A Fatal Humor

By J.S. Mawdsley

People said the plague could never touch an angel of Earstien—people were wrong.

A great pestilence has swept over Myrcia, Loshadnarod, and their neighbors, entire towns wiped off the map by the sickness. But four sorcerers—Caedmon, Ellard, Pallavi, and Stasya (one of the few survivors of the plague)—are looking for a way to help save lives. Or, at least, that is what they all claim.

From a plague hospital to rolling plains to the ancient capital of a once great kingdom to a final showdown in the faltering seat of government, A Fatal Humor is a standalone Myrcia Novel of magic, illness, and deceit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.S. Mawdsley
• Release date: Mar 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393127918

J.S. Mawdsley

We’re a husband and wife novel writing team and have been since about a month after our marriage in 2007. He’s a teacher of education law. She’s a Librarian. Being able to write together so happily once made a friend remark that we are as mythical as unicorns. J.S. Mawdsley live in Ohio, where they share their house with half a dozen dying houseplants, and their yard with a neighborhood cat named Eugene, a mother deer and her fawn, affectionately known as the Countess and Cherubino, and a couple of blue jays, Henry and Eleanor. 

Book preview

Chapter 1

People said the plague could never touch an angel of Earstien—people were wrong. Stasya knew that the moment she woke, though she was still unsure whether she had died or not. She lay in the bed, hardly aware of the blankets, or the pillows, or even her own body. She could not feel the heat of the day at first. The room was too dark for her to see anything, even when she managed to clear the crust from her eyelids and pry them apart. If this was the afterlife, she thought, then the old priestess of her clan had everything wrong. You were supposed to go to the Light of Earstien. But there was no light at all.

Her first sensation, her first connection back to the world of the living, was the smell of death. She wasn’t sure how she could have missed it earlier, but there it was, an oppressive layered smell, like the quilts that someone had piled atop her. When exactly had that happened? She could barely move. And yet she wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets over her head and escape the penetrating stench. Once she did so, however, she realized that the blankets themselves were fetid, dank, and disgusting.

She was lying in something cold and wet, and she desperately wanted to sit up and get out of it. A few minutes’ effort, however, was insufficient to free her from the quilts. So she rolled over, squeezing between the fabric of the quilt and the straw of the mattress, and then rolled over again, and in this way, she reached the edge of her bed.

She looked down—straight into the dead eyes of a corpse.

No more than two feet away, fat, glistening flies swarmed over him. She screamed, disturbing the flies and sending them buzzing around her face. That fright finally spurred her into action. The quilts, crusted in filth, crackled and snapped back, and she was free.

She was in the top level of what appeared to be three layers of bunks, made of scrap lumber and piled haphazardly together. How in Valamir’s name did I end up here? she thought. And where, exactly, is ‘here,’ anyway?

The corpse was in the bunk just below hers. Like her, he had gotten to the edge of his bed, but he seemed not to have been able to free himself. It hadn’t been filthy blankets that had kept him from climbing down, however. He had clearly been rotting even before he died. His lips were black, and curled back from a mouth with no teeth. His nose was gone, too, with a dark, triangular scar where it had been. There were smooth, black bulges at his neck. Buboes—that was what they were called. Suddenly she knew what had killed him. And that was how she remembered where she was.

The plague hospital, she whispered, rolling back from the edge of the bunk and looking up at the cobwebs covering the soot-blackened ceiling. This was the Civic Plague Hospital of Tendria, in the province of Nivia, at the southern edge of the Immani Empire. She had come there with Evika to work as nurses, and then she had gotten sick. She had come there...how long ago? What day was this, anyway?

Looking around, she could see the rows of bunks stretching away, down the darkened hall in either direction. The only light came from two, flickering small oil lamps—one at either end. Other thin, blanketed forms filled the bunks. Some were still. Some moved slightly. Stasya called out for the nurse. A soft moan came from somewhere down the hall. But no one spoke. Did they all die? she wondered, horrified at the thought. She had heard there were places where that had happened.

Gradually, she dragged herself up and hung her feet over the edge—they looked shockingly white and thin in the pale lamplight. Is anyone there? she called again weakly. But no answer came. There was nothing for it, she decided. She would have to climb down. This was a tricky business; she was terribly weak, and she lost her grip halfway. Something soft and rancid broke her fall, and she scurried away on her hands and knees until she felt real floorboards under her again.

Her memories of the hospital were hazy, even though she and Evika had worked there for several weeks. She wandered down one corridor after another; all were lined with bunks. In a wider, larger chamber, she came upon a group of black-robed nurses, each with a sachet of herbs under his or her nose. They were dragging slick, putrid bodies from the bunks and loading them on a small wheeled cart. When they noticed her, they jumped. Stasya? one of them asked. How is it that you’re here?

Go away, spirit, and trouble us no more! cried another one, pressing his hands to his head and heart in a pious gesture.

I’m not dead, she said. I just woke up.

They gaped at her, and then one by one, they overcame their fear and approached. How is it that you’re still alive? the first one demanded, as if she might possess some secret to survival that no one had told him.

