“But I can help with the other burden pressing down on your skin.” Her fingertips moved to the collar around his neck.
The Teacher flinched a little, as though he were fighting the urge to draw back. He let out a slow breath. “I would be punished if I were to walk outside without it, Wanderer.” he said, sadly. Although, to the Wanderer’s eyes, the man looked barely able to stand, much less leave the grim walls of the hospice.
“I can remove it...please let me remove it.” Her words were more a plea than a question. “I don’t think you can help with our quest any more. But I can help your days be more comfortable here.”
The Teacher let out another slow sigh. “Your accent. You come from the City of Ash.”
His shaking fingers gently probed up Wanderer’s arm, where they found the uneven lines of her old scars.
“Ah.” he withdrew his hand, and bowed his head in understanding. “You once wore a collar yourself, didn’t you?”
He did not wait for an answer, only raised his chin to expose his thin, iron-chafed neck.
“I suppose the chance of me being seen outside in the time left to me is remote.” A sad, but kindly smile deepened the wrinkles lining his face. “If it will ease your conscience, Wanderer, then you may remove it.”
This time he did not flinch away as Wanderer took hold of the iron collar and, channelling her rune-granted strength, twisted it apart. The Teacher cradled the hinged piece of metal as the static prickle of magic dissipated from the air, running a skeletal thumb silently over his name.
“You spoke of a quest.” he said in his thin voice. “Not a word I can picture the Immortal using often.”
With a simple nod of her head, Wanderer beckoned the Illusion over; the one who held the Book in her bag. An idea had formed in her mind when she saw the extent of his blindness. “Can you feel me holding your hand?” She asked the man as the Illusion joined her on the floor.
“Can you feel the little scars that litter my skin?” She waited a moment before breathing her suggestion. “Could you read letters if I raised them up like the scars on my hand?”
The Teacher mulled the idea silently for a few moments. “I could try.” he allowed at length. He raised his head again, long hair straggling either side of his face. “What is this book that you’re so keen for me to read for you?”
“It’s written in Ancient Ash.” Illusion explained, drawing the Book from her satchel. “It’s the Book of Names.”
The Teacher’s mouth fell open, quivering for a moment before he could reply. “The Book of Names...but even you couldn’t…” He looked towards the door where he had last heard the Immortal’s voice, though Illusion had since set him down on the floor, where the frowning head was keeping his peace.
“The Ambassador.” the Teacher breathed out as he mentally solved the riddle. “The Mer gave it to you. But who could be enough of a threat for the Mer to intervene?”
“The Leveler.” Illusion intoned, and thumbed her necklace.
The Teacher pursed his thin lips. “News reached us a few days ago that her army had taken the City of Light and killed the Enlightened Ones. With no mountains to our south, I am told the governors fear that she may march here next.”
“Which is why it’s in your interest to let me get back there.” Solar interrupted vehemently. “And kill the bitch.”
The Teacher was silent for a long moment. “There are old books,” he croaked at last, “In the Ash City library - books that lay out the meanings of Ancient Ash in the newer tongues. It would certainly be faster than trying to teach you those words now. But I will do what I can.” He gestured with a shaking hand. “Do you have a stylus?”
The group exchanged glances, and shrugged helplessly. After a moment though, Illusion snapped her fingers and rose to go hurrying back downstairs. She returned with the nub of candle from her room, which she prodded gingerly into the brazier until the blunt end was coated with grey ash. She put it into the Teacher’s hand and wrapped his fingers around it.
The Teacher leaned forward, swept aside a patch of mouldy straw, and began to draw the candle across the floor. His movements were shaky and the ash marks he left on the stone were ragged, but in a few strokes he had scrawled something that looked a little like the mysterious language of the Book.
“One who equalises.” the Teacher whispered. “Leveler. Find these glyphs in the Book and then let me feel the words that come after it.”
* * * * * *
“Woman! Water NOW!”
Red found the nurse on the ground floor with a bundle of fresh straw in her arms, which she nearly dropped in fright at the witch’s harsh command. Still pale and wide-eyed, she pointed without speaking through a small kitchen, beyond which lay a side entrance.
“U-up street.” the hospice keeper finally managed to say in broken Light. “Turn right. F-f-fountain.”
The Ambassador blinked at the woman, and smiled before hurrying towards the door without further word. Outside the market was still bustling, but the assassin and the Mer turned away from it back into the rutted street they had walked their horses across. Smells of cooking and wood fires competed with the less pleasant smell of a tannery, and with the sickly-sweet odour of sewage rotting in the gutters. Ragged pigeons pecked and squabbled around the edges of the road, and from an open shop front a skinny cat eyed Red with disinterest. Risemen were coming down from their upper-story apartments to open their workshops for the day, but they were busy enough not to look too closely at the two foreigners as they passed.
About five hundred metres on there was, as the nurse had said, another effluvia-thick road branching off to the right. It opened out into a courtyard of stone apartment blocks, and in the centre, as promised, was a public fountain. A time-blurred statue of the city’s strange Risen God stood above it, water gushing from the bowl he held triumphantly above his head to splash down into the circular pool below.
The Ambassador ran forward and pulled down her hood before throwing her whole head into the water. It was fortunate that no-one else was in the courtyard, though Red was keeping a wary eye on the windows above. The Ambassador surfaced with a sigh of relief, water running off the ends of her tangled red dreadlocks to soak her clothes. She cupped some of the fountain water in her hands, and tipped it to her lips before spitting it back into the pool in disgust.
“No salt.” she said by way of explanation, a disappointed look on her face.
Sitting by the pool, letting the clean water drip down her ethereal skin, she fixed her black eyes on Red.
“Why you follow me?” she asked.
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