by Lisa Lowell
“You must care for her,” Drake commented, looking at the labels on the bottles rather than at the woman who had provided the knowledge. “How old is she?”
Gailin shuddered with a hidden fear now. Would he swallow Grandma and add her to his collection of souls in the bottom of his brain? “I have no idea,” she replied flatly. “Now, coriander seeds are good for bowels and relaxing her nerves but the cilantro it grows works better. It's too early in the season for the plant. Next add garlic for the stomach and general infections.”
“I'd prefer to read these instructions, but I can't,” Drake said frankly.
“You can't read?” Gailin looked over at him with surprise. Given his suave manner and rich bearing she had just assumed he had the leisure time to learn the much valued skill.
“I cannot read the language of the Land,” he qualified. “No one understands this, but there's a spell here. Only those who live here and intend to never leave can actually speak the language. Did it never occur to you that your grandmother never spoke Malornian with you? When she came here she intended to stay and so she became part of the spell. She taught you to write in the new language because that is what the spell demanded. Those of us who do not intend to stay, while we can perhaps learn your language, we have to be taught it like a foreign language, and there are so few who can teach it. I've only been here a few years and always have wanted to return to my home, so while I can speak the language, it's nearly impossible to learn to read it.”
Gailin's hands stilled in the stirring of her additives to the broth. Was he subtly asking to be taught to read? If so, she was not going to acquiesce until he used name magic on her to demand it. Instead she redirected the conversation back at him. “Where are you from?” then added, “Ginger, for digestion.”
“Malornia, like your grandmother. I came to see why everyone wanted to come here but I also came to set up trade routes, though it's difficult. I understand why people come and stay.”
Rather than accept the compliment to her homeland Gailin added more to her broth. “Mustard seed for tumors and if you grind it, the paste is excellent for skin sores. So why do people come and want to stay?” she continued.
Drake shrugged, trying and failing to be nonchalant about the question. “There's almost no magic used here. Many people immigrated for freedom from magic. The Land is beautiful and the weather is varied. You can find almost anything to your taste. It grows crops well and while it is too newly opened to know its true resources, the Land can at least feed its people. But it will be years before you are ready for the trade I offer.”
“Nutmeg for dementia and infections,” Gailin continued. “What do you offer in trade?”
Drake smelled the concoction and curled up his nose in disgust. “Knowledge for the most part. I know who to do business with if you want silk, gold, copper, bronze, gems, lumber, leather, and iron, almost anything. And I know how to make deals. I know what goes into the 'broth' of a business. Is there more to go into this broth?”
“Yes, I add sage, to keep her calm and her mind safe and turmeric, for cancers and to increase her appetite overall. Finally I add milk and honey so it tastes better, though the combination isn't tasty in the least. Milk and honey also add just about every nutrient a human needs.”
Drake helped her lug the pot over to the fire and then asked, “And you grow all these things for yourself?”
“Most of them,” Gailin commented. “Some of them don't grow in this soil so I had to put them in pots – cinnamon, turmeric and nutmeg are all tropical, but the rest can be grown here if I'm careful. We're farther south than it seems here, but there is plenty of water so it doesn't get so dry. The bees love it here.”
They worked over the broth until it was almost warm and then Gailin woke Grandma to feed her the gruel and then gave her a washcloth bath, rolling her so that she did not develop bed sores. “She would still get up and go with me for a walk until this last winter. Now she doesn't have the strength. I'm afraid I'm losing her,” Gailin admitted sadly after she laid the withered woman back down and covered her shoulders with the thick blankets again.
“I'm sorry,” Drake replied grimly, but his tongue flashed reptilian and Gailin remembered. Although they had spent a comfortable hour and she had learned much from him, she still was a captive to his evil. Now with her chores finished Gailin looked over at the canvas bag that occupied the entire sizable table in the middle of the one room cabin, hoping to change the subject.
“Oh, I thought I should bring something so that I may pay for my half of the education. You wanted to study anatomy and the only place I could easily get a body was in the village's ice house; your fellow criminals have not been buried yet.”
In horror Gailin looked at Drake and then at the canvas package. He had brought a hanging victim here?
“They were keeping it in the ice house until they decided what to do with him. It's the murderer, not the rapist,” Drake said as if this would make it any better. When he saw the look on her face he continued to try to justify his actions. “Well, no one else was going to deal with him and we have the need. Where else are we going to find a body to study?”
“How…how…how do people in other lands study medicine?” she managed to ask.
Drake looked almost amused at her uneasiness as he replied. “Same, only there the convicts know this will be their fate. If there is no family to protest, then their body will be used to help save other people. Since he killed his wife and there were no children, I thought this was fitting,” and Drake threw back the canvas covering like he was opening a present, expecting her to be pleased.
Despite being stored in the coolest place in the village, decay had set in and the wave of putrid air made Gailin gag. Gray spots popped up on the corpse's already pasty skin and the back of his neck and hands had turned a nasty purplish gray color. His eyes, open and glazed to a milky haze looked particularly startled. Gailin put her hand over her nose and approached the table. Something in her was fascinated by this process and although the source appalled her, she was willing to learn from it.
