Demon Lord of Karanda
carried it to construction sites, and their fellow workmen carried it home to other parts of the city. Customers gave it to merchants, who in turn gave it to other customers. The most casual contact was usually sufficient to cause infection.
The dead had at first been numbered in the dozens, but by the end of the week hundreds had fallen ill. The houses of the sick were boarded up despite the weak cries of the inhabitants from within. Grim carts rumbled through the streets, and workmen with camphor-soaked cloths about their lower faces picked up the dead with long hooks.
The bodies were stacked in the carts like logs of wood, conveyed to cemeteries, and buried without rites in vast common graves. The streets of Mal Zeth became deserted as the frightened citizens barricaded themselves inside their houses.
There was some concern inside the palace, naturally, but the palace, walled as it was, was remote from the rest of the city. As a further precaution, however, the Emperor ordered that no one be allowed in or out of the compound. Among those locked inside were several hundred workmen who had been hired by Baron Vasca, the Chief of the Bureau of Commerce, to begin the renovations of the bureau offices.
It was about noon on the day after the locking of the palace gates that Garion, Polgara, and Belgarath were summoned to an audience with Zakath. They entered his study to find him gaunt and hollow-eyed, poring over a map of the imperial city. "Come in. Come in," he said when they arrived. They entered and sat down in the chairs he indicated with an absent wave of his hand.
"You look tired," Polgara noted.
"I haven't slept for the past four days," Zakath admitted. He looked wearily at Belgarath. "You say that you're seven thousand years old?"
"Approximately, yes."
"You've lived through pestilence before?"
"Several times."
"How long does it usually last?"
"It depends on which disease it is. Some of them run their course in a few months. Others persist until everybody in the region is dead. Pol would know more about that than I would. She's the one with all the medical experience."
"Lady Polgara?" the Emperor appealed to her.
"I'll need to know the symptoms before I can identify the disease," she replied.
Zakath burrowed through the litter of documents on the table in front of him. "Here it is." He picked up a scrap of parchment and read from it. "High fever, nausea, vomiting. Chills, profuse sweating, sore throat, and headache. Finally delirium, followed shortly by death."
She looked at him gravely. "That doesn't sound too good," she said. "Is there anything peculiar about the bodies after they've died?"
"They all have an awful grin on their faces," he told her, consulting his parchment.
She shook her head. "I was afraid of that."
"What is it?"
"A form of plague."
"Plague?" His face had gone suddenly pale. "I thought there were swellings on the body with that. This doesn't mention that." He held up the scrap of parchment.
"There are several different varieties of the disease, Zakath. The most common involves the swellings you mentioned. Another attacks the lungs. The one you have here is quite rare, and dreadfully virulent."
"Can it be cured?"
"Not cured, no. Some people manage to survive it, but that's probably the result of mild cases of their body's natural resistance to disease. Some people seem to be immune. They don't catch it no matter how many times they've been exposed."
"What can I do?"
She gave him a steady look. "You won't like this," she told him.
"I like the plague even less."
"Seal up Mal Zeth. Seal the city in the same way that you've sealed the palace."
"You can't be serious!"
"Deadly serious. You have to keep the infection confined to Mal Zeth, and the only way to do that is to prevent people from carrying the disease out of the city to other places." Her face was bleak. "And when I say to seal the city, Zakath, I mean totally. Nobody leaves."
"I've got an empire to run, Polgara. I can't seal myself up here and just let it run itself. I have to get messengers in and send orders out."
"Then, inevitably, you will rule an empire of the dead. The symptoms of the disease don't begin to show up until a week or two after the initial infection, but during the last several days of that period, the carrier is already dreadfully contagious. You can catch it from somebody who looks and feels perfectly healthy. If you send out messengers, sooner or later one of them will be infected,
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