I...I don’t know, she admitted, to their evident disappointment. But where is Evika?

They traded uneasy looks, and finally one of them said, Perhaps you’d best come see the physician.

His office was on the other side of the grounds, up in the big mansion. The estate, including the barn and stables that served as the hospital, had belonged to a very wealthy local family until they had all died of the plague, and the civic magistrate had appropriated the grounds.

Before Stasya was permitted through the door, she was obliged to bathe in the stream. This was not merely to clean away her own blood and filth. It was also to allow one of the female nurses to examine her and make sure that the buboes were gone. This was well known as the sign that the patient was out of danger, and the contagion had left her body. But so few people survived the pestilence that most of the nurses had never seen anyone recover from the disease. So they all insisted on having a look at the fading marks on her neck.

Once their curiosity had been satisfied, they brought her a new shift. The rest of her clothes were long gone; that was what happened to the personal effects of anyone who caught the plague. But Stasya was so pleased to have the greasy scent of death washed off her that she did not mind the loss of privacy. One of the nurses brought over a copper brazier, a vial of lamp oil, and some flints, and they burned Stasya’s old, soiled shift. Now that she was clean, she could finally smell it, and when it burned, the scent nearly overwhelmed her. 

When that was done, they brought her into the front hall, where they gave her an herbal sachet to wear and made her wash her hands in vinegar. And finally, she was allowed to go up the grand staircase—somehow all the grander with its cold white marble stripped of any decoration. Once the plague had been in a house, everything went to the fires, even the tapestries and silk carpets of the nobility. At the top of the stairs, the nurses ushered her into the office of the physician—an angular man with sad, thoughtful eyes. By this point, Stasya knew that the news could not be good. But still, she had to ask. Where is Evika?

The physician motioned for her to sit on one of the bare wooden benches in front of his desk. He sighed, and his eyes couldn’t quite seem to meet hers. That was when she started crying, and it was no surprise at all when he told her that her worst fears were true: Evika was dead.

The physician hovered next to her, putting out a hand as if he was tempted to comfort her. But then he seemed to think better of the gesture, and went back to his desk. She became ill just after you did. She cared for you through your first night, when you were feverish and delirious. Then she collapsed.

He listed her symptoms in a tired, clinical way: buboes and a fever, but also coughing up blood and a stabbing headache. Stasya knew that these symptoms signified a strange variant of the disease—one that was invariably fatal. The best that could be said for such a fate was that it was much quicker than rotting to death like the miserable souls down in the rows of bunks in the barn. The physician said that Evika had lasted only a single night.

Stasya could barely comprehend the idea that her mentor and teacher was dead. And Evika Videle had been more than that to her. She had been a kind of foster mother, too. Stasya’s real mother had never been cruel, but neither had she ever been particularly warm or demonstrative in her affection. Evika had been warm and kind, sympathetic and understanding; she had been everything a nervous young girl could have wanted in a mother figure.

Like Stasya, Evika had been a hillichmagnar—one of Earstien’s own angels sent to earth—and Evika had just begun to teach her how to use her magysk powers for the good of mankind. But she had taught her more than magy. Back at Atherton, nearly a decade earlier, Stasya had been badly out of her element—a foreign student from a land of tents and herdsmen. But Evika, beautiful, glamorous Evika, had guided her through the delicate transition to life at an elite boarding school. She had taught Stasya how to dance, how to speak Myrcian, and which fork to use at dinner. With an indulgent smile, she had tolerated Stasya’s occasional bursts of temper when frustration overwhelmed her usually steady disposition.

Going east had been Evika’s idea. Or at least she had volunteered to take the months-long journey to the mysterious land of Guangju. And she had vouched for Stasya and permitted her to tag along, even though a hillichmagnar of such tender years would normally have been obliged to stay and study for many more decades at the mountain retreat of Diernemynster before being allowed to venture back into the world.

In the end, the journey had been a waste of time, and now it had cost Evika her life. It had been her idea to stop here in Nivia on the way back. And when the plague had struck, it had been her idea to stay and volunteer at the hospital. It is our duty to comfort the dying, she had reminded Stasya. But who had comforted Evika when she died? No one, except perhaps Earstien.

In spite of the fact it had all been Evika’s idea, Stasya couldn’t help but feel terribly responsible, even after the physician assured her that she had almost certainly not been the one who had infected Evika. Most likely you both caught it from the same patient, he said.

Stasya nodded, but to herself, she said, That may be, and yet I am still responsible. Evika had collapsed while helping her, and nothing the physician could say would erase the debt that Stasya felt she owed her mentor’s memory.

The physician babbled on. It is so very odd, he said, that she could succumb to the pestilence. I had heard that your kind...er, I mean, hillichmagnars are not susceptible to the contagion.

Stasya, who had been picking at a bit of lint on her new shift, looked up. Clearly we are, she said coldly. It was a stupid superstition—one that Evika, bless her, had been happy to indulge. She had thought it was true, or at least she had pretended to think so. And for a while, when Evika and Stasya remained healthy, it seemed possible.

