Pytocane

Pytocane is a dark-green liquid drunk to bring on a quiet death. It is prepared for someone who is dying and who asks for it, and it is taken by the dying person's own hand.^[1]

Description

Pytocane is kept corked in a vial. Uncorking one sends a green mist cascading down its sides, cold enough to chill the fingers of the hand holding it.^[1] It is drunk in sips rather than swallowed at once, and it takes hold while the drinker is still speaking: the gaps between the words grow larger with each breath, and then stop.^[1]

Noran's death

The one dose in the books was prepared by Reslyn Keiser at The Avonbourn for Noran Daharshi, who was blind, bedridden and in pain in a room upstairs. Noran told Aero that she did not want to suffer any longer and that Reslyn had already prepared the pytocane. Aero let silence answer for him. He had hoped she would not mention the vial, and once she had, he could not keep his eyes off the dark-green liquid.^[1]

Aero uncorked it himself and held it to her lips, and she drank it down slowly while he held her free hand. She used the time it took to make him promise to leave his old life behind and start another that would not get him killed in his sleep. She was still rubbing her thumb across his palm when her hand fell limp.^[1]

In Eslura

How widely pytocane is known, who makes it and whether its use is a settled custom are all unrecorded. What the books establish is that a tavern keeper on the edge of the Kella Desert knew how to prepare it, and did so at the asking of a dying woman in her care.^[1]

Behind the scenes

Pytocane is listed under Other in the pronunciation guide at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection, as Pie-tow-cane. Neither novel's guide carries it, and the substance appears only in "The Heart of the Kella".^[2]