The Southern Trail (Book 4) (23 page)

Marco resumed his use of his powers, using them in a prudent, careful manner so as to preserve them in case he had some need for them in some unforeseen instance ahead.  After a long stretch of digging upward, the stone suddenly crumbled away from him instead of upon him, and he felt a warm breeze of air drop down into his burrow as his head suddenly rose into a new, open dark space.

He stopped in relief and astonishment.  Marco placed his hands out and felt a smooth, flat surface on which his debris lay scattered.  He raised himself up, and drew his sword, then held still, listening.

There were no sounds, no lights, and no indication that there was any living thing or even inanimate threat in the black space he had entered.  He could detect no reason to not illuminate the space and begin to explore it to determine the best way out.

He raised his hand, and willed it to illuminate the space around him.  The flesh burst into glowing brilliance, and as he looked around, Marco was so shocked by what he saw that he inadvertently lost all focus on the use of his energy, and let the light blink out, returning him to darkness.

He stood in darkness, in a vast room, a finely furnished, exquisitely decorated ball room, with polished marble floors, tall, dark glass windows, crystal chandeliers, and brightly painted pastoral scenes on the walls and even the ceiling.  With not another living soul in sight anywhere in the noble space.

It seemed like another impossibility, as impossible as finding a volcano on the attack or the Echidna breaking free from its confinement.  He felt as though the world had turned upside down, doing things that couldn’t be done, and doing them to him specifically.

Carefully, he prepared himself for seeing the ballroom again, and he lit his hand as he held it above his head.  The room appeared just as it had before, a large empty space, desolate without people to move and breathe life and value into the furnishings.

Even as he thought it, he heard a sound, and whirled around to see a small side door open, and a man in an elegant velvet outfit walk confidently through the doorway.

“Hello?” Marco called immediately, stepping away from the hole in the floor he had created, and approaching the man.  “Hello!  Where are we?  I have no idea where we are or how I got here,” Marco said.

The man was silent as he approached, and Marco studied his face, and his stride, carefully.  The man walked with confidence.  His face gave away no trace or his intentions or thoughts.

“You’ve made a mess of the floor, I see,” the stranger spoke at last when he was ten steps away from Marco, motioning towards the tunnel entrance.

Marco started to turn back to look at the hole in the elegant floor.  “I didn’t mean to,” he began, then he heard the whisk of the man drawing his sword, and he swiveled around as he drew his own sword free, just in time to block the man’s murderous attack.

“What are you doing?  Why are you doing this?”  Marco cried once he had blocked the man’s first stabbing attack.

“I didn’t mean to do that; I had no idea I was coming to this room,” Marco protested.

“Put the sword down, and let me explain,” Marco said.

“No, Marco, I will not put the sword down,” the man astounded him by calling him by name, as he engaged in another attack that Marco riposted.

“How did you do that?  How do you know who I am?  Who are you?” Marco asked.

“My name is Death, and today I have come for you,” the stranger spoke, and they entered into a heated clash, their swords moving faster than Marco could follow.  He thanked Ophiuchus for providing the supernatural abilities of his sword, which were the only thing that kept him alive and evenly matched with his opponent.

He wondered who the man was, that he was able to fence just as well as Marco’s weapon did; the man was extraordinary.

The battle was intense, and disconcerting.  Marco’s hand provided the illumination for the room at the same time that it slid and flowed backward and forward, left and right, and up and down.  Shadows jumped about crazily, and it added to his disconcertment, as he tried to make sense of the impossible situation, while staying alive.

“What is this about?” he panted after five minutes of difficult combat.

“This is about you learning a lesson,” the man said, his eyes drilling into Marco’s.  “Are you ready to learn?”

“I don’t want a lesson!  I want peace,” Marco answered.

“There is peace in death.  You may have it now,” the man said, and he launched a redoubled effort to fight that began to drive Marco back as he desperately protected himself from slash after stab after slash that pushed him to the limits of what he and the enchanted sword could do.

