Denna and I took the opportunity to eat some lunch of our own. Just some flatbread, sausage, and the rest of my carrots. I was hesitant to trust the food in the box, as there was the distinct possibility that the fellow living here had been some manner of crazy.
“It still amazes me that no one around here has ever seen it,” Denna said.
“People have probably caught glimpses,” I said. “The swineherd said everyone knows there’s something dangerous in these woods. They probably just assumed it was a demon or some nonsense like that.”
Denna glanced back at me, an amused curl to her mouth. “Says the fellow who came to town looking for the Chandrian.”
“That’s different,” I protested hotly. “I don’t go around spouting faerie stories and touching iron. I’m here so I can learn the truth. So I can have information that comes from somewhere more reliable than thirdhand stories.”
“I didn’t mean to touch a nerve,” Denna said, taken aback. She looked back down below. “It really is an incredible animal.”
“When I read about it I didn’t really believe about the fire,” I admitted. “It seemed a little far-fetched to me.”
“More far-fetched than a lizard big as a horse cart?”
“That’s just a matter of size. But fire isn’t a natural thing. If nothing else, where does it keep the fire? It’s obviously not burning inside.”
“Didn’t they explain it in that book you read?” Denna asked
“The author had some guesses, but that’s all. He couldn’t catch one to dissect it.”
“Understandable,” Denna said as she watched the draccus casually nudge over another tree and begin eating that one as well. “What sort of a net or a cage would hold it?”
“He had some interesting theories though,” I said. “You know how cow manure gives off a gas that burns?”
Denna turned to look at me and laughed. “No. Really?”
I nodded, grinning. “Farm kids will strike sparks onto a fresh cow pat and watch it burn. That’s why farmers have to be careful about storing manure. The gas can build up and explode.”
“I’m a city girl,” she said chuckling. “We didn’t play those sorts of games.”
“You missed some big fun,” I said. “The author suggested that the draccus just stores that gas in a bladder of some kind. The real question is how it lights the gas. The author has a clever idea about arsenic. Which makes sense, chemically. Arsenic and coal gas will explode if you put them together. That’s how you get marsh lights in swamps. But I think that’s a little unreasonable. If it had that much arsenic in its body, it would poison itself.”
“Mmmm-hmm,” Denna said, still watching the draccus below.
“But if you think about it, all it needs is a tiny spark to ignite the gas,” I said. “And there are plenty of animals that can create enough galvanic force for a spark. Clip eels, for example, can generate enough to kill a man, and they’re only a couple of feet long.” I gestured toward the draccus. “Something that big could certainly generate enough for a spark.”
I was hoping that Denna would be impressed by my ingenuity, but she seemed distracted by the scene below.
“You’re not really listening to me, are you?”
“Not so much,” she said, turning to me and giving a smile. “I mean, it makes perfect sense to me. It eats wood. Wood burns. Why wouldn’t it breathe fire?”
While I tried to think of a response to that, she pointed down into the valley. “Look at the trees down there. Do they look odd to you?”
“Aside from being destroyed and mostly eaten?” I asked. “Not particularly.”
“Look how they’re arranged. It’s hard to see because the place is a shambles, but it looks like they were growing in rows. Like someone planted them.”
Now that she pointed it out, it did look like a large section of the trees had been in rows before the draccus came. A dozen rows with a score of trees each. Most of them were now only stumps or empty holes.
“Why would someone plant trees in the middle of a forest?” She mused. “It’s not an orchard…. Did you see any fruit?”
I shook my head.
“And those trees are the only ones the draccus has been eating,” she said. “There’s the big clear spot in the middle. The others he knocks down, but those he knocks down and eats.” She squinted. “What kind of tree is it eating right now?”
“I can’t tell from here,” I said. “Maple? Does it have a sweet tooth?”
We looked for a while longer, then Denna got to her feet. “Well, the important thing is that it’s not going to run over and breathe fire down our backs. Let’s go see what’s at the other end of that narrow path. I’m guessing it’s a way out of here.”
We headed down the ladder and made our slow, winding way along the bottom of the tiny crevasse. It twisted and turned for another twenty feet before opening up into a tiny box canyon with steep walls rising away on every side.
There was no way out, but it was obviously being put to some use. The place had been cleared of plants, leaving a packed dirt floor. Two long fire pits had been dug, and resting over the pits on brick platforms were large metal pans. They almost resembled the rendering vats that knackers use for tallow. But these were wide, flat, and shallow, like baking pans for enormous pies.
“It does have a sweet tooth!” Denna laughed. “This fellow was making maple candy here. Or syrup.”
I moved closer to look. There were buckets laying around, of the sort that could carry maple sap so it could be boiled down. I opened the door of a tiny ramshackle shed and saw more buckets, long wooden paddles for stirring the sap, scrapers for getting it out of the pans….
But it didn’t feel right. There were plenty of maple trees in the forest. It didn’t make sense to cultivate them. And why pick such an out-of-the-way place?
Maybe the fellow was simply crazy. Idly, I picked up one of the scrapers and looked at it. The edge was smeared dark, like it had been scraping tar….
