The Gorgon's Blood Solution (27 page)

There were fewer voices on the other side of the final door he came to, the one he guessed was in the basement.  He put his hand on the knob and pressed the door open, then stopped in surprise for a moment as a wave of humid air enveloped him.  He had found the perfect place – the palace laundry!  He stepped inside, and saw a pair of workers standing with their backs to him, talking and folding clothing.

He stooped and walked between the stacked baskets of clothing, then stopped and pulled out an item.  It was a skirt, and he cast it aside, then pulled out a pair of pants.  He hurriedly pulled them on.  He searched through the next basket, and found a shirt that was made from heavy, dark material.  He pulled his sheet off and dropped it on the floor, then pulled the shirt over his head.  Minutes later he was dressed, out the door and back up the stairs, where he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and finally opened the door to the noisy room he had avoided before.

The room grew silent, and he found that he had walked into a servants’ work room.  Men and women of the palace staff all looked at him in surprise.

“Who in blazes are you?” one of the men asked.

“I’m lost.  I just can’t find my way out of the palace,” Marco said.

“We’ll show you out!  Browne, Jax, take this common fellow to the gate and send him on his way.  Make sure he doesn’t have anything that doesn’t belong to him,” the speaker directed, sending two men in Marco’s direction.

The men patted his pockets, looked suspiciously at his sword without saying anything, then grabbed his arms, and Marco shouted in pain as his injured shoulder was wrenched.

“I didn’t grab him that hard!” one of his escorts protested, and the two men firmly walked Marco out to the gate, and instructed the guards to keep him out.

For a second, Marco stood in the gateway, looking back at the darkened palace exterior.  He wondered in Mirra was in there; he would possibly find out soon, if he could carry out the plan he had halfway developed.  He didn’t want to separate himself from the beautiful girl, a person who had been such a close and reliable friend and companion.  There was a tangible spark of compatibility between them, and it was unbearably painful to think that he was possibly – probably – going to lose the connection to her when he fled from the city.

He wanted to take her with him, and if he could safely find her, he would ask her to go with him.

There was a sudden light in a window up in one of the upper floor rooms, and a second later he saw the outline of a woman’s body looking out through the glazed panes.  It was Folence!  She was in his room, he was sure, and now she already knew he was gone!

Marco hurriedly turned away from the gate.  He disappeared into the darkened streets as quickly as he could manage to flee without making the pain in his shoulder grow unbearable from the jostling movement.  The shoulder still throbbed, and the murmuring sound followed him around as he meandered through the dark city streets.

He was headed towards Mirra’s apartment.  He hoped he might find her there; that would reduce the problems he foresaw on his flight towards freedom.  He had left the gate of the palace headed in the wrong direction, and so he had to take an even longer route by circling around the city back towards the neighborhood where Mirra and her brother Glaze lived.

Marco knew that he could not go to Gabrielle’s shop.  That was certain to be the first place Folence would go, or send her people, in a search for him.  He needed to get some things from the shop, specifically the money that he had saved from the Duke’s gift; he needed those resources to buy passage on a ship leaving Barcelon.  He hoped that Mirra or Glaze would pick the money up for him.  He hoped one of them would be at the apartment, and he hoped that Folence would not immediately think to send anyone to look for him at Mirra’s apartment.

He was full of hopes, and he was full of doubts.  And he was full of pain as well.  His shoulder was throbbing with unceasing pain, so much so that at one point he stopped in an alley and leaned against a wall as he bent doubled over and waited for a wave of pain to pass. 

Marco reached the doorway to Mirra’s apartment in the early hours of the morning, and climbed the stairs to reach the small chamber that he knew she shared with his baby and her brother.  He knocked softly on the door, and waited for an answer, then knocked more loudly.  He jiggled the handle to the door, and was surprised to find that the door swung inward, showing him a darkness as deep as that in which he stood in the building hallway.

“Mirra?  Glaze?” he softly called, as he stuck his head into the opening.  There was no sound of movement.  “Mirra?  It’s me, Marco,” he said quietly.  He stepped into the apartment, and carefully closed the door behind him, then stood in a state of indecision.  He didn’t remember the layout of the small apartment well enough to easily move about in the dark; he wasn’t worried about awakening anyone by making noise – he assumed the apartment was empty, since Glaze often had to work night jobs to earn money, and Mirra did not respond.

