The Southern Trail (Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “Your story is preposterous. I will not waste my men’s time or my budget on you. Go try to bamboozle someone else,” he summarily dismissed them when they managed to wheedle their way into his office for an audience.

  “Now what do we do?” Argen asked, astounded by the unexpected rejection.

  “Let’s go see what are chances are at the docks. Maybe we can get a ride on a ship heading to a bigger city,” Marco suggested.

  “Any city we get to has to be bigger than Bunda,” Argen said. “What members of the aristocracy have estates in this region?” he asked Ellersbine.

  “I don’t know anyone who comes to court from this far away,” she replied as they walked through the streets to the docks.

  There were several flatboats on the river, and from the crews they learned that the boats were planning to float down to Tabora, a larger, regional capital.

  “Crassten is a baron near Tabora,” Ellersbine said.

  “Not one you could trust,” Argen answered. “I know I’ve had dealings with the man, and he can’t be trusted.”

  “But if we get there, all we need is for him to help us get to Foulata,” Marco pointed out. “We’re not asking for anything else.”

  “We’ll see,” Argen replied in a dubious tone. “He may be the best option. But first we have to get there.”

  “I think I can get us on a fast ship to Tabora,” Marco said confidently. “Let’s go talk to a few captains,” he suggested.

  And so, for the next four hours, the threesome visited and dickered with a dozen ship captains, innkeepers, and dry goods store owners while Marco engaged in a lengthy process of bartering goods and services with a variety of partners to put together the items he needed for their departure from the outpost city.

  “You can give the ship captain a powder that will make the breezes blow the ship’s sails?” Ellersbine asked.

  “Yes, but it’s going to take me a couple of days to get everything gathered together to do it,” Marco explained.

  “So we’re staying and eating here tonight because you’re going to give the innkeeper a powder that will kill bugs?” Argen asked as they ate from their bowls of vegetable and mutton stew. “Where will you get the powder?”

  “He’s going to get the powder from the dry goods store, or he’ll get the ingredients to make the bug killer from there, right?” Ellersbine answered.

  “What does he use to pay the store keeper?” Argen asked.

  “I’m going to treat the storekeeper’s children for the croup,” Marco replied. “I need to get over to his place right now, as a matter of fact,” he said as he scooped the last of the stew from his bowl and drank from his mug of ale. He stood up to leave.

  “Can I come with you?” Ellersbine asked suddenly. “I’d love to see you treat the children.”

  Marco looked at her in surprise. “I thought you’d want to stay here and take a bath.”

  “I can do that tomorrow, since we’re going to be here for a couple of days,” Ellersbine answered blithely.

  “And how are you going to make the powder for the ship?” Argen asked as they started to walk away.

  “I’ll use the dry goods and the dead bugs to make the powder,” Marco grinned. “Anything else?”

  “No, I guess that makes sense. Good luck with the kids. I‘m going to go find out what a mattress feels like again!” Argen waved them away.

  “The air is so much fresher out here,” Ellersbine said with relief as they left the inn’s dining room and stepped into the street.

  “But it’d be even fresher out in the wilderness where we’ve been,” Marco said as he wrinkled his nose at a pile of horse dung they passed by.

  “I thought the last few days of our time in the wilderness were idyllic,” Ellersbine answered.

  Marco stopped, and turned to look at her.

  “I’m serious!” the girl said. “I had two wonderful men around me at all times, the weather was delightful, and I feel fitter than I have ever felt in my life! Walking all those miles every day made my body function better than I’ve ever known it could,” she gushed.

  “We could go treat the kids, then walk out the gate and go back into the wilderness,” Marco said drily as they started walking again.

  “Oh, that’s silly,” Ellersbine laughed, and Marco thought her laughter sounded musical in the purity of spirit it contained. He wished again that he had managed to carry a container of the water away from the spring, so that he could extend the friendliness and the high spirits that contributed to the way that the girl captivated him. He was pleased that she was walking with him through the streets of the city, and he felt a thrill of enchantment when she didn’t hesitate to hold onto his arm to steady herself as she stepped over a pothole in the roadway.

  “Here’s the shop. The man told me the entrance to his apartment was at the top of the stairs in the back,” Marco said, as they turned down an alley, then climbed a set of stairs and knocked on a door.

  They could hear children coughing inside, and then the door opened, and a harried looking woman stood in the doorway, holding a sick child.

  “Are you the healer my husband sent?” she asked.

  “Who is it honey?” they heard the voice of the store owner from inside.

  “I’m the one,” Marco said. “Here, let me hold this one,” he reached out and relieved the mother of the youngster, a girl around two years of age, Marco guessed as he cradled the child in his right arm.

  “Is there someplace private we can take the child to tend to her?” he asked.

  “Come through here, and you can go up the steps and out on the roof, if you like,” the woman said, as the shopkeeper came into view in the kitchen.

  “So you really came? I didn’t expect to see you. And you brought the girl?” the man asked.

  “Show them the steps up to the roof,” the mother told her husband.

  “What for?” he asked.

  “Because your healer said he wanted some place to treat our children, that’s what for!” she snapped at him. “And we don’t have any spare room here in the apartment.

