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Amrita Tears
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ZERI (JUNE) 7, 1538
Ninety-six days into Prince Terosh’s Kireshana journey
McNoughten Farm House, Kesler Plains
Reia’s throat felt like she had swallowed half the Felmon Desert and washed it down with saltwater. She wanted to say something hopeful, but the words got stuck. Her eyes narrowed as she marched into the McNoughten home. Following Semon’s directions, she found the master bedchamber. She didn’t realize the men trailed her in. A short examination of Semon’s wife, Kira, confirmed Heskrin. The woman submitted to the scrutiny without comment, but her expression spoke of misery in a universal language. Reia’s breath refused to come out, and she fought back waves of helplessness.
Who did this? Can these people be saved? She didn’t even realize she sought answers from the anotechs until they spoke.
Dark Ones—Dalonos—control the one responsible. Amrita Tears can save them.
“Amrita Tears,” Reia said. A spark of hope flared, wavered, then faded. She’d known that all along, but Amrita Tears were nowhere around here.
“What?” Terosh demanded. “You had hope for a second.”
“Amrita Tears could cure them. It’s a sap you get from amrita plants, but they only grow on Mount Amri, high in the Ridens. We’re too far away, even if we could find them this time of year.”
“Can you ease their pain?” Semon asked.
Reia got her first good look at the man. If she stood on tiptoes, she might come up to his shoulders. A short, bushy beard and a trim mustache softened his blunt face. His deep blue eyes were flecked with yellow specks, indicating Bornovan blood.
“I can,” Reia assured him.
More than three hours came and went, while Reia mixed broths and teas. As she prepared the elixirs, Reia questioned Semon about his family. Kira favored ira flowers. The youngest child, Teven, was only two and already had his own specially carved chair. The next older child, Dable, turned four last week. His body had always been frail. Kesella, five-and-two-twelfths, and Arel, five-and-eleven-twelfths, proudly shared an age. Semon had gotten them each a doll from Rammon on his last trip. Nicella, Azer, and Torkrin, respectively seven, eight, and nine, freely shared a collection of wooden animals imported from Tareb amongst themselves but guarded them from the “children.” The two boys, though older, deferred to Nicella because she made them rielberry tarts and pies.
Reia had never treated Heskrin before, so she ended up treating the individual symptoms. She answered pain with corlia and cormea, aches with sannin, and fever with ira petals. In addition, she tried to slow the poison with ristal leaves. After administering the broths, she made some mintas tea with a bit of wuzle root, but only Kira and three of the children drank it. The others had already fallen asleep, and Reia didn’t wish to awaken them. After the tea, those four patients also drifted off to sleep.
Sitting by young Teven McNoughten’s bed, Reia held the boy’s hand long after he drifted off. Her remedies helped, but her caydronan sack ran short on sannin and corlia. If the Heskrin was as entrenched in their bodies as she suspected, there would soon be nothing she could do.
They’re so young.
Alas, the innocent perish beneath Ill Fate’s heavy hands.
She ignored the anotechs.
“Reia,” Terosh called from the doorway. “We need to talk.”
Something about his cautious tone warned Reia she might not like this conversation. Nevertheless, she released the boy’s heated hand, rose, and followed the prince to the common room. No one was around since Reia had forced Semon to drink some mintas tea and rest.
Reia sat on the couch and let her gaze wander the cozy room. A plethora of detailed wooden creatures spilled over the sides of a small box. A pair of well-loved dolls leaned against the legs of a child’s wooden chair, looking as haggard as Reia felt. Trying not to cry, she went to right the dolls.
Kesella and Arel will need you again.
Then, she slowly walked back across the care-worn rug to the couch. The braided rug’s muted red and brown tones gave the room a warm flavor. Evidence of Reia’s healing efforts littered the ground around the fireplace along the back wall.
Terosh seemed troubled.
“We can save them, but not without a price.” He paused for a slow breath. “Are you willing to try?”
“How?” she demanded.
