Call of the Flame (Knights of the Flaming Blade #1) Read online

CHAPTER 2: Poison and Dreams

  The hens turned out to be pigeons, but the meal was good and enough for three men. He kept calling to the madman to wake up and eat, but he never stirred, and now Kyric stood at the door to the cell and watched Aiyan where he lay on a straw pallet. He hadn’t moved since they brought him in. His breathing was shallow.

  The summer sun had set and Kyric took the lantern down from its hook. Don’t be an idiot, he told himself as he fumbled with the keys, he might be faking sickness just for the chance to throttle you. The only firearm Parfas had left him was the blunderbuss Aiyan had taken, but Kyric had never fired a gun and wasn’t even sure how to cock it properly. Then he remembered that the madman’s sword had been placed in a cabinet by the front door.

  When he took the sword out and drew it, Kyric saw at once that it was a work of art as well as a weapon. The blade was heavy and forged with strong clean lines, yet inscribed with delicate ancient glyphs and finely polished, catching the lantern light and throwing it back upon itself. The hilt was no more than a simple steel guard and a handle wrapped in leather, as with a sword one would take to battle. Holding it, Kyric felt foolish and unworthy, like the time in his youth when he sneaked into the temple and handled the sacred dreamstone. And look what that had done to him.

  He shook his head. It was only a sword. But he returned it to its scabbard and found a piece of firewood that would serve as a cudgel. Entering the cell cautiously, he held it ready, but there was no need. And when he brought the light close to the man’s face, he saw dark green veins creeping up the side of his neck from under his collar.

  Kyric wiped the remaining make-up away just to be sure of Aiyan’s color. He shook him and shouted, but it did no good, so he went to find the town‘s doctor. Not surprisingly, the doctor was away — gone to the games. After knocking at empty houses until his knuckles hurt, Kyric was at last directed to a shack where an elderly midwife named Galadne lived.

  Galadne was short and plump with tangled grey hair and a big nose. She simply nodded at his request, and they walked in silence to the jail, she with a pronounced limp.

  “That looks bad,” she said when she looked close at Aiyan. “Here, unlace his vest for me.”

  Once they got his shirt off, she found a festering wound beneath his armpit, but it was only the latest of a collection. His torso lay covered with scars. He had been cut and stabbed and shot over a dozen times, one of the scars running in a deep pinched seam from his navel to his collarbone.

  As she examined the wound Kyric said, “He told me that he had been poisoned.”

  Galadne nodded, prying open one of his eyes and holding the lamp high, “Aye, its poison to be sure. Arccor’s Bane by the look of it.”

  “Arccor is the Baskillian word for bear.”

  “Some call it Bear’s Bane. Grows in Baskillia,” she said, searching through her bag of tinctures and ointments, “takes a skilled alchemist to refine it down like this, deadly strong and sticky enough to cling to a sword’s point.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “It can be drawn out fairly easy, but I’m afraid some of it has got into his brains. He has a fever in his head.” She looked down at his scars. “But I’ve a feeling this fellow has a way of pulling through.”

  “They say he’s some sort of lunatic, supposed to be a cousin of Senator Lekon, but I don’t know.”

  She shrugged. “Lunatic he may be, but anyone’s apt to rave a little with that kind of fever. Still, if he’s wanted by the Senator, the like of you or me best not question it, else we’ll end up in this cell with him.”

  She made a poultice of herbs mixed with a foul-smelling jelly and placed it over the wound. Then she fished in her huge canvas bag, more of a sack really, for a tobacco pipe. Filling it with what looked like dried lichens and crushed insects, she lit it with a taper, puffing it to life and blowing clouds of smoke into Aiyan’s ear, all the while humming a weird little tune. The smell was like burning garbage.

  “Now,” she said, “we have to wait a bit and see if it takes.”

  Kyric gave her the only chair in the room and sat himself on the floor against the wall, the stones cool in the warmth of the summer night. Galadne took some unfinished embroidery out of her bag and stitched at it absentmindedly.

  “Have you ever heard of a place called Esaiya?” he asked her.

