The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 56

His ears yet ringing from the blast, Burel gained his feet and once again lifted Aiko into his cradling arms, freeing Egil to stand. As the Fjordlander scrambled up, Delon came through the tunnel, Ferret and Mayam on his heels.

"What made that bloody din?" asked Delon, clambering over the corpse of the camel, his gaze sweeping the scene of carnage. "And what in blazes happened here?"

"She is wounded," rumbled Burel.

"Here, let me see," said Mayam, now outside as well.

As the abbess lifted the slashed leathers to examine the wound, Aiko, bleeding from the gash across her chest, struggled to get down from Burel's embrace, her effort weak and ill-directed. "My swords. Get my swords."

"Where?" asked Ferret.

"Back there," said Burel, pointing with his chin.

"Let them care for you, Aiko," said Ferret, glancing down the crimson canyon, where scattered black bits of something burned. "I'll retrieve your swords."

"Shiruken," said Aiko, then she lost consciousness.

Frowning, Mayam looked up from Aiko to Burel. "I do not understand. Her wound does not look severe, yet- We've got to get her back inside, where we can tend to her. It may be poison." The abbess turned to Egil and Delon. "You men, and you, Burel, pass her across that dead animal."

Egil and Delon scrambled back across the carcass, Egil stopping halfway, Delon going completely across. Then Burel gave over the Ryodoan to Egil, the Fjordlander reaching out to receive her, and Egil in turn passed her to Delon. Burel clambered across the slain beast to take her in his arms once again, and bearing the unconscious warrior, the big man headed toward the basin beyond, Delon and Mayam at his side.

Behind, Egil and Ferret walked warily out into the canyon, Egil now with his axe in hand, Ferret gripping daggers. Parts of some black creature were scattered across the crimson stone, here and there dark pieces afire, others lying about in the scarlet shadows like shattered bits of obsidian.

"Adon," breathed Ferret, her eyes wide. She looked down at an elongated, fanged, chitinous head severed from a monster, vile eyes filming over even as she watched. "What was this thing?"

Egil squatted and looked closely. Finally he drew in a deep breath and said, "Methinks we look upon the demon that slew Burel's sire… or rather what remains of it."

Ferret glanced at Egil. "Elwydd! Are we going to have to fight one of these things every time Burel steps through the gate?"

Egil stood. "Adon's balls, I hope not."

Together, they moved on down the canyon, Ferret taking up one of Aiko's swords and four of her shiruken, Egil hefting up Burel's two-handed sword. As Ferret knelt to retrieve Aiko's last sword she said, "Lord Adon, Egil, look at this hand."

The Fjordlander stepped to her side. One of the demon's long-fingered, bony hands and part of its black-carapaced arm lay on the red stone. "How big was this thing?" asked Ferret, looking at the length of the grasp, fully three times her own.

Egil squatted at her side and slowly shook his head. "I cannot say, though given a right hand like that, it must have towered."

"Look here," said Ferret, pointing at the wrist. Four deep gouges were rent entirely through the chitin, and a black ichor oozed out. "It looks as if some roaring wild beast has clawed the demon's arm."

"Well, it's not poisoned," said Mayam, sponging away the seeping blood, "or at least I think not."

"Then why is she senseless?" rumbled Burel, the big man sitting at Aiko's bedside and holding her hand in his.

"By the grace of Ilsitt, I would say that she is merely spent."

Delon looked down at the oblivious Ryodoan. "Spent?"

"It's as if she has performed some feat of labor beyond her means."

Burel grunted, then said, "She ran the demon through with its own sword, yet that creature was strong beyond belief." He looked down at the unconscious Ryodoan. "I did not think one so small could have such power."

Mayam nodded. "Perhaps that is what drained her so."

The abbess turned to Arin, the Dylvana cinching the last of the bindings on Alos's ribs, the old man groaning and cursing stupid camels, his voice feeble as the sleeping draught took hold. As Alos's words fell to mumbles, Mayam said, "Dara, would you examine Lady Aiko?"

Arin stepped away from Alos and to Mayam's side, leaving the old man slipping into snores. With the abbess sopping up oozing blood, the Dylvana examined the long, diagonal wound. Arin then pressed her cheek to Aiko's forehead. "I sense no fever." She straightened. "Is this the only wound she took?"

"Aye."

Arin frowned and shook her head. "This will need sewing. Hast thou gut?"

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, Burel: 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.

Just after dawn on December 12, 1E9253, five hundred thirty-three days after Arin had had her vision, again the seven set out from the Cloister of Ilsitt, and once more women wept to see all of them go, but especially at Burel's leaving, for when he was gone, it truly would become a nunnery where no man trod, an unwelcome state for several within. Even so, these last two weeks, Burel had not pleasured any of those who had yet to speak their abstemious vows.

The demon, said some, took his desire away.

But others looked at the regard he paid to the yellow warrior and nodded to one another knowingly.

And amid tears and kisses and anguished good-byes, through the tunnel they fared-Aiko in the lead, her armor repaired, Burel following after, then Egil, Delon, Ferret, and Arin.

Once they were clear of the tunnel-and nothing untoward had occurred-then led by acolytes the camels came next: seven saddled for riding, four bearing supplies. As if remembering past terror, the animals balked at entering the confining way again, yet the handlers were adamant, and grumbling and protesting, the beasts finally went through the narrow passage.

When those also reached the far side-again with nothing of note coming to pass-then and only then did Alos venture into the dark strait, Mayam at his side, the old man moaning about his cracked ribs, though the abbess knew his words were impelled by fright. At the distant end, he peered out cautiously, trembling, and finally stepped forth, ready to bolt inward at the slightest need. But nothing appeared and so, grudgingly, Alos trudged to his camel.

Mayam stepped to each of them and murmured, "May Ilsitt favor you with her protecting hand."

She embraced Burel and kissed him one last time, then stepped back as they mounted, the camels hronking and grumbling as they stood, their long legs awkwardly levering them and their burdens upward.

When they were erect and ready to go, Mayam called out, "Each and every one of you are welcome to return as you will. Fare you well."

And amid growls of camels and cries of good-bye, the small caravan set off down the deep slot in the towering crimson stone.