FIC: Andrea's Story, cont.

[jeriendhal]

She had been having an old nightmare, one where she was trying to flee the murderous mob when she was eight, except that this time she was slowed down by a length of anchor chain locked around her neck. She was happy enough for the touch on her shoulder that woke her up, as it interrupted the moment when Arthur was trying to beat back the mob with the remains of his old arm.

“Andrea, wake up! Wake up!” It was Cook, dressed in only his breeches, looking like he was about to cry.

“Wha-, what’s the matter, Cook?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Someone’s tried to murder Master Tez!”

“What!” She shot up out her bed, clutching her nightclothes around her and reaching for the touchspot that would bring up the mage light. “What are you talking about?”

“His study!” Cook cried out, then headed away, likely back to his room, and not out of cowardice but to protect anyone in vicinity. Socially upsetting situations tended to bring out the worst in Cook, given his difficulties, Andrea knew. She grabbed a long coat to cover her nightshirt as she rushed out of her, following the general panicked babble coming from the direction of Master Tez’s study.

“What’s happening?” she demanded over the noise, pushing past a pair of serving girls at the door to see inside. Master Tez was laying slumped over his writing table, or rather pinned there, for the hilt of a broadsword emerged from his back, the tip having penetrated his chest and buried into the wood of his desk with such force that she could see a tiny silver of steel peeking out from underneath it.

Oh, no… But he was not dead, not dead yet, for she could see that he breathed, air wheezing in and out of the hole in his chest. His eyes were open, but blank and unseeing. From shock? From some poison? There was no way to tell. “Has a physician been sent for?” she demanded.

“A page has been sent,” a maidservant said. “The gods only know long…”

There was a loud POP from out in the corridor and a loud voice called, “Clear the way!” The gaggle of servants parted, admitting two ruffled looked elves with healer sigils pinned to their robes and large leather satchels under their arms. “Who is senior, here?” the lead elf asked, while the other rushed over to begin examining Master Tez.

“I... well, me, I suppose,” Andrea said uncertainly. She was her master’s oldest servant, save for Cook, a consequence of her half-breed blood. Most of his other servants were human, or races even more ephemeral than humans, such as goblins and their kin.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Everyone was rushing about by the time I got here.”

“I came in to bring him his evening tea and I just found him like this,” Sally, one of the maidservants, said.

“You will submit yourself to questioning when the time comes,” the senior healer said. He turned back to Andrea. “You will witness on your master’s behalf. Everyone else must clear out!”

“You heard him,” Andrea said, not wanting to start an argument at the moment. “Everybody go back to your rooms or your posts, wherever you were before. I’ll watch over things.” She helped them on their way with a few shoves and closed and latched the door behind them. “All right, that’s d---“

“Be silent!”

Andrea bit back a sharp reply and nodded, taking up station in a corner of the room as the two healers hummed spells over her master’s body to stabilize it.

“It went straight through the right lung,” the junior of the two healers said. “It is partially filled with blood, but the flow is slow.”

“The blade is intact. We will remove it and staunch the wounds before further healing. Make ready.” The senior healer took hold of the hilt heaved upward, while his partner pressed down on Master Tez’s shoulders to prevent his body from rising with it. The wood under his body creaked, but did not release the sword from its grip. The healer tried again, grunting in most un-elvish effort, but he was still unable to budge it.

“Perhaps if we located a mage who could disintegrate the blade…” the junior healer began.

“Inside the Eldest’s body?” the senior asked incredulously. “It could be done, assuming you wish to be the one responsible for also disintegrating the Eldest’s lung as well!”

“Let me do it,” Andrea spoke up. They both turned to stare at her, no less surprised than if the desk had ventured its opinion. “I’m stronger than either of you, I’ll bet. I pull the blade out, while the both of you can concentrate on making sure his lung doesn’t start filling with blood again.”

“I will not permit you to touch the Eldest’s body!” the senior said.

She favored him with a malicious grin. “Oh, believe me, I’ve touched his body in more ways than you could probably think of.”

“You disgusting…” the senior healer began to say, but bit back further comment. He waved her forward. “Do it. Try not infect him.”

She traded glowers with him, but stepped up behind her master. There was an impressive pool of blood staining the parchment page he had been inscribing, spilling down the angled writing desk and dripping in a spattered line over his breeches. Should I be worried for him?, she though uncertainly. He was the Eldest, supposedly immortal, unkillable. But there’s a first time for everything. She shook her head and reached up to grab the hilt of the sword, while the two healers took station on either side of her to steady his body.

Grasping it by the crossguard, one hand on either side of the blade, she bent her knees and pulled upward with all of her strength, trying to keep the blade steady and true so it would do as little damage as possible coming out. For a long moment she heard the creak of wood, as the desk underneath threatened to keep its hold on the blade and rise up. But then she felt the sword began to move and she very nearly lost control as the sharp blade pulled free. From there it was just a matter of easing it up and out carefully, then stepping back with it in her hand as the healers nearly shoved her aside in their haste to apply clean silk pads to Master Tez’s wounds.

They eased him down to the floor and Andrea gasped as she saw the bright splash of blood staining nearly the whole of her master’s shirt. The healers rapidly cut it away, letting the bloody rags fall to the floor as they maintained pressure and sang healing spells over him to encourage the wounds to close.

“So much blood,” the junior healer muttered.

“Not enough, rather,” the senior said, replacing the soaked pads with fresh ones, pror to binding them in place with a bandage wrapped around Master Tez’s chest. “It doesn’t account for his insensible state.” He looked up at Andrea, still holding the sword. “Hold that out, so that we might examine it.”

She held the sword out toward him, point aimed at a spot between him and his subordinate. The senior healer, rather than resorting to any kind of spell, leaned forward and looked down the length of the blade, her master’s blood growing sticky as it congealed. “Ah, see,” he said, running finger along, but carefully not touching, the edge of the blade. “Up near the hilt, where the blood has not stained the metal.”

Andrea craned her neck to see what he was looking at, and spotted a sticky orange residue coating the sword where blood had not obscured it. “He was poisoned as well?” she asked.

“So it would appear,” the senior healer said, too interested in the problem apparently to take time to berate her for speaking out of turn. While his assistant kept watch on Master Tez, he carefully scraped off a bit of the substance into a glass jar which he sealed with hot wax from a candle. “It would explain his insensibility better than shock and blood loss. I must examine it further to be certain however.”

She watched as the healers open the door and permitted the shocked servants to enter. “Get a blanket to carry him with and take him to his suite,” she ordered. She turned to the senior healer. “What else should be done, milord?”

“Attempt to feed him soft foods and introduce liquids every few hours,” the senior healer said. “Other than that, there is little to do except to reinforce the healing magic that has already been introduced to his body. Natural healing can only be accelerated so much before the cure is worse than the injury. He is, of course, The Eldest, so succumbing to his wounds is… much less likely.”

“What about the poison, what will that do to his mind?” she demanded.

The healer made a small motion with his hand, the elven equivalent to a helpless shrug. “That depends on the nature of the poison. We will have to wait and see what happens if, when, he regains consciousness.” He turned followed the other servants, who carefully lifted the corners and side of the blanket they slipped under their wounded master, lifting him off the floor to be carried to his sickbed.

She watched them go, then looked down, seeing the poisoned sword still held in her hand. It was perhaps three feet long, the hilt made of brass, with spiraling knotwork decorating the upward curve of the crossguard. A human weapon, heavy, efficient, unlike the elegant enchanted blades favored by the elves. With a start she realized where she had seen it before.

Its last wielder had been Jonathan, in the duel with her master.

TBC