[Mkguild] Healing Wounds in Arabarb (43 of ?)

[C. Matthias]

Healing Wounds in Arabarb
By Charles Matthias



As promised, the course of the slender river turned sharply south 
while the norther bank was framed by a high wall of stone with little 
fissures bored through that they could easily climb up. Brigsne and 
Luvig went first while the other seven kept a watch on the river 
behind them. For the last hour they had all felt a distinct chill in 
their bones and half of them complained of a conviction that they 
were being watched. But they could smell no pursuit and heard nothing 
in the forest around that they wouldn't expect. Would not the many 
animals, the bids, and the creeping things have all gone into hiding 
if Gmork's pups were near?

"There's nothing up here," Luvig called down the slender chimney. "Hurry."

Elizabaeg went next, scrambling up the slope, hands long used to 
labor gripping the many stones and roots clutching the sides of the 
rock face. The others followed behind her. Within a minute all of 
them had reached the top of the promontory. The hillside was shaded 
with large fir except for a few places were the stones emerged from 
the soil and allowed a little sunlight to penetrate. The ground rose 
somewhat to the north and east fell away quickly to the west.

"We should be east of the castle now," Luvig said as he gestured at 
the land. "If we follow the ridge here we should see it soon."

Elizabaeg nodded her head and soon the nine of them continued their 
travels, wary eyes ever behind them and to the west. The slope 
leveled off after about ten minutes and continued through a thick 
maze of pine, elm and fir. The forest music that they had all grown 
familiar continued its comforting song. The chirping of birds and 
scampering vermin claws suggested that all was right with the world.

Yet that only made them ore uneasy as they looked over their 
shoulders and hefted what few weapons they did have. Luvig kept one 
of his potent jars in his free hand at all times, wiry frame darting 
between the underbrush as if one of Gmork's pups were hiding within 
each bush. Elizabaeg kept her focus on the path ahead, a narrow elk 
track that kept to the ridge, only by keeping her mind on her son 
Lhindesaeg whose life they would save.

She would see him again. This she assured herself with each step.

Their hike took them another half-hour, at which point the sun was 
shining high in the sky and they could see it clearly through the 
breaks in the tangle of branches and pine needles. The ridge 
shallowed until the ground on their left rose up in a steady slope to 
meet the elk track. The forest also thinned on their right. Their 
legs were sore from the long hike and run that they'd been on since 
the dawn, but their hearts leaped when they glimpsed the castle walls 
through a break in the trees.

They wasted no time in finding rocks and trees behind which they 
could hide. Elizabaeg peered out around a boulder that hunched down 
the slop like an elbow. Along the eastern curtain walls she could 
several a quartet of Lutin soldiers looking bored. Beyond them she 
saw that the western walls were guarded by Calephas's soldiers. The 
eastern gate was closed and barred but they could see no sign of who 
guarded it.

She slipped back behind the rock and turned to the others. They 
waited with sullen looks. "So far Gwythyr's friend seems to have told 
the truth." She gestured at the Lutins guarding the eastern walls.

"So what do we do?" Brigsne asked. "There's only nine of us."

Elizabaeg sucked her lip for a moment and sighed. "We wait. At least 
for a little while."

His expression darkened like his black hair. "And if those pups find us?"

"Then we make for the gate. It's not a long run."

"There's nowhere else to run to," Luvig pointed out with a sweep of 
his hands. "There's nothing else here but the forest."

Elizabaeg nodded and brushed her hair back behind her head, before 
rolling over onto the rock to watch the castle walls. "Then we are 
committed to this. Let's just give the others a little more time."

Her friends grunted as they settled down to wait.

----------

Gmork was especially pleased with the Keeper dogs as they had done 
precisely what he'd wanted them to do. They were moving through the 
forest and reporting everything they saw and heard from the 
Resistance. He growled in delicious amusement when the three dogs 
flagellated themselves as unworthy servants whenever they couldn't 
quite hear what the humans were saying and didn't dare move closer 
without risking revealing their presence. They each professed with 
plaintive brow-beating that they were failures for their beloved 
master because they didn't know how to move as silently as they 
should through the brush, or that their hearing wasn't as astute as 
it should be as if they could refine it by desire alone.

Nevertheless, they shadowed the nine fools as they made their way 
along the ridge-line to the east of the castle. Gmork was very 
familiar with those woods as he and his pups hunted there for most of 
their food. As much as he insisted that his pups eat human flesh, it 
was a very small portion of their diet. Hunting on all fours like a 
true beast was essential to cement his pups together as a pack. They 
must depend on each other and consider each other the only things 
worthy of regard. It was the twist by which mages of good will could 
be turned into ruthless beasts eager to please their father. His eyes 
briefly alighted upon his latest whelp nestled against the tanner's 
apprentice on the pile of furs. How he longed to complete his 
transformation; but the Resistance had to be crushed first.

