"Make no more bread, and take the rest of the day off," Deeander instructed her, pushing herself up to return to the front room in hopes that someone would come to buy bread. "I'll watch the loaves you've made."
Kirah cleared the marble pastry table. Removing her apron, she hung it on a hook and wondered what she would do to fill her day. She wished Lyim would return soon, for reasons that had nothing to do with cures. He'd left two days ago to get enough antidote for the rest of the village. She missed him more than she was comfortable admitting, torn between an expectation too strong and fear of disappointment. Suddenly she could not sit still-not for a moment-leaving her in an itching agony.
She would stop by the inn. Surely Lyim would stay there when he returned with the cure. Kirah polished the bottom of a pie pan with a coarse sleeve and checked her reflection. Her face was sweaty and her hair lank. With clumsy, untrained hands, she braided the pale blond strands into one long plait that rested on her
right shoulder.
Pulling on a loose, scratchy woolen cape, Kirah stepped out into the narrow, filthy alley and shivered. She hadn't remembered the air feeling so cold. Thankfully, the Red Goose Inn was only two thatched buildings and a vegetable patch down the street, across from the green. She would warm herself by the fire there before checking with the innkeeper. Kirah rounded the corner and emerged into the sunlight.
She had kept to her room and the bakery since Lyim left and was amazed at the change a few days made in the village. Never prosperous, it looked nearly deserted now. The taint of decay was everywhere, including the shabby, boarded-up shop fronts. The breeze carried the scent of burning flesh; she'd heard people were now cremating the husks of skin that victims shed on the second day of the disease, in hopes of stopping its spread. The greatest shock came from the sight of bodies piled upon the green, as Deeander had said, waiting for burial.
Without realizing it, Kirah had slowed her pace until she was barely moving. The horror of the stacked bodies was riveting. Human torsos and faces frozen in terror and pain intermixed with a mass of snakes that still seemed to writhe, in spite of being stone. She did not iook closely enough at the faces to recognize anyone, but it was clear that many of the dead were children ar.d infants. Snake bodies lay on the grass, broken off from limbs by careless or hurried handling. It was a scene from a nightmare, a chamel pit of snakes squirm- ire over and between the corpses of the tormented dead.
Kirah yanked her gaze away from the horrid stack ar.d covered her eyes. She had become suddenly lightheaded and waited several seconds for the dizziness to pass Her gaze went wide to the right, over a fallow tbe
vegetable patch arid to the fields that surrounded Thonvil. Unharvested corn stood exposed in sodden patches, where the previous winter's steady north wind had bent the old stalks until they trailed the ground like willow branches. Kirah spied a shape trudging through the distant fields, bent almost double beneath a load. She couldn't see whether it was man, woman, or child, but she didn't hail the person, for it was enough to know there was at least one other person in the world who had not yet stopped his life for the plague.
Kirah hastened up the steps to the inn. The smell of decay seemed to vanish here, replaced by the scent of damp ashes. The hearth had just been cleaned. So much for warming myself before the fire, Kirah sighed inwardly.
No one was inside the large taproom. Kirah waited for the innkeeper at the tall counter, where the dark, pitted wood of the bar met the back wall. Feeling a little queasy of a sudden, she lowered herself upon a stool. The muscles of her shoulders, neck, and lower back had begun to ache. It was probably a good thing that Deeander had given her the day off, she decided. She'd obviously been overdoing it at the bakery.
Growing impatient, Kirah rapped her knuckles upon the hard wooden bar. Cold, despite the perspiration between her shoulder blades, Kirah shivered her thin cape closer, as if a bird rearranging its feathers.
"Hallooo?" she called toward the kitchen door when her knuckles were sore from banging.
At length a thin, shiny-pated man in his middle years pushed through the swinging door, wiping his hands on a filthy apron, a look of suspicious surprise on his face. His inn had not seen the likes of Kirah DiThon before, either as lord's daughter or crazy woman. Llewen knew her only by reputation.
"If you're here to break fast or for noon lunch, I'm afraid all we have is a few of yesterday's greasy turnips," Llewen confessed. "There's no meat to be found in the town."
"I'm not here to eat," said Kirah. "I'm looking for someone who probably stayed here recently and is expected to return any day. He's tall, with long, dark, wavy hair. He was wearing a dark brown robe."
The innkeeper raised his eyebrows at the word "he." Everyone in town believed the story of crazy Kirah waiting for the return of a lover who didn't exist. "What's his name?" Llewen asked.
Kirah saw the disapproving curiosity in the man's watery eyes. "Either you've seen the man I've described or you haven't. Which is it?"
"Haven't," he said, shaking his head. "Nobody's come to Thonvil or stayed at the inn since word of the sickness spread."
"But that's not possi-" Kirah began, then stopped. Lyim was a mage; perhaps he had magiced himself up a place to stay. "Thank you," she said weakly, turning to leave. She felt hot and limp. "Have you a cup of water, please? I'm not feeling quite right."
The man looked at her in alarm and stepped back from the bar warily.
She saw his fear through bleary eyes. "Don't worry, it's not the plague," she muttered, though the world began to spin crazily. "I can't be getting the plague, you see…" Kirah didn't finish the sentence, because she had slouched, unconscious, to the floor.
" " * * "
Guerrand did one last run-through in his mind about the state of security at Bastion. He had given a hastily jotted list of instructions to Dagamier. Ezius had replaced her in the scrying sphere after removing Lyim's body from the courtyard and taking it to the white wing to prepare it for burial. She'd taken the piece of parchment reluctantly, and only after he insisted. Though she might have run things well enough before Guerrand arrived, he was responsible for Bastion now, even during his absence.
Satisfied that he had done all he could to ensure smooth running of things during his leave, Guerrand used the scroll justarius had sent for the purpose of teleporting Bram, Zagarus, and himself back to Thonvil. The moment the words inscribed on the scroll left his lips, Guerrand felt a brief disorientation, like he was a scrap of paper in the draft of a chimney, flaming and floating, weightless. But it was only for a moment, and then his eyes were readjusting to daylight on the main street of Thonvil. He, Bram, and Zagarus stood before the open door of the bakery.
Turning, Guerrand accidently stepped on one of Zagarus's webbed feet.
The bird squawked angrily. Watch where you're going, oaf.
"What's eating you?" Guerrand asked him silently. "1 thought you'd be happy to leave Bastion for a trip back to Thonvil. You're always complaining about living there."
Yeah, well, I don't want to get too used to sky and earth again, since we'll be returning to that shadow box we call home too soon, the bird huffed. The look in his beady dark eyes abruptly softened. Guerrand could see that Zag was merely covering his own trepidation with bluster.
Uncomfortable with his master's scrutiny, Zagarus told Guerrand that he was going to the cove to see if anyone from the old days was still alive.