The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ many small compartments filled with unguents, bottled medicines and twists of foul-smelling herbs. The second box contained various knives, probes, clamps, scissors and saws – all made of gleaming Godhran steel. I tried not to look into this box as Master Juwain lifted out a roll of clean white cloth and set it on the table.

      It didn’t take him very long to clean Maram’s wound and wrap his head with a fresh dressing. But for me, standing by the window and looking out at the night’s first stars as I tried not to listen to Maram’s groans and gasps, it seemed like an hour. And then it was my turn.

      After pulling back Asaru’s cloak, I took Maram’s place on the chair. Master Juwain’s hard, gnarly fingers gently probed my bruised chest and then touched my side along the thin red line left by the arrow.

      ‘It’s hot,’ Master Juwain said. ‘A wound such as this shouldn’t be so hot so soon.’

      And with that, he dabbed an unguent on my side. The greenish cream was cool but stank of mold and other substances that I couldn’t identify.

      ‘All right,’ Master Juwain said, ‘now let’s see the arrow.’

      As Maram crowded closer and looked on, I unwrapped the arrow and handed it to Master Juwain. He seemed loath to touch it, as if it were a snake that might at any moment come alive and sink its venomous fangs into him. With great care he held it closer to the stand of candles burning by the table; he gazed at the coated head for a long time as his gray eyes darkened like the sea in a storm.

      ‘What is it?’ Maram blurted out. ‘Is it truly poison?’

      ‘You know it is,’ Master Juwain told him.

      ‘Well, which one?’

      Master Juwain sighed and said, ‘That we shall soon see.’

      He instructed us to stand off toward the open window, and we did as he bade us. Then, from the second box, he produced a scalpel and a tiny spoon whose bowl was the size of a child’s fingernail. With a meticulousness that I had always found daunting, he used the scalpel to scrape off a bit of the bluish substance that covered the head of the arrow. He caught these evil-looking flakes with a sheet of white paper, then funneled them into the spoon.

      ‘Hold your breath, now,’ he told us.

      I drew in a draft of clean mountain air and watched as Master Juwain covered his nose and mouth with a thick cloth. Then he held the spoon over one of the candles. A moment later, the blue flakes caught fire. But strangely, I saw, they burned with an angry, red flame.

      Still holding the cloth over his face, Master Juwain set down the spoon and joined us by the window. I could almost feel him silently counting the seconds to every beat of my heart. By this time, my lungs were burning for air. At last Master Juwain uncovered his mouth and told us, ‘Go ahead and breathe – I think it should be all right now.’

      Maram, whose face was red as an apple, gasped at the air streaming in the window, and so did I. Even so, I caught the faintness of a stench that was bitter beyond belief.

      ‘Well?’ Maram said, turning to Master Juwain, ‘do you know what it is?’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ Master Juwain said. There was a great sadness in his voice. ‘It’s as I feared – the poison is kirax.’

      ‘Kirax,’ Maram repeated as if he didn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue. ‘I don’t know about kirax.’

      ‘Well, you should,’ Master Juwain said. ‘If you weren’t so busy with the chambermaids, then you would.’

      I thought Master Juwain was being unfair to him. Maram was studying to become a Master Poet, and so couldn’t be expected to know of every esoteric herb or poison.

      ‘What is kirax, sir?’ I asked him.

      He turned to me and grasped my shoulder. There was a reassuring strength in his hand and tenderness as well. And then he said, ‘It’s a poison used only by Morjin and the Red Priests of the Kallimun. And their assassins.’

      He went on to say that kirax was a derivative of the kirque plant, as was the more common drug called kiriol. Kiriol, of course, was known to open certain sensitives to others’ minds – though at great cost to themselves. Kirax was much more dangerous: even a small amount opened its victim to a flood of sensations that overwhelmed and burned out the nerves. Death came quickly and agonizingly as if one’s entire body had been plunged into a vat of boiling oil.

      ‘You must have absorbed a minuscule amount of it,’ Master Juwain told me. ‘Not enough to kill but quite sufficient to torment you.’

      Truly, I thought, enough to torment me even as my gift tormented me. I looked off at the candles’ flickering flames, and it occurred to me that the kirax was a dark, blue, hidden knife cutting at my heart and further opening it to sufferings and secrets that I would rather not know.

      ‘Do you have the antidote?’ I asked him.

      Master Juwain sighed as he looked at his box of medicines. ‘I’m afraid there is no antidote,’ he said. He told Maram and me that the hell of kirax was that once injected, it never left the body.

      ‘Ah,’ Maram said upon hearing this news, ‘that’s hard, Val – that’s too bad.’

      Yes, I thought, trying to close myself from the waves of pity and fear that poured from Maram, it was very bad indeed.

      Master Juwain moved back over to the table and gingerly picked up the arrow. ‘This came from Argattha,’ he said.

      At the mention of Morjin’s stronghold in the White Mountains, a shudder ran through me. It was said that Argattha was carved out of the rock of a mountain, an entire city built underground where slaves were whipped to work and dreadful rites occurred far from the eyes of civilized men.

      ‘I would guess,’ Master Juwain told me, ‘that the man you killed was sent from there. He might even be a full priest of the Kallimun.’

      I closed my eyes as I recalled the assassin’s fiercely intelligent eyes.

      ‘I’d like to see the body,’ Master Juwain said.

      Maram wiped the sweat from his fat neck as he pointed at the arrow and said, ‘But we don’t know that the assassins are Kallimun priests, do we? Isn’t it also possible that one of the Ishkans has gone over to Morjin?’

      Master Juwain suddenly stiffened with anger as he admonished Maram: ‘Please do not call him by that name.’ Then he turned to me. ‘It worries me even more that the Lord of Lies has made traitor one of your own countrymen.’

      ‘No,’ I said, filling up with a rare anger of my own. ‘No Meshian would ever betray us so.’

      ‘Perhaps not willfully,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But you don’t know the deceit of the Lord of Lies. You don’t know his power.’

      He told us then that all men, even warriors and kings, knew moments of darkness and despair. At such times, when the clouds of doubt shrouded the soul and the stars did not shine, they became more vulnerable to evil, most especially to the Master of Minds himself. Then Morjin might come for them, in their hatred or in their darkest dreams; he would send illusions to confuse them; he would seize the СКАЧАТЬ