He stumbled his way to Mirra’s side of the apartment, and placed his hands on her bedding.  The thin mattress was empty, and held no indication of body warmth, no sign that she had been there recently.  He lay down on his back in exhaustion, wondering where she was.  Was she at the palace, ironically staying there to be close to him, or was she at Gabrielle’s, or was there some other place she was staying?

Marco thought about Mirra with his last thought of the night, and then fell into an uneasy sleep.

In his sleep he heard a voice calling, and the experience was not a dream, it was a nightmare.  He heard the voice of the sorcerer, who magically remained standing as he was dying, pronouncing his curse on Marco – “May my master be always able to find you” – the sorcerer had threatened, just before he had flung the deadly weapon of magical energy at Marco.

And then Marco head another voice, a quieter, but harsher voice, endlessly repeating a phrase.  “Here he is master, come and take him.  Here he is master, come and take him,” the voice droned on and on in his restless sleep, until he started to roll onto his wounded shoulder, whereupon the pain of his injury awoke him with a start.

Marco shifted his position in Mirra’s bed, and fell asleep again, a sounder sleep that lasted until Glaze came sleepily trudging into the apartment after sunrise, and found the intruder in his sister’s bed.

“It’s me Glaze, Marco!” he said with a start when he woke up and looked up at Glaze’s angry face above him, the man holding a club poised to strike.  “I’m Mirra’s friend!”

“What are you doing in her bed?   Where is she?” Glaze stood upright, in a less threatening pose, though he still didn’t seem entirely calm.

“I came here to hide,” Marco admitted.  “I ran away from the palace; I think Mirra is still there.”

Glaze lowered his club and sat down at the small table.  “Why did you run away from the palace?”

Marco propped himself up on his elbow to rise, and noticed that the pain in his shoulder was different – it was still very much present, but it didn’t feel the same.

“There was a woman at the palace who doesn’t like me,” he told Glaze.  “I slipped out last night, and spent all night trying to get here.  It’s the only safe place I could think of.

“I’m sure Mirra’s okay.  I didn’t think they threatened her at all,” he told Mirra’s brother, then suddenly wondered if the girl would be safe once he was gone.

“I haven’t seen her since the day before yesterday, when she and Sybele went with that captain from the palace,” Glaze told Marco.

“I saw her for a few moments yesterday, and she was fine then,” Marco assured the man.  “I need for you to do something for me though.”

“Can I get some sleep first?” Glaze asked.

Marco winced, as the pain in his shoulder gave a jolt.

“Are you okay?” Glaze asked.

“It’s the injury I took in the fight,” Marco answered.  “I’ll be alright.”

“Go get some sleep, and we’ll talk when we wake up,” Marco told the exhausted brother.   Glaze gratefully went to his heap of covers and flopped down to quickly fall asleep, while Marco laid back and drowsed in a half-sleepy state as well.  He drifted back and forth between sleep and waking concern; unlikely as it seemed, he was convinced that he had felt the pain in his shoulder move, taking a lurch that had made him wince, and then he remembered the nightmares of the night before, and with a startled new sense of fear that woke him up, he intuitively grasped that the voice he had heard had been the murmuring sound that had been following him and disturbing him.  And worse, he feared, it was the lump of evil that had been inserted into his shoulder that was the source of the noise.

He felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead as he considered the incredible notion.  The terrific pain he felt in his shoulder suddenly became the secondary concern he had, as he imagined that there was evil magic inside his body, calling out to the master of the sorcerer, whatever diabolical being that was, revealing Marco’s location to him. 
The sorcerer had put a curse on Marco, that he always be chased by the horrible master, and now Marco was truly marked and doomed to being followed and caught.  The curse was tangible and real.

He sat up with a sob, and covered his eyes with his left hand, while he tried to imagine what to do.  Suddenly, running away from Folence and the women of the isle was not his biggest fear – running away from the sorcerer’s master, or ridding himself of the tracking energy was more urgent.

He moved his left hand from his face to his shoulder, looking down at the open wound as he did.  Probing with his fingers caused considerable new pain, but he forced himself to explore the source of the pain, and he felt deeply troubled as he did.  He was certain that the lump of evil within his flesh had changed location – it was no longer buried within the heart of his joint, but now was at least a couple of inches closer to his chest, out on the end of the collar bone.

He ceased his probing and lay back down, frozen in fear.  The sorcerer’s curse was alive within his own body, and it was sending out the message to someone, telling where he was, acting as a marker so that the sorcerer’s master could come and find him while it took inexplicable steps within his body.  He wondered if he could cut the evil out, if he could take a knife to his own flesh and perform crude surgery to exorcise the sorcerer’s curse from his own flesh.  It seemed impossible to imagine taking such a step.

