The Gorgon's Blood Solution (26 page)

Chapter 18 – Folence of Ophiuchus

Marco awoke in gradual steps, rising up through the screaming pain little by little.  At first he was only aware of the horrible pain that throbbed in his shoulder.  The wound created by the sorcerer’s powerful magic throbbed along in rhythm to his own heartbeat.  As he awoke to a greater degree, he became aware of sound.  There was the sound of his own labored breathing, and the occasional sounds of the scraping movements of others around him.  And worst of all, there was the sound of an evil murmuring, another voice that was audible just on the edge of his consciousness, a voice that repeated something over and over and over again – a short simple phrase that he could not quite grasp, but that hovered on the edge of his awareness, as he lay subdued and overwhelmed by the pain he felt, with the banal murmur always
present.

He eventually became aware of light, and then he became self-aware.

"Marco, do you hear me?" he heard the question, and his mind struggled to comprehend their meaning.

"Marco, squeeze my hand if you hear me,
” the voice told him, and he realized that there was pressure on his hand, his left hand.  He squeezed the fingers of his hand and heard a sharp intake of breath.

"He did it!" it was a familiar
voice that spoke, he knew.

Marco opened his eyes and focused his blurry vision.
  He could barely see the features of a girl’s face, though not in detail.  There were sparks of light on the sides of her head, he noted.

“Who are you?” he croaked.  “What’s happening?”

“It’s me Marco, Mirra.  You’re safe, Marco.  They’re trying to heal you.  I mean, they are healing you,” she hastily corrected herself.

“Where are we?  What happened?” he asked the girl.  He used his left hand to rub his eyes, and cleared his vision.  He suddenly recognized Mirra’s lovely features, and knew who she was.  He exhaled deeply, his heart relieved to see his friend, and memories started to roll back to the front of his awareness.

“We’re in Barcelon,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” Mirra said soothingly.  “We’re in the Duke’s palace.  One of the girls you rescued is the Duke’s niece, she had you brought here immediately from the pier.”

All the memories came rolling back – his brief new career as an alchemist at Gabrielle’s shop, the plague, the attack of the Corsairs, the battle on the pier, and the frightening, diabolical powers that the sorcerer had thrown at him.

“Mirra,” he said, and he looked at her, seeing the sparkle of bright jewelry on her ears, shiny dots that took the dim light of the room and made it seem magical.  “What are those on your ears?”

He could see her blush faintly.  “They’re earrings; Captain Kilson gave them to me.  He said he wanted me to look pretty for you when you awoke.”

Despite all his other problems and pains, Marco felt a bolt of jealousy momentarily run through him.  “You look pretty enough for me without them,” he blurted out, then regretted the comment as he saw a momentary pained look on her face.

“Thank you for being here,” he said.  “How long have we been here?”

“Two days,” Mirra answered.

“Marco!  Are you okay?” she asked, as she watched his features suddenly grimace.

“It’s that noise,” he answered, referring to the murmur.  “It just keeps bothering me.”

There was a movement in the shadows behind Mirra.

“What noise?” she asked.

“That noise – I think it’s a voice.  Someone is talking somewhere; I don’t understand it,” he told her perplexed by her question.  “You hear it, don’t you?”

“She can’t hear it,” a white blur suddenly appeared behind Mirra, and he saw a woman dressed all in white, wearing a white scarf over her head even, though the scarf was unusually large and bulky upon her head.  “I can’t even hear it, but I know that it’s there.”

“Who are you?” Marco asked suspiciously.  There was something about the woman that he didn’t trust, though he couldn’t think clearly enough through the pain in his shoulder to decipher the warning his instincts delivered.

“This lady is from the temple of
Asclepius,” Mirra told him, a grateful look on her face as she glanced at the woman.  “She came to the palace immediately, and said that she would care for you with all the skill and power her temple has.”

Marco’s eyes grew wide, and the woman stared intently at him, then slowly leaned over him, and reached down to touch the flower tattoo on his shoulder.  “It saved you, for now.”

“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked quietly, then closed his eyes.  “Are you going to take me back?”

“What are you talking about, Marco?” Mirra asked in a confused tone.

“He is speaking in pain and confusion,” the woman answered.  “He needs some medicine to relax him and help that shoulder heal.  Here,” her hand suddenly had a small wafer in it, and she pressed the item into his mouth, then cupped both her hands around his cheeks.

“We have a few miraculous medicines of our own,” she said calmly, as Marco felt the wafer dissolve on his tongue, before he could even think to spit it out.

“Go get some rest Mirra.  You’ve been with him for hours now,” the temple priestess directed.  “Go see Captain Kilson, and tell him that Marco woke up briefly.  I think he may be able to take visitors in a day or two,” she said, as her hand shifted from Marco’s face to Mirra’s hand, and assisted her up into a standing position, while her other hand continued to hold Marco’s.

The lovely girl leaned over and kissed Marco’s face.  “I’m so glad to see you awake my sweet,” she smiled as she lifted her face.  “I’ll come back tomorrow to sit with you.”

Marco’s eyes shifted from Mirra to the other woman behind her, who gave a nod as an inscrutable signal to him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Mirra,” he agreed, then felt both a wave of sleepiness, and an urge to say one more thing.

“Mirra, I love you,” he told her, and then he felt his eyes fall shut, and no effort on his part could make them open, though he did not fall completely asleep.

He heard Mirra sharply inhale, then gulp.  “Oh Marco,” she whispered softly, and he felt her kiss his lips lightly, and then she was gone.

“I know you’re awake.  I know you can hear me.  Listen closely,” the other woman said several seconds later, after a door closed nearby.

“I am Folence,” the woman said.  “I am the head priestess at the temple of Asclepius in Barcelon.  Several days I received an urgent message from the Lady Iasco on the Isle of Ophiuchus; the same message was sent to every temple we have in our order.

