The Wrack

by John Bierce

  The empty seat next to Carlan’s at the foot of the table, however, was disquieting in a whole different way. The Moonsworn representative should have long since been here. Carlan, in all his years as the king’s chief seer, had never seen the Moonsworn miss a meeting on medical matters. He’d summoned all the most prestigious medical experts in the city, all to advise on the matter of the mysterious illness that had felled Arnulf. The Moonsworn had been the first ones he’d invited.

  The Moonsworn were, unquestionably, the foremost medical experts in the world— if they hadn’t been, there would have been no chance that they would be allowed free reign of Lothain and the rest of Teringia, given the centuries-old conflict the Eidola had with the Moonsworn’s sister religion, the Sunsworn.

  “We’re sure it’s truly contagion?” one of the alchemists asked. “Healer Benen reported it as poison initially.”

  “What could poison that many people?” a seer asked, polishing his peridot eye.

  “Foul vapours?” another seer asked.

  Several people shot nervous glances at the empty Moonsworn seat at that. The Moonsworn had declared miasmic disease nonsense over a century ago, but ten years ago, an entire village in southern Galicanta had died, choking on foul vapours rising from a nearby lake. The Moonsworn had been largely silent on the matter, but it was common knowledge that there had been quite a bit of strife and debate inside the insular Moonsworn community after that. The Moonsworn had claimed they’d merely been volcanic gases.

  Whatever they said publicly, it had been widely noticed that they’d not put much pressure on anyone discussing miasmic theory since then.

  Carlan frowned, and got out of his chair, ignoring the creaking of his old bones.

  “Vapours rolling downhill?” someone asked. Carlan didn’t bother to look, instead heading for the window.

  “It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it?” someone else replied. “That foul vapours would leak from the Maze of Mist?”

  The door thudded open, and brisk footsteps entered the room.

  “It’s not,” a familiar voice said, “a foul vapour.”

  Carlan sighed with relief internally, but he didn’t turn around just yet. He stared out over the city, where all Lothain’s pennants and banners had been replaced with mourning grey. The normally crowded, bustling evening streets seemed subdued, almost empty.

  Arnulf had been reasonably well-loved by his people, but the rumors of plague likely had more to do with that.

  “If it had been a foul vapuor,” the familiar voice continued, “one would think it would have affected people more evenly.”

  “But Benen did say its presence increased over time in the body,” another voice said. “That would make sense if he were breathing it in.”

  “Then explain,” the familiar voice continued, “how, exactly, it was that Benen didn’t find traces of the poison or contagion in the bodies of everyone else? There would be no escaping foul vapours for anyone in the pass.”

  Carlan rolled his eyes, then turned around.

  “You’re late, Yusef,” he said.

  Yusef on-Samn, the Lothain Moonsworn community’s chief representative, frowned at that. “I was unavoidably delayed by internal Moonsworn affairs,” the portly, bearded man said. He was darker-skinned than anyone else in the room by far, and he immediately stood out for it.

  Carlan snorted at that.

  “Forty years now we’ve known each other, Yusef,” Carlan said, “and this is the first time you’ve ever been late to anything.”

  “Thirty-eight years,” Yusef said, “and it’s the second time. Fourteen years ago I…”

  “Yusef…” Carlan said, warningly.

  Yusef tapped his fingers, looking away from Carlan.

  “It’s the Ban,” he finally admitted.

  “Again, Yusef?” Carlan asked.

  Yusef turned his gaze back on Carlan, frowning. “How many lives could have been saved if even a single Moonsworn had been there? You continually treat us as though we’re spies, despite the sacred demands of our Goddess. She demands, above all else, that we care for others and not engage in the petty wars of man.”

  “Yet no man is perfect,” Carlan said, the old arguments marshalling themselves once more. This argument popped up at least once a season, and never got anywhere. “The Ban has stood for generations, and…”

  “Are my Sunsworn brethren likely to invade Lothain through the Mist Maze?” Yusef interrupted. “Do they have armies besieging Castle Morinth that have somehow skipped over the entirety of not only Lothain but Galicanta as well?”

