In the pharmacopoeia of Anhau there are very few recognized therapeutic uses for the concentrated extract of ergot. Master Yaln had only studied the fungus to learn how it affected those unfortunate enough to ingest afflicted grain so that he might ease their suffering. His student, however, had discovered that there were any number of therapeutic uses for the fungus that brought forth fiery visions and madness, provided one did not let minor details like morality or ethical conduct get in the way. And Droon never had. He was not entirely sure what such things were for.

As a tool of the poisoner's art ergot was invaluable for in small quantities it could be as slow and secret as arsenic and in more concentrated doses it could bring on madness and, he was fairly sure, death. It was nearly tasteless and even if some astute person were to recognize the signs of ergot poisoning, it could easily be explained away as a product of bad grain. Even with all its advantages, ergot was not a perfect poison for the pleasing madness that befell the victim also made them unpredictable, prone to irrational outbursts, and very hard to control. So Droon made use of other poisons as well, and far more often, but there remained a deep attachment to ergot. There was something so perfect about a toxin that could be openly administered in a humble bowl of gruel. No one thought much of checking the grain that went into an invalid's meal for poison, and fewer still would have even the slightest understanding that it was the grain itself that was poison.

No one suspected anything of the solicitous apothecary who came to tend the poor suffering wretch with drafts of strange and foul-smelling liquids and an air of quiet concern. Few things were as therapeutic to Droon as seeing someone who had wronged him reduced for a time to a gibbering, frightened wreck by the workings of his skill. It was why he tended to his victims, to watch the course of their sufferings, to make sure the poison took its course, and to know with absolute certainty that they were grateful for the attention. It was a nearly perfect system. It allowed him absolute control over the outcome and prevented any unexpected deviations from the plan.

It had not always been so. Such a precise system of poisoning took time to perfect and in the course of a long career, Droon had made his share of mistakes. Far too many mistakes. He was not proud of these, even his early mistake that had brought him such a perfect revenge. How could he have know that the over-strong ergot mixed with the extract of certian stimulating leaves would have such an effect as to bring on . . .but no. Now was not the time to dwell on such things. It was long ago and the deed was done. Better now to put it all behind him, to think on other things and other poisons.

It was a rainy evening. Not the kind of rain that lashes at the windows of grand and haunted houses but more a heaviness in the air as though the world was dreaming damp thoughts of being over run by the sea. Through the gloom of the rain, Droon could see a few murky figures darting hither and thither. He was glad to be snug and dry and away from the scurrying figures. He was in no mood to treat with damp and unhappy people this day.

He put the bottle down. There was a glassy clink and a faint slosh of liquid. There were maybe seventeen similar bottles before him and half a dozen little jars, some contained liquid, some powder, and the jars held pastes. He smiled at these like old friends too long away. It had been many months since they had been removed from their locked trunk in the workshop, and seeing them now only made him the more grateful that Orha Bos had leered in a very suggestive manner at Droon's niece, made any number of off color remarks in her presence, and had on several occasions appeared to enter into the shop for no other purpose than to drive the poor girl to distraction.

This was not the behavior one looked for in a well off craftsman, let alone one who was already married and the father of four children. Bos had never been a pleasant man, and Droon dealt with him only because of his skill in the making of ingenious wooden boxes and other similar items. It was fortuitous for Droon, and correspondingly unlucky for Bos, that the apothecary was not presently in need of any complex wooden boxes.

Droon looked with satisfaction at the liquid in a small green bottle. That harmless looking substance was presently giving Bos, who loved his fine food above all things, violent pains in his stomach. The man could keep nothing down but a little broth and some flavorless gruel. That alone was a trying ordeal for a such a man. Droon smiled with no small amount of satisfaction. Bos' could be kept in that condition for weeks and then 'miraculously' cured. It would then be a very simple matter to exact, as part of the payment for the cure, Bos' promise to leave Droon's niece alone.

There was a creak. A wooden sound, like a foot upon a stair. There should have been no feet but those of Droon to cause the creak of wood. Bawn was away tending to Master Yaln, but there was no other person to who the step could likely have belonged. Droon snapped quickly out of the dreams of poison and revenge. "Bawn?" he asked. "Bawn, is that by way of being you?" In the silence, only the rain responded. He called out again. "Hello?" Again, he was met with nothing but the sound of rain upon the window. He looked again at his poisons. With careful deliberation he began to put them back into their locked wooden box. The rain fell, and Droon waited; for what he did not know.

Something had lain dormant inside of Frith’s father for months, for years even- Frith would not have known being condemned to the beggar flats as he had been for all that time. They’d ignored it at first, the coughing and the foul smell of death which grew and enveloped their hut quickly and now even the dogs avoided it.

