we don’t have any engagements so far tomorrow, and there’s not much we can do with Reltheus and Kyrin in daylight.”
Seregil glanced out the window, where the grey lowering clouds were beginning to brighten. “It’s almost dawn. We might as well stay up and have an early breakfast. We’ll go to the temple at sunrise. Valerius is a disgustingly early riser.”
CHAPTER 27. Valerius Investigates
SEREGIL and Alec set off for the Temple Precinct just after dawn. Both were stiff and bruised from the night’s attack, and Seregil’s voice was still as rough as a crow’s. The cut left behind by the assassin’s garrote was a scabbed, angry red line just below the edge of his collar. Alec’s hand wasn’t much better, being a deeper cut.
The early-morning sky was filled with lowering red-tinted clouds that presaged more rain to come. Leaving their horses with a precinct ostler, they made their way on foot past lesser temples and shrines to the heart of the precinct.
The main temples of the Four flanked the black-and-white-paved square, washed at this early hour with a soft morning glow that made the white paving stones look pink in the light and pale blue in the shadows. The stones here were laid out to form squares within squares, which in turn formed a greater pattern symbolizing the eternal unity and balance of the Sacred Four. The white-domed Temple of Illior and the dark bulk of the square-pillared Temple of Sakor faced each other across it, looking west and east. Red firelight showed between Sakor’s pillars at all hours, reflecting off the great ruby-studded gold aegis that hung behind the altar.
The Temple of Astellus with its fountains, and Dalna’s temple in its great grove, took the other two sides. A soft hush hung perpetually over the sacred site, and at this hour there was little to hear but the bright tinkling of the falling water and the mournful cooing of the Maker’s doves. Although Sakor and Illior were the patron Immortals of Skala,
this sacred square with its four temples was repeated in every city and town; even the humblest villages had a small patch of ground flanked by four simple shrines. Reverence for the Four, in all their complex unity, had for centuries given Skala internal harmony and power.
They climbed the broad staircase leading up to the open doors of the Dalnan temple and left their boots in the care of an elderly verger. There were already quite a few other shoes lined up in the portico.
The huge temple hall was shadowed and cool. At the far end of the vaulted room a bright, welcoming fire burned on a huge stone altar carved with sheaves of wheat bound with serpents biting their own tails. A line of people stood waiting their turn to place their offerings of food and wine on the altar and get their blessing for the day. Priests, rather than drysians, served here, except for Valerius, who was both.
A young priest in simple white vestments led them through to the high priest’s meditation room and knocked softly. Seregil steeled himself; Valerius was a renowned drysian healer, as well as a fellow Watcher, but he was also the most ill-tempered person Seregil had ever called a friend.
A little acolyte answered the door and put a finger to his lips as he let them in. Valerius stood at a small altar similar to the one in the hall, wreathed in incense as he made the daily offerings for the queen, the city, and the land, assisted by two older acolytes, one male and one female.
Alec made a sign of respect and bowed his head. Seregil folded his arms and leaned against the wall by the door.
When the last of the wine, grain, and oil had been dispensed with, Valerius dusted his hands on the front of his gold-embroidered green robe and turned to them with a look of annoyance. “Well? I suppose you have some good reason for interrupting my morning ritual?”
“We need your opinion on something,” Seregil replied.
“What’s wrong with your voice? Do you have a cold?”
Seregil nodded slightly toward the acolytes.
Valerius dismissed them. “What’s all this, then?” He noted Alec’s bandaged hand. “In trouble again?”
“We were attacked by assassins,” Alec told him.
Valerius snorted. “Surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Let me see.”
He unwrapped Alec’s hand, then inspected the shallow cut on Seregil’s throat. “Clean cuts. No infections.” He rested a hand on Alec’s head and gave some healing that made Alec shiver.
“What about me?” Seregil asked.
“For that little scratch? You’ll heal. Is this what you came for?”
“No, Valerius. We were wondering if you’d heard anything about a strange sickness in the Lower City?”
“It’s being called sleeping death,” Alec added.
The drysian raised a bushy black eyebrow at that. “Sleeping death? No, not a word. Since when have you two turned physician?”
“It’s just something we stumbled across,” Alec explained. “Last night I found a few people with it up here, near Brass Alley.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither have your healers,” Seregil said.
The drysian’s frown was ominous. “Why haven’t I heard about this from them?”
“I think they’re afraid of quarantine, but it doesn’t seem to be passed by touch. Alec and I both have handled the sick ones before we realized what it was and we’re fine. So are the drysians taking care of them.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“People just fall down and lie there with their eyes open until they die,” Alec explained. “Do you know what could cause that?”
“Sounds like some sort of fit.” The drysian led them through the cool dark corridors to his chambers. The sitting room and bedchamber, visible through an open doorway, were austere and sparsely furnished. His private library overlooking the gardens and grove, however, was impressively stocked, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient books and racks of scrolls, with ladders for reaching the highest ones. Deep, comfortable armchairs flanked a couch in front of a black basalt fireplace carved with garlands of herbs.
Another chair, more worn than the others, stood by one of the tall open windows, the table beside it already stacked with books.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Valerius said absently, already perusing a shelf.
Seregil helped himself to a gold-stamped book on herbal medicine. Alec found one filled with pictures of poisonous plants and they settled down to wait.
The drysian climbed a ladder, retrieved several weighty volumes, and sat down in the chair by the window. For nearly an hour the only sound in the room was the soft flutter of turning pages and the rustle of leaves in the grove outside.
At last, Valerius added the books to the pile on the table beside him, then consulted another book and several scrolls in quick succession. “No, nothing exactly like that. Not that lasts that long with the eyes open.”
“Care to come see for yourself?” asked Seregil, knowing full well what the answer would be.
The Harbor Way was less oven-like at this early hour, and once they reached the Lower City, a freshening sea breeze cooled their faces. The Grampus Street temple stood at the far end of the ward, near the north mole.
The Maker’s temples were always humble in comparison with those of the other Immortals of the Four, but this one, though larger than the shrines in the area, lacked even a single tree by way of a grove, just a weathered stump near the front door with a potted bay tree sitting on it. It was a low, flat-roofed stone building, and only its cleanly swept front yard and the sheaf pattern painted over the doorway set it apart from the neighboring houses. Even so, there were doves about, and the youngest acolytes in their short brown robes were spreading the morning offerings to the birds when they arrived.
Valerius had changed into a simpler brown robe, though nothing so plain as his old drysian garb from his wandering days. The lemniscate he wore around his neck was made of gold now, but his staff was the same simple, worn one he’d always carried.
His arrival caused quite a stir. Tongue-tied acolytes bowed and led their unexpected guests through the offering hall and into a larger room beyond.
Twenty-seven people-most of them children-lay on pallets around the room, each dressed in a long nightshirt
