Mortalis dw-4

by Robert Salvatore

  "Honey mead," Roger replied, without turning.

  He heard the clank of a bottle and glass, then came the same voice. "Well, what're ye looking at, girl, and why ain't ye working? "

  Roger glanced back then, to see the grizzly-bearded innkeeper pouring his drink and to see, more pointedly, a familiar face indeed, staring back at him from behind the bar.

  "Roger Lockless," Dainsey Aucomb said happily. "But I wondered if I'd ever see ye in here again."

  "Dainsey!" Roger replied, reaching forward to share a little hug and kiss over the bar.

  "Ye spill it, ye pay for it," the gruff innkeeper said, and Roger leaned back.

  "Oh, ye're such a brute, ye are, Bigelow Brown!" Dainsey said with a laugh, and she swatted the man with her dishrag. "Ye'd be showin' more manners, ye would, if ye knew who ye was shoutin' at!"

  That made Bigelow Brown look at Roger more carefully, but before he could begin to ask, Dainsey hustled about the bar and took the slender man by the arm, escorting him across the room. She shooed a couple of men from a table and gave it to Roger, then went back and retrieved his honey mead.

  "I'll come by whenever I can find the time," Dainsey said. "I'm wantin' to hear all about Pony and Belster and Dundalis."

  Roger smiled at her and nodded, and he was glad indeed that he had come back to Palmaris.

  True to her word, Dainsey Aucomb visited Roger often, and often with refills of his honey mead, drinks that she insisted were gifts from Bigelow Brown, though Roger doubted that the tavern keeper even knew he was being so generous. They chatted and they laughed, catching each other up on the last year's events; and before he realized the hour, Roger found that he was among the tavern's last patrons.

  "I'll be done me work soon," Dainsey explained, delivering one last glass of honey mead.

  "A walk?" Roger asked, pointing to her and to himself.

  "I'd like that, Roger Lockless," Dainsey answered with a little smile, and she went back to the bar to finish her work.

  It was a fine night for a late walk. A bit cold, perhaps, but the storm that had hit farther north had barely clipped Palmaris, and now the stars were out bright and crisp.

  Dainsey led the way, walking slowly and talking easily. They went around the side of the tavern and down an alley, where, to Roger's surprise, they found a ladder set into the tavern wall, leading up to the only flat section of roof on the whole structure.

  "I made 'em build it like that," Dainsey explained, taking hold of one of the rungs and starting up. "I wanted it to be the same way it was when Pony was workin' here."

  Roger followed her up to the flat roof; she was sitting comfortably with her back against the warm chimney by the time he pulled himself over the roof's edge.

  "This was Pony's special place," Dainsey explained, and Roger nodded, for Pony had told him about her nights on the roof of Fellowship Way. "Where she'd come to hide from the troubles and to steal a peek at all the wide world."

  Roger looked all about, at the quiet of the Palmaris night, up at the twinkling stars, and over at the soft glow by the river, where the docks, despite the late hour, remained very much active and alive. He surely understood Dainsey's description, "to steal a peek at all the wide world," for it seemed to him as if he could watch all the city from up here, as if he were some otherworldly spy, looking in on-but very much separated from-the quiet hours of the folk of Palmaris.

  He heard a couple on the street below, whispering and giggling, and he gave a wry smile as he caught some of their private conversation, words that they had meant for no other ears.

  He could see how Pony so loved this place.

  "Is she well?" Dainsey asked, drawing him from his trance.

  Roger looked at her. "Pony?" he asked.

  "Well, who else might I be talkin' about?" the woman asked with a chuckle.

  "She is better," Roger explained. "I left her in Caer Tinella with Colleen Kilronney."

  "Her cousin's back in Palmaris, working beside the new baron now that Kalas' run off," Dainsey put in.

  Roger walked over and sat down beside her, close enough to share the warmth of the chimney.

  "She should've stayed," Dainsey remarked, "or I should've gone with her."

  "There's not much up there," Roger told her honestly. "That's what Pony needed for now, but you would have found life… tedious."

  "But I do miss her," Dainsey said. She looked over at Roger, and he could see that there was hint of a tear in her eye. "She could've stayed and ruled the world. Oh, she's such a pretty one."

  Roger stared at her earnestly, looked deep into her delicate eyes in a manner in which he never had thought to look before. "No prettier than Dainsey Aucomb," he said before he could think, for if he had considered the words, he never would have found the courage to spout them!

  Dainsey blushed and started to look away, but Roger, bolstered by hearing his own forward declaration, grabbed her chin in his small hand and forced her to look back at him. " 'Tis true," he said.

  Dainsey stared at him doubtfully. "I gived ye too much o' the honey mead," she said with a chuckle.

  "It has nothing to do with the drink," Roger declared flatly and firmly.

  Dainsey tried to turn away again, and started to laugh, but Roger held her with his hand, and stifled her chuckles with a sober and serious look.

