Mayam motioned to one of the acolytes, and she handed a curved needle threaded with fine gut to the Dylvana. Arin eyed the needle and thread in the lantern light. "Has the wound bled sufficiently clean?"
"A candlemark, at least," replied Mayam.
"Then let us begin."
Carefully, with fine stitching, Arin closed the wound, Burel looking on and grimacing each time the needle went in and the gut was pulled through, yet he held onto Aiko's hand, his grip gentle, steady.
Egil and Ferret came into the infirmary, Ferret with Aiko's blades, Egil with Burel's. They stood beside Delon and watched as Arin closed the long cut. At last the Dylvana said, "There. 'Tis done." She turned to Mayam.
"Hast thou a poultice we can apply? Gwynthyme? Eretha? Or other such?"
"Poultice?"
Arin nodded. "She has no fever and her color is good, and so I, too, deem the weapon bore no poison, yet a poultice against such cannot harm."
Mayam nodded, and she opened a chest nearby, fetching herbs from within. "This I would use," she said, displaying a handful of yellow mint leaves.
"Gwynthyme," said Arin, approving.
"Malak waraka," said Mayam.
They prepared a poultice of gwynthyme leaves-the minty fragrance heartening-and applied the warm, wet pulp to a cloth and bound it to Aiko's wound with strips of clean linen. At last Arin stepped back and viewed her handiwork. Nodding to herself, she said, "Now we must let the tiger sleep."
With Alos drugged and Aiko unconscious, the others quietly moved out from the infirmary, all but Burel, who stayed behind holding Aiko's hand.
In the late morn, with Egil, Arin, Delon, and Ferret standing ward, the priestesses harvested the slain camel at the tunnel entrance, and the meat and hide and guts were all carried back inside, where the whole of it would be put to use: some meat to be cooked; some to be pulled into jerky and set out to dry; the viscera to be used to make spiced sausage and cooked as well; the hide to be scraped and salted and stretched in a curing frame; and the inedible and otherwise unusable parts to be tilled into the fields.
Yet although they were guarded, nothing came to disturb the women's bloody work.
Just before dawn Aiko awakened to find Burel asleep in a chair at hand with his head cradled in his arms on the bed at her side. And as she stirred he came awake. He looked up at her and sighed in deep relief. Then noting where he was, he jerked erect. "I beg your pardon, Lady Aiko, but I did not mean to presume."
She smiled at him, then suddenly sobered and bolted upright, the sheet falling away revealing poultice bandages high across her chest and a glaring red tiger between her firm breasts. "The demon!"
"Slain," interjected Burel, looking away as she recovered her modesty. "You impaled it on its own sword. And though I took off its head, I deem it was already as good as dead."
Wincing slightly with pain, Aiko leaned back and looked about, the Ryodoan noting Alos snoring away in a bed across the room. "Where are we?"
"In the abbey, in the infirmary."
"And my swords?"
"At hand," he replied, nodding toward a table where rested her blades and shiruken. "Ferai retrieved them."
"And your blade…?"
"Egil."
"What of the demon's dark weapon?"
"They say there is no sign of it."
Aiko glanced over at the old man. "And Alos…?"
"Battered and bruised, and some broken ribs. He was stepped on by a camel wild to escape the demon's stench."
Suddenly Aiko's dark, tilted eyes widened.
"Milady?" Burel inquired, frowning.
She looked at him and reached out to touch his hand. "The peril, Bureclass="underline" it is gone."
"Gone?"
"Entirely." She grinned and withdrew her touch. "I think you are no longer cursed."
Something unspoken hammered at his lips, but all he said was, "Thanks to you, Lady Aiko."
They sat in silence for a moment, then Burel said, "Are you hungry?"
"Immensely."
Burel shot to his feet. "I'll be right back with your breakfast."
As he rushed away she smiled and slid down under the covers; for the first time in her life she was ready to be cared for by a man.
"But I don't know how I did it," said Aiko, shaking her head in puzzlement. "There was a moment when everything went red, and next I knew Burel was carrying me."
They sat outside in the afternoon sun-Arin, Egil, Ferret, Delon, Aiko, and Burel. Alos was yet abed in the infirmary, demanding the acolytes serve him a tot of medicinal brandy to soothe his battered frame, or so he claimed, though nought was given him.
Aiko looked from one to another, her brow furrowed in perplexity.
"Was there nought more?" asked Arin.
Burel cleared his throat. "There was a loud sound, a strange sound, short and sharp and savage, something between a cough and a roar."
"Can you imitate it?" asked Delon, his bardic curiosity aroused.
Burel frowned and closed his eyes, remembering, and then he barked: "Gruh!"
Aiko looked at him, her eyes wide, but it was Ferret who said, "Did it sound rather like: Rruh!"
"Yes. That is more like it, but louder, much louder," replied Burel.
Ferret looked at Aiko, her gaze centered on the Ryodoan's chest, as if trying to see through her silken shirt; then Ferret turned back to Burel. "That is the chuff of an enraged tiger."
Now all eyes turned to Aiko, but she was as bewildered as any.
Egil asked, "How know you this, Ferai?"
"We had tigers in the cirque." Ferret looked toward the gate beyond which the remains of the demon lay, her thoughts on the furrowed right arm she and Egil had seen, an arm perhaps clawed by a savage beast, perhaps rent by the talons of a tiger when it aided Aiko to turn the sword backward and shove it into the demon's own gut. Ferret looked at the tiny Ryodoan and then shook her head to clear it of these vagaries.
Late that afternoon, armed and armored, Arin, Egil, Ferret, Delon, and Burel stepped under the portcullis and made their way through the tunnel.
As they came to the dark ruddy stain where the camel's blood had pooled on the crimson stone, Egil held up his hand, stopping all. Yet it was not blood from a camel that the five had come seeking, but a demon instead. For although Aiko sensed no peril in Burel or the surround, still they would put it to the test. Egil turned to the big man. "Remember, if a demon appears, step back inside."
Burel grunted and moved past Egil to stand just inside the opening, his two-handed sword gripped tightly. Then, weapon raised, he stepped forth from the holy ground to see whether or no another demon would appear.
None did.
Burel retrieved the demon's severed head, declaring, "In the name of my father, this I must destroy." But as he stepped back into the tunnel, lo! the head crumbled to dust and fell to the stone, where it burst into furious flames. Burel sprang aside, and the others stepped back from the raging fire, the heat intense.
"Huah!" grunted Egil. "Now we know why it didn't come in after you or your mother."
They turned to go back to the cloister, only to find Aiko standing behind, her swords glittering in the crimson dark.
"My Lady," protested Burel. "You should not be-"
"Oh, but I should," she replied.
They spent another fortnight at the abbey, Aiko's wound healing rapidly under the ministrations of Arin, though the Dylvana declared that it had less to do with her own skill and more to do with Aiko's splendid vitality, as well as the aid of the gwynthyme. Even so, the Dylvana bade Aiko to do no strenuous exercise, and so the golden warrior forwent her daily drills, though she did school Burel morning and night.
During this same fortnight, Alos, too, was treated with the golden mint, this in the form of a tea, which he grudgingly took, complaining that any fool knew a jot of brandy would make the tisane a much better medick. And even though bones knit slowly in the elderly, at the end of two weeks he was declared fit to travel, as long as he did not overexert himself and put pressure on his ribs.