The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Shadowpeople, too,” he said drowsily, burrowing into the bed. “I’ll pull the latchstring in behind you and take a nap.”

  “It isn’t like you to sleep in the bright day, child.”

  “Well, Boldery was telling stories last night, about ghost pieces. Boldery tells good stories, but I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “All right then,” she agreed. “But I’ll hammer on the door when I come back, so be ready. And you’re not to go out by yourself, even if I’m late.” She did not leave the door until she saw the end of the latchstring slide through the hole, then she went down the way they had come, stopping for a moment to speak to the gray woman who emerged, like a phantom out of smoke, at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yes, I’ve sent the girl to tell the watch, young sir. Not that it will do much good. They’ll send a wagon after him, sooner or later, and it will take him to the infirmary of the Healers – though with all the Healers gone, who knows what good that will do.”

  “Healers gone? Why?”

  She put on a mysterious face. “There is talk in the marketplace of a dispute between the Healers and a certain inhabitant of … Poffle. You know of Poffle?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” she admitted.

  “Ah. Well, Healers were summoned there from Pfarb Durim. Evidently they did not go or would not Heal, it is uncertain which. Then others were sought and brought – some say involuntarily, which is a mistake in dealing with Healers – and something unfortunate happened, so it is alleged, which caused all the Healers to leave Pfarb Durim and set a ban on the city.”

  “But if the dispute is with Poffle, why set a ban on this city?”

  “The connection is always assumed, young sir. The place below is somewise dependent upon Pfarb Durim. Or, other end up, possibly. Whatever. May I offer you any help or direction?” she added, looking curiously at Mavin’s cloak. And, upon Mavin’s telling her that she needed a mapmaker or guide or geographer or any combination of them, the lodging keeper gave her directions to Chart Street.

  It was almost dusk when she returned, the lights of the city were being lit and the great firebaskets upon the walls had been set ablaze. In the red, smoky glare, ordinary citizens began to assume the guise of devils. Every face seemed either frightened or menacing or closed around some ominous secret. Laughing at herself for these fantasies, Mavin nonetheless hurried to return to the lodging house, thinking of Mertyn and dinner with about equal intensity. She had purchased half a dozen cheap maps of the Shadowmarches, from different chartmakers, on the theory that the features common to all might be assumed – only might be assumed – to indicate a close approximation to reality. On the other hand, she told herself, it might not be wise to discount the odd, dangerous feature shown on only one. That one might have been the result of an exploration while the others were only popular fiction or speculation.

  She knocked at the door of their room for a long time before Mertyn dragged it open. He stood peering at her blearily, eyes and face swollen and red. She touched his forehead and cheeks and felt a feverish heat. He seemed unable to focus on her.

  “Brother child, what’s the matter with you?”

  “I feel – all sort of sick,” he said. “Everything keeps fading.”

  “Have you been asleep since I left?”

  “I slept a long time,” he said, staggering back toward the bed. “Then I woke up feeling funny, and it comes and goes.”

  “Stay here,” she instructed him, though he showed no inclination to go anywhere. “I’ll get you some broth from the kitchen and see where the nearest Healers are to be found.”

  “Danderbats don’t seek Healing…” he murmured.

  “Battlefoxes do,” she said grimly, remembering her conversation with her thalan. As she went down the stairs, however, she remembered a more recent conversation, the one with Pantiquod. The woman came out of her hidey hole as though summoned.

  “You’ll be wanting supper, young sirs,” she began.

  “I’ll be wanting some broth for Mertyn,” Mavin cut her off. “He’s sick. Did you tell me true, earlier, when you said there were no Healers in Pfarb Durim?”

  “According to the tittle-tattle of the marketplace, there is not one Healer left in Pfarb Durim. Healers are clanny, young sir, and if one of them was injured in Poffle, why – I suppose none would come near us after that. ‘Who injures a Healer goes without Healing.’ Isn’t that the old saw? Well, perhaps not. Maybe it’s only something I thought I had heard somewhere.”

