Master of restless shado.., p.14
Master of Restless Shadows, page 14
part #1 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
“I’ve a little indulgence to enjoy abovestairs, but we’ll be down shortly,” Lord Vediya called back to those seated at the table, and then despite the people still calling to him—several demanding to know who he’d brought with him—Lord Vediya bounded up the stairs. Narsi followed. As they went up, the stairway became so dark that Narsi had to strain to see Lord Vediya. They reached the hall at the top of the stairs then walked past three narrow doors before stopping at the fourth.
“Inissa.” Lord Vediya hardly raised his voice, and Narsi didn’t imagine that his words carried far over the racket that arose from below them. Someone out on the street blew out series of bright notes from a trumpet.
“I’ve brought a physician, my darling.” If anything Lord Vediya lowered his voice, and yet the door opened immediately.
Narsi wondered if the tousled woman who leaned out had been pressed against the door the entire time. Dark hair hung around her pretty pale face in disarray and her wrinkled blue dress gave the impression of having been slept in. A small mole lay just below the far corner of her right eye, like a dark tear. She threw her arms around Lord Vediya and he embraced her. Just behind her, Narsi noted a brawny blond man, whose long braided hair and rumpled clothes whipped around him as if caught in a gusting storm.
As the woman, Inissa, drew back from Lord Vediya, several pages of paper fluttered past her head and Narsi felt a breeze rush over him. Inissa wordlessly stepped aside to allow the two of them in.
A round window admitted only a single shaft of light into the small room, still Narsi absorbed a sense of the space immediately from the drawing table and multitude of small, framed paintings covering the walls so closely and completely that they gave the impression of ornate tiles. Narsi wasn’t certain in the dim light, but he thought he recognized Lord Vediya’s face and naked body in several of the miniature paintings.
A large four-poster bed stood near the one window, as did a dressing table and bookshelf, but Narsi hardly noticed them as his gaze fell upon the towering, red-haired woman floating above the bedding with her long arms outstretched and her head bowed as if in sleep. Papers, a silken scarf and what appeared to be a pillow sham whirled around her, caught in the wild wind that encircled her.
“Master Narsi,” Lord Vediya said. “May I present your patient, Lady Hylanya Radulf.”
Narsi couldn’t keep from gaping at the handsome, rawboned woman. He’d read about great wonders of magic, shining white hells, huge demon lords and armies of enchanted beasts. But reading, he realized, in no way prepared him to actually witness the impossible occurring before his own eyes.
Inissa shoved the door closed and the blond man sank down to a stool beside the bed.
“This is Kili”—she indicated the brawny, blond man and then extended her hand—“and I’m Inissa.”
“Narsi.” He took her hand and bowed his head over her fingers; he’d learned long ago not to actually kiss the fingers of a Cadeleonian woman. Though he did note the flecks of ink and paint that stained the fingernails of her right hand. Likely the art decorating this room and the drawing table was her creation.
Then he turned his attention back to the unbelievable.
“How long has she been . . .” No official medical term describing an unconscious, floating patient came to Narsi’s mind. “. . . like this?”
“Seven days and six nights,” Kili replied, though his strong Labaran accent gave Narsi a moment’s pause.
Seven days, Narsi thought as he stared at the lady. Her red hair whirled and twisted like vibrant kelp drifting on sea swells. The long strings of jewels around her neck were also aloft. Amidst what looked like a treasury of rubies, a single dull green stone glinted. Unlike her hair and the folds of her crimson brocaded dress, the stones didn’t shift in their positions. They, like the pale young woman herself, seemed as fixed in the air as stars.
“So did this . . . state occur directly after she was poisoned?” Narsi asked. Then, catching sight of the black-scabbed cut across the back of her hand, he added. “And are you certain the poison was muerate?”
“I’m sure it was.” Kili tapped the tip of his crooked nose. “I know the acrid smell of it, and Hylanya recognized it as well. The instant she realized, she withdrew and cast wards to protect herself.”
