The Usual, Apologetic Author's Note: So there was supposed to be a Christmas update. Really. I was all set to start writing in earnest right after finals. Writing everything, fanfiction, original stuff, material for the role-playing games I'm variously embroiled in. Right as soon as I got done with the most hideous finals week I'd ever stared down the barrel of. And then I got hit by a car. No. Completely serious. I actually got off remarkably intact, as small woman getting slammed with multiple tons of metal goes. Fortunately, my winter coat kept me from getting sliced to pieces by broken windshield bits and my elite ninja assassin skills got me up on the hood instead of plowed right over, but even the lesser evil is unwanted. To cut short further whining, my collarbone was broken. It took me close to a month to be able to type with both hands again, and it involved a setup with pillows and textbooks to get my elbow and laptop at the same height. So yes, late update, as usual. Good excuse, as is less usual. Frankly, knowing me, aren't you glad you're getting a chapter at all?
A very odd chapter, I warn you.
I caught him. I held him for a split second, arms tightly around him, burying my nose in his hair, ignoring tears that escaped unbidden. Before I could consciously catch up with what had happened, I was reacting. Like a good soldier. I stood and swept him with me and was out the door and in the hallway, half running toward the nearest infirmary and I hadn't even processed more than Gunter needs my help.
By the time I reached the stairs I was at least thinking lucidly. He hadn't shown the usual symptoms. His complexion was a little paler than usual, but he'd always erred on the side of bone white, my Gunter. He hadn't gone the horrid, ashen gray that was a universal signal. He'd also barely been coughing. I couldn't puzzle it out, couldn't focus… The healers would be able to. They had to be.
When I entered the sickbay, one of the stations improvised under my direction from a large parlor. There were a few cots, two desks and a coffee table converted, and a half dozen patients made as comfortable as possible on the floor. The only one awake was Julia von Wincott.
"Who's there?" She looked tired, but alert. There was some reason I didn't expect to see her there, but I'd forgotten it.
"Gwendal." Hard to recall formalities at a time like this. "I have another patient for you. Er, Gunter. And it seems complicated." I was talking too fast. On the edge of panic. My mother, my brothers, and now my dearest love, and he mysteriously stricken on top of it all. How much could a man take?
"Put him here." I noticed, faintly, that she navigated the room with perfect ease. A very uncanny girl. I realized I was lazily following her with my eyes and snapped back to attention, carrying Gunter to a makeshift bedroll.
"You mentioned complications?"
She was too tired. That was why she shouldn't be waiting up in the middle of the night. Alone. Barely more than a child and sickly to boot in a room full of dangerously ill patients. Oh, well. "He fainted after one cough. He doesn't look like he has…" I trailed off. Now that I was looking, there was a faint ashen edge to his face. Had it been there all along? I'd missed it, hadn't I?
"Oh. Well, he's quite the amateur doctor, isn't he?" She yawned a bit. "He's probably been sick for days. Someone who knows the body's energies as well as a practiced healer has more control than most over their own."
I reached over to push the hair out of his face. There was a thin sheen of sweat under my fingers. "So he can avoid being sick?"
"Not at all, unfortunately." She sighed and her hand drifted from his head to his chest, about an inch above his body. "He was holding it back, but… picture floodwaters. A dam can sometimes restrain them a good long time, but nothing holds forever. And water doesn't slowly ooze out of a dam once it's overpowered. Everything hits at once, and what would have been a slow river becomes a raging tide."
Ah. Metaphor. It made sense… Wait, why was she babbling about rivers when Gunter was in such danger, then? If I'd interpreted right, and as difficult as it was to think right then, he was going to be much worse than if he'd just let himself be ill to begin with. "Can you help him?"
"I can try." She sighed. "I'm… good at this. And he's stronger than he looks, I think. From what I've heard. Still, it's dangerous. Anyone trained as a healer knows not to attempt this kind of thing except very short term."
"I'm sure he knew perfectly well." I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket—not my precious little gift, but an everyday little square of linen. The girl was blind and I was in no state to really think logically. Wolfram, Conrart, and Mother lay in similar straits. I needed a fleeting moment to lose myself in him. I wiped the sweat from his brow and kissed his forehead, just lightly.
