Spellhand's Remorse #3

Els wasn’t home often after Garek left and didn’t stick around Iel for much longer.  For the most part I only saw him when he stormed into our room and collapsed into bed, smelling of alcohol.  His face bruised or crusted with dry blood from his latest fight.  There was still snow on the ground when he left, but he had the good sense to wait until the weather started to warm a bit.  He found a group of boys from town that shared his ideas of joining Overland in its long standing war with Arethe and he left in the middle of the night.  I woke up while he was packing his clothes but said nothing.  I didn’t like Els much by then, didn’t understand or recognize him.

         I watched him out the window as he joined the other boys in the cart outside.  They were laughing and cheering him as he clambered into the back of the cart with them.  I watched the cart creak away until it was out of sight before I laid back down, angry and hating my brother.

         In the morning, my mother was inconsolable.  I sat with her and my sister in silence for most of the day.  Lesa kept the fire burning and forced bitter tea and soup on her while I kept an eye on the fire.  The sun might’ve come for a warm visit that day but it did little for anyone’s mood.  I found my anger returning slowly with the passing of the hours.  My mother had done nothing but mope for as long as I could remember.  To what purpose were Lesa and I keeping her company all day long?  As much as I may have missed father during those years, it wasn’t until that long day that I wished so strongly for his return.

         And return he did.  Late in the night, coughing and sick.



FOUR

More Leavings



“Bastards practically threw me off the damn boat,” father coughed.  By morning he was sweaty and shaking.

         “It’s just a fever love,” my mother said.  She was clearly overjoyed at having her husband home, but underneath lurked a miserable anxiousness.  Lesa and I stood behind her at the bedside, watching her dab the sweat off his reddening forehead with a damp bit of cloth.

         She turned to Lesa and me, whispering at us to go find the alchemist.  I could hear father protesting deliriously from the bedroom as we made our way out the door and down the stairs to the street.

         The cobblestones were wet and slushy underfoot.  People milled around the streets, carts jostled passed.  Over the last few days the town’s bustling activity had slowly stirred from its winter sleep.  The fishing season would return in earnest very soon.

“It’s the rot,” Lesa said as we hurried west toward the center of town.

         “Close your lips up why don’t you?” I snapped.  The idea alone of Cile’s Rot arriving in Iel was enough to rouse a deep panic in me, and the thought of watching it kill my father was enough to bring tears to my eyes.  Lesa pursed her lips and shrugged at my request.

         The alchemist kept a small dark shop in the center of Iel, vials of powder and liquid lined the rows of shelves on either side of the door, all of them tagged with peculiar names and ingredient lists.  A cluster of dark purple candles burned dimly on the counter and a wide pool of wax lay around them.

         The alchemist sat behind the counter, his head resting in his hand as he poured over the heavy looking book before him.  His robes closely matched the color of his candles and his tangled grey beard was the longest I had ever seen.  Above his wrinkled face was a wild mane of unkempt hair that looked as though it had been shocked into life.  He didn’t look up when the door banged shut behind us, but waited until we were standing in front of the counter before taking his eyes off the page he was reading.

         “Who’s sick?” he croaked.

         “Our father has a fever,” I said.

         “Ain’t much can be done about a fever, he’ll sweat it out eventually,” I could see that he intended to see our father – he was getting up, clutching the countertop for support even as he spoke - but something in him wanted to argue anyway.

         “Please come to see him, to calm my mother’s nerves if nothing else,” Lesa pleaded.

         The alchemist was shaking his head as he took up his cane and made for the door.  We followed him outside where we took up the lead and made our way back; I could feel the anxiety rise in me at the slow pace we were forced to set for the old man.  A cold sweep of wind hit us as we rounded the corner onto a street that ran out to harbor.

         “Cold god damned winter,” the alchemist grumbled from behind, “It’s a wonder anyone survived it long enough to get sick.”  His grumbling continued until we reached the stairs up to our house, but I missed most of what he had to say.

         He told us not to wait for him to climb the stairs and to go inside.  A few long moments passed before he came into the room.  My mother was still sitting on the edge of the bed, the sweating had subsided for the time being, but she continued dabbing at his forehead as he slept.

         “The children tell me he has a fever?” the alchemist asked.

