Frey looked up from his food plate as Elysia entered The Stinky Pig.
"Look what the cat brought back," she commented, before stuffing a large piece of bread into her mouth.
"Elysia" said Elissa who also looked up from her dinner. She was worried. You said you'd be back in a couple of hours, and it's almost dawn now. I thought the wererats had you."
Elysia put the book down on the table and hugged her tight.
"I'm fine. I just had to find out a few things."
"The nauseating wererats and all their vile kind. A good and entertaining read, I can guarantee, perfect for keeping young children up at night." read Frey, who cocked his head to see the title engraved on the spine of the book.
"I didn't know you could read." Elissa said, giving him a stunned look.
Smiling at him, Frey opened the book with a greasy finger and began turning the pages until she reached the one with an entry dedicated to the Morbus Clan.
"This '4NDR3' guy knows what he's talking about."
"Yes, surely he had luck like ours, his information is accurate and well structured."
"Where did you get this, Elysia?"
"From Doctor Niccolev di L'Orme.
"Yes, it was to be expected of her. Niccolev is a woman with very varied interests, she has books of all kinds."
"Yes, tomorrow we can better see the eccentric side of her."
"Really? In that way?"
"Because we are going with her to the morgue."
♦ ♦ ♦
The Black Magician Dhalthar paced back and forth, moving through his lair like one of the human captives he had working on the step wheels in his lair in the swamps. His brain was racing under the pressure of the manastone powder he had snorted.
Those lousy traitors from Clan Morbus continued to plot to elude him. The priests' magic had proven effective against even their most powerful and subtle methods of divination. The spies had been unable to discover anything more regarding the whereabouts of Caldovil and his acolytes, despite how much they had dug. It was all very frustrating. Somewhere deep within him, Dhalthar felt the ominous certainty that the moment when the priests would put his plan into effect was drawing near with great speed. He knew that he must be right, since in the past such premonitions had never turned out to be wrong. After all, he was a mage with diviner abilities.
A terrible sense of impending doom filled Dhalthar's mind, and he wanted to run for cover, to duck into a hiding place; but at that precise moment it did not occur to him where he could go. "The plague" he thought constantly. "The plague is coming."
♦ ♦ ♦
"Good morning," the priest of Mortis greeted them, and coughed. He looked up from the table set in an alcove at the entrance to the city morgue. The black cowl covered his face, making him look as sinister as the god he served. The air was filled with the scent of freshly cut black roses from the gardens. "What is offered to them?"
"I would like to see the corpses of the last victims of the plague."
Elysia was stunned by the calm tone in which Dr. Niccolev made her request. Most people in the city would rather run a thousand miles than do what Niccolev was about to do, and the priest obviously thought the same. He pushed back the cowl of his habit, revealing a pale, bony countenance, framed by a curly black beard as thick as wire.
"That is a most unusual request." Said the priest, but this did not last long.
From the bag she found attached to Niccolev's belt; she is she took out a small vial that contained some kind of light pink powder, placed some of the mysterious powder in her hand, and then sprinkled it on the priest's face.
Slowly the priest's expression changed to one of calm, and to some extent friendly. "I'll have to check with my superiors."
"As you wish," Niccolev replied. "Tell them I just want to see if all the victims died of the same disease, or if we're going to have to fight different varieties of plague this summer."
The priest nodded and withdrew into the shadowy depths of the temple. In a distant place, some bells tolled, gloomy. Elysia knew that somewhere she was about to start another funeral. The priest returned after a short time.
"The vicar says he may proceed." She declared her. "Although he has asked me to tell him that most of the corpses have already been sent to the cemetery for burial. We only have four that arrived last night."
"That will suffice," replied Niccolev. "At least I hope so."
As they approached the morgue, Elysia whispered a question to Niccolev. "What was that dust? Did you drug the priest?"
"More or less," Niccolev said as he held back a slightly wicked laugh. "Let's just say I made things easier for us."
♦ ♦ ♦
Elysia paid for the ceremonial piece of copper and donned the black robes of a priest of the god of death. This was holy ground, the priest told them, and it was necessary to do it this way.
Niccolev did not need to change his clothing, because his dark and gloomy clothing was very similar to that of a priest. While Frey's dark and black armor was similar to that worn by paladins and knights of the god of death.
Without another word, they headed into the gloomy interior of the mortuary.
