor so long ago—an antidote calculated to heal the world of its darkest ages. To bring about a new Camelot that could never be.

  Yes, there were the Anne Shawes of the world, but far too many Handleys and Braithwaites—and the Transdiffs who would with this knowledge transform the world into something toxic and vile. “And Lyle Tremayne,” he said to no one. The name still tasted bitter on his tongue as he thought of the man who’d condemned him to hell in the first place.

  Gaelan’s GPS instructed him in a female British accent to turn left as his watch tapped him gently on the wrist. He smiled. Magic. A wristwatch with the ability to guide him halfway around the world. He would miss these little amazements.

  “Your destination is in five hundred feet.” Gaelan stopped the car at the base of a small grassy hill and looked up to see the hawthorn tree of the book’s cover. It was unmistakable. He trudged to the top and gazed along the coastline; puffins skittered across the water, leaving small whitecaps in their wake.

  Setting up his campsite, he built a small fire and unrolled a down sleeping bag before relaxing beneath the tree. The light was fading now, and Gaelan watched the stars emerge one by one, and the planets. In the distance he thought he saw the glow of distant, fading glaciers, their white-blue adorning the water in an eerie haze.

  He lay back on his sleeping bag, shoving a pillow of his clothing beneath his neck, and looked up. The Aurora Borealis lit the sky like he had never seen before: magenta, phosphorescent blue, tangerine, every color imaginable. The book lay at his side. He patted it gently, noticing Polaris gleaming bright so far to the north as the electromagnetic display faded. The stars were close enough to touch up here, pockmarking the black sky. Ah, there it was, Ariadne’s Crown.

  Perhaps he should drink the toxin now. Did it matter? Would the goddess Airmid—who, for all Gaelan knew, never really existed outside of legend and ballad—appear through some invisible portal to reclaim her book?

  No. He must see this through to the final act. There would be time . . . after . . . After what? After the fairies visit you and steal back their book? He laughed, thinking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his steadfast and quite paradoxical belief in their world.

  Finally, exhaustion overtook Gaelan, and he fell into a restless sleep, his dreamscape a towering maze, grotesque images of Anne’s Transdiff colleagues at every turn. They chased him with syringes and scalpels until they caught him, strapping him then to a silver gurney. He could not move; he could not breathe. “The medical find of the twenty-first century!” The proclamation echoed everywhere as Gaelan fought with the restraints, awaking in the dark to find himself wrestling with his sleeping bag.

  Panting and bathed in sweat, he sat up, elbows on his knees, as he tried to settle his breathing. It will be over soon. No more nightmares, no more torture relived in an infinite loop for all eternity.

  Gaelan had given up on going back to sleep when a breeze rustled through the leaves above him. And from somewhere nearby a sweet melody called out to him—an old folk tune, enfolding him, clearing his thoughts of trouble, as it drew him into a dreamless, peaceful rest.

  “Gaelan—”

  The voice was gentle as a breeze whispering through tall grass, close enough it tickled at the shell of his ear. This was different, more insistent than the murmuring song that had lulled him to sleep. His eyes fluttered open, and he squinted into the morning light as it washed over him. He patted the ground to his right—the book was gone. His first thought was that Gilles had somehow found him—found out his scheme. Had Anne been coerced, or had she betrayed him . . . ? No! Unthinkable. It must be here . . . somewhere . . .

  “Gaelan.”

  Shielding his eyes from the glare, he recognized her sitting there, swathed in a corona of sunlight. He blinked several times, and her face came into sharper relief. No explanation sufficed but that he was yet asleep, and in the midst of an improbable dream.

  But then a delicate hand reached out, cupping his jaw, real as the dew that had gathered on the grass overnight. “Hallo.”

  “Anne,” he breathed, trying to sit up. There was something amiss with his left hand, but his confusion over this . . . vision momentarily pushed it from his thoughts. “Anne, what are you doing here?” he inquired, not yet entirely certain whether this was real. But not even his most real delusion would have tasted so sweet as Anne’s gentle kiss.

  “He told you!” Gaelan wanted to be angry. “He’d no right. . . .”

  “A note stuck to some papers he insisted I take. Coordinates: no destination, no name. I hazarded a guess and trusted in the Google.”

  He should never have shared those particulars with Simon. But he’d been so fucking amazed by the manuscript’s final bit of brilliance, and after all, they’d both be dead within a day.

  A thread of suspicion wended its way through Gaelan’s mind. “Just how did you escape Paul Gilles?”

  “I never boarded my flight. It took off without me. I got a flight to Copenhagen, and from there to Wick. I drove the rest of the way. Cash transaction—thanks to my long-lost cousin Simon. The papers he left me . . . deeds, a will, and a very long letter. I’ve not read it all, but enough that I think I understand at least some of it—and his connection to you.”

  Gaelan frowned as he wondered if his dear friend, Eleanor’s brother, Anne’s . . . uncle . . . had finally found peace.

  “I’m sure when I didn’t show up at Heathrow . . . I’m not fooling myself. They’ll be after me. I daren’t show up in the UK—at least not until my report about their activities is published three days from now. They offered to push the deadline.”

