The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (37 page)

Chapter 27 – The Memories Lost

“Come on, mighty warrior.  Can’t you go any faster?” Mitment asked minutes later as Marco lagged behind her rapid pace.

“I’ve fought the
Echidna and a volcano, and I’m lucky to be alive,” he gasped with annoyance, more annoyed at his own prolonged state of injury than at the unpleasant spirit that was apparently guiding him.  “I can’t go any faster.”

The spirit slowed and then stopped to wait for him.  They were in one of the portions of the cave that sloped steeply, and Marco slid down to her more than walked.

“Fought the Echidna?  And you’re alive?  That’s an impressive claim,” the guard said.

“What did I have to do with a prophecy?” Marco asked as he stopped next to her.

“There are many prophecies about the island, but the oldest, and the most feared, told about what would happen if a man ever set foot on the island,” Mitment told him.  She started walking again as soon as he reached her.  “The prophecy said that the island would be invaded, and the lady’s heart would cease beating once a man walked on the island.”

“The lady’s heart?  Lady Iasco’s heart would stop beating?  She’d die in an invasion?” Marco asked, both fearfully and dismissively.  “I’ve seen her several times since I first stepped on the island – which wasn’t my idea in the first place, mind you, we went there after being kidnapped – and she was fine.”

“Nothing said it had to be immediate,” Mitment said as she reached the bottom of the tunnel and emerged into the vast cavern.

“Is there any water nearby?” Marco asked, feeling his throat grow parched.  It had been hours since he’d last had a drink, at the stream in the cave so long ago.

“We’ll pass a river eventually, but you can’t drink that water,” Mitment answered.  “There is a fountain, but,” she left the point unfinished.

“But what?” Marco asked.

“There are consequences for a living person to drinking its water,” the spirit said.  “Can you wait?”

“Wait how long?” Marco answered her question with a question.  “I haven’t had anything to drink in hours, maybe a day or more.  I need to stay alive; I need water. 

“I have the scale of the Echidna, and it was the spirit of the island of Ophiuchus itself that commanded me to acquire it.  Is that part of your prophecy?” he returned to the other topic.

The spirit gave him a backhanded slap, a painful chill that passed through his cheek and his mouth and his jaw, making him scream in pain and fall to his knees again.

“Don’t you speak of the prophecy in that way,” Mitment hissed.  “You respect it!

“I was told to be your guide; the light sent me.  I was told you need to return to the surface for an important mission.  I wasn’t told why,” the guard told Marco.  “Are you saying that the island itself spoke to you?  How is that possible?”

I was in the caves within the island,” Marco answered, “just like I was when I first arrived there.  And a voice spoke from nothingness in the cave, and it told me to bring a scale of the Echidna.  That’s all I’ve been doing for months now is trying to get to the Echidna, get the scale, and then return to the island.”

“If the isle wants the scale, we have to make sure you take it there.  You don’t think you could make the journey to the surface, the world of the living without a drink?  It will take three days of your time to make the journey,” Mitment told him.

“No,” Marco gasped.  “I can’t go three more days without water.  I’ve got a little food,” some of his dried food supplies had not been scattered when his back pack had been shredded, so that he retained a few scraps of food still.

Mitment stood indecisively.  “If it was up to me, I’d let you die here, so that you spirit could just rise up and already be in the underworld.”

“I’ll go to heaven,” Marco asserted, while wondering if he would.

“Yeah, sure, we all say that,” Mitment retorted.  “That’s what I thought.  But this underworld is a step on the journey.”

“Why would you go to heaven?  You tried to kill me!” Marco laughed.  “You?  In heaven?”

The spirit pulled its hand back, prepared to strike Marco again, and he shrank back in fear, but the blow didn’t fall.  “And you did kill me.  You’ve probably killed a great many, haven’t you?  And every one of them was justified?  There’s no guilty blood on your hands?” she asked.

“Mortal!”  She turned and took two steps away, then turned and walked back to him.

“If the island needs you, and if you need water, then we’ll go to the fountain of Lethe to get some water for you,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Marco asked.

“There are consequences to the water of the Lethe,” the spirit said.  “You will lose your memories.   You will only be able to remember one thing, and until you do that one thing, you will not be able to recover any of your other memories.  The task you remember must be trying; it can’t be something stupid, easy, or pleasurable,” she explained.  “And it must be meaningful.”

She started forward across the vast cavern floor, and Marco followed, as she seemed to slow her pace slightly to allow him to keep up.  He puzzled over the odd circumstances that Mitment attached to the fountain of Lethe, wondering whether the spirit was making some type of insane joke about the fountain.

In the meantime, he focused on his journey, and made himself keep moving, step by step, thinking about the island and the Lady Iasco.  She had been extraordinarily good to him, saving his life and rescuing him, healing him beyond imagination; she hadn’t acted as though she felt any threat from his presence in the island.  Had he been in her shoes, knowing the prophecy as she did, he wouldn’t have been nearly as considerate of him as she had been.  And the island itself had treated him well.  It had invited him to climb up to the temple on his first visit.  It had healed him multiple times, and it had been good to him.

Did the lady and the island know something more about the prophecy, something that made them treat him kindly, or were they simply incredibly gracious?

“Mitment,” he called as they continued their journey, after puzzling through all those facts, “is there more to the prophecy?  Does it say anything else about what happens when a man steps on the island?  The island and the lady were both nice to me, nicer that I think would have been expected from such a prophecy.”

“She was kind to you,” Mitment agreed.  “We didn’t understand why; that’s part of what made us so mad, that she was being kind while you were there to kill her.  At least that’s what we thought at the time.

