The Chromatic Chord

Laid Sicknesses

Fevers, chills, brittleness, seizures of the blood, and phantom pains laid on a body by a hostile working, which mimic ordinary sickness but come suddenly, spread to no one, and break when the working ends.

Overview

A guard drops into a sweating fever at his post with no fire in sight, and is well by morning. A laid sickness is a sickness made by a spell: heat, cold, cramp, or weakness put into a body by someone who wanted it there. Most are short and survivable. They are feared because they pass for ordinary illness, and because their makers are usually close by.

Cause

Each comes from a hostile working:

  • Fever Cast drives heat into a body: flush, weakness, delirium, a climbing fever.
  • Brittle Curse drives cold in until bone and joint lose their give.
  • Hemalock seizes the blood and the muscles, and Pulse Theft draws vigour out of a weakened body.
  • Phantom Pain makes the body feel burned, struck, or cramped without injury.
  • Harvest of Breath takes breath and stamina from a crowd.

Mob Fever is not one of them: it inflames a crowd's anger, not its bodies.

Who It Strikes

Those a caster wants out of the way: guards, rivals, duellists, informers, and crowds. Every one of these workings bites harder on the weakened, so the sick, the old, the wounded, and the starved suffer most. Peoples resist by school in line with their affinity, and hardened minds can partly disbelieve Phantom Pain.

Signs and Course

A laid sickness is told from a caught one by four things. It comes suddenly, at full strength, in a person who was well a moment before. It strikes one person, or a whole crowd at once, but does not spread through a house over the following days. It often begins when a particular person is near, and eases when they leave. And it breaks, usually within the day, as the working runs out, with none of the slow mending of a true fever.

Each has its own picture. A Fever Cast patient flushes, sweats, and raves; a Brittle Curse victim is cold to the touch, and a fall or blow breaks bone. Under Hemalock the limbs refuse to move for a few heartbeats; after Pulse Theft or Harvest of Breath the victim is grey, short of breath, and weak for the rest of the day. Phantom Pain leaves no mark at all.

Contagion

Laid sicknesses do not pass between people.

Treatment and Its Limits

Healers can counter a Fever Cast if they catch it early, and Fever Ease brings down the heat, though used too freely it leaves the patient chilled and weak. Warmth against Brittle Curse, rest, and water after a theft of breath or pulse do the rest. Each healing costs the healer, and costs less between people of the same species.

The surest cure is distance: take the patient away from the caster, or the caster away from the patient. Wards and dispelling, such as Unpicking, stop a working being renewed. Herbs for fever and sleep treat the signs as they would any fever.

Mortality

Most laid sicknesses do no lasting harm to the healthy. Pressed hard on the sick, the old, or the wounded, a Fever Cast or a Harvest of Breath can kill. A Brittle Curse leaves the bones it broke, and Phantom Pain sometimes leaves a lasting dread of the pain it imitated.

Lore and Belief

Most peoples call these "sent fevers" or "the sent sickness". Because they are real, they lend weight to the belief that all sudden illness is sent, and many a true fever has been blamed on a neighbour. Healers say: if it spreads, it was caught; if it stops, it was sent.

Healers still tell of the assassin who laid a fever on a whole wedding feast to reach one guest, and the healer who traced the sending back to its caster and burned his house down around him.

In the Medieval Era

Laid sicknesses belong to courts, cities, and wars: a poisoner's art without the poison. Assassins, interrogators, riot-breakers, and battle-mages use them; most peoples punish laying one on a person, when they can find who did it. Village healers rarely meet them, and when they do, they are likelier to blame bad air.

Where It Appears