The Southern Trail (Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Marco looked at Mersby questioningly as they passed one, then stopped at the next one to peer within.

  “That is an impressive display of what the lesser sorcerers in the palace can do. Several of them go around all day lighting up such lanterns throughout the building,” the prince stopped and explained to Marco. “Could you do that?”

  Marco grinned despite his nervousness, then held up his right hand and made each finger independently blink on and off with a warmer glow than the lanterns emitted.

  “Quite a boastful display,” a loud voice boomed nearby.

  Marco whirled around, his fingers still glowing, and faced a very short man with a long, black beard, who wore a black cape and a strange, pillbox-like black hat.

  “This is a young man who I have brought to visit you, my lord,” Mersby said in a friendly tone.

  “Lord Gaddis, this is Marco. Marco, this is Lord Gaddis the chief steward of the palace,” the prince introduced.

  Marco extinguished the glow from his hand, then extended it and shook firmly with the small man. Although his fingers were short, his grip was tight, Marco noted.

  “Would you like to step into my office for a drink and a conversation?” Gaddis asked. “I’m curious to know more about your young protégé.”

  “That would be delightful,” Mersby replied.

  They turned a corner, climbed a set of stairs, then entered an unusual room, unusual for the palace at least, one that had white walls and a window open to allow the entry of sunlight.

  “Where did you find this extraordinary talent?” Gaddis asked.

  “He was actually brought to me by my niece, Ellersbine, the daughter of my late brother, Ellersby,” Mersby explained. “He and she grew quite attached to one another during their long journey home from the battle of Athens.”

  Gaddis looked at Mersby and Marco with a perplexed look as he handed them glasses of water.

  “A group of us who survived the battle of Athens marched all the way back to Foulata from Tripool. It was the longest march an army column has ever made,” Marco explained. “Or at least that’s what the army says.”

  “Is this the journey that Count Argen said he made?” Gaddis asked.

  Marco nodded his head.

  “And Argen is engaged to your niece?” the steward asked Mersby.

  “He was and perhaps is,” Mersby equivocated.

  “So Argen, his fiancé Ellersbine, and this young man all walked all the way from Tripool to here together?” Gaddis clarified.

  “Along with scores of others,” Marco added.

  “And now Princess Ellersbine is affectionate with this young man?” Gaddis understood part of what was happening.

  “And rightly so,” Mersby said stoutly. “Marco not only is a first class sorcerer, but he also has an enchantment upon him, plus he is a paramount warrior, recognized and honored by the leadership of the army.”

  “And Argen happens to be less than enamored of the army leadership since he returned from his journey, from what I understand,” Gaddis mentioned. “He doesn’t say much about the trip; just insinuates that he heroically survived.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Marco muttered.

  “We are not here to talk about Count Argen’s issues,” Mersby decided to redirect the conversation. “We simply came here to introduce you to Marco, and to find out if he could assist the folks here in the palace with some of his talents. Once certain matters are settled, I imagine he and Ellersbine will settle into Foulata as a welcome member of the royal family, so we want to engage him in the palace in as positive a manner as possible.

  “For example,” Mersby continued, “he has an enchantment upon a finger on his left hand. Anyone may sip on the finger, and water will emerge, and the water will help heal people: illness, wounds, pains – isn’t that correct, Marco?”

  “That’s how it works,” Marco agreed. “It’s not an instant healing, but it works overnight and within a few hours to start to bring relief. I used it to help heal some of my comrades on the march after a battle, and after a couple of days of treatment they were on their way to healing.”

  “That’s,” Gaddis paused, “an extraordinary claim,” he said doubtfully. “How did you get this?”

  “I visited a spring that turned out to be enchanted, and the spring shared the enchantment with me,” Marco answered. “Can I demonstrate it for you?” he asked readily.

  “No, not for me,” Gaddis responded. “But perhaps later we can find some subjects for experimentation.”

  “This is real, Gaddis,” Mersby spoke in a harder tone. “This isn’t some foolish prank. The boy can really do this. Do you have staff that is ill, people who wait on the king who are missing their assignments because they are unwell? Marco can truly cure them. They get cured, they do their jobs better. They do their jobs better, grandfather is happier. Grandfather is happier because you and Marco did something, you’re happier. It’s that simple.

  “And we haven’t even begun to probe his sorcery abilities yet, but you saw the casual little demonstration he put on in the hallway downstairs. I believe he may be one of the strongest you have left below Itterati. Wouldn’t you like to present a new strong sorcerer to the king, especially one who can fight to protect himself, and who has been up in the northern civilization already?”

  “That would be seen as positive, especially since the loss of Iamblichus,” Gaddis agreed.

  “Well, since you seem eager to prove your healing powers, shall we take a stroll?”

  They left his office, and Marco blinked as they stepped from the bright, airy room back into the dark hallways of the palace, and then followed a path that Gaddis seemed to know, but that seemed to be aimless meandering to Marco as they walked for twenty minutes to reach a door that left the palace structure. They crossed a muddy delivery lane through which travelled the wagons that delivered the kitchen and household items and goods, and then entered a structure that was shabbily-built of dun-colored bricks.