The breeze whipping around the room caught up a kerchief from a bookshelf and sent it too swirling into orbit around Lady Hylanya. Narsi stepped closer to the woman to examine her hand. At once the wind buffeted his head and tossed the debris of papers, scarves and the red pillow sham into his face. He knocked several pages aside. Kili reached out, plucking the pillow sham and then a yellow scarf from the air.
Narsi took another step closer. The wind seemed to intensify, pulling the breath from his lungs and twisting around his throat like a strangling grip. He gasped as the force whirling around his body constricted, nearly crushing the air out of him. Narsi lurched back a half step and the pressure eased enough to let him breathe, though not without some difficulty.
“Are you all right?” Lord Vediya asked.
Narsi didn’t look at him; he didn’t want Lord Vediya to see his flushed face or watering eyes and think him an idiot. Instead he simply nodded, then he turned his attention to the half-healed wound bisecting the lady’s left hand. The famous blue-black stain left by muerate poison stood out along the perimeter of the scab.
Definitely muerate, not some exotic disease or some similar, but slower, poison. So it should have been out of her system—or have killed her—within two days. Though that was assuming that her body had purged the toxin in some manner. With the lady floating and seemingly lost in a deep sleep, he couldn’t be certain. Finding out would require a rather indelicate line of questioning.
Narsi glanced back to where Kili hunched mournfully on the undersized stool and then to Inissa.
“Has she . . . passed anything in the last week?” he asked.
Kili appeared confused and asked, “Passed?”
“He means, has she shit,” Inissa said. “And the answer is no. She’s neither pissed nor shit, nor eaten anything since she floated up off the bed.”
Narsi frowned at this.
“She was sick once, but that was before we reached the Green Door.” Kili’s expression turned pained. “She brought up blood and blackness, like tar. A great deal of it.”
“Very acrid smelling?” Narsi asked.
“It stank of muerate poison.” Kili nodded.
Narsi had never heard of anyone being able to draw poison from a wound and vomit it out of their body, but he’d also never seen a patient summon a protective whirlwind either, so he took Kili’s assessment at face value.
Narsi shivered as the breeze swept over him. It smelled like summer flowers. And standing so close, he thought that he could just glimpse tiny red streams flickering to life as they swirled all around him. When he closed his eyes, the afterimage of a whirling helix seemed to blaze up behind his eyelids.
“I’m not certain that I should interfere with her,” Narsi admitted. He looked back to the other three occupants of the room.
Lord Vediya studied him silently from where he leaned against the doorframe. Inissa scowled and batted a lock of her dark hair back from her face. Kili simply bowed his face down into his hands.
“I should have stayed closer to her—”
“You aren’t to blame, Kili,” Lord Vediya said. “You couldn’t be everywhere in the middle of a market. That assassin was faster than any of us could have expected.”
“He was a fucking shadow,” Inissa said, but then she planted her hands on her hips and scowled at Narsi. “You’ve got to do something. We certainly can’t move her discreetly like this.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Lord Vediya offered Narsi a quick smile. “Maybe we could tie a rope around her ankle, let her float up to the rooftops, and then fly her like a Yuanese kite out to the dockside and reel her down to the ship.”
“You will do no such thing!” Kili sprang to his feet, knocking the stool to the floor. He looked ready to draw his sword against Lord Vediya.
“Of course we won’t.” Inissa held up her hands and stepped in front of Kili. “Atreau is making a jest.”
“I do not find it funny.”
“A thousand apologies for my lapse of taste,” Lord Vediya said. “I only meant to point out the absurdity of attempting to move Lady Hylanya while she is still in this state.”
“Then we won’t move her.” Kili righted his stool and sat back down. “We will wait until she wakes of her own accord.”
“The royal bishop’s men are getting too close,” Inissa said softly, as if she feared that somehow her words would call them to the room. “They’ve been here once already. Pepylla put them off, but they’ll be back with a warrant to search my rooms anytime now.”
“And the Red Witch has to sail tonight. They’ve already stayed in dock waiting too long. People are growing suspicious,” Lord Vediya added.
