Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel

by E. L. Tettensor

  Lideman’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Sensing an opening, Lenoir said, “You are right, Doctor—none of us here has the right to decide the fate of those who are ill. So let us ask the loved ones of a patient you deem to be terminal. Let them decide whether it is worth taking the chance.”

  Lideman looked at Oded, his teeth worrying the inside of his cheek. He was hooked, though they hadn’t landed him yet. “How does it work?”

  Kody winced inwardly, knowing the answer Oded would give. “It depends,” the witchdoctor said. “For the very sick ones, I must first draw out the demon.”

  Lideman’s eyes snapped back to Lenoir, his mouth twisting sardonically. Lenoir held up a hand. “The explanation may not convince you, Doctor, but the results are undeniable.”

  Merden tsked. “I do not understand you southerners. You believe in an all-powerful God, to whom you routinely pray, particularly when your loved ones are ill. How is this any different?”

  “I rarely prescribe prayer, sir, and if I were to do so, it would be for the comfort of it, not the healing properties.”

  Merden was undaunted. “And do you ever administer yellowdrum mushrooms for infection?”

  “Of course. It is a highly effective treatment.”

  “A highly effective treatment that has been used by my people for generations, yet has only recently been adopted on the Humenori continent, when the evidence before you finally became too compelling to ignore. Do you know how it works?”

  Lideman didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to; his scowl said it all.

  “My people believe the mushroom is a fragment of the ancient god Anadar, lord of the underworld. His tendrils lie just below the surface of the ground, spread across the land in a vast web, always searching for a means of escape. The mushrooms are his fingertips. Like an earthworm, the god can be severed and segmented and still survive, and when the mushroom is eaten, or its spores spread over a wound, Anadar is taken into the body. If you know a little of traditional Adali religion, you know that the god of the underworld feeds upon the flesh of the dead. That is one of the reasons we burn our departed ones. But Anadar cannot consume the living. Thus, when he is taken into an infected body, he consumes the dying flesh, and when it is gone, and all that remains is healthy, living tissue, the fragment of Anadar starves to death, and he is gone, leaving the patient recovered.”

  “Superstitious nonsense,” Lideman declared.

  “I am certain you think so, and I am equally certain that your rejection of that explanation will not deter you from administering yellowdrum in the future. Life is full of theories that cannot be proven, and results that cannot be explained. You believe in God, in spite of the lack of tangible proof, and you administer yellowdrum, in spite of the fact that you have no idea how it works. Theory without evidence, and evidence without theory. What does it matter?”

  “There is a scientific explanation for yellowdrum,” Lideman said. “We simply have not discovered it yet.”

  Merden shrugged. “Perhaps. And perhaps the same is true of Oded’s treatment.”

  Lideman grunted, as if he’d just swallowed a hook.

  “Let us find someone who is willing to try,” Lenoir said.

  The physician sighed and shook his head. “I will take no responsibility for this, Inspector, and if I am asked whether I think it will work, I will tell the truth.”

  “That is reasonable,” said Lenoir. He looked relieved, and so did Merden.

  As for Oded, he just scowled and said, “We must be quick, then. We have wasted too much time already.”

  “There we agree,” Lideman said. “If my calculations are correct, in the time we have spent discussing this, three more people have fallen ill.”

  Kody swallowed hard. “How many have died?”

  Lideman fixed him with a grim look and said, “You do not want to know.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t hard to find someone willing to try something desperate. The first family Lideman brought them to refused on the grounds that witchcraft was a sin against God, but the second family didn’t share those misgivings. “If God had planned on answering my prayers, He’d have done it by now,” the father said bitterly. “Maybe the Adali gods will do better. Besides, I hear you people can cure just about anything.”

  “Medicine is the gift of the Adali,” Oded said. “Even so, I cannot promise for your son. For some, it is too late.”

  The man nodded resignedly. He’d already given up. Poor bastard, Kody thought. There were thousands of others just like him, and more by the minute. God, I hope this works.