  Gaelan had not at all planned on this turn of events. He could not begin to imagine taking the toxin in Anne’s presence. How could he put her through that ordeal? He had to get rid of her. Or something. But how could he when she gazed at him with eyes so luminous in the bright sunshine that . . . ?

  “I could not imagine your last hours spent alone, my love. Do—” Her eyes widened to saucers.

  “What is it?”

  “Your hand! Did you not notice?”

  “My . . . ?” That was it—his hand; it was leaden, as if asleep—numb. Indeed he was occasionally plagued by the phantom of his lost fingers, even decades later. He’d brushed off the sensation.

  Gaelan sat up fully, and his hand fell into his lap. Where there had been three stumps, there were now fingers—perfectly formed. He could not tear his eyes from the sight. Even after all these years, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But how . . . ?

  Airmid and her brother Miach had healed the warrior Nuada, replacing the silver hand created by Dian Cecht, with one of flesh and bone, making him whole.

  Gaelan flexed his fingers slowly, stiffly, feeling the strangeness, noticing, then, a small wrought-silver necklace, encrusted with glittering stones, draped across his palm—a labyrinth. A small scroll lay at his side in an ornate Gaelic script:

  Bone to bone

  Vein to vein

  Balm to Balm;

  Sap to Sap

  Skin to skin

  Tissue to tissue;

  Blood to blood

  Flesh to flesh


  Sinew to sinew;

  Marrow to marrow

  Pith to pith

  Fat to fat;

  Membrane to membrane

  Fibre to fibre

  Moisture to moisture.

  He knew this poem—Airmid’s poem—the incantation she’d chant as she healed the sick and wounded.

  Gaelan placed the delicate necklace in Anne’s hand. “For you, my dear Anne.”

  She fastened it around her neck, where it shimmered with prismatic light.

  “I shall wear it always, but where did it come from?”

  Shrugging, Gaelan explained that he had no idea. “It was here, in my hand, when I woke just now . . . The book is . . . gone.” He hesitated, reluctant, now that Anne was here by his side, to say it. “It is a sign, perhaps, that my long journey is, at last, coming to an end. . . .”

  Gaelan choked back his emotions as he gazed at the labyrinth resting against Anne’s breast. It looked so much like Eleanor’s—and so right around her descendant’s neck. What did it signify? He could speculate—if only there was time. Which there was not. What time he did have, he would spend in the company of Dr. Anne Shawe. Until he would shoo her away to do what he must do.

  Gaelan’s thoughts drifted back to his hand. What if he was wrong, and this “sign” was not to end his life, but . . . ? What if something else had changed of his anatomy, besides the acquisition of three new fingers? What else had been altered, and what if the antidote—the poison formulated to exactly counteract the plague elixir—would not now work as intended? Or was he only trying to justify a reason to stay . . . to be with Anne, if only for a little while longer?

  He knew that was impossible. His escape was a brief diversion, and Transdiff was likely days, if not hours, from finding him. And once they’d gotten their claws into him . . . No his death would be far preferable for both of them. He could only imagine Anne’s suffering in the knowledge that he had become Transdiff’s pawn—their lab rat. A third way. There had to be a third way. A moment of panic, and then an idea settled in its place.

  “Are you all right? You look . . . strange . . . distracted.”

  “Aye. I’m fine. Fine. It is nothing—” But Gaelan knew Anne would not release her concern until he explained. “I’ve a plan.” Gaelan sighed, assuring himself it would be all right. If . . . it worked.

  The Falls of Glomach were the second highest in the UK, and only a four-hour drive from Thurso. It was nearly one o’clock when they arrived; the mists had lifted. To the west, Anne could see the Isle of Skye and all around them, the early spring bloom of the Highlands.

  “It is beautiful, Gaelan, extraordinary. I’ve read about this place, but it’s so far from London. I’ve never been here before.” She breathed in the unearthly magnificence of the falls, yet could not keep the tremble of fear from her voice.

  Gaelan took her hand, directing her gaze. “I’ve not been here for hundreds of years, yet it, like the stars, never changes—and ever changes.” She could barely hear him above the thundering of the falls, a short walk away.

  The notion that this man to whom she’d bound herself so closely might have been . . . no, was . . . her ancestor’s soul mate was impossible to comprehend. And now the thought that she might lose him . . .

  Gaelan interrupted her thoughts. “I spent so many summers here as a wee boy, scrabbling up these very rocks and hills, even down the cataract a time or two on a dare. Come, let me show you the gorge.” He and tugged her toward the crevasse.

  The water’s roar blotted out all other sound as he reached into his pocket, withdrawing a sealed vial, offering it to her. She took it and held it as a talisman, grateful he’d not taken it.

  Gaelan had been right; the site was packed with tourists, hiking, taking pictures of the astonishing scenery. Perfect. An audience. It would all be rather pointless, Gaelan had explained, without one.

  “Trust me,” he whispered into her ear as he drew her into a tight embrace. His warmth surrounded her on this chilly precipice. He kissed her ear, her hair, each closed eye until finally he captured her mouth. And too quickly, he pulled away.

  No. Please not yet. She grabbed his sleeve, trying to forestall the inevitable.

