Doppelganger

by Logan Jacobs

  “Lizzy, you can’t just eat anyone who is inconvenient to you,” I tried to change the subject.

  “It’s worked just fine for me so far!” the she-wolf hollered out as she spurred Damask on to pull ahead of Diamond.

  It was only a mile or two later that all five of us, seven including the ponies, came upon the village. By village, I mean a small collection of about forty huts surrounded by plots of farmland from which the woods had been cleared. No one appeared to be working in the fields right now. That could have just been because it was winter, although I knew there were certain crops that could be grown and harvested during colder seasons, but as we slowed down and passed through the fields, I saw a few more corpses lying in them in a similar condition to the one we had found by the windmill which suggested there were other factors contributing to the lack of human activity.

  “Well, how are we supposed to save a village that’s already dead?” Lizzy demanded grumpily.

  “I’m sure not everyone is dead, that would be too horrible to imagine,” Ilandere whimpered.

  “Why haven’t those bodies in the fields been disposed of yet?” I wondered aloud. “Surely someone should have noticed by now?”

  “No survivors, I told you,” Lizzy said. “Should’ve known better than to listen to some dumb brain-addled baker. Playing blind is the oldest trick in the book to win sympathy, you know.”

  “I don’t think Meline was--” I began, but then we all heard the sound that proved someone in the village was still alive. The sound of sobbing, coming from the second-closest hut.

  I looked around the group. “Hey, why don’t you guys get started digging a big pit? We’re going to need someplace to bury the bodies. So if you can find a spot that’s reasonably far from the dwellings and the fields where they plant food, and won’t contaminate any water source, and the ground isn’t frozen solid, there’s a shovel from the temple in one of my packs that you can use to--”

  “No, there isn’t,” Lizzy interrupted.

  “You haven’t even looked yet.” I pointed south and suggested, “There might be a spot in that direction.”

  “There isn’t any shovel in either of your packs,” Lizzy clarified. “I didn’t know when you asked me to sort things from the carriage that burying a load of bodies was going to be high on our to-do list. I mean, if there are a lot of spares lying around I usually just eat them, anyway.” She shrugged.

  “Oh.” I sighed. “Well, I don’t think you should do that here. Even if it won’t get you sick, the villagers, um, they might be less likely to trust us and accept help from us if, um, you start munching all their dead relatives,” I explained.

  “Guess they’ll just have to deal with all that rotten disease-spreading flesh lying around in breathable distance of them then,” Lizzy replied unsympathetically.

  “Once we talk to the villagers, we will obtain digging tools from some of them,” I told her. “Stay here everyone, I’ll be right back.”

  I dismounted and walked toward the hut where the crying was coming from. I kept myself contained in one body to be as unintimidating as possible. To my dismay but not to my surprise, I heard far too many footsteps right behind me for them to belong just to the gnome and the she-wolf, my only chosen helpers in this situation due to their natural immunity.

  I knocked on the door. Then I heard a sharp gasp, and the crying was interrupted. It started back up again in a heaving, stunted breathing pattern like the person was trying to suppress it but couldn’t.

  I knocked again. “I don’t mean you any harm,” I called through the thin wood. “If there’s any way I can help, then I want to.”

  The crying finally shuddered to a halt. A few moments later the door flew backward, and I found myself facing a gaunt middle-aged woman who had eyes red and puffy from crying and beneath that, deep bags of exhaustion. I didn’t know whether she had the plague or not, but she looked about as close to dead as a living person could without having any visible wounds or signs of disease.

  “What do you want? Are you a bandit?” she demanded bitterly.

  “No, of course not,” I replied at the same time as Lizzy replied from right next to me, “Reformed, ma’am,” and gave her a wolfish smile.

  I yanked the she-wolf behind me and assured her, “We are not here to steal from you, we were sent to help you.”

  “That’s too bad,” the woman said wearily, “because murdering me and everyone else still unlucky enough to be alive around here for valuables that we don’t even have, is probably the only way you could help us at this point.”

