The Hag's Contract

Sixteen

The morning of his fifth day in Grabentod, Candabraxis rose with the sun, threw open the shutters of his room, and breathed in the cold, crisp air. It felt good to be alive, he thought, gazing down on the city below.

His journey, and then the forced use of so much magic at once, had left him exhausted. Although he had gone through the motions that polite conversation and society demanded, his heart had not truly been in them. Now, though … now, he felt like exploring the city. He still had a mystery to solve: why had Grabentod called to him when he was at sea?

The fishing boats had already left port, and several of the roundboats were missing—doubtless off on some new raid—but still the city bustled with life. Market day had arrived. In the largest square, some merchants had spread brightly colored blankets on the flagstones to display their wares. Others had set up little stands or booths, and still others had pens or cages for livestock. Children darted here and there, men and women shopped, and barkers hawked their goods in voices that carried faintly even as far as the castle.

Candabraxis smiled. It had been a long time since he’d been to market. This would give him a chance to see more of the city, meet some of the people, and see if he could find answers to his questions.

Shuttering his window to the cold, he washed up quickly, put on loose gray pants and a white linen shirt with laces up the front, which the castle’s tailor had provided for him, and threw on his heaviest wool cloak. Then, taking a small pouch of coins from his chest, he descended to the ground floor. He’d find something to eat at the market. His stomach rumbled hungrily.

By the time he reached the market square, the happy bustle had grown to a crushing throng. Half of Alber had turned out, it seemed. He squeezed past a pair of women carrying huge baskets of bread, ducked under the bundle of reeds a man carried past on his shoulder, and stepped around a line of five goats being herded past by a pair of young boys.

Everywhere, bedlam ruled. Merchants haggled with customers, sheep and goats and chickens baaed or bleated or clucked, and people jostled one another in their haste to get by.

Candabraxis eventually made his way to the center of the square, where a large platform stood. Here he found half a dozen servants he recognized from the castle. They were all selling goods at a brisk pace from long wooden tables.

Stepping forward, he picked up a beautiful green silk scarf. It had small red emblem stitched in one corner … the sign of the House of Krael. It had come from the Merchant Edom’s ship.

Swallowing, he put it back. He wanted no part of stolen goods, and especially not stolen from his friend Edom. This must be how King Graben disposed of loot he didn’t keep; Harlmut had mentioned tithes from Bowspear on the day he’d arrived.

“I’ll give ye a good price on that,” said one of the servants behind the counter. “Real silk, that is—comes from worms in Avanil, I hear.”

“Silk worms, yes,” murmured Candabraxis. “I was just looking.”

His stomach growled again, and he turned and wandered from the booth, following the scent of frying sausages and breads. He reached a line of booths selling food: warm meat pies, beers and ales, and all manner of pastries. Perhaps a small mince pie would hit the spot.

As he reached for his pouch, he felt something hit him hard in the side. A knife blade slashed past. Suddenly his pouch flopped open, spilling coins across the cobblestones with loud jingling noises. The edge of the blade just nicked his palm.

Instantly Candabraxis whirled, flinging his cloak into his attacker’s face. He began a quick charm spell, but the man blundered away from him, throwing off the cloak and running.

Candabraxis let the spell dissipate, uncast. He hadn’t reacted quickly enough … or his attacker had reacted too quickly. His hand suddenly ached with a sharp, cold, probing pain, and he glanced down in alarm. Already, that minor cut had begun to swell, and it now bulged out in a lump the size of a small lemon. Quickly, he retrieved his cloak and wrapped his hand. There had been something on the blade, poison or some spell. He’d have to get back to his tower and see what could be done about it.

Around him, people were patting him on the back sympathetically and saying things about having to watch out for cutpurses and pickpockets. Others, including a few children, were helping gather up his coins. For a people of pirates and cutthroats, he thought ironically, they were strangely honest.

The pain in his hand grew more intense, pulsing up his arm and shooting into his shoulder. He cried out in sudden agony. Then everything started to go dark, and he felt himself falling.

