Plague Daemon by Brian Craig

Author:Brian Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2002-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Sleep gave Harmis some release from his discomforts, but when he awoke, Averil was ready again with the dark water to bathe his wound. He protested that he did not need it, and that he had taken only the slightest of cuts from the Zan’s blade, but he knew as well as she did that the metamorphosis of his flesh would not heal of its own accord.

To make matters worse, he craved the tarnwine more desperately with every day that passed, and though it required only a few drops to be poured down his throat for the need to be eased, it was a need he did not like to have.

‘If you can outlast this curse which is upon you,’ she told him, when he complained about his condition, ‘then you’ll no longer thirst so desperately for the tarnwine.’

‘And is outlasting all that’s required?’ he demanded to know. ‘Will time alone heal me?’

She shook her head, more in uncertainty than denial. ‘I cannot tell,’ she said. ‘It may be that the curse must unwind to some conclusion of its own. There’s a bond, as Astyanax told you, between yourself and the daemon which commanded the Lazarite; it’s possible that the curse can’t be ended until you have faced that creature, and brought a climax to its time on earth.’

Ah! he said, softly. ‘Is that all I must do, to become again what I was before. The sorcerer is dead, and now I must slay its master – and must I then, perchance, take arms against the wrathful god himself, by whose permission this daemon roams the earth?’

‘Do you think it’s easy to be a hero?’ she said to him. ‘Do you think you can carry daemon-slaying knives without cost? Do you think that the curse with which the Lazarite tried to damn your soul is an untroublesome thing to bear, to be shrugged off like a little scratch? Harmis Detz, this entire nation is under a curse, and will fall to the forces of Chaos and the foul breath of plague unless we can save it. Khypris cannot be saved without pain, and nor can you – but you can be saved, and so can Khypris, if only you and the nation can bear what must be done to cauterize the wounds which Chaos inflicts.’

It was the longest speech he had heard from her, and he liked her fierceness – though it seemed somehow incongruous in one so round and dull of face. He resolved to put his complaints away, and bear his burden patiently.

‘How did you come to be apprenticed to the wizard?’ he asked. ‘It’s an odd calling for a daughter of the northlands.’

‘My mother was unwed,’ she said, simply. ‘I was a burden to her, and she abandoned me in Aldium, to be indentured as a pauper serving-girl. When I was old enough to work I was sold to a pharmacist, who taught me to find and mix his potions – but most of his potions had no other power save to make men drunk, and he was a besotted slave to his own medicines.

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