"Hmm, likely. I wouldn't do that. It's a sweet gesture, but you've been exposed plenty without just asking for it." Her hand was resting on his chest and she was gazing off into space, eyes unfocused. There was absolutely no way she could know. I quailed anyway.
"If you can spare a moment… Please let me know how he's doing." I was fraying at the edges. I felt ill myself, though I wouldn't admit it any more than Gunter even if I couldn't restrain the symptoms. I was on the brink of losing everyone I loved, the kingdom was falling apart, and in all likelihood there were a half dozen human countries poised to take action against us the moment catching the plague was no longer a danger. This crisis was bigger than me.
Funny, I'd thought I'd hit my breaking point a dozen times, but this seemed to really be it. I turned away from the blind girl who somehow saw, away from Gunter's senseless form, and shook. I wasn't even crying. I felt too hot to cry. Dry, blistering heat that might have been the still oppressive weather or a fever of my own. Julia let me alone for a few minutes. I needed to sob, get in a fight, get very drunk… But after the moment of hopelessness passed, though still horribly distraught and not myself, I knew that none of that would help.
And that I wouldn't be good for anything in the next few hours anyway.
Gunter had been carefully making sure that I slept. By turns cajoling, demanding, debating, and sometimes pure trickery (the man had proved before he wasn't above drugging me), he'd made sure I at least spent a few hours lying down. I didn't really feel I benefitted. My mind was always spinning too fast with worries and planning to settle into anything but a doze.
Well, unconscious he couldn't make me waste that time asleep, though the few remaining to fight the plague alongside me would scold a bit. So I wouldn't let them see me up and about. There seemed to me one halfway useful thing I could do.
I took my leave of the silent, all too knowing Julia with a tangled lie about going to get some much needed rest. It felt beneath me to sneak out of the castle and across the yard like a thief, but what other options did I have? I made it to the stable and picked out the only one of the castle's horses that was awake. It seemed I'd be asking for enough trouble riding a strange horse without it being put out for an unexpected jolt from sleep.
All roads in and out of the city were closed, on my orders, but for one. I'd considered the matter and determined that in times of such crisis, people needed spiritual help more than ever. The temple was garrisoned by young, healthy, and magically gifted soldier-priestesses, and those of the high priestess's clan didn't live so long merely because they didn't age. The whole of the temple was steeped in magic and powers older and deeper still. Not a single case of the plague had been reported, and supplicants were lining up halfway down the road back to Covenant castle during daylight hours.
Even after midnight, I wasn't alone as I rode up to the sparkling stained glass and ebony door where male petitioners could leave their names and prayers with the priestess on duty. Women could go inside a ways, though I understood they weren't admitted to the inner sanctum without reason.
The night stood out in shocking, insane relief. The moon, on its way to full, looked misshapen as it hung in the sky, illuminating every blade of grass and pebble, sharper than life. There was no hint of wind anywhere, and the air carried both the usual scents of the forest and hints of the country's misery hidden woven in with the clean, woody smell. Acrid smoke from the burned possessions of the ill, waste and rotten food. The voices of the young man in front of me and the priestess he spoke to hung unnaturally in the stifling air, not penetrating the silence, but floating atop it. I stumbled a bit as I dismounted, falling against the wall. The cool limestone felt lovely against my cheek for just a moment before I realized I'd scraped my jaw and it was bleeding a bit. Hopefully I'd be able to pass that off as a shaving cut.
Not that I really had to shave.
The boy finished his plea and turned to go. He smiled shyly at me as he passed. Not recognizing me. Which was just what I wanted. Who would spot the fineness of my clothes when they were so rumpled and sweated through, after all?
The priestess at the door I faintly recognized. As tall as I was with deep indigo hair braided down to her knees, she was a memorable woman. She'd met me when I first took my title those distant years ago, let me into the courtyard for a few scant minutes to offer my lands, life, and legacy to the service of king, country, and our Shinou.
To my surprise, she remembered me, too. Did I really recall my gawky, adolescent self o clearly? No matter. She bowed. Slightly. Being one of Shinou's priestesses put her on social par with just about everyone but Ulrike herself and the maou. "Lord Gwendal von Voltaire."
I searched my memory desperately for her name. Something botanical that wasn't a flower. It had to be there somewhere. My silence dragged on, the slight sound I'd made hoping that opening my mouth would bring on the memory sinking into the mire of quiet that was this horrid, surreal night.
