Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [53]
The smell of close, feverish bodies was overcome by incense and the scent of fethra leaves as they boiled to make a broth that eased pain and fever and seemed to stave off the worst of the symptoms. Delusional cries sometimes echoed down the corridors, carried by the curving walls and acoustics of the temple's architecture. Each cry found a fearful ear somewhere in the temple's silence, waiting in the dark for the storms to pass and for the deliverance of Savras's prophecy.
The newest patient in these suffering chambers was the young oracle stricken during the gathering. In her panic, Nivael had run from the gathering, frantically trying to stem the steady flow from her nose. She'd felt the fever but could not accept her own sickness. She collapsed in her small room, covered in her own blood. No one had sought her out, most still weighing the import of Sameska's prophecy and her edict of inaction against the encroaching evil.
Waking early and feeling little rested, Nivael had gone about her duties in the quarantined room. There, she stumbled and fell as the blush closed its grasp on her health. Her heart pounded and she breathed hoarsely, trying to cry out, but her voice was inaudible. Her throat was wet and tasted of blood. She didn't know how much time had passed while she lay there, delusional among the others.
Eventually a surge of strength filled her limbs, tensing them in spasms she could not control. Gnashing her teeth, her eyes rolled back in her head and her body heaved itself from the floor. She felt that she was dreaming and let go of her will, half-conscious and unaware of her wild charge at the wooden double doors. Her impact reverberated through the halls. Oracles and lingering hunters raised their heads in alarm, wondering what fresh terror came upon them.
Nivael could see the walls and floor of the temple passing beneath her bare feet, almost in slow motion, as if she floated rather than ran headlong toward the sanctuary. Her face was hot. The chill of the stone floors could not quell the heat of her blood as it again poured from her nose, and soon her mouth and eyes. An impossible strength sent her flying through the heavy doors of the sanctuary, gurgling a weary groan as she did so.
High Oracle Sameska, Lord Hunter Baertah, and several other oracles looked on in shock as Nivael made her way toward the altar, her arms outstretched. Dreslya raised a hand to her mouth as she saw the state her friend was in, covered in blood and swaying in a trancelike stagger.
No one moved, afraid to go near this walking plague, the blush in a form and face of one of their own.
Nivael stopped before the altar, standing on the top step of the dais, on even footing with the marble statue of Savras that stared calmly beyond her. Baertah raised a perfumed handkerchief to his nose as Nivael's stained hands gripped the shoulders of the statue. Rust-colored claws touched the image of their god. She turned reddened eyes on the small congregation and her voice spoke of its own accord. She could hear herself and wondered when this horrible dream might end. Blackness clouded the edges of her vision.
"Those who resist shall die. All of these are dead. It is done."
At those words, Nivael fell in a heap at the foot of the statue. As the others watched, the base of the statue cracked-a line webbed upward along the figure until two thin branches touched his peaceful eyes and gushed forth tears of blood.
Dreslya gasped as Nivael's words echoed in the chamber. Those who resist… All of these are dead. She reached carefully into a pocket of her robe and her fingertips brushed the edges of Elisandrya's letter.
Dimly, at the edge of her attention, someone screamed, but no one approached Nivael's limp body or the horrifying spectacle of the bleeding statue.
* * * * *
Morgynn gently closed the lid of the box and rested her hands upon it, mumbling the words of the warding spell to keep it safe. The secrets of the plague, written by the archmage Goorgian centuries ago and improved upon by herself, lay within. Admiring the skeletal carvings