will be sent. Every elf with a sword or bow is going to be heading north to Balaia.’
‘They’re going to invade?’ asked Hirad.
‘What choice do they have?’ Ilkar shrugged. ‘They don’t want to die. We don’t want to die.’
‘Right,’ said Denser, coming to a decision. ‘I’m flying back to Ysundeneth. Starting tonight. Jevin can sail round here, it’ll be quicker that way.’
‘Done,’ said Ilkar. ‘But I’m coming with you. You might just need a friendly elf.’
Denser smiled rather sadly and felt the blood pounding in his throat. ‘Friendly, eh? Well here’s a new test of our friendship, Ilkar. You want to know who it was attacked the temple?
‘It was Xetesk.’
Chapter 33
Jevin had confined his crew to the ship for the last three days and had paid two mages very well to travel with the Calaian Sun back to Balaia, whenever that day came. Like all elves Jevin wasn’t given to rushed action but the situation overtaking Ysundeneth was quite without precedent. For eight days he’d watched as first unease, then anxiety and finally panic had engulfed the city.
At the first signs of the plague being anything more than a localised infection, he had sent his crew out to hire the mages and to provision the ship. Water, cured meat, rice, grain, biscuit and root crops were the order, as well as apples and unripe grapefruit and lemons; anything that would keep longer than a few days.
Below deck, his cargo holds had already been converted to accommodate passengers. Conditions were cramped and public but neither Protectors nor Xeteskian mages had made any complaint. He wasn’t sure exactly how many mages Ilkar expected to make the trip. Over a hundred if he could get them, and Jevin had provisioned for that number.
But as he watched the disaster unfold in Ysundeneth and heard rumours of similar events in other cities, he wondered if Ilkar and The Raven would be back at all. It was unutterably depressing having to watch helplessly as the elves of Calaius’s largest port turned from calm private individuals into an angry mob in so short a time. Not altogether surprising, though.
The plague, and such it had to be, had gorged itself on the population, but at random. There were no patterns of contagion, just as there was no cure. It struck at eight members of a family and left a sole survivor with nothing but grief as a companion. No areas were immune, but in the middle of a street one house would be free, while in the next street it would be the opposite: one household annihilated, the rest untouched. The randomness inspired hope and hatred in equal measure but far more destructive to Ysundeneth society was the latter. Survivors in devastated areas had been persecuted as carriers of the plague, some beaten, some even killed for the crime of living.
But elsewhere those free of the disease pooled their eroding strength and demanded help from city authorities quite unable to provide it. Food had been looted and hoarded, rubbish had started to pile up in the streets. And so, latterly, had corpses. Businesses, inns and shops were closed and boarded up. Markets were empty.
Jevin, like all the skippers at the dockside, had moved to anchor offshore. It wasn’t just disease that concerned him; it was the mobs roaming the docks wanting out of the city by the quickest means possible. Already Ysundeneth was empty of every non-elf. They had been the first targets of suspicion but, being primarily merchants and seamen, they had simply hauled anchor and sailed back to Balaia, not that the Northern Continent was exactly stable. But a dozen ships had no cargo and therefore no financial means to sail.
And for elves to leave would be desperate, even futile. The plague was not contagious; it did not spread through the air or in food or water. It was something far deeper than that and it attacked elves at their core. There was no escape.
At a meeting on board the Calaian Sun, the remaining twelve skippers had agreed to monitor the situation and play the waiting game for as long as they could. Eventually, someone would have to sail north and beg for help. Jevin had said that he would go, but only when The Raven reappeared. Until then, the dozen ships would remain anchored in a defensive formation, protect themselves from attack by boat and magic and wait for the inevitable. For if one thing was certain, it was that one day, probably very soon,