Faerie Lord

Ninety-Eight

Chief Wizard Healer Danaus frowned. He was looking down on the frozen body of the Forest Princess Nymphalis, locked in stasis beside the body of her husband, Prince Pyrgus. Both showed the age ravages of temporal fever, Pyrgus more than Nymph so far – since stasis ceased to hold the fever, he had turned into an old, old man – but Nymph certainly. From a young woman she had transformed into a mature woman, a middle-aged woman really, and he had been vaguely considering increasing the intensity of the stasis field. Not that he believed it would do any good – you were either in stasis or you weren’t – but he disliked the feeling of helplessness that came when there was absolutely nothing one could do. Thus he stood staring at Nymphalis and… and she looked a little younger.

Which was impossible, of course. The temporal fever was a one-way trip. Even when stasis still stabilised it, nothing reversed the effect. So possibly he was imagining it. Wishful thinking sometimes had an influence on observation, even trained observation. All the same, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling she seemed younger. Her skin tone looked better. He could have sworn there were fewer, if only just a little fewer, wrinkles.

On impulse, Danaus stepped across to the stasis cabinet that held Pyrgus. The shock was so great that he actually gasped aloud. Pyrgus too looked younger, a lot younger. There was no possibility of a mistake. The effects of the fever were reversing.

For once Danaus forgot his dignity and ran down to the wards. But even before he reached them, the commotion told him something dramatic was happening. As he burst into the corridor nurses were scampering in all directions, healers were hurrying to and fro, but most astonishing, most amazing, most bewildering of all was the fact that patients were on their feet as well, patients who just that morning on his rounds had been lying in deep comas.

Danaus grabbed the arm of a blue-coated healer as he hurried past. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Spontaneous remissions,’ the healer told him shortly.

It was the sort of stupid thing they’d all been trained to say when they had no idea what was actually happening, ‘I can see that,’ Danaus snapped. ‘What’s caused them?’

The healer shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir.’ Then, annoyingly, he smiled. ‘But it’s great news, is it not, sir?’

Great news but bewildering. By the time Danaus had made a few cursory examinations to convince himself the effect was genuine, reports were pouring in from outside of "spontaneous remissions" throughout the capital city. He had not the slightest doubt that similar news from the surrounding country would be arriving soon.

With so many patients suddenly recovering, the administration burden was heavy and it was late afternoon before he suddenly remembered Nymph and Pyrgus were still in stasis. And hot on the heels of that realisation came another: Madame Cardui was in stasis too. He’d had her placed there as a matter of course for a woman her age even though all the evidence was it would no longer hold back her disease. What else could he do? Stasis might have staved off her inevitable death for a few more hours. Or she might be dead already.

Or possibly she’d undergone a spontaneous remission like all the rest.

He was on his way to find out when someone told him Queen Blue had returned to the Purple Palace.