“My lady?” Andriko’s blue eyes widened in disbelief. “A hornet’s nest? Oh, ’tis the season, and I’ve seen one out in the hills, but hornets, wasps?”
Momentarily, Nadalya’s face flashed in ire, but then she smiled and said, “Yes, Driko. I would have the nest, a large one at that, with many of the stingers inside. It is for a … demonstration I have in mind.”
Andriko shrugged nonchalantly, though a bit of a frown of puzzlement yet lingered on his face. “I can get a small wooden cask or box and enclose a nest therein.”
Nadalya nodded, but then her eyes lit up. “Better yet, Driko, seal them in a clay jar, one that is easily broken.”
“A clay pot when broken, my lady, makes a sound.”
“Oh, Driko, you are right. Perhaps a box is better.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Driko. “When do you need this—?”
“No later than early morn three days from now, Driko.”
“The day of the courtyard affair?”
“Yes, Driko. Then.”
Twilight fell and great clouds of mosquitoes and gnats rose up from the swamp. And on its fringes and dragging the chest by one of its brass handles, Rogi struggled along the west bank of the White Foal, now and again forced into the racing water by a stubborn out-jut of reeds. And every time he had to do so, the rush of the current nearly tore the prize from his grasp. “Blathsted thwamp!” he muttered, his long, long tongue causing his incurable lisp. Often he stopped to swat at the “bloodthucking petht” buzzing about, and to pick off a leech or two, but at last he reached the end of the reeds, where he paused momentarily to rest. As he stood panting, he knuckled away sweat runnelling down his hairless left brow and into that eye; as well, he flicked sweat from his single, hairy eyebrow—the only one he had, and that over his right eye—and he looked at the rune-marked box. Some mere three feet long, two feet deep, and two feet wide, it didn’t look all that heavy. Still, Rogi recked that it was at least twice his own weight. And though the handles were brass and the bottom was brass plated, the bulk of it seemed made of gilded wood. Perhaps what was within was what made it so heavy, yet Rogi could find no lock nor latch nor lid nor anything else by which to open it. “My mathter will know how to get inthide.”
After a short rest he took up the journey again, dragging the chest after. If the White Foal wathn’t tho thwift, I could float thith boxth nearly all the way to my mathter’th tower.
But the waters of the ’Foal were swift, and so Rogi dragged the chest toward the ford. Reaching it at last, gasping and struggling, he hauled the box into the knee-deep flow, but halfway across he stumbled and fell, and lost his grip on the container, and it bobbed off downstream. “Oh, no, you don’t, you pieth of thsheep-thshite!” shouted Rogi, rising up and floundering after, falling—glug!—rising up again, falling once more, but finally catching the case in the swiftening current just ere it reached the narrows where it deepened beyond his head.
Struggling, Rogi managed to gain the shallows, and, with water runnelling from him, he drew the floating box through the ford until he came to the upstream end of the crossing, and there he dragged it onto the bank and rested once more. At last, he took up the effort again, and began hauling the container overland, following the White Foal northerly, until he came to the trace that led toward Hâlott’s tower.
At that juncture and in the darkening dusk, a young woman in a brown cloak going the opposite way came hurrying down the trail, and before Rogi could catch his breath and offer to let her see his dragon, she veered wide of him and shrieked, “Get away from me, you ugly little thing!” and fled toward town.
Shrugging, Rogi grabbed a handle of the chest and dragged it along the faint path toward the tower. Finally he reached the door and pushed it open. Grunting, dripping, he hauled the box into the darkened chamber, then splopped about, his shoes squishing as he lit lanterns—for although Halott with his painted-on eyes seemed to need no light to see, Rogi was not as fortunate. And so he struck strikers and filled the dusty chamber with luminance, all the while shouting, “Mathter, Mathter, come and thsee what it ith I have dithcovered! It’th a thecret boxth! A thecret boxth! Come quick and open it!”
When Rogi awakened the next day, still his “mathter” had not managed to find the way to open the chest. Hâlott had spent all night trying to discover the secret, yet he had failed. Even so, he had seemed overly excited when he had first seen what it was that Rogi had dragged in, if a tensing of his corpselike body could be said to be uncontained excitement. And he had traced the runes carven into the wood, or whatever it was the case was made of, all the while muttering in an arcane language under his breath, a language Rogi didn’t know, and given Rogi’s lengthy life’s experiences, it was rather odd that he hadn’t a clue to what this tongue might be.
Finally Rogi, exhausted from his labors and unable to sustain the excitement of what might be in the chest, had left Hâlott to his unsuccessful attempts and had gone down to his dank quarters in the fourth sub-basement under the tower and had promptly collapsed into sleep.
But that was last evening and now it was midday, and Hâlott still hadn’t managed to open the box, though somehow he had managed to get the heavy container up on a table.
“Perhapth it takth a thecret word to open it, Mathter,” suggested Rogi, clambering up onto a stool to observe. “Have you tried a thecret word? I know theveral thecret wordth, and—”
Hâlott made a sharp gesture of dismissal.
“Did you try to thlip thomething under thomthing elth? I have thome thkinny knivth that we could—”
Again, Hâlott made the gesture, only this time he whispered a hollow groan of sorts, a groan that Rogi knew represented a growl of rage.
Still—“Did you try prething thomething and then thomething elth? I could preth on thomething while you preth on thomething elth and—”
Hâlott’s whispered groan got louder.
“We can alwayth thmack it with a thledge hammer,” suggested Rogi. “One really good thmack with a thledge hammer and I bet it would—”
The necromancer whirled on the little hunchback, and how Hâlott managed to glare with painted-on eyes Rogi did not understand, nevertheless a glare it was.
“Yeth, Mathter, I’ll be thilent.” Rogi got down long enough to fetch a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese from the cupboard. He was the only one of the two who seemed to take any sustenance, though he suspected that Hâlott did something with the corpses he seemed always to be cutting into or dismembering or flaying or draining of blood or raising up in a ghastly semblance of life. Maybe Hâlott drank the blood, or ingested some other bodily fluid to keep life flowing through his own collapsed veins. Regardless as to whatever it might be that Hâlott did, Rogi would just as soon dwell in ignorance than to truly know.
Rogi waddled back to the table and clambered up onto his stool, and, in spite of his promise, as Hâlott pushed and prodded on the case, Rogi grunted and sucked air in between clenched teeth, and moaned, and fluttered his lips, and—
“Rogi,” hissed Hâlott, jerking his head toward the little hunchback, dried muscle and sere tendon and ancient bone creaking like twisting rope, “You will go now into the woods and forage for the kastor ricinus.”
“Thothe little brown beanth that made me thshite and thshite until I thought my thtomach wath going to oothe out of my athend … and I only ate one? Thothe beanth?”
“Yes, those beans. Bring me a handful.”
Rogi shuddered and sighed but said, “Yeth, Mathter.”
He hopped down off the stool, and, stuffing the uneaten remainder of his bread and cheese into a pocket, he took up a small empty pouch and his blowpipe and poison darts, and he set off out the door and stumped ’round the tower and into the hills, heading toward the last place he had found the poisonous bounty.