The Southern Trail (Book 4)
Page 21
“I certainly won’t have to serve a watch duty,” Argen said in a bored tone.
“If you don’t, we may not be here when you wake up in the morning,” Marco warned him. “There are only three of us, and we all have to contribute if we’re going to survive this trip. That includes you,” he made his expectations clear. “The princess can take the first shift, I’ll take the middle, and you can have the last shift,” Marco announced, not prepared to accept any argument. Nor did he get any, as Argen backed down from his rebellion.
Marco walked around the perimeter of the trees alone, calming his thoughts. He had undertaken his adventure to rescue Ellersbine, without a thought for rescuing Argen as well. But the man was alive and part of the story. And he was Ellersbine’s fiancé, as well as her potential protection from court politics and retribution because of her father’s involvement in the loss of Athens.
Athens seemed like a place he had been a long, long time ago, in a different age of the world. So much had happened since then that he felt disconnected from that phase of his life. He felt as though he had forgotten so many of the things about his life before Athens, as the strange challenges of his life among the Docleateans crowded out so much.
Memories – Argen was going to remember that Marco had displayed his sorcery abilities, and he was going to spread word of that as soon as they reached Foulata. Marco pondered that approaching problem – once he was recognized as a sorcerer, attention would focus on him and trouble was sure to descend.
Unless, he suddenly thought to himself, unless he could erase memories – and he could! He knew the alchemy means of making people forget a day’s worth of memories! He needed to find out if he had the elements and ingredients in place to allow him to create such a mixture, and administer it to Argen before the middle of the next day. He began to riffle through his mental list of needed items as he walked a second circuit around the small woods. There were two of the items available in the area he was in at that moment – he had seen fragments of bentonite clay in the soil as he walked, and there were red root rushes among the grasses growing nearby. The rushes were not precisely in the apothecary list of the forgetfulness mixture, but they could be a suitable substitute.
He cut his walk short and returned to the camp, where his appearance interrupted an apparently passionate discussion between Ellersbine and Argen; even in the fading light of the dusk, he could see their expressions, but he turned away from them to open up his own, older pack that he still carried. Marco pulled his glove off his right hand and set it aglow to illuminate the contents of the bag as he began to root through the items. He found three more ingredients he needed, and two that he didn’t. He was missing only one item, and that, he realized with a smile, would be adequately replaced with water from Diotima’s spring.
He could do it! He could remove Argen’s memory of his sorcery. He thought through the procedure, and concluded that he needed to wait until mid-morning, so that Argen would remember that Marco had rescued him from the kidnapping group that had brought him to the savannah, but not remember the use of sorcery.
“Count Argen, Princess Ellersbine,” he called as he stood up.
They were staring at him, at the ungloved, glowing hand that provided the illumination in the tree grove.
He pulled the glove off his left hand as well. “My finger has the water of a sacred spring, one that provides healing powers. Take a drink of the water, then spit some on your feet and they’ll feel much better in the morning,” he told them.
“I know this is true. Marco gave me some of his water earlier in the day,” Ellersbine spoke aloud, standing up as Marco approached. She casually reached over and grabbed his hand, then placed his finger in her mouth. She swallowed a mouthful, then released his finger with a mouthful of the liquid, and as Argen watched, she sat back down, leaned over, and dribbled it upon her bare feet.
“I don’t need your chicanery,” Argen said. “Why have you kept these great powers of your hidden, but are suddenly displaying them now?” he asked.
“I used them before, but you were too blind to see them,” Marco answered. “How do you think we won that battle with the Corsairs, or beat the sea monster, or how do you think I kept men alive on the march through the mountains, or how do you think I won the battle in Rurita and was able to come after the princess?
“She knew there was something different about me, didn’t you, Ellersbine?” Marco began to throw caution to the wind, knowing that anything he said tonight would be forgotten tomorrow.
“I did,” she said demurely. “From the day I saw you on the docks in Athens I thought you were special,” she answered.
“I see now,” Argen said in an icy tone.
“So if you want your feet to heal, and if you want to be able to keep up with us tomorrow, you better accept some of this water. Otherwise you’re going to have blisters that are going to keep getting torn open, they’ll fester and grow infected, and you’ll have real problems,” Marco pressed the matter, stepping over in front of Argen, his left hand held out front, his right hand aglow overhead.
Sullenly, Argen took a drink of the water, his eyes growing wide in astonishment as he tasted the water. “This is more of your sorcery? None of the powers in the king’s stable of sorcery has mentioned such a thing.”
“This is an enchantment from a spirit, not true sorcery,” Marco answered. He pulled his finger away from the man.
“I’m going to walk around the trees one more time, then go to sleep over there,” Marco said. “Wake me up when that red star is directly overhead,” he spoke to Ellersbine, “or wake me up if there’s trouble or something that worries you.”
He doused the light of his hand and walked away, out a hundred yards away from the grove of trees, and began circling around at a slow pace. He couldn’t do what he wanted to – he wanted to murder Argen, put the man out of the way to avoid all the probable complications Argen was sure to raise whenever they finally reached Foulata. And a large part of him knew that he wanted to end the pretense that Argen was Ellersbine’s fiancé. The feelings in the cord of life that connected Marco to the princess assured him that she would never marry the distasteful nobleman.
