The Bone Doll's Twin (60 page)

“Oh, gods!” He knew what this was.

Plague. The Red and Black Death.

All the street-corner mummeries he’d watched came back to him, and the tales the boys shared around the hearth. First you bled through your skin, then huge black sores swelled under your arms and in your groin. In the end you thirsted so badly you’d crawl into a gutter to drink filth before you died vomiting out what blood you had left.

On the heels of this came Lhel’s words again.
You see blood? You come to me.
It had been a vision after all.

“What do I do?” he whispered to Brother. But he already knew.

Don’t be tell nobody. You love your friend, you don’t tell him
, Lhel had warned.

He mustn’t tell Ki. Or Tharin. Or anyone else he loved. They’d want to help and they’d catch it, too.

He looked around at the bed he and Ki had shared. Had he made his friend sick already?

You love your friend, you don’t tell him.

Tobin tied up his trousers and climbed out of the bed. Ki would never let him go off alone. Neither would Lord Orun or Porion or Tharin or anyone else. He found his tunic and got it on before pain pushed hot red fingers through his belly again, making him grit his teeth and curl forward. The seal and ring clinked against his chest inside his shirt. He pulled them out and clutched them like talismans, feeling very alone. He had to get to Lhel.

When the pain receded he went into the dressing room and buckled on his father’s blade.
I’m nearly tall enough to carry it, now that I’m dying
, he thought bitterly.
Let me at least be burned with it. There’s no one left to pass it to.

He heard servants talking out in the corridor; there was no escape that way without being seen. Throwing on an old cloak, he knelt and felt at the panel that led to his cousin’s room. As Korin had warned, he couldn’t open it from his side, but Brother could and did.

Korin’s room was similar to his own, but the hangings were richer and done in red and gold. He also had a stairway from his balcony down to the gardens, and Tobin made use of it to escape unseen.

A
s Ki had feared, Porion kept him at practice half the afternoon. The shadows of the thin pines were stretching into their chamber by the time he finally returned to their room.

“Tobin, how are you?”

There was no answer. He went to the bed and pulled back one of the heavy hangings, thinking his friend must still be asleep, but found the bed empty.

Puzzled, Ki looked around the room. There was the discarded jerkin; Tobin’s sword and bow still hung on the carved rack where he’d left them. There were a dozen
places his friend could be, and normally Ki would have been content to wait for him to show up or to meet him at the nightly feast, but Tobin’s sudden illness had left him uneasy in his mind.

Just then he caught the scuffing of feet on the balcony and turned to see Tobin framed in the brightness of the doorway. “There you are!” he exclaimed, relieved. “You must be feeling better.”

Tobin nodded and walked quickly into the dressing room, waving at him to follow.

“How are you feeling? You still look pale.”

Tobin said nothing as he climbed to the top of the old cupboard that stood in the dressing room.

“What are you doing?” Tobin wasn’t acting himself, Ki thought. Perhaps he was really ill after all. Even the way he moved seemed odd, though Ki couldn’t quite say how.

“Tob, what’s wrong? What’re you after up there?”

Tobin twisted around and dropped a dirty cloth bag into Ki’s hands. The move brought them face to face for the first time since Ki had come back to the room.

Ki looked up into those black, staring eyes and began to tremble. This wasn’t Tobin.

“Brother?”

In the blink of an eye, the other stood just inches in front of him. The spirit’s face reminded him of a mask—it was as if some ham-fisted carver had tried to model Tobin’s face, but forgotten to put in any kindness or warmth. Ki thought suddenly of his own dead mother lying frozen in the loft all those years ago; he’d pulled back the blanket and looked into her face, seeking in vain for the loving presence he’d known. It was the same now, looking for Tobin in the face of the demon.

In spite of his fear, he found his voice again. “You’re Brother?”

The spirit nodded, and something like a smile twitched its thin lips. The effect was not a pleasant one.

“Where’s Tobin?”

Brother pointed to the bag. His mouth didn’t move, but Ki heard a faint whisper like wind blowing over a frozen lake.
He goes to Lhel. Take this to him quickly!

