The Godborn

Chapter Eight

Gerak awoke shivering, face down in the sodden whipgrass, the taste of Sembia’s wretched soil in his mouth. He lifted himself to all fours, his body rebelling at even that slight exertion, and forced himself to his feet. The rain had stopped. He eyed the dark slate of the sky, the shadowpolluted air. How long had he been asleep? Was it evening? He’d completely lost his sense of time.

He blinked away his exhaustion, slapped his face a few times, and started moving again. Thinking of Elle, of the baby, brought him strength. Exertion warmed his body, loosened his muscles, and soon he was making good progress. He alternately ran, jogged, or walked, stopping only to drink.

He saw the village’s elms ahead, their massive height materializing out of the shadowy fog like columns supporting the sky. He did not smell any chimney fires, and their absence caused him a pang of concern.

He found the road that led through the gateway elms and picked up his pace. He was running by the time he entered the village.

Twenty paces in, he found a body. Or the pieces of a body. A headless torso lay in the street, the entrails spilling into the mud. Torn clothing, partially eaten flesh. The rest of the remains lay scattered elsewhere in the road, a head, an arm.

He stared at it for a long moment, unable to process what he was seeing. When the reality finally registered, bile rose and he vomited.

Another body lay nearby, the throat torn open, the abdomen split and emptied, the ribs visible.

A dead cow lay in a nearby pen, flayed, the exposed muscles glistening wetly, the poor creature’s mouth frozen open in a scream of agony.

Gerak couldn’t breathe. His heart was a drum in his chest. His vision blurred. He feared he would vomit again.

Something had come in from the plains, it must have, and attacked the village-some horror created by the Shadovar.

He started running for his cottage, heading around the edge of the village, spitting puke as he ran. He slowed enough to draw his sword, his fist white around the hilt. A buzz filled his ears, the muffled, internal roar of growing panic. He stumbled, slipped, and fell in the mud, but rose and ran on. Tears poured down his cheeks. Someone was speaking, despondent murmurings that sounded like a foreign language. It was him, he realized, the words drawn from his throat by the hook of his despair.

“Not Elle. Not Elle. Not Elle.”

He passed more and more bodies, more body parts both human and animal, people he knew, friends and neighbors. Blood spattered everything. Viscera festooned fences and doorways as if placed there as part of some celebration of horror. He did not stop to look at the remains with care. He feared what he would see. Nothing was more important than getting to his cottage, to Elle. Nothing.

“Please, Elle. Please. Please. Please.”

The cottage stood ahead, the door still closed. He saw no blood or bodies near it and prayed that Elle had hidden herself somehow, maybe in the shed. He slammed into the door, nearly knocked it from its hinges.

“Elle! Elle!”

She wasn’t inside.

His heart fell to his feet.

The smell of her stew, still warm in the cauldron over the hearth’s embers, filled the cottage, and its familiarity brought him to his knees. He dropped bow and sword, covered his face, and wailed like a child. Everything drained out of him. He did not even feel anger. He just felt. . empty, hollow, a ghost, a shadow.

He cursed himself again and again. He should have taken her away from Fairelm years ago, left the village and the thrice-damned realm of the Shadovar. He would blame himself forever, hate himself forever. He never should have left her to hunt. He should have been here to defend her.

As if of its own accord, his hand went to the skinning knife he kept on his belt. He drew it from its sheath, held its blade before him, eyed the edge he kept so meticulously sharp. It could cut flesh and veins with the lightest touch, a simple pass over his wrist, a momentary flash of pain. He extended his arm, held the blade over his arm, saw the veins pulsing under his skin. Tears blurred his vision. He could join Elle with the smallest of gestures, the slightest movement.

A muffled scream from the direction of the village center stayed his hand. He was on his feet in an instant and sprinting out the door, sword and bow in hand. Another scream drew him on. He recognized it as Elle’s voice, his Elle, and she was frightened, in pain.

“Elle! Elle! Where are you?”

Another scream pulled him onward. He made straight for the gathering elm in the center of the village.

He would kill whoever or whatever had slaughtered Fairelm, he would gut it, slit its throat, pull out its innards with his hands.

“Elle!”

He sprinted around the corner of the Ferrods’ livestock pen, hardly noticing the heap of blood and gore that had been the Ferrods’ cow, and into the commons. A thin, bald man, his shirtless torso covered in boils, scars, and tumors, had just finished. . kissing her?

