“I speak out of imagination rather than dream—though the two sometimes become so intermingled … Yes, I think there’s no alternative. In one of the visions which haunted me this morning, I saw the bravetrees of Forb rotting from the base wherever a corpse had been deposited. What manner of sickness can attack trees as well as people?”
“A new kind,” Twig said slowly.
“As new as the New Star?”
“Ah, but it was only a dream-guess!”
“I think we’ll see the same when the first victims die at Castle Thorn.”
Clenching his claws, Jing added as he turned away, “I wish with all my might it may just be a dream. But I fear it may well be correct imagining. The blight upon our trencher-plants, at any rate, is real enough.”
IX
When next they heaved the Count out of his sitting-pit to cleanse and salve him, there were the betraying sacs beneath his skin. And they were readily recognized, for a girl at one of the outlying villages who had partnered the boy from Ntah had died from their inward rupturing that very day.
Instantly the sacerdotes announced that this was the doom pronounced by the Maker against anyone who harbored heretics from foreign lands, and in the grip of the fever which preceded the visible outbreak of sores the peasants forgot what those same sacerdotes had been saying only days earlier about confronting the risk of plague with boldness. Keepfire managed to prevent his family and followers from being deluded from one of the confusing visions that now beset him, part sane imagination and part lunatic dream, Jing almost extracted a clue concerning life below the massive layers of rock that sheltered Twig’s laboratory, but it evaded him at last because he cared more about the survival of his wife and child.
For a little it seemed that Hedge and Bush were certain to escape, which would have dealt a logical blow to the sacerdotes’ argument, especially since Twig’s sole ulcer had burst outward and his cleanlickers proved able to deal with it. All three had been particularly close with Jing, and it was being claimed that associating with the Ntahans was the key to guilt and the Maker’s punishment. But the day came when Bush succumbed, and admitted contact with the Ntahish girl, and a frenzy of hate exploded like one of the geysers that snowbelong-hunters reported far to the north.
“On the way to the observatory they set their canifangs at me,” Rainbow said. “Only Sturdy’s quickness with his prong prevented me from being badly hurt.”
They sat in her bower, high in the castle and well defended, at a time when normally the night would be quiet but for distant icefaw screams and maybe a little music.
They all cast uncertain glances toward Sturdy. Were a trained prongsman to become delirious before he was restrained there could be considerable slaughter, especially when reflex due to killing had already been established in his mind. And killing canifangs was normally no part of an escort’s duty.
Still, there were no marks to be seen on him.
“It’s essential now for you to get away,” Twig said to Rainbow. Her condition was barely perceptible, fortunately, owing to her lopsidedness. But her attendants could not be trusted to keep such a secret. Let the sacerdotes once get news of it, and they would no longer be confronting angry peasants, but a systematic series of clever attempts to frustrate the budding.
Jing drew a deep breath. “You don’t yet know how essential,” he said, and spread the right side of his mantle in a manner he would never normally do in anybody’s presence except hers … but these were intimate friends.
“You too!” Twig blurted as he recognized what Jing was now revealing.
“It would appear,” Jing said with all the detachment he could command, “that even those who make a good recovery, like Qat and his companions, still carry the plague with them.”
“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill Qat!” Shine screamed, erupting to his full height. “He’s going to deprive us of—”
“You will do no such thing,” Jing decreed. It was strange, he reflected, how cold he felt, when he knew abstractly that he must be in the grip of fever. Just so long as he could continue to separate dream from reality … “You will hew to your oath. You will undertake the protection of Lady Rainbow and her bud and all the parchments on which we have copied details of what we have discovered. You will escort her away from Castle Thorn before the peasants storm it, which will doubtless be the day after they notice its bravetrees rotting where corpses have been consigned to feed the roots.” This, with a meaningful glance at Twig. “I have no homeland. I have no future. I have used my life as it befitted me to do. You have sometimes appeared to look on me as a substitute for the imaginary Maker who so long ruled your life. I’m not a god. If there is one, He watches us but does not interfere. He speaks to us, perhaps, but if His voice is couched in the language of the stars it’s up to us, not Him, to spell out the message … Oh, I ramble!”