by Dan Willis
“It’s getting bigger,” she said. “And that’s not the worst of it.”
“What else?”
She tugged her sleeve down, covering the blotch. “This is the arm that the spore woman scratched.”
A chill ran up Bradok’s spine, though he tried to keep his rising fear out of his masked expression.
“I don’t think we can make any connections yet,” Bradok said hesitantly. “She scratched Chisul on the face, and he’s-”
All of a sudden another memory came flooding back to him. When they bathed, he’d noticed a strange gray blotch on Chisul’s back.
“What?” Rose asked, her voice insistent, verging on panic.
“Nothing,” he lied. “Right now we need to stay calm.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for moment. “All right,” she said at last. “What should we do?”
“We should talk to Corin,” Bradok said. “He knew more than we do about those creatures, and he might be able to tell us what is happening to your arm. Yes, that’s what we should do. Talk to Corin.”
“Let’s go, then,” Rose said, taking a step back up the tunnel.
“Wait,” Bradok said, catching her shoulder. He nodded up the passage. “Most everyone’s asleep, but if those that are awake notice a lot of unusual activity, they’re going to know something’s up. I don’t want everyone to panic. Besides, this may be nothing.”
“Or maybe not,” she said, wringing her hands.
“In any case,” Bradok continued reassuringly, “let me go get Corin quietly and I’ll get him to meet with us back here.”
“All right,” Rose said. “I’ll wait here. Just don’t be long.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Bradok promised, handing Rose the glowing mushroom sac.
He hurried back up the tunnel, remembering to slow down and act normally only when he passed Perin and Xurces. The Daergar gave Bradok a smile and a nod that seemed out of character, but Bradok barely noticed. His eyes swept the room and finally located Corin, rolled in his cloak on the far side of the cavern. Bradok nudged the sleeping dwarf with his boot, and he sprang awake instantly.
“What?” he said before he was even fully alert.
“We’ve got to talk,” Bradok said.
Corin sat up wearily and motioned for Bradok to sit.
“Not here.”
“Is something wrong?” Corin asked, rising.
Bradok didn’t answer. He led Corin through the mass of sleeping dwarves, past the guards, and down the tunnel to where the tiny light still glowing indicated Rose’s position.
“What’s all this mystery about?” he asked when they reached Rose.
“What took you so long?” Rose asked at the same time.
Bradok gestured for Rose’s silence and turned to Corin. “You know something about those mushroom people,” he began. It was more of a statement than a question.
“Surely you’ve heard of the Rhizos?” Corin said grumpily.
When Rose and Bradok didn’t answer, he went on. “It’s caused by a fungal disease called the Zhome,” he explained. “You’ve really never heard of it or seen anything like those afflicted people?”
Bradok and Rose both shook their heads.
Corin leaned back against the cavern wall, his mouth open in astonishment.
“I never would have believed it,” he said. “It must only occur in the deep caves.”
“What is it, for Reorx’s sake?” Rose demanded, her voice almost shrill.
Corin shrugged. “It’s a disease my people get sometimes,” he said. “It’s rare in most cases, but there have been big outbreaks.”
“And the infected people become those things we fought?” Rose said nervously. “Rhizos?”
“No,” Corin said. “People infected with the disease get gray patches on their skin; eventually, mushrooms begin to sprout from their skin. What you fought were Rhizomorphs, dwarves who have been completely taken over by the fungus. They can still walk and even talk, but they have only two desires: to eat and to infect others with their spores.”
“So what about the Rhizos?” Bradok asked. “Are they curable?”
“There are many dwarves who live with the disease,” Corin said. “Eventually it will take them over, but it can take years, sometimes decades.”
“What’s the cure?” Bradok repeated.
“Sad to say, there isn’t one,” Corin answered, shaking his head. “Anyone infected down here is usually sent to a Zhome colony, often in a deep cave accessible only by an elevator.”
Rose gasped.
“What happens when they change into Rhizomorphs?” Bradok asked, his concern growing.
