Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (45 page)

“Medicine.” Elei toasted Hera, his heart booming with apprehension. At least, if this concoction slowed down Rex, weakened its influence, maybe he wouldn’t tear Hera’s throat out. He’d have more control over his body. It wasn’t much of a body, but it was his.

“Wait!” From the corner of his eye he saw Kalaes push back his chair and lurch to his feet, the medallion hanging from his neck glinting silver. “What’s that?”

Elei gulped down the hot liquid, bitterness on the back of his tongue, scalding heat down his throat, down his belly. He banged the pot down on the counter.

“Elei.” Kalaes stopped a few feet away, indecision plain on his face. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Then his stomach cramped and he bent over, gasping, gripping the counter edge. “Not sure.” Maybe Hera
was
trying to kill him.

“Shit.” Kalaes lunged forward, grabbed his arm and dragged him to a seat, planted him there. “What medicine are you talking about, what was that thing you drank? Hera.” He spun around, hands fisting at his sides. “What in the five hells did you give him?”

“Something to strengthen telmion,” Hera said evenly. “We’ve tried it before, at the hospital. It seemed to work then.”

“This same medicine?”

“No. I do not have access to a lab here, obviously. I made do with what was available.”

“What was available?” Kalaes’ voice rose, incredulous.

“There you go again, repeating what I say.”

Elei looked up at them as they faced each other, scowling, their arms folded across their chests. Another cramp squeezed his stomach and he swallowed bile. His head throbbed, the dull ache rising in intensity.

“I suggested we weaken Rex, fe, not kill Elei,” Kalaes spat each word out like a broken tooth.

“I do not plan on killing him,” Hera’s voice rose.

Whether it had been her intention or not, his body was trying to turn itself inside out. Nausea and pain squeezed his middle. If it wasn’t the potion, then it was telmion’s poison, and although he was quite sure Rex could keep it in check, the reaction wasn’t reassuring. He’d almost died from telmion twice so far. Hopefully, the third time’s charm wouldn’t work.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught Alendra’s horrified face and he winced. He should just go to bed. Lying down sounded great, but he refused to move away because of her, and besides, he wasn’t sure he could right now. Another spasm squeezed his stomach and he hoped he wasn’t about to throw up. 

“Hey.” Kalaes sat on his haunches next to him. “You look green. Need a bucket, or maybe go to the bathroom?”

“Oh, gods.” It was Alendra’s voice, low and strained. “You’ll die.”

Elei looked at her in shock, dimly wondering if she was right. Her eyes were very bright, as if she was about to cry. She smelled of fear, sour and sharp, and something else he couldn’t define.

“What’s your problem, Ale?” Kalaes snarled, and Elei blinked, caught by surprise at his anger. “He’s not going to die, dammit, this is supposed to help him.”

“But you don’t really know.” Alendra’s face was paling. Why was she so frightened? “You’re only assuming things.”

“Hera is a parasitologist,” Kalaes said coldly. “She knows about such things.”

Two red spots bloomed on Alendra’s cheeks. She stood up, pushing her chair back with a screech, and hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Hera and Kalaes exchanged an eyebrow-raised look.

“What’s up with her?” Kalaes muttered.

“I think it’s because of the Asine disaster,” Hera muttered.

“Tell me about it,” Elei whispered, wrapping both arms around himself. He wanted to understand Alendra, understand her fear. “Please, Hera. I need to know.”

Hera gave him an amused look. “You like her, is that not so, boy?”

Warmth crept up his throat, his cheeks. “Just tell me.”

“Fine. I’d rather she talked about it, but maybe she is not ready.” Hera wrapped her hands around her cup of water and her gaze was somber. “It was a plague of telmion. Not a few isolated cases, but a plague, spreading like a fire.” She shrugged, stared into her glass. “We could not believe how fast it propagated, how fast it killed. The snakeskin expanded so quickly on their bodies you could see it covering them, reaching their faces, clogging their mouths and noses. They suffocated, if they did not choke on their own vomit.”

