The Gorgon's Blood Solution (25 page)

He dragged the bodies one-by-one out to the square in front of the shop, going through the open doorway, which had been splintered open.  With the four bodies out of the way, Marco returned to the work room and turned up the lantern to better illuminate the terrible mess in the room.  It would take days to clean up.  Somehow, miraculously, the plague cure he had been working on sat untouched, ready to be offered to victims of the plague.

That was a small silver lining, he thought grimly, as his eyes roamed around the spoiled shelves and cabinets in the room.  And then his eyes stopped, frozen in place by a sight that filled him with uncomprehending horror.  The gorgon’s blood container was missing.

As soon as he realized it was gone, his mind began to catalog all the formulae that the powerful agent could be used in – recipes for death and for life, formulae that were extraordinary in the things they were intended to accomplish.  Marco hurried to the side of the room where the container had been kept, and hurriedly scraped around among the debris, hoping to find some trace of the material; surely no group of Corsairs would know what gorgon’s blood was, let alone the capacity it would offer to its owner, he told himself.

The gorgon’s blood was nowhere to be found, and Marco belatedly remembered the shout of triumph a Corsair had given – from that same portion of the room – before he had run from the shop.

The Corsairs had it, and as he comprehended that fact, Marco felt determined to get it back.

He ran out of the shop, and started running through the city streets, dodging signs of damage the raiders had done in other places throughout the city, and ignoring the signs of death and pain they had inflicted on the city that was already wounded by the effects of the plague.

As he approached the harbor front, his steps momentarily faltered.  There was a bright yellow glow in the air, and he felt his stomach flip with fear at the certainty that a sorcerer was with the Corsairs – perhaps the very sorcerer he had fought in the Lion City.  He turned a corner at an intersection just two blocks away from the water, and from there he saw the glowing yellow dome that protected the Corsairs, giving their ships a safe harbor within the harbor.

Marco stood at the water front, just a score of yards from where the yellow dome touched the land.  He examined the sights before his eyes, and it was like he was looking at a living, breathing picture of the catastrophic Lion City expedition.  There were the same piles of booty sitting on the piers, the same small flotilla of boats tied to the docks, and the same sorcerer standing in his gowns, looking supremely confident and assured.

But in this instance there was a single Corsair speaking to the sorcerer, standing with the evil man in the robes holding a small dark object out in both hands as an offering to the sorcerer.  Marco began to creep along a pier that was outside the dome, one that jutted out into the water on a parallel to the domain the sorcerer and the Corsairs controlled.  He watched as the sorcerer took the container of gorgon’s blood from the Corsair who had gotten away from Marco.  The sorcerer patted the Corsair on the head, the way a man might pat a dog on the head to express approval, then he examined the container of the dangerous crystals intently, oblivious to Marco’s stealthy trip to the end of the other pier.

The sorcerer spent several minutes, and all of his attention examining the container, as Marco climbed down the ladder at the end of his pier.  He put his face in the water and called.  “Kieweeooee!   Kieweeooee, are you close?” he called.

There was no answer, as Marco tried to devise and carry out a desperate plan.  He stripped off his clothes to ease his swimming, then grimly held his sword between his hands and dov
e deep into the harbor waters.  He swam downward, towards the sorcerer, hoping there was a bottom gap below the dome, where it plunged underneath the surface of the water, a place he’d be able to swim down to and through, to get within the protective dome.

The glow of the dome appeared suddenly in front of him, and his fingers touched its crystal hard surface.  His lungs began to burn from his prolonged submersion, and he swam rapidly upward to the surface, rising along the edge of the dome to reach the air, where he gasped deeply, sucking in great gulps of air that refilled his lungs and restored oxygen to his blood.

“Marco legs?” Kieweeooee scared him by speaking right next to him, making him give a startled yelp as he turned.

“Why are you here by this evil thing?” the dolphin asked him.

“Kieweeooee!” he exclaimed.  “Thank you for coming.

