“I think they’re afraid of quarantine, but it doesn’t seem to be passed by touch. Alec and I both have handled the sick ones before we realized what it was and we’re fine. So are the drysians taking care of them.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“People just fall down and lie there with their eyes open until they die,” Alec explained. “Do you know what could cause that?”

“Sounds like some sort of fit.” The drysian led them through the cool dark corridors to his chambers. The sitting room and bedchamber, visible through an open doorway, were austere and sparsely furnished. His private library overlooking the gardens and grove, however, was impressively stocked, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient books and racks of scrolls, with ladders for reaching the highest ones. Deep, comfortable armchairs flanked a couch in front of a black basalt fireplace carved with garlands of herbs. Another chair, more worn than the others, stood by one of the tall open windows, the table beside it already stacked with books.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Valerius said absently, already perusing a shelf.

Seregil helped himself to a gold-stamped book on herbal medicine. Alec found one filled with pictures of poisonous plants and they settled down to wait.

The drysian climbed a ladder, retrieved several weighty volumes, and sat down in the chair by the window. For nearly an hour the only sound in the room was the soft flutter of turning pages and the rustle of leaves in the grove outside.

At last, Valerius added the books to the pile on the table beside him, then consulted another book and several scrolls in quick succession. “No, nothing exactly like that. Not that lasts that long with the eyes open.”

“Care to come see for yourself?” asked Seregil, knowing full well what the answer would be.

The Harbor Way was less oven-like at this early hour, and once they reached the Lower City, a freshening sea breeze cooled their faces. The Grampus Street temple stood at the far end of the ward, near the north mole.

The Maker’s temples were always humble in comparison with those of the other Immortals of the Four, but this one, though larger than the shrines in the area, lacked even a single tree by way of a grove, just a weathered stump near the front door with a potted bay tree sitting on it. It was a low, flat-roofed stone building, and only its cleanly swept front yard and the sheaf pattern painted over the doorway set it apart from the neighboring houses. Even so, there were doves about, and the youngest acolytes in their short brown robes were spreading the morning offerings to the birds when they arrived.