Dog Star Rising

by J. August

  *

  I HADN'T seen my cousin die. I'd only heard about it from my aunt, when it was all too late. I'd been glad to be asked to sit up with Ricbert's boy - in fact, I'd angled for the invitation. I'd never seen a man dying of the white pestilence, only those already dead. This was my chance to find out whether there really was a white ghost or if it was only poison after all.

  I was making my way to Ricbert's big house in the middle of the village when I saw Alric's girl coming out. I hurried to meet her. "Evening," I said and gave her my most winning smile. "Is Alric in there?"

  "Yes," she said and would have walked right past without another word if I hadn't moved to cut her off.

  She didn't look too pleased. I held my arms out so that she couldn't slip away. "You know," I said, "you shouldn't trust everyone you meet. Even if they seem harmless, they might not be. Alric, say. How much do you know about him?"

  Ann frowned up at me. "Alric is good man," she said. "I know that."

  "So you said before. But do you really know it?"

  I could see she was confused. I decided to leave it there. Let her puzzle out what I meant by herself. I leaned against a doorpost and gave her another winning smile. "Has anyone ever told you, Ann," I said, "that you're ravishingly beautiful?"

  Her pale brows drew together. "No," she said. "What is 'ravishingly'?"

  I was about to tell her it meant she was strikingly pretty and I was smitten to the core, but before I could say anything, the girl went on in her curt Alban, "Already I know 'ravish'. So a 'ravishing beauty' - it ravishes you? Or - is a beauty to be ravished?"

  She spoke rather like someone turning over an intellectual curiosity. I began to regret the gallantry. But at least Ann wasn't trying to walk off. "Uh, well. I guess the former -"

  "Oh. You are ravished by beauty? Is odd."

  She was looking at me critically with those big cornflower-blue eyes. If there had been a haystack anywhere nearby, I'd have suggested a tumble there and then, even though Ricbert's boy was on his deathbed. "Well," I said, drowning and striking out for safer ground, "I suppose the former leads, uh, into the latter, since one's ravished senses are overcome by such beauty that one can't help, uh, wanting to ravish it..."

  My cousin used to talk like that. He'd been educated by the temple priests, because my aunt's sister had gone to serve the White Lord and they were still close. I remembered mocking his pretensions and my aunt's grey face after he'd gone into the ground.

  "Oh," said Ann again, even more curtly. "Ravishing, so to be ravished. Is very odd."

  She pushed my arm out of the way and stalked off towards the woods.

  That left me standing on the threshold and thinking uncomfortably that the conversation could have gone better. She hadn't been smiling. I should just have said I'd meant she was bewitching, I thought, and almost went after her there and then. I might have done, only a door opened deeper in the house and there was Ricbert, looking very drawn, so I followed him into the rush-strewn room where his son lay dying.

  It was dark and airless. The shutters were shut and there was incense on the fire; I could smell it on the smoke drifting lazily among the shadows. A heap of blankets had been piled up on the bed. Only the young man's head was visible: white on the pillows, his eyes staring glazed into the rafters, unseeing. His bloodless lips were parted and he drew painfully shallow breaths beneath his blanket mound.

  Alric was sitting by the bed. He nodded wearily as Ricbert ushered me in. "Evening, pilgrim," he said. "Have a stool."

  There was one next to him against the wall. I sat down, trying to forget Alric's girl, and composed myself to an expression of pious solemnity until Ricbert went out. It wasn't hard, given the young man dying in the bed. For a while, neither of us spoke.

  At last I said to Alric, "I was in Alba when people first started falling sick of the white pestilence. So were you, right?"

  "I thought you were going to Alba."

  "I'm going back to Alba. I went to sacrifice to the gods below at the sanctuary at Cynn's Rede. My aunt sent me. See, her son died of it. The white pestilence."

  He didn't say anything. His eyes stayed put on Ricbert's poor boy.

  "Some people said the wells had been poisoned," I went on. "There was a riot. A couple of people died, a couple of houses burned down. You'd left already, though. And no one else fell ill - in Alba."

  I saw him shift on his stool. "Glad to hear it," he said. "I did what I could."

  "Yeah," I said. "Not a lot, for my cousin. I guess the Dog Star was breathing on him."

  "Sometimes there's not a lot can be done," said Alric, so quietly I could only just make out what he was saying. "I'm sorry about your cousin."