  “This way, come this way,” the man answered compliantly.

  They could hear another child coughing in a far room, as the man led them to a door and opened it. Revealed behind the door was a stairway so steep and with treads so shallow as to be more of a ladder than a set of steps.

  “Go up and push the trap back,” the man instructed.

  Marco struggled up the steps, the hacking baby in one arm, while the other arm held onto the steps ahead and then pushed the hatch overhead to the side, so that he could climb out onto the nearly flat surface of wooden shingles. He found a place to sit, then settled down and pulled his glove off his golden left hand.

  “This is how you’re going to treat the child? I remember you letting me suck on your finger when we were on the ship and it was sinking,” Ellersbine said.

  “Your hand! Look at it – it’s golden!” she marveled, as the child grew silent while it sipped the water from Marco’s proffered finger.

  Ellersbine looked from the shiny finger in the child’s mouth up to Marco’s face, and her eyes studied his. “Your hand wasn’t golden on the ship. I remember that.

  “Is that why you’ve been wearing that glove all this time that we’ve been traveling?” she asked, and she watched him nod in affirmation.

  The child gave a whimper, and stopped drinking the spring water Marco provided. It looked up at him with bright eyes that studied his face closely, then it coughed, and took another drink.

  “Here, you hold the baby, and I’ll go get the other one,” Marco told Ellersbine, maneuvering the child over to her. He pulled the glove back on, then went downstairs, and returned with the second, younger, child as well, coughing and squalling in its misery.

  They sat beside one another, and Marco started giving the spring water to the baby boy he held.

  “Is your right hand golden now too? Or did you just wear the glove on that han
d to match the glove on your left hand?” Ellersbine asked, though she did not look at him as she spoke.

  In response, Marco shifted the baby slightly, then pulled the glove off to allow the moonlight to shine off both hands.

  “Are you a sorcerer?” Ellersbine asked. “Is that why we’re still alive today, after all the catastrophes we’ve faced?

  “Are you the mighty sorcerer who is fighting against Docleatae? The one who defeated Iamblichus in Athens?” she turned to face him as she finished the last question, and Marco saw that her eyes were great pools of mysterious darkness in the cold evening light from the moon, with tiny white reflections of the light reflecting off his own hands providing the only interruption in the darkness below her brows.

  “Ellersbine, I have tried to be good to you and take care of you ever since I first saw you,” Marco began to answer.

  “Tell me, simply tell me, are you the Golden Hand, the sorcerer of death?” she interrupted.

  Marco bowed his head and looked down at the two infants they held. He feared to tell her the truth, but he couldn’t lie. He switched his finger from the child in his arms to the child she held.

  “I am the Golden Hand. I did kill Iamblichus,” Marco answered. “I don’t want you…” he started to say, only to be interrupted by the girl at his side.

  “Marco, I love you,” she told him.

  “But,” he stuttered in response.

  “I’ve thought you were special ever since the day I first saw you. I’ve tried so hard to remember that I’m engaged to Argen, but I can’t help myself – I have to tell you that I love you. It’s like Fate has decided it for me,” she cut him off to speak in a determined voice.

  “Ellersbine, I love you too. I didn’t start on this journey knowing that I’d meet you, but since I have met you, I’ve thought about you a great deal,” he told her. “Here, give me your baby to hold,” he adjusted his arms, and took the other infant from her, holding both children tightly against his chest with his left arm, as he raised his right hand over his shoulder.

  “Read the back of my marriage collar,” he told her, and he made his hand glow softly to illuminate the fine script.

  “Oh my word! That’s my name!” she said moments later. “When did you have it written on here?

  “Who are these other names?” she asked.

  “A long time ago, long before I ever met you, a dream came and wrote those names on my collar, and said the names there would be the three great loves of my life,” he said. “I’ve met the first two, but I had no idea who you were or where you were, or what you were.”

  “What happened to the first two?” she asked as she came back around to his side, one hand still touching the collar around his neck. “Did you kill them with your powers?”

  Marco gave a wistful smile. “No, actually I married them. They’re still alive,” he answered.

  “You’re married to two other women, and you’ve come after me?” Ellersbine shifted her seat slightly apart from him.

  “I didn’t come looking for another woman!” Marco exploded angrily. He was angry at himself, not the girl beside him. “I didn’t want to fall under your enchantment. I didn’t want my heart to be unfaithful to the woman I’m married to. Mirra deserves nothing but the best I can offer – she doesn’t deserve to be married to someone who is sitting hundreds of miles away from her, feeling besotted with desire for another woman.” He took a deep breath, then bit his bottom lip, surprised by the release of pent up emotion.

  There was silence between them, until one of the children in Marco’s arms started to cry.

  “Here, let me take the other one,” Ellersbine quietly spoke as she reached over and pulled the smaller infant out of Marco’s crowded lap, and he placed his finger in the mouth of the coughing, crying two-year old.

  “Marco,” she said later, after several awkward minutes. “I became engaged to Argen even though I didn’t like him,” she began.

  “I know; I know that. You told me before,” Marco cried out an admission.

  “Before? When?” Ellersbine asked.

