The Complete Elenium Trilogy: The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose. David Eddings
a searching look at Sparhawk’s face, pretended ignorance.
‘I’m starting to get a peculiar feeling about this,’ he growled as they emerged from yet another office. ‘They take one look at me, and they suddenly become stupid – or is that just my imagination?’
‘I’ve noticed that, too,’ she replied thoughtfully.
‘My face isn’t that exciting, I know, but it’s never struck anyone dumb before.’
‘It’s a perfectly good face, Sparhawk.’
‘It covers the front of my head. What else can you expect from a face?’
‘The physicians of Borrata seem less skilled than we’d been led to believe.’
‘We’ve wasted more time, then?’
‘We haven’t finished yet. Don’t give up hope.’
They came finally to a small, unpainted door set back in a shabby alcove. Sparhawk rapped, and a slurred voice responded, ‘Go away.’
‘We need your help, learned sir,’ Sephrenia said.
‘Go and bother somebody else. I’m busy getting drunk right now.’
‘That does it!’ Sparhawk snapped. He grasped the door handle and pushed, but the door was locked from the inside. Irritably, he kicked it open, splintering the frame.
The man inside the tiny cubicle blinked. He was a shabby little man with a crooked back and bleary eyes. ‘You knock very loudly, friend,’ he observed. Then he belched. ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Come in.’ His head weaved back and forth. He was shabbily dressed, and his wispy grey hair stuck out in all directions.
‘Is there something in the water around here that makes everybody so churlish?’ Sparhawk asked acidly.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ the shabby man replied. ‘I never drink water.’ He drank noisily from a battered tankard.
‘Obviously.’
‘Shall we spend the rest of the day exchanging insults, or would you rather tell me about your problem?’ The physician squinted myopically at Sparhawk’s face. ‘So you’re the one,’ he said.
‘The one what?’
‘The one we aren’t supposed to talk to.’
‘Would you like to explain that?’
‘A man came here a few days ago. He said that it would be worth a hundred gold pieces to every physician in the building if you left empty-handed.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He had a military bearing and white hair.’
‘Martel,’ Sparhawk said to Sephrenia.
‘We should have guessed almost immediately,’ she replied.
‘Take heart, friends,’ the messy little man told them expansively. ‘You’ve found your way to the finest physician in Borrata.’ He grinned then. ‘My colleagues all fly south with the ducks in the fall going, “Quack, quack, quack.” You couldn’t get a sound medical opinion out of any one of them. The white-haired man said that you’d describe some symptoms. Some lady someplace is very ill, I understand, and your friend – this Martel you mentioned – would prefer that she didn’t recover. Why don’t we disappoint him?’ He drank deeply from his tankard.
‘You’re a credit to your profession, good doctor,’ Sephrenia said.
‘No. I’m a vicious-minded old drunkard. Do you really want to know why I’m willing to help you? It’s because I’ll enjoy the screams of anguish from my colleagues when all that money slips through their fingers.’
‘That’s as good a reason as any, I suppose,’ Sparhawk said.
‘Exactly.’ The slightly tipsy physician peered at Sparhawk’s nose. ‘Why didn’t you have that set when it got broken?’ he asked.
Sparhawk touched his nose. ‘I was busy with other things.’
‘I can fix it for you if you’d like. All I have to do is take a hammer and break it again. Then I can set it for you.’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’m used to it now.’
‘Suit yourself. All right, what are these symptoms you came here to describe?’
Once again Sephrenia ran down the list for him.
He sat scratching at his ear with his eyes narrowed. Then he rummaged through the litter piled high on his desk and pulled out a thick book with a torn leather cover. He leafed through it for several moments, then slammed it shut. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said triumphantly. He belched again.
‘Well?’ Sparhawk said.
‘Your friend was poisoned. Has she died yet?’
A chill caught at Sparhawk’s stomach. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘It’s only a matter of time.’ The physician shrugged. ‘It’s a rare poison from Rendor. It’s invariably fatal.’
Sparhawk clenched his teeth. ‘I’m going to go back to Cimmura and disembowel Annias,’ he grated, ‘with a dull knife.’
The disreputable little physician suddenly looked interested. ‘You do it this way,’ he suggested. ‘Make a lateral incision just below the navel. Then kick him over backwards. Everything ought to fall out at that point.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No charge. If you’re going to do something, do it right. I take it that this Annias person is the one you think was responsible?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Go ahead and kill him then. I despise a poisoner.’
‘Is there an antidote for this poison?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘None that I know of. I’d suggest talking with several physicians I know in Cippria, but your friend will be dead before you could get back.’
‘No,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘She’s being sustained.’
‘I’d like to know how you managed that.’
‘The lady is Styric,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘She has access to certain unusual things.’
‘Magic? Does that really work?’
‘At times, yes.’
‘All right, then. Maybe you do have time.’ The seedy-looking doctor ripped a corner off one of the papers on his desk and dipped a quill into a nearly dry inkpot. ‘The first two names here are those of a couple of fairly adept physicians in Cippria,’ he said as he scrawled on the paper. ‘This last one is the name of the poison.’ He handed the paper to Sparhawk. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Now get out of here so I can continue what I was doing before you kicked in my door.’
‘Because you don’t look like Rendors,’ Sparhawk told them. ‘Foreigners attract a great deal of attention there – usually unfriendly. I can pass for a native in Cippria. So can Kurik. Rendorish women wear veils, so Sephrenia’s appearance won’t be a problem. The rest of you are going to have to stay behind.’
They were gathered in a large room on the upper floor of the inn near the university. The room was bare with only a few benches along the walls and no curtains at the narrow window. Sparhawk had reported what the tipsy physician had said and the fact that Martel had attempted subterfuge this time rather than a physical confrontation.
‘We could put something on our hair to change the colour,’ Kalten protested. ‘Wouldn’t that get us by?’