Chapter 03

Abris Jelkin, the Crown’s administrator, stood just outside the town of Beldrin, staring up at the gray sky. It seemed appropriate, somehow; the overcast sky shedding little to no sunlight down on a rather large town gone dead silent. It was as if the gods had no warmth for the horrible amount of pain, suffering and death the men, women and children had suffered here.

Abris had been a military man early in his career so he’d seen death before – and, truth be told, much worse than death. As he grew older, however, the lure of a warm bed nightly and meals composed of decent food instead of hard tack had brought him into the Queen’s immediate service. The Queen’s High Chamberlain had titled him an administrator – but in reality he was just a hated taxman. As payment for his comfort, he was okay with both the divergent title and his duties.

True, he was the lead taxman for the second biggest – though not the richest – of the six Grand Duchies in the kingdom. Only Glouster was larger and it was mostly forest and undeveloped land; not much tax to be collected in such country. Alwyn was the richest Grand Duchy because it held the bulk of the kern mines, narrowly edging out Finley which, while having some kern mines of its own, was home to the King’s North Road – called such because it had been King Dartur III who had created the roads.

It was also true his position also allowed him to sit at the table of his Grand Duke and Duchess, but he was aware of their sneering jibes spoken behind his back. He might speak to them and dine with them but he was eminently aware he was not one of them. At the end of every day, he was still just their tax collector.

It was all very organized, of course. Landholders and shop keeps paid a tribute or tax to their Barons so that they could work their farms or shops. Barons paid taxes to their Viscounts, Viscounts to their Earls, Earls to their Marquesses, Marquesses to their Dukes and Dukes to their Grand Dukes. It was very orderly and very well-documented and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of it. The Queen expected a particular sum of money from the Grand Duke every season, either in goods, services or coin and he was the one who needed to collect it from the Grand Duke and assist in the Grand Duke’s collection processes. How or where the Grand Duke gathered the sum was none of his concern – but he knew it trickled down from station to station until the landholders and professionals who had no one to collect from. Even whores were taxed by someone.

Abris walked up to the latest trench, his steps disturbing a bit of dirt at the mouth. He watched it absently as it tumbled down, breaking into smaller pieces until they bounced and then lay still on top of a few of the bodies. The trench which, like the last dozen, had been dug by the squad of Queen’s Knights the Crown had sent him was over half full. Abris glanced at all the dead, jumbled and dumped like so much garbage, and he had to close his eyes and pull back. He’d never dealt with plague before. He hoped to Galal he never would have to again.

“Are you well, Master Jelkin?” The words came from his right. Abris turned to the man and bit back his first reply. The Priest of Tyln was there to assist in healing any sick that were still alive and pray over the dead to assist them from this plane to the next. That there were so few – none, since the only survivor had died overnight – of the former and so many of the latter had Abris on edge. He also found it almost blasphemous for the man to be standing there, with his rich jade velour tabard barely covering his porcine mid-section, his expensive dark silk belt interwoven with golden thread, his fine linen clothes and his golden rings; Abris found it rancorous this fat, rich, pig of a man stood so calmly while so many of the people of the kingdom lay in a nameless, shallow grave. It was the most common complaint with the commoners, the fact they had to pay so much in taxes while the church paid nothing. The exempt status of his order combined with the sight of the man’s golden crown with inlaid gems – a sure sign of a true Bishop of Tyln – set Abris’ teeth on edge.

“No, Holy Brother Thalkin,” he replied after getting his temper under control. “I’m fine. The sight of all these dead has me ill at ease, I’m afraid.”

“Fear not, my child,” Adje Thalkin, Most Holy Bishop of Tyln, replied glibly. He had been irked when his Arch Bishop, Holmat Glassen, had ordered him to accompany Jelkin. It was done at Queen Synel the Eighth’s urging, of course, so he had no recourse but to follow the orders but he’d been discomfited at having to sleep in a tent on the ground; such was not a proper bed for a holy man of his stature. He knew better than to even give voice to his displeasure lest it potentially unravel the Church’s plans but he sulked silently. Well, mostly silently. “It is not in us to know Tyln’s plans – or the hated plans of Dagah the Defiler. Know only that there IS a plan and Tyln tends each of us in His mercy.”

“Of course,” Abris replied, his mouth set in a line. “Excuse me.”

“Suffering the prattles of the priesthood, I see,” Senot Gelbin chuckled as he joined Abris some twenty feet away from both Holy Thalkin and the trench of the dead. “I take it you don’t hold to his viewpoint?”

