Cascet of souls

CHAPTER 27. Valerius Investigates

SEREGIL and Alec set off for the Temple Precinct just after dawn. Both were stiff and bruised from the night’s attack, and Seregil’s voice was still as rough as a crow’s. The cut left behind by the assassin’s garrote was a scabbed, angry red line just below the edge of his collar. Alec’s hand wasn’t much better, being a deeper cut.

The early-morning sky was filled with lowering red-tinted clouds that presaged more rain to come. Leaving their horses with a precinct ostler, they made their way on foot past lesser temples and shrines to the heart of the precinct.

The main temples of the Four flanked the black-and-white-paved square, washed at this early hour with a soft morning glow that made the white paving stones look pink in the light and pale blue in the shadows. The stones here were laid out to form squares within squares, which in turn formed a greater pattern symbolizing the eternal unity and balance of the Sacred Four. The white-domed Temple of Illior and the dark bulk of the square-pillared Temple of Sakor faced each other across it, looking west and east. Red firelight showed between Sakor’s pillars at all hours, reflecting off the great ruby-studded gold aegis that hung behind the altar.

The Temple of Astellus with its fountains, and Dalna’s temple in its great grove, took the other two sides. A soft hush hung perpetually over the sacred site, and at this hour there was little to hear but the bright tinkling of the falling water and the mournful cooing of the Maker’s doves. Although Sakor and Illior were the patron Immortals of Skala,

this sacred square with its four temples was repeated in every city and town; even the humblest villages had a small patch of ground flanked by four simple shrines. Reverence for the Four, in all their complex unity, had for centuries given Skala internal harmony and power.

They climbed the broad staircase leading up to the open doors of the Dalnan temple and left their boots in the care of an elderly verger. There were already quite a few other shoes lined up in the portico.

The huge temple hall was shadowed and cool. At the far end of the vaulted room a bright, welcoming fire burned on a huge stone altar carved with sheaves of wheat bound with serpents biting their own tails. A line of people stood waiting their turn to place their offerings of food and wine on the altar and get their blessing for the day. Priests, rather than drysians, served here, except for Valerius, who was both.

A young priest in simple white vestments led them through to the high priest’s meditation room and knocked softly. Seregil steeled himself; Valerius was a renowned drysian healer, as well as a fellow Watcher, but he was also the most ill-tempered person Seregil had ever called a friend.

A little acolyte answered the door and put a finger to his lips as he let them in. Valerius stood at a small altar similar to the one in the hall, wreathed in incense as he made the daily offerings for the queen, the city, and the land, assisted by two older acolytes, one male and one female.

Alec made a sign of respect and bowed his head. Seregil folded his arms and leaned against the wall by the door.

When the last of the wine, grain, and oil had been dispensed with, Valerius dusted his hands on the front of his gold-embroidered green robe and turned to them with a look of annoyance. “Well? I suppose you have some good reason for interrupting my morning ritual?”

“We need your opinion on something,” Seregil replied.

“What’s wrong with your voice? Do you have a cold?”

Seregil nodded slightly toward the acolytes.

Valerius dismissed them. “What’s all this, then?” He noted Alec’s bandaged hand. “In trouble again?”

“We were attacked by assassins,” Alec told him.

Valerius snorted. “Surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Let me see.”

He unwrapped Alec’s hand, then inspected the shallow cut on Seregil’s throat. “Clean cuts. No infections.” He rested a hand on Alec’s head and gave some healing that made Alec shiver.

“What about me?” Seregil asked.

“For that little scratch? You’ll heal. Is this what you came for?”

“No, Valerius. We were wondering if you’d heard anything about a strange sickness in the Lower City?”

“It’s being called sleeping death,” Alec added.

The drysian raised a bushy black eyebrow at that. “Sleeping death? No, not a word. Since when have you two turned physician?”

“It’s just something we stumbled across,” Alec explained. “Last night I found a few people with it up here, near Brass Alley.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither have your healers,” Seregil said.

The drysian’s frown was ominous. “Why haven’t I heard about this from them?”

“I think they’re afraid of quarantine, but it doesn’t seem to be passed by touch. Alec and I both have handled the sick ones before we realized what it was and we’re fine. So are the drysians taking care of them.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“People just fall down and lie there with their eyes open until they die,” Alec explained. “Do you know what could cause that?”

“Sounds like some sort of fit.” The drysian led them through the cool dark corridors to his chambers. The sitting room and bedchamber, visible through an open doorway, were austere and sparsely furnished. His private library overlooking the gardens and grove, however, was impressively stocked, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient books and racks of scrolls, with ladders for reaching the highest ones. Deep, comfortable armchairs flanked a couch in front of a black basalt fireplace carved with garlands of herbs.