  “I hope that is not true,” I told her sincerely. “I, ah, do not have any specialized medical knowledge myself, but I can help bring food and water for the sick, and I can help you bury those bodies in the fields, so that they don’t spread disease to anyone else. How many people live in this village?”

  “‘No specialized medical knowledge’?” the woman repeated. At first I thought she was expressing scorn at my apparent uselessness, but then her tone actually acquired a little more interest as she went on, “Not another quack doctor, then? With the beaky masks that just scare the poor wee ones when they’re already delirious with fever anyway and makes them think there are demons coming to carry them off?”

  “Er, no, we’re not doctors, and we don’t have any masks,” I answered.

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?” the peasant woman demanded. “Who sent you? Lord Kiernan?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t know who he is,” I replied. “We were sent by an oracle, Meline of the Order of Nillibet, to… see what we could do for you here in your time of need.”

  “Ah, an oracle,” the exhausted-looking creature scoffed. “Just when I thought this world couldn’t get any madder. Well, she should have kept her silly pampered mouth shut instead of sending more poor souls here to die of a disease that only the gods could cure, and they don’t care to.”

  “Qaar’endoth cares to,” Florenia spoke up. “The fourth son of the Fairlands. The Unvanquished One. He has journeyed here all this way just to help you.”

  As the duke’s daughter slipped around Lizzy to stand beside me, the peasant woman gaped at her in unabashed stupefaction. With her lustrous golden skin, perfectly chiseled features, dark arched brows, and fiery gaze, I knew that even a fully clothed Florenia di Valentis looked a hell of a lot more like an earth-walking goddess than I did a god.

  “Qa-Qaar’endoth, my lady?” the poor woman finally managed to stammer.

  “We don’t know that for sure, Florenia,” I muttered, because even though I was going to do everything I could for her village or die trying, I did not want to give the unhappy woman too much false hope by claiming divine powers that I might or might not actually possess.

  Florenia took my hand in both of hers. Then, before I realized what she was doing, she wrapped my hand around Polliver’s hilt. I felt the gentle, fortifying heat of the sword, as if the martyred saint were sending me a subtle message of encouragement. “Don’t we?” Florenia whispered.

  “Er,” I stammered as my heart beat too fast for comfort. I turned my attention back to the peasant woman. “You can call me Vander. What is your name?”

  “My name does not matter much since I will be dead soon anyway,” she replied matter-of-factly, “but it is Millie.”

  “What can we do for you, Millie?” I asked. “What do you need?”

  Her weathered face crumpled into tears again, and she wheezed hoarsely, “I need my babies back. Can you bring them back?”

  Millie turned toward the interior of the hut with the apparent expectation that we would follow her. Florenia, Lizzy, and I did, although the centaurs could not fit through the door, and Willobee remained outside with them atop the back of the princess. The air was so putrid and smelled so dense with disease particles that I immediately thought we should burn down all the village’s huts and rebuild them.

  Millie crossed the one room that her hut consisted of to a straw-filled bed with threadbar
e sheets that looked dingy and stained as if they had never been washed. This was all the more horrifying because the bodies of two children, about six or seven years old, were curled stiffly in the middle. Their skin had an awful purplish-gray hue and a smattering of small black pustules. There was dried blood that had run from the boy’s ear and from the girl’s nose. Their sackcloth clothing concealed their armpits, but I had no doubt that the buboes would be present.

  “Please bring them back,” Millie sobbed. “If you are truly a god, that is all I ask of you.”

  “Millie, I cannot do that,” I said gently, “but even if I could, you would not want me to. There are only two necromantic orders that I know of, one historical and one that still practices somewhere in the remote regions of the Gormenthal range. But the things they did and do are terrible beyond imagining. You do not want that for your children. I would not wish a resurrection on my worst enemy.”