  “I’m living through my confession of my love to you for the second time, and this is no easier than the first – maybe harder,” Marco told her. “On the first night after I set you and Argen free, you and I sat up at night and talked about our love for each other,” he told her.

  “I don’t remember that,” she faltered.

  “I gave you a potion so that you wouldn’t remember,” Marco said. “I had to; I had given the same potion to Argen, and we thought that you needed to forget things just like he did, so that you wouldn’t know – well, it doesn’t matter, but that’s what happened.

  “You told me that you didn’t love Argen, that you did love me. You told me the story about your father killing the wasp in your room when you were a little girl. You told me about the stuffed animals you loved, and the first boy you kissed,” he released another emotional torrent.

  “We are in love with each other,” Marco told the girl. “We both know it, we both feel it. We both know that we have other obligations that should prevent it from happening. Oh Ellersbine, what are we going to do?”

  They were staring at each other now. The children were silent, the spring water suppressing their coughs and allowing them to fall into exhausted sleep despite the emotion storm playing over their heads.

  “Is it this? Is it this string of light between us?” the princess asked. “Is that what’s causing our hearts to drift together?”

  “That name was etched on my marriage torq long before the energy began to flow,” Marco said. “You were dissatisfied with Argen long before we had this. I was enchanted with you before there was any such connection between us – the energy is a symptom of our love, not the cause.”

  Ellersbine reached out her free hand and placed it on Marco’s cheek, gently stroking the skin and sparse stubble, then her hand slid back to the back of his neck and pulled his face towards hers, as she leaned in towards him. They began to kiss, and then lost all sense of time, until they heard someone coming up the stairs.

  “Is everything okay up here?” the mother’s voice called anxiously. “I haven’t heard a sound from the children in a long time.”

  “We’re fine,” Marco said breathlessly.

  “The children are doing fine,” Ellersbine said at the same time. “Are they cured?” she asked Marco in a lower voice. “Do they need more spring water?”

  “Maybe some more tomorrow morning, just to be sure,” he said cautiously.

  “We’re done treating them,” Ellersbine called. She rolled herself around and then stood up while holding the baby. “We’ll come back tomorrow morning to check on them.

  “Come on Marco,” she called as she delicately maneuvered herself around to descend the steps to the apartment below. Marco followed, and arrived at the floor of the home as Ellersbine handed the larger child over to its mother.

  “What did you do to them up there? Are they going to be alright?” the mother asked anxiously as her husband took the infant from Marco. She studied the sleeping babies, then looked up at Marco.

  “They’ll be fine. We’ll come back tomorrow morning to check on them,” he said reassuringly. “Now get a good night’s sleep,” he urged them, as he took Ellersbine’s hand, and led her out the door and down the steps.

  When he reached the ground he stopped and turned, bringing the princess to a stop on the last step, so that their eyes were level with each other. He didn’t say a word, but smiled at her, then embraced her and started to kiss her passionately.

  She happily accepted his advance, but after several minutes she pulled back and looked at him.

  “Marco, I want this; I want it so much, but,” she paused. “Argen has been so pleasant lately, friendly and kind and thoughtful. I feel badly about betraying him like this. Let me take my time away from you to really decide what I feel, and to decide if I want to end my engagement to him.”

  Marco stood facing her, and
spent several seconds wrestling with how to respond.

  “Marco, can you say anything?” Ellersbine asked as the silence between them stretched.

  “He is kind now, but I don’t think it will last,” Marco decided to confess the truth to Ellersbine. “When we reached the river valley, and you and Argen drank water from a spring on the morning that we began to walk along the riverbanks, you drank from an enchanted spring.

  “The water there has the power to make anyone who drinks from it friendly. It lasts until the next full moon. That means that you and Argen will be just the way you are now for another two weeks, and then the enchantment will wear off. It won’t make any difference to you, because you are friendly and good-hearted already, my sweet friend. But when it wears off of Argen, I’m afraid he will revert to the pettiness and anger and cruelty that were his personality before,” Marco warned her.

  “An enchanted spring?” Ellersbine pulled even further back from Marco.

  “Can you doubt such a thing?” Marco asked, as he held his own gloved hand up before her. “I spoke to the spirit of the spring, Quonna, and she told me what the enchantment was. Think about Argen – can you imagine any other reason for the friendliness he now displays?”

  “I don’t know, I mean, no I don’t understand,” she paused and sighed then leaned against Marco and hugged him tightly. “Oh Marco, you are so enticing,” she told him then pressed her lips to his again, then pulled them away. “See?” she spoke in a scolding tone.

  “Let’s go back to the inn,” she suggested to Marco, who gave a sigh, then stepped aside, and walked with her back to their inn, where he kissed her chastely goodnight outside her room, and went into the room he shared with Argen, to slowly fall asleep.

  Chapter 24

  When Marco awoke the next morning, Argen was already sitting up in bed. Marco said good morning as he got dressed for his morning visit to the children, all the while wishing that Argen would remain the good person he was under the influence of Quonna’s spring.

  “Where are you going?” Argen asked as he saw Marco pull his boots on. “You two were out late last night; are the patients okay?”