Brother vanished, leaving Ki alone in the lengthening shadows holding a dirty cloth sack that wasn’t empty.

Lhel? Tobin had gone home? But why? And why would he leave without him? Ki’s hand found the carved horse hanging at his throat as he fought off the hurt feelings that came with such questions. If Tobin had gone without him, then something was terribly wrong and, if that was so, then Ki’s place was at his side.

But he left without me—

“Tharin. I should go tell Tharin, perhaps even Porion—”

No!

Ki jumped as Brother hissed at him from the shadows beside the doorway. It was a sign, seeing Brother at last. Tobin must be in very great danger indeed if the ghost was appearing to him. He’d better do as the thing said.

In this, at least, he had luck on his side. In the hours between duty and mess, the boys were free to do as they wished. No one would give a squire a second glance as he went between Palace and stables carrying his master’s arms for repair.

Taking only their swords and the mysterious bag, he went out to the stables. Here his fears were confirmed. Gosi was gone. If Tobin had left mounted, there was no hope of catching up with him now. All he could do was follow.

“You might have shown yourself a bit earlier,” he muttered as he saddled Dragon, hoping Brother was lurking close enough to hear.

A
tale of a squire’s errand in the city suited the Palatine guards, and another got him past those at the harbor gate. Night was falling fast and there was no sign of Brother to guide him now, but there was moon enough to light his
road. Turning Dragon’s head to the west, he kicked the roan into a gallop along the high road and prayed to Astellus to guide his hooves safely in the dark.

There were few riders on the roads at night, and fewer yet slight enough to be Tobin, but Ki couldn’t help staring hard at every stranger he overtook.

Near midnight he stopped to rest his horse at a stream. Only then did it occur to him to look inside the bag.

I
t was near that same hour that Tharin found a very distraught Molay at his door.

T
he crescent moon guided Tobin home. By its light he put the sea at his back and retraced the rivers and roads that led west to the mountains. Perhaps Gosi remembered the way, too, for they took no wrong turning through the night.

Tobin had fear to keep him awake, and the strange pain that swelled and changed as the moon pulled him onward. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all and he pushed the horse into a gallop for miles at a time. Then it would close in on him again and Gosi would wander along the grassy verge while Tobin carried a basin of dull red fire sloshing between his hipbones. Eyes half closed against it, he thought of Niryn and his handful of flame at the royal tomb.

As the night dragged on, the pain often rose through him, digging in under his breastbone and spreading out beneath his skin, making his flesh hot and cold by turns on his bones. The blood in his trousers had dried, but near midnight his chest began to itch down low, between his nipples. When he reached in to scratch, his fingers came away dark and wet.

Plague plague plague.
It thrummed with the beating of his heart.

Plague bringer.

Lhel must have some cure. That must be why he’d been given the vision telling him to go to her. Perhaps hill witches knew of some healing that the drysians and the royal healers of Skala did not.

They’d all heard the tales. In the port cities the death-bird
plague chasers nailed plague bringers in their houses, along with anyone else unlucky enough to be there when the first victim was discovered. If anyone survived the illness, they could prove their health by breaking free.

He was a plague bringer.

Lhel had foreseen it.

Would they nail the Old Palace shut?

In the darkness his imagination conjured an army of deathbirds settling like carrion crows on the Palace with hammers and pouches of nails over their shoulders, like the workmen who’d come to the keep.

Would they follow him and nail up the keep, too?

They could put him in the tower. He’d wear their mask and be a bird like the ones who’d been his mother’s only companions—

All through the long night his thoughts chased themselves round in an endless circle. He was almost surprised when he saw the jagged teeth of the mountains rising against the star-crusted sky so close ahead of him.

T
he first glow of dawn was warming the sky at his back when he rode through sleeping Alestun. Gosi was stumbling and blowing under him. Tobin had passed from weariness into a numbed, dreaming state and began to wonder if he would suddenly open his eyes and find himself back in Ero after all, nailed in his room by the deathbirds. Or perhaps he was really following the trail of his visions to that underground room guarded by the deer.

