“The bed,” she gasped, tearing at his clothes. “Quick, before I change my mind. I’m so divided… Quick, I’m ready. Open:’
“Oh, my trousers, have a care …” But he was pleased by her haste. She felt, she saw, his rising excitement, as he lowered his bulk onto her. She groaned as he laughed. She had a vision of the two of them, one fiesh, whirling among the stars in the grip of a great universal power, anonymous, eternal…
The hospice was new and not yet complete. It stood near the fringes of the town, extending from what had been called Prast’s Tower in the old days. Here came those travellers who had fallen sick on their journeyings. Across the street was the establishment of a veterinary surgeon which received sick animals.
Both hospice and surgery had a bad name—it was claimed that the tools of their respective trades were interchangeable; but the hospice was efficiently run by the first woman member of the apothecary’s corps, a midwife and teacher at the academy known to all as Ma Scantiom, after the flowers with which she insisted on decking the wards under her command.
A slave took Laintal Ay to her. She was a tall sturdy person of middle age, with plenty of bosom, and a kindly expression on her face. One of her aunts had been Nahkri’s woman. She and Laintal Ay had been on good terms for many years.
“I’ve two patients in an isolation ward I want you to see,” she said, selecting a key from a number that hung at her belt. She had discarded hoxneys in favour of a long saffron apron-dress which hung almost to the floor.
Ma Scantiom unlocked a sturdy door at the rear of her office.
They went through into the old tower and climbed the ramps until they were at the top.
From somewhere below them came the sound of a clow, played by a convalescent patient. Laintal Ay recognised the tune: “Stop, Stop, Voral River.” The rhythm was fast, yet with a melancholy which matched the useless exhortation of the chorus. The river ran and would not stop, no, not for love or life itself…
Each floor of the tower had been divided into small wards or cells, each with a door with a grille set in it. Without a word, Ma Scantiom slid back the cover over the grille and indicated that Laintal Ay was to look through.
There were two beds in the cell, each bearing a man. The men were almost naked. They lay, in locked positions, nearly rigid but never entirely still. The man nearest the door, who had a thick mane of black hair, lay with his spine arched and his hands clenched together above his head. He was grinding his knuckles against the stone wall so that they seeped blood, which ran down the blue-veined paths of his arms. His head rolled stiffly at awkward angles. He caught sight of Laintal Ay at the grille, and his eyes tried to fix on him, but the head insisted on its continued slow-motion movement. Arteries in his neck stood out like cord.
The second patient lying below the window, held his arms folded tight into his chest. He was curling himself into a ball and then unrolling, at the same time waggling his feet back and forth so that the little bones cracked. His gaze, distraught, moved between floor and ceiling. Laintal Ay recognized him as the man who had collapsed in the street.
Both men were deathly pale and glistening with sweat, the pungent smell of which filtered out of the cell. They continued to wrestle with invisible assailants as Laintal Ay drew the cover across the grille.
“The bone fever,” he said. He stood close to Ma Scantiom, seeking out her expression in the thick shadow.
She merely nodded. He followed down the ramps behind her.
The clow was still wearily playing.
Ma Scaritiorn said over her shoulder, “The first of them arrived two days ago—I should have called you yesterday. They starve themselves; they can hardly be persuaded to take water. It’s like a prolonged muscular spasm. Their minds are affected.”
“They’ll die?”
“Only about half survive attacks of bone fever. Sometimes, when they have lost a third of their body weight, they simply pull out of it. They then normalise at their new weight. Others go mad and die, as if the fever got in their harneys and killed them.”
Laintal Ay swallowed, feeling his throat dry. Back in her office, he took a deep inhalation of a bunch of scantiom and raige on the window sill to cleanse the stench in his nostrils. The room was painted white.
“Who are they? Traders?”
“They have both come from the east, travelling with different groups of Madis. One’s a trader, one’s a bard. Both have phagor slaves, which are at present in the vet’s surgery. You probably know that bone fever can spread fast and become a major plague. I want those patients out of my hospice. We need somewhere away from town where we can isolate them. These won’ t be the only cases.”
“You’ve spoken to Faralin Ferd about it?”
She frowned. “Worse than useless. First of all, he and Tanth Ein said the sick must not be moved from here. Then they suggested killing them and dumping the bodies in the Voral.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I know a ruined tower about five miles away. Perhaps that would be suitable.”
“I knew you’d help.” She put a hand on his sleeve, smiling. “Something brings the disease. Under favourable conditions, it can spread like a fire. Half the population would die—we know of no cure. My belief is that those filthy phagors carry it. Perhaps it is the scent of their pelts. There are two hours of Freyr-dark tonight; in that time, I am going to have the two phagors in the vet’s surgery killed and buried. I wanted to tell someone in authority, so I’m telling you. I knew you’d be on my side.”
“You think they will spread bone fever further?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t wish to take any risks. There may be another cause entirely—the blindness may bring it. Wutra may send it.”
She tucked her lower lip in. He read the concern in her homely face.
“Bury them deep where the dogs can’t scratch them up again. I’ll see about the ruined tower for you. Are you expecting”—he hesitated—“more cases soon?”
Without changing her expression, she said, “Of course.”
As he left, the clow was still playing its plaintive tune, remote in the depths of the building.
Laintal Ay did not think of complaining to Ma Scantiom, although he had laid other plans for the two hours of Freyr-dark.
Dathka’s speech of the morning, when Oyre had returned from her pauk-induced spell of father-communing, troubled him deeply. He saw the strength of the argument which said that he and Oyre together represented invincible claimants to the leadership of Oldorando. In general, he wanted what was rightfully his, as anyone else did. And he certainly wanted Oyre. But did he want to rule Oldorando?
It seemed that Dathka’s speech had subtly changed the situation. Perhaps he could now win Oyre only by taking power.
This line of thought occupied his mind as he went about Ma Scantiom’s business, which was everyone’s business. Bone fever was no more than a legend, yet the fact that nobody had experienced the reality made the legend all the more dark. People died. Plague was like the manic stepping-up of a natural process.
So he worked without complaint, conscripting help from Goija Hin. Together, Laintal Ay and the slave driver collected the two phagors belonging to the bone fever victims and sent them into the isolation cell. There, the phagors were made to roll their sick masters into rush mats and carry them away from the hospice. The innocuous-looking mat rolls would cause no panic.
The small group moved with its burdens out of town towards the ruined tower Laintal Ay knew of. With them shuffled the ancient slave phagor, Myk, to take an occasional turn carrying the diseased men. This was designed to hasten the proceedings, but Myk had become so ancient that progress was slow.