  “You mean Castle Island? Sure I have, but haven’t heard that name for it since I was girl.” She nodded toward the man in the cell. “You don’t think he’s one of them, do you?”

  “One of who?”

  “Some sort of religious sect, all men. They call themselves knights ’cause they once was an old-time fighting order, but they’re scholars now, I hear. Anyway, they all live together like monks in that old castle. You know the one I mean.”

  He shook his head.

  She looked at him more closely. “You weren’t born in these parts, were you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re from the Highland Lakes.”

  “My mother always said that I was born in Sevdin.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, never looking at her fingers as she sewed, “but both your parents were from the Highland Lakes, weren’t they? That’s the only place you see black hair and blue eyes like yours. Sevdin folk are all brown-eyed.”

  “I don’t know. I never knew my father.”

  They fell silent then, Galadne stitching deftly but lost in thought. Kyric dozed by fits and starts. About midnight Galadne looked at the prisoner’s wound. The green veins had visibly receded.

  “The poison is drawing out nicely,” she said. “I’ll fix a fresh poultice before I go home. He should be able to rise and take food by tomorrow evening.”

  “I forgot,” said Kyric as he walked her to the door. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Not to worry, I’ll get it from the constable. If he wakes in the morning give him water. If he gets worse come and get me.” She turned and limped away

  Kyric thought about dragging the cot out of the jailer’s cell so he would be awakened should the madman stir, but only a minute after Galadne left, Aiyan sat up and locked his estranged eyes upon Kyric, wanting to know how he had come to be in a cell. Kyric told him.

  “Yes, of course,” Aiyan said, nodding slowly. “I understand. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have taken you with me. And I shouldn’t have told you all that I did last night — I’ve just made it worse for both of us.” Suddenly he looked down at his own bare chest. “I had a locket, and a sword.”

  “They’re safely put away,” Kyric said.

  Aiyan slipped into his shirt and vest, peeling away the ridiculous pantaloons to reveal a pair of common breeches underneath. Without the costume, makeup, and sword, he looked rather ordinary. His face was the common sort, the face of a blacksmith or a stone mason, with chestnut hair and a thin, closely-cropped beard and moustache. He wobbled to his feet and faced Kyric through the iron bars.

  “I know what you think of me — a criminal and a madman, but you must believe me when I tell you that you are in grave danger.”

  “So you told me last night.”

  “But it’s far worse now. I was so drugged by the Arccor’s Bane I told you where I hid the rudders. If you go now while you can he might not come looking for you, but if Morae finds you here he’ll ask you questions. And believe me, before long you will tell him what you know. Then, when he knows where the rudders are hidden, he will kill us both so that no one knows they have them.”

  “What are rudders?”

  “A book of nautical charts and observations. Sea captains use them to find their way across distant oceans. But the one I took from Senator Lekon is very special indeed.”

  “The constable said that you had stolen a valuable book.”

  Aiyan almost smiled. “Valuable? That’s putting it mildly. What I took is nothing less than the holy quest of the merchant princes: The rudders to the Spic
e Islands themselves. A book to make empires rise and fall. And a secret so dangerous that these men will commit any murder to protect it.”

  Kyric watched him closely as he spoke, looking for one of the signs of the liar. It was his mother’s legacy, his knowing the signs, for she had skillfully told him every kind of lie that ever was, and by the age of ten nobody could give him the lie. Not that it did him any good. It had only made her final lie all the more painful.

  But he didn’t see any of them with this man. Still, a deranged fellow would believe he was speaking the truth.

  “So you’re not really Senator Lekon’s cousin?”

  “Is that what they told you?” Aiyan said. “Very clever of them really. They can’t afford a public hearing. This way they can bundle me off and torture me at their leisure. I can hear it now: ’Our poor mad cousin, he knows not what he does. We must take him home and put him away where he will never harm anyone again.’”

  Aiyan seemed calm and reasonable now, nothing like the night before. Kyric didn’t know what to think. What if Aiyan was telling the truth and Kyric had got himself involved in a power game of the ruling elite?

  “Alright,” Kyric said, “tell me what is really happening. Tell me all of it — what are these rudders to you, and who are you working for?”

