‘Yes, I don’t see how that could do any harm. Apply them around the wound. They may be able to keep the worst of the poison at bay should the antidote falter.’
‘How long?’ Gotrek interrupted.
‘Excuse me?’
‘How long until you know whether the antidote has worked?’
‘It is impossible to say just now. I may have to return for further samples.’
‘I want you to move her,’ Gotrek said.
‘Move her?’
‘You must have better beds than these,’ the duardin growled, tapping one of the cot’s legs with his boot.
‘This is a simple monastery–’ Draz began to say, but Weiss interrupted him.
‘She can have my bed chamber.’
Draz frowned and nodded, wondering again just who the travellers were. He’d never heard of Weiss offering any sort of charitable concession in all the months he’d been assigned to the temple. And who was the third figure, the young desert trader? The youth had said nothing since Draz had entered, had hardly taken his eyes off the aelf. The intensity of his gaze was almost as unsettling as the barely restrained violence exuded by the scarred duardin.
Shal’ek summoned two of the older notaries to bear the aelf to Weiss’ chamber. Gotrek and the human accompanied them, as did Blemes, with his leech jars and bandages. Draz took another corridor, down a set of worn stone steps, vial in one hand and a candle in the other. He passed under an archway at the bottom and set the candle’s flame to a brazier on the wall. The rapidly strengthening firelight illuminated a vaulted room, buried into dry bedrock. Another archway beyond led into the temple’s crypts, where generations of priests were interred in tiered niches. The looming darkness of that entrance always made Draz shudder, and he never passed over into the crypts proper – his business was with the living, and those who could still be saved.
That same business took him to the long table that dominated the otherwise bare chamber lying between the steps and the bones of the temple’s priesthood. The objects on it were covered by a series of old cloths, but he carefully removed and rolled them up, each in turn, revealing an apparatus of beakers, candles, mortars and vials. He lit the candles, checked the metal framework holding various cups and glass tinctures together was properly set, and then seated himself at the bench running the length of the table.
He was tired, and he would have preferred to check his ingredients before assessing the sample. Time, however, was not on his side. He didn’t need his years of experience to know that the aelf did not have long to live.
He unstoppered the vial of blood and allowed a drop of its contents to trickle into a beaker at the start of the connecting apparatus, murmuring a well-worn prayer to the Hammer and the Lightning as he did so. He watched the blood closely as it trickled through into another vial that had been stuffed with a grey, powdery substance. Rather than stain red, the powder turned a deep purple. Draz grunted and administered another drop, this time to a different section of the apparatus, a metal spoon held over one of the thick candle stubs. As the single droplet hissed and sizzled, Draz plucked a pinch of crushed herbs from a pot beside the candle and sprinkled them onto the spoon. He wrinkled his nose at the stink the cloying herbs gave off as they burned, but didn’t take his eyes off the little wisps of black smoke that rose from the charred remains.
Still nothing.
He had one drop left, and then he would be forced to return to the aelf to take another sample. He didn’t think either of her companions would approve of that.
He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, then shifted along the bench to the far end of the table. There a tincture of clear liquid was clasped in a claw-shaped holder over another candle, the stub almost lost in the sea of melted wax spread across the table’s edge. He laid the side of his hand against the tincture to make sure it was at the correct temperature, then tipped the final drop of blood into the liquid within.
It turned pink. He wrinkled his nose, and was about to mutter something under his breath when the scrape of iron-shod boots on the stairway made him jump.
The whole table and its rickety construction shuddered at the suddenness of his movements. He froze. A figure was silhouetted against the light being thrown by the brazier, occupying the only route back up into the temple. The crest of hair and the brutal outline of the war axe made him unmistakable.
‘You should not be here,’ Draz stammered. ‘I am trying to work.’
‘Are you?’ Gotrek asked, stepping into the light. The fire made his golden-red crest and beard look as though they were aflame, flickering with a heat of their own.
‘Working at what?’ he demanded, stamping down past the bench. Draz edged away.
‘I am seeking to diagnose your companion’s current state.’
‘Her current state is that she’s dying,’ the duardin said bluntly, coming to a stop within arm’s reach of Draz. He’d made no aggressive motions since appearing in the crypt, but the look in his solitary, stony eye made the chirurgeon shiver.
‘She is,’ he agreed hesitantly. ‘But right now I do not know why.’
‘Poison,’ Gotrek barked. ‘Any wanaz can see that.’
‘Yes. She has been poisoned. But not from the wound she has sustained on her arm.’
The duardin’s expression grew fiercer still, and Draz hurried to explain.
‘None of the blood I took has shown any sign of poison. Whatever blade cut her arm, it does not seem to be responsible for her current state. It is certainly not in itself a fatal wound.’
The duardin stepped around Draz, looking into the darkness of the tombs beyond the entry chamber. For a moment he wondered whether he’d not heard him.
‘I’m wanted dead, that is nothing new,’ Gotrek said slowly, seemingly to himself. ‘Nothing can bring me the doom I seek. That is also nothing new. Those are about the only things in these damned realms that I recognise. But the rats, they’ve been trying even harder than usual. By the grudges of the Eight Peaks, none of you understand. The horned one won’t stop. And neither will I.’
The rambling comments made little sense to Draz. He shrugged, not wanting to rouse the addled duardin’s anger by questioning him.
‘Many wish harm upon the servants of the Order of the Azyr,’ he said instead.
‘The Order,’ Gotrek echoed, still not looking at Draz. ‘She spoke about them a lot. Wanted to come here even. I told her I wouldn’t be lured in by her damned aelven trickery. I assumed if I took her here someone would look after her. Take her off my hands. After the last one…’
He trailed into silence. Draz shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he could reach the steps back up to the temple before the duardin. Perhaps he was drunk? He’d never been this close to one before, but everyone had heard tales of their fondness for ale. He certainly couldn’t fathom any other means of enduring such horrific sunburn.
‘The boy too,’ Gotrek went on. ‘The longer they’re with me, the greater the danger. They don’t understand anything about what it means to seek your doom. To be cast aside by the gods and to get back up and spit in their faces. It’s just a game to them. Especially to the boy. He’s watching over her right now. I should go tonight, before they realise I’ve left. Then perhaps I can find something worthy of my axe in these maddening realms. Is there not one beast or daemon out there capable of granting me a final doom?’
‘W-who is the boy?’ Draz asked, wanting to shift the conversation onto something more mundane than the Slayer’s dark ramblings.
‘A cart driver,’ Gotrek said dismissively. ‘He was our guide. Typical manling though – he was more trouble than anything else. You people in this new realm of yours, you’re even less trustworthy than the ones I left behind. Treacherous, cowardly, or just too foolish.’