Dragon Ultimate (8 page)

"Oh, no, my dears, once we are out of the city I forbid you to return." Lady Lacustra was determined to prevent her daughter from risking exposure to the black plague.

"Mother, if our city needs us, then we must give all that we have, even our lives. I have learned this lesson well. It is the price we pay for the rank of Tarcho, for the honor of our privileged lives within the Tower of Guard."

"Oh, my dear, I know, but I couldn't bear to lose you now."

Lacustra was on the point of tears.

"Mother." Lagdalen put her arms around her and took her to an inside room.

Everyone took that as the signal for departure. They made hurried farewells and left the Tarcho chambers and set off down the main staircase of the tower. Outside, despite Aunt Kiri's protestations, Relkin escorted Eilsa to the house on Foluran Hill. All the way there he tried to get her to agree to leave the city at once. She asked where he was going to be. He admitted he would be in the dragonhouse. Then, she said, she would remain on Foluran Hill. She doubted that there were many rats on Foluran Hill. There were far too many cats about for that.

On the top step by the gate to the house Relkin sneaked a kiss right in front of Aunt Kiri's outraged eyes.

"Please leave the city, Eilsa."

She made no reply other than to kiss him again and then hurry inside, tearing herself away from him.

He left, not seeing anything too clearly in the first hundred yards since his eyes were unaccountably hot and moist. Peculiar anger built up in his heart.

Passing back up Tower Street he noticed the sense of emergency that was in the air. Carriages were loading hurriedly. Several men rode past on good horses. The North Gate was already busy with traffic. Several carriages were waiting at the bottom of the Tower of Guard.

The guards by the dragonhouse gate were men from the First Regiment, First Legion.

"Hey, dragonboy, what news have you of the plague?"

The guard was not much older than himself, and he was clearly frightened.

"No more than you, soldier. There's some carriages loading on Tower Street. I expect most of the upper city will empty before the quarantine closes the gates."

"By the Hand, but the rat plague is the worst. There be a lot of rats in the lower city with all those old wharves and warehouses."

"We've got plenty of work ahead of us," Relkin agreed.

"May the Mother look after our souls," said the other guard.

Inside the dragonhouse Relkin found that the dragonboys were already engaged in a full-blooded sweep for rats. Swane had borrowed some terriers, and Jak had brought in some ferrets from a friend in the Elf Quarter.

"What have you found?" said Relkin as he pitched in to help.

"Just a couple so far. Under a crate in the corner storeroom. Must've been eating the leather."

"Were they sick?"

"No."

"There'll be more."

There were more; rats can hide in the most remarkable places. But it was also soon clear that the plague had not spread inside the walls of the dragonhouse or the Tower of Guard. The rats they caught were all healthy and vigorous, sure signs that they were not infected.

The hunt for rats in the rest of the city was already well under way. Where possible, volunteers from among the elvish folk worked to actually kill the rats. The black plague did not harm the green-flecked folk of the forestlands in anything like the manner in which it killed men.

Unfortunately men still became infected. They were placed in quarantine conditions within a closed-off courtyard. The dead were collected on wagons and taken out of the city at once, while plans for mass graves were hurriedly put into operation.

That night more people in the Fish Hill sector of the city came down with the plague, and more victims were recorded from other parts of the city, too, though not from the upper end of Tower Street, or on Foluran Hill.

The ratkillers went down into the sewers below the houses. They tore apart the thatch above the roofs. They went through the attics and the cellars. And they brought in terriers and ferrets.

At the second hour before dawn a desperate rider approached the West Gate. He shouted the news from Kadein. The plague was loose, and a holocaust was brewing.

Plague gripped the cities of the Argonath: first Minuend, then Kadein and Marneri, then Talion and the rest all reported the infection. The disease took very different courses, however, from city to city. Kadein saw a veritable catastrophe as one-third of its population succumbed over the next two weeks. Others escaped with scarcely a scratch. Ryotwa was saved by the Cat Witch, Nadeen, whose feline legions destroyed the infected rats before they could spread. Vo was helped by its design. One hundred years before, after fire had devastated the old city, Imperial Engineers rebuilt the central parts of Vo with a new sewer system, so there the plague did not catch on.

In Minuend the plague broke out in the camps of migrant field workers, and spread through the city with terrifying speed. By the end of the first day there were more than a thousand dying of the disease and a hundred already dead.

The following morning it began in Kadein. The first sickness was recorded from the crowded cribs of sailors in the harbor. From the beerhalls it spread to the overcrowded districts farther inland and became a conflagration overnight. By the dawn of the second day in old Kadein, every hour brought another thousand deaths.

Led by the wealthy, an exodus spread out from the cities. There was much talk of firing the cities and burning them to end the disease. That was what had been done in the early days of the Argonath. It had worked then, when nothing else had.

Others maintained that prayer was enough, that if the people were to pray to the Goddess with open hearts, She would hear them and end the plague. These believers flocked to the temples.

The priestesses pooh-poohed that sort of thinking right away. The Mother would help those who helped themselves, as it had always been.

During that second morning, beginning at the tenth hour, there came witches from Cunfshon, traveling by the magic of the Black Mirror between Andiquant and the Towers of Guard in the nine cities.

In Marneri, Lessis herself stepped out of the mirror after a trouble-free crossing.

She broke the ring of hands, embraced Fi-ice, the Witch of Standing, then shook hands with the young witches Yanna and Imlan. Signaling to the young witches to accompany her, Lessis moved to her private chamber in the tower and began to put plans into operation.