The man heard Gerak’s approach and turned. His eyes narrowed in anger and he slid behind Elle, his forearm wrapped around her throat. Inexplicably, a dozen or more mangy cats, their faces all fangs and eyes, sat on their haunches around the man. She didn’t look at Gerak; her eyes were open but vacant, staring out at something Gerak couldn’t see.

Gerak’s emotional state distilled down to a singular need to kill, to murder, to put arrows into this diseased bastard’s eyes. He dropped his sword, drew an arrow and nocked, all of it instinctive, as rapid as thought.

“Get away from her, now!”

Elle gave no response to the sound of Gerak’s voice, and the thin man’s wide, fevered eyes squinted as he focused on Gerak. He smiled, showing the mess of his mouth, the crooked teeth of various sizes and shapes.

“Where have you been hiding?” the man said, his voice much deeper than the frame of his body would suggest.

Gerak trained his sight on the center of the face, a hard shot, but he’d made harder. He advanced and the shot got easier with each step he took.

“I said let her go.”

A man lay on the ground near Elle, his face bloodied, his filthy shirt pulled halfway up, exposing a fat, hairy stomach. The man lurched up and shouted, “Gerak! Kill them! They want me to take them to the Oracle! I won’t do it, Gerak!”

At first Gerak did not recognize him, but then the moustache and girth brought recognition: Minser. The peddler’s unexpected presence made no more sense than his words.

Gerak put Minser out of his mind, walked slowly toward the man holding Elle, sighting along his arrow. A few more steps closer and he’d take the shot. The man maneuvered to keep Elle between them, but he seemed more amused than fearful.

“You know this woman?” the man said. He shook Elle and her arms and legs bounced sickeningly, as if unconnected from her body, as if she were a doll, as if she were already dead.

Gerak picked the spot he’d fire, right between the bastard’s crazed eyes. He visualized the arrow’s flight, prepared to loose.

“Gerak, look out!” Minser shouted, then screamed and curled into a ball as the cats pounced on him, clawing and biting.

Before Gerak could make sense of things before him, the splash and thud of heavy boots from behind whirled him around. A massive man in a battle-scarred breastplate, his hair long and disheveled, his eyes as dead as those of a fish, pelted toward him, a massive sword held high. Instinct and adrenaline seized Gerak-he sighted and released and his arrow sizzled through the air and slammed into the man’s chest, knifing through the plate armor, sinking half the length of the shaft, and spinning the man to the ground, dead or dying.

Gerak spun back around while drawing another arrow-nock, pull, sight. The rat-faced man still sheltered behind Elle. The cats crawled all over Minser, nipping casually at his ears, fingertips, cheeks. The peddler lay curled up on the ground, screaming, crying.

“Get them off! Get them off!”

“Now you die,” Gerak whispered to the man, and prepared to loose his shot.

An unexpected blow to the side of his head caused him to see sparks and drove him face down into the wet earth. He was distantly aware that he had fired his shot into the ground. Adrenaline allowed him to hold onto consciousness, but barely. He rolled over, bow held defensively before him, his vision shaky.

The large, armored man he had shot loomed over him, the arrow still sticking from his chest. The man leered behind his beard, raised a booted foot.

“You should be dead,” Gerak muttered.

“I am,” the man said, and slammed his heel into Gerak’s face.

A crunch as his nose shattered, a flash of pain, more sparks, then darkness.

Sayeed grabbed Gerak by his cloak and dragged him through the mud toward his brother.

“What do we do with this one?” Sayeed asked.

The cats looked up from their torture of Minser, hope in their eyes.

Zeeahd looked at the woman prone at his feet, her eyes rolled back into their sockets and showing only whites, her mouth thrown open in a scream she’d never utter.

“He seemed fond of the woman,” Zeeahd said. “Let them have each other.”

The cats looked disappointed and left off tormenting Minser. The peddler lay huddled on the ground, weeping, bleeding from dozens of bites.

Zeeahd hopped off the deck and nudged the peddler with a toe. “Now you will take us to the Oracle.”

Minser’s face was still buried in his tunic. “I told you I don’t know where the abbey is.”

Zeeahd nodded at Gerak. “Then why did you tell him that you won’t take us, rather than can’t?”

Minser went still. He turned and looked up, his face bloody, tear-stained, one of his ears bleeding freely from a cat’s bite.

“Don’t bother to lie to me, peddler,” Zeeahd said. “I know what I want is in your head. I’ll have it.”

