Pillar

Chapter Ten

The aged man, Brother Buspi, was the town mortician and he, along with two acolytes who weren’t present, prepared everybody that passed through the town to be prepared for the great beyond. They were to be processed, opened so their organs could be removed, and flowers inserted. Their hearts were burned until they were naught but ash and scattered over the river when the moons were high. The bodies were then churned and chopped up into mulch for the fields surrounding the walls. Several large monoliths in the Garden District stood the names of villagers who died honorably carved into the marble.

“What of those who didn’t die honorably? Like criminals?” Vivian asked as she set her satchel atop a stone slab, one of twelve in the long morgue. The three slain guards’ broken bodies were laid out like freshly caught fish. The low ceiling along with the six lanterns created a shadowed atmosphere that the Brother seemed accustomed to.

It creeped Vivian out.

“Criminals are sent to the capitol to be incarcerated and, if they die during their incarceration, they’re dumped in the river to feed the Dragon Fish,” Buspi said, clapping his hands together as he shook his head. “Poor souls, they’re never allowed to return to the Pillars roots via the veins that are the rivers.”

“I would think that worshippers of the Quartz Emir would prefer a graveyard over everything else,” Vivian said as she walked over to a cistern, plucking a butcher’s apron from off a peg on the wall to drape over her front.

 Buspi shrugged. “Everything returns to the earth, but the Quartz Emir can only judge you based on the weight of your heart. My casting it into the Vreba River, we feed it into the Sea of Teeth, where the ashes will settle into the silt and sink into the Earthen Realms. Those are the ones who stand a chance to be granted access to Elysium. To think of the souls I’ve witnessed that have been lost to the maws of base beasts and monsters…”

The look in his eyes was one Vivian didn’t want to see again. She crossed the rooms and took his hands in hers. “The war, right?”

“Ah,” he said, looking grim, “so you’ve heard of the horrors of the Red Marshes?”

“Yeah, Tobald mentioned some stuff that went on,” Vivian said, turning to the first body. It was nude, a man nearly forty winters old that had obviously been fond of food and drink. He had several scars on his hands. Perhaps he’d been a angler before he’d joined the Royal Guard? Vivian would never know.

She reached for her staff and leaned on it., looking over the body. Like Clay had said, there were scratches like one would see from a fight between a brother and sister on the man’s arms in tanned lines that hadn’t covered up the pale flesh. The armor had proven useful, to an extent. Each one had broken jaws, stretched down to their chest, bent at awkward angles with dried out tongues the color of over-cooked onions. Reaching forward, she allowed the Astral to build up in her palm and tried to see if any poisons were in his system, just to rule out the Royal Guards’ theory of burnt Terror Vine trimmings.

She gasped when she detected corruption within the body, a highly toxic level of pollution the likes of which she’d never seen.

“Brother, ready a pan for some fluids,” Vivian said, waving her staff over the body. Forcing magic through a wizard’s staff devoid of an Anam Shard was a hard task and only afforded spells intrinsic to the make of the specialized tool. Forcing Astral energy through the dry wood was like swimming through molasses during a blizzard, but slow wisps of green energy slipped from the head of the staff, trailing down to caress the belly of the corpse.

Beading up through the skin slowly, droplets of dingy gray water emerged like sweat, rolling down along the swollen belly towards the basin Buspi was holding flush to the torso. For several minutes, Vivian strained, forcing Astral energy through incomplete staff to use the Leeching Willow’s magical effects to their fullest extent. After ten minutes, she went slack, dropping the staff from her shaking hands, the wood smoking from where she’d been holding it.

Buspi held up a basin filled to the brim with the murky substance and quickly shuffled to an alcove where he could pour it into an empty cistern. Leaning heavily on the table, Vivian gasped for air, the rancid stink of the oily water mixed with the smell of dry rot and lilacs overpowering her sense of smell. She dropped to her knees and reached out for her staff, wincing as she touched the tool from the electric jolt it gave her. While it may not be a conscious creature, it was slowly gaining a personality all its own.

And it’d just informed her not to do that again.

She stroked the polished wood, whispering to it. “No, never again. If all goes according to plan, never again.”

“What is that wizard? Were you saying something?” Buspi said with a tone of respect.

She gave a weak smile at that. Earlier the man had been treating it like a game, like she was a joke. Now that she’d performed magic in front of him with tangible results, results that could bear fruit, he had respect for her. Vivian leaned on her staff and forced herself to her feet.

“No Brother, I was just muttering to myself. You have let none of the fluid touch you, have you?” Viviane slurred as she slowly walked up beside the worried older man.

He shook his head, face crinkled in worry. “Good,” she said, “grab my satchel if you could and pull out the tome. Flip through the pages until you come across a drawing of a Hydra hatchling and read to me the listed poisons on the opposite page. I need to take a few readings and perform a few tests before I can be certain of anything.

Listening to him rush towards her satchel, she leaned her staff against the wall and leaned over the cistern to stare into the clouded water.