"Hyssop," she said tolerantly.
Though I intended to apologize, it didn't happen. I was silent, unsure how to phrase anything, still a little unsteady, increasingly afraid. Could my prayer to Shinou be of any help at all? The whole of Shin Makoku was undoubtedly sending torrents of pleas to our deified founder. It couldn't hurt, and I couldn't work in the state I was in.
"I've come to add my voice to those pleading with Shinou for any protection he can grant my family and friends as well as every one of us," I said. My voice was hollow. My brothers could be taking a turn for the worse, my mother slipping further into feverish nightmares, Gunter could very well be dying back at the castle this minute. Why had I come?
"Hmm." She looked over my shoulder. The path wasn't abandoned, but the two travelers on their way up the path were women. "You, I heard, were recovering from injury during the presentation of our twenty-fifth maou, yes?"
Shouldn't she just be taking my name and nodding politely at my rather predictable prayer? "Yes."
"Then you missed the presentation of the rest of your family at the altar. Perhaps you should make up for that now."
Pity. I was sure she was taking pity on me. I must look such a mess, hardly worthy of such a favor. I nearly refused, half of me wanting to ride hard back to the castle, to sit beside Gunter or have Wolfram cuddle up on my lap. But a chance to see the inner sanctum itself? Especially when I had no real claim to the privilege. I nodded.
She opened the men's door all the way. Another priestess took over the post. Inside the walls, the air was no less hot, weighty, and threatening, but the oppressive silence was broken by the fall of water in a handsome fountain and the footsteps and conversation of a half dozen young women moving to and fro, the business of the temple apparently never done despite the late hour.
And something aside from that. I felt a presence here, a tangible sense of power that welcomed and enfolded me. I'd been to shrines and memorials in my life and never felt anything but mundane, quiet piety. Here was the real thing. I felt comforted. Protected. And definitely watched, not just by the eyes of curious maidens, either.
The main hall of the temple was a glory to behold. The moonlight was bright enough to sparkle through stained glass and water, but its silver light was cold and gentle. There were ordinary windows as well, allowing glimpses of a starry sky that seemed less threatening. I walked beside Hyssop in a sort of trance. For the first time since the bells had sounded I felt myself relax some and folded my hands to make my pleas.
"Hmm?" There was a tiny sound beside me. I looked down to see a small, smiling child I knew must be Ulrike, the high priestess, the one who spoke to Shinou directly.
Hyssop introduced me. Something passed between the two and Ulrike nodded, smiling up at me cheerfully. "So you're the oldest brother. I'm glad to finally meet you."
"I hope I didn't disturb you."
"Don't worry. I don't sleep very much." She smiled and walked past the torches, past the shimmering spectacles of starlight and moonlit colors, and I followed after a moment's pause.
She said something that sounded rather canned about the voice and will of Shinou, but I couldn't attend. As I looked at the faint glow where I not only knew but could feel, deep in my core, Shinou resided, I felt a sharp, sudden pain in my left eye. No twinge but a deep, twisting stab, as real as if a knife had done it. I stumbled again, forward, covering my eye. Not that there was any reason having my fingers there would help, but I was seeing stars and some instinct had me cover it. The pain faded but did not disappear, a slow, throbbing ache and I moved my hand away, about to turn and apologize for my inattention to Ulrike.
The moment my fingers moved away, though, I was thoroughly distracted again. My right eye looked out on the pretty, peaceful room, the two priestesses glancing at me with concern. My left saw a completely different scene—a different world, it felt like. A dark, cold, rustic room with a mangy stag's head mounted on the wall. My father's study? But even as I resolved the place's identity it shifted imperceptibly, becoming somehow alien, lit by flickering field lanterns instead of candle sconces, as though the familiar, comforting sanctuary I'd known as a very young child were superimposed on another room entirely, the two vying for space.
My mind attempted to process the information from both eyes as one, and the effect of perhaps three places all atop one another made me so dizzy I fell, my knees hitting the carpeted floor with a dull thud and a jolt of pain.
Strange mind, strange heart. So innocent, yet so old. I wasn't exactly hearing words. Fleeting images and feelings echoed in my head, as though someone else's thoughts had bled in, ebbing on the same impossible tide that had spun half my vision into another time and place.
