The Taker-Taker 1 Read online

  “Cover your ears and be sharp about it, or you will be the worse for it,” he instructed Adair. Then he pantomimed for Marguerite to pull, which she did, throwing all her weight into one jerking movement. Despite having his hands clasped tight over his ears, Adair swore he heard a muffled noise erupt from the plant as it was ripped from the ground. Adair looked at the physic and lowered his hands, feeling conspicuous.

  Marguerite trotted up like a dog following its master, carrying the plant in her hands. The physic took it from her, brushing away the dirt clinging to the hair roots. “Do you know what this is?” he asked Adair as he inspected the thick, five-pointed knob, bigger than the span of a man’s hand. “This is a mandrake root. See how it’s shaped like a man? Here are the arms, the legs, the head. Did you hear it scream just now, as it was pulled from the ground? The sound will kill any man who hears it.” The physic shook the root at Adair. It did look like a stubby, misshapen man. “This is what you need to do to gather more mandrake root—remember this well when I send you out for more. Some physics use a pure black dog to pull up the root, but the dog will die when he hears the scream, like any man. We don’t have to bother with killing dogs since we have Marguerite, do we?”

  Adair didn’t like that the physic had included him in his comment about Marguerite. He wondered, ashamed, if the old man knew about their trysts and condoned Adair’s casual treatment of her. Indeed, the physic might liken it to his own brusque treatment of the housekeeper, using her like an ox to pull a stump from a field, and, though she was deaf and dumb, he clearly had so little regard for human life that it didn’t matter to him if she lived or died by pulling out the root. Of course, it was possible that the mandrake’s shriek wouldn’t really kill her even if she had been able to hear it, and that the old man had only told Adair the story to frighten him. But Adair filed the tidbit of knowledge about the mandrake away in his memory, with the other morsels of wisdom the physic had shared with him, for use another day.

  What little enjoyment Adair took from his new life began to fade as he grew increasingly unhappy with his solitary routine. Boredom gave way to curiosity. He made a thorough inspection of the bottles and jars in the physic’s study, then took inventory of the wider room, until he knew every inch of the upper floor of the keep. He had enough common sense not to venture into the cellar.

  Without asking the physic’s permission, Adair started taking the horse on afternoon rides into the countryside. He reasoned that it was good for the horse to be exercised between the physic’s infrequent rides. But sometimes, when he’d put many miles between him and the keep, a voice would tempt him to flee, to keep riding and never return. After all, how would that old man find Adair without a horse to carry him? However, Adair also knew that with the time that had elapsed since he’d arrived at the keep, he wouldn’t be able to find his family, and without a family to return to, there was no point in leaving. Here he had food and shelter. If he ran away, he’d have nothing and would be a fugitive for the time he still owed the physic. After a long moment looking at any road that led away from his prison, he would reluctantly turn the horse around and ride back to the keep.

  Over time, Adair thought the physic was beginning to warm to him. At night as they worked on a potion, he’d catch the old man staring at him less harshly than usual. The physic started to tell Adair a little bit about the things in the jars as he crushed dried seeds or separated the herbs for storage, such as the names of the more obscure plants and how they might be put to use. There was to be a second visit to the castle over which the old man was practically ebullient, rubbing his hands as he paced around the keep.

  “We have a new order from the count, for which we shall start preparations tonight,” he chortled, as Adair hung up the old man’s cloak on a peg by the door.

  “Start what, master?” Adair asked.

  “A special request from the count. A very difficult task, but one I have performed before.” He scurried back and forth across the timber floor, gathering jars of ingredients on the worktable. “Fetch the large cauldron, and build up the fire—it has almost gone out.”

  Adair watched from the hearth. First, the physic selected a sheet from his handwritten recipes and read it over quickly before propping it against a jar to consult. He glanced at the paper from time to time as he measured ingredients into the warming pot. He took down things from the shelves that he’d never troubled with before: mysterious bits of animals—snouts, leathery pieces of skin, mummified nubs of flesh. Powders, shiny crystals of white and copper. He poured in an exact amount of water, and then had Adair hang the heavy pot from the spit. As the water began to boil, the physic took a handful of yellow powder from a vial and threw it on the fire: it flamed in a puff of smoke, emitting the unmistakable stench of brimstone.

