A BALM OF ICHOR
Ngja appeared above the door. Mehrigus looked up but didn’t move, as if waiting for a more definite sign from his pet. This had become the norm, as if he had become loathe to imagine there should be any tedious mere apothecary’s business to distract him now. The lizard threw back his head, unimpressed, and chittered again, but there was no need.
‘Mehrigus!’ came a booming voice from below. ‘I’ve gots your guts and I’m here for mi’ gold!’
Mehrigus set the baetylus and the engraving tool down on his desk, atop the pages of the book, and hurried down the stairs.
‘’Ere it is,’ said the surly duardin, Grimendahl, not seeming to care much whether Mehrigus had arrived to hear him or not.
He slapped a heavy, and rather bloody, cloth sack down on the counter as Mehrigus entered.
‘What’s that?’ the apothecary asked, peering down at the grizzled adventurer and his comrades.
‘You know what it is!’ said Grimendahl. ‘You asked for it!’
Mehrigus picked up an iron rod from beneath the counter and opened the mouth of the sack. ‘It’s the head. That’s not what I asked for, Grimendahl.’
‘It is,’ said the duardin, turning red. ‘Hydra’s blood, you said. That thing’s full of it!’
Mehrigus sighed. ‘I thought I’d been quite clear. Blood from the body, not the head. It doesn’t grow back from the head, does it? It grows back from the body. The head is the part that dies.’
‘Guts, ’eads, legs, can’t tell ’em apart with them hydras. Can’t tell its ’eads from its tails or any of ’em from its–’
‘Ignore our friend here,’ said Ostion, Grimendahl’s human companion, and a man who spoke curiously well for someone who’d fallen in with a disgraced duardin, an alcoholic priestess and a seasick pirate. ‘He’s obsessed with the heads. And he’s playing with you. We have what you need, Mehrigus. And it will be worth every single gold coin… but I’m sure we would all like to see them first.’
Mehrigus disappeared from sight and returned dragging a heavy wooden chest. He hauled it in front of the counter and nodded at it. Ostion did the same to Grimendahl, who kicked it, then, cursing that it hadn’t magically opened when he did so, stooped and lifted the lid. The odd band, all four of them, seemed pleased enough with what they saw. Ostion nodded to another of the duardin, Kaliqar, who then stooped to reach into the sack at his feet. He brought out a large, earthen jar and set it on the counter. Mehrigus reached out to remove its lid.
‘Take care with that…’ said Ostion. He and the rest of his party were already shuffling away, dragging the chest behind them.
‘Thank you, all,’ said Mehrigus, unconcerned with their presence now he had what he wanted. ‘I will be quite careful with it.’
He removed the lid. Inside, just large enough to be visible above the surface of the pool of blackened blood that surrounded it in the jar, was the heart of a hydra.
Mehrigus followed Dormian across the courtyard and into the small basement where the wounded man lay feverish on the hay.
‘Paluris, I’ve brought an apothecary to see you,’ Dormian said, but the man was feverish and insensible. ‘I told you, he’s the one who fixed my eyes.’ Another moment went by without reply, and Dormian simply gestured towards the prone man. Mehrigus nodded and stepped closer. A woman, the wife of one of the other watchmen, Mehrigus was told, sat on a small stool beside the man, periodically checking his fever and mopping his brow.
‘They cut off his leg?’ said Mehrigus, crouching down beside him.
‘As soon as that chirurgeon saw a sign of the rot,’ said Dormian. ‘See what I mean about starting to think I was lucky?’ Dormian offered a grim chuckle. ‘But they saved him doing that, didn’t they?’ He seemed earnest.
‘Perhaps,’ said Mehrigus. He doubted it. This was simple butchery to him now. And the rot, well, Mehrigus couldn’t for a moment say it aloud, but the rot was growth, life, change, in its own way. Its fecundity might even have been turned to healing the man’s other wounds if Mehrigus had been brought here sooner. Still, Mehrigus had no need of such extra potence. Not anymore.
Mehrigus pulled a brass pot from his satchel. It had no lid, for the ichor inside was set solid, like black wax. Mehrigus took a knife from his robes and carved out some of the ichor from the centre of the pot, making a small well.
‘Leave me, please,’ he said to the others in the room. Dormian and the woman looked from one another to Mehrigus and the wounded man, Dormian shrugging to show that he saw no reason not to do as the apothecary asked. His clear, seeing eyes were evidence of his ability. They left.
Mehrigus set the pot down in the hay between the man’s legs. He took a tourniquet from his robes and bound it around the thigh of the man’s surviving whole leg. He breathed deeply as he prepared to test what would be this near-ultimate transformation as cure, then he put the point of the blade to the man’s leg, below the tourniquet. Quickly, he snatched up the pot to catch the blood that came streaming forth.
Mehrigus let the pot fill and flow over, then set it down again in the hay. He stitched and bandaged the cut he had made, then took the same knife and began to stir the blood and ichor, incanting the words he had gleaned from the Book of Transformations.
Essence, substance, enchantment.
The balm writhed and lashed, momentary shapes, waiting to be flesh…