I didn't seem to have any options but to see what happened next. In all my reading I'd never heard of anything at all like this encounter, so I'd have to blaze the trail alone. And what harm could befall me thusly before Shinou?
To distract myself from the persistent pain in my eye I tried to focus on the room it saw. It wasn't just a picture to admire. I smelled old wood, tobacco smoke, and the wet, enlivening hint of a winter storm about to hit. There was a fire crackling in the hearth. The big, cozy armchair where a very small Gwendal indeed had loved to curl up was draped in a loosely knitted gray blanket that had fallen apart when I was twenty after many decades' service as a cave, tent, bedroll, and cape. The door was slightly ajar. For just a moment I lost myself, warm and sleepy, waiting for Father's momentary return.
I had only just snapped out of the strangely vivid memory when the ghost of the second room made itself known. Makeshift military headquarters from floor to ceiling, decrepit and cold, an appropriated storage shed lit by harsh, smoky lanterns, strewn with weapons, maps, and heavy cloaks, smelling of cheap wine and desperation. Not a strange place to me at all, though familiar to just the opposite side of me. I'd never seen this particular outpost, I was sure, but I'd known its like. I felt as at home here as in that little sitting room in the family manor.
A brave soul. A kind one. But rimed in ice. All alone. The voice grew stronger, the words coherent, though still falling straight into my head. I know you now, Voltaire. A predictable clan. No fault there. Always men after my own heart.
I knew who the voice belonged to now, though that shed no light on my painful eye and its visions.
"Lord Shinou, first and greatest, I have come to beg your protection for us all, to plead especially for the lives of my brothers, my mother, my… friend." Proper language, humble bearing, quiet voice. I couldn't have spoken loudly if I wanted, shaken to the core, but I certainly looked the perfect supplicant.
Ah, such words. I hear them often, and I needn't look into a heart to know such noble words are nearly always lies. There seemed to be an odd chuckle, not quite the warm but courtly sentiment one would expect from Shinou. But here is sincerity. An honest wish from a foolish boy, protection for your love and your own, not a thing for yourself. An old head on young shoulders, a child's heart in a man's soul, and always as cold and solitary as your mountains.
Shinou knew how to hit home, didn't he? He was describing Father as well, and my very dimly recalled grandsire. I felt very small, the last in a line that our founder seemed to know beginning to end, soul laid bare to a disembodied voice in a temple.
I was silent and he went on. Will you chose the paths that those before you have so often? Will you live your life bent over with the burdens of all? Will a warm heart hide behind cold eyes, armor and prison in one? Sacrificing all for the greater good? And will you lead a life unimpeachable and forlorn, conscience intact as you breathe your last, unfrozen and accomplished to the end?
"Yes," I said, without hesitation, forgetting what a confusing spectacle this likely was to Hyssop and Ulrike. Was there any question, after all? He'd just written out my fate for me. And could I complain? It sounded like just the life I should have. Frozen and secluded, yes, but safe. Useful. A boon to Shin Makoku, to Voltaire, to Conrart and Wolfram. Maybe even to Gunter. Yes. I even smiled a little.
I felt another laugh, somewhere between my subconscious mind and my bones. To anyone else I'd have spoken a curse. Voltaire my be hewn from stone, but what a precious one. You epitomize your clan, boy. How archaic. Clan. It suited the air of mystery and ancient grandeur. Perhaps the best of them. Go back to them. With my blessing and a gift.
Who could say what that meant. Hopefully, his gift was the recovery of my loved ones, though that seemed unlikely. A blessing was, to be sure, an intangible thing. I was grateful, but an air of blessedness failed to settle over my shoulders like a mantle. My eye stopped hurting, and as I realized my left cheek was soaked with uncontrolled, irritating tears I felt that to be boon enough as I stood.
My eyes wandered up to one of the clear windows near the ceiling, taking in the stars for a moment before I had to look back at the priestesses and tell them I'd been speaking to Shinou. There was a sudden, blinding flash of what could only be heat lightening. I twisted away, eyes already sore and watery enough.
The moment I closed them, I was seeing visions again. Too good to be true, they still felt genuine. I saw Wolfram, grown and strong with brave, flashing eyes. An adult Conrart smiling, assured, with the bluster and the edge of fear and loneliness gone from his face. Mother grinning as she directed a dozen suitors to her whims. A Covenant Castle once more bustling with everyday concerns under a forgiving autumn sun. And Gunter, gazing out a window, smiling dreamily, safe and well.