  "I was sorry too."

  I said it flatly. I hadn't meant to warn him, but I guess that's what it was. He licked his lips and looked away. After a moment, both of us turned back to the young man in the bed. It was obvious he was dying.

  "You like your prayer-tablets," I said to Alric, keeping my gaze on that poor pale face. My cousin had died just like this: slowly. The whites of those glazed eyes had dried to yellow. "Do you make curse-tablets too?"

  I heard his breath hiss in. "That's witchcraft."

  "Yeah," I said. "I know."

  "No," he said. "I don't make curse-tablets. I'm not a witch."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him sweating. I'd said too much. He knew I was onto him now. I guessed he'd be out of town before dawn, if I let him. And then what? I'd have to start the hunt again and Alric knew how to disappear among the country folk in all these little villages. I'd already spent half a year looking for him.

  I watched Alric, but he didn't go anywhere. Even when he did move, it was only to dab at the dying boy's forehead with a damp cloth. The incense on the fire was putting me to sleep. I leaned back against the wall and let my eyelids fall, as though I wasn't keeping an eye on everything the herbman did.

  I might have dozed off. I don't recall.

  At some point I opened my eyes and saw Alric standing by the hearth, his wrinkled parchment skin hanging loose on his old bones. He threw a handful of incense onto the smouldering coals. I thought I saw his lips move.

  A hint of grey gleamed between the shutters now. It cast a pale spot of light on the blankets that rose and fell with every shallow breath taken by Ricbert's boy. Maybe it was the incense that made the dark drowsy room seem to waver. I was rubbing the tiredness out of my gummy eyes and biting back a yawn when I saw the light brightening over the dying boy's bed.

  There it was, before I even realised what I was seeing. A white hand floated, disembodied, in the smoky air above Ricbert's boy. I froze on my stool, my eyes flicking to the herbman by the hearth. He was as still as me, staring at the ghostly hand.

  I could see its glassy fingernails and the creases of the knuckles. A man's hand, I thought. It touched the boy's waxy forehead once, gently, and vanished.

  The boy went still. He was dead.

  I stared at the dead boy. Then I stared at Alric. "It's true." I didn't really know what I was saying, but I knew this much. "You're a witch."

  He stared back at me. "No," he said. "It wasn't me -"

  "That was witchcraft. That was a ghost. They said there was a white ghost. In Alba, they saw it. Other places too. Why'd you do it?"

  "I didn't -"

  "Don't give me that!"

  I was angry now. Ricbert's boy was dead and my cousin was dead and so many other people were dead who shouldn't be, all because of old Alric the herbman. I came off my stool so fast it slammed back against the wall. "You did it," I said, and I was glad when he shrank back against the mantelpiece over the hearth.

  The door swung open. Ricbert had come to see what was going on. He saw his son's body cooling in the bed and let out a cry that must have woken up the rest of the house. I saw his face twist into grief and I was sorry for him and glad as well, in a dark way, because I knew he'd believe everything I said. "It was Alric," I told him flatly. "All Al
ric."

  Alric uttered a protest. "There was never any sickness," I said, raising my voice. Another of Ricbert's sons had appeared in the corridor. "He's a poisoner and a witch. I've been hunting him since the winter. There was a ghost!"

  And then everything came out: my cousin and all those other deaths, the white pestilence that went wherever Alric went and nowhere else, the ghostly hand that snuffed out Ricbert's boy. How I'd walked from Alba to Cynn's Rede and then gone looking for the herbman who'd killed my cousin. The room was getting crowded now. I told them all of it and they believed me. I could see the horror growing in their faces. Alric saw it too. He burst out, "It's not true! It's not -"

  Ricbert backhanded the old man and sent him staggering. "You keep your bloody mouth shut," he said harshly. He was looking at his dead son. "Witch."

  Alric must have known he wasn't getting out of there alive. He stood there swaying for a moment, then tried to push through to the door. I could have told him it was a bad move. Ricbert uttered an inarticulate yell of grief and rage and caught Alric by the throat. "I'll see you hang!" he said. He was red in the face and his eyes were wet. "You killed my Egric! Admit it, you bastard witch!"

  "I never -"

  Ricbert shoved the old man into the crowded corridor and his youngest son's brawny arms. "Get the village up and get this witch to the gallows," he spat. "We'll have a hanging before sunup!"