Sneak preview of Plague & Poison
This is the start of the first chapter of Plague & Poison, the sequel to Death & Magic. Read the complete chapter at my website.
Adramal knelt by the old man’s body and closed her eyes. That cut out the sights of death – the staring eyes, the unkempt hair, the shrivelled and rat-gnawed flesh. She couldn’t do anything to block the smell. Her stomach fluttered and then settled. That was one thing to be said for working in the City Watch – if you stuck with it, you got tougher. Not so long ago, the mere thought of being this close to such a disgusting corpse would have had her wanting to puke. Now, this poor fellow was just another part of her job.
She focused her attention inward, calming the surface of her mind to the smoothness of a still pond. A familiar, reassuring sequence of abstract thoughts came together in the space she’d cleared. Magic gathered from the corners of the room, eager to obey.
To her mind’s eye, the shape of the old man’s body appeared as a soft white glow, fuzzy and indistinct. It had no bright spots, which would have signified recent wounds. She tried not to form any opinions about what that meant – not even to allow any feelings about it, not yet. She let go of the spell’s thoughts, and it frayed and fell apart, as if it had never been. She paused and took a few shallow breaths, drawing in as little of the foul air as possible. Opening her eyes, she cast another spell. This one might give more information than the first, but she had to touch the corpse for it to work.
She hesitated. What if he’d died of something contagious?
Well, what if he had? She had a job to do. If she caught the disease, she could work out a cure before it got too bad. She shuddered as she touched his forehead. Her spell revealed the skull, as if she was touching it and not the worm-eaten flesh above it. But the messages from her fingertips about what they were really touching were strong enough to interfere with the information the spell presented. It was as if the man’s flesh was flowing like mud around her fingertips, exposing the bone, then reforming when she moved on. She squirmed and put more power into the spell, drowning out the sensations of his flesh.
She found no injuries to his skull or neck, nor his arms, ribs and legs. She let go of this spell and cast another that showed the major organs. Maggots wriggled in most of them, well along their way to devouring him. A cough forced itself through her lips. Acid burned at the back of her throat as she pulled her hands away, panting. She fought the urge to see whether anything had stuck to her.
“Are you all right, Lady?”
Sighing, she let go of the spell and turned to face the Watchman who stood in the doorway. He was barely older than her, in the Watch no more than a year. From the way he fidgeted, he was as anxious to finish here as she was.
“This is definitely the worst I’ve seen,” she said. That wasn’t true, of course. But she couldn’t tell him about that. Couldn’t tell anybody.
If you enjoyed this, read the rest of the chapter at my website.
Adramal knelt by the old man’s body and closed her eyes. That cut out the sights of death – the staring eyes, the unkempt hair, the shrivelled and rat-gnawed flesh. She couldn’t do anything to block the smell. Her stomach fluttered and then settled. That was one thing to be said for working in the City Watch – if you stuck with it, you got tougher. Not so long ago, the mere thought of being this close to such a disgusting corpse would have had her wanting to puke. Now, this poor fellow was just another part of her job.
She focused her attention inward, calming the surface of her mind to the smoothness of a still pond. A familiar, reassuring sequence of abstract thoughts came together in the space she’d cleared. Magic gathered from the corners of the room, eager to obey.
To her mind’s eye, the shape of the old man’s body appeared as a soft white glow, fuzzy and indistinct. It had no bright spots, which would have signified recent wounds. She tried not to form any opinions about what that meant – not even to allow any feelings about it, not yet. She let go of the spell’s thoughts, and it frayed and fell apart, as if it had never been. She paused and took a few shallow breaths, drawing in as little of the foul air as possible. Opening her eyes, she cast another spell. This one might give more information than the first, but she had to touch the corpse for it to work.
She hesitated. What if he’d died of something contagious?
Well, what if he had? She had a job to do. If she caught the disease, she could work out a cure before it got too bad. She shuddered as she touched his forehead. Her spell revealed the skull, as if she was touching it and not the worm-eaten flesh above it. But the messages from her fingertips about what they were really touching were strong enough to interfere with the information the spell presented. It was as if the man’s flesh was flowing like mud around her fingertips, exposing the bone, then reforming when she moved on. She squirmed and put more power into the spell, drowning out the sensations of his flesh.
She found no injuries to his skull or neck, nor his arms, ribs and legs. She let go of this spell and cast another that showed the major organs. Maggots wriggled in most of them, well along their way to devouring him. A cough forced itself through her lips. Acid burned at the back of her throat as she pulled her hands away, panting. She fought the urge to see whether anything had stuck to her.
“Are you all right, Lady?”
Sighing, she let go of the spell and turned to face the Watchman who stood in the doorway. He was barely older than her, in the Watch no more than a year. From the way he fidgeted, he was as anxious to finish here as she was.
“This is definitely the worst I’ve seen,” she said. That wasn’t true, of course. But she couldn’t tell him about that. Couldn’t tell anybody.
If you enjoyed this, read the rest of the chapter at my website.
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