Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show Read Online Free Page A

causing some of it to spill onto Rabiah’s hands.
    “Be careful of her eyes,” Al-Ashmar said, stepping forward. “The tonic will sting horribly for quite some time—”
    But Rabiah waved him away. At least she took more care how she supported the Empress’s head as she dispensed the liquid. The Empress’s coughing slowed the process to a crawl, but eventually the ordeal was over.
    Djazir took Al-Ashmar by the elbow, ready to lead him from the garden and out of the palace.
    “I wonder if we might speak,” Al-Ashmar said. “Alone, so as not to disturb the Empress.”
    Djazir seemed doubtful, but he released Al-Ashmar’s elbow. “What about?”
    “A few questions only, in order to narrow down the source of the worms. If we cannot find it, the infection may simply recur.”
    Djazir brought him up a set of stairs to a railed patio on the roof of the palace. Around them the entire city sprawled over the land for miles. The river glistened as it crawled like the snakeworm through the flesh of the city until reaching the glittering sea several miles away.
    Al-Ashmar spoke, asking questions about Bela’s activities, the Empress’s, even Rabiah’s, but this was all a ruse. He’d wanted to get Djazir to agree to questioning simply so he could ask the same of Rabiah. He had to get her alone, for only in her did he have a chance of unwrapping this riddle.
    Djazir agreed to send Rabiah up to speak to him as well, and several minutes later, she came and stood a safe distance away from him, staring out over the city. It took him a moment, but Al-Ashmar realized that Rabiah was staring at the fourteen spires standing at attention along the shore. Thirteen Empresses lay buried beneath thirteen obelisks, and the fourteenth stood empty, waiting. Al-Ashmar thought at first she was simply ignoring him, but there was so much anxiety on her face as she stared at the obelisk.
    “She won’t die from the worm, my lady. We’ve caught it in time.”
    Rabiah turned to him and nodded, her face blank now. “I know, physic.”
    Then realization struck. Rabiah wasn’t afraid because of the worm, never had been. She was afraid for something else, something much more serious. Like riddles within riddles, the answer to this one simple curiosity led to a host of answers he’d struggled with late into the night.
    He hesitated to voice his thoughts—they were thoughts that could get one killed—but he had no true choice. He could no more bury this question than he could have denied any of his children a home when they’d needed it.
    “How much longer?”
    A muscle twitched along Rabiah’s neck. She turned away from him and stared out over the sharp, rolling landscape. For a long, long time the only sound he heard was the call of a lone gull and the pounding of stone hammers in the distance.
    “Months, perhaps,” she said, “but I fear it will be less.”
    “You know what she’s asking of me, don’t you?”
    “Yes, physic, but you will do nothing of the sort. I will die with her. I will help her on the other shore as I have helped her here.”
    This was ludicrous, Al-Ashmar thought. He jeopardized his entire family with this one conversation. He should leave. He should instruct Djazir in the creation of the tonic, heal Bela, and be done with this foul mess.
    But as he stared at Rabiah, he realized how lost she was. She would die the day after the Empress did, would be buried in the Empress’s tomb, which waited beneath the newest obelisk along the shores of the Dengkut.
    The ways of the Empresses had always seemed strange when he’d been growing up in the southlands, and little had changed since coming to the capital to find his fortune. In fact, the opposite had happened. Each year found him more and more confused.
    But that was him. His opinion mattered little. What mattered was why the Empress would go against tradition and ask him to save Rabiah from her fate.
    The answer, Al-Ashmar realized, could be found by looking no