Chapter 18: Compulsion

The house was even more impressive on the inside than on the outside.

Not only was it a two-story building, which was impressive in itself, but each floor, Dina thought, could have housed three whole families. There was a kitchen separate from the dining area, a library, multiple storage rooms, a guest room, and even two dedicated bedrooms—one for the Councilman and his wife, and another for their eight-year-old son.

Apparently, sitting at the Count’s table in Realmshield came with certain privileges.

“Please, Dark Flame. Eat.”

Councilman Ranhoff made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the buffet in front of her. There were figs and watermelons from the Nimean Compact, strawberries from the eastern Empire, grilled quail and smoked pheasant from the forests surrounding Terynia, and oysters from the Sea of Pearls. There were even small bowls of boiled rice from the Derimar rainforests.

Dina didn’t know how the Councilman had gotten hold of the latter, whether through indirect trade via the Compact or as spoils from the incursion, but she didn’t care. The chance to sample such a delicacy was far too rare to pass up.

Not to mention that gluttony, although strictly not one of the eleven sacraments, was still looked upon favorably by the gods of the world.

Still, she was a healer first and foremost. She had a job to do here.

“Don’t you want me to treat your wife as soon as possible, Councilman?”

There was a faint smile on his face when he answered. “She’s resting comfortably now. One more hour won’t make a difference. Patera’s Dark Flame should get her due.”

True enough, Dina thought. So this was part of the payment, a way to increase his chances with the god of healing. She didn’t mind, as long as she got paid in talons as well. And if he was anything like her usual clientele, he was probably a bit nervous about the procedure. It was natural to want to postpone it as long as possible.

“And the sacrifice?” she asked.

“It’s been prepared. My servant is tending to it now,” the Councilman explained, indicating the doorway to their left with his hand. “It’s perfectly healthy and has been getting the best food and care we can give it.”

In that case, Dina was satisfied. And in the back of her mind, she could feel that Patera was, too.

She continued to eat, sampling everything from the table that looked even remotely palatable, and a few things that weren’t. There was little substance to their conversation, however. The Councilman was keenly aware that a Dark Flame of Patera would find his daily world utterly unimportant, and he didn’t want to risk annoying her by talking about politics or the gentry. And he, in turn, knew precious little about the affairs of the gods.

At the end of the meal, he brought Dina upstairs to the bedroom, where his wife rested in an opulent bed dressed with white silken sheets. Just before they entered the room, the Councilman’s son ran up to his father and threw his arms around him.

“Will Mommy get better now?” the boy asked, his voice filled with a mix of fear and hope as he turned his head to glance at Dina.

Councilman Ranhoff held him tightly, stroking his red hair.

“In only a few minutes she’ll be just like before,” he said in a low voice. “Go to your room. I’ll come get you when she’s healed.”

The little boy stuck his head through the doorway to take a last peek at his mother before leaving. She turned toward him and offered a weak smile. The woman’s face was ashen, slick with a sheen of cold sweat.

She doesn’t have much time left, Dina thought. We’d better get started now, or he’ll never get to hug his mother again.

The boy returned to his own room, closing the door behind him. His father didn’t want him to see what was to come. The taking of a sacrificial life was not a pretty sight to behold, even for an adult. In a few minutes, the master bedroom would certainly not be a place for a child.

The Councilman indicated a large, comfortable chair next to the bed. It was made with fine leather and stuffed with eiderdown. When Dina sat down in it, the seat made a soft, creaking sound as it adjusted to her weight. It smelled faintly musky and a little smoky, but not in an unpleasant way. She welcomed the diversion from the sickly-sweet odour that hung in the air.

Next to the chair stood a small table made from dark, imported mahogany and held together by elaborate bronze fittings. On top of it sat an ornamented bowl, filled to the brim with coins.

And on the other side, tied to the bedpost, stood a beautiful, young goat.

Patera, and her Dark Flame, had gotten their dues.

Everything was in order.

“You’re familiar with what ails her?” Councilman Ranhoff asked.

She was. Gangrene was, sadly, not that uncommon. Not that she really needed to be familiar with the disease to treat it. Patera’s dark magic was powerful enough to heal the woman even if she hadn’t been.

“Of course,” she said. “This will be all over in a minute. Just relax.”

Closing her eyes, Dina began to recite the incantations needed to gift the living to Patera in exchange for the health of the Councilman’s wife. In her mind, she could feel her god’s approval of the sacrifice and her glee at being allowed to extinguish yet another life.

Still, there was something different here this time, though Dina couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Not wanting to break her concentration, she pushed the thought away.

A short while later, when Dina opened her eyes again, the noblewoman sat up in her bed with a wide smile on her face, touching the leg that had been infected and necrotic only minutes earlier.

“How do you feel?” Dina asked. “Any dizziness? Nausea?”

“I feel fine. None,” the Councilman’s wife answered. “No, I feel great. Thank you, Dark Flame! Oh, thank you, Patera, my lord and god!”

That’s when Dina noticed something she had not expected.

The goat was still standing there, tied to the bedpost.

And still in perfect health.

Councilman Ranhoff turned his head toward the doorway.

“Son!” he shouted, his happiness evident in his voice. “Son, come and give your mother a hug! The Dark Flame has healed her!”

For a few seconds, nothing happened. There was no sound from the boy’s room.

“Son?”

The Councilman rose from his chair and walked out the door into the hallway. Slowly, he opened the door to the other bedroom.

“Son?”

The scream of despair that followed would haunt Dina for the rest of her life.

* * *

She had her table set up on the cobblestones of Archduke Tardovich Square, just outside the Grand Council Chamber of Realmshield. This was the center of commerce in the northeastern Empire, and today, Dina could have her pick of patients.

Despite what had happened the day before, she would be staying with the Ranhoffs for the rest of the week, sleeping in their guest room and eating their food.