And learn, she did. They spent the entire day cutting away different parts of the cadaver with the excellent knives that Drake just happened to have. Gailin took copious notes and made drawings in her book while they worked. They argued the function of the less familiar parts they found in the gut, some so mysterious they could only be speculated at. The liver, stomach and intestines were well known, but other pieces were set aside in whatever containers Gailin could find in her potting shed. Then they skinned the poor man to study his musculature. The tendons and ligaments fascinated her, for she could identify why the man walked with a limp, as she recognized him from town.
Drake, for his part seemed unusually preoccupied with the eyes and neck, like these carried more significance than other parts. He studied the neck muscles and trachea with morbid fascination, opening the vocal box to actually study its construction although it had been crushed by the actual hanging. He also plucked the eye out of the socket and shaved thin slivers off the iris to look at later. It made Gailin's empty stomach heave, but then what she was doing would not make anyone comfortable. Indeed, neither suggested that they would eat that day; not with the cooking surface occupied by a cadaver and their hands covered in every bodily fluid known.
By unspoken accord they agreed to stop as the light got dim, before launching into stripping away the muscle to reveal the bones for their next series of studies. The smell was only growing worse and when Gailin suggested boiling the body to get rid of the flesh, Drake reminded her that the brain would be lost. That made her pause. She wanted to study the brain most of all, even above the heart which was sitting in vinegar in her potting shed. In the end, they cut off the head and put it in a bucket of vinegar and then used her huge soap making pot to boil the body overnight so they could reassemble the skeleton in the morning. For her own part, Gailin went at twilight and took another bath at the river just to get the gore off and to s
omehow come to terms with what she had done.
Over the next few days she ate little and slept exhausted enough to ease the nightmares that such work might have induced. This did not soothe her conscious of the guilt she felt at studying with Drake, but she was learning. Something in her yearned to know how everything worked and she didn't want to stop until she understood. She used the evenings to draw her observations and utilized magic to make her drawings more detailed, above her poor ability to actually recreate her vision. And devotedly she wrote to Vamilion in the back of the pages where it would fade almost immediately, hopefully read nonetheless. She didn't hear much from him and her curiosity over his activities tickled her mind. What was he going to ask Owailion? She had little to say about Drake and how they would break him but someday she knew they would. She hoped they could kill him. There rested her entire hope for survival.
Chapter 6 – Owailion
Vamilion looked out over the plain with a bleak eye. The flat stark landscape blanketed with heather and moss as far as his eye could see, pink and yellow, white and lavender with the occasional effort at green held little attraction to him. He much preferred the great black volcano behind him. Jonjonel had not erupted in several years and his sense was it would be four or more years yet, before he would get to witness that spectacle again. On the very edge of the continent, isolated and by far the largest mountain in the Land, the temperamental, yet predictable volcano provided the best backdrop for this meeting. Besides, it was halfway for Owailion and him to meet.
Getting the equally temperamental Wise One to talk with him always seemed less about compromise and more about endurance. For Vamilion, he either had to make himself sick for hours after an instant trip, or he had to walk four days towards the nearest mountain. He elected to walk north west of Gailin's village and then use the like-to-like part of his magic to draw him from one peak to another to arrive at the base of Jonjonel. In all, four days to cross three thousand miles. For Owailion, it would be an instant trip from his home near the northern edge of the continent where ice remained almost year round. Owailion's magical means of travel left little to be desired: wish it and he was there.
The problem was in getting him to wish to come.
It took the patience of mountains to endure Owailion's attitude and rancor. The bitterness arrived before the customary pop of the magic that announced the King of Creating's arrival. Owailion's white head was bowed against the open wind and his bleak black eyes took in none of the scenery as he glared against the low sun that couldn't quite manage to completely set this time of year even though it was quite late in the evening. He looked older than his energy witnessed, for he could have run miles with ease, but his chronological age, along with everything else about Owailion's past remained buried. Owailion wasn't willing to talk about those times.
“Thank you for coming,” Vamilion said in greeting.
“You didn't give me a choice,” grumbled Owailion. “It was getting down-right loud.”
Vamilion almost smiled at that. He had been magically requesting, calling at obnoxious hours and pestering for this interview every step of his travel here and not been nice about his demands. His mentor would complain about anything that got him away from his work, but Owailion also would be more than interested in anything that occurred in the Land, especially if it had to do with new Wise Ones. It still remained unclear how he knew about any of the magical happenings in the Land. Owailion rarely bothered to leave his home in the far north now that he had built all the palaces and hid the Talismans. Mostly he only roused himself when there might be an invasion, leaving Vamilion to do the lion's share of guarding the borders.
“Well, I found her and I thought you would want to know. And I need your help,” Vamilion began.
“Help? With what? As I taught you, you can teach her,” Owailion growled.