         She nodded and moved away from the bed so the alchemist had room to take a look the sick man over.  He felt his forehead and checked his pulse before unbuttoning his shirt.  He gasped and stumbled backwards out of the room when he saw the network of open sores working its way across my father’s chest and stomach.

         He was shaking his head in disbelief as he made for the door as fast as his bum leg would allow.  “Nope, nope, nope,” he said, “Not here, not in Iel.”  My mother took off after him, begging him to help her husband.  She followed him all the way back to his shop; we could hear her cursing him and calling him a coward all the way down the street.  The alchemist ignored her and kept moving but he must’ve realized along the way that my mother’s temper would likely lead to his untimely death if he didn’t help.  He told her there was nothing he could do to cure the rot.  He tossed her a vial of reddish liquid, told her it’d be for when the itching started, and threw her out.



***



He was gone by Remisday.  It doesn’t take Cile’s Rot long and watching its progress was unsettling to say the least.  It usually starts with a fever and shaking, the sores follow closely behind.  Then they start to itch.  The contents of the vial the alchemist had given my mother didn’t seem to help the itching much.  By the second day my mother and sister had to hold my delirious father’s arms down while I wrapped his hands tightly in bandages to stop him from itching and reopening the sores that had moved across most of his body.  The last time I saw his fingers the nails were filthy with his own dry blood.

         I have heard it said that the itching isn’t the worst part of the rot, but that the worst of it actually happens inside your body.  A burning ache starts in your stomach and spreads quickly through the rest of your body.  The pain is so great that even if you were able to stand up, you wouldn’t be able to walk without doubling up in pain you wouldn’t get very far besides.  My mother wept to no end during my father’s last days and I did my best to be strong for her.  I kept my fear and my tears to myself, not letting them show until I was alone in my room.



***

Lesa followed in Garek and Els’ footsteps not long thereafter.  I know she loved our mother and I think seeing my mother’s heartache was almost as hard for her as watching father die.  She wasn’t a cold woman and she stuck around for as long as she could bear it.  She wasn’t as cold-hearted as Els’ either and chose to leave during the day with proper, heartfelt good byes to us both.  She told my mother she was going to Beshen, but I don’t know if that turned out to be the case.  We never heard from her again.

         Iel changed after my father died.  No one knows how it’s transferred or what started it in the first place, but the alchemist went next and took a handful of people he had treated since my father along with him.  It was lucky for Iel that the king had long since stopped burning towns and people who played host to the rot, but people were leaving town in droves anyway.  A lot of them headed south out of town, family members packed tight into the backs of carts.  There was no way to tell how many of them were bringing Cile’s along for the ride.  I watched a lot of the boats come back into harbor.  The fishermen took one look around and walked right back up the boarding ramps, sailing themselves back out onto the Ondrish. 

Most of the people who remained in Iel were dead within a few weeks.  The streets outside my window were deserted.  A cold blanket of sorrow and despair lay heavy over us.





FIVE

The Styrm Isles



“Five relins a head and that's the best you sad lot will get.” Madit paced back and forth in front of us, looking us over, taking in our dirty faces and hungry eyes.  He poked the boy at the other end of the line in the stomach and squeezed his arms, shaking his head as he did so.

         There were five of us children in all.  Mother stood beside me, staring coldly out to sea.  The butcher's son Jels fidgeted nervously beside me, his father's normally pleasant face was stoney, emotionless.  Next in line was the barmaid who had disappointed Els so much with her small breasts, her mother stood behind her wearing an expression as equally cold as my own mothers.  I didn't recognize the other two but I assumed they were brother and sister, both of them had shocks of red hair.  The girl had her arm around her little brother.

         “It might not sound like much, but its more than enough to be moving on with now isn't it?”  Madit growled as spilled the coins out of his money pouch and into his hand.

         None of the parents argued with the large man and he didn't wait for anyone to answer before he started counting the relins into their outstretched hands.  As he shelled out the thick silver coins the two heavily scarred men who had been waiting and watching from the dock approached, cudgels swinging from their belts.

         They bound our wrists and marched us across the dock and up the ramp.  The ship was moving slowly out of harbor not long after we boarded.  I didn't cry the way the others did.  I had already been angry with my mother for a long time. And now I found that anger was slowly fading, replacing itself with calm hatred.  I didn't look back.

***

The Styrm Isles was a small group of islands roughly five hundred miles off the coast.