But now he couldn’t work, could barely talk and couldn’t control basic bladder functions. Frith felt the smell of hopelessness, death mucus and urine cling to his skin, under the blanket of shame he had adopted from the flats. His mother cried for his father constantly and Frith had felt powerless to help. He was the oldest, next in charge from his father and the only one of his siblings not with wives and husbands and children of their own to look after. It was Frith’s duty to look after his family where he had failed so terribly in the past.

But old sins were not as easily cleaned as the mud of the flats. No one bought his wares; and what little he earned had to be spent on food for the family, he had no money for medicine, no way to stop his father’s pain or if the gods willed it to cure him. It made that old ember of anger, the one he’d thought the flats would stamp out re-ignite deep inside of him.
For ten years he had not fulfilled his role in the family, caked in mud and disgrace as he was for that foolish, pig headed endeavour of his youth. What had it gained but tragedy- it had not brought Elahra back and Inle had been lost forever to those flats?

The pain of silence had been unbearable, to be the eyes and ears of Anhau was not enough. What good were eyes and ears if there was no mouth to share what the senses experienced? He’d seen secrets and said nothing for too long. He could speak now so why should he not? Especially if the life of his father depended on it.

Frith had made his mind up not two days ago over the moans coming from his father’s bed and it had brought him here, to the apothecary. Rain clung to his beard and weighed down his thick hair, his eyes wild against the evening sky. Raising a hand, the strength of Roek muscle’s behind it, he raised his hand to knock.

“Tzul Droon. My name is Frith Rair,” he called in that gruff unpracticed voice “You may know me. I wish to speak with you and it is in your best interest to listen to all I have to say.”

Droon calmly finished the stowing of his poisons. It would do no good to show just how unsettled the appearance of the bearded man had made the apothecary. He swallowed hard and composed his features into something like mild curiosity. He was fully prepared to listen to the man's potential complaint and provide whatever powder, draft, oil, or unguent he might require. And then he heard the man's name.

Frith Rair. The man who in his wild youth had tried to kill a Durg; it was a name of ill omen. Water dripping from the beard, the haggard look of one who spent years exposed to all the unkindness of the elements, he looked the very personification of some gloomy and unpleasant fate. His was not a form to inspire charitable feelings. And he was Roek.

Droon had little use for the tribe of the hunters, and detested the men of that tribe above all others. Great swaggering bullies so proud of their strength, their prowess, and their exalted status as protectors of the valley. And what did they protect the valley from? From the creatures that lurked in the mist? Spears and bows would do little good against the hatchers. From wild animals? Those seemed to chiefly bother the hunters which made the claim of protection all the more dubious. From the 'outsiders'? Well, hadn't they just wandered into the valley free as they could please? And what harm had the outsiders done? Were they really the sort from whom the Anhai needed protection? Yet still the Roek were celebrated for their courage and daring. Droon had little use for such shows of bravado.

He turned his frog-like eyes upon the man. He was in no way comforted by the ominous tone and words of the man's short speech. But, perhaps that was always how the man spoke. He had spent years a silent exile and might be naturally supposed to be laconic. Still, it was not a comforting address. He swallowed hard and tipped his head to the side in an almost bird-like gesture. "Why come you here to me and with such sparse and strange words? No friendly greeting? No idle inquiries as to the mushroom hunting or to the state of my bees? What are you wanting of me? What may I be in the way of providing?"

Frith could not bring himself to look kindly upon Droon, though perhaps good manners would dictate it. It was all he could do to keep the disgust from his face. When Frith walked his shoulders were heavy with shame for his crime. But this Kohore man had no trace of guilt to speak of, no remorse for his crimes which saw the fire in Frith’s heart rise only stronger, dampened only slightly by the rain.

“Your ears will be enough for now,” said Frith gruffly. “I have no patience for talking with you of arbitrary matters…or for exchanging false pleasantries.”

He didn’t trust the room, could only imagine the poisons held within. There was darkness over the Anhau valley and Frith had seen it for some time, even before the arrival of these strange newcomers, before Elhara- beautiful Elhara with nothing but light in her heart- had succumb to the hatchers, before anything. The darkness lurked within all men and Frith felt his own stirring…and in Droon, there was much darkness to be found.

Deceptive toad. For too long Frith had sat on secrets in silence. Too long Droon had been free from shame. But Frith was shame personified, brought in from the beggar flats ragged as a dying bander wolf with matted furs and eyes caked in thick, sticky blindness.

Sometime past before Frith spoke again, his eyes raking over Droon’s flesh, over the glinting bottles and the pungent herbs. And when he did they were coarse as woven ropes. “My father is ill. You will treat him.”

