The Godborn

Chapter Seven

Standing in the doorway of Ana and Corl’s small, warm cottage, Elle drew her hood tight. The austere darkness of the late afternoon contrasted markedly with the warm glow of the cottage.

“Our thanks once more for the eggs, Elle,” called Ana from behind her. “You’re welcome,” Elle said, tying the string under her chin. “You’d do the same if your hens were producing.”

“Even so.”

“It’s Idleday,” Elle said, half turning. “So stay in and keep dry.” Ana tended a cauldron near the hearth. Her husband, Corl, sat in a roughmade chair before the fire, sharpening the blade of a hoe.

“Aye,” called Corl. “There’s naught to be done in this weather, anyway. And thank you, Elle. You’re a saint.”

Corl’s sincerity touched her.

“Go feed that baby something,” Ana said, smiling at her and nodding at Elle’s belly.

“Aye,” Elle said. She pulled the door closed behind her and stepped out into the muddy cart road. The namesake elms that ringed the village whispered and creaked in the wind. The rain smelled of decay. A shit rain, Gerak would have called it, and she would have frowned at his use of profanity. She worried for the village’s crops. A fouled rain would harm an already fragile harvest. More of her neighbors than Ana and Corl would suffer.

The dark sky rumbled. The underside of the clouds looked burned, as if the world had caught fire and charred them black. But she knew how to read the sky, the subtle variations among the blacks and grays, and she thought the low, swirling clouds promised an end to the rain, and soon.

Odd, she thought, the things to which a person became accustomed. She’d grown up in Sembia’s darkness and knew it as well as she knew the soil. But she’d never seen the unveiled sun and wasn’t sure she’d know what to do if she ever did. But she hoped to find out one day.

The thought summoned a smile. She felt oddly hopeful. Gerak would return on the morrow or the day after, perhaps with fresh meat, and she carried his child in her womb, a life unexpected. She ran her hands over the bulge of her stomach and her eyes welled. The changes to her body wrought by the pregnancy seemed to make her weep over everything. She felt silly but smiled nevertheless.

She wiped her eyes as she walked the sloppy cart road, her mind on the baby, barely cognizant of the mud fouling her shoes and soaking the bottom of her cloak. She thought of a time years earlier, when Chauntea’s greenpriests still traveled Sembia, using their magic to assist villagers with their crops. She remembered an elderly greenpriest, as thin as a reed, who had preached that where life grew there was always hope. Back then, Elle had rolled her eyes at the words. But now, with a child in her womb, she understood exactly what the priest had meant.

The child in her belly was hope.

Again her eyes welled. Again she smiled in embarrassment at her own sentimentality.

“Hope,” she said, testing out the word. It sounded good, sounded right. She ran a hand over her belly. “If you’re a girl, we’ll call you Hope.”

The sky rumbled with thunder. Elle refused to surrender her smile or her mood. She made a dismissive gesture at the sky.

“Bring your worst,” she challenged.

She crossed the village commons, heading for her cottage. The Rins’ milk cow was there, head down, chewing the grass. A scrawny barn cat slinked through the underbrush, probably stalking a field mouse. The Idleday weather had kept everyone else inside, even the children. Two fishing boats tethered to posts at the edge of the pond bobbed in the chop.

Before she reached the cottage the rain lost its stink and reduced to a drizzle. With the weather cooperating and leftover stew already in the soup kettle, she decided she’d walk a bit more, maybe stroll the edge of the village and enjoy the elms.

Shutters opened as she walked and she exchanged greetings with her neighbors.

“The rain is soon to stop,” she called to Mora.

Mora looked up, nodded. “How’s the loaf?”

Elle put her hand on her belly. “Rising.”

“The gods keep it and you.”

“And you, Mora.”

Her feet carried her eventually to the two oldest elms in the village- the Gate Elms, everyone called them. The road from the plains went right between them and extended out into the darkness, a string that connected the village to the dangers of the plains. The road faded after only a short distance, devoured by Sembia’s perpetual gloom. She stared at it a long while, rubbing her stomach. Gerak was out there somewhere, alone in the dark. She stood there under the leaves, sheltered from the drizzle, and wondered where he was, how he fared.

“Your daddy’s out there,” she said to Hope. “He’ll be back soon.”

She turned to go, but a sound from out in the plains caught her attention. A man’s voice, she was sure, although she had not made out any words. Gerak returning? A lost traveler? She considered calling out but thought better of it. Gerak was not due to return and Fairelm had not seen a traveler in many months. She looked back at the village, the homes and barns and sheds within earshot were mere shadowy blobs in the gloom. Her fine mood evaporated as distant thunder rumbled anew, the sky having its vengeance for her taunt.

“Probably nothing,” she whispered.

Still, she sheltered near the bole of one of the elms, her hand on the bark, and listened. She put her other hand on the handle of the small eating knife she carried. It would make a poor weapon.

Long moments passed and she heard nothing more, so she allowed herself to exhale. Probably she’d imagined the sound, or transformed a distant animal’s howl into a man’s voice. The gloom sometimes fooled the senses. Turning, she started back toward the village.

The sound of rattling metal froze her, tightened her chest. A man’s voice sounded from out in the darkness.

“Don’t move,” he said, and she didn’t. Surprise shackled her feet to the ground, put a lump in her throat, sent her heart racing so hard she felt dizzy. Horrors lurked on the plains and some of them could speak like a man. She knew she should call out for aid, but her voice seemed to have died in the sudden dryness of her mouth.

She heard the slosh of something large in the mud of the road, drawing nearer, the jangle of chains. She imagined huge feet thumping in the earth, something snatching her from the darkness and stealing her away. Gerak and the neighbors would wonder what had happened to her, but no one would ever know. She’d become a warning tale for children.

Thunder boomed. She blanched at the sudden sound.

“There now,” said the voice again, in a more soothing tone. “Good.” Good?

She realized that the voice was not speaking to her, and the realization slowed her heart and freed her from her paralysis. Movement in the gloom drew her eyes. She could not make out details but it did not appear the shadowy giant of her imagination.

“Who is out there?” she called.

The sound stopped. “Who asks? I seek Fairelm. This. . is the road, isn’t it? By the gods, Gray, if you’ve walked astray they’ll be no barley for you for a tenday.”

Gray? Didn’t she know that name?

And all at once the voice and the sounds fell into place for Elle. Gray was a mule. The sound of jingling metal was the old mule’s bridle. And the voice. .

“Minser? Is that you?”

“Aye,” said the peddler, and Elle heard the smile in his tone. “Is this Fairelm?”

Elle laughed with relief, her legs weak with it. “It is! It is! Come on so I can see you.”

The slosh of Gray’s hooves in the road grew louder, the sound no longer ominous but jaunty. The dimness relented as they closed and the shapes took on details. Minser’s large covered cart containing pots, pans, cutlery, tools, jars, all manner of metal and clay goods, even a few items of glass. Minser sat hunched on the driver’s bench like a dragon on his hoard. Gray, the largest mule Elle had ever seen, sullenly pulled the wagon through the muck, his ears flat on his head. Elle stepped away from the elm and waved.

“Minser! It’s been so long! We thought something had befallen you.”

Minser leaned forward on his bench to see her better. When he did, his jolly, round face split into a smile under his thick, graying moustache. “No, fair lady. Gray and me know these roads better’n the shades themselves. We steer clear of trouble. And we know how to shoot it when it shows.” He held up the crossbow he kept beside him on the bench. “Besides, a creature’d hafta be senile to want to chew on these old bones.”

He clicked at Gray to halt him before Elle, then heaved himself down off the wagon’s bench. His belly bounced with every move he made. Elle rubbed Gray’s muzzle, and the gentle giant of a mule whinnied with pleasure.

“He remembers you, lady,” Minser said. “As do I.” The peddler removed his wide-brimmed hat and made a show of bowing. “I’m pleased to see you well, Lady Elle.”

“And I’m pleased to see you,” Elle said, with a mock curtsey. “As will everyone else. Come, you should announce yourself.”