Yet Marco knew he could not murder the man. If they were to come to blows in a battle between the two, then he would not show mercy, but he would not try to provoke a battle.
He finished his stroll and looked up at the sky. There were no clouds and the stars sparkled with a twinkling brilliance that made them seem to be small, living inhabitants of the heavens. He wished that would grant him a wish, as he had thought they could in his childhood days; he wished for an easier future than he seemed destined to face otherwise, and then he walked back among the trees and settled down on the ground next to where he had left his supplies. And after a restless struggle, he eventually fell asleep.
“Marco, Marco, wake up,” he heard a woman’s voice call him, bringing him up to a groggy awakening. It was Ellersbine, settling down to a seat on the ground next to him. The air was chillier than it had been when he lay down, and he shivered as he sat up.
“Here,” Ellersbine shifted aside to press her shoulder against his. He adjusted by wrapping his arm around her, letting them each share their warm with the other up and down their torsos.
“That’s better,” she said.
“Is there something wrong, or is it just my turn for watch?” Marco asked.
“A little of each,” Ellersbine answered. Marco tried to look over at her face, but its features were lost in the dark.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“This,” she answered, then paused before she spoke further. “You and me; me and Argen, Argen and the future. It’s a problem now, and it’ll be a bigger problem when we reach the city,” she told him.
“Tell me everything Marco. Tell me everything I should know. Tell me about you. Tell me how you’re going to solve the problem of having Argen with us. Please make me feel safe; you do that already, but I want to
feel safe in the future,” she spoke with fervor, her lips breathing the warmth of her words onto his neck as they nestled together.
“I remember once when I was a little girl, and a wasp got into our rooms in the palace. I screamed,” she spoke in a gentle tone. “And my father happened to be nearby in the residential wing.
“I was running in circles around the nursery, while my poor governess was swatting helplessly at the flying bug, which was getting madder and madder. My father stepped into the room, immediately assessed the situation, then grabbed a towel from the rack, and snapped it at the wasp, striking the little creature in midair and knocking it out of the window,” she recited.
“I was so happy and proud and in awe, I ran to my daddy and I wrapped my arms around him, and I felt like he would be able to keep me absolutely safe for all the days of my life,” she finished her reminiscence. “And that’s almost how I feel now, being here with you, so safe and sound with you holding me, despite all that’s going on around us and where we are.
“I know you’ll do something to make me safe,” she finished up, causing Marco to feel that he had to explain to her what his plan was. Through the energy tether he could feel how comfortable she was with him, and he suspected he was transmitting the same feelings to her.
“Tomorrow I will give Argen a potion that will make him forget everything that’s happened in the past twenty four hours. He won’t remember seeing me use sorcery, or drinking water from my hand. He’ll still hate me, but he won’t have any claims to make against me,” Marco explained.
“A potion will make him forget what happened today?” Ellersbine asked. “What kind of sorcery is that?”
“It’s not sorcery; it’s alchemy. It’s what I was really planning to do for my life before a lot of things happened,” he told her.
“And I think it might be a good idea if you took the potion too,” he added reluctantly.
“Me? Why me? I won’t try to betray you!” Ellersbine protested. “I don’t want to forget moments like this.”
“I think you will be safer if you can truthfully say you don’t remember seeing me do anything,” Marco answered.
“Will I forget everything? Will I still be able to see this?” her hand touched his chest where the glowing line between them emerged. “What is it?”
“I think you will be able to see it. It’s,” Marco hesitated, then decided to tell her his belief. “It’s life energy. When I rescued you last night from the kidnappers, you were dying. I used sorcery to save you, and I think that now my energy is keeping you alive,” he told her. “Remember how you grew weak when I created the dome to protect us from that ambush this afternoon? That was because I used my energy for the shield instead giving it to you, I think.”
“I’m dependent on you to stay alive? Forever?” her voice was tremulous, then silent, and he felt her fear.
“I guess that just means I’ll have to keep you around me forever, and keep you safe, doesn’t it?” she moved around to straddle his legs, her face pressed forward against his. He could see a tiny spark of reflected starlight shining off her eyes, appearing all the brighter for the dark shade that fell across her face. “Marco, thank you for saving my life,” she said softly. “Will you marry me?”
Her words had an extraordinary impact on Marco, releasing a bottled up longing for the girl, the yearnings that he had tried to suppress, knowing that he was already married to Mirra. He leaned forward and kissed her, and they both lost sense of the passage of time as they began to tell each other all the small secrets and facts and fears of their lives.
“You mean you really are the sorcerer who killed Iamblichus in Athens?” she asked him as they rambled about in talking about their lives. “When people heard that he had been killed, our soldiers lost all hope; I saw my father lose hope of winning the battle to hold onto the city.
“I should hate you for that, but I was glad he was gone. He scared everyone I know, everyone but Argen,” she said.
A bit later Marco asked about her engagement to Argen.