Minser, bloody, muddied, somehow found the strength to summon a last bit of defiance. His double chin quivered when he spoke. “I’ll die first.”

“No,” Zeeahd said, and kneeled to look him in the eye. “I won’t let you die. Instead, I’ll inflict pain. The cats will inflict it. My brother will.”

Minser’s lower lip joined his chin in quivering.

Zeeahd continued, “Pain today. Pain tomorrow. And the day after that, until finally you do exactly as I’ve asked. Is that what you wish?”

The cats gathered around the peddler, eyeing him, meowing. Minser began to shake. Sayeed saw terror root in Minser’s eyes. It would live there the rest of his life. And yet still the peddler did not acquiesce. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

Zeeahd sighed like a parent exasperated with a child. “Start cutting off his fingers, Sayeed. Then feed them to the cats.”

Sayeed drew his dagger and seized Minser’s sweaty hand. The peddler shouted, tried to resist by balling his hand into a fist, but he could not hope to match Sayeed’s strength. Sayeed locked the peddler’s arm in place, pried his fist open, and put the edge of his blade to the base of Minser’s index finger. The peddler shrieked. His body and breath had a stink born of terror. The cats gathered near, meowing excitedly.

“You are not men! You are not men!”

“Cut it off,” Zeeahd ordered.

Sayeed let the blade bite just a little, and whatever little bits of resistance Minser still possessed crumbled.

“All right! All right! The gods forgive me, but I’ll show you! Don’t cut off my fingers! Just don’t! I’ll take you as far as I remember but that’s not all the way. The Oracle sees when the worthy seek the abbey. He sends an escort and they lead followers through the pass. None know the whole way but them.”

“A pass?” Sayeed asked. “It’s in the Thunder Peaks?”

Minser hesitated, swallowed visibly, nodded.

“How far from here?” Sayeed said, shaking the fat man. “How far?”

“I think. . two days’ march,” Minser said. “Maybe three.”

“I told you, brother,” Zeeahd said, triumph in his eyes. “We find the Oracle and he’ll tell us where to find Erevis Cale’s child. And then the Lord of Cania will free us of these curses.”

“You are cursed,” Minser said, weeping, head bowed. “Cursed in spirit. More devilish than those cats.”

“Shut your mouth,” Sayeed said, but only half heartedly. He could not work up any anger. He felt something he had not felt in decades, something alien, something he’d thought lost forever long ago: hope.

“What about my mule?” Minser asked diffidently. “What about Gray?”

“Your mule is coming with us,” Zeeahd said. “My cats are carrying him around in their bellies.”

Minser wept.

Growing fatigue slowed the pilgrims. Vasen, Byrne, Eldris, and Nald did what they could to keep spirits and strength high, but the encounter with the Shadovar riders had put a seed of fear in the pilgrims that flowered in the dark Sembian air. Eldris carried Noll, although it was plain the boy was healing.

Byrne, Vasen, and Orsin walked in the front of the column. “This pace is too much,” Byrne said. “They are failing.”

“We can’t let them,” Vasen answered, eyeing the terrain ahead. “See to them. Word will get to Sakkors or Shade Enclave quickly. More Shadovar will come. We must get them to the Dales.”

“And then?” Byrne asked. “War awaits them there.”

“I know,” Vasen said. “But what else is there, Byrne? This is the world.

We just have to get them through safely.”

“Aye,” Byrne said. “This is the world.”

Vasen put a hand on his shoulder. “Walk among them. Tell them stories. Give what solace Amaunator’s blessings offer. And take comfort from what comfort you give.”

“Yes, First Blade.” Byrne faded back into the column, leaving Vasen and Orsin alone.

“You said you wanted to speak of something,” Vasen said. “So speak.” Orsin walked in silence for a moment, perhaps deciding where to begin.

“Your Oracle can see the future, yes?”

“‘See’ is a strong word, but yes. He has glimpses of future events.” “And yet he sent you-us, all of us-from the abbey at a time when he knew the boy would sicken, when he knew we would encounter the Shadovar riders.”

Vasen shook his head. “‘Knew’ is too much.”

“Either he’s a seer or he isn’t.”

To that, Vasen said nothing. Shadows made slow turns around his flesh.

“Why would he take such a risk? An encounter with the Shadovar puts the entire abbey in peril. The worship of any god but Shar is outlawed in Sembia. And the Shadovar discourage travel unless it has official sanction. What if you had been taken?”

“I would never speak of the abbey to the Shadovar.”

“Byrne? Eldris?”