“It's not that simple. That hunter that has been stalking me? Well, he saw me find her and knows her name. I haven't challenged him yet because I'm not sure I can cut him off before he kills her with a word. Right now she's 'disguised' magically and I don't think the hunter knows exactly what he's lured, but he used name magic to bring her away from me. I need a decisive way to get past the sorcerer's shields and kill him without him even knowing I'm in the battle. If he's a Soul Eater, we must release the spirits he has consumed even before we can kill him. Then there's the family she is responsible for and….and I still have Paget. I won't let…let the new Queen see me until I have found ….until Paget has passed…”
As he said these words, Vamilion's appearance changed dramatically. Instead of simple leathers suitable for traveling and tramping across mountains and plains, he took on a regal appearance. He wore a blood wine colored jerkin of velvet quilted in gold stitching over a fine white silk shirt. His rugged pants were replaced with polished gray leather tooled with the outline of the mountain range just visible on the southern horizon behind them. Even his boots took on a polished sheen. Over it all he wore a luxuriously fur-trimmed and hooded cloak dyed a granite shade. Slung over his shoulder he carried a baldric that boasted platinum tooling from which hung a steel sword worthy of a king and a matching pick designed for both climbing as well as a handy weapon. This abrupt change in appearance did not surprise either man but Owailion looked at his companion and shook his head in disgust.
“You've still not learned to not make an oath, boy,” Owailion muttered.
Patiently Vamilion replied, “Not when it comes to Paget. I made this oath years ago and I've not changed my mind. And I'm not a boy.”
“You are a boy if you're foolishly still clinging to that old relationship. Hasn't finding your Queen changed your outlook?” asked Owailion. “Surely you can see that she's a much better fit for you than someone who is not magical and growing old and will die…”
Vamilion cut off his mentor, and with his denial his regal clothing just as abruptly turned back to his more customary attire. “I don't want to argue this with you again, Owailion. I haven't actually looked at …at the new Queen. From her skills and inclinations I'm thinking she's going to be a healer. Queen of Healing. It's different…more like your gifts. She's driven to study things rather than drawn to something in nature. As I was saying, she's in disguise. The hunter knows her name and used name magic to force her back to her home where she's tending her grandmother. He suspects she's magic but doesn't know her as a Wise One.”
“How is it that you haven't looked at her if you gave her the Heart Stone?” Owailion asked, only slightly curious.
So Vamilion had to tell his mentor the entire story, including how he was now communicating with Gailin, though he stubbornly refused to utilize her name. Indeed they managed to simply call her the Queen or the Queen of Healing and left it at that.
“You're a fool,” Owailion muttered after he heard all that Vamilion had tried to do and still planned. “She's going to die the instant that sorcerer figures out what he has there. And having the magician train her in mind work? Not a wise move in my opinion.”
Vamilion swallowed his own frustration, plunging it into the stone pit of his mind and then as carefully as he could, replied, “What would you have done in my place?”
“I would have looked the girl in the eye and countered every command the sorcerer gave her with a command of my own. At least then she wouldn't be in the lair of a demon. She cannot hope to be hidden there forever, especially if she's studying medicine and magic with him.”
Vamilion snapped back, “And when she didn't come to his demands, the sorcerer would know I was protecting her and kill her and I'd watch someone die in my arms all the sooner.” Vamilion didn't want to point that out, but he knew eventually that seemed to be his fate; women he loved dying, slipping away despite all the magic he could bring to bear.
Owailion sighed in irritation before reluctantly nodding agreement.
“So we both agree I can't save her just by looking her in the eye and setting our bond,” Vamilion continued. “But what do y
ou think we should do to get her out of the sorcerer's grasp?”
Owailion might not like it, but sour looks were not a solution either. So Owailion had to propose another option and Vamilion listened carefully as his mentor's proposed his plan. “We need to drive the hunter into revealing his magic first. The Queen must ask more questions, getting him to teach her about himself, until he admits that he has magic. That will open the door to letting her into his head. She's already exploring how he's managed to stay alive for so long: he's a Soul Eater. She will have to release all the spirits he's absorbed before we can ever get near to killing him, and he cannot know that we're doing it until it's too late.”
Vamilion shook his head rejecting the possibility before Owailion even finished his explanation. “I doubt we can release the souls without his noticing. He'll feel weakened and lash out to kill her if he thinks she's doing this, and then come after me if he suspects it's my doing.”
“Not if he gets his energy from somewhere else,” Owailion countered. “He's been absorbing from her for days now, hasn't he? The Soul Eater has not gone hunting since she came to him. You've been watching and tracking his movements. We know he has to feed daily and yet he hasn't left her side. He's not even tapped into the grandmother. He's feeding off the Queen's magical energy. We need to lure him into complacency, dependent on her presence and get them away from everyone else that might become his victim. He'll want to stay near her, keeping her alive so he can tap into her and her alone. Meanwhile we slowly release the souls he's absorbed.”
“Won't that clue him in that he's got a Wise One?” Vamilion observed logically.
“Yes, but she's a Wise One on a leash,” Owailion qualified. “He will love that he controls her. And if he controls her, then he controls you….even if you are not yet bonded. I am the only one on whom he has not got a grasp. I am free to act. I will drive them away from populated areas and watch over her. I'll lure them away where he cannot reach the ley lines and then we'll have out the battle, strip him down to his own bare life and by that time she will have found a way past his shields.”
