Water Of Life

“Shouldn’t I be looking into the man who means to hire me, too? An unscrupulous employer who doesn’t keep his promises would be a nuisance.”

“…”

“While I was going through the relevant records I turned up the oracle from seven years ago. Black blood shall be the ruin of House Paragon… And not long after that you turned your back on the house, I see.”

“Because I could not make myself a burden to my brother.”

“Hmph. Aren’t we the devoted brother.”

Hamel smoothed the trailing cuff of his robe and snapped his fingers. Three or four medicine bottles came whipping out of the display cabinet and fell into line beside the brass bowl on the long desk, their stoppers pulling themselves free one after another, pop, pop, pop.

“How much do you know about the temple and the oracles.”

“I know what everyone knows.”

“An atheist, then.”

He was closer to an agnostic, but he did not elaborate. Hamel went on.

“An oracle is a god’s ambiguous language translated into human words. Which means the translator’s reading is bound to get into it, and the listener’s own bias colors it as well. How accurate do you suppose a language is that reaches you refracted twice over?”

“…”

“Unless one happens to be devout, of course.”

“…”

“I’ve heard a little about the remarkable brotherly affection of the Paragons, too. Elrod Paragon took you in, half-brother though you were, so they say. One can’t know the inner story without looking closely. But going by nothing more than the fact that you went so far as to fetch a magic tutor for your niece, left all alone — well.”

“Let’s get to the point.”

“My point is that in the end you had a guilty conscience.”

Keith opened his mouth and closed it again.

“A lowborn child born out of wedlock is going to bring the house down? Had I been Elrod Paragon, I would have begun by rooting out whether someone had not put that damned oracle up to it. Don’t tell me the possibility never once occurred to you. You know far better than I how many men there are who turn an oracle to politics.”

“…”

“And yet you left the castle a bare three days after the oracle came down. So I gave it some thought. What if that oracle had touched the very thing you yourself could not stop obsessing over? Hold on. Black blood, is it… The usage is dead now, but in the old days black blood carried another meaning as well.”

“…Half-demon.”

The word leaked out between his thin lips like a sob. His heart, swollen taut with tension, seemed to subside, slowly and gently. The pleasure of the leak swept lightly through him, and his shoulders shook with excitement.

“So you let that rumor slip in order to bait me. Reckoning that if I really were a half-demon I would come to you, the man who studies demonology.”

“That’s right. A half-demon’s life is hardly likely to be an easy one.”

“…Let’s do it this way.”

Keith held up his index finger to draw the mage’s attention.

“I will turn a blind eye to your unethical research. And where demonology is concerned, I will see to it that no one so much as breathes a word.”

“And?”

“Share your results with me.”

“Share the knowledge, you say.”

Knowledge was the one thing Hamel revered, so by his reckoning this bargain could not possibly be struck. But Keith, quite unruffled by that sidelong reaction, merely added a further condition.

“With no more than that—”

“I will be your specimen.”

“…What?”

“A living half-demon will be hard to come by. We do not disclose what we are.”

“…”

“I would like you to make a medicine that lets a human endure demonic energy.”

“Hm.”

Hamel’s ears pricked up at the temptation, but he bit down on his lower lip to keep the sour look on his face.

“I know why the temple holds demonology taboo. But down in the labyrinths, treasures with all the demons’ advanced craft concentrated in them lie buried, rotting where they are. Study those, and the advance of technology would be pulled forward by a hundred years.”

“An opinion the Inquisitors would just love.”

“And one that any mage who reveres knowledge would light up at.”

“Is that what you think?”

For the first time since setting foot in the room, Keith drew the line of his mouth into a soft curve.

“I guarantee it.”

A guarantee, is it.

Hamel stroked his chin and made a show of deliberating. But Keith did not waver in the slightest, and the mage gave it up, all the steam gone out of him.

“Very well.”

He hopped down from the high chair, and as he moved, the small bottles standing in their row lifted into the air, tipped over at an angle, and poured their many-colored contents into the hollow of the brass bowl.

— Bubble-bubble…

The mixture, gone the color of boiled-down sugar, began to bubble and foam. Keith, who had been sitting bolt upright, leaned further and further forward without realizing it.

“What… is that?”

“Your water of life.”

“Pardon?”

With a single jerk of his chin, Hamel put the bottles away in order and floated the brass bowl up into the air. It moved as smoothly as something sliding down a slope of ice and came to a stop in front of Keith’s chest.

“Drink.”

“…”

“What, afraid it’s poison?”

“It isn’t that, but the smell is rather…”

Ironically enough, the ‘water of life’ gave off the stink of a beast’s rotted carcass. The smell stabbed at his nose like a gouging awl, and Keith swallowed down the nausea rising in him.

“If you mean to dawdle like that, then don’t drink it at all. Honestly. A precious thing like this, and…”

Hamel clicked his tongue, tsk, tsk, as though thoroughly displeased.

In the end Keith squeezed his eyes shut and took the brass bowl out of the air in both hands. He let out a short breath and swallowed the draught down fast, gulp after gulp.

Hamel nodded, well pleased.

“That’s it. Drinks it down nicely, doesn’t he.”

“Ulp…”

Keith’s insides swarmed, and he shot to his feet. Swaying, he set the brass bowl down on the table with a clack and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His knees were still shaking.

“Th— kaff, what does it do?”

“It should ease your condition.”

Hamel said it with a serious face.

“However long demonology has been held taboo, it can’t erase the existence of half-demons themselves. Just as you are standing plainly alive in front of my eyes.”

“…”

“I know for a fact that half-demons suffer both bodily and mental pain. Honestly, I can’t guarantee how much effect it will have, but it won’t fail to help.”

Something hot came welling up in his chest. The pain he lived with was nothing short of an incurable disease. That no medicine worked on it, he could bear; he had only to give up and live with it. But being able to tell no one of that pain was another suffering entirely, the kind that leaves a person festering from the inside.

“Ahem.”

Hamel, who had been keeping his distance, cleared his throat and stepped a pace closer. He patted Keith’s shoulder, far above him, as though in encouragement.

“Poor thing.”

“…”

“See that you come once a week from now on.”

“…I understand. And thank you.”

“No need for thanks. It’s payment for keeping my mouth shut.”

As though he had never once offered comfort to anyone in his life, Hamel spun around and threw the words out in a tone of pure annoyance.

“Now go.”

“Before that… what is that sky-blue potion?”

Keith, who had been hesitating, pointed at the aquamarine vial. Then he added, rambling lamely on,

“It looks like the eyes of someone I know… simply out of curiosity, nothing more…”

“Someone you know, who. Your lover?”

“…”

That a man in a publicly declared romance should turn bashful might strike some people as ridiculous posturing, but to a hundred-year-old man it felt rather endearing.

Ah, youth. That was the feeling of it.

“That’s for coloring.”

“Pardon?”

“It has no efficacy of its own. Take it with you if you like.”

“Th— then. If you would…”

A palm-sized container came flying over. Keith took it, bowed in silence, and went down the stairs.

“…”

Only after the door had opened and shut, and the heavy footsteps had receded a good way, did Hamel call the communication orb over from among the things in the display cabinet. The dove was smaller and blacker than Keith’s. When he tapped its little head, a gloss came into the seed-like eyes and the beak began to clack.

“So he came and went?”