“I thought we lost you.” The words sound muffled despite their closeness. “You lost so much blood.”
I’m back in Astria…somewhere. I’m certainly not in the king’s keep anymore. The sunlight is blinding and I can’t see more than a golden aura when I first open my eyes.
“There, there,” the voice whispers. It sounds so heavenly, like a beautiful girl has come to save me. “Take it slowly, my dear.”
Tentatively, I try again, and manage to keep my lids open. I focus my retinas on the face before me and –
“Ahhh.” I scream at the sight of a wrinkled old nurse.
That’s no beauty.
“Shh,” she says, smiling. “It’s going to be alright.”
I groan.
“Just rest now and let old Mary take care of you.”
Old Mary does take care of me and I feel guilty for having screamed at her. She’s the most tender medical professional I’ve ever encountered, and way better than my Earth doc who was positively obsessed with flu shots but could never fix my eczema.
She muddles strange herbs in a clay bowl and works the paste into my scars in a gentle yet persistent fashion. “Can’t have any infections blooming now can we?”
She also gives me ‘flower drops’ for pain and inflammation that work better than the advils I used to jam for shoulder soreness after eight hours hunched over my laptop.
I shoulda stuck to the desktop.
And the best thing is how comfortable she makes me feel. I’m dimly aware of being in a wagon, bouncing along a rutted path that is more grass than dirt, but I barely feel it under all the perfectly placed straw and feathers that she nestles around me.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“Oh no, thank you. You saved our lives, or so the king says. Saved us from the sorceress.”
“You mean the sorceress is….”
“No, not dead I’m afraid.”
“What happened in the King’s chamber then? Did I black-out”?
“The king hauled you out himself I believe, or with the help of his house. What’s left of us anyway. You can ask him yourself if you like.
“I can?”
“Of course,” Mary says indulgently, like a kindly old grandmother.
“Well, where is he?”
“Rest a bit dear.”
“But I need to –“ Pain shoots through my shoulder and I wince.
Mary smiles thinly. “The young always rush. Rush to work, rush to love, rush to gold. How about a different rush? A rush to patience.”
I’ve never taken well to correction, but Mary’s been so helpful and her face is so kind I feel compelled to yield. “Ok, I understand.”
Three more days I trundle along in this fashion. I’m part of some sort of wagon train it seems, likely refugees from the battle. I wonder how many there are, and where we are refugeeing to. Mary gathers food from the storage, tends my wounds, and keeps me company. She tells me stories of Astria, her village, her king, stuff that may have been in game appendixes that I never bothered with. It means so much more coming from Mary, and the stories make the trip so much more bearable while I continue to heal and recuperate.
“The land was peaceful,” Mary concluded. “Until the sorceress came.”
“Where did she come from?” I ask. “And how did she become so powerful?”
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Mary purses her wrinkled lips, as if unsure of how to proceed.
“Mary?”
“There was a problem. In the Tower of Magi.”
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I see a flash and I’m somewhere else, seeing something else. It’s a wide room with a high ceiling and iron chandeliers whose candlelight illuminates more paintings and statues than most cathedrals hold back on earth. This is different from my other trips though: I came through no portal; I’m just here in a blink, and I can’t even move. I feel like an unmovable ghost that can see and hear but can’t interact, and right now I see two women in hushed conversation.
“I’m telling you I saw her with it, Gwen.”
“You must be mistaken, Lillian. The stone has been lost. Destroyed most likely.”
Lillian rubs her palms together nervously. Her black hair is tied back in a tight bun and she wears long magi robes embroidered with silver lace. She looks downright elegant and proper. If it wasn’t for the name I’d never peg her as the sorceress.
“No, I don’t believe that, Gwen. Not anymore. Remember when she came back from across the sea?”
“Of course. She said it was a cleric mission trip. To the new continent.”
Lillian scoffs. “It was a ‘mission’ for sure, but not a spiritual one, at least not for her.”
Gwen narrows her eyes. “What are you implying Lillian?”
“That she’s dangerous, Gwen. Can’t you see it?”
“I see a woman whose jealous she wasn’t selected as directress.”
Lillian steps forward. “This has nothing to do with my defeat.”
Gwen raises an eyebrow. “Temper sister, remember your anger cost you the election to begin with.”
Lillian clenches her fists and I see a glimpse of the anger and power I sensed so strongly in the castle. “Very well, but if I’m right you may well regret reminding me of that, sister.”
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Another flash and I’m back in the wagon again. The vision is over.
“Rumor has it,” Mary continues as if nothing happened, “that Lillian went crazy in there. She unleashed…forces…that should have remained contained. Forces that either overthrew her mind, or she gave herself over to, or maybe both. I don’t know. All I can say is that the Tower fell, and when Lillian emerged from its ashes she was a changed woman. A woman who came for us all.”
We both rest in silence for a minute. Me processing Mary’s information and my vision while the nurse sips from a flask as wrinkled as her face. A disturbing thought comes to mind.
“These forces you mentioned,” I begin. “What are they?”
Mary continues to sip, her gaze elsewhere, her face somber. “Powers from the world of darkness and shadow. Evil dreams embodied they say. I do not know because I have not dabbled in such things. Nor do I intend to.”
I lick my lips. “The shards in my skin, the ones from the onyx. You removed them, right?”
Mary scrunches her brow. “Not exactly.”
My heart thumps faster and I start to respond when a horse trots alongside our wagon. The rider hands Mary a scroll; he’s elderly as well and the two smile at each other. Then the rider looks at me.
“Are you the one pestering my lady’?” the rider asks me.
I look from him to her. “You told people that, Mary?”
The old lady chuckles. “Oh, it’s just Charles. He likes to make things up, and besides,” she gives me a wink “everyone tries to avoid him.”
The old fellow leans back, grasping his chest. “Your barbs are as sharp as ever, dear Mary.”
Mary sighs. “Charles, must you always be so melodramatic?”
“Only because you love it so, Mary.” He says as he rides off, his white hair flapping in the wind.
Mary shakes her head as she unrolls the scroll.
“Are you two…together?” I ask awkwardly.
Mary chuckles. “Charles and I? No, my boy we’re just old friends. That’s the one advantage being old has over being young: we get to have old friends.”
I scratch my head. “Is that really the only advantage.”
Mary smiles. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
She looks back to the scroll and sighs.
“What is it?” I ask.
“The king demands to see you. He’s tired of waiting for your recovery apparently.”
Good. So am I.
“When? He’s coming to our wagon?”
Mary rolls the scroll up and tucks it somewhere amongst the folds of her long skirt. “Of course not my dear, but Darren says it’s safe enough to camp tonight. We have been running without stop you know, to put as much distance between us and the sorceress as possible. But we will finally rest tonight and you can visit with the King in his tent.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say. “But who’s Darren?”.
“He’s the King’s guard, my boy,” Mary says sadly. “The last of the King’s guard.”
It’s a small campground that night, and sparsely populated. Just as well because I walk slowly on still sore legs. Mary says the shockwave was bad, but that the shards were worse. They couldn’t get the onyx out of me as every time they clasped a fragment it would crack or melt inside. So they gave me herbs, roots, and drops as best they could, hoping to counteract the ‘evil venom’ as Mary called it. I appreciate the effort and I’m still alive to hear of it so that’s something. Still, it doesn't alleviate my worries.
The shards are still inside me. Could they have caused my vision of the tower somehow? But that doesn’t make sense. Why would evil powers want to show me a vision?
I shiver.
Unless they think I’m an agent of evil myself…