“Anotechs.”
“That seems to be the answer to everything.” Reia was surprised by the bitterness she felt. “How can we use anotechs to save them?”
Terosh responded with a question.
“Do you know the conditions amrita plants need to grow?”
Reia’s mind latched on to the thought, and she sucked in sharply.
Can you make amrita grow rapidly?
Maybe. It takes much energy. The conditions here are not good. You might not live through the process.
Yes or no?
Yes.
“They can do it, if you know how,” Terosh said. “Their best estimate was five days and enough strain to almost kill us.”
Reia shut her eyes, seeking and receiving confirmation from the anotechs. She cupped her head in her hands, trying to ward off a headache brought on by lack of sleep and worry that Terosh might actually talk her into this craziness. Teven’s pitiful cries echoed in her skull. She remembered feeling his sweat-stiffened blond hair and limp, burning arm beneath her fingertips.
“I—I want to do this, Reia,” Terosh confessed. “My father and tutors would call me a fool. My advisers would say I have higher duties, but this feels right.” Terosh drew his shoulders back. “We must help them.”
The last vestiges of resistance crumbled in her.
“If it can be done, it will be done,” Reia promised, rising to wake Semon.
He argued with them but agreed to let them use the barn, which currently lay empty, since the grain was already packed and stored in underground cellars to protect it from windstorms.
***
WHILE REIA TUTORED Semon on preparing remedies for the Heskrin symptoms, Terosh prepped the barn. Following instructions from both Reia and the anotechs, he heaped dirt in the center of the barn. Next, he patched the few weak spots in the walls and gathered several buckets of water. The McNoughten house connected to a waterline from underground streams from Lake Ceree, but an outside pump existed for the barns. Finally, Terosh returned to the house, ate a huge meal, and forced Reia to eat as well.
Torn between fear and excitement, Terosh entered the dirt-filled barn, knowing he would either exit triumphantly or not at all. The anotechs had explained their plan at least four dozen times, but he turned it over in his mind again and again.
Get amrita seeds from Mount Amri, carry them back here, plant them, and care for them.
Their care included creating a frigid atmosphere, giving them an occasional touch of acid, adding lots of fresh water, and periodically zapping them with heat. Simply getting the seeds would take several days. The job fell to Reia, since she knew where to find Mount Amri. Terosh would concentrate on creating and storing water. Then, he would prepare the small amounts of acid and practice chilling everything to the proper temperature.
As they lay down on the freshly mounded dirt, Terosh impulsively caught Reia’s left hand. It felt small yet strong. A lump foiled an attempt at speech, but he forced a smile.
“Alosoolsonana.” Reia squeezed his hand and closed her eyes.
To success on our journey, the anotechs translated.
***
ZERI (JUNE) 8, 1538
Ninety-seven days into Prince Terosh’s Kireshana journey
McNoughten Farm, Kesler Plains
The small bits of Dr. Atien Belcross that still existed within Dalonos ached to know what went on in that barn, but the presence of so many Light Ones made him sick. His confidence had been shaken enough to make him fear tangling with those other anotechs. Instead of fighting the gut-twisting sensation, he checked on his experiment.
The smallest child still barely clung to life. The disease was obviously thriving. The man who had served as a reluctant vector deserved a reward. Dalonos would kill the man swiftly later. A closer examination via anotechs revealed remnants of herbal remedies that kept the symptoms at bay. Two of the children seemed slightly better but the rest had worsened, though not to the point they should have. The woman struggled against the disease and grew stronger by the minute. Dalonos was tempted to declare the experiment a failure, enter the house, and clean up the mess.
“They grow amrita,” the figure of False Jalna reported, appearing at Dalonos’s side.
“Will it work?”
“That is unknown,” False Jalna replied.
Dalonos cursed.
“Stop sounding like a machine.”
The girl chuckled and disappeared. Dalonos braced for the inevitable sensation of ten thousand needles pricking him as the anotechs entered him simultaneously.
