The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 15: The Yellow Death, Part 2

 Many doors pierced the gallery that surrounded them, but as Carala and Casimir shone their lights on them, most proved to be barricaded or completely choked with rubble. Peeking past the barricades revealed passages that had mostly collapsed. The only easy exit was directly across from the way they had come, up a broad flight of steps similar to those which led from the Old Godsway to Ammas's temple portico, though these were far dustier . . . and scattered with old, yellowed bones. 

Ammas kicked a partial ribcage out of his way, his mouth pulling into a disgusted grimace. Vos muttered to Barthim, "I may not be a warlord, but I know there's something wrong here. Why would the soldiers stationed here have blocked off their own quarters?"

"They didn't," Ammas said shortly, but did not elaborate as he led them from the plaza.

In a fortress above the ground, what lay ahead of them would have been a road from one structure to another, likely with some sort of cultivated landscape around it. Instead all they saw here were natural stone walls, smoothed here and there so they could be fitted with long-dead lanterns. Occasional archways and carved portals could be seen in the towering wall, but all were blocked off. 

On their left was a masonry wall, three stories of galleries marching alongside them into the darkness. The music scraped and whined louder in Carala's ears. Under the kerchief her mouth was twisted into a grimace, and her fingers kept wandering to the hilt of her dagger. The acoustics down here were impossible to determine, so even with her wolfish ears Carala could not quite puzzle out where the music was drifting from. But it was undoubtedly drawing closer with every step they took.

The road, or corridor, stretched for hundreds of feet before ending in a monumental archway. Ammas's eyes narrowed as they approached it. His vision was not quite as sharp as Vos's, and at the moment he had the constant distraction of the whispering doorways to draw his attention away from what lay immediately before them. But even from a far distance he could see this grand portal was almost entirely occluded with rocks, mounds of dirt, and broken furniture. To their left, under the second story gallery, a rotted door hung half open. A mold-crusted sign dangled from an iron bar beside it, depicting a roast and a tankard. Apparently this had been the old fortress's tavern, perhaps one of several.

Behind them, there echoed the sound of something sharp scraping on stone.

They all jumped, and Vos glared into the shadows they had left behind. "We are being corralled," he hissed, gripping his sword in both hands.

"We should go back," Denisius said, his heart pounding. He brandished his torch in one hand, his other gripping his blade so tightly the tip quivered in time with his pulse. "Go all the way back and block off those gods-damned doors. There has to be another way."

The scraping sound abruptly stopped. As soon as it did, a massive, crashing report reverberated down the corridor, its echoes thrumming and trembling along the walls for what felt like entire minutes. "I am thinking there is no going back, good Lord Marhollow," Barthim murmured.

"Stay close to me," Ammas said in a carrying voice. The doors creaked, the shapes huddling closer to their jambs and lintels. This was a natural place for them, perhaps not so different from whatever strange regions they inhabited on the other side of the Ravens' Veil. 

They passed single file through the tavern door, Casimir staying so close to Ammas he could touch the cursewright's trailing black robes. The dancing light in the silver cage burst into a fresh brightness, illuminating a vast room very like an above-ground tavern's hearth room.

"The music's stopped," Carala whispered. None of them noticed, save perhaps Ammas. They were all too absorbed with the sight before them.

Dozens of skeletons lay sprawled on the dusty floor. They were not bare bones -- military uniforms, shrunken with no flesh to give them shape and blackened with whatever had rotted away beneath them, clung to these victims of the plague. As befitted its name, the bones were all a uniform poisonous yellow. That yellow was not the healthy color of sunflower petals or a pretty Lioness girl's summer dress, but the loathsome ochre of jaundice, of disease, of sickness, of noisome infected fluids spilled from a broken blister or vomited from a wrenching stomach. Strange powdery clusters of some unknown substance clung to the visible parts of the bodies, to the fingerbones and the grinning jaws. Here and there could be seen a victim with neither stockings nor boots, clawlike toes pointed up, knitted to the rest of the foot by that somehow unnerving powder.

The skeletons were bad enough, but what had so caught the eye of each of them stood at the far end of this hearth-turned-tomb, on a raised platform that might have served as a stage in the tavern's heyday. A group of skeletal minstrels reclined in rotted wooden chairs, perhaps laying right where they had died from the Yellow Death, cutting down this entire tavern of soldiers in mid-revel. Their dress was not the drab, faded hues of the Munazyri military, but rather sumptuous silks and linens, once brightly colored jackets and breeches and hats faded to ugly blacks and browns with mold and rot and tomb-dust. In yellowed bony hands they still clutched their instruments: viol and drum and mandolin, with a fourth skeleton slumped over a series of slats on a stand that could only be a xylophone. Casimir could still see the hammers in the skeleton's grip, yellowed fingers tightly wrapped around the handles.

"It killed them so fast," Carala whispered, her voice muffled by the kerchief. "Or were they fevered? Did they come here for comfort?"

Ammas, who remembered entirely too many scenes similar to this one from his boyhood, threw out an arm, halting Carala from stepping any deeper into the tavern. "Barthim," he hissed. "You need to unblock that doorway. Fast as you can. Casimir, help him."

Barthim understood perfectly well what Ammas really intended. "Come on, Cass," the Beast said in a voice that sounded much too cheerful. "Let us show the poor weeping cursewright how men may move when they have a purpose to fulfill." Wrapping one thick arm around the boy's shoulders he drew him from the dreadful sight of all those bones and to the shallow steps, where he began shifting aside the looser pieces of debris. Casimir did what he could to keep the steps clear of rubble.

"You heard music?" Denisius said wonderingly. "Ammas, is that a -- a wolf's blood thing? Or is it haunted down here? She heard -- well, music from years ago." Lord Marhollow's words ended in a choked sort of laughter, and he wasn't himself sure who he was trying to convince of this theory.

"Back away," Ammas said softly, tugging lightly at Carala's shoulder. She was fascinated with the sight of the minstrels though, and pulled away from Ammas's hand, stepping deeper into the tavern.

"Ammas!" Barthim cried from the corridor behind them.

The skeleton clutching the viol rose up, grinning, its eyesockets lit with a sickly yellow luminescence. It scraped its bow across the strings, raising a hellacious sound that could only charitably be called music. Carala cried out in horror.