by John Bierce
They walked among the great trading houses, where the wealthy and their clerks had once counted every single coin that flowed through Swalben like water until a man could drown in them like the fiercest river— and many men had. Now, though, the houses were empty and abandoned, and coins simply lay scattered about, untouched, as though they were as valueless as seawater. And they found many a body lying where they had fallen, untouched, and none of them bore their names in their pockets or on their chests, and Otto’s face grew darker and sadder, until they found the madman, pockets bulging with gold coins that dripped out with every step, and the madman was able to tell them the names of every single corpse and how much every single corpse owed him. Otto thanked him and graciously tipped the man a gold coin that he picked up off the ground, and the madman put it in his pocket and it immediately fell out, but he didn’t even notice as he just walked away tallying up his ledgers out loud. And Otto told Ida and Rupert that he knew the madman, that he was a cruel man, a miser, a man of little faith who treated his workers like slaves despite being one of the richest merchants in the city, but that today he’d more than atoned for all the ill he’d done in his life. And Otto caressed his book of names sadly, and looked away.
They went house to house, street to street, and the names crept into Otto’s book ten by ten.
They visited the poorest slums where only one in twenty had even gotten the Wrack and fewer died, and Ida watched as Otto inscribed those few names into his book with as much care as any other.
They visited the richest mansions where all had fled or died and the book filled faster and faster, and however tight Otto’s eyes got or however white his knuckles grew, he never took less care with any name.
They visited a street of blacksmiths and coopers and carpenters and ropemakers and when Rupert spoke of splitting up to cover more ground, Otto took one look at Ida, then said they’d stick together, for no-one should be left alone when the Wrack might strike them down at any time. And Ida felt relief, but also shame and terror that names might be lost because of her fear.
They went house to house, street to street, and the names filled up Otto’s book to the end, and he turned the pages, but there were no more pages. Then he turned back and back and back through the book looking for open space, empty margins, or pages he might have skipped. And he began to weep and curse himself for wasting his time with neat calligraphy.
And he threw the book then against the wall of a house, and he began to run past houses and streets and out of sight, wailing and ranting and shouting blasphemies until he was out of earshot too, and then Ida only heard the seabirds and the wind and the rain and the screaming and the moaning and the babbling.
Ida gently picked Otto’s book off the wet ground. She picked up the three pages that had fallen out, and slid them back into the book. She told Rupert to follow her back to the temple, but he shook his head and told her he’d wait for her here. And Ida walked back to the temple. And with every street she passed, she thought of the names they’d collected on those streets, and the thin little book began to feel heavier and heavier with the weight of all the countless souls it held. And all the confusion and anger and betrayal at Otto was the first thing to go, as the weight of that little book bore down on her and exhausted her and forced her to abandon everything but the book.
And by the time she finally dragged herself up the stairs into the temple, and stored the little book in a box meant for all the names to be transferred to the obelisk, she thought she understood why Otto had run, and all that anger and betrayal was outweighed by the memories of all the kindnesses and dignities he’d offered to everyone he spoke to and his tears at every lost name.
And Ida rummaged around the temple until she found a dead priest’s journal, half filled with complaints about the temple’s cooking and musings about hierarch politics. She carefully tore those pages out of the book and set them gently on the dead man’s desk, because the book would soon be heavy enough without the dead man’s thoughts, and she grabbed more graphite and a pouch big enough for the book.
And when she returned to the street where she’d left Rupert, and found him missing, she didn’t panic. She simply waited and listened for a moment, then followed the sound of gentle sobbing until she found him in a nearby house, where his arm dripped and bled from where he’d begun carving the names of the dead into it.
And Ida gently washed his arm and wrote the names revealed when the blood was washed away into her book. And then she washed his arm again and bound it in strips of silk that must have been so valuable once and now were only valuable for their cleanliness. And the two of them left that house with its dead whose names had been preserved.
And they went house to house, street to street, and the names crept into Ida’s book one by one.
CHAPTER TEN
Time Marked Only By Wind
Yusef vomited out his window again, then rubbed his temples. The headaches had been incessant for weeks, now. He was too old to be diving into the Goddess Sea, but he’d been using his gemstone eyes for hours every day.
He slowly trudged back to his desk and picked up his quill.
One hundred and seventy-four of the faithful dead so far.
Five in the riots on the day after the Masquerade, when the autumn winds began to blow.
Four more in the fires that followed. Surprising how much there is to burn in a city of stone.
One simply of slipping on cobbles in the first autumn rains.
Three healers mugged for their pain-killing herbs. Two still had their coinpurses left on their belts.
Ninety-four dead in riots eleven days after the Masquerade. Mob of nobles, merchants, and impressionable laborers blamed us for the Wrack. Fought them off with help from city guard.
Yusef stopped at that last one and had to take several deep breaths before continuing.
Out of pain-killing herbs day thirteen.
Day fifteen, Gilded Bensamen struck down with Wrack. Dies before sunset.