“Then let them sail,” Kili replied. He didn’t look away from the lady’s floating figure. “We have our own ship.”
Exasperated expressions passed silently between Inissa and Lord Vediya, then Inissa stepped up to Kili’s side.
“You know that would amount to throwing her to the royal bishop. He expects you to take her to her brother’s ship. That’s where most of the royal bishop’s men are lying in wait.”
“Then we will cut them down to a man.” He looked to Lord Vediya, and for the first time Narsi noticed how red-rimmed Kili’s eyes were. “It will be a glorious battle, like the night our Elezar rode against the grimma’s armies.”
“Except that we’d be starting a war instead of ending one,” Lord Vediya replied. “That wasn’t why Hylanya came here. You would destroy all the inroads she made with Prince Sevanyo and all hope of a marriage between her and Prince Jacinto.”
“A man worthy of her would be with her now, not cowering from his uncle,” Kili muttered.
“That’s for her to say,” Lord Vediya replied.
Kili glowered at Lord Vediya and Inissa. He looked like he might bound to his feet again. His big fist curled around the hilt of his sword.
“There might be one thing I could try,” Narsi announced before the conversation could become any tenser. Lord Vediya, Inissa and Kili looked to him as if startled to remember his presence in their midst. “I just have to know a few things before I can say for certain.”
“What things?” Kili demanded.
“I need to understand exactly what this wind is that’s encircling her. You mentioned wards? Is it some sort of spell that she activated and that just goes on its own, or is it something that she controls with her . . . powers?” Narsi wasn’t even certain he was wording his question clearly.
“It is her soul,” Kili stated. “Her witchflame, which she has unfurled from her body to form a ward around her.”
Narsi took a moment to think about that. Her soul unfurled around her was whipping over him, at this very moment. Was he breathing it in, or was that just the air that her soul moved?
He didn’t allow himself to ponder either too deeply.
What was important was establishing that the strength of this swirling cyclone reflected Lady Hylanya’s health and wasn’t some mere device like a waterwheel that would turn on and on without need of its creator.
If she was healthy enough to maintain this storm for days and nights on end, then Narsi suspected that she could stand to be awakened, if a bit abruptly. He retreated back to his medical satchel.
“What do you intend to do?” Kili demanded.
“I want to try nightleaf distillate to wake her.” Narsi withdrew a silk pouch and held the small jar of white powder up. “It stimulates the body more than kaweh but isn’t dangerous in small doses.”
“How are you going to get her to take it?” Lord Vediya asked.
“It’s most often inhaled,” Narsi replied. “That’s why I picked it. But the real trick will be the dosage . . . and of course how much of it will be flying around in this room to be inhaled by those of us standing here.”
Narsi walked to the window and pulled the wooden shutters closed. Thin rays of light seeped in between the slats; still, that was better than leaving it wide open. He picked his way through the gloom back to his medical satchel.
“I think that the three of you should wait on the other side of the door,” Narsi said, and then, before Kili could object to leaving Lady Hylanya, he added, “The fewer other people who breathe in her medicine, the more there will be for Lady Hylanya.”
That seemed to do the trick.
Kili allowed Inissa to lead him out of the room. Lord Vediya paused a moment in the door and Narsi thought he might ask a question, but then he seemed to think better of it and stepped out, drawing the door closed behind him.
Left alone with his decision, Narsi took a moment to consider the possibility of poisoning himself in the attempt to get enough powder into the air to affect Lady Hylanya. The tiny jar held in his hand carried far more than a lethal dose. He snatched up the scarf that Kili had tossed aside earlier and wound it around his nose and mouth. The nightleaf would still get into his eyes but at least he wouldn’t be sucking in such great clouds of the stuff that his heart would give out in a fit of convulsions.
At least he hoped not.
He edged back into the whirling grip of Lady Hylanya’s witchflame. For a moment he stood there, reminding himself that this was the calling he’d sworn himself to and that he’d come to the capital for the express purpose of aiding Lord Vediya in his ventures.
