Lyrec by Gregory Frost

chair and waited with folded arms, smugly.
    Tension rippled through the room like waves of heat. Lyrec looked at the foul-tempered, florid man uncomprehendingly. He was only dimly aware that the name referred to a population.
    He looked at Grohd across the bar, expressing his question without words. Grohd frowned and shook his head. Some people were like that, what more could he say?
    “Idiot!” The word cracked the silence. The red-faced man had been waiting for it; he had already leaned around in the chair to face his adversary. The young physician drew himself halfway across his table. “Again, how blind can you possibly be? The king came out of Ukobachia that very morning—where he had visited his father. His father , damn it. How many times must I shove the facts under your nose? Do you mean to tell me that Ronnæm was in on a plot to murder his own son and kidnap his granddaughter?”
    The other, though he had stirred the conflict, spluttered and grew redder still in anger. “Just because he lives there doesn’t mean he has to know what goes on. I told you—they plotted behind his back.”
    In the far corner of the room, Reeterkuv put his head down on his table and crossed his arms over it; the old woman sitting by herself in the opposite corner looked down at the floor in disgust; and the red-complexioned man’s own wife took her drink and very quietly crept from the table to sit farther back by herself. She tossed her husband a black look that he ignored.
    The physician tapped the side of his head. “Your brain’s gone feeble. You should move to Trufege, old man, where they’re all as dim-witted as you. A child drowns in a creek—the Kobachs caused it. The crops wither from a summer drought—the Kobachs pulled down the sun to scorch their fields.”
    “What about last winter’s plague, eh? Rats from the forest? No, that was Kobach work. Everyone knows it.”
    The young man fingered his medallion. “Tell me, you dung-minded imbecile, do you have some idea what this represents? What it means? It means I’m a physician—I had to tell you, I couldn’t wait all day for you to remember. And as a physician I study and treat illnesses and—and—plagues. So let me tell you something, let me push some knowledge through those ears of yours—”
    The old man began to make loud snoring sounds.
    “—let me give you some fact instead of myth to chew on!” His angry voice rose into a yell. “A hundred years ago the very same plague slew the Bracknils, wiped out an entire tribe!”
    The other sat up straight in his chair and pointed an accusatory finger. “That wasn’t rodents!”
    “So what?”
    “And it wasn’t in Boreshum—it was in the south, around Lake Raen.”
    “Exactly.” The physician smiled in triumph. “Disease is natural. The five human essences are thrown out of balance. Happens in different times, in different places, for different reasons—and all of them natural!” He slammed his fist on the table. “ No magic. ”
    The red-faced man’s lips crimped tightly. He sneered. “So what? That’s disease, that’s Trufege—”
    “—where you ought to live—”
    “—but that’s no answer for the king. Dekür didn’t die of plague. He died with his sword hammered through him. He was burned. All his men were dead save the one rider who escaped to tell the tale, and they say that one’s gone mad. His daughter vanished without a trace, and not one clue as to the identity of the murderers. Tell me that’s natural, oh wise man of medicine.”
    “Well, obviously it’s the work of Kobachs,” the physician agreed sarcastically. “How could anyone doubt it?”
    The other man missed the irony of the physician’s voice. “Well,” he said, “finally. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”
    “You stupid old hoar-head.”
    “You’re both fools!” It was a new voice. The old woman, sitting alone, had heard all she could tolerate. Her red puffy eyes glittered