The rainy weather continued for the next few days. Seregil and Alec were summoned once to the Palace to attend Elani, and spent the following night burgling Kyrin for fresh evidence. There was more gold in Kyrin’s secret room, but no new coded messages. Perhaps Klia had rooted that out, at least for now.
They set Kepi to watch at the Sea Market temple, in case the boy who’d traded with the old man or anyone else with the sleeping death turned up.
With the threat of quarantine hanging over their heads, Alec and Micum made their forays into the Ring slum. Alec wore his peasant-woman garb and Micum looked suitably disreputable in a dirty soldier’s coat and an eye patch. He went armed and they were mostly left alone. Though they found more people, mostly children, who claimed to have traded with a raven person, almost none of the descriptions matched. One had dealt with the old woman with the strange belt adornments, but no one had seen the old man. There was
talk of a young woman in a ragged cloak, and the lame young man on a crutch, but none of the people they questioned were able to give much more of a description than that. No one remembered a tall swordsman hanging about.
Kepi soon turned up at Wheel Street again with news of a boy who fit the description of the one Alec had gotten the yellow crystal from. He’d been brought into the Yellow Eel Street temple, along with many others.
“The merchants in the square are up in arms about it,” Kepi told them while having his customary meal in the kitchen under the fond eye of the cook. “They’re hollerin’ for quarantine louder every day ’cause folk are staying away from the merchants nearest there.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” said Seregil.
Alec and Seregil rode to the temple and found it ringed with angry people shouting at the priests and trembling acolytes.
“You know we can’t turn away the sick,” the head priest cried. “Maker’s Mercy, good people, let them at least die in peace.”
They shouldered their way through the crowd and into the temple. Once inside, Alec shook his head, looking at all the sightless sleepers lined up against the walls. The boy he’d gotten the stone from lay on a pallet near the door.
Alec hunted out the drysian in charge. “Could I borrow two of your acolytes, please, Brother? I need to send some messages.”
The two boys were quickly sent off, one with a message for Valerius, the other for Thero.
While they waited he and Seregil made use of their time examining the stricken people, looking for marks of any sort, or anything else out of the ordinary.
“Here’s something,” said Alec, kneeling by one of the little girls. “Look, someone’s cut a lock of her hair in the back. I saw that on another of the little ones over there, too.” He turned to the drysian woman. “Have you noticed that with any of the others who’ve come through here?”
“No. But we deal in illness, not hair.”
“Alec, look!” Seregil pointed to a child on the far side of the room.
It was the little golden-haired washerwoman’s daughter and her mother. The child still lived.
“That’s a few days longer than we expected,” Alec pointed out hopefully.
“We can’t take anything for granted,” Seregil warned.
The wizard and drysian arrived within the hour. The crowd had swelled but parted respectfully for Valerius.
Thero’s robe was rumpled and he looked rather hollow-eyed. He took in the room at a glance. “Your messenger told us a bit about what’s going on, but this? Look at all the little ones!”
“I’ve been talking with the priests,” said Seregil. “At least half of them were seen making trades with the ravens. I think this may be magic, rather than a simple illness. Or magic that causes the illness, at least.”
Thero nodded. “I’ll see what I can discover.”
The wizard moved among the sick, touching them, brushing their minds-or trying to. There seemed to be no mind to touch. The bodies were mere empty, breathing husks. All the same, there was the faintest hint of something else, something that made him vaguely uncomfortable, like a bad smell. He took his time at it, and when he finished he washed his hands.
“Did you find anything?” asked Valerius.
“I’m not sure. It’s not like anything has been laid on them, but rather something taken away, leaving just the faintest echo in its wake.”
“I sensed something similar,” Valerius told him.
“Taken.” Alec touched a little girl’s hand. “Like their khi?”
“Their soul, you mean?” Valerius shook his head. “They’d be dead if that were the case.”
“Only if the soul is the same thing as life,” said Thero. “Philosophers have been debating that for centuries.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “There is one last thing I’d like to
try, though. Help me move this older boy over to that clear place by the wall.”
Seregil and Alec carried the boy to the spot he’d indicated and then stood back with Valerius as Thero took out his chalk and began drawing an elaborate pattern of symbols around the stricken one. When he was done there was a solid circle around the boy, with room enough for Thero to sit inside with him on the floor.
He rested his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and sat in concentration for over an hour before giving up. At last he stood up, scuffed the chalk circle, and walked over to where Alec and the others were waiting.
“Anything?” asked Seregil.
“Just a headache.”
“Didn’t you sense any magic?” Valerius asked impatiently.
“No, nothing that I recognize as such.”
“Could it be some form of necromancy?” Alec suggested.
Thero gave him an affronted look. “I’m well versed in the various arts, Alec, as you very well know. That sort of magic always leaves traces and marks. If there is any magic to this, it’s too clean for necromancy. Nysander’s friend Teleus would have been the man to talk to about this, but he was killed when the Plenimarans attacked the Oreska House. He was the best versed in killing magic of any of us.”
“What about his successor, Miya?” asked Valerius.
“I think her studies have taken her in another direction, but she has all of her master’s books. I’ll speak with her.”
As they stepped outside they were met by a group of Scavengers being overseen by a score of the City Watch.
“What are you doing?” the temple drysian exclaimed in alarm as two Scavengers shouldered past him.
“Vicegerent’s orders,” the bluecoat captain informed him, handing him a scroll with the prince’s seal of office dangling from it. “As of now, this part of the Ring is being sealed off. All the sick ones you have there must go back inside.”
Looking past him, Alec saw a wagon loaded with boards and rocks, no doubt to build the barrier.
“But you can’t just toss them in there!” the temple drysian cried. “What will become of them?”
“They’ll be under your care, won’t they?” said Valerius.
The man looked at him with horror. “You expect us to go in there?”
“The Maker’s servants go where the need is greatest. They are your charges and you will attend to them. You, Captain!” He turned to the man in charge of the bluecoats. “Give my priests time to gather all they need and see that the sick are moved gently to some sheltered place. I won’t have you doing murder in the prince’s name and if you do, he’ll hear about it from me, understand?”
“Of course, Brother Valerius!” the captain assured him, cowed as most were by the sheer force of the imposing drysian’s will and presence.
Leaving Valerius to oversee the transfer, Alec drew Thero aside. “So what do you think?”
“I think that if this is magic, then a quarantine isn’t going to solve the problem,” the wizard replied. He paused, frowning. “I wonder if we have this backward?”
“How so?” asked Alec.
“What if it isn’t what these raven folk take away? What if it’s what they leave behind that acts as some sort of telesm? If so, then you may have put yourself in danger, buying that stone the other day. The boy who bought it has already been struck down.”
“May have?” Alec asked, suddenly uneasy. He’d had bad experiences in the past with strange magics.