"It's Artorius! He's collapsed! Says he's been poisoned!"
Shock washed through her whole body. Then she was running, shouting for Medraut to fetch her satchel. Ancelotis ran with her, bellowing at the others to stay where they were, to give the healer a chance to work. The soldier led them to Artorius' room, where another stunning sight greeted them. Covianna Nim lay dead beside him, Caliburn buried in her gut. Artorius looked up, eyes dark with terror and grief.
"She was Marguase's... chosen pupil," he croaked, voice badly slurred. "No one knew it. Killed Emrys Myrddin... killed him at Glastenning Tor. Morgan... Can you help me? It's a poison that paralyzes, she said..."
"Search the bitch!" Morgana snapped at Ancelotis, over one shoulder. "See if she's still carrying the stuff. She must have dropped it into the wine. And fetch her potions and herbs, I must see what's there!" She didn't dare voice aloud the half wish, half prayer that Covianna might have brought with her an antidote to protect herself. Then Morgana was on her knees, testing his pulse, peering into his eyes. Medraut arrived in a skidding run, stood gasping, eyes wide with fright at what lay on the floor at his feet. Ancelotis, badly shaken, searched the dead woman, pulled something from a jeweled pouch at Covianna's waist, handed it over. Morgana unstoppered the small pottery vial, sniffed. "Fetch me a cup, a lamp, anything to hold liquid."
Medraut snatched up a wooden cup from Artorius' table and handed it over, while Ancelotis ran from the room, bellowing orders to fetch the poisoner's herb satchel. Morgana poured a bit of the stuff into the cup, tilted it to the light to see more clearly its color, how it smelled, how it clung to the sides of the cup. A feeling of utter dread turned her blood cold when she recognized it.
"Oh, dear God, yes, I know what this is. 'Tis rare. The bitch must have traded for it all the way to Constantinople. My satchel, Medraut."
She raked through the packets and bottles with shaking hands. "Bring me another cup and a stack of bowls. And a cauldron of boiling water. Burn that." She indicated the cup, now contaminated with Covianna's poison.
Ancelotis returned with Covianna's heavy satchel, which Morgana searched carefully as a soldier in the doorway sprinted away to do her bidding. While Morgana plucked at knotted twine to open packets and unstoppered clay vials to sniff at their contents, her unseen guest spoke urgently.
Have him eat crushed charcoal to absorb what's still in his stomach, then induce vomiting, so he'll bring up whatever's left of it with the charcoal. And force liquids, try to flush his blood and kidneys with water, to dilute the poison he's already absorbed.
Aye! Morgana gasped, then said aloud, "Ancelotis, send someone to fetch charcoal. Make him eat it, crushed finely. Then pour this," she handed over a bottle of wormwood from her own supplies, "down his throat until he vomits."
Someone ran from the room, feet slapping against the wet ground. Mere seconds later, a girl's voice, breathless from running, asked, "Is this enough?"
It was Keelin, eyes wide and distressed, face streaked with tears, carrying a basket piled high with charcoal and ash.
"Aye, crush the charcoal and get a good double handful down him."
Keelin tipped the basket onto the floor for Medraut to pulverize. Morgana left them to their work as she continued her search of Covianna's lethal little collection of herbal death. She was beginning to despair when she found it, a small packet of carefully dried leaves that she knew at once, although Brenna McEgan didn't recognize the plant.
What is it? Brenna asked as Morgana gave a glad cry.
Echoing her hidden guest, Ancelotis asked tersely, "What is it?"
"An herb as rare as the poison, itself. Devil's Bane, the Nine Ladies called it, for it undoes the devil's work when a man has swallowed poison of this kind. Covianna must have paid a king's ransom to obtain these leaves. No one has even seen this plant growing wild since my childhood. My teachers had a precious supply of them at Ynys Manaw, not many more leaves than in Covianna's packet, and the cost was dear, indeed." She peered at the doorway. "Where is that hot water?" she added urgently.
A soldier arrived with a heavy iron kettle. Steaming water slopped over the sides. He'd brought a silver goblet, as well, carried tucked under one arm, and had dropped several bowls into the kettle to carry them more easily.
"Set it there, quickly, man!"
Morgana closed her eyes for a moment, praying, then set to work. She scooped out the bowls, draining most of them, then carefully measured the water remaining in the last one. Morgana shook the precious leaves out into her palm, gauging the amount needed against available supply and Artorius' body weight and mass. There would be enough for three full-strength doses, and perhaps two second and third doses steeped from each of those three, but no more. It shook her to realize she might well hold the last supply of this wondrous drug anywhere in the world. She looked into Artorius' eyes, sunken in a face the color of the grey rainclouds overhead, and prayed it was enough.
"Give him the wormwood," she said tersely as she dropped the first batch of leaves into the steaming water. A sharp, aromatic fragrance rose from the bowl. Artorius made a choking, gagging sound as Ancelotis fed him the emetic, then forcible retching filled the room. Keelin hasily slid a bucket under his face and held his head gently while he vomited. Ancelotis poured more wormwood down him while the leaves bled their lifesaving medicine into the hot water, turning it dark. More vomiting ensued. Morgana checked Artorius' pulse again and carefully refrained from biting her lips.
Not good, Brenna muttered silently. Not good at all...
But better than it was before he swallowed the charcoal and wormwood, Morgana retorted. Aloud, she added, "That's good, that should be enough, I think." She checked the contents of the bucket and nodded sharply. "Calm his stomach with a few sips of water, now. He must, at all cost, hold down this medicine. Should he throw it up, again, all is lost."
It was Keelin who got the water down him, murmuring soothingly when Artorius choked and swallowed convulsively. It was Keelin who gripped his hand and wiped sweat and sour vomit from his face. Medraut hauled away the noxious bucket, while Ancelotis crouched to one side, waiting with pain etched into his face. The moment Morgana deemed it safe to try, she poured the medicine into the silver goblet and held it to Artorius' lips, herself.
"Slowly," she murmured, dribbling the liquid into his mouth.
He grimaced and tightened his grip around poor Keelin's fingers until her hand turned purple, but he kept the bitter stuff down.
"More, now," Morgana soothed. "You need the whole bowlful, brother, and time is critical." She got all of it down him, praised him for holding it in his belly, then added more water to the leaves at the bottom of the bowl, determined to wring as much from each precious batch as possible. While they steeped, longer this time, she gave him an infusion of foxglove to strengthen his heart and calm his pulse, which was thready beneath her seeking fingertips. She watched him so closely that sight and sound of everything else faded away. His color, a ghastly shade of grey, gradually lightened to an ash-white pallor. Violent shudders began to rock through him as she poured the second bowl of Devil's Bane down him. He gulped, shuddered, groaned and got more of it down.
"What—?" Artorius began, voice shockingly weak.
Morgana placed gentle fingertips across his lips. "Hush, brother, you must save all your strength to fight the poison, to give the medicine its best chance to work." She dredged up a smile from somewhere down near her feet, she had to reach down so deeply to find it, and tried—with Brenna McEgan's help—to answer his unvoiced question, to explain what was happening inside his body. "The poison paralyzes, attacking the body's way of communicating with itself. The muscles don't know how to respond to commands from the brain, commands which come down tiny, threadlike fibres all through the body. The brain uses these threads to give commands to the rest of the body. It's these threads the poison attacks, making it impossible to move."