  They set Oded up in a private tent. It was smaller than the one he used in the Adali quarter, but he said it would serve, and anyway, they couldn’t risk moving the boy that far away. Kody couldn’t help grimacing when he saw the kid, covered in great purple welts, his fingers and toes grotesquely swollen.

  The witchdoctor looked his patient over ruefully. “This may not work. The demon eggs already are hatching inside. The young are born strong. They will fight.”

  “You will conquer them,” Merden said.

  “Perhaps, but this will not be good for teaching. It is not . . .” Oded hesitated, searching for the word.

  “It is not typical,” Merden supplied.

  “We can’t back out now,” Kody said. “We promised those people you’d try to heal their son.”

  “And so I will, but what I must do, I cannot teach. Not to Braelish.”

  Lideman drew himself up stiffly. “In that case, there is no need for me to be here.”

  Oded made a weary gesture. “You misunderstand. For most cases, I can teach. For this . . . it is different.”

  “Still,” said Lenoir, “it will have to serve. At least we can see for ourselves whether the treatment works. Not that we doubt you,” he added hastily, but Oded just snorted and set about his preparations.

  “To my people, the disease is known as Hatekh-sahr,” Merden explained as he watched Oded work. “It means marks of the demon, for the bruises covering the body.” The soothsayer’s amber eyes followed Oded’s every move, tracking back and forth like the quill of a scribe, recording everything. Kody couldn’t help wondering if Merden’s fascination was purely intellectual, or if he planned to put what he learned to good use. “Tradition tells us that the sickness is caused by a demon entering the body through the nose and mouth. The bruises are left behind after it grapples with its victim in the dreamworld. Once inside, it lays its eggs, crowding the victim’s organs and causing them to bruise and bleed. The demon spawn feed upon the blood.”

  Kody grimaced. “Durian’s arse, do we really need all the details?” He wasn’t usually so crude, but really—bleeding organs?

  Lideman, though, seemed intrigued; he gave a thoughtful grunt from behind his scarf. “Superstition aside, it is true that when we cut open the first few cadavers, we found massive internal hemorrhaging.”

  “What does that mean?” Kody asked, curious despite himself.

  “It means bleeding,” said Lenoir. “They are bleeding to death from the inside out.”

  “So we agree, roughly, on the cause of death,” Merden said.

  Lideman gave him an incredulous look. “Very roughly indeed, sir. The College of Physicians does not consider that the disease is a result of supernatural fiends turning the human body into a crucible of the damned.”

  “And what does your College of Physicians have to say about how the victim contracts the illness?” Merden seemed to be fully engaged in the conversation, yet his gaze continued to follow Oded’s progress, narrowing every now and then as something particularly interesting caught his eye. Just now, Oded was positioning a cluster of crystals in a semicircle along the boy’s left flank. The sickle shape seemed to be important somehow; it was echoed in the placement of the candles, and in a row of what looked suspiciously like human finger bones.


  “It is obviously the air,” Lideman said.

  That tore Merden’s gaze away from the preparations, if only for a moment. He regarded Lideman with an arched eyebrow. “Indeed?”

  “Nearly a third of my medical staff has fallen ill, several of them without ever coming into physical contact with an infected person. Bad air is the only explanation. I have ordered miasma masks for all my staff as an extra precaution. They should be ready soon.”

  “Bad air.” There was more than a hint of dryness in the soothsayer’s tone. “And what causes this . . . bad air?”

  “There are a number of theories,” Lideman said, folding his hands behind his back and assuming a professorial manner. “Some think it a punishment from God. Others argue that the miasma is like a storm, simply passing through. Myself, I am inclined to believe that it results from the burning of corpses.”

  “Divine punishment, an itinerant weather system, or burning flesh.” This time, Merden’s tone was as dry as those finger bones.

  If Lideman noticed, he chose to ignore it. “We have firmly established that the corpses are highly contagious, and it would explain why the plague began in the Camp. The burning of corpses is common in the Adali quarter, is it not?”