Was Shinou's gift a prophecy or merely a comfort? How was I to know? I tucked it away in that icy heart of mine anyway and turned to Ulrike.
"You spoke to him," she said, blinking a little dazedly. She reminded me of a sleepy kitten. It was hard to remember you were looking at a wise, powerful elder, not an adorable child. "It's not the first time the favor has been granted… But I've never heard of it falling to a man before!"
Should I apologize? "I feel the compliment," I finally said, weakly, after waiting too long. I took my leave still in a bit of a daze. I'd spoken to Shinou, had my fundamental self stripped bare, been given… something.
Hope.
Quite an evening's excursion. I'd been away much longer than I'd intended to, so after as polite a goodbye as I could handle I rode back to the castle. The sky was lightening already, the unforgiving summer dawn coming too fast on the heels of midnight.
As I'd expected, a little searching the moment I got back found me a patient to carry, poor little Josak, looking rather embarrassed to have come down ill. The day's work was beginning again, and I convinced myself I didn't feel any the worse for getting no rest. I assisted a healer until dawn, seeing the arrival of my cousin Hube and two guards in that short shift. The plague was reaching a crescendo, a fever pitch that in spite of any assurances from a higher power I was terrified of.
I decided to snatch myself ten minutes and took my breakfast of a sticky bun and coffee up to Mother's room. Conrart was fast asleep and so was she, and neither of them looked entirely natural, pale and sweating, she muttering and he much too still for a boy who tossed and turned so much he was often knotted up in his covers by morning. Wolfram was sitting on the end of the bed and crying.
When a broken off crumb of bun failed to produce any results (you could usually trust Wolfram's sweet tooth) I sat down and pulled him into my lap. "Are you feeling better?"
"N-no. My head hurts and I can't start any fires and my chest hurts and my nose is all plugged up." I decided not to ask why he'd wanted to start fires. "When will Mama and Conrart be awake?"
"Soon." I hugged him. "Soon it will be over. Like a bad dream. You'll be able to play again."
"Breathing hurts."
"Be brave, Wolf."
"I had a dream about spaghetti."
"…You still have a fever, don't you, Wolfram?"
"It played drums."
"Yes. You do." I carried him back up to the pillows and tucked him in. He didn't resist. "Back to sleep. The healers will be by to bring you water and check on you."
"I want juice."
"…I'll tell them." Brat. I kissed his forehead. If he'd been properly sensible I'd have foregone the little mark of affection—he was just the age to begin hating it, but he needed it. "I need to go, now. Get back to looking after all the others here who are look after Mother and Conrart."
"Okay. I will. I'm big." He was practically speaking baby talk. I tucked him in and sighed, leaving once more. The surge of hope and trust in the right outcome from the night before was beginning to ebb away.
No alarms were being raised about new victims. I was having trouble bringing details to mind… How long had the last epidemic lasted? It had swept across the land faster than the wind could follow. That much I was sure of. Or maybe it just sounded morbid and a bit dreamlike that way, and as such fit into the dark confusion that was all my head could hold.
I returned to the small sick bay where I'd left Julia the night before. She was still there, but asleep on a big armchair beside a teacup. The room managed to smell of chamomile and summer breeze instead of sickness, somehow. Very odd girl. The healer now on duty was a young man with dark hair and sharp eyes. Another double black. They seemed to be common lately, didn't they? But of course some of us just weren't worth the favor.
Was a blessing like a favor? Did a directly granted boon from Shinou count for more or less than being born under the lucky stars of a double black? Why be taunted with dark hair—half was worse than none, especially when any fool could see how Gunter admired the true sable-eyed and raven-haired lucky ones.
I realized I'd stalled in the doorway and shook my head. Hard. That hurt a little; I was congested to start with. At least that dragged me back to reality. My wandering daydreams would be the deaths of patients. I knew I'd caught it, but it wasn't as though I was among the untouched. At my age, with my health, I might be able to keep walking throughout. I couldn't recall whether that was supposed to be possible when blighted by this particular curse, but it worked with the flu. Once. Though Mother would tell you I'd just had a cold while Conrart and his father had been properly ill.