“Of course,” Minser said. “Will you ride?”

“I think I will,” she said. Minser made a stirrup of his hands and assisted her up onto the driver’s bench.

“Ayep,” he said, and shook Gray’s reins. The mule pulled the wagon forward. “You know, in the Dales and Cormyr, a traveler don’t announce himself as they do here.”

“In the Dales and Cormyr everyone can see a traveler when he arrives in a village. Here, the gloom makes sight uncertain. Hearing is best, unless you want to risk a startled crossbowman putting a quarrel in your hind end.”

“You speak with truth,” Minser said, chuckling.

“You’ve been to Cormyr and the Dales recently, then?” Elle asked. “The sun shines there still?”

“Only Sembia is darkened by the Shadovar, lady. I was in Cormyr at the end of summer, and the sun shines brightly there. Things are dire in the Dales, I hear. Sembian soldiers occupy Archendale and the other Dales brace for further attack. I myself saw Sembian soldiers, hundreds of them, on the march north. Stories of war in the far Silver Marches have even carried to these ears.” He shook his head sadly. “All of Faerun seems at war, milady. There’s no place safe. I don’t know what will come of it all.”

“Well,” Elle said. “You’re safe here. And welcome.”

“Ah, even in the gloom you shine brightly, milady.”

Elle laughed. “You should have had a life at court, Minser. You’ve a flatterer’s tongue.”

Minser put a hand to his chest and feigned a wounded heart. “You hear that, Gray? A flatterer’s tongue, she said.”

Elle turned serious. “May I ask you a question? Why come back to Sembia? Gerak and I were considering leaving. The Rabbs left several days ago. I wonder if you saw them on the road?”

“I did not, alas. Although they might have been avoiding the roads for fear of the soldiers.”

“Well, if we left and saw the sun, I can’t imagine ever returning.”

Minser nodded as if he understood. “The road is in my bones, I’m afraid. Besides, even the darkest places need the light of Minser’s pans and urns and stories. But maybe you should leave, lady? A life in the sun would suit you.”

Elle smiled.

Minser fiddled with a bronze medallion he wore on his chest. Elle could not see it clearly but caught a glimpse of an engraved flower.

“Is that a religious symbol, Minser? Did you turn holy man while you were away?”

She was jesting, but Minser responded with seriousness. “This?” He withdrew the symbol from under the tent of his shirt. It featured a rose and sun-Amaunator’s symbol. “A bit, milady, I’ll admit. I picked this up. . in a place of hope. A few months ago.”

Elle touched his hand, his fingers like overstuffed sausages. “I’ve been thinking a lot about hope recently. I’m glad you’re here, Minser.”

“As am I,” he said, and put the symbol back under his shirt.

Minser pulled up on the reins when Gray pulled the wagon to the village commons. A railed, wood-planked deck sat under the canopy of an elm. Seats made from old stumps sat here and there. The sounding bell hung from a post near the deck.

As they debarked from the wagon, Elle said, “You can share my dinner, if you’d like. And our shed is still waterproof, if you’d like to sleep in it rather than the wagon. There’s a spot for Gray beside it. Keep him out of the rain.”

Minser doffed his weathered, wide-brimmed hat and affected as much of a bow as his girth allowed.

“You remain, as always, gracious as a queen. It is a bit cramped in the wagon. It’ll do in a pinch, but I admit your shed sounds appealing.”

She smiled, nodded.

“And for your hospitality, you shall have your choice of cookware from my offerings. I have some fine kettles I acquired in Daerlun.”

“Thank you, Minser.”

Minser made a show of looking about. “So where, pray tell, is your king? And what sort of monarch allows his queen to walk about unescorted in such weather?”

Elle’s voice dropped and she looked off to the plains. “Gerak is off on a hunt.”

Minser recoiled. “In this? Is he mad?”

“I think possibly, yes.”

Minser chuckled. “Well, I’m sure he’s fine. I hope he returns before I move on.”

“He’ll return tomorrow or the next day.”

Elle heard doors opening, the voices over the rain. At least some of her neighbors must have seen Minser arrive. They’d want to hear his stories and see what wonders his cart held.

“I’ll set the table in two hours,” she said. “Meanwhile, announce yourself so all know you’re here. Not even the rain will keep them away.”

Minser’s mouth formed a smile in the thicket of his moustache. Elle noticed the wrinkles around his eyes. He stepped onto the deck-the planks creaked ominously under his weight-and rang the bell three times, the peals loud in the quiet.

“Ho, Fairelm! Ho! Minser the Seller has returned, with wares from as far west as Arabel and tales from the other side of the world!”

More shutters and doors were thrown open. Elle heard the exclamations of children and the happy chatter of her neighbors as they emerged from their cottages and went out to greet Minser. It had been so long since Fairelm had seen a traveler, Minser’s appearance might as well have been a festival.

Elle smiled as she walked back to her cottage. Minser’s arrival in the village always heralded a good day or three, full of stories, interesting wares, and excellent beer. She was glad Gerak would return soon. He, too, would be pleased to see Minser.

After checking on her stew, she gathered all the extra blankets they had from the chest near their bed. Tattered and faded from many washes, the blankets had belonged to Gerak’s parents. Minser would not mind their condition. She took a small clay lamp and the blankets to Gerak’s tool shed and made a place on the floor for Minser to sleep. No doubt he had his own bedroll, but he would welcome extra blankets.

She returned to the cottage and lay down for a nap. The baby growing in her drained her of energy. She planned to be idle on Idleday. She fell asleep to the sound of laughter, Minser’s voice spinning a tale, and the general hubbub of the gathering. It was as if Minser had brought the village back to life, back to hope.

A hand on his shoulder awakened Vasen.

Darkness.

The fire was mere embers and Byrne had extinguished the light from his shield. Quiet.

The rain had stopped. He had no way to tell the time, to know how long he’d been asleep. Where were the pilgrims? How was Noll doing? He was still groggy from sleep, and had trouble orienting himself. He was vaguely aware of shadows crawling over his flesh.

Orsin’s tattooed face loomed over him, lit only by the faint glow of the fire’s embers. Concern showed in the deva’s opalescent eyes.

“What?”

The deva held an inked finger to his mouth for silence. Vasen came fully awake as Orsin nodded at something beyond the cave mouth.

Noll coughed, the sound loud in the quiet of the cave. Orsin’s grip on Vasen’s shoulder tightened at the sound.

“Quiet that boy!” someone hissed from Vasen’s right.

The pilgrims were crowded into the rear of the cave, some hugging one another, others holding eating knives in their hands. One of them had produced a truncheon from somewhere. All of them wore expressions of fear. Noll lay covered in blankets near the wall, still lost in fever, muttering incoherently, but his color had returned. Elora stroked her son’s head, whispered softly to comfort him. She alone seemed unconcerned with what lay outside the cave’s mouth.

Vasen lifted himself on an elbow, trying to move quietly in his armor, and saw that Byrne, Eldris, and Nald crouched near the cave opening, hugging the wall and looking out.

Noll coughed again, summoning sharp intakes of breath from the pilgrims. Vasen saw Eldris’s jaw clench as he chewed on his own tension. Nald’s hand opened and closed over the hilt of his bare sword. Vasen stood, pulled Orsin close, and whispered in his ear.

“What is it?”

“Shadovar,” Orsin said.

The word flooded Vasen with adrenaline, pulled thick gouts of darkness from his skin. He crept toward the cave mouth with Orsin. Behind them, more coughs from Noll. Ordinarily the coughs would have been a good thing, indicative of the boy clearing his lungs. But at the moment the sound put them all at risk.

Elora tried to cover his mouth, but the boy, still incoherent, jerked his head to the side and cried out.

“That boy will get us all killed!” said one of the pilgrims, a man whose name Vasen could not recall.

Vasen turned and glared at him, pointed a finger leaking darkness at the man’s face.

The man’s mouth clamped shut and shame anchored his eyes to the floor.

Eldris held out Vasen’s sword. Vasen took it, hugged the walls of the cave near his men, and peered out across the river. Orsin stood beside him. The cave’s shadows engulfed them both, as thick as ink.