  Oded glanced up sharply, wrath brewing behind his eyes. But Merden spoke a few words in Adali, and the witchdoctor subsided, shaking his head and muttering, “Pala.” The word sounded like someone spitting on the floor, and Kody reckoned it meant roughly the same thing.

  After a bit more fussing, Oded approached Merden, a wooden bowl in one hand, a dagger in the other. Without hesitation, Merden took the dagger and drew it sharply across his hand.

  Lideman hissed. “What are you doing?”

  “All magic requires blood, Doctor,” the soothsayer said. He made a fist over the bowl; a steady tap, tap counted out the droplets as they fell. Lideman shook his head, disgusted.

  Kody was disgusted too, but he couldn’t help asking, “Why yours?”

  “He is mekhleth,” Oded said, as though it were obvious.

  Kody let it go.

  When he was satisfied the bowl contained enough blood, Oded handed Merden a cloth and said, “I am ready.”

  Merden turned to the others, his expression solemn. “If you would leave, do so now. Once the ceremony begins, it must not be interrupted, no matter what. To do so would certainly kill the boy, and very possibly the rest of us as well.”

  Lenoir and Kody had heard this warning before, but Lideman looked shocked. “What do you mean, kill the boy? What are you planning on doing to him?”

  “I must cast out the demon young,” Oded said. “They will not wish to be cast out. They will fight me, and when they fail, they will seek a new place. I must bind them so they cannot jump from the boy to us.”

  “If Oded’s focus wavers at any stage, the demons will break free,” Merden said.

  Lideman wore that same wry look as he had before, when Oded had first mentioned demons. Lenoir saw it too. “Whether you believe in demons or not,” the inspector said, “I can assure you that what is about to take place here will disturb you, and you will certainly have the instinct to recoil, if not to flee altogether.”

  “I did,” Kody put in. In fact, I’m having it right now.

  “As did I,” said Lenoir, “even though Merden had already warned us not to. Be as skeptical as you like, Doctor, but at all costs, follow his guidance.”

  Lideman sighed and rolled his eyes. “Very well, Inspector, I shall not move.”

  “Nor make a sound,” Merden said, looking at each of them in turn. Then he nodded once at Oded. The witchdoctor returned the gesture before turning his back on them.

  Here we go.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lenoir took a deep, steadying breath. He would rather be just about anywhere else, but he had started them on this path, and he had to see it through. He jammed his hands in his pockets in case they should start to tremble. It would not do for him to look like a frightened child in front of Kody.

  It began innocuously enough. Oded lit the sickle of tapers along the boy’s right flank, speaking a word with each one, which Merden echoed in his cavernous baritone. (Apparently, the rule about keeping silent did not apply to him.) The light from the tapers glinted against the crystals on the opposite side of the table. The boy’s prone silhouette appeared in the mirror of the facets, wreathed in flame, giving the eerie impression that he was trapped within. Like the flaming prisons of the below, Lenoir thought with a shiver.

  Oded dipped his fingers in the bowl of blood, then flicked them, sending a spray into the darkness. He spoke a single word, sharp-edged and delicate. The candles flared, searing the darkness and forcing Lenoir to avert his eyes. When he looked back, the boy’s figure seemed to be made entirely of shadow. A trick of the light, surely, but no matter how hard Lenoir squinted, only the boy’s outline was visible. Yet somehow, his silhouette inside the crystals had become more detailed; Lenoir could even see the contours of his face. What in the below?

  Oded let out a shriek and leapt upon the boy, hands wrapping around the child’s throat.

  Lenoir started. Beside him, Lideman moved as if to intervene, but Merden’s hand shot out and seized the physician by the arm, his fingers digging into the man’s clothing. The urgent look in Merden’s eyes seemed to be enough; Lideman subsided, visibly distressed. A few feet away, the shadowy form of the boy writhed and kicked. Oded leaned into him, bringing all his weight to bear, his face twisted grotesquely as he throttled his patient. Kody swayed a little on his feet, fighting the urge to rush to the boy’s aid. Lenoir had to look away lest he give in to the same impulse. His eyes strayed instinctively to the crystals, to the reflection of the boy trapped within.