  “This is our hospital for the staff and residents of the palace grounds, the working class residents I mean, of course,” Gaddis explained. He opened a door at random, and they stepped into a small room where four men were lying in beds, two with bandages over large swathes of their bodies, one with plaster around both his legs, and one who was flushed and unconscious.

  “I’m here to show the steward that an enchantment can help you heal,” Marco spoke immediately. He had learned while treating his fellow soldiers on the march that he had to simply bully them into accepting the water he offered. “There is enchanted water here in my finger; I want you to take a drink and tell the others how it tastes,” he told the closest man as he placed his golden hand in front of the man’s face.

  Startled, and perhaps downtrodden by his injuries and pain, as well as surprised by visitors, the man complied, and did testify to the others about how astonishingly good the water tasted.

  Marco proceeded in the next two hours to treat nearly three dozen patients in the hospital. He saw only one nurse and no doctors in his time there, and he pointed it out to Gaddis as they left the building. “How would those people ordinarily be expected to heal and return to their lives if they don’t get any real treatment?” he asked sharply.

  “I’m not in charge of this facility. I just selected it because I thought that if your miraculous cure is possible, this would be the best place to go to help people heal quickly and leave. I agree with what you’re saying,” the steward answered.

  “Now come back tomorrow and we’ll visit your patients again. If they’re making astonishing progress, and you can empty this place out in a few days, people will hear about it,” Gaddis said reassuringly.

  They walked back through the palace. “Would you like a tour of the building?” Gaddis asked. “If this is your first time here, we really should see at least a couple of the highlights. Come along,” he directed them.

  They followed his direction. “I haven’t been through this corridor in th
irty years at least,” Mersby said at one point.

  “You were here that long ago?” Marco asked in wonder.

  “When my father was alive we lived in the palace for a while when I grew up, and shortly afterwards. The king has built onto the palace since then of course and moved into a new wing, but I remember strolling through these halls,” he explained. “Then I met Grace and I moved out before we got married. There aren’t many who live here in the palace with him anymore, at least not from the family.”

  “Here,” Gaddis spoke up. He stopped in front of a pair of very large doors. “Someone open these; the beasts are too heavy for me.”

  Marco obliged, straining to pull one of the heavy metal doors open, and they walked into a nearly dark room that felt large and empty. There was only a small light moving across a distant part of the room as they stood in the doorway.

  “Let’s see you light it up,” Gaddis spoke lightly to Marco, but Marco immediately recognized that the challenge was a test.

  He held up his hand and made it glow brightly. The light stretched dimly out to a series of massive columns, but he couldn’t see the space that extended beyond. He focused his attention, and sent a string of lights flying up into the air over head, stretching off into the distance to the right, then he sent another string of lights rising off to the left, while his own hand continued to shine.

  The distant moving light, presumably a servant carrying a lantern, stopped, as Marco’s lights stretched out along two long axes. Marco waited until the lights reached the end of the room, then he snapped his fingers theatrically, and all the globes of light blazed with a brightness a dozen times greater than they had shown before, and the whole room was suddenly visible.

  It was vast. It was extraordinarily high. Marco had seen few outside courtyards or plazas that were as large as the space that was covered by the brilliant blue ceiling that hung over the great space, acres and acres.

  “What is this place?” Marco asked in awe. The servant with the lantern was coming towards them, striding purposefully across the empty room.

  “This is the throne room,” Gaddis answered. “And this is an impressive display,” he gestured towards the lights overhead. “And a timely one too, it seems,” he said as he looked at the white-haired servant who was nearing them.

  “What do you have here, Gaddis?” the man asked in a hollow voice, and as soon as he heard the voice Marco stared at the face of the new arrival. The face was ordinary enough, ageless in appearance, perhaps not appearing as old as the white hair implied.

  But the eyes were two dead pools of darkness, as black and disturbing as the eyes of Iamblichus had been when Marco had seen the man in Athens. There was no soul behind the eyes, only the hungering evil that had consumed the man’s soul.

  “You’re Itterati,” Marco stated.

  “I am, and I’m flattered to be recognized. However, you have the advantage of me,” the sorcerer spoke urbanely.

  “This young star is Marco, the paramour of the fiancée of Count Argen,” Gaddis pronounced.

  Marco watched Itterati take only a moment to work out the relationship. “And therefore the future relative of the august Prince?” he spoke to Mersby.

  “I believe that there is the matter of severing the current relationship between Argen and my niece before we make the next jump,” the prince answered. “But that should be something we can have cleared up here at court in the next few weeks, and then see how nature progresses.”

  “Where did you come up with this surprising talent? Young boys don’t just sprout abilities when they have to start to shave,” Itterati looked at Gaddis and Mersby, ignoring Marco.

  “He’s a bit of an extraordinary find all around,” Mersby answered. “He has an enchantment, and happens to be the best sword in the army. He’s a leader who older men look up to already.”