At last the man delivered a killing blow, a hard stab at Marco’s midsection that caught him out of position.  Desperate to evade the rush of the metal blade, Marco found himself twisting his body around in a pivot that ended up moving him about so that he spun rapidly, found the blade passing him by, and his own sword swooping around in a wide circle that led it to stab itself into the kidney of the man Marco was fighting.  It was a clean, deep strike that penetrated the stranger’s flesh deeply, and when Marco pulled the sword away it was covered in red blood.

Marco backpeddled away, as the man stood stiffly, then turned with an awkward, unnatural posture.  He looked at Marco, and grinned an evil smile.

“So you think you’re as good as you’re told you are?” the man rasped, as a trickle of blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“No, I didn’t mean to do that.  There was no reason to fight like that.  Why did you attack me?” Marco asked in stress.

“You need to learn a lesson, as I told you,” the man said.  “And now, it’s time for your lesson,” he told Marco.  He staggered forward a step, then fell to his knees.  His sword slipped from his fingers, and then he raised a hand to point at Marco.

“Here’s your lesson; can you learn to make painful sacrifices to preserve the greater good?” the dying swordsman asked.  A spot of blackness shot unexpectedly out of his pointing finger and flew through the air, to land on Marco’s left hand.

At the same time that the man’s face and body suddenly aged and then crumbled into dust, the blackness on his hand painfully burrowed through his skin and entered his flesh.  As it did, Marco screamed; he screamed in both pain and terror, for the blackness was a duplicate of the black energy that Iago had launched at him so long ago, back in Barcelon, the power that had been intended to possess him.

It was another one of his nightmares, coming back to destroy him, as it had previously tried to do in his life.  Marco screamed his fear and sorrow, then wielded the sword in his right hand, and swung the blade downward with vicious intent.  He felt the first contact as the sword severed his left wrist, and then he closed his eyes, felt the overwhelming pain, and passed out.  He had sacrificed his hand to save his life, the lesson the swordsman had insisted he remember.

Chapter 18

When Marco awoke, he found that he was tied down to a firm bed, and he was looking up at a well-lit rocky ceiling above.  He felt in terrible pain.  He momentarily considered raising his left hand to his mouth to suck on the comforting waters of Diotima’s spring.  But his hand was tied down, and it felt in terrible pain, and then he recollected having sliced that important piece of his flesh away.  He gave a loud, moaning, wail of despair as he recollected the last action he had taken, and then the turmoil he had endured before that.

“Hush, hush child, I’ll take care of you,” a raspy voice sounded from somewhere nearby.

Marco heard footsteps, and suddenly a wizened old man was standing next to him, looking down with small, beady eyes that were beneath enormously bushy eyebrows.

“Here, try some of this,” the man started to dribble water into Marco’s mouth, some entering between his lips, much of it spilling about, striking his nose and cheeks and chin.

Marco shut his eyes and desperately swallowed the liquid that flooded his mouth.  The water was cool, and sweet, and familiar in taste.

“This is Diotima’s water!  How did you get it?” he asked in a pleading tone.

“Why, I got it from you, of course,” the man answered matter-of-factly.  “Or from your hand, more precisely,” he added.

“My hand!” Marco’s voice rose in excitement.  “You reattached my hand?”

“No,” the man said as he reached down and unbound Marco’s left arm.  The boy raised the arm, and moaned loudly in dismay as he saw the stump of his arm.

“That’s not so bad boy,” the man said heartlessly.  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”  He walked around and unbound Marco’s right hand and his chest, then undid the ties around Marco’s legs.

Marco sat up, staring at the horrifying sight of the reddened, swollen flesh below his elbow.

“You had to do it, didn’t you?” the man asked.

“Who are you?” Marco asked.  “Where are we?” he added as he diverted his view from his hand to look around his surroundings.  There were in a cave, or rather, in a space that was partitioned to form a room within a portion of a cave.  He could see the opening to the sun-drenched outside world approximately twenty yards away.

“My name is Theophilus, and this is my home,” the ancient man answered.

“How did you get spring water from my hand?” Marco asked.

“Even after it was separated from the rest of your body, Diotima’s gift continued to serve,” Theophilus replied.

“Where are we?  Where was that palace, and who was that man?” Marco asked him as he studied his angry red flesh again.

