On the eighth day, three men and two women sickened. Arlen swore. The people telling him this reported with wide eyes, telling him of people waking up feverish and weak. "We all might be next!"

"Stand fast," Arlen said, with more confidence than he felt. "We have healers and the knowledge to minimize the harm."

Voz had commanded Arlen to make a hospital shelter. He'd worked with the chief to scout out a remote area on the island, in fact the place where there'd been a hermit's hut with an arrow in it, and try to make sure no foreigners were watching. With them screening him, Arlen raised a living space for a hundred unlucky souls. Now that it was complete, Arlen and Voz led a party to carry the sickest ones on stretchers. They passed along the new cross-island road and set people down in the strange building.

An exhausted man leaned against the wall, saying, "What do we do? I've never seen so much effort go into healing. A whole palace!"

Arlen smiled reassuringly. "In other lands this is a way to protect everyone and make sure healers can tend to everyone. Once you're better, you can help treat others. Especially if you know how."

"I'm supposed to be out there fishing."

Voz said, "Give it time. There's no shame in letting yourself recover."

That was the first batch. Voz had them settle in with food, water, and blankets, and Arlen set them up with a board game, a ball to kick around, and some wood and whittling knives and basket-weaving reeds. Outside, he said to Voz, "Another advantage of learning to read: having plenty to do while bedridden!"

Voz said, "I could always review the old medical texts and myths, I suppose. We might be lying there in bed within days ourselves."

"I hate to suggest it, but there's the danger of our guests taking advantage of that."

"Then I'll pray for your health."

#

Over the next two days, dozens of the islanders sickened. Voz was hard pressed. He had healing that much surpassed Arlen's magic in that area. While he and Arlen themselves remained healthy, the island's best doctor was down and barely useful. So were his apprentice and the island's chief. Really, nobody knew much about disease except in vague terms of evil spirits, of the invisible kind. Arlen had explained what he knew, of course, but he was no physician and couldn't be sure that disease even worked the same way in this world. His advice got received with some skepticism but the docs pretended, when anyone was listening, that he'd brought a miracle cure.

The foreign sailors lived in their fort and aboard ship, watched by spies working for Voz. It was on the third night that a man ran to Arlen's hut by the hospital, and said, "There's been a fight!"

He ran toward town and arrived wheezing. The outsiders had retreated to their fort and were perched on the low walls, brandishing their guns. Six islanders had been pulled to the treeline to be treated by what few medics were available.

Arlen shouted for attention. "What is this?"

"They're trying to kill us all!" said one of the wounded.

Arlen went over to them to apply what treatment he could. Gunshot wounds and stabbings and lesser injuries. The primitive guns used big, slow round bullets that cracked bones. He focused on removing the lead balls and stopping the bleeding. Rum got splashed around liberally as anesthetic and antiseptic. Only when the patients had all gotten some magical treatment did he turn back toward the fort.

The sailors had already sent an emissary. The unarmed man was coming closer, waving a circular thing as some kind of truce symbol. He said, "Arlen! No hurt!"

He handed Arlen a written message in their cobbled-together Mariv/Builder/Islander pidgin. It said, "Mariv not why disease happened. No harm wanted. Let us heal you."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

An offer of medical help. The men around Arlen had explained their perspective: they'd caught a sailor group doing some suspicious ritual with glass instruments (probably just surveying) and accused them of causing sickness by magic. Several guys got stabbed.

There was a ticking bomb on Catacomb Island, too, even if contact had been minimal. _All_ the islands were basically doomed to have a medical crisis and it could, at best, be delayed so that a team of immune or recovered medics could be on hand to minimize the harm. In the days of treatment and study, Arlen had gotten no clear sign of a way to do even a crude vaccine or other preventive measures. No convenient blisters or the like.

Arlen told the messenger, "Bring your healers."

#

Voz and Arlen left Opaline behind in the care of the sailors' few medically trained people. The agreement was that there'd be no retaliation for the brawl. Singer Alfons the priest was one of the magic-users who'd stay to tend people. He was also the best so far at understanding the island language. Before Arlen left, the man told him, "We'll do our best here, but some will likely die. If you hear anyone say that the gods want to wipe the islands clean and give them to us, we don't all believe that!"