A veserab stood on the far side of the river, its head lowered to the stream to drink. Its cylindrical, serpentine body was twice as long as a man was tall, much of it coiled on the riverbank. From its sides sprouted membranous wings as large as sails. The dark gray hide, fixed with an elaborate saddle and harness, faded to a pale blue on its chest and underside. Its face resembled an open sore, a pink mass of flesh in the center of which was a rictus of fangs. To Vasen, the creature seemed an impossible a mix of lamprey, bat, and serpent. Its eyes looked like flecks of obsidian. A tongue as long as Vasen’s forearm extended from the gash of its mouth to slurp at the water. A single Shadovar kneeled at the water’s edge beside the veserab, filling his waterskin. Thick, viscous strands of shadow spiraled lazily around his form. Vasen’s eyes fell to his own skin, where similar shadows swirled.

A gray tabard marked with the heraldry of Netheril covered the Shadovar’s ornate armor. The thick plates featured vicious spikes at shoulders, gauntlets, knees, and elbows. Bald, gaunt, and with skin the color of old vellum, the Shadovar looked more like a corpse than a man. His eyes glowed red in the darkness.

A sudden, animal grunt from somewhere off on the plains behind the Shadovar caused Vasen’s heart to jump and startled the veserab. Its wings flapped and it lifted its face into the air, long tongue wagging back and forth like an antenna. The Shadovar stood, patted the creature’s side, and said something in his baroque, incomprehensible language.

A call sounded in the same language from farther down the riverbank. The first Shadovar shouted back, then said something to his mount. Vasen could not see down the river from where he stood in the cave’s mouth, and didn’t dare risk exposing himself by venturing out of the cave.

“Another one,” Orsin whispered.

“Maybe more than one,” Vasen said.

“Let’s find out,” the deva said. He crouched low and moved out into the brush, a few paces outside the cave. He looked down the riverbank, then looked back at Vasen and held up one finger.

Only one more Shadovar.

Vasen would wait them out. It appeared the shades had stopped only to water their mounts. They would be on their way back to Sakkors or Shade Enclave soon enough. He would not risk the pilgrims’ safety or the abbey’s discovery by attacking.

He made eye contact with Eldris, Nald, and Byrne. He did not speak but formed the words we wait and do nothing with his lips.

They nodded. Like him, they understood the stakes.

Noll coughed again, summoning a wince from the Dawnswords. The intake of breath from the pilgrims at the rear of the cave was sharp enough to cut wood.

The veserab, already skittish, grunted at the sound and again reared up, drool dripping from the circle of its fanged mouth, wings half spread. The muscles under its hide rippled. It extended its neck and the sore of its face opened like a blooming flower, revealing more pink flesh, more flaps of teeth. It chuffed at the air, sniffing for spoor. The Shadovar came to its side, the shadows around him swirling, a frown on his lips. He spoke softly to the creature while scanning the bank. The Shadovar would be able to see as well in darkness as Vasen, perhaps better Orsin made himself small in the scrub. Vasen flattened himself against the wall, his fist clenching and unclenching on his sword hilt. By his side, Byrne softly breathed out, and Vasen caught the tail end of a whispered prayer in the exhalation.

The Shadovar’s red eyes poured over the terrain, the scrub, the trees. His eyes went over and past the cave mouth, and Vasen allowed himself to hope.

The far Shadovar called to the near one, a question in the tone. The other answered a bit too casually, nodding across the river bank.

“They’re coming,” Vasen said to Byrne, and Byrne nodded.

Another coughing spasm from Noll.

The veserab shrieked in agitation. The Shadovar gripped the reins and slung himself into the saddle, calling out to his comrade as he did so.

“Ready yourself,” Vasen whispered to Byrne. “We can’t allow either to escape.”

Moving rapidly but methodically, Nald, Eldris, and Byrne sheathed swords, unslung their crossbows, cocked, and seated quarrels. Vasen kept blade to hand and prayer at the top of his thoughts.

The veserab coiled its body, tensed, and with an awkward shove vaulted into the air. For a moment, Vasen lost of sight of it, but only for a moment. It landed amid the scrub just to the right of the cave mouth, crushing shrubs and snapping saplings. Orsin crouched in the foliage ten paces from it.

The Shadovar called over his shoulder to his comrade. He cocked his head, his red eyes fixed on the cave mouth.

Noll broke into another coughing fit. The Shadovar slid out of his saddle, drew his sword, the blade like black glass, and advanced on the cave. Darkness clung to him, concealed his legs and lower body in a fog of darkness. The veserab lingered behind him, sucking in the air, its long tongue dangling between the rows of its teeth. Orsin crept closer to the creature, as silent as a ghost.

Noll’s hacking ceased. The tension in the cave was as thick as the shadows. Many of the pilgrims whispered prayers.

The Shadovar halted.

Vasen held up a hand to order Eldris, Nald, and Byrne to hold. They nodded, but took aim nevertheless.

The darkness deepened around the Shadovar, he took a single step within it, and moved in an instant from the darkness in which he stood to the darkness in the mouth of the cave. His sudden appearance three paces before them elicited a surprised curse from Byrne and hurried shots from the crossbows. Two bolts went wide, but Byrne’s struck the Shadovar in the chest. The darkness around the Shadovar killed the bolt’s inertia, and the missile thumped weakly into his breastplate.

The pilgrims shouted in fear. Vasen voiced the prayer he’d kept behind his teeth, and his sword ignited with Amaunator’s light. The Shadovar blanched before the sudden glare, his darkness overcome by Vasen’s light, and Vasen bounded forward with a shout. He slashed at the joint in the Shadovar’s armor between shoulder and neck, but the Shadovar recovered enough to duck under the blow and stab his sword at Vasen’s abdomen. The black blade ground against Vasen’s armor, and he lurched to his left before it could penetrate to his flesh. He slammed his shield into the Shadovar’s face, felt the satisfying crunch of bone, and sent the shade careening backward three strides.

“Kill the mount!” Vasen shouted.

The veserab shrieked, spitting drool, and lurched like a serpent toward the combat, crushing scrub and saplings under its writhings. Byrne, Eldris, and Nald rushed past Vasen toward the creature, blades high and lit. The creature reared up, hissing. Vasen did not see Orsin anywhere.

He lunged at the Shadovar, noting with horror and fascination that the shade’s broken nose already had ceased bleeding-the bones reshaping themselves as the flesh regenerated. The Shadovar spit a mouthful of blood, parried Vasen’s overhead slash with his own blade, and loosed a kick that struck Vasen in the abdomen and doubled him over. Vasen’s breath rushed out of him, but he got his shield up in time to block a slash that otherwise would have decapitated him. He swung his blade at the Shadovar’s leg to drive him back a step.

They regarded each other for a moment, Vasen’s light dueling with the Shadovar’s darkness while Vasen’s fellow Dawnswords surrounded the veserab and hacked at its flesh.

Vasen moved first, bounding forward and stabbing low. The shade sidestepped the blow and loosed a cross slash for Vasen’s side, but Vasen swept the blade out wide with his shield and lashed out with a backhand. The pommel of his sword caught the Shadovar flush in the cheek, sent him reeling. From nowhere Orsin reared up behind the shade and leaped on his back, his quarterstaff drawn across the Shadovar’s throat, his legs wrapped around the shade’s waist.

The shade’s red eyes flared with surprise and fear. The darkness around him swirled, churned. He spun a circle, gagging, trying to shed Orsin, but the deva covered him like a cloak, his arms hooked around his quarterstaff, squeezing. The shade tried awkwardly to bring his large sword to bear on Orsin, but the deva’s position made it difficult.

Vasen did not hesitate. He lunged forward and stabbed the Shadovar through the midsection. The shade screamed when Vasen’s glowing blade cut through the black armor, the gray flesh. Blood gushed from the wound. The shade staggered under Orsin’s weight, then fell to the muck. The moment he hit the ground Orsin rolled off of him and Vasen stepped forward and with a downward slash decapitated the Shadovar.