“The Rhizos usually don’t let it go that far,” Corin said. “Once one of their number starts showing the signs, they take him to a magma flow and throw him in.” A sick look flitted over Corin’s face, but it passed quickly. “Well, it has to be done, doesn’t it? That prevents the spores from spreading.”
Rose’s eyes were flashing with fear. “You seem to know a lot about this disease,” Rose said. “And you don’t sound very sympathetic.”
Corin nodded sadly. “Oh, I’m sympathetic. Maybe I’m just hardened by all my years of experience. My elder brother contracted the Zhome when I was just a boy,” he added. “My mother went to the visitors’ rock every week to see him and cheer him up.”
“How did he contract the disease?” Bradok asked. “I thought you said that all the spores were contained.”
“He didn’t get it from inhaling spores,” Corin said. “If you get the Zhome that way, you’d become a full blown Rhizomorph in a matter of hours.”
“How, then?” Rose demanded.
Corin shook his head. “No one knows. There were always a few cases a year, but none of them ever had any factors in common. The Zhome just seemed to strike without rhyme or reason.”
“What happened to your brother in the end?” Rose asked, her voice small.
“One week, my mother went to see him, but he wasn’t there. One of the others told her that he’d crossed over.” He sighed and slumped his shoulders, as if the memories carried a heavy weight with them. “My mother couldn’t handle the tragedy,” he said. “She went mad with grief. Father and I tried to keep her calm with various medicines, but finally she killed herself.”
Bradok put a comforting hand on Corin’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “I don’t think you’d better do that,” he said, taking a small step back. “At least until I know which of you isn’t feeling so well.”
Bradok cast a worried look at Rose, who involuntarily covered her bandaged arm.
“All right,” Corin said, stepping back into the light. “Let’s see.”
Rose hesitantly unwrapped her arm, and Corin took another step back. He looked at Bradok and nodded.
“It’s the Zhome all right,” he said with feeling.
“What can we do?” Bradok asked.
“Call Thurl,” Corin said with no trace of humor.
“What?” Rose and Bradok asked together.
“He knows ways to make death quick and painless,” Corin said. He pointed at Rose’s arm. “Death by the Zhome is neither, and to be honest, her Zhome might pose a danger to the rest of us.”
“So it’s contagious?” Rose gasped, looking at Bradok with terrified eyes.
“That’s just it,” Corin said. “I keep telling you. No one knows how the Zhome is spread.” He nodded at the bandage in Rose’s left hand. “By exposing it to us here, you might have doomed us as well.”
“I didn’t know,” Rose said, sounding defeated. “I only discovered this, uh, sore, when I was bathing recently.”
“With the women!” Corin gasped. “All the women could be infected.”
“Stop!” Bradok said. “This is pointless. You’re just scaring her. We don’t know how many women are infected or how dangerous this disease is, really.” He addressed Rose directly, feeling he had to say something to comfort her. “Much of what Corin
has said is hearsay.”
Corin snorted, though he looked at Rose sympathetically.
“Wrap that back up for now,” Bradok said to Rose.
“We can’t let her back with the rest,” Corin said in a low voice.
“She voted to let you come with us,” Bradok retorted. “Besides, we have to. If the rest get a whiff of what you suspect, we’ll have a genuine panic on our hands. Even more people will die. Whoever has the disease now, has it.”
He looked from Corin to Rose until they both nodded.
“I propose we let Tal take a look at it,” Bradok continued. “There may be a reason why our people don’t normally get this disease. Maybe we carry a special immunity sometimes, or maybe Tal has some medicine that will treat it.”
Corin shrugged and Rose looked hopeful.
“It’s worth a shot,” Bradok said at last.
Ten minutes later Tal was peering through a bit of magnifying glass at the strange, gray patch on Rose’s arm.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he declared, looking up from the glass. “I’ve never even heard of anything like it.”
“Believe me, Doctor,” Corin said. “I know what it is, and it’s all too real.”