  "Ye never said so before," she said quietly.

  Roger shook his head, having no real answer to that. "I do not know that I ever looked closely enough before," he said. "But 'tis true, Dainsey Aucomb."

  She started to say something, then started to chuckle, but Roger came forward and kissed her gently.

  Dainsey pushed him back to arm's length. "What're ye about, then? " she asked.

  Now it was Roger's turn to blush. "I–I-I do not know," he blurted, and started to turn away.

  But Dainsey Aucomb gave a great laugh and grabbed him hard, pulling him in for another kiss, a deeper and more urgent kiss.

  The early snow didn't stay for long, and soon after, the road to Dundalis was open again. But Pony couldn't leave, because Colleen had not improved. Far from it; the woman was looking more drawn and weary with each passing day. Pony had offered to try to help her with the soul stone several times, but Colleen had refused, insisting that it was just an early season chill and that she'd be rid of it soon enough.

  But then one morning when she went in to check on Colleen-an oddity, since the woman, despite her sickness, was always up before Pony and preparing her breakfast-Pony found her drenched in sweat in bed, too weak to even begin to stand.

  Pony pulled down the heavy blankets to try to cool the woman down. And then she saw them, on Colleen's bare arm, round red splotches about the size of a gol'bear coin and ringed in white.

  "What?" Pony asked, lifting the arm to better see the strange rings. Colleen couldn't answer; Pony wondered if she'd even heard the question. The rosy plague had come to the northland.

  Chapter 27

  A Thousand, Thousand Little Demons

  It's the rosy plague, I tell ye," the old woman said decisively. She was examining Colleen from afar, and she was backing with each word now that she had seen the telltale rings. She reached the door, her mouth moving as if she were trying futilely to find some words strong enough to express her horror, and then she slipped out into the daylight, Pony rushed outside behind her. "The rosy plague?" she echoed, for she had no idea what that might be. Pony had grown up on the frontier in the Timberlands. Her mother had taught her to read well enough, but she had never studied formally, and she had never heard of the plague.

  "Aye, and the death of us all!" the old woman wailed.

  "What about my friend? "

  "She's doomed or she's not, but that's not for yerselfto decide," the old woman answered coldly.

  "I have a gemstone," Pony said, producing the hematite. "I have been trained in the use-"

  "It'll do ye no good against the rosy plague!" the old woman cried. "Ye'11 just get yerself k
ilt!"

  Pony eyed her sternly, but the wrinkled old woman threw up her hands, gave a great wail, and ran off, crying, "Ring around the rosy!"

  Pony went back inside, scolding herself for even consulting the town's accepted healer, instead of just fighting the disease with her soul stone. She moved up beside Colleen, who was lying on her bed, and took the woman's hand in her own. She could feel the heat emanating from Colleen, could feel clammy wetness on her frail-looking arm. What a different woman this was from the warrior who had accompanied Pony throughout her trials! Colleen had been strong-stronger than Pony, surely, with thick arms and broad shoulders. But now she seemed so frail, so tired, so beaten. Pony felt more than a twinge of guilt at the sight, for Colleen's downslide had begun on the journey in which she had accompanied the outlaw Pony north out of Palmaris. De'Unnero, half man, half tiger, had caught them on the road, had downed Pony, and then had beaten Colleen severely. She had gotten away, for De'Unnero's focus was Pony and not her, but Colleen had never really recovered.

  And now here she lay, feverish and frail in her bed.

  Pony put aside her guilt and focused on correcting the situation, focused on the all-important hematite, the soul stone, the stone of healing. Deeper and deeper she went into the gemstone's inviting gray depths, into the swirl, her spirit leaving her body behind. Free of material bonds, Pony floated about the bed, looking down upon Colleen and upon her own physical form, still holding the woman's hand. She focused her thoughts on Colleen, and could feel the sickness, a tangible thing; could feel the heat rising from Colleen's battered body; could sense that the very air was tainted by a sickly smell of rot.

  At first that stench, the sheer wrongness of it, nearly overwhelmed Pony, nearly chased her right back into her own body. She understood at that moment why the old woman had run off wailing. For a moment, she wanted to do nothing more than that same thing. But she found her heart and her strength, reminded herself that she had faced Markwart, the embodiment of Bestesbulzibar itself, in this same spiritual state. If she left Colleen now, then her friend would certainly die, and horribly, and soon.

  She could not let that happen.

  Colleen was her friend, who had stood with her against the darkness of the demon dactyl.

  She could not let that happen.

  Colleen's descent to this point had begun when she was fighting beside Pony, in a battle that Colleen made her own for the sake of friendship and nothing more.

  She could not let that happen.

  With renewed resolve, as determined as she had ever been, the spirit of Pony dove into Colleen to meet the sickness head-on. She found it immediately, general in Colleen's battered body, like some green pus bubbling up all through her. Pony's spiritual hands glowed with healing fire, and she thrust them down upon the sickly broth of the rosy plague.