“Their flesh regenerates only while they live,” Orsin said. The deva was not even breathing hard. “This one is done.”

But not the other.

To Vasen’s right, the veserab wailed its dying shrieks as Eldris, Nald, and Byrne’s swords rose and fell on its quivering flesh. Black blood stained their weapons, coated the creature’s blue hide. Its wings flapped feebly as it made one last effort to get airborne, but it was too wounded to fly and only managed a clumsy lurch. The Dawnswords’ blades ran it through. Its body spasmed as it died.

Vasen scanned the riverbank for the other Shadovar, spotted him twenty paces down the river, on the opposite side, strapping himself into his saddle.

“Shoot him!” Vasen said, pointing.

The second Shadovar’s veserab shrieked in answer, showing its fangs. It beat its wings and tensed to take flight while Eldris, the best crossbowman among the Dawnswords, dropped his blade, took crossbow in hand, and cocked it rapidly.

Vasen ran in the Shadovar’s direction, although he had no idea what he intended. Byrne, Nald, and Orsin trailed him.

The sails of the veserab’s wings collected air and the creature rose into the sky, and with it went Vasen’s hope. The pilgrims were more than a day away from the abbey, more than a day away from the Dales. The Shadovar would escape, report their presence, and a full patrol would come and find the pilgrims on the plains. Vasen would not be able to protect them.

Eldris’s crossbow sang and a bolt sizzled through the shadows and tore a gash in the membrane of the veserab’s wing. The creatures emitted a highpitched shriek, lurched, beat its wings frantically, and spiraled back to the ground. A cloud of shadows swirled around the Shadovar and his mount. The huge creature lurched about on the ground, shrieking, flapping its wounded wing. The Shadovar spun in the saddle, his red eyes glowing in the black hole of his face. His gaze fixed on Eldris and he held forth his free hand. A column of dark energy streaked across the river at Eldris, blasted him in the chest, lifted him from his feet, and drove him to the earth.

“Eldris!” shouted Nald, but already Eldris had rolled to his stomach and climbed to all fours.

Meanwhile the Shadovar shouted at his mount, thumped it in the side with the flat of his blade.

“We can’t let him escape!” Vasen said.

Byrne and Nald already had crossbows to hand and let fly, one bolt plowing into the soft earth beside the veserab, the other striking the Shadovar but dying in his darkness before ever reaching flesh or armor.

Vasen eyed the river, desperate. It was too wide. He’d never get across in time.

“Keep firing,” he said, although he knew it would be futile.

Responding to the furious prompts of its master, the veserab again coiled its body and launched itself into the air. Its wounded wing made flight awkward, and for a moment it struggled to get height under it. The Shadovar shouted at it, slapped its side, all the while staring back at Vasen with hate in his face.

“Take this,” Orsin said, and shoved his quarterstaff into Vasen’s hand. Before Vasen could ask any questions, the deva was gone, sprinting over the uneven ground, zagging through the thick scrub and bounding over fallen logs, toward the river.

“What’s he doing?” Byrne asked, reloading his crossbow.

“I don’t know. Come on.”

Vasen and Nald and Byrne ran after Orsin but could not approach the deva’s speed. Orsin reached the river at a dead sprint and launched himself into the air. A column of shadow formed under Orsin’s feet as he went airborne and Vasen, Byrne, and Nald stopped cold, gasping as Orsin sailed high into the air, completely over the river and into the airborne veserab and its rider.

“By the light,” Nald said.

Vasen thought light had little to do with Orsin’s feat.

The deva hit mount and rider in a tangle of limbs and wings and swirling shadows. Unready for the impact or the weight, the veserab lurched sidewise and lost altitude. It shrieked, its wings beating furiously to keep it airborne. Orsin hung on, swinging free in the air, one hand closed on the veserab’s saddle strap, one hand around the Shadovar’s ankle.

“Shoot it!” Vasen said. “Shoot it!”

Nald and Byrne fired again, one after another, the bolts slamming into the veserab’s flank.

It keened with pain and lurched sideways. Blood sprayed from its wounded side, spattered the scrub below. Orsin swung like a pendulum but did not let go.

The Shadovar, nearly unseated by the lurches of the wounded veserab, managed to steady himself enough to hack downward at Orsin with his black sword. Orsin released his grip on the Shadovar’s ankle to avoid losing a hand, but before the Shadovar could pull his arm and blade back, Orsin seized his wrist. The moment he had it, he twisted his grip somehow and the Shadovar shouted with pain. The sword fell from the shade’s fist and spun to the ground. Still holding the Shadovar by the wrist, Orsin let go his hold on the veserab’s strap and took the shade’s arm with both hands. Using the arm as a lever, he flipped his legs up and got them under the armpit and around the Shadovar’s neck. The veserab careened wildly through the sky as the men atop it struggled. A fog of shadows swirled around Orsin and the Shadovar. Vasen could see only glimpses of the tangle of limbs, the Shadovar’s gauntleted fist rising and falling as he punched at Orsin.

“Come on!” Vasen said, and crashed through the scrub toward the river. He lunged into the cold water without stopping, Byrne and Nald on his heels. He hoped that his height would keep his head above water.

The veserab shrieked again, and so, too, did the Shadovar. Orsin dislodged the Shadovar from his mount and shade and man plummeted earthward in a cloud of shadows.

Vasen cursed, the current pulling hard at him, turning his straight course into a diagonal, but the water never rose above his chest and he cleared the river. Eldris and Nald called out behind him. Neither was as tall as he, and both were getting pulled downstream by the current.

“Help them, Eldris!” he shouted over his shoulder, not knowing if Eldris could even hear him.

He clambered up the muddy bank, his boots slipping in the mud, using the scrub to heave himself up. By the time he crested the top, shadows oozed from his flesh. Faith filled him and he channeled it into his blade. The weapon ignited, lit with a rosy light.

He spotted Orsin and the Shadovar twenty paces to his right. Darkness churned around the Shadovar and he appeared unwounded from the fall. Orsin circled him at a few paces, favoring a wounded leg.

Vasen charged straight at them. He shouted Orsin’s name as he ran and hurled the deva’s quarterstaff toward him. The weapon spun wildly as it flew, but Orsin bounded back from the Shadovar on one leg, caught it, and spun it over his head and before him so fast it hummed.

The Shadovar’s red eyes glared as he looked first at Orsin, then at Vasen. He extended a hand at each and black energy streaked from his palms. Orsin tried to dive aside but his leg slowed him and the bolt caught him in the hip, spun him halfway around, and slammed him to the earth. Vasen interposed his shield and the bolt slammed into the steel so hard it drove him from his feet. The metal cooled at the magic’s touch, and dark energy crept in tendrils around the shield’s edge and dissolved the strap, but it dissipated before doing any more harm.

The Shadovar drew a secondary weapon, a black mace, from his weapon belt and stalked toward Orsin. The deva rolled to his side, tried to stand on his wounded leg-Vasen could see it was broken-and fell back to the earth, grunting with pain. The Shadovar would kill him easily.

Vasen leaped to his feet and renewed his charge, shouting a prayer to Amaunator and channeling the power of his faith into his shield. The entire disk blazed with light. He gripped its edge in his hands, spun a circle, and hurled it at the shade, who saw it coming a moment too late. The blazing shield cut through the darkness around the shade, slammed into his side, and staggered him, continuing to blaze with Amaunator’s light. Wincing in the blazing light, the Shadovar recoiled and shaded his eyes with his own shield.

Vasen rushed toward him, his blade held in a two-handed grip. Orsin planted his quarterstaff in the soil and used it to pull himself to his feet, hopping on his one good leg.

Vasen hadn’t taken four strides before the Shadovar’s darkness extinguished the light from his shield. Vasen didn’t care. His blade glowed with light enough.

He roared as he slashed downward, a blow to cleave the shade’s helm and split his skull. The Shadovar parried with his shield, bounded a step back, and countered with a swing of his mace that clipped Vasen on the shoulder. A flash of pain, then numbness. His arm hung limp from his shoulder, but he held his blade in one hand and stabbed and slashed, driving the Shadovar back a step.