“We were told to be on the lookout for a boy who had escaped from the isle, a boy who had been anointed by the spirit of the island to be the champion of the lady – a boy who happened to talk to the people of the sea.  Lady Iasco wanted to see the boy, to talk to him and warn him about what might be about to happen, for his own good,” Folence told her tale.

“We saw no evidence of any such fugitive boy, and we didn’t look too hard, because we are only Barcelon after all, not one of the great cities, like the Lion City, for example, where such an extraordinary boy might choose to go,” she lightly touched Marco’s eyelids, and he was able to open his eyes as he listened to her.

“And then of course we had a little incidence of plague that took up all our time and effort for several days, as we tried to save as many patients as we could,” she continued.  She reached up and unwound the scarf that covered her head, revealing a knife inexplicably hidden within the cloth.  She placed the items on the covers of Marco’s bed, and shook her head as she ran her fingers through her hair.

“The plague consumed every ounce of effort we had, but we barely made a dent in it.  Yet somehow the plague abated much more rapidly than it should have, with far fewer fatalities than we expected, and we heard rumors of a miraculous cure that was being given away in the heart of the city to all comers,” she continued her story.  She began to unbutton the front of her white dress.

“We dismissed it as impossible, but the stories continued,” she said.  “And then the Corsairs attacked the city, and we were told that a great hero had impossibly defeated a mighty sorcerer in single combat at the docks, but had been wounded with dark magic, so I rushed here to the palace to offer our assistance.

“And behold,” she pulled her dress up over her head,  to reveal the thin shift she wore beneath it, a flimsy garment that nonetheless held two more knives in leather scabbards attached to the shift; and she also revealed her shoulder to Marco by thrusting it towards him.  There was a tattoo on the shoulder.  It was a tattoo of a flower, a tattoo that perfectly matched the one on Marco’s shoulder

“I saw you when I was brought in to tend to you, and I immediately saw that you and I had this in common,” she paused, and Marco saw a droll smile upon her face, “and there is a very short list of males who have such a mark.”

There was a noise at the door, and Mirra re-entered the room.  “I meant to ask,” she began, then faltered as she saw the undressed priestess hovering over Marco.

              “What did you mean to ask?” Folence asked coolly.

             
“I meant to ask,” Mirra said haltingly, “when Marco would be able to return to Gabrielle’s shop?”

             
“Come here and look at this,” the priestess gestured Mirra over to the bed.  She pointed at the torn flesh and lump that occupied Marco’s right shoulder.  “This is a terrible wound, worse than you can imagine.  There is not just damage and pain, there is evil at work here, evil I do not fully understand.  I do not want him to leave my care until we can deal with this problem.

             
“It would be best if we were to take him to our own temple, and care for him there,” Folence explained.  She paused as she casually shrugged her dress back on, as though she need not take concern for anyone else in the room as she changed her wardrobe.

             
“Why did you have your gown off?” Mirra found the courage to ask.

“It’s no concern of yours, girl,” the priestess answered.  “Now go off and visit with your officer friend, and leave the care of this boy to those who know what to do for him.”

Dismissed, Mirra looked at Marco helplessly, as he lay languidly on his bed, unable to respond or send any signal to his friend.  Mirra pursed her lips, then left the room.

“She’s a nice girl,” Folence commented in an offhanded manner.  “You’ve done something to her, I can tell, though I’m not sure what it is.”

“Now, you rest while I take care of your future.  Go to sleep, my marked man,” Folence said as she began to rewrap the scarf and its hidden weapon upon her head with one hand, while her other hand reached down and closed Marco’s eyelids, causing him to fall asleep.

             
When Marco awoke next, the room was dark.  He found that he could turn his head, and he looked to either side of him.  There was an empty chair on his right, where Mirra had sat during the day, and no sign of anyone else in the room.  A darkened window was in one wall to his right as well, a sign that it was night time outside.

He felt more energetic than he had when he had awoken the first time in the Duke’s palace.  His shoulder still throbbed relentlessly, and there was still the inexplicable murmuring sound that bothered him.   He took a deep breath to prepare himself, then sat up.  As he did, he gasped at the increase in pain in his shoulder, which felt like a knife stabbing deeply into the joint.  He waited a moment for the pain to subside, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. 

Marco looked out the window, and saw a courtyard below, enclosed on one side by a guarded gate, beyond which he saw the buildings of the city.

He had to escape from the palace, he knew.  Folence was planning to take him into captivity in her Barcelon temple, and then to deliver him back to Lady Iasco on the Isle.  He had no wish to go there.  With a flash of insight, he realized that he could no longer stay in Barcelon.  Folence knew he was there, knew he was wanted by the leader of her order, and knew to find him either at the palace, or at Gabrielle’s shop.

With slow and painful motion, he stood and stared vacantly out the window, shocked by the implications of what he now knew.  He needed for the shoulder to heal, and Folence could help with that he was sure, but he needed to escape her grasp before she took him into custody.  He looked around the room and saw no clothes, though his sword was propped against a wall; there were only the sheets on the bed, so he wrapped one around himself – making sure that it draped over the horrific appearance of his wounded shoulder – and cautiously opened the door to peer out into the hall.

There was no one in sight, so he slipped out into the hall, and pulled the door shut behind him quietly, then padded silently to the staircase at one end of the hall.  It was a plain, narrow passage, one meant to be used by servants he suspected, so he crept down two flights of stairs and stopped at a doorway that closed the steps off from the rest of the palace.

He heard voices beyond the doorway, boisterous voices, and he didn’t choose to risk stepping in among them.  There was a turn and then a continuation of the staircase, one that presumably led down to the basement, so Marco continued to descend.