“Where is everyone?” Aidane asked, thankful to take a seat and rest her throbbing leg.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Ed said, pulling up a chair next to her. Like most of the furnishings in the tunnel, the chair was a broken cast-off, with one leg splinted back together and still too short, so that the chair wobbled fiercely. “People are scared of the plague. Scared enough that they aren’t even coming out to drink.” He nodded toward Kir. “Yesterday, about the only coin Kir earned was going down the tunnels with a bucket of ale and a jug of poitin, clanging his ladle on the bucket. Those who wanted a drink put out a mug and a coin and he filled them up from outside the door.”
“Damndest thing,” Kir said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen people scared before, but not too scared to drink. I can’t say I liked wandering around myself, but I need coin to pay for the supplies to brew with and the food to serve.”
Ed gave Aidane a level glance. “Now, I’m guessing you’ve got a story to tell, Aidane. You’ve got a couple of good knots on the back of your head and a knee swollen twice its size. What happened?”
The two drunks in the corner of the tunnel bar were fast asleep and paid no mind as Aidane told her story to Kir and Ed. They listened raptly as she recounted her success with Vivian’s ghost and the tavern’s patrons, and
were wide-eyed at her escape from Buka. Aidane omitted only the role of the ghost blades, but she ended the tale in a way that left no doubt that Buka was dead.
Kir and Ed both gave Aidane a round of cheers when she finished, and Kir slid another ale toward Aidane. “On the house, for the slayer of Buka! By the Lady, I’m honored to know you! Don’t you worry none,” Kir said, wagging a finger at Aidane. “You’ve got a warm bed here without having to take clients if you tell fortunes and speak to spirits in the tavern here instead of topside. That might be enough to coax people out of their holes once word spreads.”
“Thank you,” Aidane said wearily. “I wouldn’t mind it being quiet for a day or two so I can recover, but then I’m happy to earn us both some money talking to the spirits.” Kir went off to a side tunnel to tend the still, and Aidane leaned toward Ed.
“I’m sure the problems up above will blow over. Why don’t you come topside with me a few days a week? We could work our way around the taverns, you doing your hedge witching and me with my fortune-telling. Come back here until we’ve saved enough to go back to Dark Haven. Maybe your musician friends would go back with us. What do you think?”
Ed considered for a few minutes and shrugged. “We could try. Not much coin to be earned down here, even with Kir’s brew. I wouldn’t mind going back to Dark Haven, after what I’ve seen of Principality City.”
A day later, when Aidane’s knee was no longer swollen and her headache was gone, she and Ed made their way back up to the safe entrance she had used. But instead of a broken door on a cracked doorpost, they found freshly mortared bricks sealing the doorway.
Aidane and Ed exchanged glances. “What’s this about?” Aidane murmured. Together, she and Ed retraced their steps and then headed for the next closest entrance. This time, they found a small group of people milling around a similarly sealed doorway.
Ed pushed forward. “What’s going on?”
A thin, bearded man gestured toward the sealed entrance. “It’s clear enough, innit? The topsiders have sealed us in here to die. It’s the same all over the warrens. All the doorways out onto the street are sealed up with bricks or boulders, or boarded over. We’ve tried to break through, but it’s no use. The walls are too thick. It’s the city people who did it. They think if they seal us in, they seal the plague away.”
“They’ve left us to starve,” Aidane murmured. “We’ll die.”
A
somber group trudged back into the depths of the tunnels. Aidane felt the press of spirits closer than ever. When they returned to the tavern, Kir met their news with a growl of outrage.
“Sealed us in! If the plague doesn’t kill us all, we’ll starve to death before too long.” He turned away, cursing.
Several people had begun to drift into Kir’s tavern, and Aidane guessed they wanted to drink their share of the ale before it ran out. She found a seat next to Ed and rested her head on his shoulder. “How long do you think we’ve got?”
