“The bedroom! She’s bleeding!”
My hurried assessment of the situation took in a blood-soaked mass of bedding, an exhausted, half-naked and clearly hurting woman, and two small, very frightened faces peering down from a loft room above the bedroom. Dropping my pouch at once, I placed my hands upon her abdomen.
“Placenta over the birth canal,” I muttered.
“What does that mean?”
“Hush.” I listened deeper. “The babe yet lives.”
“Mata be praised!”
“Ay. N
ow, fetch me linens and warm water. Woman, listen to me–”
“Izella!” she gasped.
“Izella, I am El Shashi. You and your baby will be safe. You need to trust me. I’m going to open your belly. You will feel little. And then I will heal you again.”
She
shrieked, “Oh, Falak! Oh! Oh!”
Time was short. The
huge carpenter, although clearly troubled to the core of his quoph, gave me a curt nod. I dove into my bag and plucked out my sharpest scalpel. “Hold on.”
O
ther athocaries section infants in this manner when the woman’s life is endangered, but my advantage was that I could stanch the wound at once, and literally feel my way through the layers of skin, muscle and tissue with my power–and too, calm baby and mother with a touch. In moments, I had her laid open near the navel and reached within her belly.
“Here she is,” muttered I, quickly passing a vernix-covered, squalling newborn to her mother.
Eh? What?
I grinned at the parents. “Surprise! Here, look … another babe!”
“A boy,
” Falak exulted. “Twins! Mata is truly good.”
I hunkered back on my haunches, resting my wrists on my knees to prevent the blood from staining my burnoose. “Congratulations! Twins are a gift indeed. Two beautiful babes.”
They did not hear me, I own. The carpenter sat beside his beaming wife, helping her hold the tiny babes to her breast. Twins are often early to enter the world. I should have known by the size of her. I had best close Izella up before she lost any more blood, or it would soon go ill with her.
I laid my hands upon
Izella once more and began to knit the flesh back into place. Then I felt something. Oh, larathi, I felt more indeed! Slowly, I reached one more time through the gash into her womb. There, right near the top, as if hiding from our regard, I found what I had feared. With great care, I reluctantly drew it out.
Izella and Falak gasped in unison.
“Hold out your hands.”
Falak, as if in a dream,
rose from the bed and cupped his hands to accept the third babe from me. Triplets! A vanishingly rare phenomenon in the Fiefdoms. This little scrap of humanity was no bigger than a newborn lumdog pup in his hands. His great, work-roughened palms wholly engulfed her, for she was smaller than the other two, and her colour appeared blue-tinged and lifeless. My questing fingers touched her clammy skin. Sometimes one twin will appear to have fed upon the other like a parasite, truly told, or one will live while the other perishes. But this was my first experience of triplets.
“I’m
afraid she isn’t breathing,” I advised.
But even as I spoke, I thought I heard Janos’ voice in my ear. ‘Life can be deceptive, Arlak. It is much more resilient than you think. It clings
–and truly told, even thrives, where least expected. Can we know its nascent spark? Who can know when that spark departs the mortal vessel for the afterlife?’
‘Janos, is it possible to raise the dead?’
Ay, I remembered that conversation well–late one Alldark evening, after a blizzard had reduced Yarabi Vale to a snowbound trap. ‘Truly told,
solûm tï mik
, that is a question for the yammariks or for Mata Herself. But know this: magic is born of life, not death. One day, when you become a father yourself, you will know there is magic in that first cry of a newborn infant. But there are legends which say that Ulim’s way is the magic of dying, and the capture of souls for his foul purposes.’
I stirred uneasily at his sombre
mien. ‘But the Gods are just a legend, Janos. Ulim lives only in ulules’ tales–’
‘Hush! Don’t ever say that! Don’t even think it. Until you have observed the secret rites of the Ulitrists, do try to refrain from braying your lack of knowledge to the world.’
