Goldmoon said something pleasant and innocuous and turned her face from the amazed scrutiny to look around. She asked after the patients.
“The hospital is quiet this night, First Master,” said the healer, leading the way into the ward. “We have many patients, but, fortunately, few who are really worrisome. We have a baby suffering from the croup, a Knight who received a broken leg during a joust, and a young fisherman who was rescued from drowning. The rest of our patients are convalescing.”
“How is Sir Wilfer?” Lady Camilla asked.
“The leg is mended, my lady,” the healer replied, “but it is still weak. He insists he is ready to be released, and I cannot convince him that he would do better to remain another few days to fully recover. I know that he finds it very dull here, but perhaps if you were to—”
“I will speak to him,” said Lady Camilla.
She moved among the rows of beds. Most of the patients came from outside the Citadel, from villages and towns on Schallsea. They knew the elderly Goldmoon, for she often visited their homes. But they did not recognize this youthful Goldmoon.
Most thought her a stranger and paid little attention to her, for which she was grateful. At the far end was the cradle with the baby, his watchful mother at his side. He coughed still and whimpered. His face was flushed with fever. The healers were preparing a bowl of herbs to which they would add boiling water. The steam would moisten the lungs and ease the child’s cough. Goldmoon drew near, intending to say a few words of comfort to the mother.
As Goldmoon approached the cradle, she saw that another figure hovered over the fretful baby. At first, Goldmoon thought this to be one of the healers. She did not recognize the face, but then she had been absent from them for weeks. Probably this was a new student. . .
Goldmoon’s steps slowed. She halted about three beds away from that of the sick child, put out a hand to steady herself upon the wooden bedpost.
The figure was not a healer. The figure was not a student. The figure was not alive. A ghost hovered over the child, the ghost of a young woman.
“If you will excuse me, First Master,” said the healer, “I will go see what I can do for this sick child.”
The healer walked over to the child. The healer laid her hands upon the baby, but at the same instant, the fleshless hands of the ghost intervened. The ghost grasped the healer’s hands.
“Give me the blessed power,” the ghost whispered. “I must have it, or I will be cast into oblivion!”
The baby’s coughing grew worse. The mother hung over him worriedly. The healer, shaking her head, removed her hands. Her healing touch had failed the baby. The ghost had stolen the energy for herself.
“He should breathe in this steam,” the healer said, sounding tired and defeated. “The steam will help keep his lungs clear.”
The ghost of the woman drifted away. More insubstantial figures took her place, crowding around the sick baby, their burning eyes staring avidly at the healer. When the healer moved to another bed, they followed her, clinging to her like trailing cobweb.
When she put out her hands to try to heal another patient, the dead grasped hold of her, crying and moaning.
“Mine! Mine! Give the power to me!”
Goldmoon staggered. If she had not been holding onto the bedpost, she would have fallen. She closed her eyes tightly shut, hoping the fearful apparitions would disappear. She opened her eyes to see more ghosts. Legions of the dead crowded and jostled each other as each sought to steal for his own the blessed life-giving power that flowed from the healers. Restless, the dead were in constant motion. They passed by Goldmoon like a vast and turbulent river, all flowing in the same direction—north.
Those who gathered around the healers were not permitted to linger long. Some unheard voice ordered them away, some unseen hand pulled them back into the water.
The river of dead shifted course, swept around Goldmoon.
The dead reached out to touch her, begged her to bless them in their hollow whisperings.
“No! Leave me alone!” she cried, cringing away. “I cannot help you!”
Some of the dead flowed past her, wailing in disappointment.
Other ghosts pressed near her. Their breath was cold, their eyes burned. Their words were smoke, their touch like ashes falling on her skin.
Startled faces surrounded her. Faces of the living.
“Healer!” someone was calling. “Come quickly! The First Master!”
The healer was in a flutter. Had she done something to offend the First Master? She had not meant to.
Goldmoon recoiled from the healer in horror. The dead were all around her, pulling on her arm, tugging at her robes. Ghosts surged forward, rushing at her, trying to seize hold of her hands.
“Give us . . . ” they pleaded in their terrible whisperings.
“Give us what we crave. . . what we must have. . .”
“First Master!” Lady Camilla’s voice boomed through the sibiliant hissings of the dead. She sounded panicked. “Please let us help you! Tell us what is wrong!”
“Can’t you see them?” Goldmoon cried. “The dead!” She pointed. “There, with the baby! There, with the healer. Here, in front of me! The dead are draining us, stealing our power. Can’t you see them?”
Voices clamored around Goldmoon, voices of the living. She could not understand them, they made no sense. Her own voice failed her. She felt herself falling and could do nothing to halt her fall.
She was lying in a bed in the hospital. The voices still clamored. Opening her eyes, she saw the faces of the dead surrounding her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Dragon Edict
General Medan rarely visited his own headquarters in Qualinost. Constructed by humans, the fortress was ugly, purposefully ugly. Squat, square, made of gray sandstone, with barred windows and heavy, iron-bound doors, the fortress was intended to be ugly, intended as an insult to the elves, to impress upon them who was master. No elf would come near it of his own free will, though many had seen the inside of it, particularly the room located far below ground, the room to which they were taken when the order was given to “put them to the question.”
Marshal Medan had developed an extreme dislike for this building, a dislike almost as great as that of the elves. He preferred to conduct most of his business from his home where his work area was a shady bower dappled with sunlight. He preferred listening to the song of the lark rather than to the sounds of screams of the tortured, preferred the scent of his roses to that of blood.
The infamous room was not much in use these days. Elves thought to be rebels or in league with the rebels vanished like shadows when the sun hides beneath a cloud before the Neraka Knights could arrest them. Medan knew very well that the elves were being spirited away somehow, probably through underground tunnels. In the old days, when he had first taken on the governing of an occupied land, he would have turned Qualinost upside down and inside out, excavated, probed, brought in Thorn Knights to look for magic, tortured hundreds. He did none of these things. He was just as glad that his Knights arrested so few. He had come to loathe the torturing, the death, as he had come to love Qualinesti.
Medan loved the land. He loved the beauty of the land, loved the peaceful serenity that meandered through Qualinesti as the stream wound its sparkling way through his garden. Alexis Medan did not love the elven people. Elves were beyond his ken, his understanding. He might as well have said that he loved the sun or the stars or the moon. He admired them, as he admired the beauty of an orchid, but he could not love them. He sometimes envied them their long life span and sometimes pitied them for it.