Burn Me Deadly

EIGHTEEN

I don’t have time to banter,” I said. “Who are you and whose side are you on here?”

I heard a thump as the interloper slid down off the porch rail, then the soft shwip as he drew my sword from its scabbard. Just when I was sure I’d feel my own blade at my throat, the voice said wearily, “I suppose I’m on yours.”

I risked a glance, and was more surprised than ever: it was the damn scribe again. He stepped in front of me and faced the doorway full of dragon worshippers. “Okay, listen,” he told them. “I’m really not very good in a fight, so I’ll probably get this sword stuck in the first guy I stab. The rest of you can take me down pretty easy then, but the question is… who’s going to be that first guy?”

No one moved. The scribe mock feinted with the sword, and the others jumped back. He laughed. He had his thumb on the safety catch; he wasn’t as much an amateur as he pretended. “You taking the prince, too?” he asked me.

“I’d just as soon not,” I said.

The scribe grabbed Frederick by the hair and shoved him through the door back into the house. Then he yanked the door shut. He turned to me and said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“Poisoned,” I said.

“My horse is in the street; take her to the moon goddess hospital outside town. I’ll make sure no one follows and then meet you there.” He swung the sword casually. “Wow, a Shadow Slasher III. Nice balance, too, although I always thought they were top-heavy.”

I had no time to argue or try to fathom his true intentions. As he said, his horse-a majestic chocolate-colored stallion-waited patiently in the street, and did not balk when I took the reins, tossed Nicky’s limp body over his back and leaped into the saddle. He took off with only the slightest nudge from my heels, and people jumped aside as we shot through town.

I repeatedly kicked the door of the main hospital building to get their attention, but not hard enough to break it open. Two heavy doors in one night was all I had in me. Nicky moaned softly, limp in my arms. “Hey! Emergency here!”

The door opened and a kindly gray-haired woman wrapped in a robe held up a lamp. She saw Nicky’s pale, sweaty face and immediately stepped aside. “First room to your left,” she said. “Put her on the table.”

One of the apprentices, a young woman clad in a thin sleeping gown, appeared rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“This girl’s been poisoned,” the older woman said. “Get water heated for a bath. Put sea salt and draw-weed in it.”

The apprentice understood the urgency and scurried to obey. The older woman followed me into the small examination room, opened the red robe and scowled at Nicky’s skimpy loincloth. “Did you buy her for the evening and things got out of hand?” she snapped at me.

“No,” I said. “She’s not a whore; she’s just a girl who got in over her head and fought back.”

She looked at me oddly. “Mr. LaCrosse?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t recognize you without the bandage around your head. You should reconsider whoever gave you that haircut, though. Here, make yourself useful and light the other lamps.” As I followed orders, she lifted the girl’s eyelids, sniffed at her shallow breath and checked her pulse at her throat. Exposed this way, askew and covered in unhealthy sweat, Nicky looked even more helpless, as Laura Lesperitt must’ve looked to Doug Candora. He hadn’t hesitated then, either.

“We never officially met, but I’m Mother Mallory,” the woman said. “I assisted Mother Bennings on your case, goddess keep her soul. So who is this?”

“Her name’s Nicky, and that’s really all I know about her.”

“Well, we’ll do what we can,” she said, and turned away from me. I was being dismissed.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not leaving,” I said with certainty.

“You can’t help.”

“I’ll try to stay out of the way.”

She started to protest again, then nodded. “Pick her up and follow me, then.”

We went into the next room, where the apprentice had a large tub filled with water above a low-burning fire. Mother Mallory removed the skimpy loincloth and I placed Nicky, now totally nude, in the bath. The water was already hot. She looked like a deathly ill child, small and pitiful. Her eyelids fluttered and she tried to speak, but made no coherent sound.

“Keep the fire going at this level,” Mother Mallory said to the apprentice. I understood the treatment; if Nicky could sweat out enough of the poison, she might survive it, although it could still do permanent damage. If I’d gotten her here sooner, or known what the poison actually was, an antidote might’ve been provided. Under the circumstances, though, this was her only real chance.

“There’s nothing to do but wait,” Mother Mallory said sadly. “I suspect, from the smell, that she was given an extract of six-devil tea, but I can’t be sure. And if it was more than fifteen or twenty minutes ago, the standard antidote would have no effect.” She tenderly stroked Nicky’s tangled hair. “It all depends now on how large a dose she ingested, and how strong she is.”

The apprentice, her nightgown clinging translucently to her sweaty form, returned with two stools. “If you’re going to wait,” she said to me, “you might as well sit down.”

I took off my jacket and unbuckled my empty scabbard. I placed the stool in the corner where I could see Nicky’s face and settled back into the notch of the two walls. I yawned and closed my eyes for just a moment.

I snapped awake when a hand shook me. “Hey.”

The scribe looked down at me. He had a kindly, easy smile and eyes that were clear and sharp. The tight curls at his temples were white. He was at least my age, maybe older, and radiated a calm, seen-it-all demeanor. The other scribes I’d met over the years had a scholarly, chilly air befitting their isolation from the world’s concerns. This one seemed more grounded. “Sorry. Hate to wake you up, but we need to talk.”

I looked around. I couldn’t have been out long; Mother Mallory still sat beside the tub, and Nicky hadn’t moved, although the apprentice had changed into a less revealing tunic. The room’s air was hazy and smelled sickly-sweet, the same odor I’d caught on Nicky’s breath. I knew nothing about six-devil tea extract; I wondered if it was toxic in steam, too. I stood, wincing at the door-kicking ache in my leg and hip, and yawned.

“We’ll be out in the courtyard,” the scribe said. Mother Mallory nodded. I followed him outside, where the summer night air felt cool and dry compared to the sickroom.