There was no elective element in Frith’s voice. He made it clear that this was a firm, compulsory matter- that Droon could protest but it would fall on death ears.

"I will not pay you, for I have nothing to spare that I wish to spare on you. But you will treat him for as long as he requires."

"Then," said the apothecary is a dead, flat voice, "we shall dispense with the pleasantries and be the better for it I am thinking."

He regarded Frith coldly, assessing him as though he was nothing but a hideous beetle beneath a lens or a curious and foul smelling herb. There was not much to recommend the man. Certainly nothing in his manners or in his conversation. Conversation! As if such terse, flat, and unlively utterances could be called by that name. It was just as well the man had no taste for pleasantries. At the moment, neither did Droon.

He had only been civil reflexively; he did so many things reflexively it was sometimes very hard to remember that is was all largely an act. He was polite out of habit rather than character and there was something oddly refreshing about dealing with a man who neither wanted nor expected politeness. So there was one thing to put in Frith's favor, but it was a very little thing.

It was odd to hear the man talk about his sick father. It was odd in that Droon would have supposed such a man as this would care not a fig for his parent, no matter how ill. He had seen the exiles in the Flats, and he had some scanty idea as to their mode of life. It was not pleasant and he doubted that the softer emotions lasted long among those wretches. Compassion and filial duty were the very last things Droon expected to see in a returned exile.

"Your time among the exiles must have softened your mind Frith. Too much sun and silence must have addled your senses. Do you think a very few cryptic words in a curt tone of voice will make me all eagerness to carry out your wishes?" Droon sneered. "I am not in the habit of tending to the sick with no prospect of compensation. Clearly you have no true business with me. Begone beggar and trouble me no further. When you have something of value to offer, and not just petty words, then perhaps I will listen. If not, then you are free to drown yourself in the rain."

Frith had expected this, but had given Droon a chance. Had he vounteered to save a sick man from nothing but the goodness of his heart, perhaps this affair would not have needed to go further. But as it was, Frith could see no hint of anything redeemable in this man’s character.

Perhaps Droon was right, that his time in the flats had addled his minds- there were certainly days when he had felt like that. Felt madness and hopelessness but then presumably so had she. His mind may have softened but Frith felt his heart harden.

“I have nothing to offer but knowledge. And that is a powerful thing.”
He walked smoothly past Droon further into the room and sat cross legged on the foor. It was a leftover habit from the beggar flats that he rejected furniture and comfort, lay on nothing but bare ground to sleep, sat on hard earth to work.

“The beggar flats are a terrible place. I have paid for my crimes and would not wish them on any man…but you are no man, Tzul Droon of the Kohore Tribe.”

He scratched his beard, shaking fleas and ticks that lurked within and stared at the apothecary, through eyes that had seen many things and filled with fierce hate.

“For ten years I have been bound by silence. But I am bound no longer. “
Frith had no love for his tribe- had tried his best to rejoin the community, to make a living and to serve Anhau. But he could not move for whispers of ‘traitor’ and ‘dangerous anarchist’. He had been a boy all of those years ago, a child of Anhau so in love and torn apart by grief and they had abandoned him. Worse, they had abandoned his father- his only crime to produce a son who loved too much. But that part of Frith was gone now.

“I come here this night to offer you a choice, Droon. A chance to atone for your henious crimes by saving the life of an innocent man."

Frith knew that what he was doing was wicked. That this secret should not be contained a moment longer- but he must do all he could to protect his father.

"If you do not take this opportunity. I swear it on my life, Tzul Droon, I will live in silence no longer and you will be condemned. Ten years has turned me bitter and deplorable in nature. I can only imagine what a life sentence would do."

He had sacrificed goodness for Elahara once before and he could do it now for his father. And when he was cured Frith would do the right thing, he told himself. Droon would feel the unending silence in the end. But he had the chance to do good now.

Droon's eyes widened. He stared at the man for some little time time, turning over his words again and again like a rare and deadly insect. No man am I? And how are you to know that, beggar? The sound of the thoughts in his head was dead flat. Detached, distant, and quietly analytical. And if I am no man, then such pale and half-thought words will harm me not.

"You offer me threats and think that for these empty words I will tend to your ailing father? Could not you have come to me without your nameless wrath? Such might have done you well among the beggars, but it will be earning you no favors with me."

His voice was calm and level but even Droon could only do so much to hind the contempt he felt towards the man now seated like a vagrant upon his floor. The floor; it was the proper place for such a man, and Droon took some small measure of comfort from this. Yet it was not enough. Lofty contempt could only serve him so far as a mask to hide the subtle dread that the man's words had begun to evoke in the apothecary.