  “I’ll tell you as much as I can without compounding your peril.”

  “I thought it couldn’t get any worse than it is now.”

  Gravely, Aiyan shook his head. “No. It can be worse.”

  He sat down cross-legged on the floor like a storyteller. “Briefly then,” he said. “A few years ago Lekon was an unknown merchant. He’s risen swiftly to political power on the wealth of the Baskillian spice trade. This alone is cause for suspicion. The Baskillian Empire requires special licensing before a Western merchant can deal with a spice trader, and Lekon received the first new license issued in over a decade.

  “Now his spice galleon comes in a few weeks ago with a record tonnage of cinnamon and instead of going into dry-dock for repairs, they sail her up the coast and careen her on a private beach. They even posted guards to keep gawkers away, but I managed get a close look — her hull was eaten up with shipworm. Do you know what means?”

  “No.”

  “It means they didn’t go to Baskillia. They’ve been sailing in tropical waters — that’s the only way to get shipworm. But more disturbing than that, they brought back a new spice, something not known in the West since before the Long Winter.”

  Aiyan leaned forward expectantly. Clearly this was supposed to mean something.

  “Do you see? Lekon was not only given the location of Cinnamon Island, he’s discovered one of the lost Spice Islands. He’s found a way to cross the line and return.”

  “The line?”

  “The equator,” said Aiyan. “The line that divides the world into north and south. The line beyond which ships cannot steer by the stars. The two known Spice Islands lie above the line, but legend has it that seven more lie much farther south, below the line. So I had to know if Lekon was simply an enterprising fellow with a brilliant captain in his service, or if he was being used.

  “I contrived to see him by posing as an independent trader. One of my masters arranged a letter of introduction from a captain in the South Sea Trade Company, and I was able to secure an informal meeting at a coffeehouse. I offered the Senator yet another set of sought-after charts — the location of Shark’s Bank and the black pearl beds — all for a healthy share of the returns, of course. The day before yesterday we concluded the deal at his estate near the outskirts of Aeva. After examining my charts in his study he locked them in a heavy oak cabinet. There was only one other book of rudders in there, the one I wanted to get a look at.

  “Then he placed the opportunity in my lap. He invited me to a party the next night there at the estate, a masquerade ball to celebrate the beginning of the games. I came costumed as Captain Bombasto — you know, from the Commedia.”

  “I’ve never seen the Commedia.”

  Aiyan cocked his head in surprise. “Where were you raised, in a cave?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, Bombasto always has a big stuffed belly. I cut a slit into it from inside the jacket and carved out a place for the book. The jacket matched those pantaloons. I was quite an eyesore.”

  “That’s why you were wearing make-up,” Kyric said.

  “Yes. A mask narrows your field of vision and can slip at the wrong moment.”

  “Apparently you had a very wrong moment indeed. Did they catch you in the act?”

  Yes, but I had already slipped the rudders into my jacket. Morae nicked me as I went over the wall. They pursued on horseback and caught up with me near Karta, so I ducked into the ruins, forcing them to dismount. At one point they were all around me and the only way out was to descend the cliff face behind the agora. Even without the jacket I didn’t think I could make it with the rudders, not in the dark, so I stuffed them both behind a stone in a wall. I climbed down, took to the woods, and you know the rest.”

  “You didn’t say who you work for, who your masters are.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Aiyan said. “What matters is that you realize I’m not Senator Lekon’s insane cousin, and that you are embroiled in a plot that will surely take your life if you do not get away. Please, take your things and go. Go at once.”

  “I suppose you want me to free you before I take my leave,” said Kyric with just a bit of a sneer.

  “Well,” Aiyan said, “they might not hunt you down if you let me go, but I don’t think you should take the chance.”

  “But didn’t you say they would kill you?”

  “Only if I tell them where I hid the rudders. As long as I keep silent they will keep me alive.”

  Aiyan had told his story in a rational manner. Kyric had seen no signs of the lie, but felt that the man had left out much and talked around something important, something greater. And the crazy things he had babbled in his fever still disturbed Kyric. So he had to find out, for last night he had been sure that he spoke with a madman.