Day sixteen, twelve cases of Wrack among faithful. Four dead of Wrack, and one killed by his own dog gone mad, terrified by its owner’s screams.
Day seventeen, nine cases of Wrack among faithful. Seven dead.
Yusef continued writing down the dreadful litany, not even caring about efficiency at this point. You were supposed to keep semaphore messages as short as possible, so as not to clog up the semaphore currents, but few messages went out at this point anyhow.
Yusef finished the message, and trudged over to the window to dry heave.
He slowly, gingerly collected his things, and trudged down the stairs.
No busybody sons-in-law gossiped in the stairs or halls now. One had died in the riot. The others stood guard at the barriers around the neighborhood, or escorted the healers about the city to tend to the ill.
Halfway to the ground floor, Yusef paused to catch his breath, and sat down on the stairs. One of the household cats, a bedraggled ginger tom, clambered up the stairs and settled in his lap, purring.
Yusef smiled wanly and scratched the tom’s round face. Most of the countless cats in Lothain’s Moonsworn quarter were hiding under beds and in alleys, terrified by the screamers. The dogs wouldn’t stop howling, and many of them had been turned into nervous wrecks.
Yusef had actually seen rats on the streets. He’d never seen rats in the Moonsworn quarter before.
A few of the cats, though, seemed entirely unconcerned by all of it, like this tom. It was not the cleverest or the prettiest animal, and certainly not the best smelling, but it was one of the most affectionate.
His head eased up a little on the pounding after a few minutes petting the tom, and muscles he hadn’t even realized were tensed relaxed a bit in his shoulders. He gently pushed the cat off his lap and slowly plodded down the stairs.
The cat gave a disgruntled chirp, then padded off, probably to cuddle with one of Yusef’s grandchildren, who hadn’t played or left the house in days.
That so few of
the Moonsworn had died thus far spoke to the faith with which most of the community followed the laws of the Moon Goddess, who had given them those laws for their own protection.
That none of the dead Moonsworn had numbered among their ranks of the children was nothing less than a blessing from both Goddesses.
Yusef paused at the shrine to say a quick prayer, trying not to think about how empty it seemed. Trying not to think of the day when the mob came for the Moonsworn.
The Moonsworn Quarter was quiet, or as quiet as any place pierced by screams, moaning, and babbling could be. Even after reading all the reports, even after spending so long preparing himself, he’d been unready for the Wrack. He’d been unready for its noise.
All the reports spoke of the horrendous din of the screams, but what numbers had been offered spoke of the fact that there simply couldn’t be that many screamers at one time, save in the initial fierce burst some towns had. Most of the screamers tore their vocal cords within a few hours, and none lasted longer than a day.
Yusef passed a young couple holding each other for comfort, and he looked away.
He knew now that it wasn’t simply the measure of the screams on their own the semaphore reports had spoken of. It was their weight. The sheer grating force of them. It was like being forced to stare unblinking into a stranger’s eyes for hours on hours, to have their soul forced upon you unfiltered by the rituals, lies, and walls of civilization. To not be able to hold yourself apart and keep your innermost self a place of peace.
Somehow, the moaners and babblers were even worse. There were far fewer of them, but their voices never gave out, and they seemed to almost understand what was going on around them. Those that recovered seemed to remember the pain and delirium better than the screamers, and Yusef didn’t envy them that.
As he drew closer to the barricades, Moonsworn began approaching him, asking him for the truth of rumors.
Geredain had closed the borders.
The port of Swalben had fallen into the sea.
Geredain had already invaded.
No, the forces of the Galicantan Empress had invaded.
Galicanta had closed its borders.
Monsters had overrun Castle Morinth, and were running rampant across the plains.
Swalben had closed itself off from the world.
Swalben was blockaded by Galicanta to keep the Wrack from traveling by sea.
Swalben was blockaded by the Citrine Isles, to keep the Wrack from their shores.
The Galicantan Empress and the Sunsworn Emperor rode to war once more.
The Fractured Duchies had united at last.
Geredain and Galicanta were at war.
The Sei had invaded the plains.
That last, at least, Yusef could dismiss. The Sei had been broken a generation ago, when Geredain and Lothain had, in a rare instance of cooperation, invaded the Krannenbergs to smash the Sei raiders once and for all, to punish them for their alliances with the singing Northerners. Despite the Singers being Eidol Vowless as well, they were ill-loved by the nations south of the Krannenbergs. The Sei weren’t gone, but he doubted there were more than a few thousand of them left, up in the mountains worshipping their hungry, bitter god of dust. The best they could launch were ineffectual raids. Irritants, no more.
As Yusef reached the barricades, a couple of the Moonsworn guards detached themselves and escorted him through the narrow aisle leading out. Without saying a word, they fell into step with him as he trudged through Lothain.
He could immediately feel the difference. There were more screamers here. The streets were even dirtier and felt more hopeless.
A few of them looked his way, and some of them waved, but Yusef ignored them.