  “Trust me. It will be all right. I promise. It must be this way.”

  And she believed him, though in her heart she cried out for him not to go, not so soon. Not ever.

  Anne watched Gaelan trek across the small field to the edge of the cataract before he turned toward her a final time, his eyes fixed on hers. “Trust me,” he mouthed before disappearing down the gorge.

  She gasped, clutching the vial until her knuckles turned white. A moment passed, then two. She was almost oblivious to the blur of activity about her.

  She fingered the fragile labyrinth pendant at her neck. She’d Googled the myth of Ariadne, curious about it since Gaelan had pointed out her crown of stars in the night sky the other night. And now she needed to help her Theseus slay Minotaur, and he would abandon her to face the world alone. She did not know in that moment when . . . or if Gaelan, now reborn as her Dionysus, would return to her. “Trust me,” he’d said.

  All around her, people ran toward the gorge, shouting, nearly knocking her to the ground, as they gathered at the edge of the cliff. “He’s fallen!” “Someone call 999!” “Help!” Anne barely heard their cries through her sobs.

  She opened her phone, waiting. An hour passed, perhaps two as she sat in the scrubby grass. The ambulance had gone, and all but a few park police had vanished. The news vans had abandoned the scene as well. For who could have survived such a plummet into the crevasse? Stories would be filed about an anonymous man who jumped from Glomach.

  Finally, her phone vibrated twice. A text message. “The Empty House.” Anne smiled through the tears still blurring her vision. Standing, she dusted off her jeans and approached the uniformed officer writing notes on his clipboard.

  “I knew him—the man who jumped. His name was Gaelan Erceldoune.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a novel can at times be a solitary pursuit—hours and hours at a sitting, spent alone, inside the heads of flawed (and sometimes very nasty) characters. But the process of creating a viable manuscript and a great, well-told story takes more than one person’s imagination and a good word processing program. I have many people to thank for their encouragement, support, critiques, and so much more.

  First, to Rene Sears, editorial director at Pyr, for acquiring The Apothecary’s Curse and the rest of the team at Prometheus, especially copyeditor Jeff Curry, publicist Jake Bonar, and editorial assistant Hanna Etu. Thank you so much to gifted fantasy artist Galen Dara for the gorgeous and inviting artwork that graces the cover of the novel and Jacqueline Nasso Cooke, whose cover design completes the perfect package for The Apothecary’s Curse.

  Thank you to all those who gave me feedback during the early days of the writing process, especially Erika Mailman and my fellow scribes in Mediabistro’s Novel Writing workshop and Jody Allen of Rings True who read an early draft for historical accuracy. I will never forget, Jody, that Gaelan Erceldoune of the Borderlands would never—ever—drink whiskey with an “e”!

  I also want to thank my good friend Denise Dorman of Write Brain Media who has been my sounding board and muse all through the writing and beyond during our long coffees at the Deer Park Starbucks. Thank you for your support and your complete belief in The Apothecary’s Curse.

  I owe so much thanks to my wonderful agent, Katharine Sands, of Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency in New York. She has been with me on the journey of this novel since I e-mailed her my first chapters and outline a couple of years ago and asked, “What do you think?” Her feedback and support while I was writing, and her tireless enthusiasm in finding Gaelan and Simon’s story a perfect home, her friendship on this and other projects make her more partner than agent.

  Mostly, I want to thank my amazing mensch of a husband Phil, whose undying support really made it possible for me to fin
d the time and space to write, never complaining about dishes undone, floors unswept, and clothing not put away. As a reader, he critiqued The Apothecary’s Curse, his keen eye pointing out ways to sharpen the story, and making suggestions (some of which I even incorporated!) along the way.

  Lastly, I would be remiss without acknowledging Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose works, from his Holmes novels to his essays and his non-Sherlock stories, inspired me at every turn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photo © Cilento Photography

  Barbara Barnett is publisher and executive editor of Blogcritics (blogcritics.org), an Internet magazine of pop culture, politics, and more, for which she has also contributed nearly 1,000 essays, reviews, and interviews over the past decade. Always a pop-culture and sci-fi geek, Barbara was raised on a steady diet of TV (and TV dinners), but she always found her way to fiction’s tragic antiheroes and misunderstood champions, whether on TV, in the movies, or in literature. (In other words, Spock, not Kirk; Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker!) Her first book, Chasing Zebras: The Unofficial Guide to House, M.D. (ECW Press), reflects her passion for these Byronic heroes, and it was inevitable that she would have to someday create one of her own.

  She is an accomplished speaker, an annual favorite at Mensa’s ­HalloweeM convention, where she has spoken to standing room crowds on subjects as diverse as “The Byronic Hero in Pop Culture,” “The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes,” “The Hidden History of Science Fiction,” and “Our Passion for Disaster (Movies),” and “The Conan Doyle Conundrum.”

  A life-long resident of the Chicago area, she lives with her husband Phil not far from the beautiful Lake Michigan coast of Chicago’s North Shore that serves as the modern-day setting for The Apothecary’s Curse. She is the proud mother of Shoshanna (Mike) and Adam, and the loving savta of Ari.