which she had soaked in attar of roses, tightly around her face, although the rank scent of decay still filled her nose and Jungs. At the university in Il Aluk she had spent long hours studying anatomy using the human cadavers that were always in great supply in the teeming city. That morning, when she had asked if there was a dead body which she could dissect, the gravedigger had looked at her strangely with his one good eye. Then she had offered him a gold coin for his trouble, and the look had turned from curiosity to greed. Clutching the coin in a dirty hand, he had led her to the charnel house.
Mika pulled back the white pall. The cadaver lay faceup on the stone slab, staring at her with dull eyes. She tried several times to shut his eyelids, but they kept springing back open, no doubt from rigor mortis.
'I do so hate working with someone staring at me,' Mika murmured with a shivery laugh.
With a silver scalpel she made the first incision. After much cutting and sawing, she opened the cadaver's ribcage and removed the organs of his chest-his heart and lungs-which she set on the empty slab behind her. Now she could examine his spine from the ventrum, the belly side of his body. In a small leather-bound notebook she carefully sketched the anatomy of the bones, muscles, and nerves surrounding his spine. If she were to operate on Wort's hunchback, she had to learn such things. Otherwise she might make some dreadful mistake with her scalpel, perhaps paralyzing Wort, or even killing him.
After she finished her drawings, Mika turned the heavy cadaver over on the slab to examine it from the dorsum, the back side. Before continuing, she rested a moment. She pulled a flask of water from her satchel and took a few sips. She had still not recovered entirely from the attack by the animate tree in the forest two days before. Shivering, Mika sipped more water, then put the flask away. She turned to continue her dissection.
The cadaver stared up at her with lifeless eyes.
'That's odd,' she said with a frown. 'I thought I turned you over.' Struggling with the heavy body, she turned the cadaver over on the slab and made an incision down the center of the back. Soon she was busily making more anatomical sketches in her notebook.
A faint sound echoed off the stone walls. Mika paused a moment, listening. Silence. She shrugged and continued sketching. The sound came again-a wet, slapping noise. Slowly, the small hairs on her neck prickling, she turned around. The dead man's heart was beating! She clutched her notebook with white-knuckled hands. The fist- shaped organ lurched across the stone slab, flopping like a dying fish, trailing dark blood.
Mika stared numbly. A choking sound escaped her throat. The smears of blood on the stone made by the beating heart formed letters, spelling out two words: HELP ME. There was a rustling sound behind her. Mika spun around. The cadaver lay faceup on the slab once more. His — dull eyes stared at her with an expression of… anguish.
With a muffled cry, Mika snatched up her satchel and dashed to the door of the charnel house. She gripped the knob and pulled. It was locked. Mika streamed, pounding at the wood, her hands clenched. She could feel the dead man's eyes boring Into her back. Suddenly the door swung open. Mika stumbled forward into fresh air and sunlight. She jerked the handkerchief from her face and took in deep gasping breaths.
'Are you well, milady?' the gravedigger asked, squinting at her with his one eye.She gazed back at the door of the charnel house. The Cadaver she had been dissecting lay facedown on the slab. The heart was no longer moving. Any message it had traced on the stone was now just a smear of blood. Shuddering, she turned to the gravedigger.
'The door,' she said breathlessly. 'It was locked.'
'I'm sorry, milady. I forgot to tell you that the door only opens from the outside.'
Mika stared at him. 'But why?'
The gravedigger fixed her with another peculiar look but did not answer. 'Are you finished, milady?' he asked finally.
She nodded. 'I am now.' Clutching her notebook and satchel, she hastily set off down the street.
In the light and air of the day, Mika felt her fright lifting. Soon she wondered if she hadn't simply imagined it all. It would hardly be unusual after her and Wort's nightmarish encounter with the treant. Relieved by this thought, Mika walked swiftly. She did not want any of the villagers to see her leaving the charnel house. Since Wort had scared away the mob that had accused her of witchcraft, she had been able to practice her craft in peace in Nartok. She didn't want to give anyone cause for starting further dark rumors about her.
When Mika returned to the Black Boar, she found a patient waiting for her in the dingy chamber behind the common room. It was a middle-aged woman, clad in the plain brown dress of a farmer's wife. 'Begging your forgiveness, milady,' the woman said, standing nervously. 'I don't mean to disturb you…'
Mika smiled warmly, trying to put the woman at ease. 'It's no bother.' In truth, she was glad for something to take her mind off the grisly charnel house experience. She stepped into the chamber and set down her satchel. Only then did she notice the farmer's wife was not alone. In a chair in a dim corner sat a young woman. Mika stared in alarm, a hand unconsciously creeping to her breast. Something was terribly wrong with the young woman. Her face was pale and shadowed, and her eyes stared blankly forward-dark, unblinking, and utterly empty. Were it not for the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest, Mika might have thought her dead.
'I hope I've done the right thing in bringing my Alys here,' the peasant woman said in a shaking voice. 'Hannis-that's my husband, you see-Hannis wouldn't like it if he knew I'd come to see you. He says healers are all either charlatans or warlocks, each one worse than the other. Though I love him, sometimes half of what Hannis says is poppycock, and the rest is just plain nonsense.'
Mika knelt down to examine the young woman's face. There was no movement, no expression-no indication that she saw or heard anything at all.
'Do you think… do you think you can help her, milady?'
'I hope so,' Mika answered gravely. 'But tell me, how did this happen?'
Soon Mika knew the whole, sad tale. The mother's name was Marga. She and her husband had woken one morning to find their daughter Alys missing and the window of her bedroom open. They had discovered Alys far out on the moor, shivering and staring with unseeing eyes. At first she had muttered things in a singsong voice…
'Strange things, like dark, eerie poems,' Marga said sorrowfully. 'They chilled my blood, they did.'
Gradually Alys had turned utterly silent. Now she seemed neither to hear nor see anything, as if trapped in a waking slumber.
'I believe your daughter is suffering from catatonia,' Mika explained after she had finished her examinations. 'I'm afraid it's a sort of madness, usually brought on by some awful shock.'
'Madness?' Marga gasped. 'Can you possibly heal her, milady?'
'I'm not certain. Sometimes such patients heal themselves.' Mika took a deep breath. 'And sometimes.. She faltered. 'Sometimes they stay this way forever,' Marga finished in a whisper. 'That's what you were going to say, isn't it?' Mika could only nod. She went to a cabinet where she kept packets of herbs, jars of ointments, and other medicines. She returned with a small vial. 'This might help your daughter. It is a distillation of mandrake root. I've used it before in cases of coma or sleeping sickness.' Mika carefully poured some of the elixir into Alys's mouth. Alys screamed. The two woman stared in astonishment. Alys's blindly intent eyes were now focused on something only she could see. Horror twisted her ghost-white visage as her hands clenched into rigid claws. Despite the terror on her face, weird laughter bubbled out of her mouth. She began to chant in a queer, melodic voice:
'Where is my love?
Far under the earth
Crowned by the worms
The mold gives birth. '
'Who is my love?
The scion of Death
Whose kisses drown me
With sweet, cold breath!'
'That's it!' Marga cried. 'That's what she was saying when we found her. Over and over again. That's what she said. What do you think it means?' Mika shook her head. Bracing herself, she knelt before the traumatized young woman. 'Alys,' she said softly. 'Alys, can you hear me?' 'I see him.' Alys's voice was at once whisper and shriek. 'I see him, out my window. He is walking to… to the tower.'