“Neither would they.”

“Well enough,” Orsin said, accepting that. “But why take the risk? Did his vision fail him or. . ”

Vasen stopped and turned to look into Orsin’s face. “Or what? Do you think he would risk the pilgrims’ lives for nothing? Ours?”

“Not for nothing, no,” Orsin said. “But I think something is happening. I think he sees it coming.”

Vasen recalled the conversation he’d had with the Oracle outside his quarters. It must have shown on his face.

“You think it, too?” Orsin asked. “Don’t you?”

They started walking again before the column caught up.

“I don’t know,” Vasen said, looking up at the sky. “Things have been strange of late.”

“Yes,” Orsin said, nodding. “My journey to the abbey. Our meeting.” “You think the Oracle arranged it?”

“Now you use words that mean too much. ‘Arrange,’ no. ‘Foresee,’ yes. But what does it mean? What did he intend?”

Vasen shrugged. “The spirits in the pass, too. That was odd.”

“Yes,” Orsin said. “They spoke to you of your father.”

Vasen nodded. “And you know of my father. You follow the same god he did.”

“And you and I met and here we are. There’s more afoot here than we can see, Vasen. Maybe more than the Oracle could see.”

“Possibly,” Vasen said. “I’ll ask him when I see him again. For now, the pilgrims are my concern.”

Orsin seemed about to say something more, then said only, “Agreed.”

Each walked alone with his thoughts for hours, pushing the pilgrims, monitoring the sky, the plains around them. Most of the day passed with nothing more eventful happening than Noll trying to walk on his own. Although weak, he managed, and his recovery brought smiles and brightened spirits. Elora rushed to Vasen and hugged him so tightly she momentarily took his breath.

“Thank you, goodsir,” she whispered. “Thank you for saving my son.”

Vasen felt his cheeks warm. The shadows around him swirled, caught up Elora, although she seemed not to care. Byrne and Nald grinned at his discomfiture, and discomfited he felt.

“You’re welcome, milady.”

“Thank you for your prayers, goodsir,” Noll said to Vasen, all seriousness.

Vasen smiled, disentangled himself from Elora, and mussed the boy’s hair. “I’m not sure it was the prayers. You’re a tough one, Noll.”

The boy smiled, his face still pale, and went to his mother’s side.

The Dawnswords pushed the pilgrims as far and hard as they dared, then camped in a pine-shrouded declivity.

“No fire,” Vasen ordered, and received groans in response. “Crowd together for warmth. I’ll take first watch.”

“And I’ll take second,” Orsin offered.

Byrne looked skeptical at that. “First Blade, I should take second watch. And Nald or Eldris third. Orsin is not one of us.” He nodded sheepishly at the deva. “And I mean no disrespect.”

“I take none,” said Orsin, as implacable as a statue.

“He’s one of us in the ways that matter,” Vasen said. “And he can see in the dark as well as me.”

“As you say, First Blade,” Byrne acknowledged with a nod, and walked back to the pilgrims.

“Go eat, Orsin,” said Vasen. “Then sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

“As you say, First Blade,” Orsin said with a nod and a mischievous wink, then walked off to join Byrne with the pilgrims.

That night, while the pilgrims lay on the wet ground and shivered in the wind, Vasen sat alone at the edge of the camp. He stared out at the inky plains. His father had known Sembia before the Shadovar had shrouded it in perpetual night. His father had fought to keep Sembia in light.

And, in the end, his father had failed.

You must not fail, Vasen.

The words that plagued his dreams.

Vasen pondered events until the end of his watch, then woke Orsin and fell asleep.

The next day they plodded on. A light rain fell, summoning exasperated sighs from the pilgrims. Notably, Noll kept his mouth clamped shut.

Three hours into the trek, Orsin put his arm before Vasen. “Stop.”

Vasen’s hand went to the hilt of his blade. He saw nothing, but held up his hand to stop the column. “What is it?”

Orsin cocked his head, as if listening. Vasen heard nothing but the soft patter of the rain.

“Why are we stopping?” Byrne called from behind, his tone overloud in the quiet.

Orsin stared into the distance. Vasen followed his gaze and saw it at last.

Black dots wheeled through the sky ahead, visible against the dark sky only because of their motion.

“It’s the Shadovar again,” one of the pilgrims, an elderly woman, said.

“No,” Vasen called back. “Not the Shadovar.”

“Crows,” Orsin said.

“Yes,” Vasen said. “Crows.”