When the servant burst into his sitting room, Harlmut caught his breath in sudden fear. For months now, he’d been half expecting Bowspear to barge in and kill him in the middle of the night. He relaxed only when he recognized Jarick, one of the few loyal men he had left.

“Sir,” Jarick said, gasping for breath, “the wizard—he’s been stabbed in the market!”

“What?” Harlmut leapt to his feet. “When? Who did it?”

“Less than an hour ago. The man got away—”

“And Candabraxis?”

“We brought him to his tower. I think he’s dying!”

Harlmut swallowed. Stabbed … that sounded like Bowspear’s work. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as Jarick said. Servants had a tendency to exaggerate.

“What about the healer?” he demanded.

“Pfeiran went to fetch her.”

Harlmut nodded. Mari was a good, sturdy woman who cared nothing for politics and much for the healing arts. If anyone could save the wizard, she could.

“Get back to the tower,” he ordered. “Stay with the wizard until I get there. Don’t let anyone near him except Mari.”

“Yes, sir.” Bobbing his head, Jarick fled the sitting room.

Frowning, a thousand fears running through him, Harlmut pulled on his boots, threw on a cloak, and ran for the tower. If he could do anything to save his friend, he’d do it.

Mari had already arrived by the time Harlmut reached the wizard’s side. Candabraxis lay in his bed, pale as death, his eyes closed, taking rapid, shallow breaths, almost gulping the air. Sitting on a small stool beside him, she worked quickly and methodically.

She had already cut off his shirt and tied a tourniquet around his right arm. Harlmut stared, a little sick at his stomach, at the wizard’s right hand. Black as coal and veined with dark purplish lines, it had swollen to three times its normal size. It had also begun to give off a foul, almost putrid smell, like that of rotting flesh.

“What caused this?” he asked softly.

“Two things, poison and magic,” Mari said. “The poison can be stopped easily enough with borstice root. The magic … ah, there is the hard part. Hush, now, and let me work.”

Swallowing, Harlmut drew up a chair and sat beside her.

“Bring a jar and a candle,” she said. “Hold them for me.”

Harlmut hurried into the next room. Several large jars sat on the wizard’s worktable. He upended one, dumping out a small pile of dried leaves. Clutching that and a candle, he hurried back to the healer’s side.

Without a word Mari took the jar. She picked up a small, thin-bladed knife, passed it twice through the candle’s flame, then reached out and slit the wizard’s hand from thumb tip to heel.

Harlmut cried out in alarm as dozens of small, white worms tumbled from the wound. Mari caught them all in the jar. Then, like a woman squeezing the juice from an orange, she began squeezing his arm just below the tourniquet, forcing more worms out into the jar.

When she finished, she handed the jar to Harlmut. “Burn them,” she said.

Harlmut gazed down at the white, writhing mass inside the jar. They weren’t worms at all, he realized, and his horror grew. They were tiny white snakes. He could see their little tongues flicking out, and little blood-red eyes stared up at him with what seemed to be a cold, cruel intelligence.

Shuddering, he carried them into the wizard’s workroom. There he found a small unlit oil lamp. After pouring the oil into the jar, on top of the snakes, he touched a candle to them. The oil caught fire at once, and the snakes burned, making a shrill hissing noise. A foul black smoke roiled up from the jar.

Harlmut crossed to the window, threw open the shutters, and set the jar on the ledge, still burning. The smoke streamed up into the sky.

He returned to find Mari dressing the wizard’s wounded hand. She had released the tourniquet, and Candabraxis’s arm had regained a little of its fleshy color. At least it isn’t black anymore, Harlmut thought. He’d been afraid Mari would have to amputate the limb.

“Lucky for him they cut only his hand, and it only a little,” Mari said. Clucking a bit to herself, Mari pushed and prodded the wizard’s hard, flat stomach with her fingers, feeling his inner organs.

