A flash of gold in the flickering torchlight, and his guide slipped out of view around the corner. Pel pulled his satchel out of the mouth of a flat-faced goat, who was chewing vigorously on the strap, and hurried after her. He had taken only a few steps into the sudden darkness when the door behind him shut with a loud clang! All light was cut off. Pel spun back and tried to pull it open. The heavy latch had snapped behind a heavy bar. His fingers fumbled over a sharp-cut keyhole, but no key. He was trapped!
For a moment the events of his past life shot through his mind like an evil children’s picture book. Had he been lured here to join his former associates in humiliating and painful death? He fumbled in his satchel for the vial of poppy. He might have time to down it, and float off to eternity in peaceful oblivion, before they dug out his eyes and sewed him into a sack.
In that moment, he became aware of a soft blue light beside him no brighter than the phosphorescent glow of rotting fish. The glittering eyes regarded him above a palm-sized globe from which the gleam emanated. They looked amused.
“Stay close,” she said. The blue glow floated away into the blackness.
Willing his heart to slow down to a normal pulse, Pel obeyed.
Rumors of secret passages riddling the many levels of the ancient palace were proved true as the quivering light led Pel along narrow corridors of stone, up unexpected flights of stairs, and down ramps with low ceilings he never saw until his forehead impacted with one. Blinking stars of pain out of his eyes, he hurried to catch up with the will-o’-the-wisp who guided him. Far away he could hear noises and hollow voices like ghosts, but they never encountered another living creature. The rats avoided these passages as much as humans did.
After an eternity in the cold, damp darkness, he emerged suddenly into a warm, stifling blackness in which smoldered the red-gold coal in the heart of a single brazier. The blue glow vanished. Another smell, that of putrefying flesh, caught at Pel’s throat and made him cough.
A low voice, near to the fire, chuckled.
“Makes you sick, eh? I’m attached to it, can’t get away from my own stink.” The accent was Irrune, coarse and hearty.
“Who … ?” Pel began, but his own voice failed him.
“Call me … call me Dragonsire,” the man said. The joke appeared to please him. He chuckled some more. A pair of slender, fair-skinned hands appeared near the faint light and poured dark liquid from a slender-necked pitcher into a heavy goblet. Another hand, dark in contrast to the woman’s, reached out. The cup disappeared into shadow. “Ahhh! Wine, ser?”
“Er, thank you,” Pel said, realizing how dry his throat was. A cup was pressed into his hand by the unseen server. It was surprisingly heavy. Pel guessed that it must be made of gold. The rough shapes of stones studding the bowl scraped his fingers. He hesitated before drinking. “Er, how may I serve you?”
“Right down to business? Good.” The figure sat up. Pel thought he knew what to expect as the firelight touched its face, but he still gasped out loud. Arizak. “Do not fear me. Heh! If anything, I have more to fear from you.”
“What, ser?” Pel asked. Sweat filmed his face and palms. He had to grasp the big cup in both hands to keep it from squirting away from him.
“I don’t fear pain. No Irrune does. I don’t fear death. We welcome a good death. But this!” Arizak gestured at his leg with a disgusted hand. “This is not a good death. I am disgusted by it. It’s not a clean battle wound, an ax through the neck, a sword in the belly, a dagger tearing out your heart. No! It’s like being eaten alive by slugs. Look!”
He pulled a cloth off his lap. Beneath his left leg lay outstretched, the end propped up on a painted stool. There was no foot.
As nervous as Pel felt suddenly facing the ruler of his city he was taken even further aback by the limb the Irrune chief now revealed to him. The original wound must have been a fearsome one, but it had disappeared in seeping pillows of flesh that had been a healthy pink and had turned an angry red, even going black in small patches that Pel knew would grow. He sucked in his breath. The rot would have to be cut away if the limb was to be saved—if it could be saved at all. The leg must have been very painful. When he looked up, Arizak’s gaze held his, strong, confident, and weary.
“I have three sons,” the Irrune lord said. “Each wants to rule after me. My eldest is the strongest. He is not often here. He does not like Sanctuary. I don’t like it much myself. He came here at my behest this week—you may have heard. The greatest product of this place is talk. Everyone talks to everyone.”
“Yes, lord, I knew.”
Arizak slammed the heavy goblet down on the arm of his chair. “He did not show decent respect. I will not take that, not while I draw breath. I want to be whole again, healer, as whole as I can be. I want to ride out and teach my miserable offspring the truth about the name he bears. If he survives, well, maybe I’ll let him rule one day. When my time is over. But my time is not over yet. Not yet.” The face grew more craggy as from a throb of pain.
“Why me, my lord?” Pel asked, full of pity. “You have healers and magicians in plenty. The best in the land.”
The shrewd gaze met his eyes and locked them in place. “You must have been born in a basket, man,” he said. “They are all corrupt in this city, men and women alike. It comes from living inside these rotting walls. If you had the clean air all around, you’d have to be an honest man. Here, you can hide your sins.”
“He is honest,” said the soft voice of the woman who had guided him. Pel looked around for her, but the brazier’s light fell short. The shapes he saw beyond it could have been curtains or pillars or tapestries. The blue light reappeared, rising until it was between Pel and the unseen woman. “The stone affirms it. No great faults here—fewer than most men, as though he was a young child. I wonder why. Perhaps he was born in a basket.”
Pel opened his mouth and closed it again. To correct her he would have to explain his rebirth, and that admission would cost him his life. He knelt over the wound and prodded it gently. Every poke made the flesh twitch, but the Irrune lord said nothing. He had impressive self-control. He had to be in agony. Most of Pel’s patients moaned and cried over splinters in the thumb.
“Can you do anything?” Arizak asked, after a time. “You can say no, man, and leave here with your skin. I just want truth, that is all and everything to me. If you can cure me I will reward you well. If you cannot, I will be glad of your candor. I am so weary of the shite-eating hypocrites in this city, it would be worth a bronze wristlet to hear an honest answer.”
“I can try, lord,” Pel replied. The stink of the rotting flesh made his throat tighten. “Such a wound has to be treated inside and outside. If your constitution is hale enough, you may be cured, with Meshpri’s aid.”
“Pah!” The Irrune ruler spat a wine-tinged gob on the floor. “Keep your false godlings to yourself, Wrigglie. If you’ve got any skill in your fingers Irrunega put it there.”
“I apologize,” Pel said, and went back to his examination. Meshpri aid him, indeed! He had never seen such decay in a wound on a living being. Yet, he felt the flesh. In spite of the cold he felt warmth in them, and when he pinched a patch of intact skin down near the tortured ankle, the color rushing back to it was visible even in the poor light. Automatically he felt behind him for his pouch. Without his having to ask, the unseen serving woman came forward with the blue ball in her hands. Its illumination increased to a pure blue like a cloudless sky, easy for Pel to distinguish which herb packet was which.
“What do you need?” the soft voice of his guide asked from the shadows.