Blood Soup - Part #1 (Book 1 - Sacrifice)
Kelly A. Harmon
Issue #5 (July 2008)
She rose and walked across the room where her reed basket sat on the linen chest at the foot of the bed. The basket overflowed with the necessities of her trade, brimming with essential oils, fragrant herbs, liniments and salves. Innocuous items. The important bits she kept away from prying eyes at the bottom.
Salvagia rummaged a moment, then retrieved four candle stubs, the bases crusted in something dark; a hollow gourd, motley green and yellow stripes dulled with age; a leather bladder, new compared to the other items; and a small, bone-handled knife. The contents of the gourd rattled as Salvagia crossed the room to return to Piacenza.
The nurse knelt again at the side of the tub and set the four candles in a diamond shape on the flagstones and lighted them west, east, south, then north. The queen dropped her arm over the lip of the tub, her fingers drooping over the tableau. Thin white scars decorated the tips of her red, swollen fingers. Atop the scars, slender red lines of barely healed wounds pulsed in the firelight. Salvagia grabbed each finger in turn, tightening the pressure until blood flowed hot and tight to the tip, then sliced the tender skin.
Piacenza stiffened with the first cut, but didn’t cry out, even when Salvagia milked the ravaged fingers, pumping more blood onto the knife. Salvagia carried the blood first to the west candle, then east, then south and north, smearing the sanguinary fluid at each base. Then, she laid the knife aside and opened the gourd, spilling the bones around the diamond. She’d brought these runes with her from Omero when she’d accompanied Piacenza to the mountains to marry her prince. But their accuracy failed her once they’d arrived. She included their presence in the rite lest they get jealous; away from this place they would work again, unless peeved.
The new runes, culled from the spine of a stillborn lamb, the base of this province’s economy, were required here to work the mallochio, the sorcery. And in the six months she and Piacenza had performed this rite, the same message appeared no matter how many times she cast. The magic was strong here on this mountain aerie.
Salvagia untied the dark, leather pouch containing the etched lamb’s bones and poured them into her hands, rolling them round and round.
“What is it you wish to know?” she said to Piacenza.
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