"I have a sack of the stuff in my basement. It's always been cheap. Who would've thought it would be so useful? It might not prove to be so cheap in the future!"
"Will you give us some?"
"Are you sick?"
Sardec nodded and indicated the children and the limping, weary soldiers. Rena coughed a little too and he widened his gesture to include her.
“What about you, your honour?”
“I am not sick.”
“It’s true that the Terrarchs are blessed by the Light then, sir, and that the plague passes you by.”
Sardec did not feel blessed but he could see how things might look that way to a mortal so he simply nodded. “How long does this cure take to work?”
“A few hours, sir, if the victim is in a really bad way.”
“Might it be worth those men who don’t have the plague taking some of the drug anyway, as a preventative?”
“I don’t see how it could hurt, sir, other than by exhausting the berry paste when we might need it later.”
“If this works, Pteor, I will see that you have your weight in gold. You will go down in history as the man who found a cure for the greatest plague in history. You and your wife had better come with us. Pack up what you need. You’re going to be rich and famous!”
The mention of the gold made the man perk up. He hustled off and got busy, and Sardec offered up a prayer for his endeavours.
It was night and for the first time in a few days, there were no signs of illness among Sardec’s small command. No one was kept awake by coughing. All of the people who had seemed to be getting ill slept peacefully. Sardec sat within the abandoned Palace and watched some more antique furniture burn. Once he would have despised the waste but now they needed the warmth more than they needed the beautiful old chest of drawers. He looked down on Rena and thought he detected the faintest signs of improvement. There was more colour in her cheeks.
“They look healthier, sir,” said Weasel. The Barbarian grinned and nodded his head emphatically.
“Do you really think that old alchemist has found a cure for the plague?” he asked.
“We’ll just have to wait and see, but it’s starting to look that way.”
“If we can get this knowledge home we’ll all be heroes,” said the Barbarian thoughtfully.
“If we can get this knowledge home I’ll see you all decorated by the Queen and with a pension for life.” Sardec realised he was making very free with the rewards but he felt sure such munificence would be more than justified. In some ways it would be the discovery of the age. Who would have thought that a simple medicine used to ease women to childbirth would prove to be the cure for the worst scourge ever unleashed on this world?
He told himself to calm down, that it had not been established yet and even if it was the cure might only work for some people or prove only temporary. He felt hopeful though and that brought fear — of failure, of death. More than just the safety of his small party rested on him now. The lives of every human being in Talorea or quite possibly the world now did.
Perhaps Fate had just done this to torment him, to dangle the possibility of success and triumph in front of him just to yank it away. He told himself not to be so self-obsessed. All he could do was try and complete the task set in front of him and leave others to worry about the machinations of destiny.
Rena’s eyes opened and she saw him looking down on her.
“Hello,” she said.
“How do you feel?”
“Better than I have done in days.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You look better too. So do the others.”
“You look thoughtful. What were you thinking about?”
He told her. “You worry too much,” she said.
“I have a lot to worry about.”
“You’ll do your best. You always do.”
“What if I fail?”
“What if you don’t? All you can do is try. You can’t let worrying about the consequences stop you or make you second guess your decisions. You’re right — this is potentially the most important thing in the world now. You need to bring knowledge of it back to Asea or Lord Azaar.”
He saw the realisation flicker across her face — they did not even know where Asea was or whether she was still alive. “There are others who will know what to do about this. The important thing is that it works and we bring it back to the West. Then we might have a chance to overcome this plague and win this war. And now you had better get some rest. We still have a long way to go and you need to recover your strength.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you need rest too?”
He rose from beside her and glanced around. “I just need to check the sentries and then I shall get some sleep.”
Rik was glad the coach approached Askander. The tension had increased within him with every league as they approached the city and he felt like he was wound up so tightly that something within him might break. He knew that the greatest struggle of his life was approaching and now he just wanted to get it over with.
The full moon was near. That was when the barriers between worlds were at their lowest. If there was any time when an attempt to summon a Prince of Shadow was going to be made, it would be then.
He was as ready as he was ever going to be. He had learned a lot from Tamara and from Asea both. He could see in the deepest of shadows and darkness now in a manner that did not only use his eyes but gave him a strange mystical awareness of the space that surrounded him.
He could open the pathway and look through it to any shadow within a hundred yards, listening and seeing things there in black and white.
He could open the paths between deep shadows in a manner that would let him pass through them. He could mould the shadows and bend them to his will when he concentrated, altering their appearance, letting them flow over him to hide himself, to cloak him from the eyes of those who would see him. He had kept this a secret even from Tamara.
During the journey he had gotten to know his half-sister better.
There were times when he asked about his father, filled with curiosity about the Terrarch he had killed and never really known, and was surprised by some of the things she told him. He had not been the worst of fathers and his truly sinister nature had only become evident once Tamara was out of her childhood years. It seemed that he had changed over the time she had known him, becoming stranger and madder as he practised thanatomantic sorcery in response to his ageing.
Knowing what he did about such things Rik found that easy enough to believe. It was at once a revelation and a warning to him, a vision of what he could become himself if he followed a certain path. He wondered if he would have any choice about that- he was young now but perhaps if he became old and feeble like he had seen befall others, the temptation would become greater.
He was fooling himself, in some ways, because the temptation was always with him now. He knew the strength and power he could acquire by draining other living things of their life, and the more his knowledge grew the more he felt the temptation. Tamara had given him access to a body of knowledge that seemed to come naturally to him, far easier than the sorcery that Asea had taught him. It was as if he had always known it and merely had to be reminded, like a student having their memory jogged by a fragment of poetry, like a memory of childhood brought back by a certain smell or sight, like something that had always been there in his blood and had only now started to emerge and change him.
He wondered if this was the trap of which Asea had tried to warn him, at once simple and devilishly subtle. By using magic you not only changed the world, you changed yourself along with it. It was part of a process. He wondered what changes were being made to him by all this knowledge, in what subtle ways the patterns of his thoughts were being re-aligned. He had always been ambitious. He had always wanted such power and now he knew secret means of gaining power that were unknown even to the two sorceresses who had taught him. He could make himself very strong by using thanatomancy and there were going to be times in the near future when he would need such strength.