Before they turned the corner onto Temple Row, Tilly was hit by the smell. It was more than the funk of hundreds of unwashed bodies kept in one place for too long. The air was thick with a tang of rot that settled suffocatingly around Tilly's nose and would not dissipate no matter how he tried to cover the orifice. He marched forward dutifully following Amelia's vector as she angled for the corner of a building that sat on the intersection of Devotion and Temple Row.
Soon after the smell came the sounds of shouting,
“Please, she is dying!”
“Light's Mercy, is there no one left to perform the Purification?”
“Where is the Lady Light now that we need her?!?”
Tilly stayed in stride with Amelia and they slowed as the temple came into view. There were hundreds of petitioners in the street around the entrance to a squat stone structure with a tall tower emerging from its center, shining with a steady light. Everyone in the crowd was either escorting someone who was extremely sick or on death’s door themselves. Most of the crowd was pitiful to look upon, but a few continued to cry out in rage and despair to haggard-looking clergy at the entrance of the temple and their grim guards.
“Have mercy Mother!”
“We know you keep the best magics for yourselves, it's time to open up!”
An elderly clergyman was moving through the crowd handing out linens and water and his head cocked up wearily at that last call, “How many times must we tell you! The Mother Superior is only able to cast so many times a day. We must let her rest between healings or the only reliable way to be cured will be gone!” He shouted in the direction of the last voice of malcontent.
Tilly looked over at Amelia, wondering where she wanted to start, but her face betrayed her surprise at the sight. When she looked over at him, it was with an expression of chagrin and guilt.
“This is much worse than it was two days ago. If we move into this crowd and start healing, we will be mobbed. I had hoped to get to work without garnering too much attention. But it seems like this will be impossible to do and remain completely anonymous.” She said softly, chewing on her lip, eyes shooting back to the crowd as she tried to think of a way forward that didn't end in chaos.
Tilly’s face settled down into heavy grim lines as he read the situation, “The temple is locked up tight to give the healers time to rest, and if we start working on the people out here we might get mobbed. Even if we don’t get rushed once we start, there is zero chance of not being found out by those in the city who want me dead...”
Amelia’s eyes widened as she suddenly stopped chewing her lip and looked back at the elderly man making his way through the crowd,
“If they are limiting entry, maybe we can use that to our advantage. I think I can get us in, and if we can convince the clergy to work with us, then we can pose you as another faceless priest and heal as many as possible, hopefully without being found out.”
At this Tilly shrugged, it was better than risking a mob. He had seen a few of those in his day and they were no joke. Add magical bullshit into the mix and he was absolutely sure it was something he did not want to mess with.
“Let's go for it. Hiro didn't seem too hot about me revealing myself to this Temple, but it's probably the best of our options.” Tilly said, shrugging the hood of his cloak even deeper over his features.
Amelia gave him a half-hearted smile, “I should not have brought this option to the table so flippantly. I hadn’t thought this through nearly enough. Move over to that wall across from the crowd and I'll be back, hopefully with a way in.”
Tilly nodded his assent and Amelia moved down the street and through the crowd. Tilly had lost sight of the older clergyman and hunkered down against the thick stone wall of the building across the street while waiting for Amelia to return. He idily looked up and down the road noting that there were not many temples in the temple district, and almost none of them were as well maintained as the towering temple of light at its center.
The temple’s wall he leaned on supported a curvy structure made up of domes and arches that was topped by a statue of a richly dressed dwarf holding a hammer in one hand and a scale in the other. The compound looked ornate, but the walled gates to get in were firmly shut. Tilly guessed it was a deity for craftsmanship or commerce or something…
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Just then Tilly heard the voice of the elderly clergyman ring out tiredly from the midst of the crowd,
“Alright, that's all the water and linens I have, the guards are going to come through and collect the ones from yesterday. Do not give them any trouble and for the Lady’s Sake, please don't hold on to what we gave you yesterday, we will cleanse them and bring them back out as soon as we can. Dirty and diseased bandages will not help any of your cases.” At his words, two of the guards moved to a couple of very large wheelbarrows at the bottom of the steps and lifted glowing face coverings to mask themselves against the crowd.