He left the town behind and rode on along the familiar road between autumn-colored trees. It had looked much the same the first time his father took him to Alestun nearly half his life ago. He was glad to be here again, even if it did prove to be for the last time. Better to die here than in the city. He hoped they’d leave his body somewhere in the forest. He didn’t want to be on one of those stone shelves under the stone queens. He belonged here.

He’d just caught a glimpse of the tower roof over the
treetops when Lhel stepped out of the trees ahead of him. Tears of relief burned his eyes.

“Keesa, you come,” she said, walking out into the road to meet him.

“I saw the blood, Lhel.” His voice was as faint as Brother’s. “I’m sick. I’ve brought plague.”

She grasped his ankle and squinted up into his face, then gave his foot a reassuring pat. “No, keesa. No plague.”

Pulling his foot out of the stirrup, she climbed up behind him and took the reins.

He remembered little of the ride that followed except for the warmth of her body against his back. It felt good.

The next thing he knew she was helping him down out of the saddle with hands as cool as river water. There was the house oak, with its baskets and racks, and the round shining pool of the spring glimmering like a green and gold mirror just beyond.

A cheerful fire crackled in front of the door. She guided him to a log seat beside it, pulled a fur robe around him, and placed a wooden cup of boiled herb tea in his hands. Tobin sipped it, grateful for the warmth. The soft fur of the robe was tawny cream and brown—catamount fur. Ki’s catamount, he thought, wishing his friend was here.

“What’s wrong with me?” he rasped.

“Show blood.”

Tobin pulled down the neck of his tunic to show her the seeping patch on his chest. “You say I’m not sick, but look! What else would do this?”

Lhel touched the damp flesh and sighed. “We asked much of the Mother. Too much, I think.”

“My mother?”

“Her, yes, but Goddess mother is the one I speak. You have pains there?”

“Some, but mostly in my belly.”

Lhel nodded. “Blood other place?”

Embarrassed, Tobin pulled up his jerkin and showed her where the first stain had soaked through his trousers.

Lhel placed her hands on his head and spoke softly in words he didn’t understand.

“Ah, too soon, keesa. Too soon,” she said, sounding sad. “Perhaps I did wrong, making Brother’s hekkamari keeping you so close. I must bring Arkoniel. You eat while I go.”

“Can’t I go with you? I want to see Nari!” Tobin begged. “Later, keesa.”

She brought him warm porridge, berries, and bread, then strode away through the trees.

Tobin huddled deeper into the robe and took a bite of the bread. Stolen from Cook’s kitchen, no doubt. The taste of it made him even more homesick. He longed to run after Lhel and sit by the kitchen fire with Cook and Nari. Being so close, dressed in his old clothes, it was easy to pretend that he’d never left home at all.

Except that Ki wasn’t here. Tobin ran his fingers along the edge of the catamount skin, wondering what he was going to say to him when he went back. What must Ki and Tharin and the others be thinking by now?

He pushed that worry away for later and touched the blood on his chest again. He wasn’t a plague carrier after all, but something was wrong. Maybe something even worse.

I
t was almost daylight when Ki reached the turning of the road for Alestun, but he missed it all the same, only having been this way once before. He was clear past it when Brother suddenly appeared in the road in front of him, startling his horse.

“So there you are!” Ki muttered, snubbing the reins to calm Dragon as he shied.

The ghost pointed back the way he’d come. Ki turned and saw the marker he’d missed at the crossroads behind him. “Many thanks, Brother.”

He was almost used to the ghost by now. Or maybe
he was just too tired and hungry and worried about what he was going to find at the end of this night’s long ride to have any fear to spare. Whatever the case, he was glad enough when Brother stayed with him and led the way to Alestun.

It was a warm morning for mid-Erasin. A mist rose off the dripping trees, ghostly in the thin light of the false dawn.

“Is Tobin well?” he asked, assuming Brother would know something of his twin’s condition. But Brother neither turned nor spoke, just moved on ahead of him in that odd, not-walking way of his. Watching him for a while, Ki began to think he’d been more comfortable alone after all.

A
rkoniel looked up from his washbasin to find Lhel’s face floating before him.