Chester guffawed. “Don’t believe the lies of the Church. They would have us think that the rest of the world is uninhabitable. There are some Simian scholars who believe that the first Humans were not fleeing from a mysterious plague but were the ones who brought it. Many accounts, from both sides, describe how more Simians died from the foreign diseases of Humans than in combat with the invaders. I have seen the hills beyond the sea to the east, and they are just as green and beautiful as these.”
Farris gestured for another round but was refused—perhaps for the best. The two Simians stumbled out from the bar as if the earth itself were spinning.
The air of the waterfront was cold and damp, and a chilling breeze cut right through Farris’s chest. The two made their way along the docks in drunken silence, as water trickled and slushed below their feet. The sea was dark as the sky, and the boats and ships tied to the pier appeared to sway mysteriously in mid-air.
St. Ruadh’s Canal sat eerie and still at the end of the road. It rose overhead and tore through the city in a straight line, like a ship’s contrails across a clear sky. Chester started hiccupping, punctuating the silence with arrhythmic outbursts.
Farris considered the work ahead of him. There were agents on board the ship, and he’d need to find them and silence them. That much was obvious. If he failed, he could still go straight to the Silverback and have the king’s druid he was supposed to meet apprehended instead.
But what if the others beat me to it?What if they succeed and we’re plunged into a civil war before we’re even prepared?
Chester continued to hiccup as another wave of anxiety washed over Farris. It was stronger than before. Fire raged through his skull. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.
It’ll pass, it’ll pass. Like all the other times before, it’ll pass.
Chester had paused, too, and let out another audible hic.
“Jacob, are you well?”
A thousand fears began to surface in Farris’s mind, but he tried to keep them at bay.
It’ll work, don’t worry. It’ll work. I’ll tell the Silverback about the king’s lies and then I’ll be home.
Through a half-open eye, Farris saw the only person that could stand in his way.
No. He is not a problem. He’s a drunk and doesn’t even know when the ship leaves. I’ll be gone before he wakes, and I’ll be home before he’s sober.
The ground rolled beneath his feet, and Farris fell to one knee. He held his head in his hands.
But what if he does wake? What if he gets to the ship and warns the others?
The risk was minimal, but it was there, eating away at Farris’s peace of mind.
The future of the Simian race and the peace of the kingdom lay upon one the shoulders of the drunkard who bent down to help Farris to his feet. The fear began to subside as he stood, but Farris realised that he no longer had a choice.
“Are you alright, J-Jacob? Do you want me to walk—”
With a flick of his wrist, a tiny blade concealed in Farris’s sleeve slid into the palm of his hand. He had plenty of practice with this manoeuvre, but half a dozen glasses of thainol had taken their toll on his agility. He leapt up and sliced the blade across Chester’s throat, but his aim was off, and the blade only grazed the skin of Chester’s neck.
The drunken Simian spluttered with fright, raising both hands up to cover the wound. Farris plunged forwards again, this time shoving the dagger into the Simian’s chest. For a moment, Chester attempted to push Farris away, but a twist of the dagger rendered the navigator’s body limp.
Farris caught Chester’s weight with bent knees, then slowly dragged it towards the canal’s bank. With a gentle splash, the body went floating down along the dark stream of water.
Feeling a little more relaxed, Farris stumbled on home. He won’t be missed. Even if he’s found, nobody will care. He’s a lowly Simian, a second-class citizen. He took a turn and made his way uphill to a row of hovels looking out over the sea. Another dead rat in the gutter.
Chapter 8:
Poppy for the Pain
Water trickled and dripped overhead as Morrígan skulked deeper into the catacombs. Even after weeks of exploration, feelings of overwhelming pride and excitement still struck her every time she discovered a new chamber. Yarlaith had said that scholars have been searching for the Lost Catacombs of Móráin’s Conquest for many years, but it seemed that none had thought to check under the tiny village of Roseán.
Morrígan glazed her torch over the tunnel walls, looking for any irregularities in the stone. The rocks jutted out at awkward, chaotic angles, but every so often they formed a neat and ordered cleft, and Morrígan paused to record what was inside. This one held a skeleton shrouded by a thin, grey veil—a sign that it was once a battlemage. She noted the pair of rings on its fingers and began scribbling away in one of Yarlaith’s old notebooks.
One Pyromancer: bones without flesh, no ornaments other than flint-rings.