The wind picked up, carrying the caws of the birds, the distant sound as faint as a whisper. He and Orsin moved back to the column.

“What is it?” Byrne asked.

“Carrion birds,” Orsin said.

“Something has died,” Elora said, and put her hand to her mouth.

Vasen resurrected a smile and put a hand on Elora’s shoulder, pleased to see no shadows dancing from his skin. “Take heart. It could be the carcass of a beast. Crows out here will swarm a dead deer.”

Elora looked doubtful, her eyes worried in their nest of wrinkles. She put her hands protectively on Noll’s shoulders. The other pilgrims, too, seemed uneasy, sharing concerned glances, whispering among themselves. A few looked up into the dark sky, perhaps fearing Sakkors itself would materialize out of the darkness, perhaps fearing another Shadovar patrol would happen upon them.

“Be at ease,” Vasen said to them all. “There’s nothing to fear.”

He pulled Byrne aside. He felt Orsin’s eyes on him all the while.

“There’s a village on the other side of that rise.”

Byrne chewed the corner of his moustache and nodded. “I know. Fairelm, it was called.”

“It is called Fairelm. I’ll go ahead and have a look. Keep the pilgrims here for now.”

Byrne took Vasen by the arm and pulled him around. “Perhaps we should just avoid it. I don’t want to compromise the safety of the pilgrims, and the doings of Sembia are not our concern.”

“True,” Vasen acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “But if something has happened to the village, someone there could need help. Our calling is more than just escorting pilgrims, Byrne.”

“A light to chase darkness,” Byrne said softly. His hand fell from Vasen’s arm. Distant thunder rumbled, as if the sky disputed Byrne’s sentiment.

“A light, indeed,” Vasen said. He thumped Byrne on the shoulder.

“I still dislike putting the pilgrims at risk.”

“As do I,” Vasen said. “Take them over to that wood.” He pointed at a nearby stand of broadleaf trees that swayed in the wind, leaves hissing. “Do what you can to put their minds at ease. I’ll return quickly. The light keep you.”

“And you, First Blade.” Byrne turned and started gathering the pilgrims.

“Come, folks,” he said, filling his voice with false cheer. “Rain is coming. Let’s get under those trees and take a meal. . ”

As Byrne shepherded the pilgrims toward the wood, Vasen hefted his shield, turned, and found himself face to face with Orsin.

“Gods, man. You move like a ghost,” Vasen said.

“I’ll accompany you,” Orsin replied. “Not hungry, I suppose?” Vasen asked with a smile.

“No,” Orsin answered with a grin. “Not hungry.”

“I’ll be grateful to have you.” Vasen signaled to Byrne that Orsin would accompany him. Together, the two of them hurried toward Fairelm. Orsin dragged his staff behind them, carving a temporary groove into the whipgrass and mud. The caw of crows pulled them onward.

Vasen smelled the faint, sickly odor of death before he and Orsin reached the edge of the rise.

They crouched low, and looked down at the village, maybe a long bowshot away. Small plots of farmland surrounded a core of single-story, sturdy wooden buildings, themselves built around a central commons and a large pond fed by a small stream. Several ancient elms stood here and there throughout the village, a dozen maybe. Vasen imagined the trees predated the Spellplague; they appeared to have come through unchanged. Two small rowboats bobbed on the wind-whipped water of the pond.

“There are many dead here,” Orsin said, his voice a somber whisper.

A child’s swing hung from one of the nearest elms, swaying eerily in the breeze, as if ridden by a ghost. The elms’ canopies whispered in the wind.

“I see them.”

Pieces of bodies lay scattered among the buildings. Vasen could make out heads, arms, torsos, the bloody flotsam of a slaughter. He noted the twisted forms of women and children, even livestock had been torn apart. Blood pooled in dark puddles on the road, stained the grass, spattered doors and the sides of buildings.

“What happened here?” Vasen whispered.

Orsin said nothing. He simply stared, as still as a statue, as still as a corpse.

Crows gorged on the feast, their cries a grotesque accompaniment to the quiet of the dead. Now and again a few would take to the air, cawing at one another, before they again alit and feasted.

“This isn’t the work of an animal,” Orsin said.

“No,” Vasen said.

“The Shadovar, then?”

Vasen shook his head, shadows curling around him. “When the Shadovar wish to teach a lesson, they do so with magic and leave no doubt of their involvement.”

“What, then?”

Vasen didn’t know. There were many predators that prowled Sembia’s dark plains, but this, this was something else. .

