Chapter 10: 10: The Courier's Tale, Part III

- and Colroann oesh Ustlin slumped in his bed, limp and entirely dead.

Endras stared at the body for a few moments before remembering his duty. He knelt beside the bed and checked him - the man who had been utterly alive, to whom he had been speaking at length and in depth, just a few moments earlier - for signs of life. There were none.

He closed Colroann’s eyes, then took out a pocketbook and pen and recorded the time of death to be certified later. Generally, he would have made a note as to the cause of death, but after a few moments’ hesitation, he left that part blank in this case. To be worked out later, if such a thing were possible.

Then, carefully, his fingertips protected by a thin handkerchief, he picked up the flask, set it down on the bedside table, and replaced the stopper, though not without a quick glance at its contents. He didn’t dare look too long, but from the brief sight he got, it looked empty. Still, he had no intention of risking his own safety, so he made sure not to touch it for a moment longer than he had to - not to look too closely, even, in case some of the fatal liquid somehow splashed onto his skin or reached him as improbable vapour.

That done, Endras slumped in an armchair in the corner of the room, rubbing his face. What he had seen was not tremendously remarkable, by most measures. In fact, he reasoned, all that he had really seen was a man drink a substance that had killed him. That was no particularly strange thing. All kinds of substances, mundane and magical, had that power.

Yet he believed what Colroann had said. At least, he thought he did. He believed that Colroann had believed it, and he believed (for some reason he could not name) that Colroann was the sort of man not to believe things without a good reason to think them true.

If this truly were one of the last treasures of Acorton, that alone would make it astonishingly valuable.

And if it truly had the power to cure all diseases, even those beyond the power of both medicine and magic, that too would make it astonishingly, astoundingly, stupefyingly valuable. Albeit of course that it came with incredible risk, but Endras suspected that people would be far more drawn by the potential reward than they would be deterred by the risk. Desperate people had a way of overlooking even the most appalling likelihood of peril - and if they were in need of the kind of healing the flask promised, the kind that could not be given by any other means, they would be desperate.

Endras sat there for some time, thinking all these things and more, in the room of the dead man. Finally, his thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, half-heartedly and out of reflexive politeness more than a genuine desire to invite someone in.

The man who had driven Endras to Ellinton in the carriage entered and looked directly towards the bed, not giving Endras a passing glance. A deep, weary sigh escaped his lips.

“He knew this was the most likely outcome,” said the driver.

Endras glanced up at him. There was a conflicted look on his face: fondness, sadness, perhaps a little relief at the suffering having ended. “You were close?”

“I worked for him for a long time,” the driver said. “He was a good man. Didn’t deserve the illness, but then few people who get sick do.”

The doctor nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

“He’s better off now, I should think.” Another heavy sigh. “I don’t know whether I believe in any of the heavens, but his last few weeks were… not pleasant for him. Wherever he is, or nowhere at all, can’t be much worse.”

A few moments of silence elapsed.

Then both men tried to speak at once.

“I should give you a moment -” said Endras, rising.

“I’ll let you do your job -” the driver said at the same time, pulling the door open.

The two men exchanged the looks of gentle amusement peculiar to people who have just spoken at the same time and have not yet worked out whose job it is to break the stalemate.

Finally, Endras said: “I need to carry out some routine checks. For the paperwork, you understand. Once I’ve done that, we’ll have to call for someone to remove Mr oesh Ustlin to the mortuary, and then I imagine you or his family can make funeral arrangements?”

The driver nodded, gazing at the body of the man he had served.

“So if you’d like a few moments,” Endras continued, “now would be the time, before I begin the necessary processes.” He stood. “Did he have any family? Anyone else who should be notified before the official paperwork is processed?”

“I can arrange all that,” said the driver quietly, still staring at Colroann. “Thank you, Doctor. If I might have that moment…”

“Of course.” Endras bowed his head and left the room.

He closed the door behind him and stood in the corridor, breathing steadily - which took some effort, but he just about managed it.

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Only four or five breaths later, his heart rate was sent leaping upwards once more by an almighty crash from inside Colroann’s room. He flung the door open to see the driver leaping out of the window, shards of glass twinkling razor-sharp in the air around him. Endras rushed to the window, catching himself on the frame before he inadvertently went sailing out too; the driver landed heavily, but had aimed for a soft-soiled bed of flowers. A moment later, the driver was back on his feet and running - running, but without using his arms, as if he were cradling something.

Endras’s eyes snapped to the bedside table.