The conversations at the dinner table had been strained, to say the least. Quite obviously, the last thing the pair wanted now was to sit across from—and entertain—her.

Truth be told, that was the last thing Dina wanted, too. She’d much rather have moved on from Realmshield and forgotten the whole thing. But a contract was a contract. As part of the payment for the healing, Count Ranhoff had offered her lodging for several days in addition to the money she had been promised, and now there was no way for either of them to change the terms. You simply didn’t back out of a deal with the god of torture.

So Dina sat at their table, ate their food, and tried to think of the least offensive things she could possibly say to them. She was sure the Ranhoffs were doing the same. The conversations were short, strained, and utterly meaningless, as both sides counted the days until she would leave.

The patients lining up in front of her table in the square were perhaps a bit less enthusiastic than usual, but that had little impact on her business. If you were dying from pneumonia, you didn’t care much that a rich nobleman had lost his son to the gods. Still, she could hear in the voices of those seeking her services that day that there was an element of fear in the air.

Suddenly, she froze. In the middle of the crowd of people milling about the square, and just to the right of the queue to her booth, stood a small woman wearing a hooded gray cloak.

The same woman she had seen praying at the back of the crowd in Deercall.

And she was looking straight at Dina.

Looking away, the Dark Flame did her best to pretend she hadn’t noticed her. When she tried to spot her again, out of the corner of her eye, the hooded woman was gone.

It had all been over in a few seconds, and if she hadn’t felt nauseated from Patera’s obvious disapproval of the stranger, Dina would have chalked the whole thing up to her imagination. Her entire visit to Realmshield had been uncomfortable from the start, so it wouldn’t have been unreasonable if she had begun to see things that weren’t there.

But the woman had been real. And she had been quietly observing Dina from afar. Was that why she had been in Deercall, too?

“Hello.”

The voice startled her, disrupting her thoughts. She looked up to see yet another woman. This one was middle-aged, dressed in a brown coat and wearing a simple, green headscarf, and standing right in front of her table.

“Good morning,” Dina greeted her in return. “How can I help you?”

The woman seemed quite nervous. No surprise there, Dina thought darkly.

“Hello,” the woman said again, fidgeting with her headscarf. “I’m a Flow Walker, here from Miller’s Fall. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute?”

Dina nodded. “Of course. What ails you?”

“No, no, you misunderstand,” the Flow Walker said, shaking her head. “I just want to talk to you.”

That was a little unusual. But then again, her whole visit here had been like that.

“Go on,” she said, not sure that was such a good idea, but also not wanting to dismiss the woman in case what she had to say really was important.

“I was going into the city today to buy alchemical ingredients,” the Flow Walker explained. “And when I saw you, I thought to myself that you probably have some of what I need. I was wondering if perhaps I could take a look at them?”

Dina didn’t usually sell her potions. She needed them for her own business. But the nervous appearance of the woman intrigued her. Rather than encouraging her to go to the nearest alchemical shop instead, Dina allowed the Flow Walker to sit down and browse through the bottles and jars sitting on the cloth on top of her table.

The woman seemed genuinely interested in the brews. The tension in her shoulders softened as she lifted each bottle into the sunlight, inspecting them one by one.

It did, however, come back as soon as she opened her mouth to speak to Dina again.

“I was wondering if you had any Terynian Purple?” she asked, referring to the strong, and very rare coloring agent extracted from sea snails caught in the Sea of Pearls, which by decree of the Lion could only be traded in Terynia.

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Dina explained. She colored her potions only seldom, and even when she did, she couldn’t afford such expensive pigments. And she definitely couldn’t sell them here.

“Maybe you should,” the Flow Walker said, wringing her hands nervously. “Should go to Terynia to buy some, I mean. So you have them. When you need them, I mean.”

Dina shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not really what I do. And I do my business here, in the east, not in the capital.”

Her refusal seemed to agitate the woman further.

“No, no,” she said—almost cried—“you really should go to Terynia. I think you really should go there today.”

Dina looked at her, trying to figure out what was going on. First, there had been the strange hooded woman silently observing her, and now here was this Flow Walker, apparently terrified of Dina not going to Terynia. Why on Taeron would the woman care where a Dark Flame went? Dina walked where Patera sent her, and her patron god hadn’t said a word about going to the capital.

There seemed to be some urgency to it, too. She didn’t just want Dina to go to Terynia at some unspecified point in the future. The woman wanted her to leave now.

“Why today?” Dina asked, trying to sound casual. It wouldn’t do if the woman suspected she was on to her.

“I don’t know, he didn’t say,” she replied. Realizing what she had just revealed, the Flow Walker changed her tune.

“I meant, I didn’t say. Yet. I didn’t say yet why you should go today. It’s because… It’s because purple is such a wonderful color. You should really be using it more.”

Dina reached to the side of her table and picked up her special kit, a small leather roll-up pouch containing the tools of her trade that she didn’t use when healing her patients. She put it on her display cloth next to her potions and opened it with slow, deliberate motions, revealing the ornamented knives, scalpels, and pliers inside. The tools of her other trade. Tools crafted not to mend what was broken, but instead to induce pain in the most exquisite of ways.

She looked up from her kit, staring at the woman with steel in her eyes.

“Who’s he?” she demanded.

The Flow Walker, fully aware of whom Dina served, desperately tried to come up with an answer she could get away with. Eventually, she seemed to come to the conclusion that the immediate threat Patera’s servant posed was greater than whatever compulsion she was under not to reveal the source of her message.

“He told me not to say,” she said, giving up all pretense. “Or the spirit he sent told me, I mean.”

“Who?”

“Mardocar.”

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods! If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider giving it a like.

Now also available as a free audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/@LordsOfTheStars