"Did you think to be coming to me as a specter of nameless dread and hope to prey upon some unknown guilt in trade for all the skill I have in my art? You speak of atonement. What have I to atone for? What crimes have I committed? Has your time among the beggars so warped your mind that now you see malefactors where ever you look?

This Frith set all the nerves of Droon's body to twanging like the strings of disordered lute. There was no possible way the man could know anything. By all the gods and spirits, by the Valley itself, the man had been an exile these ten years! He could have seen nothing, known nothing. It was all mere chance. And yet Droon found no comfort in this. Part of him said, in the quiet of his mind, A beggar is silent, a beggar is unregarded. We choose not to see them and so they are invisible. And this one is bold. He might have braved the town to forage for scraps, and he might have seen . . . .No. He could not have seen, he could not have known. Could he?

Droon stood up and crossed the room until his shadow, like that of some thin and ghostly spider, fell upon the seated form of Frith. The apothecary leaned downward and stared at the returned exile.

"Had you offered me no threats, had you come merely as one seeking help for your ailing father I might have willingly gone with you this very night. I might have sat by his bed in the flickering light of an oil lamp and done what I could for him, and I might have done it gladly for little more than gratitude. But this I will no longer do. I am thinking that no gratitude will I be receiving, not if I saved a thousand fathers."

“It is you who should offer me gratitude,” said Frith, a spark of desperate anger ignited in his eyes. He saw hot flames and a forest burning under a curtain of thick smoke. All of this will turn to ash. Frith thought of the cool mud of the flats, smothering flames and breathed slowly.

“No matter,” his voice returned to a deathly calm, a hush in respect for the dead who’s spirits Frith felt in the air. “You may well have done me a kindness this very night, Kohore. And now justice can prevail.”

He stood up, lean muscle unfurling like a flower in bloom- oh, the unchecked potential in Frith, he would have made a fine Roek warrior once. Would have made a good man. But that was all in the past, as dead as his dear dead Elahra.

“What has waited nine years to be said will wait just one more night. One. Droon. And after that you will have made my father as damned as you have made yourself.”

“I will take my leave and assume you have taken the righteous path. And who am I to disagree with that? But I have one more thing to offer you, Tzul Droon. It is a name…and if you accept the worth of a name you may consider it a down payment, for I have many more.”

He walked slowly to the door and spoke quietly, though the words rang out true, his voice as jagged as a bear’s claw. “Nuet Uita”

Frith did not pause to look at the reaction of Droon as he exited in to the rain because he could not bring himself to care. A hope that had swelled when he had first formulated this plan now burst messily and gave him a pain at his temples. He had failed his father. He would return to his hut and watch the mess that was the man who gave him life, would have to look him in the eye and be aware that he could not return the favour by preserving his own

The bile rose in his throat, burning it with the hot and bitter taste of wrath. Droon savored its taste for some time as he watched the wretched beggar disappear into the rain. That name! How could he have known that name? That Frith might have suspected poisonings by the score, might have seen Droon gather the deadly mushrooms that grew on the edges of the forest, and that might have been enough. But to know that name! The name of the man who was both Droon's greatest mistake and most secret joy, it was too much.

He had been so young when the name of Uita had become linked to his own. He had not been thinking and had acted rashly, acted without a plan. And for that Droon was as near ashamed as one such as him could be. That the man was now long dead did not cause the apothecary the least discomfort. That he had died in such a bloody way, and by the hand of his own wronged wife brought only a kind of poetic joy to him. The man who seduced Droon's sister and driven her to her ruin deserved no pity. Yet it had been inelegant, and that was not to be tolerated.

And now here again was a man of the Roek, a swaggering fool and a bully, who deserved no pity from the apothecary. A Roek who had wronged him and might yet continue to harm him. There would be no inelegant action this time, no hasty decisions. What Droon needed was time, time to find a means to forever still Frith's tongue. He would learn all he could of the man; his habits, his comings and goings, what he ate, when he slept, and a thousand other little things. And so, Droon would go to the ailing man and sit by his bed. He would go with the face of atonement and the words of contrition, and he would bide his time. One so foolish as to invite a viper in by the front door deserved no pity when he discovered the snake had bit him. It was the nature of vipers to bite.

The apothecary smiled wickedly and thanked fortune for the strange and dangerous gift it had given him this night. Now he knew beyond all doubt who was his enemy and it would be a pleasure to destroy him. It would not be justice, such as the beggar wanted, no admissions of guilt, only the calm removal of a troublesome man about whom no one much cared. It would be beautiful.

"There is no justice, beggar," said Droon to the now departed Frith, "only the thousand varieties of revenge."