  That last statement was the only one that may have been slightly untrue. Although I hadn’t even mustered enough strength to kill Thorvinius once yet, I had to admit that the prospect of eventually getting to do it twice, after first seeing him and his followers having their consciousnesses ripped apart and grafted back together in crude bastardized imitations, and their corpses tortured into unrecognizable reanimated forms, did not cause me the slightest twinge of pity. But I hoped for Millie’s sake that an ordinary woman like her had not had cause to know hatred as potent as mine, even though other forms of suffering had obviously ravaged her life.

  “I can tell that they were beautiful children,” I said as Millie sobbed over their bedside. That one was a blatant lie. I could not guess from looking at them now whether they had been beautiful, ugly, or somewhere in between in life. “What are their names?”

  “Timmy and Beth.” Millie pointed to a wooden cradle in the corner. “And Elsie. They were such good, sweet children. Beth never left Timmy’s side after he fell sick. She was the most devoted little nurse that anyone ever had. Perhaps I should have tried harder to keep them apart, perhaps I could have saved at least one of them, but… there seemed so little point. None of the wee ones are strong enough to survive this. They’re all catching it from the bad airs, anyway. And where else could they go, where else could I house one? There’s hardly a family in this village as does not have one sick yet. And besides that his sister’s presence was the only thing in the world that seemed to give Timmy any comfort in the end. I could not bear to deny him that.”

  “I am sorry for your loss. I am sure you did the best that you could for them,” I replied carefully. It was true that any sick should have been quarantined. But if the entire village was already riddled with disease, then it may have been too late for that.

  “I know that they are playing in the Fairlands together now,” Florenia said softly but in a tone of firm conviction. “Rosy with health and joy again. They’ll never grow old. They’ll never know frailty or disappointment or weariness. And Timmy will always be grateful for his sister’s faithfulness. I believe there is only one thing that still troubles them now, Millie. Their mother’s grief.” The elegant beauty reached out to the despairing peasant mother, and at first Millie quaked almost as if in fear of her. But then as Florenia enfolded her gently in her arms, the older woman slumped against the younger one and the tension released from her rickety frame as she sobbed into the ex-vestal’s pink-robed bosom.

  Florenia continued steadily, “As you worried for them in life, they will worry for you in death, now that they are safe forever and you continue to suffer alone. They will not expect you to be able to stop grieving today, or tomorrow. Because you cannot see for yourself yet how wonderful their existences are now. But their peace cannot be complete until you are healed as well.”

  “What about the baby?” Millie wailed. “My Elsie… she was so young that I fear that even if we are reunited someday in the Fairlands, she will not know me.”

  “Of course she will know you,” Florenia replied warmly. “You are her mother. Yours was the first voice she heard, the first face she saw, the heartbeat that first set the rhythm for hers. She will know you, Millie.”

  Lizzy and I stood there feeling useless and snuck glances at each other while the duke’s graceful daughter continued to speak to and soothe the bereaved mother. We weren’t going to abandon either of them as long as our presence could give them comfort, but I knew I would be able to do more good once we got outside the hut than I could inside it. I had ideas for how we could improve the living conditions and hygiene standards of the villagers and halt the spread of the disease as well as provide relief to those who already suffered from it even if we could not cure them.

  But as for what to say to a grieving mother? Florenia clearly knew better than I did. I was glad and grateful for her help in this situation although I was horrified by the idea that her noble gesture in coming here could potentially result in her meeting the same fate as those poor children decomposing in the bed. The thought of the beautiful ex-vestal lying there like that was almost enough to shake my resolve to carry out the terms of the oracle’s prophecy and compel me to head straight for the temple of Thorvinius instead, consequences be damned.

  But more lives than mine now depended on going about this quest the right way. And countless lost lives depended on me alone to avenge them, for no one else remained on earth to do it. And what my gut told me was to have faith in Meline, even though when she delivered her prophecy with a hiccup, the blind oracle could not have had any conception of the kind of living hell that she was so casually sending us into.

  After a time Florenia returned to my side and said, “Millie wants us to go and visit the rest of the village now to see if there is anyone who can still be saved. I told her that we will return later to retrieve the children to give them the burial that they deserve, once we have made preparations for that under your guidance, Qaar’endoth.”

