This morning the sick guard, Lo-sen, would not waken. He lay gripped in a burning fever, delirious, hardly even aware of his surroundings. The remaining guard, Toru, stood aside, scanning the surrounding jungle while Pon-lor studied his companion. He set a hand to the man’s sweaty brow and found it searing hot to the touch. I can heal flesh and break flesh … but I cannot cure a fever.
He raised his eyes to Toru. ‘There is nothing I can do.’
Looking away, the man flexed his grip upon his sword. After a time he grated: ‘There is one thing.’
Pon-lor dropped his gaze. Yes. One last thing. The onus is upon me. He summoned his powers and drew a hand down across the blank staring eyes. He felt the heart racing like a terrified colt trapped in the man’s chest and he soothed it. He eased the mad beating then slowed it even more to a calm easy rest. The man’s clenched frame relaxed and a long breath eased from him. When Pon-lor removed his hand the man’s heart beat no more. Pon-lor stood, straightened his robes.
‘Thank you, Magister,’ Toru said.
Thank me? No — you should curse me. I have led you poorly. Lost my command. My only hope to redeem myself is to return with the damned yakshaka, or this witch herself. Collecting that bastard Jak’s head along the way wouldn’t hurt either.
He gestured into the jungle. ‘This way.’
After the sun had passed its zenith — from what he could glimpse of it through the layers of canopy — he chanced upon a plant he recognized. It was a thick crimson-hued vine dotted by large cup-shaped flowers, pale and veined, like flesh. Alistophalia. The Pitcher. Also known as Ardata’s Cup.
He broke off one blossom and examined it while he pushed aside leaves and grasses. Within, trapped by the clear sticky ichors, lay corpses of insects all in varying degrees of decomposition.
It feeds upon those it attracts.
He remembered the words of an ancient writer: Beware the Queen’s gifts, for poison and death lie hidden within.
Yet their Thaumaturg lore had found many uses for poison. This one’s could deaden nerves and mask pain. In larger doses it induced a trance-like sleep that to all outward appearances mimicked death. In just a slightly stronger dose it brought the eternal sleep itself. It was Master Surin’s serum of choice for his dissections. Under its influence a subject lived even as Surin exposed the heart and vital organs. The diaphragm continued to expand, the lungs to operate. Surin’s slick hands slid amid the glistening organs as he indicated this feature and that. Pon-lor and his classmates had crowded close round the table.
Surin had turned his attention to the head. He’d raised his keen scalpel blade to the immobilized face. ‘And now, gentlemen,’ he’d said, ‘the miracle of adaptation that is the eye.’ And the blade had descended to slide into the exposed clear orb. Pon-lor remembered thinking, appalled: This man is still alive, still aware trapped within.
Did he watch as the knife-edge penetrated his eye?
‘My lord?’ Toru asked.
Pon-lor halted, blinking. He peered up. ‘Yes?’
The guard gestured to a gap through the fronds, where the earth was bare and beaten. He squatted to examine the spoor. ‘Some sort of animal track. Heading east for now.’ He raised his helmeted head to look at Pon-lor, cocked a brow.
‘If you think it safe …’
Toru straightened. ‘I believe so, Magister.’
Pon-lor started forward but Toru stepped in front. ‘With your permission — I will lead.’ He drew his blade.
‘Very well.’ Following, Pon-lor returned his attention to the cup-shaped blossom in his hand. Beautiful … but deadly.
He cast it aside.
The track veered to the north and then to the south but tended to return to the east. He was grateful; along its relatively clear way they made good time. As the shafts of sunlight that managed to penetrate the canopy slanted ever more and took on a deep rich gold, he began to consider where to stop for the night. A wide tree would offer cover against the rain. However, after a few more hours of walking they came to the perfect cover against the gathering dusk and its inevitable downpour, but Pon-lor did not know if he dared enter.
It was a long-abandoned heap of stones that might have at one time been a temple or shrine, perhaps even a sort of border marker. Roots choked it now, and trees grew tall from its slanted sides. The questing roots had heaved aside the huge blocks of dressed limestone. Some had fallen away from the building. None of this gave Pon-lor pause. What troubled him were the heaped goat skulls. They lay in a great pile before the entrance: bleached white bone beneath black curved horns. Many had been set into the crotches of nearby trees. Some of these had since been overgrown and incorporated into the flesh of the tree. Trees with grinning dead animal faces. Why did this disturb him so?
An old practice, he realized. All long ago.
He waved Toru forward to examine the structure. After studying the ground and the interior, the guard returned. By now it was quite dark beneath the trees. ‘No one,’ Toru reported. ‘Only animal tracks.’
‘Very well. We’ll spend the night.’ His remaining guard was obviously reluctant but said nothing. ‘What is it?’ he invited.
‘An ill-omened place, Magister.’
‘This entire jungle is ill-omened, I fear, Toru. We’ll just have to make do, yes?’
‘Yes, Magister.’
They climbed the stone stairs to the enclosure. Geckos scampered from Pon-lor’s path in bright olive streaks. Spiders the size of outstretched hands hung in thick webs about the abandoned shrine. Pon-lor brushed dirt and leaf litter from the stones, wrapped his robes about himself, and sat.
Toru took first watch. ‘Magister …’ he asked after watching the darkening forest for a time. ‘Was this — do you think this was dedicated to … her?’
Pon-lor raised his chin from his fists. ‘For a time, perhaps. However, originally, no. This dates back far before her. And what need has she for temples or shrines? The entire jungle of Himatan seems to be dedicated to her.’
Toru grunted his understanding and was quiet after that. Thunder echoed and rumbled above. Then the rains began again. A spider that had been hunting among the stones padded up to Pon-lor’s side. As if curious it gently stroked his robes with its long hairy forelimbs. It was larger than Pon-lor’s hand. He edged it aside. Perhaps it was merely hoping to escape the rain.
When Toru woke him for his watch the rains had long ceased. Fat drops now pattered down from the canopy as heavy as slingstones. He lowered himself to the stone lip of the small shrine’s entrance and wrapped his robes about himself for warmth. He sat hunched, watching the glittering wet wall of foliage. The cry of a hunting cat sounded through the night. Then the ghosts came.
They arrived as a file of youths escorted by a priest in rags. They chivvied along a goat with them. The priest and many of the youths, male and female, carried suppurating sores on their limbs, faces and necks. Pon-lor recognized the symptoms of the Weeping Pestilence as recorded in Thaumaturg histories. It had struck centuries before. Named ‘Weeping’, it was thought, for the obvious reference to the constant drainage of the sores that erupted everywhere, and for the pain and misery it inflicted upon the entire society. Weeping indeed.
Yet these ghastly wounds and scars were not the only marks they carried. The youths were emaciated, little more than walking skeletons. The priest’s ragged feathered robe hung from him loose and soiled. Pon-lor recognized the starvation — and desperation — that accompanied plague and the breakdown of social order.
‘Great Queen,’ the priest announced, falling to his knees, ‘we beg for your pity.’ He gestured curtly to the children, who knelt as well. The youngest held a crude twine rope tied about the goat’s neck. ‘Spare our village. Turn your hand of condemnation from us and our devotion will be without end.’ He waved the goat forward and the child, a boy of no more than perhaps five years, pulled it to the fore. It bleated, nervous and unhappy.