‘A curtain would have been sufficient to block the light,’ he said, forcing a lightness of tone he did not feel.
The Old Woman did not smile, her face impassive in the light of the red-glassed lantern on the table before her.
‘Sit,’ she said.
He did so, and tried to stop himself from considering her awesome ugliness. Her teeth were multi-coloured – green, grey and the brown of rotting vegetation. Her eyes were rheumy, and a cataract had formed in the left. She was wearing a loose-fitting gown of faded red, and a gold talisman was partially hidden in the wrinkled folds of her neck.
‘Put the gold upon the table,’ she said. He lifted a single gold raq from the pouch at his side and slid it towards her. Making no move to pick up the coin, she looked into his face. ‘What do you require of me?’ she asked him.
‘I have a friend who is dying.’
‘The young axeman.’
‘Yes. The surgeons have done all they can, but there is poison within his lungs, and the knife wound in his lower back will not heal.’
‘You have something of his with you?’
Sieben nodded and pulled the silver-knuckled gauntlet from his belt. She took it from his hand and sat in silence, running the calloused skin of her thumb across the leather and metal. ‘The surgeon is Calvar Syn,’ she said. ‘What does he say?’
‘Only that Druss should already be dead. The poison in his system is spreading; they are forcing liquids into him, but his weight is falling away and he has not opened his eyes in four days.’
‘What would you have me do?’
Sieben shrugged. ‘It is said you are very skilled in herbs. I thought you might save him.’
She laughed suddenly, the sound dry and harsh. ‘My herbs do not usually prolong life, Sieben.’ Laying the gauntlet upon the table, she leaned back in her chair. ‘He suffers,’ she said. ‘He has lost his lady, and his will to live is fading. Without the will, there is no hope.’
‘There is nothing you can do?’
‘About his will? No. But his lady is on board a ship bound for Ventria and she is safe – for the moment. But the war sweeps on and who can say what will become of a slave-girl if she reaches that battle-torn continent? Go back to the hospital. Take your friend to the house Shadak is preparing for you.’
‘He will die, then?’
She smiled, and Sieben tore his eyes from the sudden show of rotting teeth. ‘Perhaps . . . Place him in a room where the sunlight enters in the morning, and lay his axe upon his bed, his fingers upon the hilt.’ Her hand snaked across the table, and the gold raq vanished into her palm.
‘That is all you can tell me for an ounce of gold?”
‘It is all you need to know. Place his hand upon the hilt.’
Sieben rose. ‘I had expected more.’
‘Life is full of disappointments, Sieben.’
He moved to the door, but her voice stopped him. ‘Do not touch the blades,’ she warned.
‘What?’
‘Carry the weapon with care.’
Shaking his head, he left the house. The sun was hidden now behind dark clouds, and rain began to fall.
*
Druss was sitting alone and exhausted upon a grim mountainside, the sky above him grey and forlorn, the earth around him arid and dry. He gazed up at the towering peaks so far above him and levered himself to his feet. His legs were unsteady, and he had been climbing for so long that all sense of time had vanished. All he knew was that Rowena waited on the topmost peak, and he must find her. Some twenty paces ahead was a jutting finger of rock and Druss set off towards it, forcing his aching limbs to push ‘his weary body on and up. Blood was gushing from the wounds in his back, making the ground treacherous around his feet. He fell. Then he crawled.
It seemed that hours had passed.
He looked up. The jutting finger of rock was now forty paces from him.