  “Yes. Yes. Better that than Ed should take them,” Millie mumbled. “I know he said I have to give them up the minute they passed…but I just couldn’t do that, and let him dispose of them that way, they are all I have left, and mine are special, I know mine would never harm me. Never.”

  “Ed?” I repeated. I was curious about this Ed, because if there was someone in the village insisting on prompt corpse disposal, then maybe he did have some kind of knowledge of hygiene and disease and could be a helpful ally to us. But before I could ask Millie any more questions, Florenia ushered me and Lizzy out of the hut that reeked of death and back into the winter air.

  The centaurs and the gnome were waiting for us anxiously.

  “Are you all right, Vander?” Ilandere asked me.

  “Are you, ah, quite sure that this is the village Meline was referring to, Master?” Willobee asked at the same time, as his hair-tufted ear twitched uncomfortably. “Because I am widely acknowledged as being the cleverest gnome of Clan Benniwumporgan, but even my prodigious noggin cannot produce an especially compelling rationale for us spending more minutes in a place like this than it takes to ride past forty huts, Master.”

  “Yes, I am all right, Ilandere,” I replied to the lovely centaur and smiled to reassure her. “And Willobee, didn’t you say you can’t get sick from human diseases?”

  “Of course I can’t,” the gnome scoffed. “But does that mean that I revel in the sensation of being enveloped in the clinging vapors of inexorable death and pervasive decay, with atmospheric undertones of cyclical near-starvation and hereditary fatalism, to a symphony of sorrowful wailing and ominous chanting?”

  “… Ominous chanting?” I repeated. Then I heard it too. I turned around to see a stream of villagers pouring from a relatively large blue-painted wooden building half a mile away that I assumed was a local temple of sorts. My first thought was relief that so many more than I had feared seemed to be alive. There were about two dozen in the procession alone, and I could only assume that some villagers, such as this Ed character, were engaged in other tasks such as tending to the s
ick and disposing of the dead.

  Then, as the procession approached, I began to get a weird feeling about it. The leader was a priest clad in vestments like a shabby discount version of Father Ludo’s, but all of his other followers were shirtless; even the women wore only rags like the one that Florenia had recently replaced for Ilandere. They were all shivering in the cold, and their half-nakedness was not at all an attractive sight. Most of the villagers were simply pale, but some of their skin tones were verging more toward the purplish-gray that I had seen on Millie’s deceased children, and I even spied pustules and those horrible black underarm lumps on a few of them, which made me horrified at the proximity of the group’s members to each other. These people were mostly gaunt and emaciated, many with soft pooches hanging over their waistbands while their spines protruded from their hunched-over, defeated backs. Their hair was stringy and unwashed, and their eyes looked like those of dead fish at market.

  They were chanting under their breath while hardly moving their lips. The words of the chant sounded something like, “Hakmut forgive us our sins, Hakmut witness our atonement, Hakmut be appeased by the blood of the wretches that grovel for your mercy and forgiveness.”

  “Hakmut?” Elodette inquired of me. “Is that a human god?”

  “Not one that I have ever heard of,” I replied. “Probably his power does not extend beyond this village.”

  And then it became apparent what the wretches meant by their “atonement” and their blood. The fully clothed priest drew a leather scourge tipped with metal from his robes, turned, and began to move down the line of his followers. He administered a forceful, resounding blow to the back of each one that he passed, young and old, man and woman, obviously sick and not-obviously sick alike.

  “I can’t bear to watch!” Ilandere exclaimed as she covered her angelic face with her dainty hands.

  “They are just foolish humans, Princess,” Elodette replied coldly.

  “Stop!” I yelled as I ran toward the procession. It was one thing to practice whatever rites you wanted to worship your temple’s particular god, and maybe Hakmut was into this sort of thing, but the main problem here as I saw it was that this priest was using the same scourge on all of them and thereby mingling diseased blood with potentially still-healthy blood. I knew from the temple infirmary that the nurses never, ever used their medical tools on two different people in a row without cleaning them in between.