And then Orsin was there, barely mobile, but with his quarterstaff still a whirling, spinning line of oak. The Shadovar parried with shield and mace, backing up under the onslaught of metal and wood, the darkness around him whirling like a thunderhead.

Vasen ducked under a too-casual mace swing, stepped past the Shadovar’s shield, and stabbed up under the shade’s breastplate. He felt his glowing weapon grate against metal plates, pierce the mail beneath, slide into flesh, and grind against bone. The Shadovar grunted with pain, red eyes wide. He dropped his mace and grabbed at Vasen with his free hand, as if he would push him away. Orsin’s quarterstaff slammed into the shade’s temple, sending his helm from his bald head.

Vasen jerked his blade free and the Shadovar hit the ground like a felled cow, the darkness about him still swirling. Vasen straddled him, reversed his grip, and drove his blade downward. . into the earth.

The Shadovar was gone.

“Damn it,” said Vasen, looking around frantically.

Orsin sagged to the ground, wincing from pain. “He is not far. Their power allows them to step from shadow to shadow, but not over long distances.”

Vasen spun around, eyeing the thigh-high whipgrass, the scrub bushes, the solitary broadleaf tree here and there. He saw nothing.

“He escaped us!” Vasen shouted, as Byrne, Eldris, and Nald climbed over the river bank. “He’s near and sorely wounded!”

“He’ll heal rapidly,” said Orsin, feeling the break in his leg.

Vasen knew. He snatched his shield from the ground, picked a direction, and started walking.

“Light,” Vasen called, and all four servants of Amaunator used the power of their god to light their swords. Holding them high, they scoured the nearby plains.

“Here!” Eldris called, and Vasen and the others sprinted to his side. Eldris crouched near a broadleaf tree.

“It’s soaked with blood,” he said, touching the bole of the tree and holding up his fingers, red with Shadovar blood.

Vasen sheathed his sword, darkness whirling around him. “Then he’s gone. We’ll be pursued soon enough.”

“His mount abandoned him, at least,” Byrne said, nodding at the dark sky. The wounded veserab was nowhere to be seen.

“That earns us some time, but only some,” Vasen said. “He can move rapidly from shadow to shadow. A patrol will pick him up eventually.”

“So they’ll be coming,” Nald said.

Vasen looked up at the sky, thick with darkness and nodded. “They’ll be coming. Get the pilgrims ready. We need to move rapidly. Not the normal way. We take a direct path to the Dales.”

Byrne’s eyes widened. “You’re certain that’s wise, First Blade?”

“No, I’m not. But see to it.”

“Aye.”

As Byrne, Eldris, and Nald headed back to the cave where the pilgrims sheltered, Vasen hurried over to Orsin. The deva sat on the grass, his loose trousers rolled up over his thigh. Tattooed lines traced paths like veins the length of his leg. The man’s flesh really was a map of sorts, the places he’d been drawn on his flesh in cryptic swirls and angles.

“Broken?” Vasen asked.

“And the ankle.” Orsin nodded at his ankle. It was already purpling and the bones were angled all wrong. Only a furrow between his eyes suggested the pain he must have felt.

Vasen crouched beside him. “I can help you.”

“Your chain.”

“What?”

Orsin nodded at Vasen’s chest.

It took Vasen a moment to realize what Orsin meant. The chain on which he wore Saint Abelar’s holy symbol was broken, its unlooped length hung up on a ridge of his armor.

His heart fell and he cursed. “I have to find it!”

He started to rise, remembered Orsin’s leg, remembered his duty.

“After, of course. This may hurt, Orsin.”

“May?”

“Will,” Vasen acknowledged. “Ready yourself.”

Using the symbol of Amaunator enameled on his shield as the focus for his power, Vasen gently laid the shield over Orsin’s leg and intoned a prayer of healing. The shield glowed softly and warmth flooded Vasen’s body. He focused the warmth in his hands, his palms, and placed them on the shield. The power passed through to Orsin’s flesh and the deva hissed through gritted teeth as bones reknit and bruises faded. Vasen slung his shield and pulled the deva to his feet. Orsin tested his weight on the leg.

“Good?” Vasen asked.

“Good. Your symbol?”

“It must have fallen off in the fight,” Vasen said, looking hopelessly at the ground around him. “It’s. . important to me.”

“A silver rose,” Orsin said.

Vasen was surprised the deva had noticed. “Yes. It belonged to the Oracle, and Saint Abelar before that.”

“I’ll help you find it.”

They slowly walked the area where they had fought the shade. Neither of them found the symbol. Eventually both of them got down on all fours, feeling through the grass, Vasen berating himself for his carelessness. He should have had it tucked under his mail shirt, not hanging free. He should have been more careful. Nine Hells, he could have lost it in the battle or he could have lost it while crossing the river.

“Vasen,” Byrne called from across the river.

“I know,” Vasen shouted over his shoulder, running his hands over the grass, hoping to feel the metal rose under his hands. Orsin stood, put a hand on Vasen’s shoulder.

“I think it’s gone,” the deva said.

“I know.”

“We should go.”

Vasen hung his head. How would he explain to the Oracle?

“The pilgrims, First Blade,” Byrne called.

And that was the word that dispelled Vasen’s self-pity. The pilgrim’s safety was more important than any holy symbol. He sighed, angry, sad, and stood.

“Thank you for helping,” he said to Orsin.

“Of course.”

“The lines on your skin? What exactly are they?”

Orsin looked down at his hands, covered in lines and swirls. “The story of my life.”

“The story of your life can be read on your skin?”

Orsin nodded. “Much of it. Where I’ve been, at least. But the point of the story isn’t to read it. It’s to write it. A man writes his story in the book of the world, Vasen. Or so I tell myself.”

“Well, that’s a good story,” Vasen said, and Orsin chuckled. “Very good. A good story, indeed.”

Byrne, Eldris, and Nald already had the pilgrims geared up and ready to set out. Vasen and Orsin sidestepped down the river bank and waded into the water.

“You’ll not jump it this time?” Vasen said to him, smiling.

Orsin smiled in return.

“How did you. . manage such a feat?”

Orsin’s eyes narrowed with puzzlement. “How do you cause your blade to shine?”

“You know the answer to that. With faith.”

“And so it is with me. Your faith manifests as light. Mine. . does not.”

“But your god is. . gone.”

“Yes, but my faith is not.”

“Well enough.” They waded into the water. “You are a strange man, Orsin.”

“I think you said as much once already.”

Vasen chuckled. “I thought maybe you needed a reminder. Maybe you should write it on your skin?”

Orsin laughed. “Very good. Very good.”

As they emerged on the other side of the river, Orsin adopted a more serious tone. “When there is time later, let’s discuss some things.”

Zeeahd’s satiety unnerved Sayeed almost as much as his appetite. Having spat his pollution into the young girl, Zeeahd seemed almost giddy. He whistled as they plodded over the plains, saturated by the rain. The cats seemed gleeful, too. Their bloodlust temporarily sated, they fairly pranced around Zeeahd, tails held high.

For his part, Sayeed could not rid himself of the foul taste of the devourer’s flesh, the memory of the girl’s screams of terror, his brother’s wet grunts as he expelled the evil in him.

“Her name was Lahni,” he said to himself, not understanding why he felt the need to say her name aloud.

“What’d you say?” his brother asked, looking back, his voice high-pitched, irritating.

“Nothing,” Sayeed said, knowing Zeeahd would not understand. “Protesting the rain.”

The cats eyed him suspiciously, their fang-filled mouths more devilish than feline.

Zeeahd held his hands out, palms up to the sky. “I like the rain. Renews the spirit.”

Sayeed said nothing. He feared he had no spirit to renew. He feared the Spellplague had stripped him of his soul and left a moral vacancy filled now by only his brother’s ambition and his own resignation. He lived, but he did not live. And so it would go, forever. He swallowed down the despair evoked by the thought.

