Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“A Bardek man, is he?” The old man sat back on his heels. “Now, that’s a peculiar thing!”

He rested his hands on his thighs and looked at the corpse for a long time. From the slack way Nevyn sat and the drowsy look of his eyes, Jill suspected that he was in a trance. Every now and then his mouth moved soundlessly, as if he were speaking to someone. Finally he looked up with a toss of his head, and his eyes snapped fury.

“What an ugly little soul! Well, we’ll send him to his rest whether he wants to go or not.”

Motioning Jill and Blaen back out of the way, he stood at the head of the corpse and raised his arms high, as if he were praying to the sun. For a long while he merely stood, his face set in concentration; then slowly he lowered his hands, sweeping them down in a smooth arc until his fingertips pointed at the dead thing on the cobbles. Fire burst out in the corpse, an unnatural, ghastly fire, burning blue-silver in peaks and leaps. When Nevyn called out three incomprehensible words, the flames turned white-hot and leaped high, too bright to look upon. With an oath Blaen threw one arm over his face. Jill covered her eyes with both hands. She heard a tormented moan, a long sigh of terror, yet oddly enough, mingled with relief, just as when a wounded man knows that his death is near to free him from pain.

“It is done!” Nevyn called out. “It is over!”

Jill looked up in time to see him stamp three times on the ground. Where the corpse had been lay only a handful of white ash. When Nevyn snapped his fingers, a little breeze sprang up and scattered it, then died down as abruptly as it had come.

“There,” the old man said. “His soul is freed from his body and on its way to the Otherlands.” He turned to the gwerbret. “There are strange things afoot in your rhan, Your Grace.”

“No doubt,” Blaen stammered. “By the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell, what is all this?”

“Dweomer, of course. What did it look like?”

Blaen took a step back, his face pale, his mouth working. Nevyn gave him a gentle, patient smile of the sort mothers give to children who’ve stumbled onto something they’re too young to understand.

“It’s time that everyone in the kingdom learned the truth about the dweomer,” Nevyn said. “His grace may congratulate himself on being one of the first. Would his lordship allow me and Jill to take our leave of you for a little while? I have an urgent matter to attend to in the city.”

Blaen looked at the cobbles, still shimmering with heat, and shuddered.

“If my lord wishes.” The gwerbret abruptly elevated Nevyn’s rank. “I should be willing.”

Nevyn caught Jill’s arm through his and led her firmly away.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve been so frightened.”

“As well you might be. Now, here, child, the danger’s not over yet. You’ve got to understand that. Stay close to me and do exactly what I say.”

Jill nearly wept in disappointment.

“When I scryed, I saw you guarding Ogwern the thief,” he went on. “Take me to him. If you had a bad time last night, I’ll wager he did, too. That fellow was trying to suck the life force out of you so he could keep his—well, the blue shade you saw—together and alive for a little while.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me just now, of course. Since he’d been dead some time, he couldn’t tell me much more, because his shade was already beginning to break up and weaken. So I just sent him on to his judgment, much as I would have liked to squeeze some more information out of him.”

Jill felt herself turn rigid with fear at this talk of ghosts.

“Now, now,” Nevyn said. “It’s a perfectly ordinary thing, but it’s not the right time to explain it all to you. Let’s see what’s happened to Ogwern.”

When they arrived at the Red Dragon Inn, they found out that Nevyn was quite right to be concerned. The frightened innkeep told them that Ogwern had been taken ill the night before and that he was in his chambers. They hurried upstairs to find the door shut, but when she knocked, Bocc opened it.

“I heard Ogwern was ill,” Jill said. “I brought an herbman we can trust.”

“Thank every god in the Otherlands,” he said with sincere piety. “This has been horrible, it has. I never thought I’d be grateful to a cursed warden, but if his grace hadn’t set that great, strong fellow at the door for a guard, Da would have thrown himself out of a window, I swear it.”

Nevyn nodded grimly, as if he’d been expecting just that. They went in to find Ogwern lying in bed with a frayed blue blanket pulled up around his massive neck. Although he was staring at the ceiling, he looked more terrified than ill.

“Last night was like being in the third hell,” Bocc said. “We were having a tankard in the Red Dragon, and all at once he started shaking and raving.”

“I don’t want to hear of it.” Ogwern pulled the covers over his head. “Leave a dying man in peace, all of you.”

“You’re not going to die,” Nevyn snapped. “I’m an herbman, good sir, so pull the blanket down and tell me your symptoms.”

The blanket receded until Ogwern’s dark eyes peered over the edge.

“I’m going mad. Oh, doom doom doom! I’d rather die than go mad, so brew me up some kindly poison, herbman.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Stop ranting and tell me about these ravings.”

“Tell him, Da,” Bocc broke in. “Tell him about the chickens.”

Ogwern groaned and pulled the blanket up again.

“He started talking about drinking blood,” Bocc said. “About killing chickens and drinking their blood.”

“It was horrible.” Ogwern lowered the blanket. “I don’t truly know what to say. All at once I was terrified, good sir, and I started shaking and sweating buckets. I knew I was doomed, you see, that I was going to die, no matter what I did.” Ogwern let his voice trail off weakly. “But I had to drink the blood. But it was disgusting. I’ve never felt such terror in my life.”

“And then he started screaming that it would be better to die fast than slow,” Bocc broke in. “He grabbed his dagger, so we jumped him, and me and a couple of the lads got him here about the time the city wardens shows up. After he tried to jump out the window, we tied him to the bed, but he went on raving and yelling about wanting to die.”

“Ah, I begin to understand,” Nevyn said. “Then at first light he turned suddenly calm.”

“Just that.” Hope dawning, Ogwern sat up, revealing that he was fully dressed under the blankets. “It was so sudden that it was like a fever passing off.”

“Exactly, but it wasn’t a fever, but a poison. Now, here, Ogwern, you must have an enemy in town who put a particular herb in your drink: oleofurtiva tormenticula smargedinni. ” Nevyn rolled off this imposing name with a flourish. “Fortunately, your bulk saved you from a fatal dose. This poison unbalanced the humors, giving the victory to the hot and moist over the cold and dry, which support the rational faculties. That’s why you wanted the blood, you see, to slake your humors. Then, as the body feels the poison work, the mind can’t understand what’s occurring and can’t take rational steps to combat it, and thus the clever poison doubles its own effects.”

“Ye gods!” Ogwern whispered. “Fiendish, good sir.”

“You must guard yourself very carefully from now on. For the residual poison eat only cool, dry foods for two weeks, cracker bread, apples, the white part of fowl, taken cold. This will cleanse the humors.”

“I will, good herbman. Ye gods, what a close call!”

Since he wasn’t dying after all, Ogwern got out of bed and insisted on giving Nevyn a copper piece for the consultation.