“There may be more to the prophecy; I don’t know,” the spirit said.  “Now just keep walking.”

They continued on in silence, as Marco’s humanity was noticed, and spirits starting coming to him asking him to take messages back to the surface, until Mitment stopped their trip and shouted at the spirits to leave them alone.

After that they walked on in solitude for some time longer, Marco’s mouth and throat growing drier and more uncomfortable minute by minute.  They began to climb a small hill, and Mitment turned to him.  “We’re almost there.  Have you thought of what your one memory will be?” she asked.

“I have,” Marco answered.  He had been thinking long and hard, trying to fashion the one memory that he could be sure would direct his feet towards the appropriate place.  He couldn’t simply remind himself to go to the island he knew, for without special dispensation, no man would be allowed on board any vessel that could reach Ophiuchus.  And delivery of the scale was the most important task he had.  Then once that was done, he would be able to return to Mirra at Sant Jeroni, after more months than he was afraid to imagine. 

That reminded him that it
was spring time in the world overhead.  He had been on his way to the gate of Persephone, which was to have opened on the first day of spring.  He had left Mirra in the fall, when he had been injured at his castle just before the first snowfalls had occurred; that meant that nearly half the year had already passed, and he still had months of journey to accomplish.

“Well?” Mitment asked impatiently.  “What is it?”

“I will journey to see the Lady Folence of the temple at Barcelon,” Marco said calmly.  He had thought about where he could go, who he could see, and what he could do; a visit to Folence solved all his problems.  She was integral to the workings of the temple, and would understand the prophecy, as well as understand the importance of a quest laid upon him by the island’s spirit.  She had been kind to him; she seemed to have some regard, possibly even affection for him.  And she was in Barcelon, close to Mirra, and approachable, reachable for a man.

The choice seemed to meet with Mitment’s approval, as she thought about him going to see the high-ranking priestess of the order.

“Well, just in time,” Mitment told him, “for here’s the spring.”

They had reached the summit of the small hill they had climbed, so that Marco could see the far side.  Just below their feet, a wide pool of water flowed forth from the hill, and fed a falling stream of water that tumbled down the side of the hill, then flowed away into the distant darkness that Marco could not see into.

They stepped down the trail on the side of the hill and stopped next to the spring pool.  Marco knelt and dipped his hands in the cool, refreshing water.

“And you know what it is that you will do?” Mitment asked.

Marco raised his hands to his lips, but Mitment’s cold, ethereal hand swept through his hands, making him jerk back and spread his fingers wide, causing the water to spill.

“Say it,” she commanded.  “Say it out loud, here at the spring, as your commitment.”

“And as soon as I drink I’ll forget?” Marco asked.

“Actually, you will only forget once you leave the underworld.  When you step out into the sunshine, or at least the open sky; then Lethe’s waters will be triggered, and your memories will be gone,” the spirit answered.

Marco scooped his hands into the water again, though they still felt the pain of Mitment’s slap.  “I will go to Barcelon, and I will see the Lady Folence,” Marco murmured into his hands as he brought them up to his swollen lips.  He sucked in greedily, and the water poured into his mouth, tasting sweeter and more refreshing than any other drink he could remember ever receiving.  He drank all the water in his hands, then bowed his face down to the spring and plunged his head in, drinking recklessly in big gulps of liquid that were instantly absorbed by his dehydrated body.

Marco raised his head and took a deep breath of air, then raised more water in his hands and took another drink.

“I’m sure it was worth it,” Mitment said as Marco knelt, alternately gasping for air and drinking more water.

“Take off your shirt,” she told him seconds later, as his thirst for the water abated.  He looked up at her spirit in confusion.

“We’ve got a long walk ahead of us, and it looks like you have no jug or skin to carry water in,” she said.  “So I suggest you soak your shirt in the water, then suck on it for a day or so to give you water.  That should get you to our destination.”

Marco looked at her with a blank stare, trying to conceive of some alternative way of carrying the water with him, but nothing came to mind.  After a minute of annoyance, he gave in and took off his pack, then removed his shirt, and plunged it into the water.

“Those are quite a few scars you’ve collected there,” Mitment commented, with a hint of respect.

“It’s been a difficult journey,” Marco answered as he pulled the sopping shirt out of the water and stood.  “Let’s get going,” he said.

Without comment, Mitment started down the hill, on her way towards the only exit now available for Marco to use to return to the land of the living.

Marco followed along behind her as best he was able, frequently falling behind, and frequently catching up when she stopped and impatiently waited for him.  He nibbled on bits of his dried fruits, and sucked on the sleeve of his wet shirt as he trudged on, ignoring most of the spirits who had so many stories to tell him, and favors to ask.

Mitment let him sleep when he grew tired, but then roused him to start again after only a short period of sleep.  His shirt grew drier, to the point that he could no longer draw any moisture from it, and he began to fret that he would soon be back in a position of dehydration.

“If it’s water you’re worried about, we’re almost to the River Acheron; there’s plenty of water there, though I’d advise
you not to touch a drop of it,” Mitment told him. 

“Why?” Marco asked simply.  The name sparked something in his memory, though in his weary, worn condition he didn’t know why.  It took him moments to recollect; a formula, he finally remembered – there had been an alchemy formula he and Algornia had discussed that required water from the river.  He gasped as he remembered that it had been a formula to reverse death.

They crested a short rise as Marco mused, and he saw the river flowing at the end of a long stretch of road before them.  A ferryman in a boat was stationed on the far side of the river, where a short line of passengers stood waiting for their turn to cross over towards the bank that Mitment and Marco were approaching.