Another chair, more worn than the others, stood by one of the tall open windows, the table beside it already stacked with books.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Valerius said absently, already perusing a shelf.

Seregil helped himself to a gold-stamped book on herbal medicine. Alec found one filled with pictures of poisonous plants and they settled down to wait.

The drysian climbed a ladder, retrieved several weighty volumes, and sat down in the chair by the window. For nearly an hour the only sound in the room was the soft flutter of turning pages and the rustle of leaves in the grove outside.

At last, Valerius added the books to the pile on the table beside him, then consulted another book and several scrolls in quick succession. “No, nothing exactly like that. Not that lasts that long with the eyes open.”

“Care to come see for yourself?” asked Seregil, knowing full well what the answer would be.

The Harbor Way was less oven-like at this early hour, and once they reached the Lower City, a freshening sea breeze cooled their faces. The Grampus Street temple stood at the far end of the ward, near the north mole.

The Maker’s temples were always humble in comparison with those of the other Immortals of the Four, but this one, though larger than the shrines in the area, lacked even a single tree by way of a grove, just a weathered stump near the front door with a potted bay tree sitting on it. It was a low, flat-roofed stone building, and only its cleanly swept front yard and the sheaf pattern painted over the doorway set it apart from the neighboring houses. Even so, there were doves about, and the youngest acolytes in their short brown robes were spreading the morning offerings to the birds when they arrived.

Valerius had changed into a simpler brown robe, though nothing so plain as his old drysian garb from his wandering days. The lemniscate he wore around his neck was made of gold now, but his staff was the same simple, worn one he’d always carried.

His arrival caused quite a stir. Tongue-tied acolytes bowed and led their unexpected guests through the offering hall and into a larger room beyond.

Twenty-seven people-most of them children-lay on pallets around the room, each dressed in a long nightshirt made of cheap linen.

“So many!” Alec exclaimed softly, dismayed at the sight.

A drysian was at work over one of them, but it was a middle-aged, balding priest in green vestments who hurried in to greet them. “Brother Valerius! What brings you here?” He gave the rest of them a puzzled look, too.

Valerius wasted no time on pleasantries. Fixing the man with a dark look, he said, “I’m told there’s some new ailment going through the Lower City, but it came to me from these men, rather than one of you. Why is that?”

The priest seemed to shrink a little under that hard gaze. “We’ve been dealing with it, Brother, and saw no reason to trouble you-”

“Or attract the vicegerent’s notice? There have already been a few found up above. Fetch me water and clean rags.”

The priest gestured to the acolytes, who scurried away.

Valerius began his examination of the stricken, touching them with remarkable gentleness and skill. Meanwhile, Seregil knelt down by one of the few adults, an emaciated old woman with chapped, large-knuckled hands that spoke of a hard life. Her rheumy eyes were fixed; her chest barely stirred.

Across the room, Alec was looking at a tall, sharp-featured young man not much younger than himself. “This is Long Nais, the keek.”

“The what?” asked the priest.

“A kind of footpad, one really good at locks,” Alec told him.

Seregil joined him and looked down at the prone figure. “Yes, that’s him, all right. Odd finding him here among the likes of these others.”

“Tell me what you know,” Valerius ordered the cowering priest as he moved slowly among the sleepers.

“We’ve never seen the like, and nothing we do brings them

around, Brother,” the man told him. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it that I can make out: young, old, men, women, children. The only thing they have in common is that they are all poor.”

“There are more children than adults,” Alec noted.

Valerius nodded and turned back to the priest. “How many have you seen so far?”

“There are reports of seventy-two dead since the beginning of the summer, and what you see here. And those are only the ones we know about.”

“It only strikes the wretched?”

“So far, Brother.”

A young drysian woman came forward hesitantly. “If I may, Brother Senus, there is what I was telling you yesterday.”

“Go on, Sister, though I still say it’s only coincidence,” the older priest said grudgingly, clearly displeased at being interrupted by his subordinate.

“A week or so,” she told Valerius. “That’s the longest any of them have lingered, though the littlest ones and the aged usually go more quickly. The first who were brought in had been lying in the street. We didn’t know when they’d been stricken, but then an older boy and a girl were brought in by their families the day they fell ill. The girl lasted five days, the boy nine. Now we’re watching Silis.” She pointed to a child of no more than five. “His mother brought him to us two days ago. They go quietly, at least.”

“The rest of these were found in the street,” the priest explained. “Only the Maker knows how much time they have.”

“Or how many don’t get brought to us,” the woman added sadly.

Valerius examined the little child and the old woman closely, then grasped his staff, muttered some spell, and laid his hand on the old woman’s chest. She didn’t stir. “Have you tried sparis root and rabbit vetch?” he asked the priest in charge.