Ay, not our first clash. But with his scorn ringing in my ears, I laid my hand upon the babe in the carpenter’s hands and tried to probe for some sign of life, however dimly it might burn. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and willed the power forth. Tiny heart, beat. Lungs, breathe. Mind … hear my call. Mata, I beseech you …
She was so far gone, I gave up hope in the long waiting. I was unable to pray more, to think further than this: that if Mata was a lover of life, then she might succour this poor babe from the steps of Ulim’s throne and return her immortal quoph to the realms of mortal people. I
felt nought in her flesh that should give me hope.
Not a glimmer
.
Suddenly
… I felt the heart flutter. Now her eyelids trembled.
I gave a cry of amazement!
And then I caught the babe deftly as the giant carpenter measured his length upon the floor in a dead faint. Now I would have to mend his head too.
Give me the dry land any makh,
A place to walk across its back
,
Not for me to float on fishes,
Lest I end up those fishes dishes!
Popular Ballad
of Herliki Free Fiefdom:
Drink to the Sea My Lovely
The city of Herliki perched as a great mother seagull warming an egg upon the famed chalk cliffs of Hakooi, overlooking the Gulf of Erbon. Its walls were monuments of white majesty. Herliki was named a free Fiefdom, because its citizens, men and women both, were freemen, not bondservants or landless serfs as in many of the other Fiefdoms. Orik had described Herliki as a sunny paradise, but in the Glooming storms when I arrived, the city was caught in the throes of a wild sea tempest that flung such booming wave-mountains against the cave-riddled cliffs that the ground shuddered at each blow. Once through the great gates, I had to lean into the wind whistling down the narrow alleyways while torrential rain lashed the cobbles into rivers.
The storm blew me through the streets, and raged for five days. My innkeeper kept invoking Slukkan, a local weather-god much revered by sailors, and
urged all her guests to partake in interminable rituals meant to encourage good weather. I have never been fascinated by the entrails of animals. After the second night, I confined myself to my room pleading illness.
And it came as little surprise,
mark my words, that good weather followed the bad. Superstition does irritate me like a burr in the boot.
After the storm broke, I quickly learned that my position in Herliki society was
only slightly above the crabs that the locals loved to consume in a bewildering variety of local dishes. My chances of entry to the Mystic Library appeared to closely mirror the chances of one of those luckless crustaceans escaping the cooking pot.
But I am a trader at heart.
As I marked in the past, healing power has leverage.
One day, I removed a warty growth from the nose of a popular ulule. She knew that the only daughter of the Hassutl was deathly ill with a canker of the liver. The Hassutl had offered a great
reward for her healing, which for anna had lain unclaimed while the usual procession of charlatans and vultures made merry with her treatment. Now they were waiting for her to die. Had they hoped for El Shashi? No. But the ulule knew my reputation. She did not believe I was he, but she did offer a bargain.
Bargain enough to purchase an audience with the Hassutl.
* * * *
“I am minded to toss you off the cliffs!” snarled the Hassutl.
First Lord of the realm, his word was second only to the Hassutla’s. She had not deigned to meet an itinerant healer. “I’m sick to death of your kind–lizards and snakes, swindlers to a man!”
I pressed my feverish forehead against the cool mosaic tiles,
depicting a fanciful underwater seascape. A creature they called ‘octopus’ was right beneath my nose. Horrible, rubbery meat. I had attempted it but once.
“Who allowed this scoundrel access to my presence, let him tremble!” I imagined the pompous herald growing pale. “What my daughter has suffered
–words fail me. What makes you think you’re offering any different potion, or poultice, or ritual, to the rest of those … those scum-sucking parasites? What skills have you? What proofs do you bring? Calling yourself El Shashi–I’ve never heard such brazen effrontery!”
I wet my lips and ventured, “I bring no such proofs, great Lord.”
“Then what in Mata’s name do you expect of me? How dare you.” A pair of magnificently tooled leather boots stamped into the periphery of my vision. “Arise, be you a man, and look me in the eye, and swear you will heal my daughter! Else crawl out of here like the cur you are and flee my city, or I swear I will feed your filthy, lying carcass piece by piece to the crabs.”
It was not a fate I cared for. His challenge, however, angered me. I had suffered more than he knew. His doubts were his right, but so was my
integrity. At my rising, an agitated hissing rose from his court.
