[Mkguild] Healing Wounds in Arabarb (42 of ?)

[C. Matthias]

Healing Wounds in Arabarb
By Charles Matthias



Lindsey had no way of knowing how long it had 
been since he'd been given the dragon potion and 
the poison. Calephas kept an hourglass on his 
worktable that he'd flipped twice already, but 
from his vantage point near the floor he couldn't 
tell if the device was the right size to properly 
measure an hour. The Baron paced back and forth, 
obviously loathe to leave the room as he watched 
his experiment unfold. Weaker stood in one corner 
with head bowed, though he gave the boy shadowed glances from time to time.

They only spoke to him once and that after 
Calephas turned the hourglass the first time. The 
Baron had scrutinized him as if he were livestock 
for a moment before saying, “Weaker, remove his 
gag. We don't want him vomiting in it and 
drowning before the potion has taken effect.” And 
then, those eyes met the boy's and scowled 
deeply. “If he says one word, bite his tongue out.”

Lindsey kept as still as he could while the tiger 
undid the bindings around his mouth. Weaker's 
expression was placid, eyes glimmering distantly 
but they said nothing to the boy. When he had 
finished his task, the tiger Keeper returned to 
his place in the corner as obedient as ever.

What relief Lindsey had in being able to move his 
jaws against was short-lived. His headache 
proceeded from the back of his skull to the front 
like a fist slowly enclosing and squeezing. It 
thrummed like a distant drum signaling the 
approach of an army. To hide from the pain, 
Lindsey would close his eyes and shut out all of 
the world. At first this seemed to help, but the 
poison was moving quickly through his system, and 
soon the more he closed his eyes, the dizzier he 
felt. And the dizzier he felt, the more unsettled 
his stomach and the queasier his bowels.

So he let his eyelids droop but did not close 
them. That kept his balance better even if it 
made his headache worse. But that was infinitely 
preferable to bathing his thighs in a gooey pile of shit.

Despite the headache and the nausea that 
assaulted him in sullen waves as the minutes 
drained past, Lindsey was able to snatch thoughts 
in between. His body felt warm and suffused with 
a strange energy. Every pinprick of hair tingled 
as if he'd spent an hour petting a cat. His toes 
curled and uncurled with the inchoate sensation 
of pins and needles. And the wounds on his 
wrists, once sore and red, no longer hurt and 
when he managed to turn his head without spinning 
the world, he saw that they did not look as vicious as he remembered them.

Still, to the baron's obvious impatience, Lindsey 
showed no sign of turning into a dragon. His 
flesh and body remained stubbornly that of a 
human child. Lindsey wondered if perhaps the 
potion was working far too slowly. Perhaps the 
Curses of Metamor were interfering; their nature 
was a mystery to nearly everyone and Jessica's 
mastery was late in coming and only because of 
what the Marquis with the power of Marzac at his 
beck and call had done to him four months past. 
Did even Nasoj truly understand them anymore? Lindsey doubted it.

And even though his headache made thinking 
clearly difficult, he was aware enough to observe 
Gmork's reluctant and irritated entrance with the 
bottle of yellow powder. He listened as carefully 
as he could while remaining as listless as the 
poison made him. It took all of his will power 
not to flinch when he saw the bright flames erupt 
from the bowl of water or the block of ice. The 
only thing he knew that could burn in water was 
the Whalish Fire, but he also knew that secret 
would never be revealed. What then was this?

After Gmork left, Calephas studied the powder by 
mixing it with a few other compounds but nothing 
quite as dramatic happened. But the baron's 
curiosity could not hold him forever and soon he 
returned to scowling with rabid indignation at 
the boy who was not turning into a dragon.

For Lindsey the baron's irritation was a pleasant 
contrast to the misery the poison caused. He 
didn't want to die, but he'd rather that than 
give Calephas the power to make himself a dragon.

Still, if it were possible to deny Calephas what 
he wished and still survive, Lindsey found the 
idea of becoming a dragon himself rather 
pleasing. He recalled all of those glances that 
Pharcellus had given him when he'd spoken of 
being brothers as a ruse to sneak through Arabarb 
and into Fjellvidden. Pharcellus had known, and 
very much wished to tell him. Perhaps once this 
was all over, his older brother could teach him 
how to fly. Perhaps his older brother could introduce him to their mother.

