A woman lay on a pallet several feet from the fireplace. It took me a moment to realize she was Gwenyth. Her face wasred and swollen, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. Sweat glistened on her skin as slick and shiny as fish scales. Her body jerked and trembled, making her disheveled hair flail around her shoulders. A seizure. The housekeeper sat beside her and dabbed her face with a wet cloth.
The castle physician knelt on her other side, ripping an old tablecloth into strips.
I hurried across the room. “How is she?” Before anyone had time to answer, I added, “Will she recover?”
“From the scorpion stings, probably.” The physician’s voice was the low calm I’d heard from every castle physician. No amount of illness or dismemberment rattled them. “Mage Saxeus gave us a treatment to put on those, and her fits are becoming milder, but we’ve also her burns to worry about.”
The bottom of Gwenyth’s dress was charred completely away in parts, revealing bright red welts running along her calves and up her thighs. Her thrashing might be from pain. Her eyes darted back and forth, unseeing. Gwenyth, a woman who’d this morning been lively and capable, had been reduced to this. I’d thought I’d understood the danger of this mission before, and yet I hadn’t.
I lowered myself to the floor at Gwenyth’s shoulder. “I’m here. I’ll make sure they take care of you.”
A bowl of grease sat next to the physician. Coating damaged skin with grease was the standard treatment for small burns. It seemed like little help now. She needed more. She needed magic, and I could do nothing that would reveal my abilities.
The guard had already left the housekeeper’s room. I got up, dashed into the hallway, and ran after him. “Wait!” I called. “Bring Mage Saxeus here.”
Instead of moving in the direction of Mage Saxeus’ room, the guard turned and stared at me in disbelief. He thought I was asking for things beyond my station.
“At once,” I added. “He’s responsible for this.” I didn’t have the time to argue with him about the propriety of my order. I took an angry step toward him, my hands planted on my hips. “I’m a guest of the king and queen. If Mage Saxeus can send you to fetch me, then I can return the favor. Bring him here immediately. In fact, run to his room.” This was the benefit of being a noblewoman. No demand seemed too outrageous.
The guard lifted his eyebrows. “He may be on his way to the dining hall already.”
“Then run quickly.”
I spun on my heel and marched back to the housekeeper’s room. Once there, I knelt by Gwenyth again. Another fit was starting. I dipped a rag in the bowl of ointment and helped the housekeeper dab Gwenyth’s stings, all the while silently going over my stock of incantations in search of pain-relieving spells that could be administered in secret.
Most required items I didn’t have. But there was one, a less potent spell, that took its energy from fire. A fine one was burning in the hearth nearby.
I took Gwenyth’s hand in mine. “You’ll recover.” I leaned over her as though whispering more reassurances and said the words of the incantation slowly, so as not to dim the firelight all at once.
At first, the flames diminished only a bit, then, despite my care, they nearly flickered out. My foolish, foolish desire to help. The physician and housekeeper would grow suspicious. They’d know what such a dip in firelight meant.
The physician did look up, but instead of glancing around to see if a wizard had come into the room, he snapped, “Put another log on the fire. I need light to see.”
Blessed mercy. They didn’t suspect. I’d forgotten there were other reasons for fires to dim.
I was saying the last word of the spell, and prolonged the syllable ‘lor’, holding onto it so the fire wouldn’t blaze back to its normal height.
The housekeeper jumped up and went to the hearth. My “ooo” felt like a song note. I was running out of breath.
She noticed the log in the hearth was not half burned yet, and took the poker to it, adjusting its position. I ended the last word of the incantation and the flames grew and crackled, spreading upward.
At first, I wondered if the pain spell had worked at all. Gwenyth still shuddered as though some unseen foe stood over her, shaking her. But this time when her quaking ended, she lay limply on the pallet, taking long, gasping breaths.
“Good,” the physician said, “the ointment has finally overcome the scorpion venom. Her fits should stop now.” He motioned to the housekeeper to help him apply grease to Gwenyth’s legs.
Gwenyth gazed around. Her tired eyes stopped on mine. “Sorry,” she rasped out.
“This isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have sent you.” Despite the physician’s pronouncement that Saxeus’ ointment had done its job, I kept dousing her skin with it.
Gwenyth winced at the physician’s touch, evidence my spell hadn’t taken all the pain. Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “The maid told me it was one of two rooms. I thought the family would have the one closest to the stairs. I opened the door to check, but I couldn’t tell. I didn’t think?—”
“Don’t worry yourself over it further.” I feared she was a bit delirious and might say too much.
Her swollen lips lifted in a hint of a smile. “At least now I can tell you with assurance which room it is.”
“Yes. I already explained to Mage Saxeus that I meant for you to deliver a message to Mage Warison.” I went on in myapology, reciting for her what I’d told the wizard. I hoped she had her faculties about her sufficiently to understand she needed to remember this version of what had transpired.
“Mage Warison,” she murmured. “I warned you not to let him distract you. You should put his fine eyes behind you.”