The dogs were able to get close to the nine idiots seeking to 
challenge him once they stopped at a familiar cairn of rocks and 
trees overlooking the sward between castle and wood and eastern road 
leading to the Lutin-held bridge. They heard voices speaking quietly, 
but had not been able to arrive in time to convey them to their 
beloved master, and for this reason they proceeded with their 
customary self-abasement.

Still, that these nine had managed to move through the woods without 
being challenged by his second and third pups was disturbing to him. 
Where had they gone? It was one weakness of the conversion process; 
unlike his pets whose will he stole into his brass baubles, he could 
not listen to his children's thoughts. Wherever they had gone they 
would seek to do their father's will, but until they revealed 
themselves, Gmork had no idea where they might be.

He still hoped they would track down these nine interlopers and 
slaughter them. But he could not rely on it. His nostrils flared as 
he allowed his snout to grow and stretch to its full extent. Lips 
thinned and pulled taut against his fangs used to gnawing raw flesh 
and crunching bones. His frame hulked with sprouting fur as he rose 
to a crouch and turned to his pups. He had a thought to wake them and 
send them out to kill those fools but he stopped and decided against 
it. Calephas's potion may be finished, and he would not allow that 
man to escape with the secret to transforming a man into a dragon. 
The monster now had a weapon to use against his children; he needed 
both of them when that time came. If the nine were doing nothing but 
waiting, so too could he.

Still, Gmork turned to the single door leading out of his Listening 
Room and quietly opened the door. Standing outside were a pair of 
Lutin guards carrying awl pikes. The one standing on the right was 
decorated with more bones, but not as many as Yajgaj had. This one he 
knew to by Khilaj, Yajgaj's second amongst the Lutins in the castle. 
He would have to do.

"Master Gmork," Khilaj said with a bow of his head, long, pointed 
ears twitching with each syllable. "What you want?"

Gmork let his lips curl back across his fangs. "There are nine humans 
in the woods to the east. Make sure the eastern gate is well guarded 
and that there are archers on the eastern battlements. If they 
foolishly attempt to assault the gate let them cross the road, but 
then cut them down. I want none of them to escape."

Khilaj nodded his head and grinned with pronounced yellow tusks. 
"They all die as master Gmork say."

He growled at them under his breath until the two Lutins rushed down 
the hall to see that it was done. It was a good thing that Lutins had 
no love for humans. It was about the only reason they could be 
trusted to do anything.

Satisfied that those nine fools would never be even a glimmer of a 
threat, Gmork returned to his stones to listen and wait.

----------

His shoulder ached but that couldn't stop Pharcellus from running. He 
ducked and wove through the trees and around rocks and through brief 
glades. His feet barely brushed the hard loam and the glistening 
stone as he rushed as fast as his human guise would allow him. To his 
left the sun strode upward in the sky. The clouds had dispersed and 
now a vast blue sky spread from east to west. He longed to soar 
through such an expanse but the pain stabbed more deeply each time he 
thought of it.

The terrain had a general downward slope and Pharcellus saw many 
signs of animal habitation, and the occasional abandoned woodcutter 
or trapper's lodge. Most of these had been sacked with their walls 
punched through and their doors torn down. Some of them had even been 
burned and were now just pillars of crumbling stone that had once 
framed a home. His heart burned with the memory of what had been done 
to Lindsey's home.

The minutes passed as swiftly as he ran. His eyes kept a close watch 
on everything around him, noting the angle of the sun in the sky, 
ever rising and rising until midday gleamed with a pleasant warmth. 
But it was not to the sun that his eyes constantly strayed, but to 
the southern bank of the river which he saw through the trees from 
time to time. He longed to glimpse Fjellvidden and the castle but all 
he ever seemed to see was more forest.

When the sun climbed almost to its apex, he finally, through a breach 
in the woods opening into a small meadow, glimpsed the stone bridge 
spanning the river, and beyond it, the high walls of the castle. 
Pharcellus smiled as he quickened his pace and then tripped over a 
cord leaping suddenly from the ground. He grunted and gasped for 
breath as he smashed into a thicket that proved to be a disguised 
net. A pair of small shapes threw the net over his head and he 
twisted this way and that before he felt the sharp points of spears 
poking into his side.

Pharcellus stopped moving as the net tangled around his arms and legs 
and against his face, pulling painfully at the short beard he 
sported. Six Lutins emerged from the woods as if exuded from the 
trees like sap. Their faces beamed with ravenous triumph. "Stupid 
man," the nearest of them said as he jabbed Pharcellus in the side 
with his spear. "You have meat on you. We enjoy you for dinner. 
Unless the mage wants you."

Pharcellus grunted and pulling one the net, managed to get to his 
feet. But the Lutins were at his side and back, with one in front. 
"You come with us now," the lead green-skinned vermin said with a 
throaty chuckle. They prodded him and lead him toward the bridge a 
short distance ahead. The dragon in disguise grimaced but allowed 
himself to be led. As he walked and worked out the soreness in his 
muscles he wondered whether that stone bridge would carry his weight.

