The wizard Val Maxis is poking around my potions when I return. His slight start when I catch him tells me it wasn’t merely idle curiosity. He casts me a friendly smile as I climb into the cart. I acknowledge him but don’t actually say anything.
He watches me while I work for several minutes. The antitoxin is ready to be distilled so I pull a small crucible from a shelf and place it on a raised stand for heating. A candle will provide the heat. As I reach for my flint to light it, the candle flashes to life by itself.
The reason is unmistakable. The arcana in the area was swept in for the briefest of moments, then thrust back outward, in force, from a single point. It felt very much like how the atmosphere feels different just before a storm, only much faster and much stronger. I turn and regard the master wizard who is looking very self-satisfied at the end of the cart.
“Looked like you could use a hand there, son,” Val Maxis smirks.
I hate being called son. Or really anything other than my name. I am Zer Khaldun and it would be wise for a person to learn it.
Returning my attention to the task at hand, I wring the pulped foxglove blooms, ficus leaves, and thornapple seeds through cheesecloth into the crucible.
Val Maxis knocks his staff against the cart, “What are you making there?” His lips are pursed and twisted in a crooked frown as he juts his head forward to get an arguably better look at the workspace.
I sigh inwardly. It seems I won’t be allowed to work in peace without conversation.
“Antitoxin.”
The answer isn’t enough because he keeps craning his head around.
I point to the ingredients in turn, “Foxglove. Ficus. Thornapple. Heat and distill. Filter through charcoal.” It is my own recipe that I first devised nearly twenty years ago in the jungles of Solmienya. I had spent some years there after being recruited as the shaman of a Lizardman tribe; one who chose to live in the hills rather than one of the three cities. Lizardmen were quite civilized, I learned after I’d left. As it turns out, I had been taken in by one of the few savage bands that still clung to the old ways for no good reason. They had been imbeciles. It had been a part of my role to provide healing, however, so I had. When a difficult-to-diagnose poisoning had once wound through several members of the tribe, this concoction had finally cured it.
“So you’ve made that before, have you? Not a recipe I’ve ever heard of.”
“It has worked when nothing else has. Especially composite poisons.”
“Ah.”
To my satisfaction, he is quiet after that—though he still stays to watch the rest of the process. As I am considering the best way to either excuse myself or convince him to leave, he wanders off.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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