by Paul Yoder
Jadu was now making his way across the hall dragging a table, all the while creating quite the ruckus. Nomad, putting the saren down on the disheveled bed, quickly went to help Jadu carry the table the rest of the way, answering the man’s questions as they went.
“Surprisingly good eyes and ears, Mr. Jadu. I do indeed hail from the East. Many simply refer to me as Nomad, which I have been going by for some time now. You can call me by that name.”
Back in Jadu’s inn room, they set the borrowed table down on the hardwood floor.
“Place the patient on the table if you would and strip her of everything but her undergarments.”
Nomad picked the saren up and gently set her down on the bare table, the saren letting out a moan of sickening pain as he did so. Nomad got to work at taking off the warrior’s armor as quickly as he could, knowing that at this point, they had very little time left to spare, her condition and skin color having only worsened since the battle.
First he took her tabard off, revealing trim-fitting steel armor underneath. Unbuckling multiple latches attached to her breastplate, pauldrons, rerebraces, and vambraces, he slid all her upper torso armor off, one by one. He slipped off her gauntlets next, then started to unstrap her lower gear, starting with the cuisses, poleyns, then greaves and sabatons.
After all the heavy gear was discarded on the floor, Nomad then started in on the assortment of leather and padded clothes she wore, stripping her down to her undergarments, revealing very fair skin with lines of green trailing all throughout her body visible just beneath her skin—an ill sign of the dire nature of the consuming poison that currently inhabited her body.
“Now what?” Nomad asked, stepping back from the unarmored, disrobed knight.
Jadu looked up from his momentary silence while studying the condition of the prone, bare patient and answered, “Now you take a seat and let me get started with my diagnosis. I’ll ask you questions if needed, I don’t mind the company, but it may interfere with my work. I’ll leave you with that word of warning in case this lady’s life is of great worth to you.”
Looking behind him, finding a chair, Nomad took a seat. Taking off a few articles of gear to get comfortable, he sat watching the peculiar praven perform some cursory tests—watching and feeling the slow rise and fall of the saren’s chest, opening her eyelids, mouth, feeling around under her jawline and wrist.
After his assessment, Jadu began to shoot some seemingly disinterested questions Nomad’s direction.
“Do you know her?”
“I don’t. She is a stranger to me,” Nomad replied.
“Where did you find her then?”
“I came upon her in mid-combat in the dunes to the east of here,” Nomad answered.
Tapping his chin in thought, Jadu asked, “Combatting what exactly? You made mention of some knight without flesh—any more details than that?”
“Yes, very sinister in appearance, and as far as we could tell, he was all bone, no flesh or sinew,” Nomad offered.
“Hmm. Indeed,” Jadu mumbled as he took out a device from the folds of his robes and uncapped a turquoise cylinder, the tip of it producing a bright, white glow.
“That does help to narrow the types of poison this could be. How was this poison administered?”
“It shot forth some sort of gas from its hand after speaking some trigger word. It sounded profane in nature,” Nomad replied.
“I see,” Jadu said, drawing out the phrase.
He opened the unconscious saren’s mouth and peered in with his small light source inspecting as he talked. “Green gas. A corpse-like foe. Well, it’s either good news or bad news then. She’s either dead or alive depending on your answer to my next question. How long has it been since the poison entered her system?”
Nomad gave the question some brief thought before answering, “It has been eight hours now, give or take an hour or so.”
Nomad waited for a response from Jadu, watching his facial features, which didn’t lean one way or another. After a short pause lost in thought, Jadu answered, “Well, eight hours is generally the kill time for certusmortem, or as the locals around here call it, and aptly so, the eight hour death.
“It’s a toxin that is somewhat uniquely regional around these parts. It’s a bacteria that sometimes is found in rotting carcasses. If a pustule explodes, those in the vicinity can find themselves quickly brought low with a respiratory infection, which can spread through the body at startling speed.
“You said the knight was all bone, but perhaps underneath its armor still remained decaying flesh with a large culture of certusmortem that popped and sprayed your friend here.”
Looking to the faintly breathing saren on the table, Nomad asked, “Is there anything you can do for her?”
Jadu, taking pause from biting his lip, mumbled, “Yes. If I have the proper ingredients, I can make an ointment that should reduce the toxicity levels of her blood just enough so that she’ll survive until her body takes care of the rest of the toxins.”
Waiting for Jadu to continue, Nomad prompted him, asking, “Do you have the needed ingredients?”
Looking rather annoyed, Jadu returned Nomad’s stare and said, “I’m not sure yet. The recipe is in one of my study books somewhere, but finding it in any sort of timely manner is unlikely. I’m attempting to recall the recipe by memory.”
Sitting back in his chair again, Nomad attempted to emotionally detach himself from the saren’s fate. After all, he didn’t even know her, but something about being able to take down the unholy knight and not doing so at her request, and potential demise, didn’t sit right with him.
“Carlous bloom root! I’m pretty sure that’s the medicinal ingredient that was slipping my memory. Alright, alright. Now hopefully I have the right amounts of everything,” Jadu said while frantically scuttling around the small, cramped room.
