The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 16: Daybreak, Part 4

 We had reached a sort of truce with the plague, I suppose -- that sounds strange but it's the best way I can describe it. Infections were falling, the skeletons were a rare occurrence (unless one ventured beneath the streets, which in some of the wards was a death sentence), and in the wealthier wards order was being restored. The treason of the Argent Brand was a blow, however. 

Oddly, some of the criminal guilds, maybe out of a love of their city, picked up the pieces. When order had been completely restored, the next Lieutenant Commander was a woman who had once run a gang called the Dragon's Teeth. I was long gone by then. In my last weeks there, we suffered a blow from which we nearly did not recover. 

I had been sent to Butcherstreet along with one of the cursewright journeymen. The market you know so well was certainly not open then, but there were some stocks of food we could secure. We were delayed. My companion was killed. Guardsmen, not thugs. At that point, there was little difference.

I was able to escape, but it was hours before I could return to the old temple. When I finally got there I found that the attack on my companion had been coordinated. Only a handful of us had remained there, including Master Ulleth. Almost all of them were dead. A few guardsmen had broken into our stores of medicinal spirits and were passed out drunk. They were immune to the plague but not to the sword or the dagger. Only Master Ulleth was alive, laying against the altar. I knew he couldn't survive -- I had seen enough men and women die in the time I was in Munazyr to know that. He was shocked to see me, and I think pleased -- I think he died knowing that what he had learned would not be lost, that at least there was a chance I could do what was needed; what he had set out to do.

They had spent much of the night brewing a vast batch of the elixir, enough to treat a throng of plague victims who had gathered at the auxiliary barracks near the Doge's Villa. It was the first time the Doge's Avenue had been opened to plague victims in weeks, and we thought it a sign that things were finally getting under control. These rogue guardsmen thought to seize the elixir for themselves and hold it ransom, their last act of avarice before fleeing the city. Captain Pathrell had already fled Titansgrave by then, and while it was never proved that he was the one behind the attack on my fellowship, enough people believed that I think it was perhaps the true reason he was executed later on. Ulleth had arrived in the middle of the slaughter, taken by surprise, after the guardsmen had already begun their celebration.

He called me over to him, told me he was not long for the world, and gave me an order -- and a master cursewright giving an order to a young apprentice was a rare and serious thing. I was to bring as much of the elixir as I could carry to the barracks, and to bring back a contingent of guards to secure the rest. But that was not the most crucial thing to be done, though it was what led to the absurd stories that would be told about me later on. 

No, Master Ulleth had information he needed to impart: three letters, sealed in scroll cases. One for the Emperor, one for my uncle Gratham, and one for my father. There was a representative of the Academies who had arrived at Munazyr only that week. I was to go to him and deliver two of the letters, and find another cursewright to take me to Gallowsport. Master Ulleth was insistent I deliver my father's letter personally, I think because he wanted him to know I had survived this disaster.

I cannot pretend I was anything but overwhelmed. My master was dying, I was alone in a city full of the sick and the criminal and the undead, I didn't know where any of the elder cursewrights were, and I was a boy. It had been exciting and frightening and I was proud of the things I had done and learned, but at that moment I only wanted to see my family again. 

Master Ulleth closed his eyes and didn't open them again. I knew what had happened but I didn't want to accept it -- I took his hand in mine, whispering for him to wake up, to help me, to take me to the barracks, he wouldn't have to carry anything, just -- just don't leave me alone here.

The guardsmen were starting to waken from their stupor. I don't know if they had a commander, but whoever was in charge of those men could not have been pleased with their performance. I had a skymetal dagger -- I suppose if I wanted I could have taken Master Ulleth's, and other weapons too, for all the good they'd have done me -- but I didn't even think of drawing it. All I could think to do was cower behind the altar, wishing the iron grate over the catacomb entrance could be moved. Risking that place was safer than being near those guardsmen.

And then -- something happened, something that has happened to my fellowship but rarely in all of history. A woman began to emerge from that iron grate. But the grate did not open; it had been bolted to the stones. Rather she flowed through the grate as if she were a woman of mist, and I knew at once she was dead. Not the creaking bone things birthed from the Yellow Death, but a ghost or a spirit of some kind. I thought maybe she was the Grace of Endings, or a handmaiden of Uraz sent to take me across the Veil of Ravens. I had read of such things. Cloaked in black and silver, from the waist down she seemed nothing but smoke. 

She turned her face on me and I -- I thought I might scream. Her jaw was fleshless, a skull's teeth, like so many I had seen in Munazyr. But her eyes were still alive, and in them I saw a terrible compassion. I did not comprehend it then and I barely understand it better now.

The guardsmen who had begun to awaken saw her -- they certainly weren't screaming at the sight of me. What she did to them, I do not know, but when I finally looked up from where I cowered behind the altar, I saw they were all still and pale. Their eyes were terrified. And the woman was beckoning for me to follow. The idea that she was there to escort me into the afterlife lingered in my mind. But I followed. I followed her past my murdered brethren, past the bodies of their killers, and onto the Old Godsway, doing as my master had bid me and carrying as many flasks of the elixir as I could carry. 

And as we made our way through that half-dead city toward the barracks, others began to emerge from their hiding places, from their sickbeds, from the chimney corners where they had curled up to wait for the end. They followed me -- or her, I do not know. I heard them whisper about the cursewright boy, how I was leading them to a place where they could be cured. By the time I reached the barracks a full ten score of the sick and dying were following me in a train. Between what I had managed to deliver and what the guardsmen were able to secure from the old temple of the Graces, all of those people were cured, along with the ones already languishing at the barracks. That was the moment, really, when the fires of the Yellow Death were smothered to embers.