JESSAN - A TALE OF WIZARDRY Chapter 15
Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 15
I awoke the next morning drenched in sweat from a dream in which I stood at the top of the tower that rose above the Gates of Karn. I was staring down at the road that twisted its way up to the pass, carved out of the side of the mountain. It was just wide enough so five men could stand on it abreast, and a great army of such men were marching up it, the lower levels half-hidden in the dust cast up by so many feet. Scattered among them were huge, misshapen figures that towered over the soldiers and drove them on with long, snaking whips, regularly laying a bloody welt across the back of any who might be lagging.
At the head of this army rode a similar thing, but larger still, astride a monstrous shambling beast walking erect on two massive hind legs. Its rider looked up at me; his eyes burnt in his head as red as coals. He lifted his arm and shook it, and as he did the beast he rode raised its massive head, opened a mouth full of teeth the size of swords, and uttered a scream of such pure and terrifying hatred that, even though I struggled with all my strength to turn and flee, I was rooted to the spot, shaking all over as if seized by a great fever.
I stumbled out of bed, my head still ringing with that dreadful sound, pulled on my shirt and stumbled down the stairs. I mumbled something to Onna as I passed, went to the wash pail, and, holding my breath, plunged my head deep into it. I cooled it there until I could keep my breath in no longer, and emerged, gasping for breath and dripping water all over the floor.
"Oh, Jessan!" Onna's voice was a wail, conveying at once her shock at my appearance and her anger about the mess I'd made on her just-scrubbed tiles. Abjectly, I picked up a drying cloth and buried my face into it as I sank onto a stool.
"I'm sorry, Onna," I mumbled through the fabric. "I just awoke from a nightmare and I'm still full of the terror of it. Give me the mop and I will clean everything up."
"If I gave you the mop," Onna said, "you'd make only more of a mess. Go brew yourself some bracing tea. There's plenty of gruel left in the pot and it may yet be warm."
She swabbed the floor dry again and I, guiltily, concocted a tea for myself from Grysta's herbs and roots. While it steeped, I set the porridge pot onto the stool beside me where I could easily reach down into it. I was amazingly hungry and had devoured its contents before Onna could bring me the salt bowl. I brought the well-scoured porridge pot over to the washing basin and returned to my stool to sip my tea.
Onna had gone into her room behind the kitchen. Now she emerged carrying my vest in one hand and my undergarment in the other. "I return the one with thanks and the other with...."
"With the satisfaction of having found me out again," I said, finishing her sentence for her.
Onna sighed. "Really, Jessan, you make it so easy that it almost isn't fair. Do you know at this very moment you have a dark round stain on the back of your shirt, right in the center of..., right where your..., right where you sit down." As she fought to find a phrase that she'd dare utter, her face turned a scarlet red.
"Oh!" she said. "You're impossible. You'd better take that shirt off and let me clean it before anyone else sees what you have been up to."
Sheepishly, I tucked the drying cloth into my lap and rose enough to pull up my shirt. I passed it over to her. She looked at it and tossed it onto the floor.
"But first," she said, "I'm going to have a look at you. There's blood there as well as..., as well as other stains."
"Onna!" I said, now completely alarmed.
"Jessan!" she answered, "don't argue. As an apprentice healer it's perfectly right that I do this and, if it's any comfort to you, I won't be seeing anything I haven't seen before. Which, if our positions were reversed, is not something you could say."
"But I'm fine!" I protested weakly. In truth, now that the power of the nightmare had waned, I realized that I was magnificently sore.
"I'll be the judge of that," Onna replied. "Up. Up."
I reluctantly stood up, holding the cloth to my sex. But I realized how foolish I looked bending over clutching myself, and so I tossed it on the table.
"Have it your own way, then," I said.
But Onna wasn't listening. She spread my buttocks, prodded the sore area gently, tsk-tsking as she did. She took the drying cloth I had just set down, placed it in a bowl, and covered it with steaming water from the kettle.
"Don't even think of touching me there with that," I said. Onna gave me a look and went into the workroom, coming back shortly with a fistful of herbs. She scattered them into the water and then came and sat on the stool across the table from me. She put her elbows on the table and cupped her hands to hold her head, regarding me with complete puzzlement.
"Didn't it hurt?" she asked. "I mean, truly hurt?"
"I don't know," I answered. "I liked what was happening so much I didn't really notice. Does it look bad?"
She considered. "Well, you have torn it a bit. But whatever that stuff is that your 'lover' smeared there, it seems to have a healing quality to it, for I see no sign of infection."
"It's called the 'Warrior's Friend,'" I told her.
"I'll bet it is," she said, and we both giggled.
I remembered now tasting it on Caelas when I'd licked him clean after our lovemaking. The thought caused a stirring in my loins. I quickly shifted my thoughts, took a finger, and rubbed some of the lingering salve on the tip of it. I then brought it up to my nose. "The vulnerary is fretvine, the lubricant is mostly jelly of minda tempered with a thickish oil, of lightwood, I think, with some extract of umbra to give it fragrance.
"That's impressive," Onna said, "and also disgusting. I'm glad at least you didn't taste it."
She saw a shifting of my eyes. "Oh, yuck!" she exclaimed, understanding the import of this, "I cannot believe you, disgusting boy." She reached over and tentatively touched the cloth. The fragrance from the herbs she had added floated about us. I refrained from naming them.
"It is still a little hot," she said, poking it back into the soaking liquid. "So," she said, settling back on her stool, "after your little escapade of yesterday afternoon, which left your undergarment forgotten in your pocket, you slipped out last night without wearing any, and found someone eager to take advantage of that. You know, you boys get away with a lot."
She reached over and touched the cloth again. "And you're such a skinny thing, too," she said. "I should think it would be like making love to a child."