Once again, I hadn't moved. I walked over to offer my services and the healer, after only a moment's hesitation, had me take over getting a swallow of water into those who remained unconscious, caught in their fever dreams. Some tossed and turned and let out tiny groans. Some were still and rigid. Some looked almost peaceful. I lingered as long as conscience would allow beside Gunter.
All his skin was too hot and his nest of sheets and a worn duvet were soaked with sweat. I sat on the floor beside him and, after a moment's hesitation, propped his head up on my thigh. I'd done it with two or three others lying on the floor and hadn't given it a moment's thought. Certainly there was no harm. It was easiest to trickle potentially life-saving water down his throat this way. What had been clinical, drab duty I could barely keep my fevered mind on became a wicked, enthralling indulgence.
I parted his lips with my thumb. They were parched, but still soft, somehow, still as velvety as the brush of a new leaf, smooth as pearl. He reacted a little, a slight sound, and twisted his head away to the side. I waited a moment and managed to tip his head back. I moistened his mouth a little with a soft cloth and let him drink. Slowly. He was never awake, though he seemed less deeply asleep. I stroked his hair and even whispered… something no doubt incoherent, but soothing. Oh, my Gunter. He looked so frail. I should take him to bed and watch over him properly.
Make sure to ease away whatever was making his eyes dart back and forth, visible through closed lids, soothe his twitching hands to stillness and quiet the little whimpering noises it broke my heart to hear. No one was watching. Julia still slept (and the mad girl knew whatever she wanted to know anyway, seer witch or perhaps not blind at all, wouldn't that be something?). The other healer, Kennard, was it? Occupied fully by a woman taken by a fit of terrible coughing.
I helped myself to another kiss. Not as though I could avoid getting ill at this point.
I couldn't help it being a proper kiss, not just a shy peck. He could be dead by next time I saw him, taking all the beauty in the world with him. As I pulled back, his eyes fluttered open. The shock of it and the icy horror of being caught pulled me back to near lucidity. I almost dropped him. When had he ended up in my arms, come to think?
But his amethyst eyes just slid closed again. He muttered something I couldn't make out. A name perhaps, not mine, and words I'd never heard with the tone of a question. Some ancient scholarly tongue he'd picked up, or just as easily inventions of a tortured mind locked inside hellish heat.
"Gunter. Lover." My voice was raspy and came unexpectedly. "I… I will take care of you. Don't worry." I could never say the right things, even when I was three-quarters delirious and hardly responsible for what might come out of my mouth. No response from Gunter, anyway. And I'd need to be this fever mad to say something like that. I lay him back down, wiped his forehead clean of sweat, and stood.
As I straightened the room went dark, and I had to grab a bookshelf to keep from falling. I felt cold and empty, though oddly there was cold sweat forming on my face, especially around my hair. Every time I opened my eyes the floor insisted on jerking back and forth, not a gentle roll that came with normal dizziness but what looked like an attempt to escape.
Finally I felt like I could stand again and looked over my shoulder. The healer had seen me.
"Looks like one more for sick bay," he said mildly.
"It's about full, here." I swallowed. I wasn't done yet. I hadn't checked recently, but there was very likely nothing left of my task force. Someone had to keep this up before healers started dropping from over extending themselves. "I'll go upstairs."
He wanted to stop me, I could tell, but a girl on one of the desks made into beds chose that moment to start gasping and I ducked away while he attended to her.
A corpse was carried past me as I stumbled to the nearest infirmary. A small one. It took me a long moment to recognize little miss Emily, Conrart's supposed girlfriend. Funny. Her redhead's complexion hadn't changed a bit from when last I'd seen her, but there was no mistaking the pallor of death.
She wasn't the first of the dead I'd seen, but the mess I was in, getting worse every second, couldn't take this blow. I turned and retched. It was lucky I hadn't eaten since… Gunter had made me. Sometime. When the dry heaves stopped and I'd steadied myself on the stair rail, I realized there was a strong hand on my shoulder.
"Hube…" At an ordinary time I'd never dream of addressing the cousin who so intimidated me, who stood on even more formality than I, by a familiar nickname I'd only heard from his mother, years ago. Now the walls between us were crumbled. Between everyone.