  “But the end of all this is what you said earlier. No Healers in Pfarb Durim. Where would the closest ones be, then?”

  The gray-faced woman nodded in mixed sympathy and satisfaction. “He’s truly ill, then. I thought that might be coming. We seem to have ghoul-plague in the city. So rumor hath.”

  “Ghoul-plague? I have never heard of it.”

  “I thought of it when the boy spoke of the sick man in the alley. I was almost certain of it when the wagon came suspiciously soon. Plague has been muttered of for days. They say it began in Poffle. The Healers were summoned and would not – some say could not – heal. An attempt was made to force them. Now the plague has come to Pfarb Durim, and the Healers are gone.” Then, seeing the horror on Mavin’s face, she relented. “Let us not be so quick. Come, I’ll get you some broth. Perhaps he is only weary from his journey.”

  But when they returned to the room, Mavin could not get Mertyn’s attention at all. He was in some deep well of delirium from which she could not arouse him.

  “It’s too quick,” complained Mavin. “We only arrived today.”

  “The disease is sudden in those it takes,” said Pantiquod from where she hovered in the doorway, not coming any closer than she needed to see the boy’s face. “And he said he touched the man in the alley.”

  “Do they recover?” Mavin whispered. “Does it kill many?”

  “Some recover,” Pantiquod said. “Most die. It is said that the shadowpeople can cure it, which is like saying a flask of sun will gild thrilps. First one has to fill one’s flask.” The woman left her, turning in the doorway to say, “Do not try to move him. Sometimes, so I have heard, persons ill with ghoul-plague are transported, perhaps in search of a Healer, or some more salubrious air. If they are moved, they invariably die. So I am told. Do not move him. In any case, you could not. The gates will soon be locked against any leaving.” And the door swung shut behind her, leaving an impression upon its surface as though she stood there still, dim and smoke-like, inhabiting the lodging house like mist, a smile almost of satisfaction upon her face.

  It did no good to feed Mertyn the broth. It ran out of his mouth. She could not get him to swallow. She sat with him cradled against her, terrified and helpless, not knowing what to do next. When she began to pull herself together, it was fully dark outside.

  She did not know whether to believe the woman or not, but for the time being she would not attempt to move Mertyn. He was hot, unconscious, but he breathed steadily and when she put her ear to his chest, his heart thudded away evenly. So. She covered him warmly, set herself frantically to make some sensible plan.

  First she must determine whether what the woman said was true. She left the room, wedging the door shut behind her. At the foot of the stairs, she looked inside Pantiquod’s hidey hole. It was empty, more than merely empty. It had an air of vacancy about it. Suddenly suspicious, she found her way to the rear of the place. The kitchen was empty also, and the little area way opening from it. She went back up the stairs, opening each room she came to. Empty. So. If there had been plague rumored for the past days, then those who heard the rumor would have left the city. The woman herself? Had she stayed? Or did she have some secret way out?

  No matter where she might be, Mertyn and Mavin were alone in the place now, and the street outside was quieter than it had been since she had entered the city. She opened the heavy door onto the street. It creaked, and the wall torch showed her the crudely painted words, “Plague here” on
its rough outer surface. The warning had been painted after she had returned, within moments, perhaps of that time. Mavin found some curse phrases she had not remembered knowing and used them freely, harshly, whispering into the silent street. She would have to leave Mertyn alone in the place while she sought some kind of help. Perhaps the sign on the door would protect him as well as anything could. She closed the door softly behind her and went back down the dark alley, the way they had originally come, unaware until she was halfway to the city wall that she was going to find the Seer Windlow. Then she realized that it was the only sensible thing to do.