Whatever had attacked the village had reveled in blood, in murder. He looked back to Byrne and the pilgrims. He could barely see them, huddled as they were under the broadleaf trees. A soft light flared-Byrne’s holy symbol, light in the darkness. Perhaps he was leading them in prayer.

Vasen stood and drew his blade. Anything to be done in the village would require hard steel, not soft prayer. The weapon’s edge glowed faintly in the shroud of Sembia’s shadowed air.

“Come on,” he said, and started down. Shadows gathered around him, a reflection of his anger. To keep himself centered, he concentrated for a moment and put his faith in his shield until it began to glow. The soft, rosy light warmed him but did nothing to dull his anger.

“If the attackers remain, they’ll see your light,” Orsin observed.

“Let them see,” Vasen answered.

They walked through fallow barley fields, under several of the towering elms, and into the bloody streets. Somewhere a loose shutter or door slammed repeatedly against a window sash, like a pulse, like the dying heartbeat of a dead village.

The crows took wing, cawing in anger, as Vasen and Orsin neared the first of the bodies-an elderly man pressed face down in the mud. They kneeled beside him and flipped him over. His abdomen had been ripped open, his throat shredded. His wide, terrified eyes stared up at the dark sky.

“The claws and teeth of something large,” Orsin said. “But he is not fed upon except by the crows.”

“Just murder, then,” Vasen said. He removed his gauntlet, placed a hand on the elderly man’s brow, and with his other hand held his glowing shield over the man’s face so that its light reflected in his eyes.

“Whomever your patron, let Amaunator’s light help guide your way to your rest.”

The other bodies and pieces of bodies they found on the outskirts of the village showed similar wounds. Vasen’s heart ached over the dead children, who had spent their final moments in terror and pain. He prayed over everyone he found.

He and Orsin made slow progress, checking the bodies for signs of life, checking the interior of cottages for someone who might have hidden from the attackers. They found nothing but blood and the dead. Livestock had been slaughtered in their pens, cows flayed. Chicken feathers floated here and there in the wind like snowflakes.

Neither Vasen nor Orsin called out for survivors, although it would have made sense to do so. Breaking the quiet seemed blasphemous somehow.

He looked for tracks, some clue about the identity of the attackers, but the rain had washed them away. By the time they neared the center of the village, Vasen had resigned himself to finding neither survivors nor perpetrators.

“Ages turn, the world changes, but there is always horror,” Orsin said.

“And sometimes beauty,” Vasen said.

“But none here,” answered Orsin, his eyes distant.

A shout shattered the quiet, a rage-filled roar that originated from somewhere ahead, the commons, perhaps. The sound summoned Vasen’s anger. Shadows exploded from his flesh.

“Move!” he said to Orsin, and ran for the village center, blade ready. He channeled his god’s power as he pelted through the mud, empowering his blade and shield. Both glowed white. But the shadows around his flesh remained. Light and shadow coexisted in the air around him.

“Wait,” Orsin said, but Vasen did not wait.

When they reached the commons, shaded by the canopy of one of the large elms, they saw a woman slouched against the bole of the elm, her mouth slack, her eyes open. She looked alive. A man crouched beside her, head bowed, one hand on her shoulder, the other around a longbow. A sword hung from his belt. He had not noticed them.

“Step away from that woman!” Vasen said, slowing to a walk and advancing.

The man’s head snapped around and his eyes fixed on Vasen and Orsin. His mouth twisted with rage in the nest of his beard. He stood.

“Shadovar! You brought this down on my home!”

Before Vasen could respond, the man had drawn and fired an arrow with startling speed. At almost the moment he released it, Orsin dived in front of Vasen and hit the ground in a roll. Vasen feared he had been struck, but the deva came up in a crouch, the arrow clutched in a fist.

“He’s not Shadovar,” Orsin said to the man, who had already nocked and drawn another arrow and sighted for Vasen’s chest.

Vasen held his shield up, with its sun and rose, as evidence. He could see that the man was a victim of what had happened in the village, not a perpetrator.

The man walked toward Vasen, arrow still aimed at his chest. Circles darkened the skin under the man’s eyes. A large, purple lump marred his brow near the hairline and blades of grass stuck out of his hair. His nose was crooked, and dried blood was caked in his beard and mustache. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.

Orsin tensed, as if he might launch himself at the man, but Vasen signaled for him to be still.