The place was cool and dark, and the floors were clean, washed with holy ointments. The scent of black rose scent was everywhere, which was not what Elysia had expected. She believed that she would find putrefaction and the stench of decaying flesh: the smell of death.
The central chamber of the house of the God of Death was lined with rows of marble slabs, and on each one lay a body. Elysia averted her eyes from her.
The bodies belonged to people who had died in unusual circumstances that required special rites to be pronounced over them to ensure the soul's comfortable passage into the afterlife. Many of them did not present a pleasant appearance.
On one of the flagstones lay the bluish, bloated corpse of a fisherman, obviously recently pulled out of the river.
On another was a woman who had been monstrously cut and mutilated by some madman.
They also passed the corpse of a child who Elysia could see when she got close, had been decapitated. She looked away quickly.
Here, the stench overcame the aroma of incense and ointments, and the catgirl understood all too well why the cowls of a priest's robes had a flap that could be pulled over her mouth and nose. Adjusting hers to reduce the stench, she moved to the area where the plague victims lay. Near them stood two priests with their eyes closed and holding censers in their hands. They murmured prayers for the dead and showed no fear of what had ended their lives.
"Perhaps they are hardened against fear because of their habitual dealing with death." Elysia thought; Or was it because they were not afraid of dying? After all, they were the priests of the God of Death and were assured of preferential treatment in the afterlife. She decided that if she later met one of those priests, she would ask him about his attitude. She was curious as to how they had hardened to this point.
Niccolev moved cautiously to the flagstones and exchanged words and coins with the priests; at the same time that he again sprayed his mysterious dust on the priests.
The priests nodded their heads, ceased muttering their prayers, and withdrew.
Without ceremony, Niccolev removed the sheet from the corpse nearest him. It was the body of a short man, a merchant dressed in his best clothes. He wore a red rose on the lapel of his blouse. He seemed strangely helpless and forlorn, and he had been cleaned up after he died.
"Some scratches on the hands, knees and forehead," Niccolev said. "They were probably made when the man collapsed in his last death throes."
Elysia remembered the spasms that had seized the man she had seen on the street, and she understood how he could have caused those injuries.
"Notice the swollen area on his chest and throat, and the little scab of greenish matter on his upper lip and nose."
Niccolev lifted the eyelids with his fingers and they saw traces of green matter around the rims of the eyes as well.
"I am sure that if I did an autopsy, which our priest friends would object to, I would find that his lungs are filled with a viscous green fluid. It is that which ends up killing the victim, who literally drowns in it."
"A horrible way to die," Elysia said.
"As far as I understand, few diseases cause a pleasant death, Miss Elysia." Niccolev replied, moving to the next corpse and pulling back the sheet.
It was the body of a middle-aged woman dressed in black. Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling with an expression of horror. There were traces of rouge on her cheeks and galena around her eyes. This attempt to improve the appearance of someone who was dead at the time was rather pathetic to Elysia.
"At least she's dressed in the right color." Frey said. The catgirl thought the dark hero's intervention was rude, and Niccolev shrugged.
"Widow's Garments. Her husband must have died recently. She will now join him."
He moved to the next slab and studied the corpse of a small girl who bore a family resemblance to the dead widow. Niccolev looked at the piece of parchment he was wearing around her neck.
"She is she the daughter. An unfortunate family, it seems." He turned and looked at Elysia. "Unfortunately, it is nothing unusual. It often happens that pests and other diseases spread between members of a family and people who usually live together. It looks like this plague can spread like a summer cold."
Elysia sniffed.
"What exactly are you looking for here, Doctor Niccolev?"
"A pattern; something that is out of the ordinary, something that tells us if there is some common factor among all these poor victims."
"And how would that help us?" Frey inquired, but Elysia already knew the answer.
"If we found something like this, we might discover how the disease spreads, and in that case, we might be able to take steps to isolate it, or if it really comes from ratfolk, we might be able to trace it back to its source."
"Very good, Elysia. In a sense, it's like solving a murder or mystery. It is necessary to see the clues to find the culprit."
"And have you seen any clues?" Frey asked.
Niccolev pulled the sheet away from the last corpse. It was a young man barely twenty years old, more or less. Elysia experienced a poignant sense of mortality. The plague victims were not much older than she was.
"Do you notice anything?" asked the catgirl, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Unfortunately, no." Niccolev replied, and then turned to leave.