----------

After the fourth time flipping the hourglass Calephas finally threw 
his hands into the air and stamped his feet. "Why aren't you 
changing?" he asked, snarling at the boy, his normally pallid blue 
eyes ribald with fire. "All the other boys showed signs by now, and 
they didn't have your blood. Why aren't you changing?"

Lindsey felt sick and his body was trembling, but he did his best not 
to give the man any satisfaction. Rather he kept trying to study the 
spells he knew he was seeing. The one at the outermost layer must be 
the one that was keeping him a child; somehow he could almost see 
Jessica's feathers brushing over its surface as if she were 
constantly stroking him to keep the boyhood curse in place. The Curse 
itself was a dark thing exactly as the hawk and the other mages he 
knew had described it. But there was a brilliance beneath it that he 
could only catch glimmers of. All he knew for sure was that it was 
not Jessica's spell.

Calephas ran his hands over is face and neck as he glowered. After 
several long seconds, he snapped his fingers and Weaker lifted his 
face from its empty contemplation of the floor. "Fetch a sample of his blood."

The tiger strode to the worktable and picked up a small empty bowl, 
the turned straight for Lindsey. The boy lifted his head, breathing 
as slowly and as deeply as he could. The world swam around him and 
his bowels threatened to turn over. The tiger's hot breath washed 
across his face, as one hand gripped his arm. A sharp stab with his 
thumb claw and a bit of blood poured free and into the bowl. Lindsey 
was too weak even to moan in pain.

Yet, despite the haze produced by his pounding headache and nausea, 
Lindsey could see that his blood looked darker than it should. 
Calephas's fierce scowl seemed mollified a little when Weaker brought 
the bowl back to the table and set it down. The baron took several 
bottles of fluid and powder from the shelf over his worktable and 
laid them out. Lindsey's wound continued to bleed, trickling down his 
arm and across his chest, but within a few seconds the flow slowed to 
a dribble.

"There's one possibility," Calephas murmured to himself as he opened 
first one bottle, then the next. He sprinkled some powder into the 
blood, then poured in a little liquid and mixed the two together. 
Lindsey couldn't see what was happening in the bowl, but from the way 
that the man's face slackened and slowly turned into a sadistic grin 
he knew something had to be happening.

Calephas swirled the bowl around in one hand after adding the last 
dash of powder and then let out a long sigh. "Finally." He set the 
bowl down and beckoned Weaker to bring his chest of decanters. 
Lindsey rolled his head back to watch. Taking the plainer bottles and 
a funnel, he poured the dark fluid into each one until they were 
filled. The potion appeared to glow with a strange crimson light.

Once all three delicately crafted bottles were filled, the liquid 
making the eyes of the dragon in each neck glimmer with a warm 
radiance, Calephas sealed the chest and set it on the worktable at 
his side. "Dragon's blood can tolerate Arsenic in a way that human 
blood cannot. It is the only reason that you are still alive my little boy."

Calephas took the little bowl of blood he'd mixed with various 
powders and unguents. He turned to Lindsey and tipped the bowl over 
so that a vibrant purple fluid touched by silver spilled forth to 
pool on the ground. There was no splatter at all even though Calephas 
poured it from chest height. "Your blood is pure. Your blood is that 
of a dragon. My potion worked."

He tossed the bowl aside, even as Weaker handed Calephas his buckler. 
The baron secured it and drew the steel half a foot before slamming 
it back down into the scabbard. "My potions will need a little more 
time to brew, but by this time tomorrow, I will be a dragon at last. 
And I have you to thank for it.

"And you are doubtlessly wondering why you still look human." 
Calephas's smile widened even as he gestured for Weaker to pick up 
the chest. The tiger obeyed with lowered muzzle and slouched 
shoulders. "Have you forgotten your father's tale already? Your 
mother, your real mother, cast a spell on you when you just hatched 
to keep you human. My potions cannot change that; and so human you 
remain. And in a very short while, even with dragon blood, the 
Arsenic will surely kill you in a very, very painful way."

Caelphas peered out into the hallway and then glanced back at him. "I 
promised to kill you, but I think I'll let your mother do that 
instead. And if she doesn't, Gmork will. Good bye."

Before the baron could step outside, Lindsey marshaled his tongue and 
his last reserves of strength to shout. He didn't know why he said 
what he said, but the words would not be denied. "You are a wicked, 
wicked man!" His eyes flashed once to the tiger before returning to 
the baron. "But there is one more wicked than you, Calephas. One more!"

The baron smirked, and then without another word was gone. The tiger 
carrying his chest followed after him the obedient slave, turning 
only once to growl at the boy before disappearing through the 
doorway. Lindsey tried to scream it once more but his throat had 
nothing left to give.





----------

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

Charles Matthias


!DSPAM:4dd64bbc70211804284693!