Casket of Souls

by Lynn Flewelling

  “I’ll wait downstairs for Micum.”

  After assuring Tomin that the affliction was not contagious, Seregil ordered him to the Temple of Illior to fetch Elsbet, but not to tell her why. When he was reasonably sure the man would do that instead of disappearing, he slowly climbed the secret stair back to his rooms.

  Micum sat at the dining table with Alec, head in his hands, looking shattered. Alec didn’t look much better. Three silver brandy cups had been filled, but neither of the others had touched theirs.

  “She’s right, you know,” Micum groaned. “I should have sent word.”

  Seregil sat down and took his friend’s hand. “We had no way of knowing, Micum.”

  Micum pulled his hand free and downed a gulp of brandy. “One too many secrets, after all these years. Something finally followed me home.”

  They sat in glum silence for a time, then Seregil raised his cup and took a sip. “Go back to Kari. Stay with her.”

  “She doesn’t want me there.”

  “Maybe not, but she needs you. Alec, take him down.”

  Alec took Micum by the arm and drew him from the room. Seregil set his cup aside and went to the window overlooking the front yard. The full moon was rising. Nearly two precious days had passed since Illia had been stricken. Seregil sent up a silent plea to Illior for her life.

  Alec returned and closed the door.

  “How are they?” asked Seregil.

  “Kari let Micum hold her, thank the Light. Do you think she meant it when she said she’d never forgive us?”

  “I wouldn’t blame her.”

  “We failed Myrhichia—” Alec paused and swallowed hard. “We can’t lose Illia!”

  A painful shiver crept up the back of Seregil’s neck at the thought, and a sick feeling cramped in his belly. “We’re missing something critical again, Alec. I feel like I’ve been blind in one eye all this time. Something is right there, staring us in the face, and we’re not seeing it. There’s more to them than mere beggars, especially that tall one. There’s something about him …”

  “You think you might know him?”

  “There’s just something about the way he moves. I don’t know. I doubt that old woman is an old woman at all, though, the way she evaded us—and the old man that day in the Ring. And the way that one-eyed man went out the window and over the roof? I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  They heard Tomin return with Elsbet within the hour and Alec hurried down to meet her. The young woman was still dressed in her initiate’s white robe and smelled of the dreaming herbs used in temple practice, but her dark eyes were clear.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Your mother and Illia are here.” He took a deep breath and forced the words out. “Illia has the sleeping death.”

  “No!” Elsbet’s knees gave out and Alec caught her. “But how?”

  “We’re not completely sure, but we’re going to find out, I swear by the Lightbringer.” He took her hand. “They’re upstairs.”

  Holding her hand, Alec led Elsbet to the sickroom. Seregil was leaning against the wall outside the door, looking unhappy. He hugged Elsbet, then let her go inside.

  Kari was asleep in the armchair drawn up to Illia’s bed. Micum had spread a blanket over her, and her dark hair was combed and braided. He sat on the edge of the bed, stroking his daughter’s brow. Illia looked so much like her mother it made Alec’s heart ache. Elsbet hurried in and kissed her sleeping sister on the forehead. Micum stood and embraced Elsbet, stroking her dark hair and murmuring something in her ear that Alec couldn’t catch. She nodded, wiping at her eyes, then knelt by her mother. Kari woke and embraced her as they wept together.

  “Thank you,” said Micum, coming out to join Alec and Seregil in the corridor. “That was kind of you to think of.”

  Seregil nodded. “I thought Kari could use the support while we’re out hunting.”

  Micum’s eyes darkened dangerously and his knuckles went white as he gripped the hilt of his sword. “We were so damn close with the old woman!”

  Seregil clasped his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll find them, Micum. We will.”

  Elsbet suddenly appeared in the doorway, eyes wide with fear. “There are riders with torches in the courtyard. Bluecoats.”

  “Bilairy’s Balls! They’re coming to take Illia to the Ring. Everyone upstairs!”

  “You go. I’ll deal with them,” said Micum.