  Carlan blinked at that. Yusef interrupting him was hardly more common than Yusef being late.

  “It’s not just about Castle Morinth, Yusef,” he said. “It’s not just about the Moonsworn, either. It’s as much about the rest of Teringia— there’s not a ruler south of the Krannenbergs that doesn’t hold to the Ban. If we were to lift it, they might take that as…”

  “It is just about Castle Morinth,” Yusef said. “There are people there suffering at this very moment, and there is a plague that risks spreading from there. I’m not demanding a lift of the Ban, merely a temporary exemption. Castle Morinth holds no strategic value against or to the Sunsworn, and sending in Moonsworn now could save lives.”

  “I…” Carlan stopped. “Give me a moment.”

  He turned back to the window, ignoring the murmuring voices behind him. Several people starting talking to Yusef at once, but Carlan left Yusef on his own to deal with the vultures.

  Carlan stared pensively back out over the stone city.

  Lothain had once been a city built largely of wood and clay. Located far out in the plains, there were no good quarries for half a hundred leagues. Two centuries ago, a great drought had struck Lothain, and the parched city had burnt to ash that summer. Oltaeg II, an otherwise largely undistinguished ruler, had ordered it rebuilt entirely of stone. Most of the varied types of stone were quarried in various locations in the Krannenbergs, and ferried down the Winterbranch River, which flowed out of the Mist Maze, down the pass Castle Morinth guarded, across the plains, and straight through the center of the capital. A half dozen small limestone quarries on the plain contributed as well, leaving the city a hodgepodge of different shades of stone.

  Relations between the Teringian kingdoms and the Sunsworn had been better then, and the Moonsworn had been instrumental in redesigning the great city. A great sewer network had been built beneath the city, leading away from the Winterbranch, to artificial marshes a league away from the city and the river. Great settling ponds had been created to clean the muddy waters of the river so that the citizens might drink safely.

  For all the thousands that had died in Lothain’s Great Fire, Carlan couldn’t help but wonder how many more lives had been saved from filth and disease after the city had been rebuilt. According to the Moonsworn, Lothain had fewer deaths from disease than any of the other Teringian great cities.

  Though the Moonsworn never called them great cities. Lothain was one of the largest on Teringia, at half a million. Only the Galicantan capital Ladreis had more, yet even it was dwarfed by some of the cities on Oyansur— There were at least a dozen cities with twice Lothain’s population or more on the southern continent. If a plague got loose here…

  Carlan sighed before his thoughts could lead him down any other rambling tangents. He turned to face Yusef again.

  “I can’t simply grant an exemption without the king’s permission,” Carlan said, interrupting the conversation behind him. “I’ll need to speak to him first.”

  Yusef simply nodded, then turned to face the others at the table.

  It would hardly be easy to persuade the king, but, as shaken as he was from his son’s death, he doubted Sigis would care much what he did. Carlan sighed, straightened his robes, ran his fingers through his beard, then set out to speak to a king in mourning.

  Yusef strode through the torchlit streets of Lothain, already planning out the logis
tics of the mission to Castle Morinth, tallying out supplies, budgets, and timelines in his head.

  He made a mental note to write it all down later. The other Elders hated it when he kept everything in his head and didn’t produce records.

  King Sigis hadn’t actually confirmed the order, but Yusef had faith in Carlan. His friend was slow to change his mind, but when Carlan did, he’d throw his entire weight behind his decision. Yusef wanted the Moonsworn to be able to set out immediately when given permission.

  As he strode down the cobbles, most of the laborers and lesser merchants and craftsmen nodded cheerfully to him, or at least bowed. The Moonsworn only ever charged what the patient could afford, and they offered healing free of charge when needed.