"Who believes that, exactly?"

Alfons hesitated. "Captain Huygens has muttered it. He hasn't been the only one."

Voz was nearby. "What do you want, priest?"

"I want to understand the Builders. And to teach you of the gods."

"What a great introduction we've had to their kindness!"

The priest's cheeks burned. "The sickness isn't their doing. We'll fix this, in their name."

#

The trip back to Catacomb took time. During a lull with uncooperative wind, Arlen dived and created a tiny waystation island. "Some comfort to future travelers, anyway."

Voz said, "Would you put these things everywhere?"

"So long as they're not a navigation hazard and don't tear up much of the seabed, why not?"

"These outsiders think they can come here and lecture us about their gods even while they're getting us killed."

Arlen turned to speak to him, but Voz was already holding up one palm, placating him. "I don't mind what you're doing. What would have happened if you hadn't demanded this travel restriction? It sounds like, the plague would've hit everywhere at once and collapsed our society. Nobody knowing what's happening, nobody available to bring food and water." He shuddered. "If we must suffer through this, I'm grateful we at least have you to ease it."

Arlen nodded. "Given that Mariv had the curiosity to come here, and they know hardly more about medicine than our people do, the disaster couldn't be prevented. Once we get through it, I want peaceful trade. It should be up to you and the island chiefs how much contact you want with Mariv. Which means you must be strong enough that they can't dictate the terms. Especially not while we're down on one knee from sickness."

#

Meadow was the one to greet him when he approached shore, and she looked pale and frazzled. Using a sound-amplifying wind spell, she said, "That bastard Joop managed to spread the disease anyway! We need help."

They landed. The island was eerily quiet. The golems, once a fixture of the place, weren't in sight but for one that sat idle. The fields of recently replanted crops went untended. Voz asked Meadow, "How many?"

"Over a hundred sick already. The chief broke all contact as soon as she found Joop and his idiots got here, and tried to push away everyone they'd met, but that didn't totally prevent this. They've got some fishers on the far shore and that's about it."

"Did anyone travel from here?"

"Not yet. We think."

The chief had to be helped outside by one of her nephews, who was himself looking pained. "This plague got to me anyway, somehow. Your storm shelter is our healing hut; get to it."

Voz and Arlen got to work. Scores of people were quietly moaning and murmuring in the stone building or in nearby huts and tents. The two magic-users had help from the local people who'd been the least harmed, who were trying to comfort everyone. Healing spells didn't outright purge this ailment but were good for cleaning, fever, and general well-being in a way Arlen didn't understand. He did what he could.

It began to rain again. Not a monstrous storm this time, but enough that he decided to expand the hospital. Despite the noise he went out and added new rooms that he pulled up from the earth. That let people spread out more. But there'd be more, possibly far more, before it passed.

He went to Captain Joop. He, his two sailors, and the two natives who'd come with him were still confined to a single hut. The islander duo were the only sick ones. Joop himself looked ragged from lack of sleep and from confinement. He said, "Let me out so I can fix."

"Do you understand what you did, by being here?"

The captain looked aside. "The islands would be hit anyway. The longer you wait, the more pain."

"You don't understand. Stay, then, till the people here heal." Arlen turned away.

The islanders with him protested. "We get it, war-chief! We'll stay on the island and only help tend the sick."

"Yeah, all right. You two, come out."

Joop and his sailors tried to push their way out with them. Arlen fumed. This idiot wanted to be a big shot? He asked the islanders, "Do these three have magic?"

"Joop uses wind."

Arlen began shaping the stone prison, forming bars. Joop said, "The kingdom will hear of this!" and only a spearman at the door kept him from escaping. Arlen trapped the three.

The good news was that the pair of islanders, hardy men who'd been exposed earlier, said they were feeling no worse today. "Maybe it's not the end," one said.

"We'll make sure it's not."