Rats roamed the streets, and Yusef forced himself to look at the piles of trash, to count how many of them wore clothes and should be walking and laughing and…
Some ugly part of Yusef smiled deep within his chest at the thought that those piles of trash wouldn’t be forming any more mobs.
The stench was like a wall he was trying to force his way through.
What should have been a walk of a few minutes seemed to take hours until they reached the river, where the bridges had once stood. The mobs and guards had pulled them all down, in an effort to keep the Wrack on the other side with the Palace.
Carlan’s last, hasty message ran around his head again, and he wondered at it.
Yusef looked to the river and saw a child drinking its water, but rather than pull it away or scold it as he once would have, he simply looked away. He kept walking.
They came to the semaphore tower by the river, and the city guards watching it just nodded and let him pass. The king was dead, and the nobles had betrayed the people. They didn’t give a damn about orders forbidding the Moonsworn from using the semaphores.
Yusef trudged up the stairs, and though the tower was only three stories tall, he climbed for seven times seven years, like Ehairon from the children’s story, and his head pounded and ached. He focused on Carlan’s message and not the hole inside him, for the message was horror enough.
Carlan’s conjecture that something in the air, stress, or even the screams themselves were what kicked off the first, deadliest wave in each Wrack outbreak— at least, during the ones that erupted like wildfires, rather than the slower sort. It made a dire sort of sense to Yusef and his healers and scholars. Being an external trigger was unlikely, for outbreaks had erupted in such different conditions across Lothain. The only plausible external trigger the Moonsworn had thought of had been that perhaps cooling temperatures triggered the outbreaks, but Yusef doubted that. The initial outbreak at Castle Morinth had been during the heat of the summer— which, admittedly, was much cooler in the mountains than on the plains, but even then, many of the first outbreaks on the plains had been during the heat of late summer and early fall as well.
No, the initial outbreaks being a stress response was more likely. Or a response to the screaming.
Yusef climbed to the top of the stairs, where a Moonsworn seer, amethyst eye glinting in the wan sunlight, slowly cranked the handle of the semaphore, the arms slowly ratcheting and revolving. The looped message chain he’d crafted three days ago, detailing their findings about the Wrack, clattered and twisted. Clattered and twisted. Another seer watched at the window, waiting for anymore messages.
One of Yusef’s guards silently took over from the seer at the semaphore, and Yusef strode over to a nearby desk to begin assembling a new message chain.
As he pulled the links from the many drawers resting atop the desk, to begin assembling the message he’d written, he tried not to think of Carlan’s other bit of conjecture, and once again he failed.
The tides of the Goddess Sea and the currents that flowed through it, trended south across Lothain from the Mist Maze. You could track currents in the Sea almost precisely along the path of the Wrack.
The Wrack couldn’t be floating in the Goddess Sea.
Not without the Goddesses putting it there, and plagues were not the tools of the Goddesses, but of their sister who they had chained inside the earth, who would not just go nameless like the Goddesses, but not even be allowed a title.
Of course, if it were some venom released by the nameless sister— for toxin lay in her domain as much as disease did— that might explain why the Wrack could be seen by citrine.
Yusef desperately tried to shake the thought from his mind. For their nameless sister to have loosened her chains that much, to have touched the Sea, would mean…
Well, it would mean the end of times, when she broke apart the world itself, to escape its prison and resume her battle with her sisters until they overwhelmed her and built a new world to imprison her— as they had a thousand thousand times before, and would a thousand thousand times again.
A particularly piercing scream reached the tower. Yusef dropped a link, and he had to laboriously lean down to pick it off the floor again.
As he slowly finished the chain, his
thoughts turned to Nalda. He’d received no messages from her since the ban. No word. The outbreak at Castle Morinth had died down before the outbreaks on the plains even began.
Perhaps the soldiers at the castle were merely keeping to the king’s orders.
It was, he knew, a bit of an overblown worry on his part. No word from Castle Morinth had reached them at all in weeks, for that matter, but that was no surprise— the semaphore network had started falling apart soon after the Wrack hit the plains. He doubted there were any occupied semaphore towers left in the north of Lothain. What few messages they’d received from Swalben had been routed south through the Fractured Duchies and Galicanta, then back north into Lothain.
Yusef prayed every day that Nalda was safe.
He finished assembling the message chain and carefully carried it over to the semaphore looped over his arm. He crouched down, and as the old message was feeding through, he unhitched its loop, hooked in the new message, and carefully guided the new, extra-long chain over a series of pulleys to keep it from tangling.
The Moonsworn turning the crank didn’t even have to stop, let alone slow down. Yusef wasn’t as skilled as a semaphore seer, but he was more than skilled enough to loop in an additional length of chain mid-message.
The momentary flit of pride faded, and Yusef stood with a groan. He didn’t even bother to check the outgoing message, leaving it to the semaphore seers.
Yusef began padding down the stairs, brooding over whether there were enough active semaphore towers to the south to get the message to any other Moonsworn community. Despite Galicanta’s ban on the Moonsworn, a few small communities had been allowed to stay. However, even in the best of times, many of their messages were intercepted and censored.