  “I’ve never seen this mixture before, have I, master?” Adair asked.

  “No, you have not.” He paused. “It is a potion that makes anyone who drinks it invisible.” He searched Adair’s face for a reaction. “What do you think of that, boy? Do you believe that can truly happen?”

  “I have never heard of such a thing.” He knew better than to disagree with the old man.

  “Perhaps you will get to see it with your own eyes. The count will have some of his best men drink this potion, and they will become invisible for one night. Can you imagine what an army can do when it cannot be seen?”

  “Yes, master,” Adair replied, and from that moment, he began to think of the physic’s spells and potions in a different way.

  “Now, you must watch this cauldron, and let the water boil down, as you have done before. When it has boiled down, you must take it off the fire and let it cool. When you’ve done that, you may go to sleep, but not before. These ingredients are rare, and that is the last of a few of them, so we cannot afford to ruin this batch. Watch the pot carefully,” he said over his shoulder as he descended the staircase. “I will see how well you’ve done at dusk tonight.”

  Adair had no trouble staying awake that night. He sat bolt upright against the hard stone wall, realizing that the old man had lied to him and his father. The old man was not a physic, but an alchemist, maybe a necromancer. No wonder the people in the village avoided him. It wasn’t just because of the turncoat noble. They were frightened of the old man, and with good reason: he was very likely in league with the devil. God knew what they suspected of Adair.

  This potion was not like the previous ones and took forever to shed its moisture. Dawn started to break before an appreciable amount had evaporated. But through the last hours of the night, as he watched a slow vapor rise from the cauldron’s depths, Adair’s gaze kept wandering back to the stack of handwritten papers on the desk. Surely there were formulas in that pile more intriguing—and more profitable—than the ability to turn men invisible for one night. The old man probably knew how to make fail-safe love potions and talismans to bring great wealth and power to the owner. And surely any alchemist should know how to turn base metal into gold. Even though Adair couldn’t read the recipes, he didn’t doubt that he could find someone who would, for a piece of the profits.

  The longer he thought about it, the more restless he became. He could hide the papers in the sleeve of his tunic and sneak past Marguerite, who would rise at any minute. Then he’d walk all day and get as far from the keep as he could. He thought fleetingly about taking the horse, but there his courage failed. To steal property as valuable as a horse was a death offense. The old man could justifiably seek Adair’s life. But the recipes … even if the old man could track his servant down, he probably wouldn’t dare take Adair before the count. The physic wouldn’t want the villagers to know how powerful he really was, or that his mystical knowledge was written down where it could be stolen or destroyed.

  Adair’s heart pounded, until he could no longer ignore its wild exhortation. It was almost a relief, giving in to this desire.

  Adair tightly rolled as many papers as he dared take at once and slid them up his sleev
e just as Marguerite began stirring. Before leaving, he hoisted the cauldron off the spit and left it to cool on the hearth. Once outside, he chose a path he knew, one that would take him to Hungarian territory, to a stronghold where Romanian sympathizers would hesitate to go. He walked for hours, cursing his impetuousness, for he hadn’t thought to bring provisions. When he started to get light-headed, and the sun had started to slip on the horizon, Adair figured he’d traveled far enough and took refuge in a barn in the middle of a hayfield. It was a desolate place with nothing about, not even livestock, so Adair felt he’d traveled a safe distance and no one would search for him here. He fell asleep in the hay a free man.

  He was jarred awake by a hand at his throat, jerking him to his feet and then, inexplicably, off the ground. Adair couldn’t see at first who had him, the air thick with night, but as his eyes adjusted, he refused to believe them. The figure holding him was slight … wizened … but in less than a minute Adair knew it was the old man by the smell of him, the stink of brimstone and decay.