Seven floors lower down, sitting on a divan in the empty Tarcho apartment, Lagdalen sipped a mug of weakbeer and tried to get some strength back into her legs. She'd been up all night, working to organize the assault on the rat population in the East Bay area. Teams of men and elves, all volunteers, had gone in with dogs and ferrets. Wielding crowbars and axes, they'd cut their way into crawl spaces and cellars and slaughtered the rats.

The run-down area of Fish Hill had been totally abandoned, and the dockside was empty.

The rat hunters had found a sizable population in the dock-side area, as had been expected. They had slaughtered rats by the dozen in various warehouses and within the grand sewer. Still, folk were falling ill and dying by the score. The disease had continued to spread. Now there was a quarantine on the city, and no one was allowed out, so refugees were spreading into the rest of the city, and they were bringing the plague with them.

Now the first victims began to appear north of Broad Street, a prosperous area which lay in the shadow of Foluran Hill. Broad Street was the center for merchants' offices and trade organizations. The buildings were relatively new and well designed.

There could be few rat nests there, and yet the plague was spreading into that precinct.

Lagdalen wondered if they were wrong about this plague. Was it spread by something other than rats? She sipped her beer and tried not to think about all the people that had fled the city and spread out into the surrounding countryside. What if they were carrying the plague?

It might spread across the entire Argonath.

Come to think of it, there was still no word from Kenor. They had sent to Dalhousie the previous day but the bird had not returned, which seemed ominous.

She shivered and hugged herself. Usually the Tarcho apartment was home to seven adults and four children. All that energy was replaced by an eerie quiet.

In fact, the whole tower was quiet. The inhabitants had fled, and there were just a few officials and guards on hand.

She prayed that Laminna was safe. And she prayed for her husband Hollein, who was at that moment riding hard for the nearby city of Bea, bearing messages to the authorities there.

Come home safely, my love. Don't leave me alone.

There was a sudden knock at the front door. Lagdalen sat up with a jerk. She'd dozed off. With a gulp, she finished the weakbeer and got up to open the door.

On the step she found a young witch, a girl not much older than herself, dressed in the minimal gray costume of their order, with her hair demurely braided and no jewelry or decoration anywhere.

The young witch bowed. "Beg pardon, Lady, but are you the Lady Lagdalen of the Tarcho?"

"Yes."

"Then the Lady Lessis asks if you would attend upon her as soon as possible."

Lagdalen gave another start.

"Lessis? She is here?"

"Yes, Lady."

Lagdalen imagined the Black Mirror that must have flashed into being in that hidden chamber at the top of the tower. There was something terrifying about the power of the Great Magic; Lagdalen knew she would never have made a good witch.

"What are you called?" she said.

"I am Yanna," said the young witch.

Yanna's face was impassive, calm, her eyes level. Yanna had probably been up all night, too, but she didn't look like it. Lagdalen thought that Yanna had probably been a star in the Novitiate schools. They tried to inculct that way of being calm and in control. Witches had to be in control of themselves at all times so they could control others if they had to…

"Did she say where I was to find her?"

"In her chamber, Lady. I will escort you, if you like."

"That's all right, I know my way. Thank you, Yanna."

Lagdalen pulled a jacket around her and took the key to the apartment. It felt very strange actually to lock the apartment door behind her. Normally there were always people there and a guard on watch.

The only sound was her feet on the stairs as she climbed through the unnatural hush.

At length she reached the high floor where Lessis kept her seldom-used chambers, with bare blue blankets on the cots and bare stone flags on the floor. The Lady was deep in thought, writing at her desk, when Lagdalen entered. After a few moments she looked up.

"Lagdalen, my dear, thank you for coming so quickly." Lessis came around the desk and took her hands.

Lagdalen curtsied, awkwardly. "This plague is his work, is it not, Lady?"

Lessis nodded faintly. "Yes. To begin in all nine cities within days is too much of a coincidence. It is exactly the sort of thing he is well-known for. A byword for such horrors, in fact."

Lessis sat down again. "I must just finish this note." She scratched another line, signed with a quick flourish, then rolled the message up and melted wax for her seal.

"I have some good news. We have discovered how this plague is carried. It comes on the backs of fleas. When the rats die, the fleas abandon them and seek out blood from other animals and people. That's when the disease is passed to another person."

Lagdalen smacked a fist into her palm. "Of course, that explains so many things. By the Hand, we must hurry!"

Lessis smiled at the sudden energy in Lagdalen's face. The child was a doer, a credit to her line. A pity, in fact, that she could not be queen instead of the current holder of the throne.

"We must fumigate the whole city. I hope the stock of pyrethrum will be sufficient. More will have to be imported at once…"

Lagdalen had come fully alive. Here was the hope she'd been lacking. The threat was terrible, but they could take effective countermeasures.

"Here," Lessis handed Lagdalen the scroll. "I want you to take this message to the queen."

"Yes, of course, Lady. At once." But Lagdalen winced slightly at being reduced to a mere messenger again.

Lessis read her expression accurately.

"I'm sorry to ask this of you, my dear, I know how busy you must be. But I know that the queen will not ignore you. Besita is often unwise in a crisis."

"Yes, lady. She has been better lately."

"She fell to pieces during the rebellion in Aubinas."

"Ah, yes."

"She must order a massive effort. We have to fumigate the city. All supplies of pyrethrum leaves, flowers and powder, have to be handed over to the crown and used to the maximum effectiveness. We need metal cans for the powder and long-handled brushes so that the powder can be applied in corners and crevices where fleas might hide. I have some drawings that must be shown to designers."