  The nobles and wealthier merchants he passed, however, tended to eye him more suspiciously. Many of them would even refuse Moonsworn healing, afraid they might be Sunsworn in disguise, or some such nonsense.

  There weren’t many Moonsworn in the city of Lothain— just a community of a couple thousand or so. Only about one in five were healers— there was no shame in being a clerk or baker, if you did not feel the call to healing. So long, at least, as you kept the faith, lived by the sacred tenets, and kept to the rituals. Converts almost always became healers, but those born into the faith were much more diverse in their interests and professions. And of those one in five, a great many spent their time wandering about the plains, tending to villages.

  Yusef waved greeting to a butcher he knew, whose daughter he’d once nursed through a childhood brush with mudpox. She was happily married now, and had children of her own.

  Decades ago, when Yusef had first moved to Lothain, he would have crossed the street to avoid a butcher of furred animals. He’d thought the Lothaini to be barbarians, benighted and accursed folk to be pitied.

  He still thought them barbarians, but he’d grown to love them for it. They were a straightforward, enthusiastic people, forward in their affection and their feuds. It was, to say the least, a refreshing change from the scheming, politics, and backstabbing of the Holy Cities— Sun or Moonsworn. He couldn’t say he’d ever want to go back there.

  Not that it would be wise of him to return to the Holy Cities. A memory as sharp as his… well, it had proven more a liability than a strength there, for some things were safer to forget.

  It had taken a few years, but he’d started to adapt, even to thrive. He’d even managed to find a perverse sort of enjoyment out of Lothain’s brutal winters— at least, out of staying indoors by the fire during them.

  Yusef crossed one of the seven bridges across the muddy Winterbranch, pensively eying the sparse crowd. He would normally have loved the bridges to be this empty and uncongested. He hated having to hire a ferryman. Yusef was not cut out for traveling over even the gentlest currents. He’d much rather get jostled and shoved trying to cross one of the narrow bridges.

  Tonight, though, everyone was hiding in their homes, mourning Prince Arnulf and fearing plague.

  The old healer took a moment to watch the river, absently rubbing his eyepatch. He had only a simple glass sphere in there at the moment, to keep the socket open. As some seers aged, looking into the Sea of the Goddesses— what the Eidola of Teringia called the spirit realm— could begin to induce headaches. Glass on its own couldn’t grant one vision into the Sea, removing easy temptation.

  Carlan, of course, could still look into the Sea just fine, something he’d teased Yusef about on many occasions.

  Crossing into the Moonsworn neighborhood was like entering another city entirely. Grey banners still hung about the streets, in mourning for Arnulf, and the mood was a little duller than it might have been, but it wasn’t the oppressive quiet of the rest of the city. Arnulf hadn’t been well known among the Moonsworn, and their greater numbers of healers, seers, and scholars were there to keep the people from panicking.

  The differences went beyond mere mood, however. The cobbles were clean-swept, and the gutters and drains were kept clear of debris. There were more and larger windows, with tightly built shutters. A few of the wealthier Moonsworn healers and traders even had glass windows on their upper stories, though none were so rich as to put them on the ground floor and risk them being broken by playing children or opportunistic thieves— sturdy shutters were much safer.

  Dogs and cats roamed the streets in far greater numbers than the rest of the city. All were well cared for by the community, and they often had two or three homes they’d wander between.

  Most of the passersby nodded to him, a few even stopping to chat with him— though he made those conversations brief. His role as palace liaison and his position on the neighborhood’s council of elders made him an important community member.

  He’d certainly prefer to think it was because he was well-liked, but he knew most people saw him as rather stuffy and precise. Still, he could live with simply not being disliked.

  His wife, Emala, was in the entry parlor when he arrived at home, tending to the household shrine. He kissed her on the cheek after he removed his boots, then climbed the stairs. He could hear the grandchildren arguing somewhere on the ground floor, likely displeased at having been ordered inside for the evening. He edged past two of his sons-in-law gossiping in the second-floor hall, then climbed to the third floor.

