Stepping forward, he picked up a beautiful green silk scarf. It had small red emblem stitched in one corner … the sign of the House of Krael. It had come from the Merchant Edom’s ship.
Swallowing, he put it back. He wanted no part of stolen goods, and especially not stolen from his friend Edom. This must be how King Graben disposed of loot he didn’t keep; Harlmut had mentioned tithes from Bowspear on the day he’d arrived.
“I’ll give ye a good price on that,” said one of the servants behind the counter. “Real silk, that is—comes from worms in Avanil, I hear.”
“Silk worms, yes,” murmured Candabraxis. “I was just looking.”
His stomach growled again, and he turned and wandered from the booth, following the scent of frying sausages and breads. He reached a line of booths selling food: warm meat pies, beers and ales, and all manner of pastries. Perhaps a small mince pie would hit the spot.
As he reached for his pouch, he felt something hit him hard in the side. A knife blade slashed past. Suddenly his pouch flopped open, spilling coins across the cobblestones with loud jingling noises. The edge of the blade just nicked his palm.
Instantly Candabraxis whirled, flinging his cloak into his attacker’s face. He began a quick charm spell, but the man blundered away from him, throwing off the cloak and running.
Candabraxis let the spell dissipate, uncast. He hadn’t reacted quickly enough … or his attacker had reacted too quickly. His hand suddenly ached with a sharp, cold, probing pain, and he glanced down in alarm. Already, that minor cut had begun to swell, and it now bulged out in a lump the size of a small lemon. Quickly, he retrieved his cloak and wrapped his hand. There had been something on the blade, poison or some spell. He’d have to get back to his tower and see what could be done about it.
Around him, people were patting him on the back sympathetically and saying things about having to watch out for cutpurses and pickpockets. Others, including a few children, were helping gather up his coins. For a people of pirates and cutthroats, he thought ironically, they were strangely honest.
The pain in his hand grew more intense, pulsing up his arm and shooting into his shoulder. He cried out in sudden agony. Then everything started to go dark, and he felt himself falling.
When the servant burst into his sitting room, Harlmut caught his breath in sudden fear. For months now, he’d been half expecting Bowspear to barge in and kill him in the middle of the night. He relaxed only when he recognized Jarick, one of the few loyal men he had left.
“Sir,” Jarick said, gasping for breath, “the wizard—he’s been stabbed in the market!”
“What?” Harlmut leapt to his feet. “When? Who did it?”
“Less than an hour ago. The man got away—”
“And Candabraxis?”
“We brought him to his tower. I think he’s dying!”
Harlmut swallowed. Stabbed … that sounded like Bowspear’s work. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as Jarick said. Servants had a tendency to exaggerate.
“What about the healer?” he demanded.
“Pfeiran went to fetch her.”
Harlmut nodded. Mari was a good, sturdy woman who cared nothing for politics and much for the healing arts. If anyone could save the wizard, she could.
“Get back to the tower,” he ordered. “Stay with the wizard until I get there. Don’t let anyone near him except Mari.”
“Yes, sir.” Bobbing his head, Jarick fled the sitting room.
Frowning, a thousand fears running through him, Harlmut pulled on his boots, threw on a cloak, and ran for the tower. If he could do anything to save his friend, he’d do it.
Mari had already arrived by the time Harlmut reached the wizard’s side. Candabraxis lay in his bed, pale as death, his eyes closed, taking rapid, shallow breaths, almost gulping the air. Sitting on a small stool beside him, she worked quickly and methodically.
She had already cut off his shirt and tied a tourniquet around his right arm. Harlmut stared, a little sick at his stomach, at the wizard’s right hand. Black as coal and veined with dark purplish lines, it had swollen to three times its normal size. It had also begun to give off a foul, almost putrid smell, like that of rotting flesh.
“What caused this?” he asked softly.
“Two things, poison and magic,” Mari said. “The poison can be stopped easily enough with borstice root. The magic … ah, there is the hard part. Hush, now, and let me work.”
Swallowing, Harlmut drew up a chair and sat beside her.
“Bring a jar and a candle,” she said. “Hold them for me.”
Harlmut hurried into the next room. Several large jars sat on the wizard’s worktable. He upended one, dumping out a small pile of dried leaves. Clutching that and a candle, he hurried back to the healer’s side.
Without a word Mari took the jar. She picked up a small, thin-bladed knife, passed it twice through the candle’s flame, then reached out and slit the wizard’s hand from thumb tip to heel.
Harlmut cried out in alarm as dozens of small, white worms tumbled from the wound. Mari caught them all in the jar. Then, like a woman squeezing the juice from an orange, she began squeezing his arm just below the tourniquet, forcing more worms out into the jar.
When she finished, she handed the jar to Harlmut. “Burn them,” she said.
Harlmut gazed down at the white, writhing mass inside the jar. They weren’t worms at all, he realized, and his horror grew. They were tiny white snakes. He could see their little tongues flicking out, and little blood-red eyes stared up at him with what seemed to be a cold, cruel intelligence.
Shuddering, he carried them into the wizard’s workroom. There he found a small unlit oil lamp. After pouring the oil into the jar, on top of the snakes, he touched a candle to them. The oil caught fire at once, and the snakes burned, making a shrill hissing noise. A foul black smoke roiled up from the jar.
Harlmut crossed to the window, threw open the shutters, and set the jar on the ledge, still burning. The smoke streamed up into the sky.
He returned to find Mari dressing the wizard’s wounded hand. She had released the tourniquet, and Candabraxis’s arm had regained a little of its fleshy color. At least it isn’t black anymore, Harlmut thought. He’d been afraid Mari would have to amputate the limb.
“Lucky for him they cut only his hand, and it only a little,” Mari said. Clucking a bit to herself, Mari pushed and prodded the wizard’s hard, flat stomach with her fingers, feeling his inner organs.
“A little?” Harlmut said, aghast.
“Aye, a slice no larger across than your little finger. If that blade had cut him on his side or chest, he’d be long dead, eaten from the inside out.”
Harlmut gave a shudder. “But he’ll be all right now?”
“I said no such thing. Ah! What have we here?”
Candabraxis shifted, moaning deeply as she prodded his left side. Then he produced a series of racking wet coughs that set Harlmut’s skin crawling.
“In my bag I have a pair of knitting needles,” Mari said. “Fetch one. I will need your help, Harlmut, if we’re to save him.”
“Anything,” he said, rising. What could she possibly use knitting needles for?
He found them, along with a skein of yam, inside the bag she’d brought. Selecting one of the needles, he brought it back to her.
“You must hold him down,” she said, placing one of his hands on each of the wizard’s shoulders. “This will hurt him, and he will struggle. Keep him down, or it will mean his death. Understand?”
“Yes, Mari,” he said.
Keeping her fingers on his stomach, just below his ribs, she picked up her knife again, passed it through the candle’s flame, and then, in one swift motion, cut a two-inch incision.
Candabraxis shrieked in agony and tried to arch his back. Harlmut put all his weight on the wizard’s shoulders and pushed him down.