Healing Wounds in Arabarb
By Charles Matthias
Lindsey had no way of knowing how long it had
been since he'd been given the dragon potion and
the poison. Calephas kept an hourglass on his
worktable that he'd flipped twice already, but
from his vantage point near the floor he couldn't
tell if the device was the right size to properly
measure an hour. The Baron paced back and forth,
obviously loathe to leave the room as he watched
his experiment unfold. Weaker stood in one corner
with head bowed, though he gave the boy shadowed glances from time to time.
They only spoke to him once and that after
Calephas turned the hourglass the first time. The
Baron had scrutinized him as if he were livestock
for a moment before saying, Weaker, remove his
gag. We don't want him vomiting in it and
drowning before the potion has taken effect. And
then, those eyes met the boy's and scowled
deeply. If he says one word, bite his tongue out.
Lindsey kept as still as he could while the tiger
undid the bindings around his mouth. Weaker's
expression was placid, eyes glimmering distantly
but they said nothing to the boy. When he had
finished his task, the tiger Keeper returned to
his place in the corner as obedient as ever.
What relief Lindsey had in being able to move his
jaws against was short-lived. His headache
proceeded from the back of his skull to the front
like a fist slowly enclosing and squeezing. It
thrummed like a distant drum signaling the
approach of an army. To hide from the pain,
Lindsey would close his eyes and shut out all of
the world. At first this seemed to help, but the
poison was moving quickly through his system, and
soon the more he closed his eyes, the dizzier he
felt. And the dizzier he felt, the more unsettled
his stomach and the queasier his bowels.
So he let his eyelids droop but did not close
them. That kept his balance better even if it
made his headache worse. But that was infinitely
preferable to bathing his thighs in a gooey pile of shit.
Despite the headache and the nausea that
assaulted him in sullen waves as the minutes
drained past, Lindsey was able to snatch thoughts
in between. His body felt warm and suffused with
a strange energy. Every pinprick of hair tingled
as if he'd spent an hour petting a cat. His toes
curled and uncurled with the inchoate sensation
of pins and needles. And the wounds on his
wrists, once sore and red, no longer hurt and
when he managed to turn his head without spinning
the world, he saw that they did not look as vicious as he remembered them.
Still, to the baron's obvious impatience, Lindsey
showed no sign of turning into a dragon. His
flesh and body remained stubbornly that of a
human child. Lindsey wondered if perhaps the
potion was working far too slowly. Perhaps the
Curses of Metamor were interfering; their nature
was a mystery to nearly everyone and Jessica's
mastery was late in coming and only because of
what the Marquis with the power of Marzac at his
beck and call had done to him four months past.
Did even Nasoj truly understand them anymore? Lindsey doubted it.
And even though his headache made thinking
clearly difficult, he was aware enough to observe
Gmork's reluctant and irritated entrance with the
bottle of yellow powder. He listened as carefully
as he could while remaining as listless as the
poison made him. It took all of his will power
not to flinch when he saw the bright flames erupt
from the bowl of water or the block of ice. The
only thing he knew that could burn in water was
the Whalish Fire, but he also knew that secret
would never be revealed. What then was this?
After Gmork left, Calephas studied the powder by
mixing it with a few other compounds but nothing
quite as dramatic happened. But the baron's
curiosity could not hold him forever and soon he
returned to scowling with rabid indignation at
the boy who was not turning into a dragon.
For Lindsey the baron's irritation was a pleasant
contrast to the misery the poison caused. He
didn't want to die, but he'd rather that than
give Calephas the power to make himself a dragon.
Still, if it were possible to deny Calephas what
he wished and still survive, Lindsey found the
idea of becoming a dragon himself rather
pleasing. He recalled all of those glances that
Pharcellus had given him when he'd spoken of
being brothers as a ruse to sneak through Arabarb
and into Fjellvidden. Pharcellus had known, and
very much wished to tell him. Perhaps once this
was all over, his older brother could teach him
how to fly. Perhaps his older brother could introduce him to their mother.