Elei closed his eyes briefly.

“Telmion wiped out Asine, a middle-sized town in the west of Dakru. We think, perhaps, the meat sold at the central market or the water carried cysts of the parasite. Barely any mortal survived.”

But Alendra had. No wonder she couldn’t stand the sight of snakeskin on him.
Damn mess
.

“Hey, kid, wanna lie down?” Kalaes was frowning.

Elei thought about it and shook his head. He’d rather stay there until it was over, with something to distract his mind.

Kalaes’ medallion was right before him, hanging from its thin chain, dull silver against Kalaes’ black shirt. The Seven Islands. Now why did that remind him of something —
a pier by the sea and Jek and Afia...

He unwrapped one arm from around his middle and reached for the pendant. “Pelia gave this to you.”

Kalaes wrapped his fingers around the medallion. “How do you know?”

“She told me about it once.” He tried to remember the dream. It crumbled like old paint when he tried to grasp at the images. “She asked me to read it.”

“Read it?” Kalaes’ lips pursed. “It’s just a drawing of the islands, fe.”

“She said—” Elei gasped around another spasm.
Damn this medicine to the lowest hell
. “She said she gave it away. For safekeeping. That I have to read the medallion, and use the number on the gun to unlock something and...” Gods, it sounded crazy. Then again, it was a mad world. “Said I have to bring the Gultur down.”

“When did she say all that, fe?” Kalaes looked up at Hera. “Is he delirious, you think?”

He raised a hand to Elei’s forehead, and Elei slapped it away. “I’m fine. Listen. I think she told me these things about two years ago, when I first started working for her. They made no sense to me back then, and I forgot about them. They come back in my dreams.”

“And here I thought you were finally remembering,” Hera said, hard eyes glittering like glass. She came to sit at the table. “Or are they just dreams after all?”

Elei shook his head. “I told you before, it’s all mixed up.”

“He knew it was Pelia who gave me the medallion,” Kalaes said. “He couldn’t have known if Pelia hadn’t told him.”

Hera flicked her hand dismissively, like swatting at a fly. “He could have guessed.”

“Dreams are sometimes memories, fe!”

“Dreams are just dreams, Kalaes.”

Elei wished he knew who was right. “Can I see it?” He met Kalaes’ confused stare. “The medallion.”

“Right.” Kalaes snorted, pulled the pendant over his head and handed it to Elei. “Read it.” He shrugged. “If there’s anything there to read.”

Elei took the medallion and turned it over and over. On the front, in relief, were the seven islands, their names spelled in a curly font — Ker, Torq, Ert, Aue, Kukno, Ost, and Dakru in their center. Their relief shapes were polished, probably from Kalaes’ fingers, but around them the surface was duller, darker. Nothing else was written, on the front or the back.
Damn riddles
.

Or just dreams, as Hera said — no memories. Not the truth. Disappointment lay heavy on his chest as he returned the medallion to Kalaes.

“Forget it,” he whispered, feeling very tired all of a sudden, more tired than illness or physical weariness warranted — defeated, because it was all a lie. His stomach churned and he had to swallow hard to keep the sourness down.

“But you’re right,” Hera said.

That brought his gaze back up. “Huh?”

“Now is the time to strike the regime. Before they manage to contain the outbreak, before they find an antidote for Rex. While they’re confused and fighting each other.”

“We four are going to strike and utterly defeat the Gultur regime,” Kalaes drawled. “Uh huh. You’re out of your damn mind.” He rolled his eyes. “There’s no pissing way in the five hells.”

“What if we had information others lacked?” Hera frowned. “If Pelia has hidden a clue in a safety box in Dakru City as to how to proceed, then we must find it.”

“I thought you didn’t believe me,” Elei muttered.

“I still do not,” Hera muttered. “I’m talking hypothetically.”

Oh, right
.

“But if she did say those things to Elei,” Kalaes tugged on his braids, lips pursed, “then what’s the deal with the riddles? What if we never figure them out?”