  “Just before you passed-out,” he said to Aiyan, “you talked about a secret order of warriors and a man with black blood who could dominate the will of others.”

  Aiyan looked at him sheepishly. And skillfully — just the right mixture of embarrassment and surprise, covering that split-second flicker, the fear of the truth. Kyric saw the lie coming before the man even opened his mouth, and that was what made it so shocking.

  “I guess the poison did make me rave like a lunatic. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “What of Esaiya and the castle?”

  “It’s a monastery. I’m acquainted with some of the monks. I don‘t know why I babbled about that.”

  Another lie. Kyric stood in exasperation, starting to walk away then turning back to Aiyan.

  “I don’t know what to make of you anymore. The absurd and unlikely things you say seem to be the truth, more so as the story gets more impossible. You finally say something that makes sense and it appears to be a bald-faced lie. You must be put together backward.”

  Aiyan looked straight at him, and Kyric saw a new light come into his eyes. He slowly rose to his full height, his burning stare never wavering, and when he spoke, it was with the authority that needs no force or proofs, for to hear it is to know it. The words struck Kyric like rapid blows.

  “Om aei al aim syrav haolis aeic.”

  It was a simple phrase in Old Essian. Kyric searched for the translation. “Let the true heart . . . mirror true words?”

  “Close enough,” said Aiyan. “Where did a country boy like you learn the Elder Tongue?”

  “I spent ten years of servitude in a convent. The lone gift I received from the Sisters of the Rune was a classical education. One must be able to recite the Eddur, mustn’t one?”

  “Did they teach you nothing of
the weird?”

  “No, why would they?” Kyric said.

  Suddenly Aiyan was very still, his eyes glazing over and looking faraway.

  “The moment of the night storm has come,” he said. “Morae will be here before the dawn and nothing can stop him. We will not live to see first light.”

  He’s having another fit, Kyric thought, turning away. He had almost believed the glib story about the rudders, but now he had no way to tell. Truth and lies were one to a madman.

  What do I really know? This man killed two reputable gentlemen, and nothing else. And even if Aiyan’s madness was the result of the fever and story of the rudders true, the man was still a criminal.

  All of this was giving Kyric a headache. He went to the jailer’s room, closing the door, throwing himself down on the hard little cot. Aiyan called to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. He covered his head with the pillow and let sleep take him.

  At first the dream felt so real that Kyric thought he hadn’t gone to sleep. He sat up on the cot in the jailer’s room, and Mother High Priestess Nistra was there in her full ceremonial robes.

  “You should have told Nistra about these dreams you have,” she said. Of course it wasn’t her. Kyric didn’t need to see the catlike eyes to know that it was one of the dream beings. He didn’t know what they were, but when they entered one of his dreams it was never pleasant.

  “I was a boy,” he said, “and a servant besides. And not allowed to be taught the weird.”

  She looked at him with a cold, inhuman eye.

  Suddenly Constable Parfas stood there with a man in medieval armor — black chainmail with a visored helm concealing his face. Parfas smiled at Kyric. “You did say that he’s hidden the rudders in the ruins of Karta?”

  “That’s right,” Kyric answered.

  Aiyan crouched in his cell, ready to spring, facing the black knight through the bars. The knight leveled a pistol at him and fired, but Aiyan leapt aside the instant before the pan flashed. The ball missed, yet while Aiyan was still in the midst of his leap the knight raised a second pistol and shot him in the head. The room filled with thick smoke.

  Then the black knight took Aiyan’s sword from Parfas and thrust it all the way through Kyric’s chest and left it there. It didn’t hurt, but Kyric fell to the floor completely paralyzed.

  “Here,” said the knight, “open the cell and drag that dead baggage over here. Remember, when we brought him out he broke away and got hold of his sword. I drew and fired, but not before he killed this poor young man. Understand?”

  “As you say, Sir Morae,” Parfas said. “But isn’t leaving the sword stuck in him overdoing it a bit?”

  “It seems so now, but when we bring in the witnesses it will be all the more convincing. Trust me, I have done this before.”