Tal took out a small needle and poked the gray skin.
“Did you feel that?” Tal asked.
Her face pale, Rose shook her head.
“I wonder,” her brother said, digging around in his pack for a moment. He emerged with a small, short bladed knife.
“What are you going to do with that?” Rose asked.
“Trust me, Sister,” he said then slid the sharp edge of the knife over the top of the infected area. He reached down with a curved metal prong and pulled open the skin, revealing a shallow cut. The flesh seemed rubbery, like a stiff pudding, with strange yellow veins running through it. Tal poked and prodded the exposed flesh with the point of the knife.
“You can’t feel any of that?” he said.
“No,” Rose answered dispiritedly.
Tal ran his knife along the cut again, slicing deeper.
“Ow,” Rose said, flinching as blood blossomed and began to seep up through the wound.
Tal released Rose’s arm and leaned back against the passage wall for a moment, his face screwed up in thought.
“It looks like the disease is transforming her skin,” he said. “Taking it over. ‘Occupying’ is what doctors sometimes say.”
Corin nodded. “What’d I tell you? Eventually she’ll start growing mushrooms. That’ll be the beginning of the end.”
Tal shot the Daergar a dark look. “Well,” Tal said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “The affected area’s not too big or too deep. Why can’t I just try to cut it out?”
“Does that work?” Bradok asked Corin, who just shrugged.
“I don’t know about cutting. My people believe the Zhome is an infallible death sentence. I’m sure they tried all sorts of things in the beginning, cutting, purifying, even praying. Nowadays they just send infected people to the colony.”
Rose stuck out her arm. “Cut it,” she commanded.
“There’s likely to be a fair amount of pain and blood,” Tal said, hesitating. “Not to mention scarring. If what Corin says is true, I’ll have to cut as deep as possible, past the affected tissue.”
“So get started,” she said again, sounding as though she had been injected with hope.
Tal exchanged looks with Bradok, who pursed his lips, frowning. “It’s worth trying,” Bradok said finally.
Tal dug into his bag and pulled out a silver flask. He gently pulled out the cork. Bradok could smell the potent dwarf spirits from where he stood. The smell caught Corin’s attention too. Neither had known that Tal was carrying any liquor.
“Take a swig of this,” Tal said, passing it to Rose. “Only one swallow, mind you. I don’t want you acting like a schoolgirl all of a sudden and running naked through the cave later.”
Rose blushed redder than her hair.
“That only happened once,” she said, half to her brother, half to Bradok, before her face cleared and she pushed the flask away. “I don’t need anything to bolster my courage.”
“You’re going to need something for the pain,” Tal insisted.
Rose shook her head. “If I cry out, even once, it’ll bring everyone in the cavern running,” she said. “Better that I keep my wits about me.”
Tal’s face clouded. “I tell you, this is not going to be pleasant,” he warned.
“We’ve been down here so long,” Rose said with the hint of a wink, “that I don’t even remember what ‘pleasant’ is.”
“I need more light,” Tal said to Bradok and Corin. “Get one of the lanterns from the cave without alarming the others.”
“I’ll fetch it,” Corin said. “Xurces won’t ask any questions.”
“You’ll have to hold her,” Tal said to Bradok. “It’ll be a shock, no matter how tough she is, and she must keep still while I work.”
Bradok nodded. He hated to admit it, but the idea of putting his arms around Rose, of holding her closely while she underwent her ordeal, was the only good thing about the whole mess.
“Sit there,” Tal said, indicating a smooth part of the cave wall.
Bradok did as he was told, sitting on the ground with his legs apart. Rose sat right in front of him and leaned back against his chest, her right arm extended, resting on Tal’s bag.
“Put your arm around her,” Tal said. “Hold her tight.”
Bradok put his right arm over Rose’s shoulder, draping it down so she could grip it with her left hand. His left arm he slipped around her waist. Her hair still smelled vaguely of sweet soap, and Bradok felt acutely aware of the bottoms of her breasts brushing against his arm as it encircled her waist.