“A little?” Harlmut said, aghast.

“Aye, a slice no larger across than your little finger. If that blade had cut him on his side or chest, he’d be long dead, eaten from the inside out.”

Harlmut gave a shudder. “But he’ll be all right now?”

“I said no such thing. Ah! What have we here?”

Candabraxis shifted, moaning deeply as she prodded his left side. Then he produced a series of racking wet coughs that set Harlmut’s skin crawling.

“In my bag I have a pair of knitting needles,” Mari said. “Fetch one. I will need your help, Harlmut, if we’re to save him.”

“Anything,” he said, rising. What could she possibly use knitting needles for?

He found them, along with a skein of yam, inside the bag she’d brought. Selecting one of the needles, he brought it back to her.

“You must hold him down,” she said, placing one of his hands on each of the wizard’s shoulders. “This will hurt him, and he will struggle. Keep him down, or it will mean his death. Understand?”

“Yes, Mari,” he said.

Keeping her fingers on his stomach, just below his ribs, she picked up her knife again, passed it through the candle’s flame, and then, in one swift motion, cut a two-inch incision.

Candabraxis shrieked in agony and tried to arch his back. Harlmut put all his weight on the wizard’s shoulders and pushed him down.

Mari, moving so quickly he almost missed it, snatched up her knitting needle, jabbed it into the wound, hooked something, and pulled.

Slowly a long white tail emerged from the hole. She continued to pull, and six inches, then a foot, then a foot and a half of snake emerged. The snake’s tail began to lash, whipping back and forth. It wrapped itself around Mari’s wrist and tightened.

Candabraxis screamed again as the snake’s head came free of his body. Holding its head firmly between thumb and forefinger Mari took her knife and drove the blade through the creature’s brain. The snake gave a long, low hiss as it died.

Mari held the white corpse out to Harlmut. “Burn it,” she said simply.

The wizard had stopping struggling, so Harlmut let go and gingerly took the snake’s body. It felt warm as blood and soft as a baby’s skin. Gingerly, he carried it into the workroom, cut it into several pieces, and dropped them one by one into the still-burning jar on the windowsill. Then he added more oil to make sure all the snakes burned away to nothing.

By the time he got back to the wizard’s side, Mari had finished dressing the new wound on his stomach. She pulled the blankets up around his chin and tucked him in like a mother would her firstborn child.

“There now,” she murmured. “Sleep for old Mari. You’ll be up again before you know it.”

It seemed to Harlmut that Candabraxis began to smile a little. A healthy flush had returned to the wizard’s cheeks, and he breathed deeply and regularly again.

Softly, Harlmut drew Mari aside. He didn’t quite know what had happened, but he knew it was evil. He couldn’t allow such magic in Grabentod.

“Those snakes,” he began.

The old healer shook her head. “A foul magic,” she said. “My grandmother saw it once, long ago. Her patient died before she found out what caused it. My mother saw it twice, but both times she arrived too late to help.” Mari glanced sidelong at the wizard. “This one, he was lucky.”

“Do you have any idea who caused it?”

She hesitated. “It is not my place to guess at blame.”

“Please, we may all be in danger.”

“My grandmother, she knew who killed hers: an assassin sent in the dark of night by the Night Walkers.”

Haltengabben, Harlmut thought, could easily arrange an assassination if she wanted to. And yet he had no proof … no proof that Haltengabben and Bowspear were allies, no proof that Haltengabben had sent an assassin to kill Candabraxis, no proof of anything.

At least the wizard had survived. Perhaps he could identify the man who had attacked him.

“Will you stay with him?” he asked Mari.

“Tonight, yes. But keep a watch over us both—guards you trust at the door. And I must prepare all his meals personally tomorrow. His stomach will be weak, and he needs certain herbs to speed his healing.”

“Agreed,” he said quickly. “And … thank you.”

“Do not thank me so quickly,” she said, eyeing him darkly. “We all pay a price for help we request.”