  The reflection was not moving.

  Lenoir started. His gaze snapped back and forth between the crystals and the cot, unable to reconcile what he was seeing. Oded and the shadow continued to grapple, but the image of the boy in the crystals remained motionless—peaceful, even—a surreal counterpoint to the brutal struggle taking place only a few inches away. Impossible, Lenoir’s mind told him, but the evidence of his eyes was undeniable. Whatever was happening on that cot, it did not seem to be affecting the boy. But if that is not the boy, then what . . . ?

  The shadow on the cot bucked violently and froze, back arched, as though suspended from a cord tied to its navel. Still, the reflection in the crystals did not move. Oded straightened, his grip slackening, his expression wary.

  The shadow exploded.

  A rush of stinging wind blasted Lenoir full in the face, forcing his eyes closed. Then a buzzing unlike anything he had ever heard surrounded him. When he opened his eyes, he saw what looked like a massive swarm of black hornets gathered above Oded’s head. Except they were not hornets, but fragments of shadow, somehow visible in spite of the gloom, each one an impenetrable blot of dark against dark. Lenoir glanced down at the cot. The boy was gone, yet his reflection remained in the crystal, still as a painting.

  Lenoir could see the whites of Oded’s eyes. The healer stood there, immobile, watching the swarm as it darted and roiled, stretched and twisted, moving like a flock of starlings. He does not know what to do, Lenoir realized in growing horror. Whatever had just happened, Oded had not been expecting it. Neither had Merden, judging from the look on his face.

  Panic welled up in Lenoir’s chest. Merden’s warning still rang in his ears, but it was slowly being drowned out, subsumed beneath the numbing drone of the shadow swarm. The buzzing filled his ears until his skull seemed to vibrate. His heart pounded so badly that he could feel it in his throat. All he could think of was how much he wanted to get away from here. He looked at Kody and saw his own fear reflected in the sergeant’s wild-eyed gaze. Lideman, meanwhile, looked ready to faint.

  Just when Lenoir had made up his mind to move, Oded came alive. He grabbed a bundle of
herbs from the table and plunged it into the flames. They took light, sending up a dense plume of smoke, and Oded dove at the swarm, brandishing the bundle like a torch. The shadows veered away from the smoke. Oded dove in again, tracing an arc with the flaming bundle, and once again, the shadows twisted over themselves to avoid the fumes. Oded circled the swarm, trailing smoke, letting a wall of it rise toward the ceiling. Everywhere the smoke touched, the swarm receded, and soon Oded had it surrounded. The smoke climbed higher, drifting above the swarm in a lazy canopy. The healer had succeeded in weaving a net of the smoke, but what he intended to do with it, Lenoir could not guess. Beside him, Merden stirred, watching Oded’s progress with frightening intensity. He seemed to understand what the healer was doing, but he made no move to help. Perhaps he did not dare.

  Oded continued to tighten the noose. The fragments of shadow drew together, tighter and tighter, until they formed a dense cloud.

  Merden twitched, his eyes blazing, as if to say, Now!

  Oded produced a knife from somewhere inside his cloak, a wickedly curved sickle of what looked like bone. He reached inside the ring of smoke and slashed at the air. In an instant, the swarm began to stretch, pulled toward the spot where Oded had sliced the air, as though he had opened some invisible drain in the fabric of the world. The buzzing grew louder, angrier, as the swarm was drawn into a shrinking swirl. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The last fleck of shadow vanished, leaving only . . . darkness.

  Oded lunged at the spot where the swarm had disappeared, grabbing empty air and twisting his fist in a harsh movement. He shouted a string of words and drew the knife across the back of his arm, trailing a dark line of blood. Then he turned back to the cot. Swiping a hand across the cut he had just made, he waved a bloody palm over the sickle of small bones arranged near the head of the cot. The bones began to judder and shimmy. They moved, rearranging themselves into a shape Lenoir could not see. Then another gust of wind, a sudden darkness, and silence.