What Moves the Dead (41)







CHAPTER 13


The house burned for two days. Denton and I, dead on our feet, took shifts turning back anyone trying to extinguish it. I must have slept at some point but I honestly have no memory of it.

I listened to the roar of the fire and thought of Roderick saying, “I know exactly where I would place the match.”

If the tarn glowed, it was swallowed up by the orange reflections.

At last, when there was clearly no saving the house or anything in it, we went to the village inn. I slept for eighteen hours straight, waking only to drink cold tea and piss it out again. Surely if the water had been boiled for tea, it would be safe. Surely.

When I finally got up, I checked the mirror for any sign of white wool on my tongue. I couldn’t see any.

I stumbled down to the common room and found Denton huddled near the fire. “You look like I feel,” I told him.

“What a coincidence,” he said. “I feel about how you look.”

I collapsed into the other chair by the fire. The innkeeper brought me a mug of something. It was hot. That was all I cared about.

We sat there and I drank whatever was in the mug and slowly felt human again. It was not an unmixed blessing. It meant that I could think again, and my thoughts were a horror. Judging by the circles under Denton’s eyes, his weren’t much better.

“I keep thinking of what it could do,” said Denton.

“Take us over, you mean?”

“Not just that.” Denton hitched his chair a little closer. “It could move people around. It was learning to talk. Suppose it got better at it. Good enough that no one gave it a second thought. Suppose it spread.”

The chill in my bones seemed to radiate outward. “It could go anywhere,” I said softly. “Reproduce itself. We’d be at its mercy. Just extensions of it, like the hares.”

Denton nodded.

Madeline had said that the tarn meant no harm. Probably neither did rabies. We could not risk humanity on the continued goodwill of an infant monster that could puppet the dead.

I grabbed the poker and stirred up the log, trying to warm myself. “How do we know it’s not in us already?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe if we don’t get a lungful of lake water, we might be all right. It seems to start in the lungs. And Madeline kept going back to the water, maybe to … I don’t know, maybe so the bit that was in her could talk to the bit in the lake. So maybe if we can destroy what’s in the lake somehow…” He trailed off. I wondered if there was enough alcohol in the village to cleanse the lake, or, hell, if there was enough alcohol in all of Gallacia.

“How the hell do we destroy a lake?” I asked, as the front door opened.

“Well,” said Angus, stamping his feet on the mat, “the wagonload of sulfur we brought seems like a good start.”



* * *



“Twelve hundred pounds of sulfur!?” I stared from Angus to Miss Potter and back again. “Where did you get—how did you get—?!”

Miss Potter had clearly traveled hard and suffered for it. Her hair was a wild gray tangle and there were immense bags under her eyes. Yet her back was as ramrod straight and her upper lip as stiff as ever, and I was inordinately glad to see both.

Angus looked like Angus. Angus always looks like Angus.

“Sulfur,” said Miss Potter primly, “is used in the treatment of scab, rust, and a number of other fungal ailments affecting fruit trees. When it became abundantly clear that the authorities were not going to listen to anything we had to say, we stopped by several of the orchards farther down the valley. This is, I am told, the very finest Sicilian sulfur, which is considered superior to the American sort.”

“Madam,” said Denton, “while normally I might try to defend the honor of my countrymen, at this moment I could kiss both you and your Sicilian sulfur.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” grumbled Angus, “or I’ll call you out, Doctor.” And Miss Potter actually blushed.

“Where’s Hob?” I asked, as we went outside.

“Down the valley, standing surety for the return of the wagon and team.” Hob was worth three times as much as the pair of draft horses standing in harness, but this was definitely not the time to quibble. The two feather-footed brutes could pull, that was certain. The wagon was piled high with sacks but they did not shirk, not even when the four of us climbed on as well. Angus took up the reins.

To my surprise, Aaron joined us. Angus nodded to him. His face was lean and he looked as weary as the rest of us.

“We’re poisoning the lake,” said Denton bluntly.

“Oh, aye?”

I closed my eyes while Denton explained about a fungal disease in the lake that caused madness. It was as good an explanation as any, and close to true.

Aaron considered this. “Not surprised, sir. We’ve known that lake’s bad since my grandfather’s day.”

“You and Mary should take care,” said Denton carefully. “It may be spread by drinking the lake water.”

I could hear the disbelief in the man’s voice. “Nobody drinks that water, sir.”

Denton paused. “But in the house…?”

“There’s a well. A good deep one.”

I turned my face away so that no one would see the tears of relief running down it.

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