Lindsey's heart clenched for a moment as he
thought of the mother he'd never known. He
imagined her looking similar to Pharcellus, with
purple scales along her ridge and highlighting
the otherwise gray hue, and also bigger and more
alluring. He wondered what she would say to him
but couldn't form any words through the Arsenic drumbeat.
And the poison seemed to take a new turn with him
as the minutes trickled away into insensibility.
Everything he saw grew blurry and illumined by
strange lights whispering and passing through the
air. Lindsey blinked to clear his sight, but the
strange light, a sullen blue and pink at first,
flared even brighter and more insistent. Soon he
saw a plethora of strands passing every which way
in a tangled weave, moving through them, being
dragged back and forth as Calephas paced
impatiently. Lindsey saw that they were moving
through the baron and coursing up and down his
body. And there was a dark smear clutching to the
insides of Weaker that seemed to absorb all of the strange light coming to him.
Was this merely the effects of the poison? Or was it something more?
Lindsey lowered his eyes and stared at his
juvenile legs. His little feet, callused with
small toes already crooked from wearing boots,
showed no outward sign of distress. The strange
dreamy cords that were flowing this way and that
in a crazed tangle also reached into him,
coursing through his legs and disappearing into a
dark mass that seemed very much like Weaker's
own. Only, Lindsey could see that there was a
more filmy layer wrapped around that darkness
like a glove would a hand. Only this outer
surface slipped like oil, back into the dark
blob, through it, and back out again, as if they
were both ultimately the same thing.
Peering more intently, his mind throbbing with
the exertion, he could see that there was a
glimmering light hidden with that encompassing
black mass. What was he looking at? Lindsey tried
to clear his thoughts as he let his head roll
back against the wall. Those lines wrapped about
everything, but most things they simply passed
through as if they were nothing. Calephas and
Weaker moved when they did without truly
disturbing those lines. Cords. Some force that he
had never imagined had been there.
But others had. Lindsey blinked as he remembered
one of the many conversations that had ensued in
the long journey to Marzac. The hawk Jessica, the
skunk Kayla, and the Binoq Abafouq, had been
discussing at length the varieties of magic with
which they were familiar. How well he could
remember that evening all huddled in tents in one
of the forests of Pyralis. Andares, Charles and
Jerome had been scouting the perimeter of their
camp. Habakkuk and Qan-af-årael had been quietly
talking on the other side of the fire. Guernef
reclined with his wings pulled in close, while
Abafouq laid against his side. Jessica and Kayla
sat nearby while Lindsey polished his axe and listened to them.
Despite the many differences they had
encountered, all of them had described in more
detail than Lindsey had liked at the time, what
that magic had looked like. They always spoke of
an endless flow of strands of strange energy that
passed through all living things, and sometimes
even those things that were not alive as they
were. Was that not what he saw now? And Jessica
had described the Curses as a darkness clinging
to each Keeper. Is that not what he spied in Weaker and himself?
But if he was now glimpsing magical energies, did
that not mean that the potion had worked? Was not he, Lindsey, now a dragon?
Lindsey hoped it was true, but how could it be if
he was still resolutely human in body?
He stared at Calephas and wondered the same thing
as he. Why wasn't he changing?
----------
The long road descending out of the hills south
of Fjellvidden followed the course of the river
flush with snow melt. About three miles from the
city it cross the tributary to avoid the jagged
terrain that kept Fjellvidden protected on its
southern flank. The jumble of rocks and steep
hills persisted for half a mile before flattening
out into the long slope that was cut through by
streams and rivulets during the Spring. It was
not impassible to determined men, but to the
usual traveler the road on the western bank was easier and already cleared.
It was this same road that only a few days before
Elizabaeg had come with Lindsey and Pharcellus
hiding in the secret cache in her wagon. Now,
Gerhard and the men of the southern mountains
galloped down the road as quickly as they could
that they might reach Fjellviddne in time to help
save their friends. Quoddy had tried to ride by
perching on the horn of Gerhard's saddle, but his
webbed feet and the bouncing gain made it
impossible for him to keep a tight grip so he
flew overhead, keeping below the line of trees, but always following the road.