The flask was gone.

~~~

Doctor Cartiston considered chasing the driver, but thought better of it. Perhaps if he had immediately flung himself out of the window after him, there might have been a chance of catching up, but even a few seconds of hesitation meant that he had no realistic prospect of apprehending the man. Besides, he would have had no idea what to do if he had managed to catch him.

So he carried out his duty as best he could, performing all the required checks on Colroann’s body in accordance with approved procedures. Then he realised that he had been planning to ask the driver to send for someone from the mortuary to collect the body, but of course that was no longer an option, so he looked around the house to see if anyone else was living or working there. He found no signs of anyone.

After collecting the second half of his payment from Colroann’s bedside table, he wandered out into the streets. The carriage was gone.

Endras closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to stave off the oncoming sensation of general despair. He had brought a small briefcase with some basic tools of his trade into the house, but he had also had a larger bag with the things he would need for an overnight stay. That had stayed in the carriage, and so it was gone. Fortunately, nothing of much value had been in it, but this newest misfortune felt almost more painful for being, in the grand scheme of things, trivial. It was as if the universe were saying, “Don’t forget: even when huge things have gone wrong, you can still continue to suffer in small and irritating ways!”

So, after asking a few people for directions, Endras managed to find his way to the mortuary on foot. Then things became normal again as he worked his way through the usual business of dealing with a death, and then he went home again.

~~~

In the years thereafter, Doctor Endras Cartiston did not give much more thought to the matter of Colroann oesh Ustlin and the flask of life and death. It occupied his mind for a few weeks, and then it faded into the past, as things do.

In his middle age, he had the opportunity to make a trip to Acorton, to stand on the edge of the ruins and behold the devastation, as many people do for various reasons. The memory returned to him then, but it was by that time so distant that it felt almost as if it had never happened - or at least that if it had happened, it had done so in a fashion that was so far removed from the way his life had turned out that it could not possibly matter to him anymore.

But when he was older, approaching retirement - having spent his life continuing to serve people in the best way he knew how, although he had learned that in order to help people he did at least need to give some small consideration to sustaining his own income - the flask re-entered his life.

Endras himself, by this time, was dying. He knew it. He had accepted it. It was what happened to people, he knew that.

But when, by complete chance as he wandered through a street market one day, he heard the call, it was irresistible.

“Flask of Healing!” came the cry of the hawker. “Priceless treasure straight from the vaults of Acorton itself - pre-apocalyptic destruction, of course, sir - madam, Flask of Healing? Heals all ills, all ills! Not a price you could put on it, and yet a very fair price I have for you today - sir, you look like a connoisseur of history, own a piece of history with a verified bit of Acorton dungeon loot! Oh, danger, of course, and thrills and wonder, madam, come and look, and so beautifully made too, and - aha, sir, won’t you come and see?”

This last exhortation was aimed squarely at Endras, who had turned to stare directly at the seller. Generally, of course, to appear so openly interested would be something of a mistake on the part of a buyer: feigned nonchalance serves better for negotiating a favourable price, but to visibly desire something is to bite firmly and painfully on the merchant’s barbed hook. Endras, however, was not interested in haggling for the best price.

“Let me see,” he said.

“But of course, sir, of course, feast your eyes and behold!” And with that redundant statement, the merchant flung his coat theatrically aside and withdrew, cradled in both palms like an egg or a jewel, a flask that looked awfully familiar to Endras.

The breath caught in Endras’s throat. “This should not be sold,” he said, his voice trembling.

“But sir, but sir, I am a seller of goods, and this is good indeed, and to sell it is what I am here for, and -”

Endras held up a hand, cutting off the meaningless patter. “It should not be in the hands of… of anyone.”

“Well, then, sir, if I might suggest, sir, that the most efficacious way to ensure -”

“Get to the point.”

The merchant gave a wordless grumble, then cleared his throat and fixed his salesperson’s smile on his face, albeit perhaps a slightly reduced one. “The best way to keep it out of people’s hands is to keep it safe yourself, no?”

Endras considered striking the salesman down himself there and then, but quickly dismissed it. He had never struck down anyone in his life, let alone a man who must have been forty years younger. He thought about involving the law, but what would he tell them? That a merchant was selling an item he claimed to have incredible properties and a dazzling history? Hardly a crime. And even if the law did somehow remove the flask from its current owner, who knew where it might end up then? In the hands of some corrupt official, or stolen by ne’er-do-wells looking to burgle treasure from the police’s shelves of requisitioned loot.

No, that would not do. He had to ensure it was in good hands, and the only hands he knew to be good were… his own.

So Endras paid an appalling sum for the flask, but felt it worthwhile to ensure that nobody would ever again be tempted.

~~~

Until, of course, his last sickness took him.

Endras suffered. He suffered terribly. And so, as Colroann oesh Ustlin had before him, he came to the conclusion that there was really no reason not to drink from the flask. If he was a good man, he would be healed. If he was not, he would die quickly and painlessly, and that would be better than doing nothing.

Was it even possible, he wondered, for anyone to be truly pure of heart? Or at least to be sufficiently pure of heart by whatever definition was employed by the magic within the flask? Perhaps the only people pure enough to count were those who had no real hope of surviving, because to hope for one’s own healing might be considered selfish.

In the weeks after meeting Colroann, Endras had agonised over these questions. Then they had faded from his mind, long before he had managed to come to any conclusions.

So, hoping for nothing, knowing only that his suffering was about to end one way or another, Doctor Endras Cartiston took the flask from its hiding place. He pulled the stopper free, lifted it to his lips, and drank.