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One would think that the great Abramalin could afford a better class of servant, Mircea thought, staring at a knee-length grizzled beard; a dirty loincloth over a scrawny, nut-brown body; and a pair of eyebrows so bushy that they were like little beards all on their own hanging down in front of the man’s eyes.
Mircea couldn’t tell if the creature was staring back because of the eyebeards, but he supposed so. Because a harrumph issued from between unseen lips after a moment, forcefully enough to blow out the regular beard a little. And then the creature turned and went back inside, prompting Mircea to call after him, and try to explain.
And to sound like one of the goats on the way to the abattoir back home, bleating its last, because his lips still didn’t work!
But a moment later, he found himself floating feetfirst through the doorway, into the small room with the tree. Which had all sorts of shelves nailed to its dead trunk, strewn with strange-looking devices and potion bottles and some things that might be shriveled body parts. Mircea felt himself swallow, and wished he’d had the forethought to have the praetor’s servant write him a letter of introduction, not that the creature looked like he could read. . . .
The man lit a little clay lamp, illuminating the rest of the room. And explaining why the shelves were on the tree. Because virtually every other surface—walls, floor, even part of the ceiling—was stacked with books and scrolls and collections of parchment.
The man toddled over with the lamp, and thrust it in Mircea’s face. And said something in a language Mircea didn’t know, and couldn’t even identify. And coming from a busy port like Venice, he found that disturbing, all on its own. Like everything so far!
“Do . . . do you speak Italian?” he asked, very carefully, so that his still-numb tongue wouldn’t trip over the words.
“Do I speak Italian?” the man mimicked, and flapped his arms around, like a bird. It caused the lamp to flap, too, and spread dancing shadows everywhere. Mircea stared.
And not just because of the strange mockery or whatever it was. But because the house had only one room, and there was no one else in it. Just a pallet on the floor, a small bench by a wall, where food was obviously prepared, and a wild-eyed hermit.
Who, Mircea was coming to suspect, might not be a servant after all, because the place didn’t look like it had one.
Mircea had been warned that all mages were at least a little mad. He should have thought to wonder where on the spectrum someone who chose to live out in the Egyptian desert, in a tree house, might fall. But he hadn’t, and now he was in the man’s power and the sun was soon to rise, and he didn’t know what to do.
But he knew that he couldn’t go home to Dorina empty-handed.
“I have a little girl,” he blurted, and the man—the mage?—who had been fussing about, fixing breakfast, looked up.
“Liar.”
“What?” Mircea blinked at him.
“You’re a vampire.”
“Yes. But . . . but I wasn’t eleven years ago! Almost twelve now, back when I lived in—but that doesn’t matter; you don’t care where I lived—” Get control of yourself, man! He was babbling, but the creature was listening, or he seemed to be, and Mircea didn’t know how long that would be the case. “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said, trying again. “But she’s dying. My daughter. And I don’t know how to stop it, and neither does anyone I’ve tried—”
“And who have ye tried?” The man took a swig of something from a bottle.
“I live in Venice, so I went to the great healing houses there first—Piloti, Lachesis, and Jalena—”
“Ha! Filthy poisoners. They deal in death, not life, boy!” The shaggy head shook.
Mircea swallowed. “And then to Zoan of Napoli—he didn’t have another name—but I was told—”
“Oh, he had one. His family stripped it from him after the last scam.” The man took another swig. “Toad doctor.”
“What?”
“Picked it up on his travels. Britain, I believe. Hang a bag containing a live toad around an afflicted person’s neck.”
“And . . . and what does that do?”
An eyebeard went up. “Absolutely nothing. Hence the scam.”
“I—”
“And before that, he was selling wool soaked in olive oil, supposedly from the Mount of Olives. Said to cure all sorts of ailments, when coupled with a long-winded story about a soldier named Longinus—”
“—healed of his blindness by the blood of Christ,” Mircea finished, feeling sick.
The old man cackled. “Got you, did he? Ah well. The old tricks are the best tricks.”