  Seregil swept Illia up in his arms and headed down the corridor to the secret staircase in the storage room around the corner, with Alec and the women close behind. Just as they reached the secret panel they heard the sound of the front doors being violently thrown open and men shouting.

  “I’m staying down to keep watch on Micum,” said Alec.

  “Try not to be seen, talí.”

  Alec peered around the corner of the corridor. The bluecoats came thundering up the stairs to confront Micum.

  “Stand aside, you,” the officer in charge barked, taking in Micum’s disreputable-looking clothing.

  “What’s this about?” Micum demanded, not moving.

  “Vicegerent’s orders. All those struck down with the sleeping death must be quarantined.”

  “Dumped in the Ring to die, more like it. That woman heard you were coming. She took the girl and scarpered.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the bluecoat muttered, shouldering past him. “Spread out, men, search the place from attic to cellar.” Then, to Micum, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I work for the innkeeper. He left me here to guard the place after everyone else cleared out. See that you don’t break anything or I’ll report you.”

  Alec retreated hastily to the secret staircase and closed the panel. An instant later he heard someone enter the room outside. There was the sound of the boxes and trunks stored there being shoved about, then a man’s voice: “No one here. Let’s move on.”

  He crept upstairs and found Seregil on guard beside the outer door, sword drawn. “Get your bow, Alec.”

  Alec tiptoed across the empty room and into their rooms beyond. Glancing through the bedroom doorway, he saw Illia lying on their big, velvet-hung bed with Kari and her sister beside her. Both Elsbet and Kari had knives.

  Alec grabbed his bow and took up his position at the top of the stairs, arrow nocked on the string, ready to shoot the first man who came into view. He strained his ears for any sound of approach, but all he could hear were the muffled thumps and shouts from the floors below.

  “Sounds like they’re making a thorough job of it. How’s Micum?”

  “Fine, last I saw.”

  The sounds of the search went on for quite some time, but at last things went quiet again. Presently a sliver of light appeared at the base of the stairs as someone opened the secret panel. Alec raised his bow.

  A hoarse whisper floated up to him. “Luck in the shadows!”

  Seregil brought Micum up, then went to the window overlooking the courtyard. “They’re gone.”

  Micum stood in the middle of the room, fists clenched. “I can’t just stay here, doing nothing!”

  “There’s nothing to do, until morning,” Seregil told him gently. “The ravens don’t come out at night. No little children to cozen. All we can do is get some rest and start fresh in the morning. You take the couch. Alec and I can make do with the armchairs.”

  Micum grudgingly lay down, but none of them rested well that night.

  THEY left Kari and the girls asleep as soon as the first rays of dawn appeared between the curtains and entered the twisting streets of the tenement district with the early street vendors. Alec and Seregil were dressed again as women, with Micum as their protector. Alec and the others each hunted alone for the morning, so as to cover the most ground, and met up at noon at the ward’s large central well.

  Anything? Alec signed and felt a sick sinking in his belly when the other two gave him a slight lowering of the chin. No.

  A lin
e of people were waiting to fill their pots and jugs at the well. Alec and the others chatted with them about the war and the price of bread, posing as fellow refugees.

  When he’d ingratiated himself, Alec asked, “I heard a townsman talking of the raven folk. Does anyone know where they might be found?”

  “Raven folk?” A pretty blond woman in front of him in line shook her head. “What are those?”

  “Beggars making odd trades.”

  He was interrupted by the sound of shattering crockery and looked over to see a middle-aged woman staring at them in horror, a broken water jug at her feet. The gnarled old man who’d been standing with her hobbled over to them, leaning heavily on his stick.

  “Beggars making trades, you say, girl?” he rasped out, fixing Alec with rheumy blue eyes. The old man’s voice was thin and labored, the result of some complaint of the chest.

  “Yes. Have you seen them, old father?”

  The old man nodded slightly and took Alec’s arm. “Come with me, girl, and we’ll talk.”