“Yes, Brother, and lania bark with spleen water, bitter saw grass, and Zengati salts. As you can see, nothing has any effect.”

“What do you think?” Alec asked when Valerius stood up again.

“I’ve seen other maladies that leave the stricken ones catatonic like this.” Valerius scratched under his unruly beard. “It’s closest to some form of Kalian falling sickness but there’s no sign of jaundice. And even if it was, one of those remedies should have helped them.”

“Thero wondered about epilepsy,” Alec told him.

“But you can’t catch epilepsy, can you?” asked Seregil.

“Not that we know of, but we also don’t know what causes it,” Valerius told him. “And the salts should have brought them around.”

“It could be some form of plague that causes epilepsy,” Alec suggested. “But Seregil and I haven’t caught it yet, and we’ve been close to it. Same for the drysians who tend to them.”

“Often, there’s no rhyme or reason to who catches plague,” Valerius told him. “Sometimes it takes the old and sick. Sometimes it takes the young and healthy, and it’s never all of one and none of the other. This one seems to strike children the most often, but you have a few of the old and ill.”

“What about Nais, though?” Alec pointed out. “He was young, and healthy as far as I know. And he doesn’t look like he’s been sick.”

Valerius arched a bushy black brow. “And you can tell that by looking at him, can you, Brother Alec?”

“No, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t jump down his throat, Valerius. He’s concerned,” Seregil warned.

Valerius gazed around the room, expression softening a little. “It’s most certainly some new disease, and given where it’s been observed, I’d say it’s something brought in by sailors, as usual, or some trader. I’ve seen stranger things. As it is, though, I have no choice but to tell Prince Korathan.” He mopped his brow. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, though.”

“Well, he is a good deal easier to deal with than his sister,” Seregil pointed out with a smile. “But the Rhiminee merchants and the nobles who back them won’t like losing

custom to smaller ports up the coast, or beyond the Cirna Canal if he decides to close the Lower City, especially on account of an illness that strikes down only those in the most wretched wards.”

“Which is why the vicegerent relies on me and not them to judge such things.”

“Maybe whatever it is will pass when the heat breaks,” said Alec.

“Perhaps,” said Valerius, but he didn’t sound particularly hopeful. “I think it might be best if you two come with me to speak with Korathan, since you’ve seen more of it than I.” He cast a baleful look in the direction of the priest. “I should send him, so he can explain why he kept all this secret, but I see no point in wasting the prince’s time.”

The prince’s formal audience hours had not yet begun in the great hall. A servant led them instead through the royal household to the queen’s garden, where Korathan was taking breakfast alone and reading a tall stack of correspondence as he did so. Seregil hid a smile at the prince’s look of surprise as he and the others bowed.

Korathan rose and took Valerius’s hand, then raised an eyebrow at Seregil and Alec. “You two again? This is unexpected.”

“Please forgive the early intrusion, but we bring word of a matter of the utmost importance,” the drysian replied. “A new sickness has appeared in the Lower City and over a hundred people have died.”

The prince’s pale eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “And this is the first I’m hearing of it?”

“I only heard of it this morning, and from these two,” Valerius explained.

Korathan glanced at Seregil. “You certainly are busy fellows.”

The drysian went on. “The priests and healers down there have been trying to study it and manage it themselves, but it continues to spread. Last night Alec found a man in the Upper City, who’d apparently come up through the Harbor Way.”

Korathan sat down and waved them to the other chairs. “Bilairy’s Balls! As if we needed anything else this summer. Tell me more.”

“Seregil and Alec have seen more of it than I have.”

The two of them told the prince of the people they’d found, and the temple drysians’ reactions.

“You handled the bodies and yet you come here?” Korathan asked incredulously.

“Yes, and as you can see, Your Highness, we haven’t caught whatever it is,” Alec replied.

“How it is passed is a mystery so far,” Valerius explained. “But it doesn’t seem to be through physical contact. I mean to look into this personally.”

“Very good. See that you keep me apprised of your progress. Of all the damnable luck!”

“With all this heat, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more sickness,” said Valerius. “Hopefully this one will run its course quickly.”

“I’ll issue the edict of quarantine immediately.” With that Korathan returned to his breakfast and the papers he’d been studying.

Parting ways with Valerius at the front gate, Seregil and Alec headed for Wheel Street.

“There, that’s handled,” Seregil remarked as they rode down Silvermoon. “Are you satisfied?”

Alec shrugged. “Quarantine isn’t going to help the people who are already sick.”

“It’s in Valerius’s hands, now, tali. There’s nothing more we can do. Come on, let’s see Thero, then it’s home for a nap for me.”