Gradually the physician seemed to understand that he had said something wrong. He hastened to offer his apologies for any offense he might have caused. Stasya could have been angry with him, but she simply didn’t have the energy. Now that the first, quick burst of horror and sorrow were past, she felt terribly tired. It was odd, considering that she had apparently spent days in bed down in the barn. It was as if she had not slept in all that time.

If you would like, said the physician, you could stay. I have heard it said that if a person survives the plague, he can never catch it again. You would be invaluable to our work here. As, indeed, you already have been. You and the unfortunate Miss Videle, both, of course.

She looked past him through the high, leaded-glass windows that opened on the manor house garden. There was a hedge maze there, quite close to the house. It might have been modeled on the labyrinths that Stasya’s people sometimes built, back home in Loshadnarod, as a sign of submission to the will of Earstien. Here in the Empire, the little maze had probably just been a way to amuse the guests at a garden party. Beyond the last row of the hedge was a line of tall lindens, swaying gently in the breeze. The trees were full of cicadas, and with every gust of wind, their song crescendoed briefly, and then died away again. It would have been a picture of a perfect patrician summer, but for the scene beyond the trees.

There were long mounds of earth there, one neat row after another. To the left, the mounds were covered with grass—these were the ones from the previous summer, when the plague had first started. Then, just behind the physician, were the newer mounds, covered with bare earth. The ones farthest to the right still had splotches of white lime visible here and there. And finally, just at the right-hand edge of the window, she could see the final mound, higher and rougher than the others.

Stasya could not see the open scar in the earth next to that mound, but she knew it was there. Somewhere in that long, anonymous trench, Evika was buried. No one would ever know exactly where she was. There would be no engraved monument for her. She would not get a funeral where her friends could eulogize her. Instead, she had become one of the countless, faceless dead.

The wind shifted slightly, and the scent of the open pit reached them. Stasya gagged, and it was only after burying her nose in the sachet for half a minute that she was sure she would not throw up.

The physician coughed. I think perhaps I may have the nurses burn the trench again this afternoon. Sometimes they did that, if there were too many bodies at once. He gave Stasya an expectant smile, and she knew what he was thinking. In the past, Evika had used an ignition spell to light the bodies. It saved on lamp fuel. The trouble was that, even at the age of 21, Stasya still wasn’t very good with ignition spells. And even if she had been, she couldn’t have brought herself to do that, knowing that Evika was down there somewhere.

I’m afraid I can’t accept your offer of employment, she told the physician. If it’s all the same to you, I think it’s time I go home.

Chapter 2

Outside the tent, Stasya could hear the jingle of the buckles and harnesses. She couldn’t see who was at work, but she knew what they were doing. First the breast collar, then the flank cinch, and then the front cinch. A grunt of effort as the young girl lifted the saddle and blanket from the horse’s back. Then, the slow, smooth, rhythmic scrape of the brush over the horse’s back. It was a sound that reminded Stasya of all the best days of her childhood. The sound was nearly as soothing to her as the brushing must have been for the horse. She had let her eyes go closed, even though she was in the middle of being examined, and between the heat in the tent and the sound of the brushing, she very nearly drifted off to sleep, until the Sahasran woman asked her to sit up and tilt her head back.

These are healing nicely, said the woman. Her name was apparently Pallavi Ratnam, and she was a hillichmagnar, too. She ran a hand over the tiny scars—barely noticeable anymore—where the disgusting bulges had once been on Stasya’s neck. Were there any others?

Stasya knew what the woman meant. The hard, smooth, black buboes could form anywhere on a victim’s body, but generally they were found in one of three places: the neck, the armpits, and in a certain very private portion of the anatomy. When Stasya had worked at the hospital in Nivia, she had seen a great deal more of people’s naked bodies than she had ever wanted. When she had been sick with the plague, she had been too lost in her own, dreadful fever world to care whether people were looking between her legs or not. But her usual modesty had returned with her health, and she disliked the idea of getting undressed, even in front of another female hillichmagnar.

There were two in my right armpit, she told Pallavi, and some black blisters on my upper right arm, but nowhere else. Do you really need to see them?

I suppose I’d better, said the other woman. Here now, just open your tunic here. Yes, like that.

Stasya’s face burned as she shuffled off the borrowed tunic. Pallavi spent half a minute poking and prodding at Stasya’s armpit before declaring herself satisfied. Well, it looks as if you’re completely cured. I’ve never seen anything like it. Read about it, yes. But never seen it myself. She smiled and gave a wink. Then, in a low voice, she added, And I don’t see what you’re so shy about, girl. You should be proud of a chest that perky. Before Stasya could sputter out an indignant reply, the Sahasran woman raised her voice again. Have you ever seen anyone recover from the plague, Vasily?

Several times, yes. But never in this outbreak. The voice, deep and soothing, came from the other side of a thick, woolen horse blanket that served to partition the tent into separate rooms.