He bowed slightly then turned and headed away. There was something very comforting about the old-fashioned courtliness of this man. He was like someone from another time. He reminded her of Gabriel a little.
Liv looked back down at the symbols, focusing on one in particular.
Though many of them danced before her eyes, this one remained steady and clear. The sword above the crude horse figure was Gabriel — the warrior, the rider, the sword of justice and the liberator of the Sacrament. It was the one symbol that gave her hope because the sword also appeared toward the end of the prophecy next to another.
It meant two things to her: first, Gabriel was still alive, he had to be if he was to figure in events that would come to pass eight months from now; and second, before those eight months had run their course he would be reunited with the one who was represented by the T: the Sacrament, the Key — her.
34
Gabriel woke to haunted moans echoing off stone walls. He opened his eyes and saw a vaulted ceiling high above him, a host of frozen angels bound to the stone, faces fixed in sorrow, as if in lament for what they saw below.
He twisted his head to the side and saw rows of beds stretching away to the nave of a church. They were filled with the writhing figures of men and women, straining against thick canvas bands that bound them, their skin a riot of boils that burst under the stress of their contortions. Doctors in contamination suits moved among the beds, tending to the worst cases by giving them shots that instantly calmed them. On the far wall he saw images of demons pulling tongues from the damned and devils boiling others in vats of oil and realized where he was. It was the Public Church in the Old Town of Ruin, close to the base of the Citadel. He had made it, but too late. The church was now a howling sick bay full of the infected.
The disease was spreading.
Gabriel gritted his teeth as a wave of fever rolled over him followed by an excruciating urge to scratch violently at his skin, but he was bound to his bed like the others so he could not. He heard footsteps approaching across the stone floor and closed his eyes, quelling the urge to writhe against his bindings and feel the ecstasy of relief from the growing itch. He felt hot, was getting hotter, and sweat trickled down his burning skin, making it worse.
The footsteps stopped by his bed and he battled hard just to remain still. He didn’t want to be knocked out with a dose of strong sedative. He needed to think and for that he needed to be conscious, no matter how agonizing it might be.
“You’ve looked better.” The voice took him by surprise. He recognized it. “Don’t worry,” the voice came again. “I haven’t told anyone who you are. You still have a number of serious outstanding warrants on your head and to be perfectly frank I just can’t face the paperwork.”
“Arkadian!” Gabriel opened his eyes to a figure in a complete hazmat suit, one arm in a sling and a familiar face smiling behind a plastic visor.
“I heard some lunatic had ridden in here on a horse.” Arkadian’s voice was muffled behind layers of material that kept him isolated from the infected air. “How are you feeling? Better than you look, I hope?”
“I feel like I’m dying. I probably am dying.”
“Nonsense. You’re the picture of health compared to some of these people.” He glanced up and across the huge empty space of the church. “Most of them have been driven insane by this thing. They have to be heavily sedated just to stop them from howling and weeping and tearing at their own flesh.”
Gabriel shuddered and clenched every muscle as a new prickling blossomed and spread inside him. He could see how easy it would be to give in and be driven mad by this unbearable sensation. “How many cases?” he managed between gritted teeth.
“Twenty-eight confirmed so far, eighty-four more being held in quarantine. They’re all here in the Old Town too. So far it’s only adults; children seem to have some kind of immunity and everyone’s hoping to God it stays that way.”
“How many dead?”
Arkadian hesitated. He watched Gabriel snatching shallow breaths and guessed he was mindful of attracting the attention of the doctors. “How many?” Gabriel repeated once the spasms had eased.
“Nine.”
“When was the first?”
“Two days ago, a waiter working at his aunt’s café on the embankment. She was the next to die.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. He thought back to the two figures with breathing masks he had seen as he approached the Old Town wall, the paper suits and hazmat signs. If they had reacted fast enough to put a quarantine in place and isolate the infected then perhaps it had been contained. Maybe he wasn’t too late.
“Have all the people infected worked close to the Citadel?”
“Yes — all except you. You have been the cause of much excitement, and also concern. Concern because you’re the only one with the lamentation who hasn’t originated inside these walls, excitement because it seems to have affected you differently. Most people are driven incoherent by it and die within forty-eight hours of the main symptoms appearing. But you can still talk. How long have you had it now?”
“I don’t know. Days.”
“More than two?”
“Five, I think.”
Arkadian’s eyes misted a little behind the visor as he imagined five days of this kind of suffering. “Why did you come back?”
Gabriel shivered, freezing again despite his burning skin. “To protect Liv. I wanted to bring it back where it came from. I wanted to return it to the Citadel.”
“Well — you have done.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not quite.”
Arkadian looked on until Gabriel had ridden out another spasm. “Listen,” he said, leaning closer. “I’m going to have to let the doctors know you’re awake. They need to ask you some questions and run more tests. Right now you’re the best chance they have of finding an antidote to this thing.”
“Okay. Just don’t tell them who I am.”
Arkadian managed a smile. “You take me for a fool? You’ll be no good to anyone if I have to throw you in jail.”
“But I want you to do something for me first. Send a message to the Citadel. Try and persuade them to open their doors and allow the sick inside.”
Arkadian stared down at him as though he had genuinely lost his mind. “They’re not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the Citadel, they don’t let anyone inside.”
“Things change. This infection started in there, it must be decimating the population of the mountain. They probably need medical help more than anyone else. Tell them doctors will come too, along with all the medical equipment they need to study this thing and try and find a cure. It’s airborne. That’s how I got it. I breathed it in when I was there. And all these people here worked on the embankment closest to the mountain, that’s why they got it. So we need to return it to where it started and keep it contained. Just imagine if this thing spread.”