The Hassutl of Herliki wore crimson silk pantaloons cut to the knee and a vest of costly silver brocade. At wrist, ankle and neck, he wore tens of silver bracelets and torcs in a variety of designs, patterned after the tygar common to these parts and the great sea condor. A great chain-link of office, the hassulkarian, rested upon his broad-muscled shoulders, and was so encrusted with rubies, garnets
, and carnelian that it was difficult to discern the metal beneath. A robe of the finest purple flowed from his shoulders to the floor. His crown rose a good handspan above his head, its centrepiece a ruby the size of a lyom’s egg. His right hand rested upon the hilt of a meliki-style scimitar, a double-pointed, double-edged beast of a weapon favoured by pirates and freemen alike, which could split a man in half at a stroke.
He was, in a word, magnificent.
But I was El Shashi, in truth mightier than he. Meeting his hostile stare with a measure of calm at odds with my churning belly, I replied, “Great Lord, I’ve no need of potions or infusions, poultices or ointments, or any form of trickery or cheap flim-flammery. I dare because I can. I dare, because I have a great need.”
“Ah. And pray tell, what is your price?” I could tell he expected me, in my apparent arrogance, to demand half the jewels in his kingdom.
“Entry to and free use of the Mystic Library.”
The Hassutl stared. The longer he stared, the more frightened I became. His colour
rose–dangerously. His eyes bulged, red-rimmed. A vein throbbed so fiercely on his forehead I feared it would leap out of its own accord and strangle me.
“The Mystic Library?” he screamed at la
st. “Entry to the Library? That’s your price? Answer me, you worm!”
An awful silence gripped the room.
I burshingled stiffly, goaded beyond bearing now. “Perhaps we should see to your daughter’s good health first, great Lord, before we discuss the price of her life.”
Harsher than I had intended. The Hassutl’s fist was white-
knuckled on the hilt of his scimitar. Doubtless he had more than a passing temptation to separate my impertinent head from my shoulders. I bowed even lower than before, wishing I could disappear through the floor, and trembled.
“Dismissed!” he roared at the nobles. “You.” His finger stabbed at me. “Follow me.”
I have long legs, but I had to trot to keep up with the Hassutl’s storming progress through the palace. Evidently the staff were used to his moods, for his mien had them skipping and scurrying like frightened forest deer to clear his path. I had a confused impression of marble halls, galleries populated with priceless vases, and silken hangings and artwork from across the Fiefdoms, before we crossed a pretty open courtyard, darted between a pair of soldiers who raised their crossed scimitars for us to pass, and entered a wing with boudoir after fantastical boudoir set off a great central corridor.
Without pause or warning he swept into one of the rooms, scattering maidservants left and right with a chorus of frightened cries, before leading me into the chamber beyond. It was dark and shadowed, and the stench of imminent death hung
thickly within, despite Jartian incense being burnt in a brazier and a vase of fragrant lilies dominating a small side-table. A ghastly rattle drew my attention to the massive bed, where a bevy of elderly athocaries fussed over the dying daughter of the realm.
“OUT!” roared the Hassutl, and made good his word with the flat of his scimitar when one of the athocaries moved too slowly for his liking. “Get out!”
Again, a long, rattling breath sounded behind the kingly silken hangings. I knew I was not a makh too soon. Too many a time I have heard that sound–Ulim’s rattle, say the Elbarath, the sound a person makes just before death.
“Behold the Hassia K’huylia, my daughter,” he said.
The poor girl was swaddled in bandages suffused with some ghastly concoction–dung of the marmoset and crushed lizard livers, or I missed my mark. A favourite for cankers of the bowels, liver, and kidneys. I had to cover my mouth as I leaned over the bed. K’huylia was sallow and emaciated, her pulse barely flickering against the sunken flesh of her throat, and though her fever burned fiercely against my hand, there was no trace of sweat on her skin. They had probably withheld food and drink in a mistaken attempt to deny the canker nutrients to grow, never realising it would take all it needed from her body and more, regardless.
Bloody butchers. Better the blade than this!
