As the two overdukes traded grim shrugs of foreboding, they felt the prickling of magic, and then the cold weight of hostile regard.
Some Serpent-lover was watching them from afar. Probably from yon hilltop, because now they could also hear-as if borne on a faint wind, but against the breeze sighing over the battlements from behind them, blowing toward the hill-chanting… a hissing chant: Serpent-worship.
Sudden shrieks arose in the castle yard below. Hawkril and Craer looked down, and saw cortahars and Storn folk stabbing each other with blades, clawing each other barehanded, and running wildly here and there.
Two strides took Craer to the dying priest. He slapped the man's face, and those dull eyes flickered. "What's causing this? This butchery and fighting? Hey?"
Bloody lips trembled to shape a last smile, and the priest whispered gloatingly, "Blood Plague. The Blood Plague is come at last."
12
A Surfeit of Plague
Fire leaped up in the night. Flaeros Delcamper stared at it-and then at another tongue of flame, shooting up to scorch the stars some distance away, probably at the next village. He frowned. "T'isn't festival time. What's going on?"
There were only three other paying passengers on the trade barge. One was asleep, but the other two were gawking at the flames just as he was. "What's going on?" he demanded again, but one of them-the trim-bearded Sirl merchant in green-just shook his head in silent bewilderment.
The barge crew had been rowing steadily against the steady flow of the river, keeping the barge to the most placid bankside shallows, but they'd seen the nightfires, too-and their response, without waiting for orders, was to stroke more swiftly.
For a moment the barge moved raggedly, and then settled into a new, faster rhythm. The breeze was quickening, too, and for the first time those afloat heard faint screams and shouts.
Flaeros strode toward the barge captain, sitting on his high perch and staring into the night ahead. Several of the hired Sirl guards moved to block his way, but the captain said a single quiet word and they drew back to allow the bard through.
Master Rold did not halt his ceaseless scanning of the way ahead as Flaeros approached. He'd caught up a double-ended metal spear from somewhere, and was holding it ready across his lap.
Even before the bard could open his mouth to repeat his queston, the master of the Silver Fin gave him a flat stare and said, "I don't know either, sir bard-but I'd much appreciate it if you'd stand quiet and just watch and listen, until I tell you different. Panic aboard makes our tasks no easier. So look sharp for archers or others on the banks who could menace us, and otherwise…"
"Keep my jaw shut?"
The barge captain nodded once, and resumed his steady scanning of the waters ahead and the banks around them.
Flaeros sighed, then said, "Very well. I agree if you'll tell me one thing- full truth, mind. I promise not to share your answer with…" He waved his hand to indicate the other passengers, now pacing nervously as new fires sprang up in the night-strange tall, narrow pillars of flame. The sleeping man had awakened, it seemed, and was going about asking very much the same thing Flaeros had been.
The barge captain watched those askings, sighed, and said flatly, "Ask your one thing, Lord Delcamper."
"Why are we on the water? Silverflow barges don't normally travel by night, and I remember us tying up and bedding down. When I came awake, there were one or two of these fires and we were under way again. Why?"
The breezes brought them more screaming; the folk doing it sounded terrified. "Is Aglirta at war?"
The barge captain shrugged. "As to war, the shouting and the fires, I know no more than you do. Something's going on, aye, but all I can tell you is that we cut our moorings in fair haste, and left Sabbar dock as fast as we could."
Flaeros cast a look back at the grimly rowing sailors, and saw sweat glistening on them in the reflected firelight. It was a clear night, but more warm than chill, even right on the water. "Why?" he asked again, when it became clear the barge captain was in no hurry to say more.
"Sir bard," the man asked reluctantly, "have you ever seen lions with two heads, that turned into great snakes halfway down their bodies, and slithered along with no rear paws? Or doings like walking spiders as big as mules, but with dozens of snake-heads sprouting from the tops of their bodies?"
"N-no," Flaeros replied. "The lion-things are known to heralds, though, and are called krimazror, or krimazrin in the singular. The desert backlands of Sarinda were once full of them, the tales say."
"Ah. Well. That's very nice. Remind me never to take it into my head to go faring into the deserts of Sarinda."
"Master Rold," Flaeros asked firmly, "are you telling me you've seen such beasts this night? Here, in Aglirta? Real beasts, and not some wizard-spun illusions to drive you off a dock he was keeping open for someone else, say?"
"I saw no wizards," the barge captain replied stolidly, "or at least, no men in robes who waved their arms as they sneered and declaimed, but I did see beasts of both these sorts. Real beasts, Lord Delcamper. They burst onto the docks and bit the heads off some of the crew-and sleeping passengers, too-of the Taratheena, out of Dranmaer. It was tied up next to us, and when a lion-thing looked our way, I yelled at the lads to cut loose and push off into the Silverflow."
They were rounding a great bend in the river, and there were more flames ahead. Flaeros shook his head. "I don't doubt your word, master-but I can scarce believe it."
"Huh. You're not alone in that," the barge captain replied. "Now, Lord Delcamper, I'd best devote my full attention to avoiding sandbars and swimming monsters, and suchlike, so if you'll…"
"Of course," Flaeros said, turning away from the raised bow under the watchful eyes of the guards.
As he did so, a weird hissing call arose, faraway down the Vale, and seemed to sweep closer, picked up and echoed by unseen folk-or beasts-nearer at hand. As if in response, the pillars of flame bent, wriggled, and took on the shapes of serpents, snake-heads questing this way and that. Flaeros could just make out the heads and arms of a ring of worshippers gathered around the base of the nearest bright serpent of fire.
It bent toward the bank, a forked tongue of fire licking forth, and Flaeros felt its heat on his face. Instinctively he shrank away, murmuring, "I might have known! Always, 'tis the Snake-lovers!"
A low moan of recognition and fear arose on the barge. Flaeros looked back downriver, and then forward, and shook his head. Much of the Vale seemed to have erupted in whatever mischief this was.
Abruptly, a hay-barn perched high on the bank they were passing burst into flame-a blaze set by whoever was crying out in triumph, not a serpent-shaped fire, at least not yet-and in its sudden bright light, Flaeros and everyone else on the Silver Fin saw people running. Vale folk were fleeing other Vale folk, some of them staggering strangely.
Staggering, and sinking down into things that grunted and snorted and ran now on all fours, reaching out with tentacles or crablike claws or spindly, barb-limbed talons.
People were screaming, people were falling and being eaten.
"Three take us all!" someone gasped, as a tall, elegant lady in a torn gown ran down the bank, hotly pursued by two youths. Almost at the water's edge they caught and clawed at her, raking her face and arms into bloody ruin. She bit them, snarling and pummeling, as the last shreds of her clothing fell away, and then flung herself atop one of them and held him down and drowning as she battled the other.
Flaeros and his fellow travelers on the barge stared in horror as hair was torn out and kicks and punches thrown recklessly. Everyone seemed enraged, one screaming man even turning with a roar to bite and claw the monster chasing him. Everywhere, folk were battling in barehanded, reckless savagery, like maddened animals.