But she didn’t have it anymore. Maybe she never did. Then the Lady’s hand had guided her. That hand was gone now. Reisil stopped, staring around her at the bodies scattered like tortured dolls. Most people, the ones who didn’t blame her, said the wizards had done this. And she knew, down to the soles of her feet, that it was true. The plague suited the wizards’ style perfectly. It did their dirty work for them, efficiently, with no wasted energy.
They will pay,
Reisil promised herself.
I will make them pay.
Halfway down the line of tables, Reisil found a girl still alive. She lay sprawled half on one side as if she’d tried to curl into a ball. Her hands were black halfway to her elbows, and her feet were black where they protruded from her skirts. Her breath came in wheezing gasps, and she jerked and twitched in agony. Reisil could hear a soft, crackling sound, like crumpling paper, and realized that it came from the blackened limbs, the gases within bubbling and popping. The girl gave a little groan, her mouth moving, her eyes closed.
“Here,” Reisil called to Sodur, who dropped down beside her.
“By the Lady,” he whispered.
“I’m going to try to heal her.”
Reisil reached down inside herself. To her astonishment, the magic answered immediately, roaring up ferociously to engulf her with volcanic heat. Power crackled over her skin and snapped in the air around her. Reisil snatched her hands up to her chest. Sodur grunted and scuttled aside as the searing heat licked at him.
Reisil struggled against the rising power.
Either it came too fast and hard or it came not at all. What use was magic if she couldn’t control it?
Long moments passed, her mouth growing parched, her skin feeling stretched and tight as the heat grew more intense.
At last she managed to contain the magic, but it pulled at her like a chained animal, snapping and growling.
She laid tentative fingers on the girl’s chest, her light touch making the girl twitch and moan. Reisil closed her eyes, concentrating, moving inside. The girl’s body was as bloated and rotten as a corpse floating in a river. Reisil shuddered as she explored the damage. Collapsed blood-ways; pulpy, bruised organs; putrid, decaying flesh. Reisil couldn’t imagine how the girl still clung to life.
She slid inside on a thick tendril of magic, wincing at the girl’s pained cry of protest, the way her body twitched and flinched. Reisil tried to thin the magic, but to no avail. She pushed further along, determined to do what she had to do quickly. Elation rolled through her as she went deeper. It was working!
How long she sat over the girl, she didn’t know. Over and over again she repaired tattered nets of veins and arteries, restored putrid flesh, swallowed poisons and corrosion. But corruption returned, sliding unabashedly in behind her as she moved on to the next repair. She was besieged on all sides. Over and over she sought the epicenter of the body’s disaster, the source of the spreading horror. Over and over.
The girl died.
Reisil reeled back, feeling the child’s life fleeing away, trying to catch it with spectral hands. But the girl was gone, her body a patchwork of healed flesh and voracious rot. Reisil sobbed, the heels of her hands pressed hard against her eyes, her fingers curling hard into her scalp. She felt Sodur’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her against him in a rough embrace. Dry, racking sobs shook her like a sapling in a rough wind.
“Next time, next time,” Sodur soothed. The words worked their way into Reisil’s brain, and at last she pushed herself away from him, scrubbing away her tears.
“Then let’s try again.”
There were a dozen others still living in the shearing sheds. Reisil tried again with each of them, to no avail. At last Sodur dragged her drenched and shaking body away from the corpses.
“You cannot do this anymore. Not yet. You still have more to learn. And Kodu Riik cannot afford to lose you. We’ll have no hope then. You must survive and learn to use your power.”
She resisted his commands, pulling away. She owed these people. She was supposed to save them. That’s what her magic was for; that’s what the Lady had told her to do.
Heal my land. Heal my children
. If she couldn’t do as the Lady bade, she didn’t have a right to walk away. And who else would care for these pitiful creatures in their last days? Certainly not those hiding in the tavern.
In the end, Sodur promised to send back
ahalad-kaaslane
to help. Even then Reisil would have waited for them, but Saljane agreed with Sodur and urged Reisil to leave. Reisil allowed herself to be drawn away, though she couldn’t help but wonder if Sodur would do as promised. He saw her skepticism and there was an answering flare of pain in his expression, but Reisil wasn’t sure she believed it. He wore too many masks, too well.
