Worlds Without End Read Online Free PDF Page A

color of my skin was hardly commented upon.
    But here among these backwards Englishmen with their pasty skin and bad teeth I was something to be feared, hated, and possibly killed. And the place they’d put me in might well do that.
    It was called the Tower, but, of course, it wasn’t. More like several castles and towers collected together. Not that I’d had much of a chance to see any of it. I’d been brought here in the middle of the night and hadn’t seen much of the light of day since. Sometimes I wondered if anyone even remembered I was there.
    Once a day a jailer slid a plate of bread and porridge through the grate. I could hear him muttering catechisms under his breath. It would do him little good and likely lose him his head, given the political mood. But don’t we all fall back upon the icons from our youth? The stories we recite to keep the monsters at bay.
    And that was how I knew I must appear. Oh, I’d lost the pointed ears, thank goodness. The more obvious signs of my elven condition were muted now. Magic was at a low ebb, though for some reason belief in it had never been higher. There were more charlatans and mountebanks claiming to turn lead into gold than you could swing a dead cat at. And they did a great bit of that, too. To drive out the demons.
    Demons like me with my black skin and my white hair. My hair I could dye. Luckily, my eyes had changed to a brownish-gray color; otherwise I’d probably already be dead. What would they make of Vistrosh and his ceathral skin and pink eyes? I wondered.
    But here I was locked up tighter than a miser’s hoard.
    And how had I come to be here? My own weaknesses, as usual.
    “Help us.” I’d heard.
    I looked down and saw a young child, a girl, maybe eight. She wore a ragged tunic and her feet were bare and dirty. What desperation drove her to ask for help from any passing stranger? Much less one who looked like me.
    “They’re sick.” she said.
    “Who is sick?” I asked.
    “Everyone.” she replied. “Everyone except me.”
    But she didn’t look well herself. Her eyes were bright and glassy and as I drew closer, I could feel the heat of fever radiating off her.
    “Please.” she said. Her hands reached out and I thought she might actually touch me, but she pulled away.
    “What makes you think I could do any good?” I asked.
    “Someone has to.” she replied. “Or I’ll be all alone. They’ll ... die.”
    I didn’t want to help them. For as far back as I could remember I’d been trying to keep out of these things. To let Fate take her own course. It wasn’t for me to decide. There were other matters that needed my attention. But as I looked into that pale feverish face another child came to my mind, and I found myself being led into the rude thatched hut.
    The air was thick with the odor of a low-burning peat fire. There was a hole cut in the roof to let the smoke escape, but that only helped a little. Pallets lined the edge of the room. On them lay several people, all of whom were in various stages of the same sickness.
    The grippe.
    Why these people were so, ill from it I didn’t know. It was a common enough problem—not as frightening as the plague or cholera, which could pass through a town and leave it devastated in a matter of days or weeks.
    At my feet lay an elderly woman. I knelt down beside her and took her wrist in my hand. Under my fingers her pulse felt erratic. I was closer to the power here; the pull of it too tempting to resist. As my eyes closed I began to see the pattern of her life. Thin and threadbare. Bleak colors woven together with an odd shock of bright blue.
    It was so difficult to hold on to what I was seeing. The images were blurred and hazy, slipping away from me if I hesitated for a moment. But, healing her would be simple enough, I saw suddenly. It had been so long since I’d taken the risk. Since I’d wanted to.
    There was a faint sound. It broke my concentration and I turned toward it. There, shadowed in