“Marco?” he heard his name, then realized that the door had opened.  He found that Mirra was in the small room, holding Sybele in her arms; she was instantly next to him, placing the infant in her basket, then bending over him, grasping him in a hug that was both wonderful, and painful as she pressed against his shoulder.

He moaned in pain, and she hastily backed away from him.

“I’m sorry!  So sorry!” she told him as she hovered above him.  He reached out with his left hand and gently rested his fingers on the back of her neck, then carefully pulled her face down to his, and kissed her.

“Oh Marco,” she murmured against his lips after several seconds, as he released his grasp, and she raised her head slightly.

She looked over to where Glaze remained asleep, then looked at Marco again.  “I was so worried about you!  The Duke and the priestess are ready to tear the city apart to find you.  Captain Kilson is waiting downstairs for me; he thinks I just came here to pick up something, but I came here because I thought this is where you might come to hide.

“Why are you here?  Why did you run away from the palace?  Lady Folence is furious, and I think she is genuinely worried as well.  What are you doing?” she whispered the questions.

Marco looked at her intently.  “It’s a long, long story,” he said.  “Do you really want to know it all?”

“Kilson is waiting; he’ll come up soon if I don’t go back down.  Will you stay here?  Can I come see you tonight?” she asked.

“I don’t think I can go very far,” he told her.  “I’ll be here.”

I’ll be back Marco,” she said.  “Stay safe.  “I love you too, Marco, I want you to know!  When you said in the palace that you loved me, that was the most wonderful thing anyone ever said to me,” she told him as she picked up Sybele.  The infant began to whimper, and Mirra hastily stood.  “I’ll be back tonight, I promise,” she told him, and then she was gone.

Marco smiled, as he momentarily forgot all about his pain and the evil that was within him.  He lay back and closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

Chapter 19 – Alchemy Gone Astray

Marco awoke when Glaze stirred him.

“Marco, what do you need for me to do?” Mirra’s brother asked him.

“I need for you to go to Gabrielle’s shop, and tell her you are there as a secret favor to me.  Tell her to tell no one.  Then ask her if you can go up to my room in the garret and get some of the gold coins up there.  Tell her I need the money to go on a trip, but she has to keep it a secret,” Marco instructed.  He wasn’t sure any longer that he could go on a trip, as badly as he hurt, but he had to hope that the pain would subside, and he would be able to manage to take passage aboard a ship that would sail him out of the harbor, away from the city where Folence was searching for him.

Glaze immediately left the apartment, and Marco sat alone, listening to the sound of the beacon within his body, as well as listening to the noises of the lives of the neighbors who lived in the crowded tenement building as well.

An hour later Glaze returned, empty-handed.  “She couldn’t give it to me.  She told me there were people there hiding, waiting for you to show up,” the young man reported to Marco.  “She said to send Mirra and she can arrange to be alone with her long enough to give you money,” Glaze reported.

“Thank you, Glaze,” Marco said, disappointed, but glad that nothing worse had happened.  “You weren’t followed back here, were you?”

Mirra’s brother assured Marco that he wasn’t.

“Did you know Mirra was here while you were asleep?” Marco asked.

“You’re kidding me!” Glaze replied in astonishment.

“She brought Sybele.  They both looked fine.  She said she’ll try to come back tonight,” Marco assured her brother.  He looked pleased at the news, then bid goodbye as he left to go to his job working in a slaughterhouse.

It was late afternoon, and Marco was alone in the small apartment.  He smiled as he thought of Mirra’s visit, especially her declaration at the end, that she loved him.  It made him happy, better able to withstand the pain in his shoulder, and he paid no attention to anything else around him, consumed by his own daydreams, until there was a momentary spike in the murmur and then a sudden loud banging noise at the room’s window that made him jump.

He turned his head, and saw a large black bird, sitting on the sill, peering in through the window at him.  Marco waved his hand at the bird, but it did not react at first, then proceeded to tap its beak against the window pane.  The bird flapped its wings and hopped up and down, then sat and stared directly in at Marco.

He slowly stood up, then walked towards the window.  The raven spread its wings wide as it faced him, and bobbed its head up and down.  Marco banged on the window to try to chase the black bird away, but it only remained on the sill and started pecking at the glass in return, as if mocking him.  Exasperated, Marco picked up a towel and hung it in front of the window to block his view of the bird.  It responded by cawing harshly and repeatedly, making Marco angrier, so that at last he opened the window and swung his hand at the bird, tired of its inexplicable behavior.