  “Thief! This is how you reward my patronage and trust?” the physic roared with outrage, and threw Adair to the ground with such force that he skidded all the way to the back of the barn. Before he could regain his breath, the old man was on him again, clutching him by the shoulder and again lifting him off the ground. Adair was aflame with pain and confusion: the physic was ancient, how could a weak old man lift him so easily? It had to be an illusion, or a fantasy induced by a blow to the head. Adair had only a minute to ponder this before the old man threw him to the ground a second time, then began hitting and kicking him. The blows were tremendously powerful. Adair’s head chattered in pain, and he was sure he would black out. He felt himself carried, felt the movement of air all around. They were traveling at a great rate of speed, by horseback, but it seemed unlikely that the old charger would be capable of such speed. Surely it must all be a delusion, he told himself, produced by some elixir the old man had forced on him in his sleep. It was too magical and frightening to be real.

  Still in a stupor, Adair felt the air slow, their bodies again take on a human weight. Then the smells came to him: the musty dankness of the keep, the residue of burning herbs and brimstone hanging in the air. He felt curdled with fear. Dropping to the floor, he opened his eyes a crack and was crushed to see that he was indeed back in the keep, returned to his prison.

  The old man walked toward him. He had changed: perhaps it was a trick of angle and perception, but he seemed tall and foreboding, not the old physic at all. The physic’s hand snaked out for the poker, and then he leaned over to fish the ratty blanket from Adair’s straw pallet. Slowly, deliberately, he wound the blanket around the poker as he advanced on Adair.

  Adair watched the arm rise, but averted his gaze as the poker came down. The blanket cushioned the blow, kept the iron from breaking the boy’s bones outright. But the blows were like nothing he’d felt before, not the punches and slaps he’d endured from his father, not like willow switches or the lash of a leather strap. The iron bar compressed muscle, smashed the flesh until the bar came in contact with bone. It came down again and again, across his back, shoulders, and spine. He rolled to escape the blows, but the weapon caught him anyway, striking his ribs, his stomach, his legs. Soon Adair was beyond pain, no longer able to move or even to flinch as the poker continued to rain down. It hurt to breathe; white-hot lashings of flame laced his sides with every breath, his insides awash in runny, hot liquid. He was dying. The old man was going to beat him to death.

  “I could cut off your hand, you know, that is the punishment for thieves. But what good would you be to me then, with only one hand?” The physic stood upright stiffly, throwing the poker to the floor. “Maybe I’ll chop off your hand when your service is over, so that everyone will know what you are. Or perhaps I won’t release you, when your seven years are over. Perhaps I’ll take another seven years, as punishment for your crime. How could you ever think you’d escape me, and steal from me what is mine?”

  His words made little difference. The old man was deluded, Adair decided, to think his servant would live. He’d not see the sunrise, let alone seven years. Hot liquid worked its way around his intestines and organs, up Adair’s throat, into his mouth. Blood seeped over his lips and onto the wooden floor, oozing toward the old man’s feet in a dark, trickling stream. Blood was escaping from every orifice in Adair’s body.

  Adair’s eyes flickered. The old man had stopped talking and was staring at him again in that intense way of his. He began creeping on the floor toward the boy, like a snake or lizard, close to the ground, until he was very near Adair, his mouth open, his tongue inching forward, straining. He took one long, bony finger and dipped it in the stream of blood flowing from Adair’s mouth. A long red trail dribbled down his finger as he brought it to his face and wiped it over his tongue. He rolled his tongue in his mouth and a faint, excited sigh passed over his lips. At that point, Adair passed out and was relieved for it. But the last thing he discerned, as consciousness left for what he was sure would be the last time, was the old man’s fingers stroking the side of his face, and running through Adair’s sweat-soaked hair.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Marguerite found Adair in the morning in a terrible state. In the night, his body had prepared for death: his bowels evacuated, his blood-soaked clothing had stuck to the floor so stubbornly that the housekeeper had to swab the spot with rags steeped in warm water to pry him loose.

