"Tell me what this is all about, Elysia." Frey asked as they stepped out into the street, and Elysia looked around her to make sure no one was close enough to hear them.
"All the people we know of who have died of the new plague visited the cemetery recently. The grave robber too, in all probability."
"And?"
"It's the only relationship I've been able to see, and Niccolev told us to look for connections."
"That seems unlikely."
"Do you have any better ideas?" Elysia asked, allowing a hint of frustration to creep into her voice.
The dark hero thought about it for a moment, but shook his head.
"Do you think we'll find our mousey friends raising pests in the city cemetery?"
"Possibly."
"There's only one way to find out."
"I know."
"When?"
"Tonight, when we finish work. At that time, everything will be very quiet, and we can take a look."
The cat girl shuddered. She could think of many better places to be than crawling through the city's main graveyard after midnight with a handful of ratfolk in attendance; but what else could she do?
If they went to the authorities with that story, they probably wouldn't believe them. Perhaps the ratfolks would hear of his presence and move their base of operations. At least, she was almost certain that there couldn't be many wererats on the surface, since a small army camped in a graveyard would attract attention. With luck, they would be few, and the sword of the dark hero could deal with them. Elysia really expected it.
♦ ♦ ♦
The entrances to the cemetery were not open. Steel bars closed the arcade, held in place by heavy chains and padlocks. There was a postern manned by a night watchman warming his hands on a brazier. The high wall surrounding the city graveyard bristled with spikes, and Elysia marveled at the fact.
In a way, the cemeteries resembled fortresses; however, she did not know if the walls were meant to keep grave robbers out, or to keep the dead in. "According to history, there have been times when the dead have not slept peacefully in their graves." She mused herself.
"This is the work of some basic primal fear." She thought her. "Something meant to separate the dead from the living." In her way, that physical barrier was reassuring, except, of course, when one intended to breach it, as was the case tonight with her and the dark hero:
"What am I doing in this place?" Elysia wondered. He should be home, in the tavern bedroom, sharing a bed with Elissa since he had finished his work for the night, instead of lurking in the shadows and preparing to break into the city cemetery, a crime whose penalty was several years in prison and an injunction from the temple.
She was sure there had to be an easier path than that. Surely someone else could take care of the problem... But she knew that wasn't true. If she and Frey didn't hunt the ratfolks, who would? They were the only people crazy enough to get involved in that kind of thing. If they didn't do it, no one else would.
The authorities seemed determined not to see the evil forces at work in their midst. The best interpretation that Elysia could make of that attitude was to attribute it to ignorance or fear. The worst possible interpretation was to think that they had a pact with the Dark Powers. How many other Fritz Helstaff held positions of trust in all the human nations? She would probably never know. In truth, all she could do was act on her own, carry out the actions that had apparently been assigned to her and the dark hero, and hope that things would turn out for the best.
What else could she do? If she left the city, the plague might spread and take the lives of Heinz, Otto, Elissa, and everyone else she knew and loved in that city. Thousands of people might die if she and the dark hero couldn't solve this riddle.
And, if she wanted to be honest with herself, she had to admit that the thought of her responsibility thrilled her as much as it frightened her. In a sense, she was like being one of the heroes of fantasy stories and novels. She found herself involved in intrigue and danger, and the stakes were high for her.
Unfortunately, unlike in novels, the stakes were all too real. It was easy for her and the dark hero to fail, and in that case death would be her reward. It was that thought, and not the night air, that made her shiver.
♦ ♦ ♦
They skirted the cemetery walls until they found a conveniently dark spot. Elysia made sure the deaf lantern she carried was securely attached to her sword belt, and then she jumped up and caught onto one of the metal spikes which she then used to pull herself up to the top of the wall. "Perhaps the spikes are just ornaments, and useless for anything else." she told herself.
The moon came out from behind the clouds, and the catgirl found herself looking out over the graveyard. The sight was eerie in the moonlight. Through the mist, the tombstones stood out like islands in a dark sea. The trees bowed like huge ogres raising their branchy arms to worship the Dark Gods. Somewhere in the distance, the light of a night guard's lantern flickered for a moment, then faded. Elysia preferred not to find out if she had left because the guard had returned to her booth, or some other, more gloomy reason. She reigned quiet. She didn't know if it was sweat or the humidity of the place that was beading her forehead.
It suddenly occurred to her that this excursion would not help to improve her cold, and the incongruity of such an idea made her want to laugh. She jerked back as Frey's powerful hand gripped her gate and with a sharp leap of her legs, she crossed to the other side. The dark hero was fast and amazingly agile when he wanted to... "and when he's sober enough." the cat girl said to herself.
"Let's get to work," she mumbled, as they dropped into the silent cemetery.
♦ ♦ ♦
They glimpsed tombstones everywhere; some were down, and others were overgrown with weeds and black rose bushes. Here and there stone inscriptions were almost visible in the moonlight. The graves were arranged in long rows, like streets of the dead. Gnarled old trees cast shadows in places, and everywhere the mist hung spectrally, sometimes becoming so thick that the eye could not penetrate it. The scent of black roses filled the air. During the day the cemetery grounds might be a pleasant place, but at night Elysia found her mind drifting too quickly to thoughts of ghosts.
It was easy to imagine the countless bodies rotting under the ground; the maggots that bored into rotting flesh and emptied the eye sockets of corpses. From that, the imagination had only to take a small leap to envision those same corpses emerging from the earth, their skeletal hands reaching up through the ground like the fingers of drowning swimmers in the sea.
She tried to push those thoughts from her mind, but found it difficult. She had seen stranger things still; she had encountered the undead in the gloomy mountains before, during the doomed journey through that place in the company of the exiled Von Deyl family. She knew that ancient dark magic was capable of restoring the dead to a hideous semblance of life and filling them with a terrible hunger for the flesh and blood of the living.
She tried to convince herself that this was sacred ground, sacred to Mortis, and that the God of Death protected those under her hand from such possibilities. But these were strange times, and she had heard dire rumors that the powers of the Gods were weakening as the power of the dark gods increased.
She told herself, however, that perhaps these things happened in remote lands like Glacia, which bordered on the Nordic tundra, and were in Bergheim, the heart of human civilization. Yet a part of her whispered to her that the corruption was there too, that all human realms were rotten to the core.
In order to calm down, she raised her eyes to Frey. The dark hero seemed undaunted, an expression of grim determination etched on his face. He held the sword ready to strike and remained motionless; he tensed his body and tilted his head to listen to the sounds of the night.
"There are a lot of strange smells tonight." Elysia commented. "Lots of strange noises. For a cemetery, it is a very crowded place."
"What do you mean?" frey asked
"There are things that move around here, and there is something bad in the air. Lots of rats in the undergrowth."
"Wonderful" Frey replied, while behind his helmet he manifested a sadistic smile. "Let's get moving. We have to find an area where there are new holes, because that's where the funerals will take place, and I think it's also where the plague comes from".