  She found the inn at the city wall without trouble, could not have avoided finding it, for there was a great mob gathered around it full of threats and brandished weapons, like a gathering of devils in the light of the great braziers and the torches. Above them the city walls were crowded with people looking outward, shouting down to those below. “It’s King Frogmott from the north. He has Armigers and Elators with him.” And these cries were contradicted by others, “No, they come from the Graywater Demesne of the Sorcerer Lanuzh!” Mavin forced her way through the crowd, tucking in a rib here and bending a shoulder there. Everyone was so full of panic that they paid her no attention. From the wall she looked out to see the City gates guarded from some distance by an array of warriors and Gamesmen, torches flickering along their lines, lighting the pennants flickering over their heads.

  “Why are they here?” she asked the nearest watcher. “Who are they?”

  “I’ve heard six people say six different things about who they are,” her informant muttered. “As to why, well, young man, that should be obvious to anyone. We’ve plague in the city, and those out there are determined we shall not bring it out of these walls.”

  “Surely there are Elators within the walls who could transport themselves away in an instant? Armigers who could fly over their lines? Others, perhaps, who escape such sieges as this every day of their lives? The place cannot be closed tight!” Mavin was beginning to feel the crowd’s panic as her own. Her heart pounded and her muscles twitched with the need to do something.

  “Well, and if it gets bad enough, they’ll probably try. The Healers have set a proscription on all who leave the city, however, and not many will risk that until they must. Even an Elator must come out somewhere, and it is said they have the countryside for leagues around under watch.”

  “It’s true, then? What someone told me. A Healer was injured – forced, down in Poffle.”

  “So the story goes. There is plague there, in Poffle. And now there is plague here.”

  “Has anyone approached the Healers? Surely they know there are people here innocent of any involvement with Poffle. Travelers.”

  “Young man, ask someone who knows. I am a merchant, here doing trade, and as innocent of involvement as yourself. Wait! See there. A Herald comes. Now you will have some answer, and so will I.”

  A knot of glaring light had separated from the flaming line along the hill and was coming toward them, lighting the upper half of a Herald’s body so that he seemed a half person, floating upon the dark. The light came from a large, shallow brazier floating between two Tragamors, and its evident purpose was to light the Herald’s face so that he could be recognized. He stopped outside the walls, far enough away that all could see, yet close enough to be heard. Mavin had been told of Heralds’ Talent, but she had never heard the trumpet voice with which Gamesmen of this persuasion made their pronouncements. When the voice came, it started her as well as others along the wall so that they moved as one with a reflexive grunt.

  “People of Pfarb Durim give ear,” the Herald cried. “I am the Herald Dumarch-don, servant of the great King, Frogmott of the Marshes, and of his allies in this endeavor, the Sorcerer Lanuzh, the mighty Armiger, Galesbreath of Rockwind Demesne, and other Gamelords and men of unquestioned honor and unlimited might. I cry siege upon the city of Pfarb Durim and upon that pit of Hell which lies at its feet. Siege shall be maintained until all within have died or until a cure has come. Let none within seek to escape, for our vengeance will be dreadful upon him and upon his house, his Demesne, and his kindred.” The Herald wore a tabard of jewels. His face was proud and high-nosed, and his voice like an orchestra of brass, mellow and challenging at once. Mavin could not get her fill of looking at him, so marvelous he was, but he turned his back on all within the city and rode away, back to that flickering line of light along the mountain.

  When she turned back to ask yet another question, the man had gone, and she stood for long moments upon the wall staring out at the gathered host. Even as she watched, a hilltop was crowned with moving figures, newly arrived besiegers tightening the grip upon the city. She fought her way down the stairs and through the crowd gathered around the inn. Huge, burly men guarded the door, pretending not to hear her as she asked for the Seer Windlow. Giving up in frustration, she slipped away, around the side of the place and into a narrow, blank alleyway where the trash from the place was dumped. There was a small window, high above. She looked around to see that she was not observed, then lengthened an arm and used it to pull herself up and through the narrow opening. She came down into the place, casually, stopping a scurrying servant in the hall.

