The Ruined City Read Online Free PDF

overwhelming the salt tang of the sea. Swelling the dark breath of the great funeral pyres that burned night and day was the smoke of innumerable incense burners and herbal fires employed to ward off the pestilence. The utility of these secondary blazes remained unproven, but their contribution to the general atmosphere was undeniable. Everywhere, the sharp prophylactic perfumes mingled uncomfortably with the airborne remnants of the dead.
    The pungent miasma infiltrated every cranny and crevice of the city, from the twisted narrow lanes of the Spidery, to the respectably sedate parks and courtyards of the center, to the elevated mansions of the august Clouds, and then went even farther, pushing beyond the warehouses and taverns of the waterfront, out into the harbor to shroud the colossal figure of the Searcher, obscuring his bronze features and dimming the light of his great lantern. All Vitrisians, both human and other, seemed to bend beneath the atmosphere, whose weight and sad density lent them the insubstantiality of ghosts. Sound was likewise smothered beneath the charcoal pall. The rumble of wheels and the clop of hooves on cobbles, the sigh of the sea breezes, the tolling of bells, the clank of hammers on anvils, the crackle of fires great and small, the screeching of gulls and Scarlet Gluttons, the barking of dogs, and above all, the vocal babble of humanity—all was suppressed in volume and oddly remote. The air was harsh and cold, but riddled with unexpected pockets and puffs of warmth, carried from the insatiable pyres.
    There was no escape from the smoke. Respecting neither power nor privilege, it pressed its weight against the walls and windows of the Cityheart itself, seeping in through invisible breaches to claim the stronghold of the Taerleezi conquerors as its own. The adjoining Plaza of Proclamation and its tributary avenues were likewise swathed in grey, their inhabitants veiled in deep anonymity.
    And therefore, the eccentricity of two dim wavering figuresinitially went unnoticed. They were similar in size, shape, and slightly hunchbacked posture. Their skulls were flat and hairless, their golden eyes prominent, their air sacs flaccid. Both were identically liveried in purple velvet heavily embellished with gold, these colors identifying them as property of the Governor Anzi Uffrigo’s household.
    The two Sishmindris were making their way across the plaza toward the Cityheart, their owner’s residence. A commonplace sight; many liveried amphibians traversed the area at all hours of the day and night. This particular pair, however, were distinguished by their curiously unsteady gait. Both wobbled and staggered for all the world like drunken human beings. But they were not drunk. It had never been necessary to pass a law officially forbidding Sishmindris the pleasures of wine; no power in the world would induce the creatures to swallow alcohol.
    On they pressed, stumbling, now clinging to one another for mutual support, great eyes vacant and seemingly blind. And still they attracted little attention, for the human world was frequently unseeing, until one of them faltered and fell. For a moment he lay motionless, then his limbs began to twitch and jerk, his head thrashed from side to side, and a spray of blue-green froth bubbled upon his lipless mouth. At sight of this, his companion raised a croaking outcry, easily recognizable even to those unfamiliar with the amphibian tongue as an expression of distress, and the interested citizens began to gather.
    “Rabies,” opined an onlooker.
    “Or worse,” came the ominous reply.
    As if in confirmation of unspoken collective fear, the fallen Sishmindri began to tug at the purple velvet garments that seemed to be suffocating him. Presently he managed to tear them away, exposing a dry-skinned, feverish body marked with distinctively tri-lobed dusky carbuncles; the signature of the plague.
    A gasping agitation stirred the circle of human witnesses,for this