“There are going to be bad things happen unless I get inside this shell,” he said urgently.  “Does it go all the way to the bottom?  Can I swim under it?” he asked.

The dolphin stared at him.  He’d never known his finned friend to be speechless before, but he knew his declaration had made it happen.

“Wait here,” Kieweeooee said, then disappeared beneath the water.

Seconds later the dolphin returned.  “There is a space.  You can go inside the evil shell.  Must you do so?  Can I help you?  I will go with you,” she offered.

“No, Kieweeooee, my love,” Marco said affectionately, placing a gentle hand on the dolphin’s flipper.  “You have to stay safe and ready to have all those baby mermaids someday, eh?” he laughed.

She splashed her flipper in a soft burst of laughter, then turned, and Marco took a deep breath before he grabbed ahold of her and let her pull him quickly downward.  He felt the pressure start to build in his ears as the water above them grew deeper, and they continued to descend, until Marco saw the abrupt ending of the glowing yellow dome beside him.

He released his hold on the dolphin and grabbed the bottom of the dome, then pulled himself underneath it.  He felt the slimy bottom of the harbor rub against his back, and his lungs began to burn again, and then he was on his way upward, back towards the sweet air he needed to breath, on the inside of the Corsairs’ dome.

Marco reached the surface of the water, one hand still touching the yellow dome that protected the Corsairs.  He looked at Kieweeooee, who was just inches away on the other side of the dome.  He waved a quick wave at his friend to acknowledge and thank her, then he turned and swam quickly towards the pier that the sorcerer occupied.  He stopped to breathe and catch his breath at the base of that pier, trying to prepare himself for his rapidly approaching confrontation with the sorcerer that stood just overhead.

Carefully, holding his breath now in anticipation, Marco slowly raised his head above the surface of the pier, and spotted the sorcerer down at the far end, the end of the pier closest to the city and the warehouses.  He stood among a group of Corsairs, and once again Marco saw that a crowd of the citizens of the city stood across from the protective dome, angrily determined to fight the invaders of their city.  And once again there were pi
les of booty and captives laid on the planks of the pier, awaiting their turn to be roughly handled as they became the cargo that the Corsairs would carry away from the city.

Marco crept around the side of the pier and edged his way over to one of the piles of booty.  The sorcerer still had his back turned, confident in his security, unaware that the very same threat that had fought him before, hundreds of miles away, was once again creeping up on him.

Marco crept up onto the pier, keeping the pile of stolen goods in front of him as a shield.  He approached a young girl who looked at him with frightened eyes, and he held his finger to his lips as he gently sliced her ropes and set her free.

“Go down over the edge and hide beneath the pier.  Hide in the support beams,” Marco whispered to her, and then he set another girl free, one who appeared to be a nobleman’s daughter, judging from the jewels that still dangled about her, and he freed a very young boy, who he told to follow the girls.

There were no others he could easily reach, so he settled in among the stolen goods and waited for the sorcerer to return towards his end of the pier.  He sprawled himself among the goods, and hid his sword under his body, loosely holding severed ropes around his wrists to make it appear that he was a bound captive.

And minutes later, the sorcerer came stalking down the pier towards him.

It was the same man.  He had the same penetrating eyes, and Marco kept his face averted to try to hide his identity; he was sure that the sorcerer would recognize him just as surely as he recognized the sorcerer.  The only difference Marco noted between their last meeting and the current one was that a black raven perched upon the man’s shoulder, riding comfortably as the man strode forward.

The man reached Marco’s pile of goods and stopped to look down at Marco’s body, a figure the sorcerer didn’t remember seeing before.  And at that moment, Marco pressed himself upward, rolled forward on the pier, and thrust his sword into the chest of the astonished sorcerer.  The raven on the man’s shoulder let out a squawk of pain, lifted itself off the shoulder of the sorcerer, then flew in a tight, quick circle, and landed back on the other shoulder of the injured man, looking at Marco with a baleful stare.