Abris glanced at the mage. Senot Gelbin was a minor mage called into service by Heg Selka, the Queen’s Arch Wizard. He wore a plain brown tunic, a worn belt tied at the waist. His shoes were old but not overly worn and his clothing, while not new, was not ripped either. With his long brown hair tied in a pony tail, he could have passed for normal. Clean shaven with fairly common, if piercing, gray eyes, there was nothing which obviously set him apart; nothing which declared his vocation. “I’m just a simple man,” he replied drily, raising his eyebrows to the mage. “I’m afraid the teachings of any church are lost on me.” He paused a moment. “If you’re asking if I bend my knee to Tyln, however, I must confess that I’m more prone to the teachings of Galal.”

“A serviceable god, I suppose,” Gelbin smiled. “I prefer Kyr, of course; the goddess of Magic – when I bend my knee at all. This may surprise you but there are days when I question whether the gods actually exist.”

“Hmmph,” Abris scoffed. “There are times... “ His voice trailed off before he shook his head abruptly. “If they didn’t exist, though, Holy Brother Thalkin would have no power.”

“Maybe,” Gelbin pursed his lips noncommittally. “I have often considered the possibility the Priests were like the Magi, using a type of magic to fund their abilities. Watching Holy Thalkin, however, I sense no magic coming from his hands – which doesn’t mean my hypothesis is wrong, however, just that I might not be able to intuit his form of magic.” The mage shrugged. “Which leaves us back where we started – the gods may or may not exist. I guess that is what is meant by ‘faith’.”

Abris glanced at the opened trench. “When I see things like this, I’m not sure I have any faith left.”

“When I was young, my family worshipped at Tyln’s altar,” Gelbin admitted. “A priest gave a sermon that struck a chord in me back then – this was before it was found I had Power, of course; before I became a Neophyte. He spoke of a village whose primary source of income was woodcutting. One night, during a bad storm, lightning struck the forest and started a huge fire and burned the forest down. The people cried out to the Holy Priest of Tyln ‘Where was our god when we needed him? What kind of god would let our way of making a living end like this?’ The Priest explained a forest would grow until it consumed everything. It would grow until even sunlight could not make its way to the ground. In doing this, it would choke the life from the brush and grass, which would make the animals go hungry and die off. At first, this would benefit the forest because the corpses of the animals would give nutrients necessary for the life of the tree to the soil. Eventually, though, when all the animals died, the forest would die because there would not be enough water or nutrients. Fire sets this right. From fire, the old life would re-enrich the soil, sunlight and water would find the ground; new life could come as the forest started anew.” Gelbin looked out over the ghost town across the trench. “Maybe this plague is like the fire. Maybe we grow until we strangle everything around us and plague sets it right again, giving us new room to grow and become stronger.”

“It sounds like you’re trying to restore my faith,” Abris chuckled uneasily.

“Maybe,” Gelbin shrugged. “Or maybe I’m just trying to find my own.”

“Hello!” Abris heard called before he could respond. He turned and saw the two undertakers he’d hired pushing their cart up to the trench.

Hiring them had been strange. He was more used to accepting coin than distributing it. However, the Grand Duke had presented this as part of his duty’s and the Queen’s Chamberlain had agreed.

“What’s the word?” Abris called, walking back towards the trench. He noted the cart of the two men was full again. Always full.

The two – Kalem and Gerosh – were vagabonds; they had no home. They’d contracted the plague but had somehow lived through it – the lucky ones, or so it was said; it was certainly true you could only catch the pox once. Abris had been on the lookout for such as them; not necessarily nomads, but men and women who had survived the plague and would help to clear a town for some meager payment by the crown and the unwritten, unacknowledged benefit of potential riches to be looted from the houses they cleared.

This plague was virulent. Not many survived its ravaging. He’d been hard-pressed to find any to do the work that needed doing.

He’d organized what remained of his subordinate taxmen – plague knew not the difference between Lord, Lady, peasant or taxman – and divvied up the Grand Duchy between them. He bid them find plague survivors to act as undertakers, then to sweep their assignments, every landholding and town, and burn the dead and the cities where death flourished. Save what they could – but burn anything that had the taint of plague. No one knew what caused the plague so everything it touched needed to go.

He’d hired Kalem and Gerosh and started on his own section of the Grand Duchy. Beldrin just happened to be the largest town within it – and the nearest town to where he’d started. Nearly ten thousand men, women and children and, to a man, they had been burned and buried or lay in the trench in front of him awaiting burning and burying.

“We found another survivor,” Kalem called. Or maybe it was Gerosh; he didn’t know them well enough to tell them apart. The younger one, at any rate. “A boy. No more than five or six.”