Tilly couldn’t see where the elderly clergyman was, but he saw the two guards begin to move through the crowd and receive the discolored linens from the sick and their keepers. Anxious murmurs rolled through the people as they unwrapped and uncovered sick family members or infected limbs. Then the process was broken by wailing in the distance,
“Father! Father, answer me! Oh Gods he's dead. We have been here for two days with nothing but rags given for our trouble and now he is dead!” The voice was growing more frantic by the minute, and the energy of the crowd was starting to shift. Other yells started to rise up indistinctly from the crowd, and Tilly was afraid he was about to see them break out into a riot. A very sickly riot.
Then the haggard-looking woman in white robes stepped forward from the entrance of the temple. She had not spoken yet in Tilly’s hearing, but instead of trying to gain control of the crowd she simply raised her hands and staff before starting to chant. A golden light radiated from her and the crowd closest to her quieted as it washed over them.
The priestess gritted her teeth as she chanted and more light flowed out from her in bursts of concentric light. This had a more powerful effect than any sort of violent crowd control Tilly could have imagined and everyone fell silent as the light washed over them all. Even Tilly felt a distant echo of the massive area effect.
Warmth trickled into his body where the light touched his skin and it moved through him relaxing knots in his shoulders and easing the last of his headache. If this was the edge of the working, what was it like in the center of the area of effect?
Suddenly the chanting cut off, as blood trickled down from the priestess' nose and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. The crowd seemed mollified and then even concerned as she collapsed on the steps in front of the main entrance. The guards surrounded her in a protective formation even as the clergyman’s voice rang out in anger,
“Light have mercy, Dinah! You were supposed to only be supervising.” He shouted as he rushed through the crowd. Once he arrived, the formation broke and his hand lit up with more minor magics. He rattled off some orders to a pair of guards who gently lifted the priestess and took her inside. He then turned and addressed the crowd.
“Look, I know you are suffering. This is not easy for any of us, but in case what you just saw didn't make it clear. We are doing everything we possibly can to fight this. Only our most senior members can completely cure you, and they are pushing far past their limits with the support of the rest of us. Please remain calm, we will see as many of you as we can today.” He said, some of the fire leaving his expression as he scanned the crowd before looking farther and farther out until he found Tilly across the street. Even at this distance, Tilly could feel the curiosity burgeoning on his brow.
Just as Tilly processed the look, Amelia appeared back at the edge of the crowd and made her way over to him, “Mateus is the steward of the temple and he has been by the shop several times to restock when their normal shipments were delayed or short. He says he is willing to get you in without being seen, but he stressed that we had better be telling the truth. I assured him we could deliver on what we promised, and even with our relationship, I'm not sure he would have relented if I hadn’t told him you were another human... That got his attention.” She said, turning and eyeing the crowd warily.
“So is there a back entrance we need to get to or something?” Tilly asked, craning his neck from his position to try and spot some previously unnoticed alleyway.
“Uh… I'm afraid not. The plan is somewhat more involved than that. I hope you are as resistant to this infection as your magic seems to be.” She said, digging her hands through her pockets. Tilly stared at her for a moment as she flashed an apologetic smile his way and gestured for them to move toward the outskirts of the crowd.
As they quietly arrived at the edge, Tilly saw the cart approach, piled high with soiled linens and the bones of the plan clicked into place. He looked over sharply to Amelia, who was tying a thick square of cloth over her airway that had several more of the deodorant balls tucked into cleverly sewn pockets in the center.
After she finished, she handed him a similar cloth and a few more of the fragrant herb bundles. Her eyes were serious, and Tilly caught the slightest hint of a challenge in them as he moved to follow her lead.
The guard kept moving toward them, and the Mateus’ voice rang out from the steps, “I have just been informed that we will start seeing patients again in the next few minutes. Each of you has a number and you will report to the guards when called. If you make trouble or try and harm another child of Light, we will confiscate your number. If you do not have a number, please report to the guards and one will be issued to you shortly.”
This was clearly a speech he had given many times, but still, the crowd broke into orderly action. Maybe it was part of the magic of the priestess, or maybe it was guilt over what had followed, but they moved into orderly queues, and in all the shuffling, a guard looked the other way as two humans hopped into the back of the cart and covered themselves in damp and discolored linens of various shapes and sizes.