“She could not risk such information falling into the wrong hands.” Hera sat next to Elei, gazing at Kalaes’ medallion, now hanging again around his neck. “She picked Elei, gave him the gun and information, then sent him to you.”

“Information she didn’t explain to him. She just injected him with Rex and gave him my address. Besides, she said nothing to me that I remember.” Kalaes scowled. “What if Elei didn’t make it to me? What if he didn’t survive Rex? What if I didn’t make it?”

“She took a risk.” Hera’s voice held respect. “It was all a gamble.”

“That’s a damn huge gamble if you ask me,” Kalaes rumbled.

A new wave of pain and nausea, and Elei lurched to his feet, shoving Kalaes away. “Bathroom,” he managed to say before staggering out.

“Elei!”

He barely made it to the sink before it all came up. A hand fell on his shoulder, a cup of water was pushed into his hand. He used it to wash out the bitterness and sourness.

“Is this supposed to be helping him, Hera?” Kalaes called through the door. “You know, throwing up, feeling like crap... You do realize he’s just skin and bones, and now he’s lost his dinner again.”

What dinner?
Elei thought fuzzily. He vaguely recalled eating some bread the previous day. No wonder nothing else came up but bile.

Hera appeared in the opening. “Well, it appears telmion is still alive, and yes, that is a good thing, Kalaes. Now let us think more of what Pelia might have meant.”

He followed them back to the kitchen, feeling like week-old roadkill. Telmion was always swift in taking one down. Any chink in cronion’s armor and it’d flared, holding him in a relentless grip. With Rex, he’d forgotten already how his gut clenched and twinged every day, the battles won and lost between telmion and cronion.

They sat at the kitchen table, examining the medallion and the gun in turns. Kalaes shoved a cup of water into Elei’s hand and he sipped at it cautiously. The snakeskin on his cheek itched. He rubbed it, blinking at the tattoo on Kalaes’ hand, a black spiral.

“What does it stand for?” He pointed.

Kalaes lifted his hand. “This?” His lips twisted in a crooked smile. “Death.”

Death?
“Why do you have it?”

“For those who are gone.”

Elei’s eyes were closing. “The dead.” He had some of his own. Pelia, Albi. Maybe he should get a tattoo, too, to remember them by.

“You’re falling asleep, fe. Go to bed.”

“No.” He needed to make sense of Pelia’s words, to undo the knots of his dreams. He gestured at Kalaes’ medallion. “How can I read something that isn’t there? How can I find a box to open when I don’t know to whom it belongs? How can I get into Dakru City and reach the Palace?”
Not to mention make it out alive?

“These are good questions, fe.” Kalaes’ eyes glittered with amusement. “I just don’t think there’s an answer.”

“There has to be.” He rubbed his face. “She must’ve given the medallion to you for a reason.”
Or it was just a dream
. His head felt heavy. “What did she tell you when she gave it to you?”

“That it was for safekeeping. A family heirloom.” Kalaes scratched his head. “Said it was old and never to try and polish it because it could get destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Hera frowned. “Why, if it’s only the islands and their names? What is there to destroy?”

Kalaes opened his mouth and closed it, blinking. “I just promised her, fe. I don’t know much about precious metals.”

Roused, his heart racing, Elei straightened in his seat. “Do you think something could be written there?” Sweat rolled down his face, dripped into his eyes, and all the while cold shivers shook him. He probably should go to bed, but curiosity wouldn’t let him.

“There’s only one way to find out.” Hera went to the counter and opened a few cupboards, taking down containers. “The black staining is silver sulfide. Acid should remove it.” She pulled a small
nepheline
bottle from the cupboard. “Here. Vinegar.”

Vinegar?

She poured some into a cup, turned on the stove and held it above the hot plate for a few minutes. The smell brought tears to Elei’s eyes. Then she returned with the stinky cup and stood over Kalaes, thrusting out her hand, palm up.

He hesitated, clutching the medallion. “What if it gets destroyed, like she said?” He looked down at it and his mouth tightened. “It’s her gift, the only thing I have left of her.”