“I’ll break it as soon as we’re back in court,” she swore, forgetting that she wouldn’t remember the conversation. “I’ll tell everyone that with my father’s death my heart has changed.
“I only accepted Argen’s proposal because I thought he would help my father in the court. My mother was dead of illness by then, and I ignored the advice of my friends like Rhen who tried to prevent me from choosing the Count. I should have listened,” she sighed.
They each found sudden and complete trust and comfort in one other as their kisses triggered the deep-seated love that had always been their destiny, and had led the fates to engrave Ellersbine’s name on the collar on around Marco’s neck.
“You need to get some rest,” Marco told the girl at last, as she silently lay against him a long time later. “We’ll need to travel a long distance tomorrow.”
“I will,” she said in a sleepy voice, and Marco felt her breath take on a regular rhythm as she began to slumber.
He sat and dozed throughout the night, not bothering to awaken Argen for a shift. When he saw sunlight starting to strike the trees around them, he gently moved the sleeping Ellersbine aside, and he spent several minutes working to mix together the portion needed to induce forgetfulness, and he mixed together enough for two doses, then sat motionless over the coarse powder.
Did he really want Ellersbine to forget about all they had discussed the previous night? The two of them felt inseparably close after their long, midnight conversation, and he didn’t know if he had the fortitude to wipe out all of the girl’s memories of that magical tete-a-tete. He split the powder into two portions, then closed up his bag and went to awaken the other two.
“Time to wake up. Eat some breakfast, and then we’ll get going,” Marco told Argen, standing over the man and nudging his shoulder with his toe.
He left as soon as he saw the count’s eyes open, and he walked over to Ellersbine, who was curled up in the same spot Marco had left her in. He bent low and kissed her cheek. “Time to get up sleepy head. We’ve got a long day ahead of us,” he told her gently.
“I was dreaming about you, and now I wake up to you! What a fabulous start to the morning,” she smiled at him.
Within half an hour, they were walking once again, heading across the morning savannah, towards the river that Marco hoped they would find before nightfall. There was constant activity around them, as the animals of the open plain also began their day with movement.
“My feet feel better,” Ellersbine said cheerfully. “Thank you Marco.
“How do yours feel Argen?” she asked.
“Not good,” he refused to concede any improvement as a result of the water Marco had provided the night before.
Marco and Ellersbine spoke to one another frequently as the trio walked along, a familiarity between them that was obvious, and made Argen’s face darken whenever he looked at them.
By mid-morning they were already several hours along their way south, and Marco judged it was time to administer the potion to the two travelers from Docleatae. He came to a halt, and removed his large knapsack, then pulled off the smaller one as well.
“Let’s take a break, and give each of you a dose to treat your feet,” Marco said. He held a wooden cup, and poured half the forgetfulness mix into it.
“Here, take a drink of water from my finger, then spit in it this and drink it,” he told Argen, holding out the cup to the nobleman.
“We didn’t mix it with anything last night,” Argen automatically contested Marco’s direction.
“This is to make it better for you. Drink this, then I’ll give some to the princess, and we can start walking again,” Marco was insistent.
Argen exhaled loudly, then took the cup, and diffidently grabbed Marco’s hand to drink the water.
As soon as he finished, Marco took the cup and poured the rest of the mix into it.
“It’s your turn, dear one,” he said to Ellersbine.
“Not until we talk again. We will, I promise,” Marco reassured her.
She stood up tall and kissed him firmly, as Argen watched in shock, then she took his finger and produced a mouthful of water. Marco quickly pulled his gloves back in place to hide his golden hands from the others.
“What’s going on here?” Argen asked suddenly, as Ellersbine started to drink her potion.
“Just a quick drink,” Marco said.
“What’s going on? Something seems wrong here,” the count said, as he forgot all that had happened, the potion’s effect coming to the fore.
“I want a drink too,” the count said petulantly.
“We’ll hopefully reach a river by nightfall,” Marco told him. “We should all be okay until then.” He took the empty cup from Ellersbine’s hand and put it away.
“Nightfall? You’re no better prepared than that?” Argen snapped.
“I’m sure he’s trying,” Ellersbine spoke up.
“You stay silent and let me handle this,” the count told his fiancée. She glared at him momentarily, then her face went suddenly blank, and Marco knew that the potion had had its effect on her as well.
“Let’s go,” he said as he pulled his pack on. He turned his back to the others and started walking, his eyes filling with tears as he thought about all that he had told the princess the night before, and the magical interaction the two of them had shared during their hours of conversation. For Ellersbine, it was all gone, although he fervently hoped that the same rapport would automatically reappear when they were able to get together again, after they reached Foulata. He promised himself that he would try his hardest to make it happen, and, he reminded himself as an afterthought, he would be ready to do whatever Iasco had in mind for him to do.
Chapter 23
The group did not reach the river by sunset. Argen was slower than Marco expected. When night fell they were among gentle slopes and increasing amounts of trees and shrubs, signs that Marco took to mean that they were close to the water. He debated whether to offer his supply of Diotima’s spring water to Argen, but decided to only do so in a case of extreme need, and so they continued on through the darkness for two hours after sunset.