  He lay on his straw pallet, unconscious, for several days, and when he awoke, he found he was covered with large patches of black and violet edged with yellow and green, his skin hot and tender to the touch. But somehow Marguerite had cleaned away all outward traces of blood and dressed him in a fresh linen nightshirt.

  Adair drifted in and out of consciousness, his thoughts incoherent as they danced in his head. In the worst of the twilight moments, he imagined someone was touching him, that fingertips glided over his face and lips. Another time he fancied he was being rolled onto his stomach and his clothing disturbed. The latter could be explained if Marguerite was cleaning him, as he was unable to move with sufficient coordination to use the chamber pot. Incapacitated, he couldn’t move or resist, could do nothing but accept this violation, real or imagined.

  Smell was the first sense to return and then taste, the tang of iron from blood and the unctuousness of beef tallow. Once his eyes opened—and it took a few moments for his vision to focus and to be assured that he hadn’t lost his sight—his surroundings became real again and the sensation of pain came back to him. His ribs ached, his gut went wobbly and loose, and every breath stabbed into splintered ribs. With pain came his voice. He flailed at the blanket, attempting futilely to rise.

  Marguerite hurried to his side and felt Adair’s forehead, and flexed his feet and hands, looking for signs of discomfort that foretold broken bones, to see which parts he could move by himself and which parts were injured. After all, what good was a laborer without the use of arms or legs?

  She fetched broth and then ignored Adair for the rest of the afternoon while she moved through her chores. He had no alternative but to stare at the ceiling and watch time mark its passage as a square of sunlight working its way down the wall, counting off the hours until nightfall when the old man would awaken. Adair spent the time in fearful anticipation: it would have been better to have died that night, Adair decided, than to awake trapped in a wrecked body. How long would it take to recover, he wondered: Would he be whole when his bones had mended? Would the parts mesh correctly? Would he limp or be hunchbacked? At least his face seemed free of scar or disfiguration: the old man had spared his head—had he struck it with a poker, he would have split Adair’s skull open.

  When the square of light faded, signaling the end of daylight, Adair knew his time had run out. He decided to pretend to be asleep. Marguerite, too, sensed a confrontation was near and she tried to hurriedly prepare for bed as the old man came up the stairs, but the physic interrupted her, catch
ing her arm and pointing toward Adair’s bed inquisitively. But she had seen Adair close his eyes and settle into a pose of unconsciousness, so she only shook her head and withdrew into her bed, pulling a blanket over her shoulder.

  The old man went to Adair’s bed, crouching low. Adair tried to keep his breathing even and calm and to control his trembling, waiting to see what the old man was going to do. He didn’t have to wait long: the old man’s cold, bony hand touched the young man’s cheek, then his Adam’s apple, then slid down his chest, but only briefly before settling on Adair’s flat stomach. He barely touched the bruised spots and yet it was all Adair could do to keep from curling up in pain.

  The hand did not stop, but continued gliding downward: to the abdomen, then lower still, and the shock almost caused Adair to cry out. Somehow he managed to lie stoically while the old man’s fingers found what they were looking for, caressing the irregular piece of flesh, massaging, kneading, coaxing. But before Adair’s manhood could respond, the fingers withdrew, and without a backward look, the old man turned and drifted through the door and into the night.

  The panic was almost enough to cause Adair to leap out of bed despite his condition. He was seized by the urge to flee but could not: he had little control of his arms and his legs were entirely unresponsive. The old man was considerably stronger than he appeared; Adair was defenseless against him in good health, never mind in his current state. He couldn’t even crawl across the room to find a weapon to use to defend himself. Sour with despair, Adair realized there was nothing he could do for himself, not now. He could only endure whatever the physic wished to inflict upon him.

  He passed the days by thinking of the work he’d done for the physic, the elixirs and salves he’d made, wondering if perhaps there might be something there he could use for his defense. Such thoughts were hopeless; though they served to strengthen his memory of the ingredients that went into these powerful things—as well as the proportions and smells and textures—he was still ignorant of their purpose, for all except the one that conferred invisibility.