"Onna, please," I protested. "I may be slight but I have hair in all the right places. And I'll be sixteen the day after tomorrow. No one would take me for a child."
"Not until they spend a few minutes with you, " Onna said, "and then they couldn't help but know it."
I sighed. "I suppose you're right to scold me," I said. "But, truly, I don't go looking for these things. They just seem to happen."
Onna looked at me and burst out laughing. She got up and wrung out the cloth, came around to me, and, still laughing, began to gently dab at my wound. I flinched but didn't complain; I knew the moist heat would draw out any lingering contagion. Indeed, after the initial shock, the warmth was comforting.
After she finished, Onna wrung out the cloth and dipped it again into the steeping liquid, removed it, and squeezed it out. "Here," she said, "passing it over to me. Your privates could no doubt use a little soothing themselves. While you attend to that, I'll clean your shirt."
After we both were finished, we realized that, my shirt hung up to dry, I had nothing to wear, since my new clothing wasn't yet finished at the tailor.
"Alfrund treats you poorly, beyond doubt, if you own but a single shirt," she said tartly. I was about to tell her that this was Alfrund's shirt, but caught my tongue in time. Taking pity on me, Onna went and got me a blouse of her own. It fit me nicely, although it barely covered me below. It was my turn to preen. The fabric was quite light and the embroidery done with skill and flair. I wished Grysta had a reflecting glass of a size big enough for me to see myself.
"Well," Onna said, "you're sweet looking enough to be a girl but far too thin to pass for one. Those scrawny shanks would give you away even if nothing hung between your legs."
I went over to Onna and gave her a hug and a kiss. "You're a true friend," I said, "and more than I deserve."
She flushed prettily and kissed me back. "Despite those winning words," she said, "I'm still going to lock you in your bedroom tonight and perhaps even chain you to your bed."
"Only if you chain someone there with me," I said, "because with dreams like mine I dare not sleep alone."
I spent the rest of the day at Grysta's worktable, with a small pot of ink and several quills, scribbling away in my new book. It was my intention to start an enkiridion for Onna and I now feared I had little time to do so. Orien's promise of a week's respite seemed much frailer today.
My writing skills were long unpracticed and at first I despaired of even producing an unspotted page, let alone one written in the necessary small but readable hand. But after a few destroyed quills and an hour or so of effort, I retrieved the hang of it.
Grysta, as she did, came and went, sometimes with Onna in attendance, sometimes alone. When she was here, she was busy at her work, making poultices and refreshing her stock of physics, clysters, and antipyretics. When she did so, I would listen as she instructed Onna, for Grysta was a good teacher. And once, when she took down a delicately and elaborately hand-blown retort, I joined them and watched as she distilled some water of metaffra, watching as the concentrated essence dripped, tiny drop by tiny drop into a small vial.
By this time, my shirt had dried and I'd returned the blouse to Onna. If Grysta had noticed me the short time I'd been wearing it, she said nothing. She had one last errand to attend to at the end of the day, leaving Onna to prepare our simple supper of root and barley soup. She returned with a loaf of bread still warm from the baker under her arm and something else for me. Reaching into her robe, she retrieved a slip of paper from some inner pocket, and passed it over. "I was asked by Orien to give you this," she said, "and to warn you to burn it the moment you have committed its contents to memory."
On it was written "A as in Archfiend." I took the poker and pushed the scrap deep into the glowing coals. The rest of the evening passed as many did, with both Onna and Grysta going their separate ways to bed.
Although I indicated that I would soon do so myself, taking care to let Onna catch me yawning, I intended to return to Caelas that night, especially since there had been no sign of Alfrund all day. I suspected that this was at the order of Orien, as a precaution against drawing any attention to this place. Even so, I needed the smell, the warmth, the touch of a male body, and I desired Caelas's very much.
I was in no hurry to slip out, however, since I knew that he didn't take his watch until the owls were about. I pulled the candle over to where I sat, retrieved my book, the quills, and the ink, and returned to scribbling, despite the stiffness of my fingers. Several hours passed as I filled page after page, reworking what I'd read in Alfrund's enkiridion with what I'd learned both from watching Grysta and puzzling things out myself. When the candle had finally burnt low and the fire sunk into a mass of sullenly glowing coals, I put away these things, slipped into my vest, and hurried out into the dark.
And dark it was. A mist had come up from the sea and the way was so shrouded that I despaired of finding my way up the track - or even find the track at all. I was about to turn back when a shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness and a hand closed on my shoulder.
"I came down the path to find you, fearing you'd lose your way and step over the cliff," Caelas said. He put his arm around me and led me forward, lifting me up when I stumbled. After a bit, he added, "I'd also begun to fear you might not come at all."
I clasped his hand. "If it hadn't been for the mist," I said, "I'd be in your arms already."
At last, the spectral glow of the watch fire appeared. It wasn't until we actually reached it that I could make out the sleeping forms of his men in the mist. I raised my hands to enhance their slumber, but Caelas seized my arm.
"A little less of that this time, Nithaial," he whispered. "It took me half the morning to rouse them. If it happens again, they'll think I've drugged them."
I lessened the force to a mere ripple, and we made our way, stepping over and around their sleeping bodies. "No need for you to close your eyes this time when we cross over the crest," I whispered back.
Caelas laughed. "In any case, it would be the blind leading the blind. But, listen Jessan," he said, returning his arm around my waist, "if we were walking now in bright sunlight, I would not avert my eyes. The time quickly approaches for me to make the choice I spoke of before."
"I know," I said, and told him of my dream.
"That wasn't fact but foresight," he said when I'd finished. "It takes many weeks for an army that size to cross the wide plains of the Lhennad. It will not reach the Gates of Karn for many days yet. But, yes, it comes, and in a great fury. But let us talk about that once we're safe within the walls of Sondaram."