Ed shrugged. “We’ve got water; that’s not the problem. Plenty of cisterns down here, as fresh as you’ll find up above. It’s food and good air that are going to be in short supply. Without the doorways and openings to the above ground, the air will foul. ’Course, plague spreads faster like that, too. Food won’t last long. Nothing grows down here except for some mushrooms, and there aren’t enough of those for everyone, even if you were of a mind to eat them.”
He shook his head. “Once people realize that there’s no way out and they get hungry, some of them’ll go mad, riot. It’ll go from bad to worse pretty quickly then.” He put an arm around Aidane like a protective big brother. “I’m sorry, Aidane. You shouldn’t have come back. Unless something changes, none of us are likely to be alive for very long.”
Spirits filled the air around them. The voices had a new urgency, and Aidane let them speak to her.
Please carry a message for me. My wife is dying. She’s afraid. I’m waiting for her, just on the other side. We can cross the Gray Sea together. Please, please tell her
.
My children are dying. They’re alone. Please go to them and tell them that I’m here with them. Tell them I’ll be with them soon. Please tell them
.
Each ghost came with a fresh tale of woe, but the plea was always the same. These spirits had no desire for a carnal reunion with a living lover; they simply wanted to comfort the dying.
Aidane roused from where she leaned against Ed. “I need to go to where the plague victims are,” Aidane said, meeting Ed’s eyes.
Ed stared at her. “Are you crazy? Why would you want to do that?”
“Because it’s better than sitting here waiting for the ale to run out and feeling sorry for ourselves,” Aidane said, as purpose began to replace resignation with anger. “The spirits are all around us—can’t you feel them?”
Ed sighed. “Not like you can, but I know they’re here.”
“They won’t leave because they’re trying to stay with their loved ones,” Aidane said, taking Ed’s hand as her resolve grew stronger. “They want me to carry messages
for them, to comfort the dying. Ed, we don’t have to wait around to starve to death or die pushed up against a stone wall in some Goddess-forsaken riot. Maybe we can do a little bit of good with the few days we have left. You’re a hedge witch. You could ease some pain. I can carry messages. If you can find Bez and Thanal and the other musicians, maybe we can make it a little easier on the dying, since we’ll soon be among them. Please, Ed.”
“You’re sure to die of plague.”
Aidane gave him a level glance. “How long does it take to die of plague?”
Ed shrugged. “Cough in the morning, dead by nightfall.”
“And it takes how long to starve?”
Ed sighed, and then nodded. “All right. We’ll round up the musicians and then go to the lower levels.”
They found the musicians crowded together in a dingy cellar. Their bedrolls and personal possessions were stacked against one wall. A torn, dirty sheet hung from a length of rope served as a makeshift divider in a room that was home to a dozen people. A bucket against the far wall served as the garderobe. A jug of poitin and several tin cups sat on a small, broken table next to a block of hard cheese and a half loaf of dry bread.
Cal, a portly older man, cradled his drone as he listened to Aidane’s proposal. Cal’s wife, Nezra, sat next to her dulcimer. Nezra had been plump on their journey from Margolan to Dark Haven. Now, she was much thinner and her face looked tired and old. Her dulcimer was scratched, with several broken strings. Bez, the young tattooed drum player, kept up a quiet rhythm all during their conversation, and his faraway expression made Aidane
wonder whether he had mentally already left the caverns for somewhere untouched by death and sorrow. Thanal, the flute player, looked even shaggier than before, with his long, dirty hair tied back haphazardly.
“If we’re all going to die, at least we can do some good,” Aidane said, wrapping up her plea. She fell silent, waiting for what she was sure would be a quick rejection from the others.
Cal turned to Nezra. “Sounds like what we’ve talked about, doesn’t it?” he said quietly. Nezra nodded.
“I’m in.” Aidane looked up in surprise at Bez, who answered without altering the rhythm his fingers tapped on the drum.
“Me too,” said Thanal, who withdrew his flute and his pennywhistle from a pouch on his belt and turned them lovingly in his dirty hands. “Playing to an audience makes me feel alive, and I haven’t felt like that since we came down here.” He shrugged. “At least we won’t be alone when the end comes.”