Moving slowly, as he might to calm an excited animal, Vasen dropped his blade and lowered his shield. The glow went out of both of them. As his anger dissipated, the shadows curling around his flesh subsided. He stood before the man, exposed, vulnerable.

The man kept his eyes on Vasen’s face and walked up to him until the point of the drawn arrow touched Vasen’s breastplate. Tears had made tracks in the filth and blood covering the man’s face.

“I’m not Shadovar,” Vasen said. “We came to help.”

The man studied Vasen’s face and Vasen imagined how he must appear, with his dark skin and yellow eyes.

“You’re not Shadovar,” the man said, the words empty. The bow creaked against the tension of the drawn arrow.

“We’re here to help,” Vasen repeated.

“To help,” the man repeated. He seemed dazed. Tears welled in his eyes and he audibly swallowed.

Holding the man’s eyes, Vasen reached up, slowly, and closed his fingers around the arrow’s tip. “To help.”

The words finally seemed to penetrate the man’s haze. He looked down at the sun and rose on Vasen’s shield.

“You’re a priest?”

“I serve Amaunator,” Vasen answered.

The man’s eyes overflowed but he seemed not to notice. Desperate, pained hope replaced the tears and sought validation in Vasen’s eyes. He released the tension in the bowstring, dropped the bow, and took Vasen by the shoulders, shaking him in his distress.

“Help her, man. Please.”

Before Vasen could respond, the man fairly collapsed into Vasen’s arms and began to sob, as if whatever tension had been holding him upright had just been released.

“Please help my wife. Help her.”

Vasen let the man’s emotion run its course while Orsin looked on, sympathy in his eyes. After a time the man pulled back, stood on his own two feet, wiped his nose and face, obviously embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I just. I need. Just help her.”

He pulled Vasen toward the elm, toward the man’s wife.

“What’s her name?” Vasen asked, kneeling to examine the stricken woman.

“Elle.”

“And your name?”

“Gerak.”

“I’m Vasen, Gerak. This is Orsin.”

The woman’s long red hair hung over skin as pale as snow. Vasen leaned in to check her breathing and recoiled at the stench of her breath. “What is it?” Gerak asked. “What?”

Vasen shook his head. He removed his gauntlets and took her face in his hands. She was warm, feverish. Her eyes were open but rolled back in her head. He opened her mouth, wincing at the stink, and saw the remnants of a black film sticking to her teeth and tongue. Worry rooted in his gut.

He took her hand in his, channeled some of Amaunator’s power, and with it took the measure of her soul. He instantly cut the connection when he felt the growing corruption there. He tried to keep it from his face.

“What are you doing?” Gerak said.

“I’m trying to help her,” Vasen said. Using his shield as a focus, he held a hand over Elle and prayed to Amaunator. When the shield glowed and his palm warmed, he took Elle’s hand in his own and let the energy course into her, but he could see it changed nothing. When he was done, she remained feverish and unresponsive. He thought he knew why. Not even a more elaborate ritual could help her. She was beyond his arts. Maybe the Oracle could help her. Maybe.

“How long has she been this way?” he asked Gerak.

Gerak cleared his throat. “I don’t know for certain. Hours. Did it work? What you did?” He kneeled and took his wife’s hands in his own. “Elle? Sweets, come back.”

“Let’s get her inside,” Vasen said, sharing a meaningful look with Orsin. The deva took his point and sighed.

“Yes, of course,” Gerak said, and pointed. “There’s our home that way. Come.”

Gerak averted his eyes from the dead and led them into a one-room cottage that smelled faintly of vegetable stew. A large carpet covered the wood floor and modest, homemade furniture afforded seating.

While Orsin started a fire, Vasen and Gerak placed Elle in the bed and covered her to the chest in a quilt.

“You’re home now, Elle,” Gerak said, and smoothed her hair. He bent and kissed her brow.

Gerak pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat. Vasen remained standing, conscious of his shadow thrown on the wall by the fire.

“What happened here, Gerak?” he asked.

While holding Elle’s hand, Gerak told them his story: how he had left Fairelm a few days earlier to hunt, how he had been attacked by a creature that had been Lahni Rabb.

“You mean she had been transformed into something?” Vasen asked, eyeing Elle and making connections.

Gerak swallowed, nodded. “A horrible, twisted form. The poor girl.” “Go on.”

Gerak explained how he had hurried back to the village to find almost everyone slaughtered, save his wife. He told them of the two men, one deformed and scarred, the other huge and unkempt. He told them about Minser, about the cats.