I stood with him for a bit, wordless. I had a funny urge to speak, to try and talk to the man I'd both feared and disdained, to connect to someone who wasn't dying or delirious, but there was nothing to say. Later, maybe, if I didn't find myself afraid of him once more. I continued upstairs, and he brought Emily down to wherever she'd rest.
An overworked, frazzled healing witch gave me a box of linens to carry, clearly not trusting me to attempt magical medicine however short-handed she was. I think I made it halfway across the room before my knees gave out from under me. Whacking my knees on the floor felt a bit like deja vu until I remembered the bruises from my collapse in the temple. So I wasn't seeing the future. Or seeing the past. It had always seemed to me that was more along the lines of what deja vu was.
I was vaguely aware of being carried into a bed unceremoniously. Whoever did it wasn't really strong enough to carry me and didn't care. Luckily I was too insensible to mind being hauled like a sack of potatoes. Long delayed coughing was escaping me now, harsh, stabbing coughs that contorted most of my body.
All at once. Now wasn't this familiar?
I forgot why. Being in bed felt nice, though this wasn't really much of a bed, more a couple of cushions stolen from a sofa. I head myself trying to talk to the healer, but every time a word managed to escape I'd start coughing and it didn't seem worth it.
Every second I felt warmer, emptier, and weaker, lost my grip on reality a little more. But one thought did somehow penetrate the fog before I slipped entirely into hallucinations. There was only one way I could have been hit so hard so quickly. Gunter had been shielding me as well as himself. I was absolutely sure of it.
And then I was gone. Wandering through twisted, misty epics, landscapes dark and strange. Delirium steeped in heat led me on up roads through memory into realms where I wasn't meant to be, stalked by formless terrors, filled with endless corridors. I spent what felt like days walking through the same house, always finding one more room. I was roasted alive for aspiring to a kingship of some sort. I directed an army of the flybone tribe over a fire blasted landscape. Once I watched bodies crawling with maggots that hatched into massive moths with wings like shining oil slicks. Hands on the ends of disembodied tentacles gripped my ankles and pulled me into a peaty mire. Shattered ice spoke to me as it broke. Wildly shifting nightmares kept me locked so deep inside myself not even coughing my lungs out could change anything.
Can't catch a break, can you, Voltaire?
That voice came and went a lot. And though I didn't feel myself choking and gasping and, I was told later, spitting up blood, I did occasionally feel a dull ache in my left eye.
The next thing I knew that didn't involve a skeletal horse carrying me toward my dead father in an underground warren of tunnels carved in volcanic glass, I was looking up at Anissina.
"I've… missed a bit, haven't I?" My voice came out as a grating croak and I winced. My throat was still raw.
"Mmm."
"Why is it always you?"
"Pure luck. The healers think that the smoke you breathed in during the fire probably made it worse. Oh, and running around for days while you were ill."
"How long?"
"I don't think I'll tell you until you're feeling better. I want to see your best infuriated face." The wench grinned. I hoped I looked pretty infuriated as it was.
I didn't remember the past two or three days except in snatches that made no sense. A trip to the temple, Gunter whispering his brother's name to me, a handsome double black healer, chamomile. "What is… That is to say, the state of…?"
"It's well under control here, and we're now able to spare healers to send to the other cities that need it. In a few more weeks the plague's going to be under control." She smiled. I'd never seen Anissina look so soft. Had she actually been concerned about me? Or was she just still recovering herself? I noticed she was wrapped in a flannel dressing gown. Probably some combination. Even so, I was a bit touched.
"Good. So we helped some…"
"Yes, Gwendal, you did good. Pest. You've gotten a lot of thank yous. Even some flowers. Those mostly from Wolfram. And a few young ladies you seem to have saved personally. And there seems to be some lilac."
"Not in season…" Maybe I wasn't quite back to normal just yet.
"Ah, true, but I've heard some lovely things about magically regulated botanic gardens in the von Christ Province." She handed me a sprig that smelled of sweetness and green and springtime. And Gunter. I couldn't have had a happier awakening. A token from Gunter, the knowledge that he must be fine, and an uncharacteristically sweet Anissina.
Was it too much to hope she'd done a bit of growing up, settling down while she was ill? I smiled at her for the first time in memory. "It's really going to be okay?"
"The kingdom will recover." She winced, and suddenly her air of gentle calmness could be seen for the eye of a hurricane it really was. "Just in time for your wedding."