Edith Pattou - Hero's Song

He had plucked the herb from Mordu's garden. Mallow. That was it. And Mordu had told him the recipe. But it would probably not work.

"Collun? Tell us."

"Mallow," he rasped out painfully. "Leaves are round with points, bright red flowers, dried. Boil them ... with leek juice ... gentian ... goat's thorn leaves. Two parts mallow ... one of the others ... Make a paste. Mordu said..." He trailed off.

Brie disappeared.

Nessa stayed beside him. He looked up at his sister's face in wonder. Her skin was pale as curds, and the bones of her face stuck out sharply. There were purple-black shadows under her eyes, and her lips looked bloodless and thin.

"Nessa," he whispered.

"Collun." He could barely hear her voice.

"You are alive."

She nodded and covered his left hand with hers. Then he slept.

When he woke he was no longer in the water. Nessa and Brie were gently trying to peel away the layers of his clothing. In some places flesh and cloth stuck together, and during the agony of undressing, Collun lost consciousness several more times. Finally he lay shivering, both hot and cold, in a thin layer of sweat-soaked underclothing. He saw his sister holding something in her hands. He didn't recognize it at first, but then realized the sodden lump was the book she'd given him.

"Your ... book," he quavered.

"I'll make you another," she whispered.

The mallow paste was ready, and Brie slowly began to rub it into a patch of fire that burned at Collun's wrist. He let out a high-pitched animal sound. From then on, they told him later, he was delirious. Nessa said it was Brie, her face pale and set, who rubbed the mallow salve into Collun's raw, mangled flesh, reapplying it several times.

When he finally came out of the delirium, Brie bathed Collun's flaming face in freshwater. She told him she thought the salve was already beginning to heal the oozing weals on his body.

They got him to drink an herbal broth that Brie had improvised, sweetened with bits of Mealladh's apple. Collun felt weak and wrung out, but his heartbeat was steady and the gray streaks only occasionally darkened his vision.

His jaw throbbed. It hurt to move it. In the wavering light of a candle nearby, Collun could see his arm. It had been burned in a spiral pattern where the Wurme's tongue had wrapped around it. Undamaged skin alternated with festering ribbons of red. His shoulder was a mass of blistered flesh, and his hand was swollen and seeped with red-and-yellow pus. He remembered what the Wurme's tongue had done to the thick branch on the shore and wondered why he had any arm left at all. Perhaps, he thought, the Cailceadon Lir had protected him.

The soles of his feet had been badly burned. He wondered how he was going to walk again. And yet he was alive, and the mallow salve was healing his body more quickly than he would have thought possible.

As Brie sat by him, bathing his face, Collun noticed that her hands were covered with blisters. She told him she had gotten them while pulling him away from the dead Firewurme and onto the Ellyl horse.

"Fiain," Collun said, suddenly afraid. "Where is he?"

"He is fine," answered Brie. "The cave is too cramped for him, I think. He prefers to wait outside. He gallops around the causeway at low tide."

Nessa joined them then with a new batch of herbal broth. Collun looked again at his sister's emaciated face, and his heart twisted in his chest.

"What did they do to you, Nessa?" Collun asked.

Nessa looked at her brother. For a moment her eyes were unfocused and strange, as if she did not know where she was or even who she was. Collun anxiously reached over and touched her hand. "Nessa?"

The girl's eyes suddenly refocused, and they filled with tears.

"Crann said you must have held out for a long time, because Urlacan set out late to find me," Collun said painfully.

Nessa nodded, covering her eyes with her hands. "For as long as I could. But in the end..." She dropped her hands, her mouth twisted in anguish.

Collun held her hand tightly. "It was Bricriu, wasn't it?"

"Yes. The night before my coming-of-age ceremony, there was a feast at his dun. Halfway through the evening, Lord Bricriu asked to speak to me privately in his library. I entered the room, and then everything went blank. I woke in the darkness in a dungeon below Bricriu's dun."

"The labyrinth," said Collun.

"Was it? I knew it only as darkness. Each day Lord Bricriu came, carrying a candle. He said I would be given nothing to eat or drink until I told him where the chalcedony was. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, but he only laughed. Days went by, and I grew weaker and weaker. Every day Bricriu came. 'Where is the chalcedony?' he'd shout. 'Where is it?' Soon I became too weak to answer.

"I think he believed, finally, that I knew nothing of the stone. The next time he came he brought a piece of bread, some cheese, and a flagon of cold water. He said I could have them if I would tell him about my brother and my mother. I sensed that to speak might bring harm to you and Mother, though I did not know why. So I kept silent. Bricriu was very angry. After that he used needlelike pieces of metal, which he heated in a torch's flame." Nessa shuddered and bowed her head. After a while she spoke. "I don't remember much beyond that. Except that somehow I did not tell him what he wanted to know.

"There was a journey on horseback then. I was given a little to eat and drink, but it made me sick. Finally we came to a rocky land with air that hurt to breathe. By then I was able to eat again. It was night and we were camped by a large river. There were many Scathians around the fire, as well as a number of hooded creatures with yellow eyes that frightened me."

"Morgs," Collun interjected.

"There was suddenly a great commotion," Nessa continued. "Another large group of Scathians arrived, and at their head was a tall, fair woman. She wore a strange war helmet with two silver horns rising from the crown. It hung low on her forehead and over her nose, curving into the beak of a large bird of prey.

"I did not know at first who she was," said Nessa, "but then I heard one of the men call her queen, and I knew she must be Medb."

"You saw Medb herself?" asked Collun, his eyes wide.

Nessa nodded, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her face had gone white.

"What did she do to you, Nessa?" Collun cried out.

The tears came again. "I'm sorry, Collun," she whispered. "But her eyes..." Nessa faltered. "They were so pale, almost white, like her hair. And when she stared down at me I felt so cold, colder than I've ever felt before. I almost fainted, I think." She paused, then began again, her voice still a whisper. "I could bear Bricriu's needles better than those eyes..."

Brie poured Nessa a cup of chicory and handed it to the trembling girl.

"I was lying on my side, near the fire, my hands and feet bound. Medb stood looking down at me; she took off her war helmet, and her hair fell straight and white to her shoulders. She was beautiful, but in a cruel, frightening way.

"Then she leaned over and picked me up. Her arms were like iron. She carried me as if I were a baby and walked to the edge of the causeway. She lowered me into the rancid water until I was completely submerged except for my head. Then she took hold of my hair with one hand, pulling it so tight I cried aloud.

"With the other hand she rummaged in the folds of her white cloak, then pulled out a stone. She held it up in front of my face. Something about the blue stone looked familiar to me, but I was too terrified and ill to remember what it was. 'Where is the stone like this one?' she demanded. I told her I didn't know. With the hand gripping my hair she pushed my head underwater and held it there. I was on the verge of losing consciousness when she roughly pulled me up again. I gasped for breath and she stared down at me, no expression at all on her face.