Lindsey's heart clenched for a moment as he 
thought of the mother he'd never known. He 
imagined her looking similar to Pharcellus, with 
purple scales along her ridge and highlighting 
the otherwise gray hue, and also bigger and more 
alluring. He wondered what she would say to him 
but couldn't form any words through the Arsenic drumbeat.

And the poison seemed to take a new turn with him 
as the minutes trickled away into insensibility. 
Everything he saw grew blurry and illumined by 
strange lights whispering and passing through the 
air. Lindsey blinked to clear his sight, but the 
strange light, a sullen blue and pink at first, 
flared even brighter and more insistent. Soon he 
saw a plethora of strands passing every which way 
in a tangled weave, moving through them, being 
dragged back and forth as Calephas paced 
impatiently. Lindsey saw that they were moving 
through the baron and coursing up and down his 
body. And there was a dark smear clutching to the 
insides of Weaker that seemed to absorb all of the strange light coming to him.

Was this merely the effects of the poison? Or was it something more?

Lindsey lowered his eyes and stared at his 
juvenile legs. His little feet, callused with 
small toes already crooked from wearing boots, 
showed no outward sign of distress. The strange 
dreamy cords that were flowing this way and that 
in a crazed tangle also reached into him, 
coursing through his legs and disappearing into a 
dark mass that seemed very much like Weaker's 
own. Only, Lindsey could see that there was a 
more filmy layer wrapped around that darkness 
like a glove would a hand. Only this outer 
surface slipped like oil, back into the dark 
blob, through it, and back out again, as if they 
were both ultimately the same thing.

Peering more intently, his mind throbbing with 
the exertion, he could see that there was a 
glimmering light hidden with that encompassing 
black mass. What was he looking at? Lindsey tried 
to clear his thoughts as he let his head roll 
back against the wall. Those lines wrapped about 
everything, but most things they simply passed 
through as if they were nothing. Calephas and 
Weaker moved when they did without truly 
disturbing those lines. Cords. Some force that he 
had never imagined had been there.

But others had. Lindsey blinked as he remembered 
one of the many conversations that had ensued in 
the long journey to Marzac. The hawk Jessica, the 
skunk Kayla, and the Binoq Abafouq, had been 
discussing at length the varieties of magic with 
which they were familiar. How well he could 
remember that evening all huddled in tents in one 
of the forests of Pyralis. Andares, Charles and 
Jerome had been scouting the perimeter of their 
camp. Habakkuk and Qan-af-årael had been quietly 
talking on the other side of the fire. Guernef 
reclined with his wings pulled in close, while 
Abafouq laid against his side. Jessica and Kayla 
sat nearby while Lindsey polished his axe and listened to them.

Despite the many differences they had 
encountered, all of them had described in more 
detail than Lindsey had liked at the time, what 
that magic had looked like. They always spoke of 
an endless flow of strands of strange energy that 
passed through all living things, and sometimes 
even those things that were not alive as they 
were. Was that not what he saw now? And Jessica 
had described the Curses as a darkness clinging 
to each Keeper. Is that not what he spied in Weaker and himself?

But if he was now glimpsing magical energies, did 
that not mean that the potion had worked? Was not he, Lindsey, now a dragon?

Lindsey hoped it was true, but how could it be if 
he was still resolutely human in body?

He stared at Calephas and wondered the same thing 
as he. Why wasn't he changing?

----------

The long road descending out of the hills south 
of Fjellvidden followed the course of the river 
flush with snow melt. About three miles from the 
city it cross the tributary to avoid the jagged 
terrain that kept Fjellvidden protected on its 
southern flank. The jumble of rocks and steep 
hills persisted for half a mile before flattening 
out into the long slope that was cut through by 
streams and rivulets during the Spring. It was 
not impassible to determined men, but to the 
usual traveler the road on the western bank was easier and already cleared.

It was this same road that only a few days before 
Elizabaeg had come with Lindsey and Pharcellus 
hiding in the secret cache in her wagon. Now, 
Gerhard and the men of the southern mountains 
galloped down the road as quickly as they could 
that they might reach Fjellviddne in time to help 
save their friends. Quoddy had tried to ride by 
perching on the horn of Gerhard's saddle, but his 
webbed feet and the bouncing gain made it 
impossible for him to keep a tight grip so he 
flew overhead, keeping below the line of trees, but always following the road.

