The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) Read Online Free PDF

was stoic as the time passed and he could do nothing but look upward; he had spent days and days in miserable isolation, unable to control his body or his reactions to the world around him.  It was only the belief that Lady Iasco would be able to heal him that had prevented him from considering whether death would be preferable, something that would have been unthinkable before the terrible accident.
    The traveling group stopped late in the day, more than halfway up the side of the mountain, but not at any of the usual resting places for travelers, so that they were forced to stop at a spot without a built shelter, and set up sleeping arrangements under trees around a campfire.  Not long after the group began to gather wood for their fire, Marco heard Porenn’s voice – which he recognized apart from all others – scream.  He was anxious to find out what the cause of the alarm was, and he didn’t have long to wait.
    Iasco’s face appeared above him seconds later.  “Did you knowingly bring a male companion with you to the island?” she asked, her eyes glittering with a hardness that was not pleasant to witness.
    “He came at my request,” Marco acknowledged, hoping to prevent Glaze from suffering.
    “Bring the boy over here,” Iasco ordered someone, and Glaze’s face appeared among several others in quick order.
    “I asked him to come; it’s my fault,” Marco spoke up.  “I wanted a male companion, and Glaze is my betrothed’s brother.  Don’t punish him,” Marco said.
    “You know our rules,” Iasco replied.
    “And you know how punishing your rules are, how unnatural they are, don’t you?” Marco shot back.  “It doesn’t feel right.
    “But he is here for me, and only because of me, and he’s already here,” he added.
    Iasco pursed her lips, and glared at him.  “Leave the two men together, and the rest of you finish setting up camp,” she ordered brusquely, and the other women scurried away quickly to escape the heat of their leader’s wraith.
    “What happened?” Marco asked when no one else was around.
    “The young one, Porenn, spotted me answering nature’s call,” Glaze said softly, his face turning red.
    One of the women came over later and wordlessly delivered food to the two men, then they were left alone for the remainder of the night.
    The next morning they walked up the rest of the mountain without comment or incident, or any interaction with the others in the group.  They passed another group of women who were coming down the mountains, and by mid-afternoon they reached the summit of the mountain.
    “We will place Marco in the temple, and hold a pray vigil over him every night for seven nights,” Iasco explained to Marco and Glaze when they were settled into the hostel that accompanied the temple.  “A different member of our party will pray over him each night, and we will perform various healing practices during the days.
    “We’ll start with prayers tonight.  I’ll be the intercessor on your behalf tonight, Marco,” Iasco told the two men.  She seemed to have accepted Glaze’s presence, and said no more about it.
    Marco was carried into the temple, and silently laid on top of the altar.  He heard the door close, and the shuffling of feet momentarily, before Lady Iasco’s voice began to murmur from a location nearby.  He felt her hand touch his right hand, the golden hand she had re-attached to his body when he had last been in that very same temple, and he squeezed those fingers around hers, making her gasp.
    “Marco!  Are you healing?” she asked.
    “That hand, the hand that was cut off and then you re-attached, it did not become paralyzed,” he explained.
    “Ah,” she said softly, then began to murmur her prayers to God, calling for healing for Marco.   The disk of sky that Marco could view through the opening in the dome overhead grew red, then darkened, then became the night sky, sprinkled with bright stars, as Iasco’s voice continued to