Zeeahd stopped. “I smell wood smoke.”

The excitement in his voice made Sayeed nauseous.

Sayeed smelled it, too, the faint hint of a chimney’s exhalation. Breakfast fires, maybe. Once, the aroma would have made his stomach growl with hunger. Now, he barely tasted the food that passed his lips. To the extent his senses let him perceive anything with acuity, it was invariably something foul. Like devourer flesh.

“Come, come!” Zeeahd said, and picked up his pace. “A village is near.” He chuckled. “Perhaps Lahni’s village.”

Hearing his brother speak the girl’s name sharpened Sayeed’s irritation. He stared at his brother’s cloaked form, Zeeahd’s soul as distorted as his flesh, and wondered how it was possible to love and hate the same person so much. He flashed on an image of his sword driven through his brother’s back, the blade exploding out of Zeeahd’s chest in a spray of blood or whatever foul ichor now flowed in his brother’s veins.

“Come on!” his brother called.

Sayeed came back to himself to find three of the cats sitting on their haunches before him, slit eyes staring at him knowingly. They lifted paws to fanged mouths and licked at the mud on their pads. Their eyes never left Sayeed’s face.

“Out of my way,” he said, but they did not move and he walked around rather than through them.

The smell of breakfast fires grew stronger with each step they took. And by the time they reached the village, the rain had sputtered to a stop. A dozen or more ancient elms sprouted from the plains, noble looking trees with vast canopies lost to the shadowed air, giants compared to the meager broadleafs that predominated elsewhere on the plains. They must have been saplings when the Spellplague struck.

Within the circle of the elms was a large pond and the village whose breakfast fires they’d smelled. A few dozen single-story wooden homes huddled around a common pasturage. Bark shingles covered the roofs. Smoke rose from several chimneys. Post fences made from stripped broadleaf limbs delineated small fields and gardens. A few rickety wagons sat here and there, small chicken coops, livestock pens. The village was so small Sayeed could have run from one end of it to the other in less than a fifty count.

The overgrown cart path they walked carried them between two of the elms, which formed a kind of natural gate. Sayeed heard voices coming from the village center, the chatter of earnest conversation punctuated with laughter and the occasional jovial shout.

“A collection of hovels,” Zeeahd said, eyeing the village contemptuously. His good mood was already fading. Probably his hunger was already returning. “It smells of peasants and shit.”

A herd dog stood in the open door of a rain-sodden woodshed, eyeing them, its hackles raised. Zeeahd’s cats stared back at it as they walked past and the dog tucked tail and retreated into the shed.

No one seemed to be around. As Sayeed was about to announce their arrival, as was the custom, a boy of maybe ten winters with a too-large cloak thrown over his homespun hurried around the corner of one of the fences ahead. Head down, he clicked at a thin sheep that trailed him. When he caught sight of Sayeed and Zeeahd he froze, ten steps away but a world distant. The sheep, its head down against the rain, walked into him and bleated.

“Ho there, boy,” Sayeed said, raising a hand in greeting.

The boy’s sleepy eyes went wide. Sayeed and Zeeahd must have looked to him like ghosts stepping from the shadows.

Sayeed tried to look harmless, despite his armor, sword, and wild hair and beard. “There’s no need to be afra-”

The boy turned and ran off toward the center of the village, slipping in the mud as he went. “Mother! Mother!”

The sheep trotted after him, oblivious.

“Fly back to the nest, little bird,” Zeeahd said softly, and Sayeed knew his tone promised blood. “Predators are afoot.”

They followed the boy’s shouts toward the center of the village. The few local dogs and cats they saw slinked away as Sayeed, Zeeahd, and their cats drew near. Scrawny livestock lowed or bleated in their pens as they passed.

Ahead, they saw the village center. A raised, planked deck and a bell on a tall post had been built under the canopy of a large elm. It looked like the entire village had gathered there. Women, children, and men sat on stump stools or stood about, their eyes on the deck, where stood a large, fat man with a thick moustache, holding forth about something. A rickety peddler’s cart stood to one side, still yoked to a large, graying mule. Some of the villagers were examining the cart’s wares, smiling.

The boy Sayeed had frightened stood at the edge of the gathered villagers, a woman kneeling before him, probably his mother. The boy pointed back at Sayeed and Zeeahd while his sheep nibbled the grass.

“See! I told you more travelers had come! See!”

Dozens of eyes fixed on Sayeed and Zeeahd, questions written in their expressions. Eyes widened at the brothers’ blades, their unkempt appearance.

The brothers walked toward the gathered villagers. The crowd formed up to await them, shifting on their feet, children hiding behind parents.

The peddler standing on the deck bowed and doffed his cap. “Minser the Seller at your service, goodsirs. This gem of a village is called Fairelm. And if I may be so bold as to speak for these good people, we bid you welcome.”

The villagers did not echo the welcome.

Sayeed did not bow in return. His gaze swept the villagers, looking for anyone who might have been other than they appeared. He saw no one of note.

“My name is Sayeed,” he said. “This is my brother, Zeeahd.”

Their foreign sounding names caused a murmur of discontent to move through the crowd.

“Well met,” Minser said. He waited a moment for a return greeting that didn’t come, and the brothers’ silence seemed to take him aback. He looked around at the villagers, perhaps hoping one of them would speak, but none did. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, yes, well. What has you two walking Sembia’s plains under this bleak sky? There are dangers on the plains, although you look like a man familiar with a sword.”

“We are merely travelers,” Zeeahd said.

“We’re just passing through,” Sayeed added. “It is custom, is it not, to offer shelter and a meal to travelers?”

No one offered either. Eyes found the ground. The silence thickened. Finally the boy they’d frightened piped up.

“Those are strange looking cats.”

Nervous laughter greeted the boy’s words.

“Strange looking men,” said a man’s voice in the back.

Zeeahd stiffened at that, craned his neck. “Who said that?”

Sayeed took his brother by the arm, but Zeeahd shook it off.

No one responded to the question.

“Who spoke so?” Zeeahd said. “It seems the custom in this stinking mass of hovels is to speak rudely to strangers.”

Lots of angry looks, but no words, until a woman’s voice from off to the side said, “And now who speaks rudely?”

Sayeed and Zeeahd turned to see a tall, strongly built woman with long red hair walking toward the crowd. Sayeed would have thought her attractive had he still felt such things.

The cats at Zeeahd’s feet hissed at the woman as she approached, and her step faltered, her eyes on the creatures.

“You mind your tongue, woman,” Zeeahd said. “Lest. . ”

Sayeed’s hand on his brother’s arm halted whatever threat he might have uttered, but the woman took his point and would have none of it. She put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin.

“Lest what, goodsir?”

“Elle,” said another woman in the crowd, a small, mousy looking woman with a mane of black tresses.

“No, Ana,” Elle said, and glared at Zeeahd. “Say what you would, sir.”

“Yes, lest what?” said another man in the back.

Most of the villagers’ expressions grew vaguely hostile, although a few looked frightened. The children in the crowd, perhaps sensing the rising tension, looked upon events with wide, fearful eyes.

“Now, now,” Minser the peddler said, as he lowered himself from the deck, huffing with the exertion of moving his fat. The crowd parted to let him through. He wore a fake, vacuous smile that annoyed Sayeed. “Things have gotten off poorly for no reason that I can see. I can assure you, goodsirs, that Fairelm is a village of unparalleled hospitality.”

“Our homes are not hovels,” spat a large, bearded man near the front of the crowd. Nodded heads greeted his assertion.

“Nor our women to be threatened,” added another.

Minser gestured grandly, a king granting dispensation. Sweat beaded his brow. “Of course not! And I’m sure these men meant no offense! They misspoke, is all.”

The cats lined up before Zeeahd, eyeing Minser coldly. The peddler’s eyes went to them, to Zeeahd, back to the cats. He licked his lips nervously.

“Yes, well, um, perhaps you two could explain what brings you to Fairelm? If the good people here can be of assistance, I’m sure you’ll have it. Within reason. And if not, well, then you can be on your way. Much of the day remains, and this is the best time to be traveling.”