The men of the tundra proved themselves versatile 
even in the forests as not even Quoddy saw them 
or suspected they were there when they sprang out 
of the bushes and trees just before the bridge 
with snarling dogs at their sides and bows and 
axes in their hands. Gerhard and his men drew up 
quickly, their weapons in their hands even before 
their horses managed to stop within the circle of 
men and dogs. Harald lifted his hands to ready a 
spell. Dark eyes brown and blue scowled across 
the short distance as the dozen riders surveyed 
the dozen and a half men on foot and their two dozen dogs.

The tension evaporated a moment later when out of 
the trees burst a black bird with orange beak 
cawing one word full of excitement and delight, “Quoddy!”

The gull turned in the air and cawed his joy too, “Machias! You made it!”

As the seabirds danced around each other in the 
air, the southern and northern men of Arabarb 
gazed at them and then at each other with long, 
slow exhalations. Weapons lowered one by one, and 
the hard-set chiseled lines bent into comradely smiles.


“So they have a way into the eastern gate,” 
Gerhard said thoughtfully after Ture and Thuring 
regaled him with Elizabaeg's impromptu plan. “It 
will be hours before we can reach them. The day will be mostly gone by then.”

Ture nodded with a sullen frown as they forged 
their way through the jagged rocks and tight 
passages of the eastern flank of the river. The 
crevices through which they had to squeeze were 
not so small that the horses couldn't manage 
them, but they balked and had to be coaxed 
through by the riders leading them and tugging 
from time to time on the reins. A few could only 
be brought through by offering them food.

The dogs had no such trouble, and several of the 
tundra men navigated along the tops of the 
boulders with their four-legged companions to 
make sure that they could not be ambushed. But 
their northward progress was slow and it 
obviously grated on Gerhard and the other southerners.

“We'll be through this soon,” Ture replied with a 
wave of one hand as he walked ahead of him, 
squeezing his swarthy frame through the walls of 
rock that rose overhead twice their height, 
topped and pock-marked by tufts of grass and 
creeping brush. Moss and loose stones crunched 
under their boots and the horses hooves. “Another 
half-hour at best,” he added optimistically. 
“From there we have a clear road to Fjellvidden 
and neither the monster or the mage will be any the wiser.”

“You said his pups chased you out of the mill,” 
Quoddy pointed out. The two birds stood next to 
each other on Gerhard's saddle, eying the cliff 
walls warily, but glad to rest their wings. “Won't they know we're coming?”

“Perhaps,” Thuring said from behind them. The 
tall, grizzled tundra man had one of the travois 
slung across his shoulders as if it were nothing 
more than an axe. “But they won't know how many 
of us are coming, or from what direction.”

“I'm worried about running into the pups,” 
Gerhard said with a grunt as his steed dug in his 
hooves before an especially tight passage through 
the stone. He tugged on the reins a couple of 
times before the steed attempted the passage with 
trembling hide. His wide belly brushed the stone 
on one side but he had a hand's span on the other. “How many does he have?”

“Four that we know of,” Ture said as he started 
up a slope through the rocks. The passage widened 
and they could see a cluster of trees ahead. They 
were leaving this cleft behind and would soon 
enter another. “That dragon killed one of them 
yesterday, but the one that attacked us at the 
bridge was unfamiliar. I think he has a new pup.”

“So four,” Gerhard said with a sigh. “And Jarl 
only had the one jar of powder left?” Ture nodded 
and Gerhard scowled more deeply. “They are 
probably already hunting Elizabaeg down. They may have already killed them.”

“Maybe,” Quoddy admitted, but both gull and 
puffin began to shake their heads. “I don't think 
so. Elizabaeg will find a way.”

“We need to help them somehow. Is there any way 
we can get to them quicker?” Machias asked.

“Not likely,” Thuring grunted as his eyes 
followed the trees, noting the others in their 
party moving through the brush and wood as the 
stones broke clear before rising up again a short 
distance ahead. “I say we get those dumb dogs to follow us instead.”

“How?”

“Attack Fjellvidden from the west. If they are 
going to attack from the east, then we should attack from the west.”

“But nine aren't enough to seize the castle,” Ture objected.

“That's all your going to get.” Thuring's gruff 
voice deepened as he added, “We aren't going to 
get to them before the pups do. So we need those 
pups and all of that mage's eyes on us. If we do 
that, then maybe nine can seize the castle.”

Gerhard stroked his chin with his free hand and 
smiled ever so faintly. “What exactly did you have in mind?”




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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,

Charles Matthias


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