“Should I kill them?”
We no longer want them dead.
“Not them, though it would be easy now. I meant the family. Should I kill the farmer and his family?”
An excruciatingly long silence followed, but eventually the anotechs answered.
No. Leave scouts to report on their success or failure. There is no time to wait. We must warn the master that the Light Ones grow stronger. It may affect his plan.
“You know he wants me dead, right? I can feel that skulking Ranger haunting my shadows.”
Lord Kezem is momentarily misguided. He will see reason soon enough.
***
ZERI (JUNE) 13, 1538
102 days into Prince Terosh’s Kireshana journey
McNoughten Farm, Kesler Plains
Terosh and Reia stayed in the McNoughten’s barn for six days. They lay side-by-side locked in unnatural slumber, connected to the dirt by thousands of threads. The anotechs inside them weren’t enough to accomplish their mission, so they constantly drew new ones from the ground. They didn’t know where they came from, but each time they needed new anotechs more answered their call.
The days were paradoxes: long and short, safe and perilous, peaceful and strenuous, fascinating and tedious. Reia’s presence disappeared for two days so she could personally direct the anotechs in their seed-retrieval task, leaving Terosh feeling empty. To blunt the edge of slowly passing time, he practiced his parts endlessly. He spent some energy maintaining their sleeping bodies, but most of his effort went into manipulating the air. Molecule by molecule, he formed water and stuck it to the back wall. When that filled, he started a new sheet. He willed the anotechs to spread over the barn and draw heat away until the temperature hovered just above freezing.
The acid was the hardest part. Terosh soon discovered it would have to be fetched from the Talmeth Mountains, volcanoes tucked in the southwest corner of Reshner’s habitable continent. The volcanoes spew molten metals and acids approximately every three months. Knowing he couldn’t retrieve the acid and continue working in the barn, Terosh sent Reia soon after she returned with the seeds. He sensed her weariness as she planted the first two seeds and instructed him on planting the other eight, but if he asked her to stop, they would fail.
She returned two days later, bearing the precious acid. Her life force trembled with fatigue, which coupled with the cool temperatures to make her physical form shiver.
Terosh concentrated on feeding the amrita plants water, acid, and proper jolts of heat but remained aware enough to go half-crazy staring down upon their bodies. Seeing Reia’s deathly pale cheeks made him angry.
When the amrita plants were finally ready, the anotechs informed them that they could return to their bodies. The task of withdrawing control slowly, while still maintaining the right temperatures, took a lot of patience. Terosh had gathered too much water and could not release it all at once for fear of flooding their work. Reia helped him slowly return the water to the air, then return to his body.
He awoke with a gasp. The cry that escaped him was as pitiful as a newborn baby’s mewling. The sensation of a thousand glass shards repeatedly stabbing his head made him nauseous. Sparkles of light danced around his vision. His mouth tasted like he had been sucking on tretling fur for a week. He released Reia’s hand and rolled left, away from her. A coughing fit overtook him, followed closely by twenty seconds of body-racking, empty retching.
He landed on his hands and knees. Spotting the three buckets of water he had gathered, Terosh crawled to them. Another coughing fit threw him forward into the first bucket, spilling it. He rolled onto his back and shut his eyes, too weak to try again and willing to die if it would stop the headache. Soon, Terosh felt water slowly dripping onto his face.
“No quitting now,” Reia said with a rough, weary, and wonderful voice. “I have what we need.”
“How—”
“While you were playing with the weather, I was conserving my strength,” Reia explained. “Sit up, drink this, and spit. It won’t taste pretty, but it’s clean. The anotechs inform me they’ve killed all the evil crawly things.”
He followed her instructions. When his mouth felt normal again, Terosh swallowed some of the stale water. It tasted metallic but passable.
Reia cleaned him up with a few words to the anotechs, helped him to his feet, and guided him to the side wall.
“Stay there until your legs agree not to dump you on your head. I’ll be right back. I need more vials.”