“Eech!” Denna said behind me. “Bitter. I think they burned it.”
I turned around and saw Denna standing by one of the firepits. She had pried a large disk of sticky material out of the bottom of one of the pans and taken a bite out of it. It was black, not the deep amber color of maple candy.
I suddenly realized what was really going on here. “Don’t!”
She looked at me, puzzled. “It’s not that bad.” She said, her words muffled through her sticky mouthful. “It’s strange, but not really unpleasant.”
I stepped over to her knocked it out of her hand. Her eyes flashed angrily at me. “Spit it out!” I snapped. “Now! It’s poison!”
Her expression went from angry to terrified in a flash. She opened her mouth and let the wad of dark stuff fall to the ground. Then she spat, her saliva thick and black. I pressed my water bottle into her hands. “Rinse your mouth out,” I said. “Rinse and spit it out.”
She took the bottle, and then I remembered it was empty. We’d finished it during lunch.
I took off running, scrambling through the narrow passage. I darted up the ladder, grabbed the waterskin, then down and back to the small canyon.
Denna was sitting on the canyon floor, looking very pale and wide-eyed. I thrust the waterskin into her hands and she gulped so quickly that she choked, then gagged a bit as she spat it out.
I reached into the fire pit, pushing my hand deep into the ashes until I found the unburned coals underneath. I brought up a handful of unburned charcoal. I shook my hand, scattering most of the ashes away, then thrust the handful of black coals at her. “Eat this,” I said.
She looked at me blankly.
“Do it!” I shook the handful of coals at her. “If you don’t chew this up and swallow it, I’ll knock you out and force it down your throat!” I put some in my own mouth. “Look, it’s fine. Just do it.” My tone softened, became more pleading than commanding. “Denna, trust me.”
She took some coals and put them in her
mouth. Face pale and eyes beginning to brim with tears, she gritted up a mouthful and took a drink of water to wash it down, grimacing.
“They’re harvesting Goddamn ophalum here,” I said. “I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”
Denna started to say something, but I cut her off. “Don’t talk. Keep eating. As much as you can stomach.”
She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. She chewed, choked a little, and swallowed the charcoal with another mouthful of water. She ate a dozen mouthfuls in quick succession, then rinsed her mouth out again.
“What’s ophalum?” she asked softly.
“A drug. Those are denner trees. You just had a whole mouthful of denner resin.” I sat down next to her. My hands were shaking. I lay them flat against my legs to hide it.
She was quiet at that. Everyone knew about denner resin. In Tarbean the knackers had to come for the stiff bodies of sweet-eaters that overdosed in the Dockside alleys and doorways.
“How much did you swallow?” I asked.
“I was just chewing it, like toffee.” Her face went pale again. “There’s still some stuck in my teeth.”
I touched the waterskin. “Keep rinsing.” She swished the water from cheek to cheek before spitting and repeating the process. I tried to guess at how much of the drug she’d gotten into her system, but there were too many variables, I didn’t know how much she had swallowed, how refined this resin was, if the farmers had taken any steps to filter or purify it.
Her mouth worked as her tongue felt around her teeth. “Okay, I’m clean.”
I forced a laugh. “You’re anything but clean,” I said. “Your mouth is all black. You look like a kid that’s been playing in the coal bin.”
“You aren’t much better,” she said. “You look like a chimney sweep.” She reached out to touch my bare shoulder. I must have torn my shirt against the rocks in my rush to get the waterskin. She gave a wan smile that didn’t touch her frightened eyes at all. “Why do I have a belly full of coals?”
“Charcoal is like a chemical sponge,” I said. “It soaks up drugs and poisons.”
She brightened a little. “All of them?”
I considered lying, then thought better of it. “Most. You got it into you pretty quickly. It will soak up a lot of what you swallowed.”
“How much?”
“About six parts in ten,” I said. “Hopefully a little more. How do you feel?”
“Scared,” she said. “Shaky. But other than that, no different.” She shifted nervously where she sat and put her hand on the sticky disk of resin I’d knocked away from her earlier. She flicked it away and wiped her hand nervously on her pants. “How long will it be before we know?”
“I don’t know how much they refined it,” I said. “If it’s still raw, it will take longer to work its way into your system. Which is good, as the effects will be spread out over a longer period of time.”
I felt for her pulse in her neck. It was racing, which didn’t tell me anything. Mine was racing too. “Look up here.” I gestured with my raised hand and watched her eyes. Her pupils were sluggish responding to the light. I lay my hand on her head and under the pretext of lifting her eyelid a little, I pressed my finger against the bruise on her temple, hard. She didn’t flinch or show the least hint that it pained her.
“I thought I was imagining it before,” Denna said, looking up at me. “But your eyes really do change color. Normally they’re bright green with a ring of gold around the inside….”
“I got them from my mother,” I said.
“But I’ve been watching. When you broke the pump handle yesterday they went dull green, muddy. And when the swineherd made that comment about the Ruh they went dark for just a moment. I thought it was just the light, but now I can see it’s not.”
“I’m surprised you noticed,” I said. “The only other person to ever point it out was an old teacher of mine. And he was an arcanist, which means it’s pretty much his job to notice things.”