Before they left, she insisted on making the dozen still-living plague victims as comfortable as possible on pallets, moving them to a vacant home nearby. Then Reisil incinerated the sheds with the bodies inside, her magic still flaming bright inside her.
As with the wizard circle, it seemed she could always destroy. It gave her no satisfaction.
Chapter 3
T
he snow began to fall again as Juhrnus rode into Koduteel through the Lady’s Gate. He waved at the guards in the gatehouse, pulling his cloak tight as a chill burrowed into his skin. Snow whirled in his face and melted down his collar, driven by the briny wind off the ocean. The banners along the walls snapped welcome, and Juhrnus gusted a happy sigh, looking forward to a hot kohv, a hot meal and a hot bath. And tonight there would be no rocks or branches or lumps of uneven dirt prodding his backside as he slept.
Esper humped in an uncomfortable-looking pile between Juhrnus and the pommel of the saddle, protected from the snow and cold by a curly sheepskin. The sisalik’s tail, too long to fit in the narrow space, hooked around Juhrnus’s waist, the tip twitching.
~We’re here,
Juhrnus announced.
~Cold. Hungry.
~You’ve been saying that for weeks. Tonight we’ll have a fire at the Temple, a warm bed and plenty to eat. And tomorrow we’ll have more of the same. No more traveling for awhile.
~Good
. Esper’s tail twitched again, and Juhrnus chuckled.
They turned north inside the city, Juhrnus resisting the urge to push his tired mount faster. The cobbled streets were treacherously slick. He gave the mare her head, allowing her to pick her way, glancing up at the sober lines of the banking and merchant buildings of the passing brown district. Few people were about this late in the afternoon. A group of four men walked hurriedly down the middle of the street ahead, talking rapidly and waving their hands emphatically. They bustled inside a forbidding edifice, gargoyles snarling from above the lintel. A carriage rolled down the street in the opposite direction, drawn by matching gray hacks. Juhrnus didn’t recognize the crest emblazoned on the door, but he admired the high-stepping horses as they trotted past with their silver bells jingling. Woodsmoke twined with the smell of the sea, overlaid with the lighter smells of cooking meat. Juhrnus drew an appreciative breath.
A vendor closing up his cart caught sight of the travel-worn
ahalad-kaaslane
. “Bright evening. Come far?”
“Lately from Kallas.”
“Through Karnane or past Mysane Kosk?”
Juhrnus rubbed a gloved hand over his beard, frowning. “Mysane Kosk.”
The other man nodded his silvered head, taking two sticks of roasted pork from his cart and passing them up to Juhrnus, who took them with a thankful grin. “Bad as they say?”
“Like nothing I’ve seen.”
The other man nodded again, absently stroking the decorative green stitching adorning the collar of his cloak. “Was a pretty city once. Brother’s wife’s family was there. Glass-makers. Haven’t heard from them since . . .” He paused. “Seen any of those
nokulas
? The plague?”
Juhrnus swallowed and wiped his mouth. “Saw where they’d been. Bad way to die.”
“They say they’re coming here.”
Juhrnus shrugged a shoulder, taking another bite. “Most
nokulas
seem to stay up in the western mountains. Not that many down low. Not yet anyway.”
“They’ll come, though, won’t they?” The vendor didn’t seem to need an answer, looking up at the sky and shaking the snow from his head. “Won’t keep you. Appreciate the news.” He staggered forward as his mule shoved against his back. He muttered and cuffed the beast lightly on the neck. The mule brayed a protest. “Winter’s going to be long and hard. Don’t think you won’t end up on the pointy end of a stick,” he said in the tone of a threat oft made.
Juhrnus thanked the vendor again and continued on. The Lady’s Temple sat inside the brown district, a stone’s throw from the road separating brown from orange, where the nobility played. Across that road expensive dining rooms, luxurious hotels, posh theaters and music halls abounded, as well as gambling dens, drug parlors and elite brothels that catered to every whim.