“I don’t know who did this to you, but you somehow delivered yourself practically to my door step,” Theophilus answered.  “Here, let me get something for that,” he nodded at Marco’s stump and walked through a doorway.

He returned with a handful of dark green leaves, leaves that were so thick, they audibly snapped when Theophilus broke them open.  A thick white sap welled up along the exposed edges of the leafy flesh, and Theophilus began to rub the liquid around on Marco’s stump, squeezing the leaf from the edge towards the center break to squeeze more of the sap out.

The cool, moist application brought an immediate hint of relief that grew stronger as Theophilus repeated the application over and over again.

“That feels good,” Marco told his caregiver.  “What is it?”

“It’s from a bush that grows in the mountains,” Theophilus replied.

“Does it like sandy soil?” Marco asked as he watched the swab of leaf continue to brush across his wound.

“It does,” Theophilus agreed.  “I didn’t realize you were a scholar.”

“I’m not.  I’m an alchemist, or at least I used to be,” Marco answered.

“Well then you certainly are a scholar,” Theophilus declared.  “That’s a very honorable profession requiring much study and practice.”

“Where is my hand?  How did you get water from it?” Marco asked.

“One finger was practically weeping the liquid when I saw it lying on the ground next to you.  I just collected some and when I tasted it, I could tell it was healthful,” Theophilus explained.

“Where are we?  In the mountains?” Marco wanted to begin to understand where he was, as the pain of his arm continued to diminish as a focus of his attention.

“You are full of questions, which I suppose is natural enough,” Theophilus told Marco.  He ceased treating the wound.  “I am a hermit, I suppose.  I live alone here in the mountains in this cave, and I see no neighbors, for I have no neighbors.”

Marco considered the answer.  “Is there a trail near here, one that runs north and south, used by men who work on farms?” he asked.

“There is a trail just a few miles away,” Theophilus confirmed.

Marco stood up, then felt light-headed, and reached to hold on to Theophilus to steady himself.

“Easy, take it easy,” the old man said.  “You lost a lot of blood,” Theophilus advised.  He helped Marco sit back down.  “And you’re not in the best of shape otherwise.”

“I can’t afford to rest,” Marco answered.  “There’s a girl on the trail, and I was following her.  She needs my help.  I have to go after her.”

“You won’t do her any good if you pass out.  Just take a little time to let your body recover.  What happened to you, anyway?  Did you try to fight for this girl?” Theophilus asked.

“It’s not like that,” Marco replied to the meaning implied by Theophilus’s tone.  “I’m married, you see,” he fingered his torq to demonstrate that he wasn’t pursuing Ellersbine romantically, although his heart squirmed in discomfort at what was almost an untruth.

“She’s a nice girl, and she was kidnapped by men on the trail,” he added.

“And what is a one-handed alchemist going to do to save her?” Theophilus bluntly asked.

“I can do things,” Marco answered cagily.  “I know some sorcery,” he said.

“A sorcerer?” Theophilus looked at him skeptically.

“In a way,” Marco agreed.  “But I’m not evil,” he reassured the old man.  “I didn’t sell my soul to the dark one.  I just want to help folks.”

“How does a sorcerer get his hand chopped off?  Didn’t you know a spell to save yourself?”

“It was just a sword fight with a stranger, and I thought I could win.  I didn’t even know why we were fighting.  Then I beat him, and he sent evil energy against me.  I had to cut off my hand to avoid being possessed,” Marco finished with a very soft voice.

  “You cut your own hand off?” Theophilus asked in astonishment.

“I had to,” Marco said as he stared off into space.  “I would have been completely possessed.  Better to lose one hand than my whole body and soul.”

“That’s usually easier to say than act upon,” Theophilus nodded sagely.  “Especially for someone so young.”

“Do you have a great deal of power?  As a sorcerer, I mean?” he asked.

“I think I have all that I need,” Marco spoke slowly as he pondered the question.  “Those abilities aren’t what I need to be happy.  In some ways they’re as much trouble as help.”

“There was an explosion a couple of days ago.  It didn’t seem natural.  Was that something your sorcery caused?” Theophilus asked shrewdly.