“Well it’s my job to notice things about you.” She cocked her head a bit. “People probably are distracted by your hair. It’s so bright. It’s pretty…. pretty distracting. And your face is really expressive. You’re always in control of it, even the way your eyes behave. But not the color.” She gave a faint smile. “They’re pale now. Like green frost. You must be terribly afraid.”
“I’m guessing it’s old-fashioned lust,” I said in my roughest tones. “It’s not often a beautiful girl lets me get this close to her.”
“You always tell me the most beautiful lies,” she said, looking away from me and down to her hands. “Am I going to die?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“Could…” she looked up at me and smiled again, her eyes wet but not overflowing. “Could you just say it out loud for me?”
“You aren’t going to die,” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on, let’s see if our lizard friend is gone yet.”
I wanted to keep her moving around and distracted, so we each had another little drink and headed back to the lookout. The draccus lay sleeping in the sun.
I took the opportunity to stuff the blanket and the dried meat into my travelsack. “I felt guilty about stealing from the dead before,” I said. “But now…”
“At least now we know why he was hiding in the middle of nowhere with a crossbow and a lookout and all that,” Denna said. “A minor mystery solved.”
I started to fasten up my travelsack then, as an afterthought, packed the crossbow bolts as well.
“What are those for?” she asked.
“They’re worth something,” I said. “I’m in debt to a dangerous person. I could use every penny…” I trailed off, my mind working.
Denna looked at me, and I could see her mind jumping to the same conclusion. “Do you know how much that much resin would be worth?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said thinking about the thirty pans, each with a wafer of black, sticky resin congealed in the bottom, big as a dinner plate. “I’m guessing a lot. An awful lot.”
Denna shifted back and forth on her feet. “Kvothe, I don’t know how I feel about this. I’ve seen girls get hooked on this stuff. I need money.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t even have a second set of clothes right now.” She looked worried. “But I don’t know if I need it this badly.”
“I’m thinking of apothecaries,” I said quickly. “They’d refine it into medicine. It’s a powerful painkiller. The price won’t be nearly as good as if we went to the other sort of people, but still, half a loaf….”
Denna smiled broadly. “I’d love half a loaf. Especially since my cryptic prick of a patron seems to have disappeared.”
We headed back down into the canyon. This time as I emerged from the narrow passageway, I saw the evaporating pans in a different light. Now each of them was the equivalent of a heavy coin in my pocket. Next term’s tuition, new clothes, freedom from my debt with Devi….
I saw Denna looking at the trays with the same fascination, though hers was somewhat more glassy-eyed than mine. “I could live comfortably for a year off this,” she said. “And not be beholden to anyone.”
I went to the tool shed and grabbed a scraper for each of us. At the end of a few minutes work we had combined all of the black, sticky pieces into a single wad the size of a sweetmelon.
She shivered a bit, then looked at me, smiling. Her cheeks were flushed. “I suddenly feel really good.” She crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing her hands up and down. “Really, really good. I don’t think it’s just the thought of all that money.”
“It’s the resin,” I said. “It’s a good sign that it’s taken this long to hit you. I’d have been worried if it had happened sooner.” I gave her a serious look. “Now listen. You need to let me know if you feel any heaviness in your chest, or have any trouble breathing. So long as neither of those things happens, you should be fine.”
Denna nodded, then drew a deep breath and let it out again. ?
?Sweet angel Ordal above, I feel great.” She gave me an anxious expression, but the wide grin kept spilling out. “Am I going to get addicted from this?”
I shook my head and she sighed with relief. “You know the damnedest thing? I’m scared about getting addicted, but I don’t care that I’m scared. I’ve never felt like this before. No wonder our big scaly friend keeps coming back for more….”
“Merciful Tehlu,” I said. “I didn’t even think of that. That’s why it was trying to claw its way in here. It can smell the resin. It’s been eating the trees for two span, three or four a day.”
“The biggest sweet-eater of them all, coming back to get his fix.” Denna laughed, then her expression went horrified. “How many trees were left?”
“Two or three,” I said, thinking of the rows of empty holes and broken stumps. “But it may have eaten another since we’ve been back here.”
“Have you ever seen a sweet-eater when they’ve got the hunger on them?” Denna said, her face stricken. “They go crazy.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of the girl I’d seen in Tarbean dancing naked in the snow.
“What do you think it’s going to do when the trees run out?”
I thought for a long moment. “It’s going to go looking for more. And it’s going to be desperate. And it knows the last place where it found the trees had a little house that smelled like people…. We’re going to have to kill it.”
“Kill it?” She laughed, then pressed her hands against her mouth again. “With nothing but my good singing voice and your manly bravado?” She started to giggle uncontrollably, despite the fact that she was holding both her hands in front of her mouth. “God, I’m sorry Kvothe. How long am I going to be like this?”
“I don’t know. The effects of ophalum are euphoria…”
“Check.” She winked at me, grinning.
“Followed by mania, some delirium if your dose was high enough, then exhaustion.”
“Maybe I’ll sleep through the night for once,” she said. “You can’t seriously expect to kill this thing. What are you going to use? A pointy stick?”