If it’s water at all! She thought bitterly. Her favorite element, polluted in such a way… no wonder the man died. He didn’t need the neck trauma if he was loaded with this level of toxins. Looking back at the other two bodies, she had a bad feeling they were just as loaded, if not more so than the first man.

Buspi returned with her large journal and began flipping through the parchment pages, squinting over smudged spectacles to read Vivian’s handwriting. Stretching her back and taking a few calming breaths, Vivian pulled the Astral into her palms via her rings, and held them inches above the toxin.

It’s magical, she thought when she felt a slight tug on her gathered energy. It’s not just a poison, more like a potion… it’s drawing Astral energy from the environment to perform a prearranged effect. There aren’t any bite wounds, so far as I could tell, so that rules out venom…

“A-ha! Poisons!” Buspi crowed, tapping the page excitedly. “You have quite the list here wizard, what were you doing with such an array of deadly additives?”

“I catalogue for occasions such as this,” Vivian replied coolly, cutting the priest’s glib tongue short. “Now begin reading off all the poisons listed there.”

“Are you sure?” Buspi asked, looking down and turning the page a few times. “You seem to have several hundred listed.”

“I’m certain, I just something to jar my memory,” Vivian said, closing her eyes to inhale the scent of the toxin. Her belt buckle prevented any noxious fumes from building around her, but still allowed the odor to come through to be swirled about.

Smells like old leather, but sweeter? She thought as Buspi began listing off several amphibian toxins.

Several hours rolled by with Buspi stopping to take breaks, leaving Vivian to trowel through her now-tedious notes. She’d found a few references to Astral -absorbing potions being used in delayed traps, and even found a detailed account of a wizard that would inject into himself potions that sharpened his wit before debates and, during the introductions when he’d flare some energy to show that they were ready to debate, he’d activate them.

But no poisons…

She flipped to some last pages of her journal, stopping on several leaf pressings of Leeching Willow leaves and a drawing…

Wait! She screamed in her head, flipping back to the bookmarked section on poisons. Yes! Here it is! It has all the properties!

Turning to Buspi, Vivian laughed. “Found it!”

“You did?” He asked, amazed.

She showed him the passage and explained her reasoning. He seemed doubtful, so she asked for a cup and began undoing her braid. He gave her a strange look but bustled off to fetch a clean cup. By the time he returned, her hair was in messy tangles down to her waist, but her enchanted hoop was sitting on the cool stone floor, which was bolting warmer. She used her ring to channel enough Astral energy to have a trickle of the amberum solution out into the cup, before setting it in the middle of the ring.

“Now watch, and wait,” she said with a smile.

Slowly, over the course of a few minutes, the water percolated, bubbling bit by bit until it was steaming. Buspi leaned back, covering his mouth, but Vivian leaned in, smelling in the sweet scent coming from the concoction. When she lifted the wooden cup, she offered it to him to analyze. He swirled the water around before narrowing his eyes.

“What are… are those crystals forming at the bottom of the cup?” He asked, looking at her in wonder.

“Yup! In nature, the various breeds of amber wasps go after wizards and people with magical goods to siphon away the energy. They bring it back and inject it into their honey, creating amberum, a delicious substance that many enjoy. What some don’t realize is that amberum is inherently magical. And if the energy seeps into you through an open wound, or through prolonged consumption without a means of flushing it out, then you build up a toxic level of Astral energy and can die from the poisonous build-up.”

“I’ll be… and you could tell all that just because of the notes you took?” Buspi asked, looking at her journal in a sort of awe. “What would it cost to have such a tome transcribed for my temple?”

“Let me finish it first and then you and the Scriveners can hash out an agreement, as my book will be free to whoever can pay for the materials to copy it,” Vivian smiled, “but we’re not finished.”

“But you just said that they had amberum in their systems… they must have died to magical overdose, right?” Buspi asked. “I mean, yes, their jaws are malformed, but it could be an effect brought on by the amberum if they all consumed the same batch.”

“But what’re the odds all three would die together, close enough in time span not to shout a warning, and have that same effect occur to each of them?” Vivian asked, bouncing on her heels. “There’s something inside them we’ve yet to find.”

“And what’s that?” Buspi asked.

Vivian smiled. “Alchemical reagents. Somebody was counting on the amberum to do something to these guys after they died. There deaths were clearly trauma induced. After all, the man we took the amberum from has a broken neck from his head twisting so much. I imagine the others are the same.”

“I… I hadn’t noticed,” Buspi looked down at his shoes.

“Hey,” Vivian said, smacking him on the shoulder to bring his gaze back up to hers. “You hadn’t even examined the bodies, just accepted them from the Royal Guard and shooed away your assistants, right? You would’ve noticed faster than I did if you hadn’t been trying to hold a basin flush against a dead fat man.”

Buspi chuckled. “I suppose you’re right. Thank you for not thinking me an old fool like the rest of the Garden District. I may be a little dodgy in my setting years, but I still have many hours before twilight sets in.”

“That you do my friend,” Vivian said, walking across the room to lean over the dead man they’d worked on already. “That you do. Now let’s spend what time you have left cutting this fellow open to see what goodies are hidden inside.”