Gods & Thieves ✔

43. Third and Wheel

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The moon has disappeared, and the hallway is now chillingly dark, but this bothers neither Cale nor Kofi when they go to the third floor, and to the narrow iron sliding staircase leading to the attic.

The attic in our house has always been a collection of unnecessary things. Moreover, they are so unnecessary that they have been lying around here for literally centuries--like one rotten portrait.

And that's why here, we always hid our silver daggers, the maps of the temples, the aura that we stole from the Tik'al fountains...

A bulb lights up under the ceiling. Without wasting any time, Cale is already approaching one of the old chests in the corner. Prudently not brushing off a thick layer of dust from it so that it looks as abandoned and forgotten as before, Cale moves the heavy bronze box to the side, then removes one of the crumbled floorboards and, grinning, pulls out some inconspicuous old bag from his hiding place.

"Here," he says, handing the bag to me.

Accepting, I frown.

"How will this rag help you defeat shamans?" However, beneath the rag, inside the bag made of dirty sand-colored fabric, groping without untying the bag, I find some beads. Not perfectly round, but curved and rough, like natural pearls. And cold as ice balls.

"It's silver," says Kofi, standing over my shoulder.

My curious fingers, still exploring the contents of the bag, freeze. Silver...Oh shit. The one that will sting me now if I touch it with my bare hands. And it will not just sting, but scald, like acid tea, because there is clearly more metal there than in the cuff on my ear, the one Loretto gave me!

My hands, trembling with fright, cramp at the thought of this. I almost drop the bag, but somehow I just manage to cling to it even tighter.

My brothers seem to take my reaction as admiration. They look at each other. They're smiling.

"We've all been wondering what's wrong with the great-grandfather's essence recipe, which takes away the power of sorcerers," Cale says, closing the hiding place in the floor. "But when you were caught, Eli, of course, there was no time to guess, we had to hurry to get you out. So my friend Pablo...do you remember Pablo? Who is always joking that he will hang a skeleton of a real shaman at home."

How can I not remember, I think, staring at the ill-fated bag. Fortunately, the cloth is thick, and my fingers do not even feel any burning, only an unnaturally sharp cold.

"Pablo, through acquaintances among the patrolmen, came across a Tik'al guard," Cale continues calmly, pushing the chest back into place, "who knows a Tik'al cook who gets along with one imperial counselor, and he, in turn, knows a lot about alchemy. Long story short, we got this idiot to help us adjust the recipe, and it worked! We added rat blood, dried acacia flowers, and a couple of emeralds to aura. Boiled everything well, as it was said, on a full moon in the open air, and then poured wine--for taste. We were told that shamans call this thing Yavar'vaka. Tears of the moon, isn't it?

Yavar'vaka...Going over everything that I now know about the ancient shamanic language in my head, I only get depressed. These are not tears of the moon. The moon in the shamanic is "chel". As in Ixchel. And Yavar'vaka must be translated as "the one who cries..." red juice? heart? blood? The one who cries blood.

I find myself shivering.

"...It turns out that the poison for shamans looks like nothing but silver," Kofi, standing behind me, finishes for Cale. "But not simple, but liquid. Inside each pearl that you hold, Eli, is liquid silver. Nice, huh? It is harmless to humans, but if it gets into the shaman's body... it will completely deprive them of their powers. And if you overdo it, it will kill them in agony. We've already checked it."