A round of “ayes” arose from the villagers.

Zeeahd stiffened, leaned forward, looking at Minser closely. “What’s that?” “What’s what?” asked Minser.

“On your neck, what is that?”

Zeeahd advanced on the peddler, who nearly stumbled over himself backtracking. The crowd surged forward a step, but that was all. Sayeed put his hand to the hilt of his blade.

Zeeahd snatched at a lanyard hanging from Minser’s neck and yanked it hard, snapping it.

“Sir!” Minser said, his face blotching red.

Zeeahd held the lanyard before him. A medallion hung from it, a medallion that featured a rose and a sun. The cats crept forward, gathering at Zeeahd’s feet. Zeeahd’s tone was sharp enough to cut flesh. “How did you come by this?”

The peddler stuck out his chest. “That is none of your-”

Zeeahd grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close. His brother was much stronger than his slight frame would suggest. “How did you get this, peddler?”

“Let him go,” Elle said, and angry murmurs formed in the crowd. They moved closer.

“Aye! Let him go.”

The cats at Zeeahd’s feet arched their backs, hissed, showed fangs. Sayeed moved to his brother’s side, eyes cold.

“Keep your distance,” Sayeed ordered them.

“Speak, Minser,” Zeeahd said. “Your life depends on truth.”

The peddler sputtered, terrified. “My life? You threaten me? What is this?”

“Speak!” Sayeed said, his eyes still on the crowd.

“I got. . I got it at an abbey.”

Zeeahd’s hand gathered more of the peddler’s shirt into his fist. His voice was as tight as bowstring, his eyes on Minser’s face. “The Abbey of the Rose?”

Minser hesitated, nodded, his eyes moving from Zeeahd to Sayeed.

Sayeed glanced at the peddler, hope rising in him, making him as giddy as his brother.

“And while you were at the Abbey of the Rose, you saw. . the Oracle?”

Several in the crowd made a sign with their hands: three fingers raised to the sky.

Minser gulped, nodded. “And. . the sacred tomb of Dawnlord Abelar.”

Sayeed whirled on him. “Who?”

“Did you say sacred?” Zeeahd asked, his voice low.

“He did,” Sayeed said.

Sweat poured off of Minser’s brow. He swabbed at it with a dirty hand, streaking his face with filth.

Hearing the name of Abelar Corrinthal, hearing him given a hallowed titled, his resting place called “sacred,” all of it made Sayeed want to puke.

Zeeahd released Minser, and the fat peddler adjusted his shirt and his dignity.

“Thank you, Minser,” Zeeahd said, faking a smile. “You must know where the abbey is, then.”

Minser huffed. “No one knows where it is exactly. The Oracle sees who will come and sends Dawnswords to fetch them. But I doubt that you two-”

“And they fetched you?” Zeeahd asked.

Minser’s mind seemed to be catching up with his mouth, so he held his tongue.

“Speak, man!” Sayeed said, his shout startling the peddler.

“Yes, they fetched me. I. . wanted to see the Dawnlord’s tomb.”

“The sacred tomb,” Zeeahd said, closing his fist over the medallion. “Of Dawnlord Abelar.”

Minser chewed the corner of his moustache. He seemed unable to make sense of things. “You. . think him other than a good man?”

Zeeahd smacked Minser across the face, eliciting gasps from the crowd. “I know him to be other than a good man!”

Minser’s mouth moved but no word emerged. A trickle of blood leaked from the corner of his lips.

“Something to say?” Zeeahd asked. “Say it, fat man.”

The peddler’s face reddened but still he made no sound.

Sayeed, caught up in Zeeahd’s growing anger, held up his maimed hand, showing the stump of his thumb. “Your Dawnlord took my thumb and that of scores of other unarmed men. He was a coward.”

Gasps and uncomfortable expressions answered his proclamation.

“You’re mad,” someone said. “Leave here!”

“Dawnlord Abelar died a hundred years ago,” said a burly man in a thick homespun, probably the village’s smith.

“He’s jesting,” said the fat peddler, rubbing his cheek, then blanched before Sayeed’s hard gaze. “Aren’t you?”

Another man’s voice from deeper in the crowd said, “You look hale for a man of a hundred winters.”

Uncertain laughter.

Sayeed sought the source of the voice in the crowd. His gaze killed the laughter.

“Jest?” Sayeed snarled. “You think I jest? About this?”

The smith’s wife, Ana, tried to pull the man away from the front of the crowd. “Come on, Corl. Let’s go now. Breakfast is ready.”

“No one is going anywhere,” Sayeed snapped, and whisked his blade free. He knew now how events would unfold. The cats did, too, for they meowed in excitement.

The crowd went wide-eyed at the sight of Sayeed’s blade. A child wailed.

The red-haired woman, Elle, stepped forward, her arms held out to her sides as if she would protect the entire village with them.

“Why don’t you put your blade back and be on your way, now? Please, just leave.”

The villagers nodded heads, murmured agreement.

Zeeahd shoved Minser away, causing the fat man to stumble, and glared at Elle until she took a step back.

“I take no orders from you, woman.”

“I meant no offense.”

Zeeahd paced before all of the villagers, staring at them, fists clenched.

“Ah, but now I am offended! By this place! By all of you!” He glared at the crowd. “My brother spoke truth. One hundred years ago Abelar maimed unarmed men, us among them.” He held up his own severed thumb. “Dawnlord Abelar stole our livelihood, stole our lives.” His voice rose as he spoke, spit flying. He made wild gestures with his hands. The cats trailed him like angry shadows, hackles raised, hissing. “Dawnlord Abelar condemned us to a cursed existence, a living hell, with only a devil’s promise to give us hope. And you venerate him. You simplistic idiots. You wish to see? Do you?”

No one spoke. Everyone stared at Zeeahd, wide eyed.

“Then see.”

He threw off his cloak, untied his tunic, and tore it from his body, revealing his torso.

The villagers gasped, turned away. Children screamed, started to cry. Sayeed simply stared, dumbfounded. He’d not seen his brother’s exposed flesh in years.

Fissures and scars deformed skin that was the color of an old bruise. In places the flesh looked melted, like candle wax. Tumors bulged, the largest in the small of his back, and here and there were malformed lumps of vestigial tissue. A few red scales covered the flesh in places. His distended stomach looked like that of a starving man, like it would pop if it were pierced. Blue veins, visible through his skin, made a grotesque net on his flesh.

“You see now what your Dawnlord wrought? Do you?”

As they watched, his skin bubbled and rippled, as if something moved below the surface of his tissue. He laughed, the sound manic, filled with rage.

“That is what Abelar did to me!” Zeeahd was respiring heavily, the sound wet and bubbling. He whirled on Minser, who quailed before his wrath, and pointed a finger in his face. “You will take me to the abbey, peddler. And I will see the Oracle. And while I am there, I will also visit the sacred tomb of Abelar Corrinthal.”

Minser sputtered. “I. . I told you, I don’t know how to find it. And even if I did-”

Zeeahd stalked forward and slammed the medallion into the peddler’s brow, knocking the fat man to his knees and causing him to exclaim with pain.

“I think it’s in that head, Minser. And I’ll have it out one way or another.”

He cast the medallion at the feet of the bleeding peddler. Elle stepped forward and tried to help Minser to his feet, but the peddler seemed in no mood to stand. Instead, he sat there, stunned and bleeding.

“I’m all right, lady,” Minser muttered, but he was weeping. “I’m all right.”

Elle whirled on them, face red with anger, a vein bulging in her forehead. “Get out of here!” she shouted, and pointed at the road. “Get out of here now!”

Zeeahd ignored her as he gathered his tunic and cloak. The cats paced around him, meowing, licking their chops, eager, hungry. Sayeed could not deny that he felt some of the same hunger, looking on the faces of the stupid peasants and their foolish reverence for Abelar Corrinthal. He had not come into the village intending to kill, but the desire to do so rose in him now, ugly and bloody.