The men of the tundra proved themselves versatile
even in the forests as not even Quoddy saw them
or suspected they were there when they sprang out
of the bushes and trees just before the bridge
with snarling dogs at their sides and bows and
axes in their hands. Gerhard and his men drew up
quickly, their weapons in their hands even before
their horses managed to stop within the circle of
men and dogs. Harald lifted his hands to ready a
spell. Dark eyes brown and blue scowled across
the short distance as the dozen riders surveyed
the dozen and a half men on foot and their two dozen dogs.
The tension evaporated a moment later when out of
the trees burst a black bird with orange beak
cawing one word full of excitement and delight, Quoddy!
The gull turned in the air and cawed his joy too, Machias! You made it!
As the seabirds danced around each other in the
air, the southern and northern men of Arabarb
gazed at them and then at each other with long,
slow exhalations. Weapons lowered one by one, and
the hard-set chiseled lines bent into comradely smiles.
So they have a way into the eastern gate,
Gerhard said thoughtfully after Ture and Thuring
regaled him with Elizabaeg's impromptu plan. It
will be hours before we can reach them. The day will be mostly gone by then.
Ture nodded with a sullen frown as they forged
their way through the jagged rocks and tight
passages of the eastern flank of the river. The
crevices through which they had to squeeze were
not so small that the horses couldn't manage
them, but they balked and had to be coaxed
through by the riders leading them and tugging
from time to time on the reins. A few could only
be brought through by offering them food.
The dogs had no such trouble, and several of the
tundra men navigated along the tops of the
boulders with their four-legged companions to
make sure that they could not be ambushed. But
their northward progress was slow and it
obviously grated on Gerhard and the other southerners.
We'll be through this soon, Ture replied with a
wave of one hand as he walked ahead of him,
squeezing his swarthy frame through the walls of
rock that rose overhead twice their height,
topped and pock-marked by tufts of grass and
creeping brush. Moss and loose stones crunched
under their boots and the horses hooves. Another
half-hour at best, he added optimistically.
From there we have a clear road to Fjellvidden
and neither the monster or the mage will be any the wiser.
You said his pups chased you out of the mill,
Quoddy pointed out. The two birds stood next to
each other on Gerhard's saddle, eying the cliff
walls warily, but glad to rest their wings. Won't they know we're coming?
Perhaps, Thuring said from behind them. The
tall, grizzled tundra man had one of the travois
slung across his shoulders as if it were nothing
more than an axe. But they won't know how many
of us are coming, or from what direction.
I'm worried about running into the pups,
Gerhard said with a grunt as his steed dug in his
hooves before an especially tight passage through
the stone. He tugged on the reins a couple of
times before the steed attempted the passage with
trembling hide. His wide belly brushed the stone
on one side but he had a hand's span on the other. How many does he have?
Four that we know of, Ture said as he started
up a slope through the rocks. The passage widened
and they could see a cluster of trees ahead. They
were leaving this cleft behind and would soon
enter another. That dragon killed one of them
yesterday, but the one that attacked us at the
bridge was unfamiliar. I think he has a new pup.
So four, Gerhard said with a sigh. And Jarl
only had the one jar of powder left? Ture nodded
and Gerhard scowled more deeply. They are
probably already hunting Elizabaeg down. They may have already killed them.
Maybe, Quoddy admitted, but both gull and
puffin began to shake their heads. I don't think
so. Elizabaeg will find a way.
We need to help them somehow. Is there any way
we can get to them quicker? Machias asked.
Not likely, Thuring grunted as his eyes
followed the trees, noting the others in their
party moving through the brush and wood as the
stones broke clear before rising up again a short
distance ahead. I say we get those dumb dogs to follow us instead.
How?
Attack Fjellvidden from the west. If they are
going to attack from the east, then we should attack from the west.
But nine aren't enough to seize the castle, Ture objected.
That's all your going to get. Thuring's gruff
voice deepened as he added, We aren't going to
get to them before the pups do. So we need those
pups and all of that mage's eyes on us. If we do
that, then maybe nine can seize the castle.
Gerhard stroked his chin with his free hand and
smiled ever so faintly. What exactly did you have in mind?
----------
May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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