“Come on; let’s have a smoke and exchange stories,” he said, and led me into a courtyard. Neat patches of herbs and flowers showed in the moonlight. The windows of all the other patient rooms were dark.

He reached into the shadowy space beneath a stone bench and withdrew my sword. “No one from the house showed their noses after you left. I stayed and watched until people started yelling inside.”

“I bet they did,” I said. Marantz and the others would have returned through the tunnel.

He handed me my sword. “The girl that important?”

“No,” I sighed, suddenly bone tired. My scabbard was still inside, so I leaned the sword against the nearest wall. “Just that the people who hurt her hate being embarrassed by things like me taking her out the front door.”

“Your daughter?”

I shook my head. “Just a friend.”

“Name’s Harry Lockett, by the way,” the scribe said, offering his hand.

“Eddie LaCrosse.” His grip was strong. The scribes I’d met in the past had weak grips, betraying their fear that they might injure their writing hand.

He caught my reaction. “I didn’t come up through the scribe academy,” he said with a laugh. “It was more of a mid-life career change. That’s why I don’t shake hands like a six-year-old girl.”

“And why you know where the safety is on a Shadow Slasher III.”

He laughed. “I’m more interested in what you know, Mr. LaCrosse. Like why Prince Frederick of Muscodia is living in an old whorehouse in Neceda.”

I shrugged. “I was as surprised as you. I suppose he’s a dragon worshipper, like the rest of them.”

“Then it makes some sort of sense,” he said seriously.

“It does?”

“Sure. You know anything about the history of this area?”

“No. I’m not from here.”

In a stentorian voice he proclaimed, “Long before men came to what we now call Muscodia, this whole area was the domain of the dragon.” This was how scribes recited their stories in royal courts, and even now it made me stand up straight, like I was a little boy back in the throne room with my father.

A window opened somewhere and a sleepy female voice said, “ Shut up! ”

Lockett grinned. “I know, hard to believe, but it’s true,” he said in a normal voice. “Ever wonder how the Black River Hills got their name?”

“From the Black River?”

He mock sighed in annoyance and began packing a pipe with dark, serrated leaves. “Okay, okay. How did the river get its name?”

“I heard because it’s so deep in places the water looks black.”

“No. There were originally two names, the Black Hills and the Black River. They got combined over time, and their origins were lost. Both came from a time when the river and the hills were black with accumulated ash.”

“From dragons breathing fire?”

He grinned. “Now you’re catching on.” He held the pipe in his teeth, struck a flint over it and sucked until the flame caught. “Want to hear the story?”

I looked back at the door to the hospital. I could do nothing for Nicky; going after Candora right now certainly would not help her. I really wanted to talk to Liz, but that thought sent warning hackles up my back. I felt adrift. So I said, “Sure.”

“Once, the whole world belonged to the dragons. They had tribes, territories, politics and wars, just like men. Only their great reptile hearts could not conceive of the idea of compromise. As a result, they killed each other off, until by the advent of the time of men there were only a few widely scattered dragons left.” He cut his eyes at me to gauge my reaction; I kept my expression neutral.

“Solarian and his consort, Lumina, were two of these few,” he continued. “They once ranged over this whole hemisphere, burning and pillaging as they wished. People at the time didn’t understand much about how the world really worked, so they saw these two immense, powerful beings first as harbingers of the gods, then as gods themselves. They built temples, wrote songs, made sacrifices.”

“Human?”

“Human and otherwise. When a thirty-foot flying lizard’s breathing fire down your pants, you’ll try anything once to calm him down. Finally two great men appeared: Gerard Tempcott, great-great-and-so-forth-grandfather of the man you rescued your friend from, and Charlton the Just, the founder of Muscodia. Both saw in the dragons something they wanted to possess. Tempcott the elder believed they could lead mankind into a better world, and Charlton simply wanted to use them as weapons against his enemies.”

“That would be useful. Except that I imagine dragons aren’t easy to train. Oh, and they aren’t real.”

“How do you know that for certain?”

“Because I’m not some backwoods yahoo who believes anything he’s told. Real animals can’t breathe fire; they’d burn themselves up. No animal has four legs and wings. It’s all folklore and mythology.”

His eyes narrowed and looked closely at me. “Where did you get your education?”

“The school of hard parries,” I fired back.

He smiled. “Hell, you’re probably right. I can’t argue with any of that, except to say that maybe conventional wisdom could be wrong. Tempcott supposedly brought Solarian’s skull here with him; have you seen it?”

“Yeah. It’s just some kind of crocodile.”

“But it’s real? The skull of a real animal?”

“As far as I could tell. But if it’s a real animal, then it can’t be a dragon, can it?”

Again he paused for a draw. “Do you want the rest of the story?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Solarian wasn’t interested in a truce or a treaty. Charlton the Just met him for a battle to the death on the plain where Sevlow is today. He couldn’t overpower the dragon, so he built a dummy, studded it with hooks and knives and gave it his shield. When Solarian attacked it, he inadvertently slashed and cut himself to pieces on it. Once he was weak enough, Charlton was able to get in close and deliver the fatal blow.”

“Clever,” I had to admit. “Not exactly sporting, though.”

“No. But the winner writes the history, and it’s considered a great victory. Solarian, mortally injured, flew back here to the Black River Hills for his death throes. He burned every tree from the mountains. He killed every living thing for a hundred miles around. And he accidentally wounded Lumina. When Solarian finally died, his corpse fell into the river and was never seen again. Lumina, gravely injured and distraught, crawled into a cave and disappeared from history.”

“And that’s the end?”

“Of the historical record. The rest is just speculation. Some say Lumina died, too; some say she’s still there sleeping, awaiting the call of the true believers. And some…”

“What?”

He paused for a long, dramatic draw on his pipe. “Some say she still stands guard over the last dragon egg.”