Chapter 555: Substitute Physicians
On the far side of the castle, in an area that had become much busier since the arrival of Nyrielle’s army, Ashlynn made her way through the crowds of people toward the guest chambers where Artificer Erkembalt and the sorcerer Aspakos had taken Hauke as they continued to study the curse that bound him.
Two days ago, they had sent word that they’d made significant progress, but they needed the help of a witch’s Severing Knife if they were going to make any more progress. Any other time, Ashlynn would have rushed immediately to Hauke’s side, but at the moment, she had to prioritize Virve’s transformation and the transfer of her seed of witchcraft.
Even now, Ashlynn felt guilty for asking Talauia to watch over her newest witch as she underwent her transformation beneath the branches of the Ancient Oak. She wanted to be there for Ollie, she wanted to be there for Virve, but there were only so many places she could be at once, and right now... right now it was Hauke’s turn.
Inside a large guest chamber that had clearly been sized for members of the Clan of the Great Claw or other large-sized Eldritch visitors, Ashlynn found herself stepping into what resembled a chaotic blend of magical laboratory and scholarly study rather than any kind of sickroom.
Slate boards leaned haphazardly against every available wall surface, each covered with intricate diagrams, some depicting patterns of chains labeled with the names of horrifying curses, while others illustrated the internal structuresof Frost Walker horns.
All of the diagrams were accompanied by dense mathematical formulas written in at least three different scripts, some in Erkembalt’s precise, angular notation, others in Aspakos’s flowing, feathery script, and a third that looked like it had been faithfully transcribed from directly from ancient texts, as if the person doing the copying was afraid that re-writing it in a more modern script would result in misinterpreting the original meaning.
The room’s central table, large enough for a party of four to dine at, had been repurposed as a research station, its polished surface barely visible beneath stacks of leather-bound tomes borrowed from Nyrielle’s personal library of texts pertaining to sorcery. Many of the books were still open to pages marked with scraps of parchment covered in hasty annotations. Loose pages of calculations and observations littered the floor around it, some half crumpled and left to lay wherever they fell when the ideas expressed on them proved fruitless.
Near the window, where the light was strongest, a collection of small braziers burned with flames in unnatural colors. One emitted a pale blue glow that reminded Ashlynn of Hauke’s horn when he used ice magic to create intricate shapes, while another produced a green smoke that curled into the shape of glyphs associated with healing before fading away.
In the far corner of the room, behind a folding screen with panels of intricately carved cedar, lay Hauke himself, feeling less a patient being tended to and more a puzzle these two scholars were determined to solve. Other than a small potted plant that had clearly been placed there by one of the maids in order to bring some life into the room, his bed was surrounded by measuring instruments, crystals that seemed to pulse and glow in different colors that correspond to the colors of Hauke’s iridescent horn, and even more slate boards covered with observations about his responses to the two men’s attempts to unravel his curse.