The Wordsmiths and the Warguild by Hugh Cook Page B

and iron filings.
            The woman looked around,
taking stock of the situation. She wrinkled her nose with distaste at the
shambles around her. She had nothing but contempt for everything she saw.
Picking up her skirts, she began to pick her way toward the nearest exit.
            "Wait!"
screeched Togura, wallowing through the filth on knees and elbows. "You
have to help us. Don't go!"
            The woman turned,
sneered, aimed her weapon again and fired, this time giving him a blast which
knocked him unconscious for a day and a night. Then she turned on her heel and
left, and was never seen again in Keep.

Chapter 9
     
            The servitor lanced one
last blister. Clear fluid eased out, forming a painless tear which the servitor
wiped away with a fleece-white dabbing cloth. Togura flexed his hand, which
felt stiff and sore.
            "Another time,
bandage your hands before you fight," said the servitor, a rough-bearded
man with a strange accent. "Until such time as your hands are
battle-hardened."
            "Where did you
learn that?" said Togura.
            "In another place,
another time."
            "Tell me about
it."
            "Not today. No -
don't get up. Rest. I'll be back soon with something good."
            "What?"
            "Wait and
see."
            The servitor departed.
Togura lay back in bed, staring at the cobwebs sprawled across the timbers
overhead, and listened to the fury of the autumn storm which raged without. The
wilderness weather was scattering the ilpses far and wide across the land, or
blowing them out to sea; it was killing or dispersing the mobs of birds; it was
grounding most of those quarrelsome machines which had not yet run out of fuel.
The war weather was dealing with the pests and enemies unleashed by the odex,
bringing a kind of peace back to the city state of Keep.
            The servitor returned,
bringing a two-handled drinking jug filled with something hot and sweltering.
             "Drink," he said.
            Togura did so. Warmth
paunched in his belly and invaded his veins. His senses slurred. The colours of
the darkened timbers overhead began to drift.
            "Drink," said
the servitor, encouraging him.
            Togura drank his fill.
Though he was lying in bed, he felt that he was floating. He tried to ask a
question. On the third attempt, he managed to curl his tongue round the word.
            "What is it?"
            "Quaffle,"
said the servitor.
            "And what's
that?"
             "A
mixture of all good things. Alcohol, opium, hemlock, dark nightshade, the
red-capped mushroom and the blue, a foreign herb called ginseng and a little
oil of hashish. And honey, of course."
            "I could learn to
like it."
            "You could learn
too well," said the servitor, with a laugh. "But it's good for the
sickness. Sleep now."
            And, at his command,
Togura drifted off into silk-blosomed drug dreams which suckled him with nectar
and fed him on honey-basted melody cats.
            He woke later, in
darkness. The rain and the wind were still at work beyond the walls. He was
alone, without the company of so much as a candle. Lying there in the darkness,
he remembered Day Suet, in spring, cradling a tiny bird in her little hands,
and laughing when it stained her fingers with a tiny bit of lime. Hot tears
blistered his eyes.
            He wept.
            Later, in the darkness,
he found the two-handled drinking jug. What was left in the bottom was cold to
the touch. It sidled down his throat, cold as a snake, then transmuted itself
to living fire. Sweating from the heat of the fire, and reeling from weariness,
he allowed his bones to compose themselves once more for sleep.
            When he woke, it was
morning.
            The servitor brought him
mutton chops, swedes, rutabaga and water cress. He ate,