Okay, I -have- been holding back on the feedback at part one, but I shan't now, as you requested it. ;-)
I'm intrigued, very intrigued... and if part 3 isn't finished by Sunday evening, I shall personally track you down in Norway and make you write it!
Good writing, a gripping style as per usual with the other stories I've seen from you and most of all; originality. Keep up the good work, Leif!
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Okay, I -have- been holding back on the feedback at part one, but I shan't now, as you requested it. ;-)
I'm intrigued, very intrigued... and if part 3 isn't finished by Sunday evening, I shall personally track you down in Norway and make you write it!
Good writing, a gripping style as per usual with the other stories I've seen from you and most of all; originality. Keep up the good work, Leif!
[/ QUOTE ]
Thank you very much for the comment, and I know the third party is late, but I am working on it so there's no need to book a flight to Norway yet.
[The first part of this story can be found here. The third and final part should, God willing and the Creek don't rise, be finished sometime this weekend.]
Professor Kastner and Doctor Eversley stood at the back of the hospital's waiting room, discussing Catherine's case in hushed tones.
"So you think it's the arrowhead?" Kastner asked and stared glumly down into his cup of what allegedly was coffee.
"Well the doctor's can't find what's causing her catatonia." Eversley replied, absently watching a patient buy a chocolate from the vending machine on the other side of the room, "And swallowtail heads were used for hunting large game, not warfare. It's an arrowhead the owner would collect and use again and again."
"The type of arrowhead that would gain special significance for its owner." Kastner replied with a reluctant nod of understanding.
"Precisely. Everything fits together. The region, the time period, the size and location of the building and the significance of the arrowhead."
"An archer-wizard's lodge," Kastner said, sounding unconvinced, "I know archer-wizards are mentioned in the Malleus Maleficarum, but the site dates to a hundred and fifty years before that was written."
"Written as a reaction, in Germany," Eversley pointed out, "von Digre has made a good case that the order of archer-wizards were founded in Wales during the Norman conquest. If we assume that, it stands to reason that they arrived in Normandy with the Hundred Years War."
Kastner scratched his neck doubtfully, but in the end deferred to Eversley's expertise on the subject.
"This was supposed to be a safe dig," he exclaimed angrily, eliciting a quick hushing from the taller man. More quietly he continued, "The Special Ministry cleared it for student participation. Two of their dowsers spent a week combing the
site for totems."
"It seems they missed one." Eversley replied drily.
Kastner stood for a moment staring irritated into his coffee, swirling it aimlessly around in the cup. After a moment he put the cup down unfinished and with a decisive air strode towards the door to the patient's wing.
"Come on." he told Eversley.
Perplexed, Eversley followed. "Where are we going?"
"To get Catherine out of here and on the first plane to Paragon."
"What?! Are you insane? Lucien, you know the procedure. We sit tight, call the national specialist body and wait for their experts to arrive. Please, Lucien. Think about your funding!" Eversley pleaded, but knew from the set of Kastner's shoulders that it wasn't much use.
"The only competent specialist in the French Ministry is Joseph Halévy, and he's currently in Yemen combing the desert for Minaean magic formulae." Kastner paused for a moment to orient himself at a branch in the corridor, then set off down the right branch at a determined pace.
"We'd be lucky if we even get Desnoyers down from Paris," he continued, "and I wouldn't let that ham-fisted rock-picker meddle with the mind of one of my students if the survival of the British Museum depended on it. No, we get her back to Paragon where they know how to deal with things like this. If need be, I can call in a favour from Gregor Richardson. He should be able to handle this; and if he isn't, he knows the people who are."
"Lucien..." Eversley pleaded, but to no use. Kastner marched up to the room Catherine was lying in, barged into it and a few moments later appeared back in the corridor with the catatonic girl in his arms. Despite her state she still held her right fist clenched to her chest.
From further down along the corridor a doctor came running towards them, probably alerted to the disturbance by a nurse. Eversley looked accusingly down at Kastner and asked rhetorically "Why do you always use an excavator and never a trowel?"
"What's going on here?!" the doctor demanded when he reached them, first in breathless French then again in English, more insistently.
"We're arranging medical transport for a foreign patient back to her country of origin." Kastner replied curtly.
"What? Who gave you permission for that?"
"Her insurance company." Kastner lied and set off briskly back down the corridor, the doctor and Eversley in tow.
"You can't just move a patient like this! Not without the paperwork." the doctor objected angrily.
Kastner stopped, looked at the red-faced doctor and then up at Eversley. "Robert, cut the red-tape, will you?" he asked and nodded towards the doctor. Eversley hid a sigh but nodded.
Kastner set off down the corridor again with the girl. When the doctor started to follow, Eversley stepped in front of him and when the doctor tried to angrily move around him, he placed a hand on the doctor's shoulder and leant down to stare him in the face.
"We'll do what we like," he told the doctor in a dangerously quiet voice, "because I'm six foot five and I eat punks like you for breakfast."
The doctor instinctively backed up a full three paces before his professional arrogance bristled up. "Are, are you threatening me?" he asked incredulously, his voice an equal mix of fear and outrage.
Eversley arched his eyebrows at the doctor and glanced behind him just in time to see Kastner disappear out the door to the waiting room.
"No," he replied after a long pause, "Just stalling you."
Later, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean,strapped to a stretcher behind a curtain on a commercial 747-400, Catherine could feel the arrow about to lose. In the first few hours it had seemed to be winning the deadly tug of war, millimeter by millimeter burrowing deeper into Catherine's chest despite her desperate grip on the ghostly shaft. It had managed to painstakingly force its way through her rib-bone, but slowly its strength had waned and Catherine had eventually been able to check it in place, its needle-sharp point only a millimetre from the heart it was seeking.
They were both exhausted from the day-long struggle but where Catherine had nourishment and water from an IV drip, the arrow had only had its internal stores of magic to draw on and now those stores were almost empty. With glacial slowness Catherine went on the offensive.
Her entire are was a knot of pain from the hours of gripping against the arrow, but she still found the strength and the will to move it. With a great effort she started to pull the arrow out. The razor sharp barbs dug into her rib-bone and anchored the arrow in place. Catherine's pull tugged on the whole rib, the bone on the verge of splintering.
The pain was unbearable. Catherine held out for a heartbeat, then her hand gave out and her fingers slipped. For a moment she had no hold on the arrow, but it was too weakened by the long fight to exploit the fleeting opportunity. As Catherine fastened her grip once more around the insubstantial shaft, she realised the struggle was killing them both.
"Truce." The word hung voiceless in Catherine's mind, tinged with defeat and desperation. Mentally and physically exhausted and seeing no other way
out of the deadlock, Catherine accepted. With a barely perceptible tingling the insubstantial shaft suddenly wafted away and her hand closed on nothing. She could still feel the arrowhead inside her but it was inert now, no longer pressing for her heart. Somehow she was aware of it knitting itself into her rib, binding itself in place, becoming part of her; but she had no energy left to worry about it.
The struggle over, Catherine fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
[The third and final part is in the works, and should be posted Sometime Real Soon Now (r) (c) (patent pending), but you don't have to wait for that to leave feedback. Really.]