The Lady’s Temple was an ancient four-story building made of polished green stone ranging from shades of early spring green to brilliant sea moss to shadowy evergreen darkness. Two sweeping wings circled around a spacious courtyard, large enough to fit a dozen merchant caravans with room left over for a herd of a hundred cattle. It was roofed over by a lattice of vines looped around spreading tree limbs. In the warm months, it was a shady glen of cool comfort and retreat. Now the lattice was bare, and leaf litter collected in fountains, in piles against the walls, in ice-scummed pools and in thick blankets beneath the trees.
Nothing moved in the courtyard as Juhrnus rode in, his beard thick with snow. He crossed to the archway leading into the mews, where he found a crew of the orphan stable boys dicing in an empty stall. The stable master was at dinner, and the boys started guiltily when he poked his head over the door. He didn’t recognize any of them.
“Sir!” one of them said, scrambling to his feet.
Juhrnus held up his hand. “None of that. See to my mare. She needs a hot mash and a good rubdown. Don’t stint her or I’ll be having a word with your master.”
They swarmed out of the stall, watching as he pulled his cloak aside and lifted Esper to his shoulders before removing his saddlebags.
“Where’d you come in from?” one of the boys dared.
“West.”
There was an audible gasp and Juhrnus couldn’t help but grin. A dangerous trip, riding through the western mountains. The boys were suitably impressed by the journey.
“Did you see Mysane Kosk?” one asked breathlessly.
Juhrnus felt his face harden. “Hurry up the mare. Don’t want her getting stiff or colicky. And don’t forget—a hot mash and plenty of straw in her stall.”
With that he returned to the expansive courtyard, turning left from the archway and up the cloistered walk to the main entrance. He pushed open the doors and was greeted by a cacaphony. A swarm of orphan girls was rallying in a nearby classroom, singing loudly off-key, much to the annoyance of their long-suffering teacher. A group of both boys and girls slid raucously down banisters and played a boisterous game of tag in the sprawling foyer.
Juhrnus entered quietly, adroitly avoiding the careening bodies as he proceeded up the stairs, aware that a certain silence targeted him as the children first noticed him, evaluated him and then carelessly returned to their play. Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned first into the large common room, the corners of his mouth turning up at Esper’s grunt of pleasure. Heat permeated the room from the two enormous hearths on either side of it. A horde of chairs, couches and tables filled the space, illuminated by the fires and a host of oil lamps and wall sconces. A few human
ahalad-kaaslane
snored in chairs. Brilliant disks of shining green, amber and red peered at Juhrnus as the animal
ahalad-kaaslane
blinked sleepily from their own beds on laps and couches.
On the other side of the heavy doors blocking the far end of the commons came the muted sounds of laughter, clinking dishes and rumbling discussions. More important were the mouthwatering smells of fresh-brewed kohv, roasted meats, yeasty breads and spiced vegetables. Juhrnus’s stomach growled, and he sped across the room.
There was a hush, and then he was surrounded by welcoming voices and thumping backslaps.
“Juhrnus! We’d thought you’d fallen into a swamp!”
“Should have known you’d arrive in time for dinner. Your timing is always perfect.”
“Did you run into anyone? Meriis? Olvaane?”
Other names were volleyed at him, and Juhrnus nodded or shook his head at each, finding himself pushed to one of the long tables, his saddlebags taken from his hands, his cloak whipped away. He sat down before a trencher piled high with roasted potatoes, thick roast pork, gravy, baked apples and fried onions. A mug of ale sloshed down in front of him followed by a basket of crusty rosemary bread and a crock of honey butter. Juhrnus helped Esper onto the table and set to with gusto as Esper began his own feast of greenhouse-grown lettuces. Later Juhrnus would grab a couple of fat mice or a rat from the rodent cages to fill the sisalik properly.
He talked around his food, answering questions, finding no entry to ask any of his own. Yes, he’d seen signs of the
nokulas
. No, he hadn’t seen any himself. Yes, he’d seen where the plague had hit, but long before his arrival. Yes, the drought had made for a bad harvest in the Karnane Valley. No, the people didn’t seem to blame the
ahalad-kaaslane,
feeding, housing and clothing him as usual. Yes, there were bandits prowling everywhere. No, he hadn’t been attacked. He was
ahalad-kaaslane,
after all. Untouchable. The questions went on, skipping from town to town, topic to topic. He answered as best he could, beginning to feel the weight of his long ride as the food and ale filled him warmly.