To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [54]
Mr. Data noted the way in which the villagers had mobilized to deal with the illness. To judge by their methods—efficient in spite of how primitive they were—this was a situation that they had faced many times before. He was particularly impressed by their establishment of the makeshift hospital in Sekol’s inn.
They were doing their best to segregate the sick from the well. As for how effective this would be in the long run, he had his doubts. The illness had spread rapidly since Shomia’s death. Few homes could boast that not one of their occupants had been touched by the disease. When he consulted his memory, it revealed that most other ailments analogous to Talossa fever were at their most communicable before symptoms manifested. The time to separate the sick from the well was before anyone seemed to be sick.
It was far too late for that now, even if the Ashkaarians could have diagnosed the disease before it manifested. Shomia had been one of many children crowded around the storyteller’s feet that fateful night. The illness had gone home with every one of them.
As he and Lelys passed through the bustling taproom-turned-medical-ward, someone hailed him.
It was the innkeeper’s son, Kinryk. The lad stood at one end of a bench where a body lay very still, its face covered over with a square of blue cloth. “Hoi! Give us a hand. Got to get this one out of here. No more we can do for him.” “Certainly.” The android turned to Lelys and said, “I will not be long.” “Hurry,” she replied, and walked out of the inn.
Mr. Data was true to his word. It didn’t take him long to help Kinryk remove the body to the large storeroom behind the bar. Like the taproom, this place, too, had been converted to another use. A table cut the room in half. Before the table stood four young men, their faces pinched and grave. They stepped aside to allow Kinryk and Data to place the body on the board, then one of them arranged six small clay figurines around it. These were the images of the Six Mothers, all lovingly made and glazed, their long, full skirts swept forward to form cups where mounds of incense now smoldered. The atmosphere in the storeroom was thick with fragrant smoke whose scent effectively masked the smell of death.
Behind the table stood a fifth man, hardly older than the others. He wore dark robes of blue and brown embroidered with silver thread, and in his left hand he held a ball that seemed to have been woven of brightly colored feathers. His right hand removed the blue cloth covering the face of the dead and dropped it into a brazier beside him. Between the heat of the brazier and the smoke of the six incense holders it was almost impossible to breathe in the storeroom. Sweat streaked the faces of the four attendants, but the man behind the table remained untouched, cool, focussed only on the task before him. He raised the feather ball and chanted for the dead. Throughout all the rite, Kinryk stood with his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back, eyes on the bare ceiling beams or perhaps on something beyond them. Mr. Data observed him and imitated his pose exactly.
When the chanting was done, the man set aside the feather ball, reached under the table into a basket, and produced a strip of white cloth with which he bound the dead man’s eyes. This accomplished, he nodded to his four assistants, who carried the body out past Data and Kinryk. The innkeeper’s son went up to the empty table and bowed.
“Your blessing, Bilik oberyin,” he said.
“Given with joy.” The village oberyin cupped Kinryk’s face with his hands and released him. His expression did not match his words, but his lack of joy was more than understandable.
The blessing received, Kinryk ducked out of the storeroom as Mr. Data went up to the table. The android