  He strode all the way to the end of the hall, to the office he shared with his eldest daughter Nalda. She’d never married, having devoted herself to healing. Yusef suspected that she just didn’t want to marry, considering that two of his other five daughters had also become healers, yet still had families of their own.

  Both of them— and several of Yusef’s largely forgettable sons-in-law— worked out of the home, making house-calls or working in one of the Moonsworn clinics around the city. Nalda, however, worked as his assistant. She’d done plenty of work in the city as well, but Yusef was grooming her to take his place in the community some day.

  “Carlan said yes,” Yusef said, not bothering with small talk.

  “Did he say yes, or did he say that he was going to speak to the king about it?” Nalda asked dryly, not looking up from the ledger she was writing in.

  “He said he was going to speak to the king, but that’s the same thing as saying yes,” Yusef said, rummaging in the cabinet between their desks.

  “The king does have opinions of his own,” Nalda said. “He might still reject the petition.”

  “Here we are,” Yusef said, pulling a bottle of pear brandy out of the cabinet. “A celebratory glass is in order.”

  Nalda raised her eyebrow, but didn’t protest when he poured her a glass as well.

  “So who will lead the mission, then?” she asked.

  “Who do you think?” Yusef said, sipping his brandy. It was a little on the harsh side, which was how he preferred it.

  “Father, you’re far too old to go haring off into the mountains to investigate a mysterious new illness,” Nalda said.

  “Too fat and lazy, too,” Yusef said. “You’ll be leading the mission.”

  Nalda started coughing at that, a bit of brandy apparently having gone down the wrong tube.

  “You’ll be up late tonight planning the logistics of the trip,” Yusef said. “Supply estimates will have to be made for a whole range of possible missions— I’d like to send at least twenty healers, but the king might not be comfortable with that many. Plan for everything from the full twenty down to just yourself. I’ll be double-checking your calculations.”

  He could have just given her his calculations, but he wanted her to be able to do his job someday.

  His daughter finally caught her breath, then glared at him.

  “You can’t just put me in charge of the mission,” she said. “There are far more qualified and experienced healers out there than me, and the council won’t tolerate you abusing your position like this.”

  “I already cleared it with them,” Yusef said. “There are more experienced healers— healers who have saved more patients, better
chirurgeons, more perceptive seers, and more knowledgeable herbalists. At almost any single thing, you can find someone better than you. Not many, though. You rank near the top of all the healers in skill at nearly everything. You’re one of the best-rounded healers in Lothain, and there’s not a one of the Vowless that compares to you.”

  Nalda still looked skeptical.

  “Not to mention,” Yusef continued, “you’re one of the few healers that both the Patient and the Dedicated still respect.”

  Nalda rolled her eyes at that, but seemed to relax a bit. The feuding between the two factions had grown steadily over the last few decades, with the Dedicated pushing for changes to doctrine more and more rapidly, and the Patient resisting the speed of those changes. It wasn’t that the latter were opposed to change for its own sake— the core of the goddesses’ teaching was that their children must come to learn and understand the world on their own. It was, instead, the Patient belief that the Moonsworn must be cautious when trying new techniques, for lives were at stake. It wasn’t that the Dedicated were incautious or didn’t care for the safety of their patients— though the Patient definitely accused them of such on a regular basis— it was that the sheer speed at which the Dedicated had been producing new treatments, ideas, and diagnoses was coming at a dangerously swift pace over the last few decades, as though the Moon herself had begun delivering them to the Dedicated in the holy city through dreams. Adapting to so many changes so quickly was challenging at best, and it was seldom at its best.

  Yusef and Nalda had been two of the few to stay neutral between the factions in Lothain. Relations had been growing steadily more acrimonious, but there hadn’t been any brawls or outright riots between the factions, like there had been in other cities.