There was word that winter was slowly melting into spring outside, for daffodil shoots had been spotted along the Sandy Road. All Morrígan cared about, however, were the caps and stalks of fungi that grew along the underground rivers, vital for her salves and potions. Between her work in the clinic and the caves, she rarely saw the sky, even if the other villagers visiting the clinic told her that the clouds had finally cleared.
Delving deeper into the caverns, Morrígan reached another fork in the path and paused to record its location, scribbling on a separate roll of parchment with a Simian inkpen. As the mole burrows, she wasn’t far from the workshop, but the path back to it was erratic and winding. She took a new route that she figured would bring her back in that direction and pressed onwards, keeping a careful eye out for more burial cairns along the walls.
She came upon another chamber. This one contained a row of stone sarcophagi with the likeness of brave warriors etched upon their surfaces. She pulled out her parchment and began mapping the area. The tops of the sarcophagi were too heavy to lift on her own, but she knew that inside they contained high ranking officers and generals from Móráin’s Conquest, perfectly preserved by archaic alchemical oils and ointments.
Morrígan checked her updated map and saw that there was possibly a shortcut from this chamber that looped back around towards the workshop. There was a thin path across the way that looked like it led back into the eastern portion of the lake. Satisfied with her work, she pocketed her parchment, amplified her torch, and returned to her uncle’s base of operations.
***
When Morrígan found him, Yarlaith was hard at work, cursing and muttering before a wooden table covered in severed limbs. In his bloody hands he held an arm, cut at the elbow.
“Morrígan! Make up another measure of balanth serum.”
Without hesitation, Morrígan set to work, picking out the bottles of solutions and setting the ingredients down on a separate table kept clear for alchemy. Any contamination from a flake of skin or a drop of blood could render a potion useless, so she carried out each step with extreme caution.
She slowly heated a pot of water over an array of red focus-crystals, crushing a handful of balanth stalks in a mortar and pestle until they became a fine powder. She used a brass scales and tiny iron weights to measure out exactly six ounces of balanth, all while keeping an eye on the water, careful not to let it boil. When the powder was prepared, she added the balanth to the water and immediately transferred the solution to a second array of red crystals, enchanted to produce twice as much heat as the first. The water turned cloudy and grey as it began to boil, and the powder disappeared into the liquid. This was a sign that it was time to add the blood, which she did, dropwise, using a long glass pipe filled with gauze.
Ten per ounce, she reminded herself, counting each drop as it fell into the potion. She let the solution cool for exactly three minutes, counting on her uncle’s Simian-made pocket watch, and then it was time to add the remaining ingredients. They were already prepared with the exact amounts needed so they could be added quickly. The bottles were labelled with numbers, but Morrígan didn’t bother to learn their real names. She hated alchemy.
When the serum was ready, she brought it to Yarlaith, who was still fixated on the severed arm.
“Grab the swab and apply it to the elbow, right where it has been cut.”
The first time he asked her to do this, Morrígan was terrified of getting too close. Now, even as the blood had grown foul and crusty around the exposed bone, she barely hesitated.
She worked in silence, blotting the liquid around the flesh of the torn arm. Nothing happened. She watched for a moment, then blotted at the flesh again.
“Stop, Morrigan,” said Yarlaith, putting the arm back onto the table, defeated. “The reaction should be immediate. Are you sure you added the blood at the right—?”
“Yes! I did exactly as you asked,” she snapped. “How can you expect to repeat the experiment exactly as it happened to Fionn, without another armless mage to work on?”
Yarlaith shook his head. “That shouldn’t matter. Once the solutions and poultices are exactly as they were that night, I should be able to make the flesh my mark again. I achieved that much before I even began sewing the arm onto Fionn’s body.”
“What if the corpses were fresher? I found some sarcophagi today, out in the eastern tunnels.”
“No, Morrígan. We’ve been through this. It won’t make a difference. Besides, I need to focus on these limbs for now.”
“But even if you take control of the arm, how will that bring back Mother?”
“This is how research works, Morrígan. We often must stray far from our goal to learn how we can achieve it. Necromancy has never been studied properly, and before we can even consider bringing your mother back, we need to learn how it works. Now, I must go and record these findings while they are still fresh. Can you prepare more medicine for Mrs. Mhurichú’s next few rounds? We’re running low.”
Yarlaith sat down at his desk near where Mother lay and set to work with his writing.