It didn’t take Jadu long to gather the small list of ingredients, ground them up, and combine them with a cream, producing a yellowish-orange paste.
“Here, help me coat this on her body,” Jadu commanded, plopping a generous amount in a wooden bowl.
As they began rubbing the salve on the saren’s body, Jadu kept talking, sometimes directed at Nomad and sometimes seemingly to himself.
“This salve is not so common a recipe. Well, might be common here, but not outside the region. Picked it up from a desert local around four months ago. But, what this is supposed to do is draw out the poison, almost like a sponge. So the paste, if it works, should start to turn brown, then black over the next hour or so.”
Just as Jadu had detailed, even before they had finished coating all of the saren’s body, the earlier coat began to turn a light-brown color, and by the time they had finished the coat and washed up in a washbasin down the hall, half of her covered body was a dark tint of brown, and almost visibly turning darker as they watched.
After making the intrigued off comment of, “Seems to be working faster than the local described to me,” Jadu went back to his desk where he had multiple books open and started reading from them disjointedly.
Flipping from book, to book, to scrap paper for a little more than an hour, Jadu finally looked sideways over to his patient, whispering, “That she still draws breath seems to indicate she’s going to pull through. Feel free to wash that mass of black goop off of her and get her a room. Might take her a day or so before coming around, and a few days after that to recover her strength.
“Don’t forget to clean up her armor a bit too. Wouldn’t want any of the residue from the poison to cause any further problems with her in her weakened state. At the least, it’d be a skin irritant if any of it was left on.
“Thanks for bringing her in. I needed to prove out that local remedy sometime anyways before I could add it into my college’s medical journals.”
A bit confused at both the abruptness of the good news of the saren’s expected positive recovery and the invitation to leave
Jadu’s room, Nomad stuttered out, “Th—thanks. What do I owe you for the care?”
Jadu placed a finger in the spot in his book and looked up to answer.
“Nothing. Unless you care to, that is. I have no issue taking a tip for the ingredients used. I found the experiment interesting. My college pays for my needs, so I’m well off with or without pay from you.”
Nomad, feeling a bit incredulous towards the strange praven, fished through his purse and placed twenty gold strips on the table. It was a lot for him since he didn’t own much monetary wealth, but it was nothing compared to performing such lifesaving medicine on short notice.
“That is what I can spare. Thank you, Jadu. Do you plan on staying here in this room for a few days?”
Jadu smiled and answered, “Ah, thank you for the tip! As to how long I’ll be staying here, I’ll be here a bit longer, more than likely. I have been boarded here for a month now collecting local samples, and I still have a bit more work to do in cataloging them.”
Nomad began gathering his things and said, “Very good. I will see if there are any rooms open at this establishment then and get one for me and the saren. She will need someone to attend to her and a few days on my journey means little to me. I will be back to carry her to another room if the proprietor agrees to housing us here.”
A bit of gold later and with the keys to a room just down the hall from Jadu, Nomad began unloading all of his and the saren’s belongings into the twin bedroom. He had spent a little extra and ordered a bath drawn for the saren.
Bidding Jadu thanks again, he lifted the unconscious saren off the table and made his way to the bathing room, which thankfully was not occupied, and the servant had already heated the water mildly in the time it took for him to transition his and her things to their new room.
Getting involved had cost Nomad more than half of the wealth he had on him, but he had never been one to worry over finances. The time spent nursing the saren would also cost him an extra week off the road on his aimless journey to wherever the wind took him. He didn’t have reservations over his new dependent, but he did wonder, once she was to come around, how she would feel about his help.
She seemed, in the brief interactions he had with her, quite independent. At the most he supposed he expected a thanks from her—at the least, a claim that he should not have interfered with her affairs in the first place.
Either way, to be abruptly tied back into society and to someone needing his help, whether she would later admit it or not, felt good.
He had been without human ties for so long.
3
Introductions
Nomad was finishing up the meal the page boy had brought in when he noticed the saren rousing. Turning his chair to get a better look, he waited for her to open her eyes, which she did after a minute or two of slight movements mingled with moans.
She didn’t start, nor did she seem overly concerned or frightened by the unfamiliar setting, though she did have a questioning look openly displayed in her features.
Nomad decided to take the initiative, asking, “Your color came back today. How are you feeling?”
She seemed to contemplate on the question for a moment before attempting to force her body into a sitting position, groaning, the effort straining her weakened muscles the whole way.
As she sat up, the bed covers slid down over her chest to her waist, exposing her upper torso.
Nomad quickly went for a sack on the table with a linen top wrap, handing it over to her to cover herself while averting his eyes, fumbling over an explanation of why she was naked.
“Your other undergarments were all but decomposed after the toxins in your body were expunged. I just got to the market this morning to get you new garments.”
She made no attempt to take the cloth from Nomad. After a moment, she mustered an explanation, grunting through a throb of pain, “I don’t think I could put it on.”
Nomad, abashed slightly, and honestly not sure what to do, considered his next questions before mumbling out, “What would you like for me to do?”