  Broken pot forgotten, the woman came with them as they set off through the narrow streets. Both the strangers were dressed in Mycenian clothing that had been good quality once but seen better days; they had the weary air and accent of refugees.

  The woman, introduced as Nala, daughter of the old man, Elren, still looked stricken. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Someone who was wronged by them, Mistress,” Seregil told her, speaking in a light country lilt like hers.

  “Are you a country woman, too?”

  “I’m Arlina, of Ivywell,” Seregil told her as they climbed the stairs of a tenement with a peeling green door. “This is my husband, Garen, and my sister Sana.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. Have you been in this wretched city long?”

  “We came by ship in the spring, first to Haverton port, and then down here,” Alec replied.

  Nala and her father led them into a cheerless little third-floor room. It was clean, but sparsely furnished. Two neat pallets lay on the floor near the window. A battered cabinet, a warped table, and two rickety-looking chairs stood against the far wall. The old man took a seat while Nala took out a half loaf of brown bread and a small lump of cheese from the cabinet and carved slices for them. Even here, Mycenians practiced their native hospitality. Seregil hated to take even a morsel away from them, but it would be the height of rudeness to refuse the humble meal.

  “So you’ve met them, have you?” Master Elren asked as they nibbled their stale bread and hard cheese.

  “Aye. I think they’re plague carriers. We lost our sister to the sleeping death last week,” Seregil told him with a catch in his voice.

  The woman made a Dalnan sign against ill health and stepped back from them.

  “You know of the sleeping death?”

  The old man nodded. “My daughter here lost her first son to it, some thirty years back, when we lived in Dresher’s Ford, up in the northern freeholdings.”

  Seregil exchanged a surprised look with Alec. The first time they’d heard of the place was from Atre.

  “My boy was only six years old,” the woman whispered, hand pressed to her heart as if to fend off fresh pain.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” Seregil said sorrowfully. “What happened to him?”

  “Why, it’s just like you have here,” she told him. “A person falls down in a trance and dies before the week is out.”

  “And you saw others stricken with it?”

  “Dozens in our town,” Master Elren wheezed. “And it stopped quick as it started. People said it was on account of the strangers.”

  “The traveling beggars,” Nala explained. “They traded trinkets with children, who soon fell sick with what you call the sleeping death. But the blackguards ran away before we could catch them, and the sickness gradually stopped after they were gone.”

  “How many beggars were there?” asked Seregil.

  Nala spread her hands. “It’s been so long. Four, perhaps five?”

  “But it didn’t end there,” said Elren. “We moved south after that, down into Mycena, and a few years ago we saw it again, in the city of White Cliff, and I heard from some others on the road here that it had happened in Nanta, too, just before the siege this year.”

  For an instant Seregil couldn’t breathe as a terrible idea came to him. “Were the beggars there, too?”

  “I don’t know about Nanta, but they were in White Cliff. I told the mayor about what we’d seen before, but they ran off again before anyone could catch them. It must have been the same clan of people, don’t you think?”

  “Something like that,” Seregil murmured, tamping down his growing horror. “Did either of you actually see any of these beggars?”

  “I did,” Nala replied. “I watched one of them, an old woman, trade my little boy a pretty stone for some toy. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember what it was. But I remember her and that stone!”

  “Was it a yellow crystal?” asked Alec.

  Nala shook her head. Reaching into the neck of her dress, she pulled out a red jasper pebble with a hole through it, which she wore on a thin silver chain. “After my poor boy died, I hoped this would kill me, too. Now I have it as a keepsake.” She wiped her cheek. “I remember that old woman like she’s standing here before me!”

  “What did she look like?” Alec asked, and Seregil felt a stab of the same unsettled excitement along their talímenios bond.

  “Dirty! Dirty kerchief around her head, dirty hands, dirty dress, and a belt with things strung from it—”

  “Do you remember what?” asked Seregil.

  “Foolish things. A bird skull, a harness ring, more stones—I remember those because she untied the pebble she gave my Ressi from a string of others … That’s all I remember, but it was just trash.”