Her organs would fail soon. A touch-and-go case. One wrong step and I could hasten her path to the grave.
I drew back and addressed the Hassutl. “Get me a sharp blade, hot water, broth, and throw the windows open for Mata’s sake. Consign this stinking brazier to the firepit.”
His eyes darkened.
“We must cut off these filthy bandages,” I assured him. “Have the servants bring fresh linens as well.”
Never before had I encountered so many poisons in a body. Usually much would be excreted or sweated out by a fever, but K’huylia was beyond that now. Concentrate them, and there was a good chance they would reach her heart. But maybe … yes. I closed my eyes and began to draw the poisons into a crystal I fashioned inside her abdominal cavity.
Her heart stopped.
Makh passed. Servants came and left. The Hassutla herself came to observe, but all she would have seen was her daughter breathing in perfect concert with me. I cradled her life at the cusp, like a baby bird trembling in my palm, and refused to let her pass on.
I remember the first time I held a bird. Janos had rescued a kestrel’s chick from a
marauding mountain fox. He placed it in my hands. He taught me how to hold it, to soothe it, and as reward, to feel the warmth of its fast-pulsing heart and to appreciate how life is curiously fragile yet as strong as ivy clinging to the side of a house. And once its spark is snuffed out, there is no return …
At length, I began to drip the broth between her lips. Drop by precious drop. It took all night to finish a
single bowl. With the moisture came the ability to remove the poisons faster. I cleansed her bloodstream, and sometime during the darkest makh her heart began to beat again–I gave it a tiny push, and her spirit did the rest. By the dioni orison, a glorious sunrise over the pearl-white peaks of the western Loibrak Range, her heart beat steadily of its own volition and her breathing eased.
Now that K’huylia was stronger I cut off the dung-encrusted bandages with my own hand. I had the servants strip off the linens and bathe her body
–much did they mutter at my presence, though the girl was nought but pitiful skin over bone. Surely they could see she was no attraction to a man? Always these social niceties over survival … Umarik customs are passing strange.
I turned my attention to the canker. There were tumours throughout her abdomen, not just in the liver
as the other athocaries had assumed. Her kidneys were dysfunctional, her bowels, riddled with growths. Here I did a deep, slow work–struggling to help her body find ways to remove the diseased parts while preserving the good. Again and again, I was stymied by my lack of knowledge, baffled by the progression of the disease, humbled by the elegant intricacy of the pathways I trod. I proceeded as much by instinct and experience as by understanding.
When I was done, I knew my work was not done.
* * * *
A delicate gazebo, crafted of sliver filigree over columns of solid blue-veined Rhumian marble, housed our dining table. Three successive layers of diaphanous Sulmian silk hangings created an atmosphere of intimacy, but in reality left us
at the pleasure of the cool, scented breezes of eventide. All around the gazebo, the formal palace gardens were lit with tiny candles winking like fireflies in the darkness. I wondered if the servants had perfumed the hangings especially.
We four sat at table
–the Hassutla, the Hassutl, the Hassia K’huylia, and I. Though they had other sons and daughters, this was a private celebration. A lummericoot twanged discreetly behind one of the hangings. Every dish was exquisite. The wine was by leagues the finest I had ever tasted, and completely wasted on an uncultured vegetable farmer of my ilk. Even the spoons and dishes were solid silver.
The royals
wore semi-formal robes, and the Hassutla’s hair alone boasted more jewellery than could have furnished a respectable trader’s business back in Roymere. K’huylia, in the manner of the younger court set, was wearing a flowing surriba the colour of amethyst, and I thought its close fit at the bodice and waist, and elegant length, befitted her slender figure most admirably. And I? My flowing sallinen shirt and soft bruke trousers, with tooled leather boots and a silver torc about my neck, were quite the finest clothes ever to grace my undeserving skin.
“It is too much,” I said. The Hassutla beamed at me. “I urge you
–my presence here cannot become widely known or I would become a danger to you and to those you love.”
“You have healed my daughter. For that, half the kingdom were yours.”
I poked at my food, feeling tired and dispirited. “My Lord, as we discussed, I merely stayed the course of K’huylia’s illness.”