The Exotic Enchanter Read Free Page B

"Please ask your servant to boil water in a clean pot."
    While that was being prepared, Shea stripped the bark from the willow branches, and cut about two dozen small pieces.
    "What are you doing?" Chalmers murmured.
    "Using your synthesis spell to make aspirin, Doc. Mark these, please; the formula is C 9 H 8 0 4 ."
    Chalmers perked up and set to work with his knife, while Shea shredded the rest of the bark. The Rus were quiet, but Shea knew that if this didn't work, the trouble Igor had mentioned would come, with a vengeance.
    A servant, his hands muffled in rawhide, brought in a pot of water. Shea indicated where it should go on the table, a fair distance from Igor. Then he arranged the marked pieces of bark around it, and dropped the rest of the bark into the pot.
    Finally, he and Chalmers stood on either side of the pot, Shea reciting, the older man gesturing.

    "When I consider how my life is spent,
    The time ill-used, the wealth I fling askance
    On fleeting follies tuned to my own bent,
    Or joined with others, dance delusion's dance;
    O Willow! Emblem of the soul's own tears,
    O weep with me, a-pent in mine own snare,
    Yet healing bring, lest prey to mine own fears,
    I fall into the pit of black despair.
    Although thy leaves our dreary truths bespeak,
    Thy bark, now shredded,'s balm to make us whole,
    This bitter draught gives strength, unlike the sweet
    Taste of the mead, to which our strength pays toll.
    Come, prince of drugs! Thy powers unseen, restore
    To all who drink, sobriety once more."

    The atmosphere in the lodge was anything but salubrious, but the spears remained stacked and the swords sheathed. Shea checked the pot; the bark had steeped. He wiped his cup and dipped some out.
    Yeech!! It tasted vile, out warmed his stomach very nicely. In a few minutes he felt his incipient stomachache go away. His head felt clearer than ever.
    He held out the cup to the princess. "The draught, Your Highness."
    All heads turned to her again. She didn't hesitate. "Give him the draught," she ordered. "If he is harmed, you will both be flogged and your eyes burnt out with not irons before you lose your heads."
    She gestured, and Mikhail Sergeivich raised the prince.
    Shea was relieved to see that he was not unconscious, just asleep. He put the cup to Igor's lips; the prince swallowed by reflex. By the time it was empty he had opened his eyes.
    "Gaaaah!" was his first sound, and "Water!" his first word. The water was hastily brought, and the hands which had tightened on swordhilts relaxed a trifle, but did not move. Igor downed a pitcher and part of a second, then looked around, cold sober.
    The hands fell away from the swordhilts. The princess stared.
    "Did you prepare this draught?" Igor asked the psychologists.
    "Yes, Your Highness."
    "It tastes like rotten maresmilk. You bogatyri have stomachs of iron." He smiled broadly. "Mine is only that of prince, but I owe you a boon. Ask what you will."
    "Only that my wife be rescued, Your Highness," Chalmers said, before the princess could recover.
    Igor repeated his previous vow, not as loudly but with more dignity, as well as several embellishments. By the time he had finished, half the room was cheering.
    The prince was also beginning to find company in sobriety. Three or four of the men came up to the table and dipped their cups, and many a respectful, even awed, look was aimed at the strangers.
    Princess Euphrosinia gave them a respectful nod, then turned to the prince. "Let us go to bed, my lord. The morning is wiser than the evening, and there will be much to do."
    Igor offered his arm. "Gladly, my lady," he said, with more than a suggestion of a leer. He escorted her out.

II
    Two days later, Harold Shea and Reed Chalmers were riding with Prince Igor's party eastward to the Don country. It was a fine day for riding, clear and neither too hot nor too cold. The trails, the occasional wide trail that deserved to be called a road, and the stretches of grassland they frequently had