He pulled the cork out of the bottle and carefully shook a little of the white powder out into the whirling wind. It whipped away from him but an instant later he felt a sprinkling of the powder wash over his eyes. At once the faint light streaming into the room flared. The shadowy form Lady Hylanya had presented lit up, as did the white haze of nightleaf powder twisting and curling up around her. It swirled around her head like a thin cloud.
Narsi waited, but the lady gave no reaction.
He shook a little more powder into the air. An instant later his heartbeat quickened and despite the chill of the breeze, his body warmed. Moments later, Lady Hylanya’s eyes fluttered and she gave a listless nod. A third dash of nightleaf set Narsi’s pulse pounding and his ears ringing, and then Lady Hylanya lifted her head and peered at him through the gloom.
He’d done it! A giddy delight rushed through Narsi and he felt certain that only half of it arose from the nightleaf. He quickly corked the bottle.
“Who are you?” Lady Hylanya’s thick Labaran accent swept over him with the breeze.
Narsi pulled the scarf down from his nose and mouth. “I’m master physician Narsi Lif-Tahm. Lord Vediya brought me to treat you after you were poisoned.”
“You are Atreau’s man?”
Narsi wasn’t certain if she meant “man” in the Labaran sense or the far less romantic Cadeleonian context of a servant. He didn’t suppose it mattered at the moment.
“Yes,” Narsi assured her. “He, Inissa and Kili are waiting just outside the door. Shall I fetch them for you?”
All at once the wind wheeling through the room stilled. Particles of nightleaf drifted to the floor and Lady Hylanya dropped down onto the mattress. She swung her legs off the bed and stood.
Narsi briefly marveled at her height. She stood eye to eye with him and possessed shoulders nearly as broad as his own. The young woman returned his curious gaze with pale, dilated eyes.
“I know your face,” she said.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before.” Narsi knew they hadn’t but was at pains not to take an argumentative tone while still under the influence of nightleaf.
“Not that you know of, Master Physician, but witches can see through many eyes.” She lifted her right hand and made an odd gesture, as if toying with the air as she spoke. “I liked the look of you from the start. Your bones, the line of your jaw, the curve of your nose. You are a Grunito, born of the same bloodline as our Elezar.”
Narsi’s suppressed the urge to deny it. But what would be the point, here in a dark room far from Father Timoteo and the Grunito family?
“Please feel free to just call me Narsi,” he said instead.
“Narsi.” She took particular care in the pronunciation. “Tell me, how long have I been in this place?”
“A week, I believe. You were poisoned, by person or persons unknown, in the city market. Knowing the lethality of muerate, I’d say that it’s a miracle that you’ve survived, though considering that you’re a witch I suppose that wouldn’t be the correct term. . .” Narsi staunchly resisted the urge to go on talking. Nightleaf always made him far too chatty and he knew it.
Lady Hylanya smiled at him, but then her expression turned grave. She spun from him and went to the shuttered window. She lifted one of the strings of red jewels from her breast and held them up to the tiny rays of light filtering through. Narsi heard the door open behind him and glanced back to see Kili, Inissa and Lord Vediya slip into the room. Lady Hylanya continued to study the scarlet stones glinting between her hands.
“Lady Hylanya?” Kili asked.
She offered a murmur of acknowledgment but didn’t turn.
“There are assassins on the streets,” she said. “I can feel the spells that hold them in thrall. Many more have lit up since I slept. They are becoming an army . . .”
“You mean outside this building right now?” Inissa asked in a whisper, and Kili drew his long sword. Narsi stared at the huge bare blade. His heart tripped into a frantic rhythm at the thought of being caught up in an actual battle. He knew next to nothing of combat and, aside from his scalpels, carried only a short belt knife.
“Not here. I feel them scattered across the city and all blazing with the fury of their commands. Their master is plotting something and he means to act soon.” Lady Hylanya’s voice softened. “There are so many of them. Most are broken creatures. But a few still thrash against the thrall laid over their flesh.”