  “I am seeking the Seer Windlow. I carry an important message for him. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “There’s no Seer here, young sir. Was you wanting that one with the young men and the boy? He was here eating a meal, but then he went with the others. To the Mudgery Mont, so they said at dinner. And sensible it was of them, too, for the Mont is above all this clamor.” And she was off down the hallway, answering a screamed summons from below.

  Mavin used the same window to leave the place and set about finding the Mudgery Mont, growing more frantic by the moment as she thought of Mertyn left alone.

  Now it was necessary to fight her way through the streets, packed from wall to wall with the inhabitants of the inner city as they tried to get to the walls, to the gates, to learn for themselves that the city had been closed like a trap with themselves inside. She gave it up before she had gone two streets, melting into a dark sideway and from that swarming up the side of a building and onto the roofs. When she had come to a less crowded place, she descended, picking out a small group who seemed disinclined to join the general pack.

  “The Mudgery Mont? Surely. At the top of the hill which caps the cliffs, young man. They’ll never let you in there, though. It’s guarded like a treasury.”

  Mavin nodded her thanks and was off again, swarming onto the roofs once more to lope across them in some long legged form more usual in forests than in such a place as this. She could see the hill against the western sky, crowned with squat towers and another set of walls. It was closer, actually, to the place she had left Mertyn than the gateway inn had been, and she wasted some small breath giving thanks for this as she ran and climbed and swung across gaping chasms of street.

  Behind her came the hooting of a great horn, an outcry of bells, a welling shout as from a thousand throats. Something had happened where the mob was gathered, but she did not look back. Soon she was at the foot of the hill where streets widened to sweep upward around mansions and palaces and one brightly lit and elegant hotel. Before it stood a dozen Gamesmen in livery, Heralds and Tragamors, leaping to do the bidding of those who went in and out. Mavin came to ground and walked into the light, approaching the door as though she had business there. They did not let her go by unchallenged.

  “Just hold a minute there, young man,” said one of the Tragamors, moving toward her purposefully. “What business have you here?”

  “I have come to Mudgery Mont to find the Seer Windlow. I have … a message for him.”

  “Does he expect you?”

  “I think – yes, he may well. Can you tell me if he is here?”

  “Give me your name. Wait here. It may be he will receive you, and it may be he will not.”

  “Tell him, please, that Mavin waits without. With news whi
ch he should have.”

  She waited. The Tragamor showed no indication of passing on her message or of going himself. Time passed. She fidgeted from foot to foot, strode back and forth. Then she saw another petitioner approach the Tragamor, give him money, and the man went within on the moment.

  “Gamelords,” she said to herself. “I have no coin to pay the man. What I have must be kept for Mertyn’s sake.” She melted back into the darkness, into the shadows of the streets and up to the roofs once more. Trees grew in the gardens of the Mont, and she was able to go across to the roof of the hotel itself, leaping like some great thrilpat among the branches. From there it was only a few moments to find a stairway leading down, and from there only a matter of time until she encountered a servant.

  “I seem to have lost my way,” she said, trying to give an appearance of puzzled calm. “I am looking for the Seer Windlow, or any of his party.”

  “Certainly, young sir,” she replied. “Will you follow me.” She trotted away, down a flight of stairs, to knock on a door and beckon Mavin forward. The door opened and she said, “This young man wandering about the hotel, sir, looking for a guest.” Before she could react, Mavin found herself held fast by yet another Tragamor in the livery of the place confronting an irritable-looking Armiger who held a glass of wine in one hand and a sword in the other.

  “A spy,” he grated. “The hotel is full of them. They gather in closets and leap out at one from under the stairs. And who are you working for, young spy?”

  She had no time to invent anything new. Taken by surprise, she fell back upon the story she knew. “I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery, sir. I traveled here in company with the Seer Windlow and his group of students. I seek him now, with a message.” She tried to keep the face which she wore calm, slightly aloof, not dismayed, even though her nerves screamed at the thought of Mertyn, alone in the empty lodging house, burning with fever.

  “Humph,” the Armiger snorted. “A silly tale, but silly enough to be true. How did you get in?”