The man remained standing with a horrified look, and Marco grabbed at the front of his robes and pulled the container of gorgon’s blood out, ripping the fabric of the robes as he jerked it forcefully.  Then Marco pulled his sword clear of the sorcerer’s flesh, and fearfully back-pedaled several steps.

The sorcerer did not topple over.  The man stood stock still, his eyes shut, and his lips quivering as he mumbled some incantation.

Then the sorcerer’s eyes opened, and he was enclosed in a wavering blue light.  The yellow dome overhead began to dim and flicker, as the sorcerer redirected his will away from maintaining it.  And then, as amazing as anything else he had seen, Marco saw the sorcerer’s skin change, the uniformity of its pale color faded, and Marco saw a clearly striped pattern appear on the deadly man’s face.  It instantly reminded Marco of Lady Iasco’s identical complexion.

“It’s you again?” the sorcerer struggled to say.  “Has fate chosen you to be a champion?”

The question resonated in Marco’s brain, as he remembered the voice in the cave on the Isle of Ophiuchus.

The sorcerer’s eyes shifted to look at the flower tattoo on Marco’s shoulder.  “You’re her champion, are you?

“Then let my curse rest upon you.  May my master be able to always find you, so that when the time comes that he wants the gorgon’s blood, he’ll be able to reach out and pluck it away from you,” the sorcerer’s voice was unsteady, and a drop of blood ran down his chin.

“And then he will pluck away your very life itself, after he had used you in the ways that amuse him,” the curse grew in power – Marco could feel it building in the air.  The yellow dome flickered completely out of existence,
as the sorcerer vented all his dwindling energy into empowering the curse he cast on Marco.

“Take my curse, since you have taken my life, and feel the curse – live with it, know that it will draw your own doom down upon you,” the sorcerer screamed the last words, then raised his left hand with a speed that Marco had not expected, and hurled a glowing ball of deep purple and black energy directly at Marco’s chest.

With reactions that were inhumanly quick, Marco’s sword raised up in front of his chest and intercepted the ball of diabolical energy.  The sorcerer’s powerful weapon hit the edge of the sword blade square-on, and split into two parts.  One part flew to the left, while the other flew to the right.

One half of the attack struck Marco directly on the tattoo that had been imprinted on him.  He felt the force of the strike, and then he watched with amazement as the ball of energy bounced off the tattoo and rebounded directly back at the sorcerer.

At the same time, the other half of the dark energy flew at Marco’s right shoulder and struck him squarely there.  The energy blasted its way through his skin, creating a smoldering burn on Marco’s flesh, and something within the energy burrowed into his shoulder joint, creating agonizing pain as it took up residence in Marco’s body.

Marco felt the pain, and felt his body hurled backwards by the blast, so that he landed on his back on the surface of the pier, one hand holding his sword while the other hand held the container of gorgon’s blood.  He did not see the other half of the energy ball strike the sorcerer as it rebounded off of Marco.  As soon as it struck its creator, the other ball burrowed into his flesh, and then appeared to move about beneath his skin, raising a lump as it moved, akin to a person burrowing beneath covers on a bed.  The bulging energy’s movement caused the sorcerer to scream in agony for several seconds, until the power came to rest directly above his heart; for one second it held still in that location, and then suddenly dove through his body, deep into his chest.  The next second the dying sorcerer erupted in a burst of greasy smoke and flame that instantly consumed him, sending a column of smoke and flame high into the sky.  The raven launched itself into the air just ahead of the explosion, and disappeared into the darkness of the sky, making a raucous noise.

The three captives that Marco had set free had watched the confrontation, and as one, they climbed back onto the pier and grabbed Marco’s body, so that they could pull it down into hiding with them beneath the pier.  Their rescue of the unconscious Marco was just barely in time, but they succeeded, for the dissolution of the yellow dome had allowed the enraged citizens of Barcelon to storm at the unprotected and outnumbered Corsair invaders, and sweep away the violent attackers who had tried to loot the plague-ravaged city.