In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) Read Free Page A

looked down at Jocosa once more.
    For a time he examined her closely. He bent his ear to her mouth and listened to her shallow, sparse breaths. He laid a hand on her brow and measured her fever. He touched her hands and feet and felt the coldness of them. He lifted first one lid and then the other and peered into her blind and staring eyes. He laid a hand on her belly and stood as if listening to some far away voice.
    At last, Euberacon straightened up. “Death has almost found her. There is none of man’s physic that will save her from him.”
    It seemed to Rygehil that the world split in two. “There is nothing you can do?” he heard himself ask.
    “I did not say so. There are things that may be done, but for them, I will demand a price.”
    Whitcomb’s remark about souls came echoing back to Rygehil. “What price?”
    Euberacon smiled his thin smile. “Compose yourself. I am not the Devil. I have no interest in souls in that way.” Rygehil wanted to bridle at that, but he looked again at Jocosa, pale and still in the firelight and did not dare.
    “Your wife carries a daughter in her womb. I claim the life of the child in return for the life of the woman.”
    Rygehil opened his mouth to say ‘How do you know? How dare you? What manner of man are you?’ But he looked again at the room with its jars and mortars and nameless shadows. This stranger who asked for the life of his child. His child who waited within his wife …
    His wife who would die, and presently. He felt it as he felt the blood and fear roaring through his veins. What was one child? They would have a dozen. One girl to be given in years to come? There were many solutions that could be found before then. This man, this sorcerer, might be satisfied with gold or land or some servant woman. It was nothing, this promise now. It was everything. It was Jocosa’s life.
    “If that is the price, I will pay.”
    Euberacon’s dark eyes glittered. “Very well then.”
    The sorcerer melted into the shadows and returned with a piece of parchment. He spread it out on one of the work tables. From overhead, he selected a gourd and untied the thong that held it to the roof beam. He unstoppered the gourd and instantly the room filled with the scents of myrrh and rich resins. He poured some of the powder out into a shallow dish.
    Euberacon picked up a small knife from the table. With one sharp stroke, he scored his own palm. Rygehil gasped. The other man gave him a look bordering on contempt and held his wound over the dish. Bright blood dripped into the powder. From a bundle of plumes on the table, Euberacon plucked up a crow’s ebony feather. With delicate strokes, he mixed the blood and powder into a dark ink. He laid by the crow’s feather and selected the feather of a white swan. With the same knife that had cut his hand, he trimmed the quill into a point. He dipped the pen into the ink Despite the blood, its point came out blacker than Euberacon’s rich robe. The sorcerer bent over the parchment and began to write.
    Rygehil tried to see what words Euberacon laid down, but he could make no sense of the waving lines and dots. He had seen some Hebrew written once and thought it might be that, but it did not look quite right.
    Whatever he wrote, Euberacon was soon finished. He sprinkled sand over his work and brushed it away. Then, he blew gently across it. Apparently satisfied, he reached for a glass beaker that seemed to contain nothing but the purest water. As he stretched out his hand, Rygehil saw his palm. The wound was completely gone.
    Rygehil resisted the urge to cross himself.
It is for Jocosa’s life. Her life
.
    Slowly, carefully, Euberacon poured the water from the glass across the words he had written. He tilted the parchment so the liquid flowed down into a brass bowl. When all the water had crossed all the words, he set beaker and parchment down and picked up the bowl.
    “Hold her head,” he instructed Rygehil. “Open her mouth.”
    Rygehil