The situation deteriorated from there.  The raven sidestepped his wave, and flew into the room, making Marco try to raise both arms in a panicked response to the creature’s sudden movement in the confined space.  Marco’s shoulder burst into a new wave of agony, and he bent over in response, a fortunate move, as the bird dove at his face, and only raked his forehead with its talons and not his eyes.

He swung a fi
st with his head still down, and felt contact.  The bird gave a squawk, and Marco looked up to see the black creature shoot out the window.   He stretched his good arm and slammed the window shut, then hung the towel in front of it again, and slumped back onto Mirra’s bedding.  There was blood in his eyes from the deep scratches on his forehead, and he removed his purloined shirt to wipe his face clean.

It should have been unsettling; it should have been shocking.  Yet Marco felt almost numb to any increase in horror over the attack.  After the battle with the sorcerer, after the infection by the evil energy, after the appearance of the priestess Folence, an attack by a determined and driven bird was not anything to cause him to flinch with further fear.  It was simply another sign of how his life was spiraling downhill, out of control, his destiny invisible in a dark future ahead of him.

And the murmuring voice was changing its words, he realized dejectedly.  “You will go to him, you will go to him.  You will go to the dark master,” the voice was now chanting in its nearly inaudible croon.

He sighed and flung his arm over his eyes, and tried to imagine how a master alchemist would tell him to respond to his misfortune.  What would Algornia tell him, he wondered.  The old master would tell him something about sanctity and purification of the impure infections an
d stains, he knew.  He had heard the lectures so many times before, when life had been so simple, and his future had not been so dark.

There was a knock at the door, and Marco realized that his doom was at hand.  The raven had gone off to alert someone to his presence, and they had come to find him.

“Marco?” Mirra’s voice called, and then the door pushed open, and he saw her eyes looking at him before she pressed the door wide, and entered the room.  She carried Sybele in one arm, and had a sack of belongings flung over her other shoulder.

“How are you, my love?” she asked, setting the awake baby girl down to sit on the floor as she crouched down next to Marco.  “What happened to your face?” she asked in dismay as she looked at the raven’s scratches across his forehead.

“There was a bird at the window, a big black bird.  I tried to chase it away, but it flew into the room and scratched me,” he said, as she got up and dampened a rag from a pitcher of water, then gently washed his face.  She looked down at his wounded shoulder, and her face turned pale.

“It looks so bad, Marco,” she said.  “Why don’t you want Folence to treat you?”

And so, in a long monologue that was a relief to tell, Marco told an abbreviated version of the story of his experience on the isle of Ophiuchus, the hatred of the women and the effort to take him back captive once again.  “The dolphins brought me here to safety,” he said, “and now it looks like the only way I can get healed is to turn myself over to the women who will lock me away.”

There were tears in Mirra’s eyes as she listened to him.

Sybele began to cry, and Mirra absent-mindedly lifted her blouse and began to feed the child, then looked at Marco and blushed as she realized what she had done without thinking.  “I’m sorry; I was too busy listening to your story to think about what I was doing,” she said.  “And in some ways it doesn’t matter, since you’ve seen every inch of my skin anyway, the time we went swimming with your dolphin friend,” she rationalized, as Marco averted his gaze and pretended not to notice.

“What are you going to do?  You’re purely in trouble now, my sweet,” Mirra asked him.

“Pure?  Pure!  That’s it!” Marco exclaimed energetically.  “Maybe there’s something I can concoct to purify this evil out of my body,” he said recollecting the lessons of Algornia once again.  “Do you know what happened to the gorgon’s blood that I rescued from the sorcerer?  Did Folence get it?” he asked anxiously.

“Do you mean this?” Mirra fished with one hand in her bag of belongings, and drew out the small dark container.  “You still had it in your hand when they brought you to the palace, and I thought it must be important to you, so I took it and kept it for you.”

“Oh Mirra!” Marco said joyfully.

“I think there must be a way to use the strength of the gorgon’s blood to purify my body and expunge the evil that the sorcerer put in me,” he beamed a smile at the girl, happier than at any time since just before he had seen the Corsairs arrive in the city.

“Here, let me open it up so you can get started,” Mirra said, placing the container on the floor and then beginning to unscrew the lid.

“No! Stop!” Marco said loudly, making Mirra look up in surprise, as Sybele momentarily stopped her suckling at the sound.

Mirra looked up with large eyes in surprise.