“Cats?”

“Yes. Lots of cats lingered around him. They weren’t from the village. They looked feral, larger than normal. I had an arrow on the skinny one but the bigger one took me unawares, gave me this.” He indicated the purple bruise on his brow, the ruin of his nose.

Vasen took it in, turned the information over in his mind.

“Why?” Orsin asked. He sat in the chair with his hands crossed in his lap.

Gerak looked at him as if he had spoken another language. “Why what? Why did they do it? I don’t know. How could I know?”

“Men always have reasons,” Orsin said.

“Men could not have done this to the village,” Vasen said.

“Not alone,” Orsin agreed.

“Her fever is not breaking,” Gerak said, indicating Elle. “How long before she improves?”

Vasen stared at him, saying nothing, saying everything.

“She. . will improve?” Gerak said, haltingly.

Vasen spoke in a low tone. “I don’t think her sickness is one of body. It’s in her soul.”

“Her soul? What are you talking about?”

“Gerak, I believe they put something inside her. . ”

Gerak might have surmised what Vasen had already guessed. He shook his head. “No, no, no.”

“I felt it. And. . it’s growing. . ”

“No, no.”

“. . and I fear that what happened to Lahni. . ”

Gerak’s voice grew louder and he slammed his palm into the arm of the chair. “No!”

“. . will happen to Elle. I can’t stop it.”

There was silence but for the crackle of the fire and Gerak’s heavy breathing. He stared at Vasen for a time, wide-eyed, as if stricken dumb by the words. He shed no tears. Perhaps he had already shed all he had. He pressed his hands together, as if in prayer, and placed them under his chin. “Not my Elle,” he said, as soft as satin.

Vasen said, “If the transformation runs its course-”

Gerak held up a hand. “Do not dare to speak what you’re thinking in my house, in her house. Do not dare.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Vasen said.

Gerak’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised that it was what he was thinking. “Who can heal her? Another of your order?”

“There isn’t time-”

“You don’t know that!” Gerak said, half rising from his chair; then, more quietly. “You don’t know that.”

Vasen conceded the point with a tilt of his head. He did not know.

“She’s pregnant with our child,” Gerak said, his voice breaking. He looked at Vasen as if the words were an accusation.

Vasen did not wilt, and he knew he would not turn his back on Gerak, on Elle, on their child. Perhaps Elle and the child could fight on long enough for them to get her back to the abbey.

“The Oracle might be able to help her,” Vasen said.

Gerak stared at him as if he did not understand. Finally, he said, “Oracle? The Oracle? The Seer of the Vale?”

Vasen nodded.

“Then. . you two are from the Abbey of the Rose?”

Again, Vasen nodded. Orsin held his peace.

Gerak sat back in his chair, his exhalation audible through his teeth. “Minser.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar to Vasen but he could not place it.

“Minser?” Orsin asked.

“A peddler. He-”

“Fat with a moustache and ready smile,” Vasen said, placing the name. “He made the pilgrimage to the abbey once. His aunt was ill.”

Gerak nodded. “The two men took him prisoner. They wanted him to lead them to the abbey.”

Vasen half rose from his chair. “What? Why?”

“One of them was seeking the Oracle, Minser said.”

Vasen stood fully, shadows swirling around him. “What would he want of the Oracle?”

“I. . don’t know.”

“I need to get back to the abbey,” Vasen said. “Quickly.”

“I’m coming, too,” Gerak said, standing. “And Elle.”

“Gerak,” Vasen said, trying to phrase the words gently. “I must move very fast.”

“So we’ll move fast. I know the terrain better than anyone.”

“Gerak. . ”

Gerak’s expression turned vacant, as if he were anticipating a blow. “Don’t you dare say it. Don’t. You are a servant of the light. Don’t say it.”

Vasen felt Orsin’s eyes on him, felt the weight of his words to Byrne before he had come to Fairelm-his calling was more than escorting pilgrims.

“I’ll help you bear her,” Vasen said. “And we’ll move as fast as we can.”

“I’ll help, too,” said Orsin, standing.

Together, the three men hurriedly built a makeshift litter for Elle and pulled her along behind them.

“These were good people,” Gerak said, as they picked their way through the streets, through the dead.

“We have no time to tend to their bodies,” Vasen said. “I prayed over each, if that’s any consolation to you.”

To that, Gerak said nothing, and Vasen could not blame him. There was little consolation to be found in the destruction of Fairelm.