“Has he any pox marks?” Thalkin called, covering his mouth with a silken kerchief as he stepped to the trench.

“None!” Kalem called. “Checked him, we did. E’s still a mite yella but he tain’t hot nor sweatin’. No pox on him anywheres.”

“Bring him around,” Holy Thalkin called, stepping back from the hole in the ground. He glanced over towards Abris as he moved away. “Appears Tyln has seen fit to save one in this town.”

“One,” Abris echoed, moving to join the Priest. The wizard, his face thoughtful, brought up the rear. “Out of nearly ten thousand? Tyln saved one?”

“We have mourned the dead,” Thalkin replied, “as is right and just. We will mourn more, I fear, before our work is done. Let’s celebrate Tyln’s gift of the life of the living while we can.”

The two men approached, the younger carrying the young boy in his arms. “That’s close enough,” Thalkin called when the men were still about ten yards away, holding his hand up for the men to stop. “You still bear the stench of the plague upon you; did you want to spread it to our persons? No – strip the child and place him on the ground, then back away.”

“On the ground, Brother Thalkin?” Abris bristled.

“The boy has just survived the plague,” Thalkin waved away Abris’ concerns. “A little cold and mud will do him no harm. Tyln’s benevolent hand is upon him, of that there can be no doubt.”

Kalem and Gerosh glanced at one another, their faces sour. Shrugging, Kalem slowly lowered the boy to the ground before he and Gerosh began disrobing the child; it wasn’t hard – the boy only wore breeches and a light, brown, linen shirt already opened to the waist.

When they’d finished, the two men began to back away, their eyes gazing back at the small form lying in the cold, wet mud. Before they’d taken more than a few steps, Kalem rushed back, pulling the small pouch from around his neck. He knelt next to the boy, lifting his head, and then settled the pouch around the boy’s neck before gently placing the boy’s head back on the ground.

“Kalem!” Gerosh hissed. “What are you doing?”

“What’s this?” Thalkin called, ignoring Gerosh’s words and waving at the boy as Kalem began to stand. “I said to disrobe him and I meant completely.”

“At ere is da boy’s inheritance,” Kalem stated firmly, beginning to take a step back. “It’s all ‘is mum and da had on ‘em. Ere’s some coin and jewels and rings and such.”

Abris’ eyebrows rose. Being undertakers didn’t pay much – a few coppers a day. Due to the plague, it was an unspoken benefit that the undertakers would be able to take anything in the houses as they emptied them of the dead – the town would be put to eldritch fire once emptied, after all. Such a benefit could be very lucrative, especially in a town of this size and most especially since it was home to a Duke and Duchess. Of course, the commoners hadn’t been allowed to empty the Duke and Duchess’s manor of dead – that had fallen to some few of the Knights, who’d carefully emptied the manor of possessions so they could be given to the Grand Duke or Grand Duchess if they survived, or to the Queen and King themselves, if they didn’t – but there were merchants and laborers in any town.

“Take it off him!” Thalkin thundered, his voice booming. “You can return his inheritance after we’re done with him.”

“No,” Gelbin called, his voice hard. “Leave it, goodmen. Go, take care of the rest of your charges. I’ll take care of the pouch.” He glanced over at Thalkin before turning back to the men. “I give you my word, the boy gets his inheritance. ALL of his inheritance.”

“Are you mad?!?” Thalkin hissed angrily. “The pouch could be a carrier of plague.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Gelbin murmured, rolling his eyes. He made his way slowly towards the boy. “Gods! Can’t you feel it? There’s magic in that pouch. Powerful magic.”

The mage knelt next to the boy, his eyes intent on the pouch. He looked around and picked up two small twigs that were lying in the mud. Without thought, he wiped the twigs on his pants and then, holding one in each hand, worked them into the opening of the pouch. Once he had the ends of the twigs inside, he tried pulling the pouch open, but the pouch wouldn’t give and one of the twigs snapped.

“Gods!” he cursed. He looked up, his eyes closed, and paused for a moment. Taking a deep breath, his eyes opened. “Right. Nothing for it then.”

He determinedly picked up the pouch from the child’s chest and carefully worked it over the boy’s head. Once it came free, he stood and opened the pouch, emptying it into his left hand but there was too much and he immediately moved his hand to his stomach to catch it all. He dropped the pouch onto the boy’s chest and used the forefinger of his right hand to move the objects in his left.

Abris’ curiousity overcame his fear and he moved nearer. It was with some satisfaction that he noticed Thalkin following behind. “What’d you find?”