Leaning against the wall next to the bed, she said, “If it’s a distraction for you, clothe me, but I need water, and I need to be sitting up for that.”
Wishing he had just clothed her earlier that afternoon when he had come in from the small-town bazaar to avoid the awkward situation he was now in, he took the long strip of linen and gently lifted her arms slightly and proceeded to wrap her chest, tying the excess in a knot on her side. Afterwards, he grabbed his bed’s pillows and comforter and stuffed them behind her to prop her up in bed.
Going to the table, Nomad poured a cup of water from a clay pitcher, bringing her over a drink, touching the mug to her lips, tipping it up slowly as she drank.
“Another one,” she let out between breaths after the cup was emptied. Nomad complied.
“Would you like more?” Nomad asked.
Weakly shaking her head, she said, “Don’t want to overdo it for now. Do you have any wafers or flatbread or anything? I’m starving.”
Picking his leftover biscuit from his meal earlier, he handed it to her and added, “I will have a meal brought up soon for you.”
As she began working laboriously on her bread, Nomad started to explain what had happened after she had gone down in the desert from the dark knight’s poison; how he had carried her to the town, finding Jadu, administering the antidote just in time, cleaning her from the caustic goop, and setting them both up in a room so he could monitor her condition.
She finished her biscuit and asked for another drink, this time asking to hold the cup herself, some strength already coming back to her.
“Well certainly you didn’t need to do all that for me,” she scoffed, pausing to add, “but I’m glad you did. It seems I wouldn’t be around right now if you hadn’t.”
Nomad could tell giving thanks was not her strong suit, and if he were to be honest with himself, gratitude wasn’t his either, so he changed subjects for both their sakes.
“I do not know your name.”
“Reza. And yours?” she asked.
Sitting back in his chair, he replied, “The few that have come to know me these last few years call me Nomad.”
Reza seemed to pause, perhaps to consider asking about the origins of his odd name, but asked instead if Nomad could bring her her belongings. Nomad brought her a satchel and a belt strung with a number of pouches and watched as she unstrung a small pouch that sounded as though it carried coin.
After briefly counting through it, she looked up and said, “You haven’t been through my stuff it looks like? If you had, I’m sure my gold would have been the first thing to go missing.”
Though perhaps in his younger years his pride might have taken a blow at even the suggestion of theft, spending years on the unkind, open road, his pride now flapped like a torn and worn banner, taking no offense to the suggestive reply. “No. Your possessions are yours, and I am not the kind of person to snoop.”
“Well,” she said, hesitating for a moment, “it seems you have integrity. That’s an attribute my kind hold in high regard.”
“Your kind cherish many principles similar to my own,” Nomad responded.
Reza subtly crooked her head in curiosity and asked, “You know my kind?”
Nomad answered, “Saren. I wonder if you are but a follower of Sareth, or are a true born saren. By your fairness, I would guess you are indeed a saren. Few of that race walk upon Una.
“Only a handful of your kind have graced the land of my people, but those that have visited have been revered as honored guests and good omens. Your kind are considered heirs of the gods themselves, distinguished from mortal man. Your people possess spirits so strong as to defy death. Much of my culture has principles built up around what has been the core tenants of your kind for ages.”
Though her body was slack, her eyes shone with curiosity and intent as she asked, “You know an unusual amou
nt about my people. You are not from this region then? Your skin color doesn’t quite disagree with the locals, but I do notice your facial features are not regional. Where do you hail from?”
Nomad nodded, confirming Reza’s speculation of his heritage. “Silmurannon. I would be surprised if you have heard of my land. Even most of the well-traveled do not know of it.”
Reza looked off for a moment as if searching her distant memory and slowly replied, “That place. It does sound familiar. Though, of any details, I am at a loss for. It’s far to the east of here, correct?”
Nomad nodded. “Yes. Far to the east. It took me many years to travel to where we are. Most on horseback, some on boat, and recently, on foot.”
“If I’m not prying too much to ask, what is the purpose of your long journey? It seems you’ve traveled far from your home for some purpose. What’s so important?” Reza questioned.
“That,” Nomad said between a long sigh, “is a long story. I suppose you could say, I’m fleeing from something. A past that is too painful to face. Perhaps the further I journey, the more I hope to find the courage I lack to confront my demons. Distance has not seemed to ease my sorrows, but I know of no other path.”
Reza didn’t have a response for Nomad’s cryptic answer, and it seemed as though she didn’t want to press him on his history or purpose for being there. Nomad didn’t allow too long a pause to pass before asking Reza the same question.
“And what of you? What brought you to our meeting place in the dunes? Where did that dark foe you faced come from?”
Reza did not hesitate in answering, “There is a cursed land southeast of here. As a traveler, you may have heard of Brigganden?”
Nomad shook his head, never having heard the name.
“Up until two years ago it was a prosperous trade city. It skirted the borders of the Tarigannie desert, which we’re in currently, and the Plainstate, the territory you most likely just passed through to get here if you were traveling from the east. Brigganden refused to be subject to either the Tarigannie or Plainstate governance, and they fought for their freedom centuries ago and succeeded in winning their independence from either region.