“The peddler comes with us,” Zeeahd said.

Sayeed stepped forward, pushed Elle away roughly, grabbed Minser by the arm, and jerked him to his feet.

“Leave him alone!” Elle said.

“It’s all right, lady,” Minser said, his speech slurred, daubing at his bleeding forehead. “I’ll be fine.”

The cats continued their insistent meowing. Zeeahd rubbed their heads.

“Hungry, are you?”

He looked up at the crowd, a sly smile on his face.

“Please,” Elle said. “Just go.”

“We are going,” Zeeahd said. “But first, something for those who revere Abelar Corrinthal.”

A nervous rustle from the crowd, one uncertain laugh, a cough. “Come out,” Zeeahd said to the cats. “Show them.”

The villagers watched in wide-eyed horror as the cats’ mouths opened so wide it looked as if their jaws were unhinged. Their faces seemed nothing but an open hole. Something wriggled within the cats’ bodies, under the skin, causing their forms to bulge grotesquely. Their eyes rolled back in their heads and their bodies convulsed.

A woman screamed. Another fainted. Everyone took a step back. Terror moved in a wave through the crowd.

“What’s wrong with them?” someone shouted.

“Gods!” said another.

Scaled hands reached out from within the cat’s throats, took hold of either side of the gaping mouth, and began to pull back. The cats’ skins stretched as blood-slicked diabolical forms wriggled out of the maws.

More screams, shouts of horror.

Diabolical forms wriggled forth in a slick, bloody mess of scales and horns and claws and teeth, the bodies much larger than the skin of the cats that contained them. They snarled as they emerged, drooling, shedding the feline skins like cloaks.

“The light preserve and keep us,” Minser whispered beside Sayeed.

Sayeed backhanded him in the face with a gauntleted fist. The peddler did not even groan, just fell to the ground unmoving.

As the devils stretched, panic seized the villagers. They gathered children, screaming, and fled. All except Elle. She stood her ground, her hand to her mouth, terror in her eyes.

The gore-slicked devils crouched on all fours, their sinewy muscles coated in a blanket of long spines. Their slit-eyed gazes darted about as they fixed on one and then another of the fleeing villagers. Long black tongues ran over mouths fanged like a shark’s. The one nearest Sayeed lifted its head to the sky and uttered an eager, clicking ululation.

“Feed,” Zeeahd said to them, and gestured at the fleeing villagers. “All but this woman and the peddler. They’re mine.”

The devils snarled and pelted after their prey like a pack of wolves, howling for blood and flesh, their clawed feet throwing up clods of sod with every stride. One of them thumped into Elle as it passed, nearly knocking her down.

“The woman, Sayeed,” Zeeahd ordered.

Two of the devils pounced on the villager who had fainted. They seized her by head and feet and tore her apart in a spray of gore.

Sayeed grabbed Elle by the wrist. She whirled, terror in her eyes, and kicked him hard in the groin.

“No! No! No!”

The blow might have doubled over another man, but Sayeed barely felt it. He pulled the woman close while she slapped and clawed at his face, her nails digging bloody furrows in his cheeks.

“Leave me. . alone!”

Sayeed grabbed her by the hair and thumped her in the temple with the pommel of his sword. She sagged to the ground, as limp as a grain sack.

He stood over her and watched Zeeahd’s creatures work.

The devils prowled heedlessly through the village, gleeful in the bloodletting. They overturned wagons, knocked down doors, shattered fences. From time to time they launched groups of spines from their backs, the missiles catching fire as they flew, thudding into flesh and wood and setting it all aflame. Screams sounded from all over the village, terrified shrieks from inside cottages and barns, wet ripping sounds from the street, gurgling groans of pain. The devils slaughtered everything within reach, not even sparing the livestock. Pigs squealed, impaled on devil’s claws. Dogs, cows, goats, and cats were chased down and torn to pieces. The devils careened wildly through the streets, soaked in blood, bits of flesh and fur hanging from their claws, arms or legs dangling in their fangs, an orgy of gore.

Zeeahd came to Sayeed’s side.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

When Sayeed said nothing, Zeeahd kneeled beside Minser and pulled him to a sitting position. Slaps to his face opened Minser’s eyes. Seeing the slaughter, the peddler clamped his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“No, no.”

Zeeahd slapped him, once, twice, a third time.

“Open your eyes, peddler! Open them or I will cut off your eyelids!”

Wincing, jaw clenched, his entire body trembling with the effort, Minster opened his eyes. He wept at the screaming, the blood.

“What have you done? What have you done? The light preserve us.”

Zeeahd grabbed him by the hair.

“That will be your fate and worse, if you don’t take us to the abbey. The light won’t preserve you. Nothing will.”

“You’re a monster,” the peddler said, sobbing. “A monster.”

Zeeahd roughly released his hold on Minser’s hair. “You have Abelar Corrinthal to thank for that, peddler.”

Sayeed watched the devils work with a peculiar sense of detachment. He knew he should feel something-horror, sympathy, elation, something. But he felt nothing except tired. He might as well have been watching the slaughter of dinner chickens. He just wanted to get on with finding the abbey, the Oracle, and end his perpetual self-loathing and bitterness.

He ran his fingertips over his cheek and felt only smooth skin. The grooves that Elle’s nails had carved in his face had already healed. Everything healed. Except his spirit. That wound where it should have been had never healed and never would.

“The Lord of Cania will cure us, Sayeed,” Zeeahd said, as if reading his thoughts. “We need only get to the Oracle and from him, learn the location of Cale’s son.” He kicked Minser. “And now we have a way.”

Fewer screams carried from the village. The devils had killed most everything. Sayeed heard mostly the sound of feeding, tearing meat.

Sayeed put a boot in Minser’s belly. The peddler groaned, curled up into a fetal position on the ground. “And if this oaf cannot lead us to the abbey? He said-”

“He can and he will,” Zeeahd answered. “Won’t you, Minser?”

The peddler made no answer other than sobs.

When the devils had devoured their fill of the corpses, they stalked back to Zeeahd and Sayeed. Minser covered his eyes at their approach.

Their yellow, reptilian eyes glared at Sayeed as they passed.

“Back now,” Zeeahd said.

“We serve,” one of the devils croaked, and each went to the bag of cat skin it had vacated, picked up the fur, extended the mouth over their horned heads, and began to squirm back inside. They seemed to diminish as they wriggled and writhed their way back into cat form. Soon the devils were gone and thirteen cats stared at Zeeahd and Sayeed.

“The woman?” Sayeed asked, although he suspected he knew the answer.

“I have something special for her rude mouth,” Zeeahd said. His bare, scarred, distended stomach began to lurch and roll as he dredged up the poison he carried within him. “Put her on the deck.”

Sayeed picked Elle up under her armpits and dragged her atop the deck. Her eyelids fluttered open when Sayeed dropped her there. She sat up, still woozy, recoiling as Zeeahd advanced on her, his body heaving with the effort to expel the darkness within him.

“Please, don’t,” Elle said, backing away crabwise. “I’m with child.”

“Not anymore,” Zeeahd said, the words distorted by the black phlegm filling his mouth and dribbling down his chin. As quick as an adder, he lunged forward, grabbed her by the wrists, and pinned her arms to her sides. He leaned in toward her face, his mouth open, drooling. She clamped her mouth shut, turned her head from side to side, making little grunts of fear.

Sayeed sheathed his sword and walked away. He’d rather survey the slaughter of Fairelm than watch his brother purge. He felt eyes on him and realized that several of the cats were following him, or perhaps they wished to revisit their slaughter.

Looking on the cats, Sayeed imagined something lurking within Zeeahd, too, some secret form waiting to burst forth from his brother the way the devils had heaved themselves out of the cats.

Blood, bodies, and gore littered the village’s streets and buildings. The eyes of the villagers-where eyes still remained-stared accusations at him. Seeing the blood and death, he thought it was good that he no longer had a soul. If he had, by now it would be a withered, shriveled remnant of feeling, a thing that brought only pain, far worse than nothing.