“Follow me,” Ed said.
Ed led them farther into the caves. Aidane had never been this far underground. They left the man-made tunnels behind and were soon following a maze of natural caverns.
After a long walk, the narrow passageway widened and Aidane and the others followed Ed out into a large open space. “Where are we?” Aidane wondered, squinting to see better. Bez and Cal moved up to the front with their lanterns, and Aidane gasped as the view unfolded.
The cavern opened out of what appeared to have once been a hillside, now just an outcropping of bare rock and dry dirt. A few paces away, a cobblestone road led off in
either direction into darkness. Lanterns hung from posts at intervals along the street, casting everything in a smoky haze. On either side of the street, the first two stories of shops and buildings opened onto walkways, but at a second glance, Aidane could see that the buildings’ windows were broken and their signs were missing or askew. What had once been a common area around a well was long barren of grass, now just hard-packed dirt. But when Aidane looked up, expecting to see sky, all she saw was total darkness.
“Welcome to Ford’s Crossing,” Ed said with forced joviality. “Fifty-odd years ago, this was a busy part of town: shops, taverns, plenty of merchants. Had a sky then, too, and the road actually went somewhere in either direction.”
“What happened?” Aidane could see that Nezra and the others were also craning their necks for a good look around themselves.
“The street ran in a narrow place between two hills. A big flood swept through the first two floors of the buildings, killed a lot of people. Instead of cleaning up and reopening the shops, the people just built arches from one side of the valley to the other and ran the road over this part. They abandoned the bottom floors of the buildings and built new over top.” Ed shrugged. “No one up there probably even remembers. But it didn’t take long for the vagabonds to find it.”
He swept his arm in an arc. “Now, this is where the sick gather, if they can make it this far.” He pointed across the commons, toward a rocky outcropping in the far hillside. “The tunnels go on in that direction for quite a ways, too. But those tunnels filled up with the plague victims first, so there’s naught down that way but corpses.”
“Are ye dying?”
The strange voice startled them. Aidane and the others turned to see a pale, thin man in tattered brown robes making his way across the street toward them. “If you’re not dying, best you go back the way you came, or you will be,” the stranger warned.
Aidane stepped forward. “My friends and I aren’t sick. We came to give comfort to the dying. They’re minstrels,” she said with a nod toward Cal, Bez, Nezra, and Thanal. “Ed’s a hedge witch, and pretty good with herbs. I’m a seer.”
The thin man looked at them sharply. “If you thought to loot the bodies, there’s nothing to take. The people who come here have nothing and leave with nothing.”
“No, of course not,” Aidane protested. “We’ve come to help.”
The thin man crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been down here for several months, I reckon, and no one else has come to help. I even marked the tunnels to keep people away and help the dying find their way here. Why would you come if you didn’t mean to steal from the dead?”
Ed exchanged glances with Aidane. “The topsiders have sealed off all the entrances. I imagine there’ll be more business for you in a few days than you’ll be able to handle, once the hunger sets in.”
The thin man’s eyes widened. “Truly? We’re sealed in?”
“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving.”
The man shook his head. “No. When I came down here, I knew I wouldn’t leave.” He paused, and then extended a hand to Aidane and to Ed in greeting. “I’m Brother Albert. Welcome to Ford’s Crossing. To my way
of thinking, it’s a peaceful place on the shores of the Gray Sea.”
“You’re a healer?” Aidane asked as their unexpected guide greeted the musicians.
Brother Albert shrugged. “No, I’m not. But I do have a talent with potions and herbs, and a little bit of magic with plants. It was enough to win me a position at a noble house. Then fever took the lord’s son, and he blamed me. He cast me out, and I wandered, since no other manor would have me.”
“How did you end up down here?” Aidane asked.
He shrugged. “Truth be told, I blamed myself for the boy’s death as much as his father did. I was tired of my existence, but not quite ready to end it.”
Aidane watched Brother Albert carefully, trying to reconcile what her magic was telling her. She met his gaze. “You’re
vayash moru
.”