A light came bobbing along the passage as, a moment later, Corin returned with a lantern.
“Here,” he said, holding out a stick wrapped in leather to Rose. “It’s to bite on. Might help you a little.”
Rose nodded then opened her mouth and accepted the stick.
“You’ll have to hold the light over here so I can see,” Tal told Corin. “I hope the sight of blood doesn’t bother you.”
“Only when it’s mine,” Corin said with a hint of a smile.
“All right,” Tal said as he pulled out a disconcerting number of knives and tools and laid them down in an organized row. “I’m going to do this as fast as I can. If it gets to be too much, Rose, just spit out the stick and that’ll be my cue. I’ll stop.”
“Yust oo id,” she said around the stick in her mouth.
As Tal picked up a sharp, thin-bladed knife, Bradok felt Rose’s hand clamp down on his forearm. He tightened his grip on her arm and her waist as Tal began to saw away at the strange blotch.
The first cuts were shallow, allowing Tal to scoop out some of the gray skin. He quickly cleared the area, leaving only a few spots where his knife had plunged deep enough to draw blood. The next cut, however, caused Rose to grunt with effort, and Bradok felt her nails digging hard into his arm.
Tal chopped away a chunk of bloody flesh, throwing it down on the sand. Corin looked away, edging back, but Tal waved him forward again because of the light. Tal used a towel to dab the blood away before cutting again. Rose bucked hard, straining against Bradok, and chomped down on the stick, which muffled her cries of pain. But her arm stayed in place. Bradok could see the muscles in her arm tightening and jerking as she forced herself to hold her arm steady under her brother’s cutting, probing knife.
“All right,” Tal said after what seemed to Bradok like an hour of butchery, though it was only ten or twenty minutes. “I think I got it all. One root went very deep, but I got that out.”
He laid aside his tools and began packing the wound with cheesecloth, finishing by wrapping it tightly several times.
Rose had long since stopped straining and jerking. She was panting and drenched with sweat. She spat out the stick but couldn’t talk at firs
t. She gazed up into Bradok’s eyes. He thought he detected something in the look she gave him then. More than simple gratitude for help well rendered, he imagined her look said that she’d have risked such pain only if he were the one to hold her. In another moment, though, she had fallen asleep, slumping down to the cave floor in exhaustion.
“What should we do with this?” Corin said, indicating the bloody pile of flesh with disgust.
“Bury it,” Tal said, “or it will stink and attract predators. Needless to say, have as little contact with it as possible.”
Tal shook Rose gently. “Can you stand?” he asked.
Dazed and wobbly, Rose stood up. Tal helped her steady herself.
“You two clean this up,” Tal said to Bradok and Corin, wiping off his knives and putting them away. “I’ll take Rose back to the cavern and give her a medicine to help her sleep comfortably.”
With that, Tal shouldered his bag, took Rose by the hand, and slowly led her away.
Corin went to get the privy shovel while Bradok got to his feet and dusted himself off. His shirtfront was soaked with Rose’s sweat, and her scent was all over his body.
It didn’t take long to dispose of the bloody flesh once Corin returned with the shovel. They didn’t talk much as they worked, for both were anxious to get past the unpleasant job.
“I’ve been wondering something,” Bradok said as they finished up, piling sand on top of the hole they’d made.
“What’s that?”
“If your people kept all the Rhizos in a sealed cave, then where did our four playmates come from?” Bradok asked.
“What playmates?” Corin asked.
“The four Rhizomorphs we fought,” Bradok said. “Where did they come from?”
Corin stopped, his shovel frozen in mid action.
“By the Abyss,” he said finally, swearing in a low voice. “The caves,” he stammered. “The Zhome colony must have been broken open by the earthquake, just like the prison.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” Bradok said grimly. “It means that, if those four Rhizomorphs were down here, running around looking for hapless victims, so are all the rest of ‘em.”