  “And he’s quite a bit more than all that even,” Itterati said absently. Marco watched in astonishment as the sorcerer reached a hand out into the air in front of Marco and delicately handled the space where the life line of energy to Ellersbine extended from his chest. The sorcerer’s hand ran along the light line that Marco thought only he and his beloved could see, then the hand waved up and down through the wispy ether of life.

  “That’s quite astonishing,” Itterati said as he ceased his inspection and looked at Marco’s face. “There are any number of implications in what you’ve done. I assume she was dying?”

  “She was,” Marco said faintly.

  “How long?” the sorcerer asked.

  Marco looked at him in confusion. “How long have you kept her alive?”

  “A month, maybe?” Marco guessed.

  “The king will be most interested. I’m most interested,” the man said.

  His eyes shifted to Gaddis. “I doubt you realize what you’ve brought to us. I’ll expect you to present him to the king within the week.”

  With that the man turned, without further conversation, and walked away from them.

  Rattled, Marco let his overhead lights blink out, one by one, the distant parts of the room returning to darkness first, and then the darkness approaching them as a wave until only the light directly overhead remained, and Itterati’s small lantern of light could be seen in the distance.

  “What was all of that about?” Mersby asked in astonishment.

  You,” Gaddis said in a shaky voice, looking at Marco, “you have made an impression on him. Heaven help you.”

  Marco extinguished his last light, and they left the room, as Gaddis started leading them down the hall.

  “What was he talking to you about?” Mersby repeated.

  “I’m keeping Ellersbine alive,” Marco answered. “You can’t see it. She can. I can. And he can. A part of my life energy is flowing to her, keeping her alive; when I rescued her from the kidnappers, they had nearly beaten her to death, and she started to die as I rescued her, so I used my power somehow to give her life back to her by giving her some of the energy from my life.”

  Gaddis refused to look at him until they were back at the entrance of the palace, where the prince’s carriage waited. “I had no idea what you were bringing.”

  “Neither did I, apparently,” Mersby answered.

  “Bring him back tomorrow morning. You know you have to. I’ll try to arrange to put him on the audience schedule within three days,” the steward said. He shook hands with the prince, and looked closely at Marco as he shook his hand as well. “Thank you for coming,” he said, then scurried away from them, and left them to climb into their carriage for the ride back to Mersby’s palace.

  Chapter 32

  Marco went by horseback to Ellersbine’s home as soon as he could.

  “I met the king’s sorcerer,” he told the women of the house when he arrived.

  “Itterati?” Rhen asked, the oldest and most worldly of the four who chiefly spent time there. “What did you think?” she asked.

  “He scares me,” Marco said simply.

  He went on to tell them about treating the servants at the palace hospital, while they told him about their activities during the day, and after dinner he returned to Mersby’s home for the evening.

  The next day he and Mersby went back to the royal compound, and Gaddis took them back to the hospital. The population of the hospital had declined overnight, as several people had checked themselves out by simply walking away. As Marco made the rounds, all of those who remained were eager to have a second opportunity to sip the water from his finger, and they lauded the improvements in their health. Gaddis was astonished.

  “This building is going to be empty tomorrow!” he marveled to Mersby, as Marco entered a new room.

  “The girl from the kitchen, the one with the burns – she’ll still need an extra day,” Marco observed clinically. “And any new cases that come in will be here,” he added.

  “Let’s go treat some other patients,” Gaddis suggested as they finished with their short rounds of visits.

 
“Who?” Marco asked.

  “The nobles. We have nobles in the palace who grow ill or get injured as well, you know,” he said.

  They walked through the dark halls of the main palace structure, then climbed stairs up a tower to a series of rooms that all had single occupants, attentive nurses, and wide windows letting plentiful light into the rooms.

  “What brings you here Gaddis?” asked one young man with splints immobilizing both his arms.

  “This young man has a way to hasten your healing process, so that you can climb back on that untamable horse and get injured again,” the steward explained.

  “Good morning, your grace,” the man in the bed said to Prince Mersby.

  “Good morning to you, my duke,” the prince replied easily.

  “A miraculous cure? That’s what you’re peddling? How much will this cost? And why should I want to leave the loving ministrations of the beautiful Prina?” he nodded his head towards the discreet nurse who sat quietly in the corner of the room.

  “Because, you rascal, we both know that Prina is no nurse, and that you’ll take the young lady with you wherever you head next,” Mersby said with a mock sternness.

  “Conor, would you like for your nurse to sample the healing ability Marco offers?” the prince asked lightly.

  “What? She’s not ill; there’s no reason to do that. What is this cure you’re so supportive of? How much is this going to cost me?” the young man was suspicious.

  “It costs not a thing. And if you don’t want to have a more immediate ability to use your arms and hands when Prina,” he paused, “attends to, you, then we’ll not trouble you anymore,” Mersby appeared to give up. “Come along Marco, let’s go.”

  “What is this cure?” the nurse suddenly asked. She had listened with bright-eyed curiosity to the conversation.

  Mersby tool Marco over to her, and positioned the two men with their backs to Conor.

  “What are you doing to my nurse?” he asked loudly.