“No,” Marco repeated more softly.  “It’s a very dangerous element.  Just to touch it will burn your skin off.  We shouldn’t open it until we’re ready, until I know exactly what to do.  Keep it closed,” he warned her.

They sat together quietly until Sybele competed her nursing, and fell asleep in her mother’s arms, and was then tucked into her basket to rest.

“Would you like something to eat?” Mirra asked as she adjusted her blouse.

Marco looked at her in surprise.  “What do you mean?” he asked, turning bright red as he misunderstood her question.

She looked at him in confusion.  “Do you want me to go get something from the shop down the street?”

He smiled and gave a chuckle.  “Yes, if you can.  I haven’t got any money to give you though,” he warned.

“I have a silver that Captain Kilson gave me,” she assured him.  “It’ll be enough to feed us.”

“Why did Kilson give you a silver?” Marco immediately asked, looking at the earrings that Mirra still wore.

Mirra blushed.  “He said it was just for being so pretty,” her eyes avoided his.  “I told him no, but he said I could give it back if I didn’t use it.  And now it looks like I need to use it.”

“As soon as we get some of my money from Gabrielle, you can pay him back,” Marco told her.

“Of course,” she agreed.  She stood to go.  “I’ll be back.  Sybele should sleep for a while now,” she told him, and then she was gone.  Marco looked at the closed door, and wished he could take back the jealous words that had escaped his mouth.

Mirra returned in only a few minutes, carrying a skin filled with fruit juice and a pair of meat pies.  She smiled warmly as she re-entered the room, and they ate their meal by the light of the setting sun, as red rays reflected in through the window.  Mirra broke off bits of Marco’s pie and fed them to him, as she told him about how beautiful and glamorous the palace had been while she had stayed in the room next to the one where he had been cared for.

“It was so luxurious,” she told him.  “They even brought in a crib for Sybele, and a nurse to help watch her,” she told him as she fed his last bite of pie.  She stood up and went to Glaze’s side of the room, and pulled the makeshift curtain closed between the two sides, then emerged moments later wearing a nightgown, as she carefully hung up her day clothing on a hook.  “Gabrielle gave me this,” she told him, regarding her dress.  “If I sleep in it there will be more wrinkles than you can imagine.”

She lay down carefully next to him.  He lay still, feeling both pain from the sorcerer’s infection, and tranquility from having Mirra by his side, until the murmuring lump in his chest suddenly raised its level of sound – the nasty siren call that invited evil powers to come find him – and he felt the evil energy move itself slightly, closer to the center of his chest.

Marco screamed in pain as the evil settled down in a new location, farther from his shoulder, and closer to his heart.

“Marco! What is it?” Mirra asked anxiously, instantly rising up and standing over him.

“It’s the evil part; it moved in my chest,” he gasped.

“We have to get you to see Folence,” Mirra responded, placing her hands over his, which were on top of his chest.

“No, not yet,” Marco told her.  “I think I know how to treat this,” he said.

“We need to start right away!” Mirra said emphatically.  “I can’t bear to see your pain.”

No, let’s wait until morning,” he told her.  “I don’t want to try to battle the evil until the sunlight is shining, and there are a couple of things I’d like for you to see if you can get from Gabrielle’s shop, in the morning.”

They both slept uneasily that evening, and when Glaze returned at sunrise, they both sat up with dark circles under their eyes.  The brother and sister had a happy though muted reunion, and then Mirra got dressed and left to get some food for all three of them to eat breakfast.

Later that morning, as Glaze fell asleep, Marco told Mirra what items he needed from the shop.  She dutifully left him to watch Sybele as she went to Gabrielle’s shop on the square.  When she returned an hour later, she was using both hands to carry a basket full of the things Marco had asked for.

Under his direction, Mirra used the small mortar and pestle to grind together soil from the banks of the Nile, dust from Calvary Hill, and oxidized sands from the top of Mt. Olympus.  She added a small amount of sanctified water, then waited while Marco suffered through another painful seizure, as the evil spell within his body moved again.

Glaze awoke at the screams, and watched silently as Marco recovered, then gave the final instructions.

“Take a needle, and carefully poke it into the container of the gorgon’s blood crystals,” he directed.  “Place the crystal you stab into the mixture you just created, and let it rest there while you close up the container again tightly.

Mirra cautiously did as instructed, then raised her head, startled, when a puff of smoke arose from the mixture of the gorgon’s blood crystal and the thick potion in the mortar.  She closed the container.