  “I see.” Seregil would have liked to have bought the stone from her to show to Thero, but chances were any magic that might have been on it had long since leached away—and he doubted she’d part with the treasured relic of her child.

  “Are they here in Rhíminee, the strange beggars?” asked Elren.

  “Yes, old father,” Seregil replied.

  “I hope they catch them this time, and hang them all!” he wheezed. “I hope I live to see the day!”

  Micum gave the woman a handful of silver. “For your troubles, Mistress Nala, and the Maker’s Mercy.”

  “Bless you,” she quavered. “Bless you all, kind folk! May the Old Sailor carry your sister gently.”

  Seregil refused to speak until they were safely in their rooms at the Stag and Otter. Kari and Elsbet were in the front room and stood as soon as the others came in.

  “Well?” asked Kari, hands clutched over her heart.

  “What’s wrong, you two?” asked Micum. “You both look like you’ve eaten a mess of bad mussels.”

  “We’ve been blind as moles is what’s wrong!” Seregil growled, stalking over to the table where the map was spread.

  Alec followed. “You really think it could be them?”

  “Who, damn it?” Micum demanded.

  “Atre and his company. They could be our ravens, and plague bearers,” Seregil replied grimly.

  “The actor at Alec’s party?” asked Elsbet.

  “Yes,” Alec replied. “Atre told us of his travels. They’d been everywhere the old man spoke of. He never said when, though.”

  “Those Mycenians didn’t say anything about actors, though,” Micum pointed out.

  “Oh, they were acting, all right!” Seregil snorted. “Atre got himself stabbed one night near Basket Street, long after he’d moved up here. Alec went to help him, and noticed traces of stage cosmetics along his hairline, even though the Crane was dark that night.”

  “And Thero sensed magic on Brader at the tavern,” added Alec.

  “Tall Brader!” Seregil exclaimed in disgust. “No wonder that swordsman looked familiar! And remember how he reacted when Thero asked for a strand of his daughter�
��s hair?”

  “But Atre didn’t care,” Alec pointed out.

  “Which only means he wasn’t afraid of being affected. What does that suggest?”

  “That he’s the necromancer.”

  “Right.” Seregil stabbed a finger at the map. “Look at the pattern again. The sleeping death started in the Lower City, and didn’t come up here until after Atre and his company moved to Basket Street. And what have the ravens avoided?”

  Micum looked down at the map. “The Sea Market, the Harvest Market, the Noble Quarter …”

  Seregil tapped impatiently in two places. “Basket Street, even though it should be in the swath they’ve been cutting, and the area around the Crane. Why? Because a wise bird doesn’t shit in its own nest.”

  “That doesn’t explain Illia, or Myrhichia,” said Micum.

  “Illia danced with him at Alec’s party!” gasped Kari.

  Seregil felt another stab of guilt. “Yes. She must have seen all the people giving him trinkets and done the same. Myrhichia, too.”

  “Bilairy’s Balls, I’ll slaughter the lot of them!” Micum snarled.

  “That won’t help Illia,” Seregil said, clasping his friend’s shoulders. “We have to find out how they’re doing this, and—please, Illior—if there’s a way to undo it.”

  “If?” Kari clutched Elsbet’s arm for support.

  “I’m sorry, Kari, but it’s best to be honest with ourselves. Alec and I are going to burgle the Basket Street theater tonight. It would help if we knew what we were looking for, though.”

  “I think I know,” Elsbet said softly. “The little silver filigree ring you gave her for her last birthday—I noticed it was gone the next day and scolded her for it. She said—” Tears slipped down her wan cheeks. “She said all the fine ladies were giving him things and begged me not to tell Mother or you.”

  “But if he’s had it all this time, why hasn’t Illia fallen sick sooner?” asked Kari.

  “We won’t know that until we find out what he does with the things he’s given,” Alec replied.

  “I’m going with you,” said Micum.