  And indeed, that green pus melted beneath her touch, steamed away into sickly vapors! Pony pressed on determinedly, pushed down, down. She had beaten back the spirit of the demon; she could defeat this.

  So she thought.

  Her spiritual hands pressed into the greenish plague as if she were pushing them into a pot of pea soup-a deep pot. Soon the plague all about those two areas where she focused her healing closed in around her arms, grabbing at her, a thousand, thousand tiny enemies seeking to invade her spiritual arms, to find a link to her physical form. Pony pressed and slapped, but the soupy disease slipped down before her and rolled over her glowing, healing hands, attacking relentlessly. Pony had battled perhaps the greatest single foe in all the world, but this was different. This time, her enemies, the little creatures of the rosy plague that had invaded Colleen's body, were too many to fight, were too hungry and vicious.

  They would not wait their turn to war with Pony but came at her all at once, attacked the spiritual hematite link without regard. She knew she was killing them with her healing hands-by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand-but only then, to her horror, did she realize the truth: they were multiplying as fast as she was destroying them! She moved frantically, desperately, intently focused, for she had to be. To let up for one moment was to allow the rosy plague into her own body. If even one of these tiny plague creatures got into her, it would begin the frantic reproduction process within its new host.

  She knew that, and gave everything she could possibly offer into the gemstone. Her hands glowed even brighter, a burning, healing light.

  But the plague was too thick and too hungry, and soon Pony realized that she was slapping at her own arms, desperate to keep the vicious little creatures out of her. Before she could even register the change, the connection with Colleen was severed; and a moment later, Pony found herself sitting on the floor beside the bed, instinctively slapping at her arms.

  A few moments later, she slumped back against the wall, exhausted and overwhelmed and unsure of whether or not any of the vicious little creatures had found their way into her body.

  She crawled back to Colleen and pulled herself up by the woman's side.

  Her efforts had done nothing at all to alleviate the woman's suffering.

  "She's flagging us, but not coming any closer," the watchman explained to Warder Presso. The two stood on the rampart of Pireth Vanguard, overlooking the wide Gulf of Corona, observing a curious ship that had sailed in just a few minutes before. The ship had come close to Vanguard's long wharf, but then, when a group of soldiers had gone down to help her tie in, she had put back out fifty yards.

  The distant crew had then called something about delivering a message to the new abbot of St. Belfour, but when the soldiers had inquired of the message, the sailors had insisted on seeing the warder of the fort.

  "She's not carrying any standard of Honce-the-Bear," Presso remarked, studying the vessel, obviously a trader. "But she's got the evergreen flying," he added, pointing to the lower pennant on the aft line of the mizzen mast, the white flag with the evergreen symbol of the Abellican Church. "Agronguerre, likely, sending word to Abbot Haney."

  "But why aren't they just saying it, then?" the nervous soldier asked. "And why won't they come in? We've asked them over and over." Presso, more skilled in ways politic, merely smiled at the ignorant remark. Knowledge was power, to the Church and the Crown, and so messages were often secret. Still, this visit to Vanguard seemed especially strange this late in the season, with the cold winter wind already blowing down from Alpinador. And for the crew of this ship to be apparently intent on turning about seemed preposterous. Even if they meant to cross the gulf only halfway and dock at Dancard, the journey could take several days, and one of the gulf's many winter storms could easily put them under the waves.

  Strange as it seemed, Presso could not deny the sight before him, and so he hurried down the long winding stairway outside the fortress, making his way to the low docks and his men.

  "They want to send it in on an arrow," one explained.

  Presso looked around, spotting an earthen embankment not so far away. "Go and tell them who I am," he bade the soldier. "Have them put their message there, and on my word as a warder in the Coastpoint Guards, assure them that it will be delivered, unread, to Abbot Haney at St. Belfour posthaste."

  "They should just come in and deliver it themselves," the soldier grumbled, but he saluted his warder and ran down the length of the long dock, calling to the ship.

  A moment later, an arrow soared off the boat, thudding into the earthen embankment, and the soldiers retrieved it as the ship bade them farewell and turned fast for the south.

  Constantine Presso then surprised his men by announcing that he would deliver the message personally. An hour later, he arrived at St. Belfour and was announced in the audience chamber of the new abbot, who sat comfortably behind his modest desk, with Brother Dellman sitting off to the side.

  "From Father Abbot Agronguerre, I would assume," the warder explained after the informal greetings. "I believe that is his seal." He tossed the rolled parchment on the desk before Haney.

  "Unopened? "
Haney remarked.

  "As we were bid by the ship that delivered it," Presso explained. "By arrow, I must add, for they would not dock."

  That made Haney turn a curious, somewhat nervous glance over Brother Dellman.

  "I thank you for delivering it, Warder Presso," he then said, "and for holding the confidence, as you were requested."

  "But I ask that you open it now, in my presence," the warder surprised the abbot by saying.

  Haney glanced at Dellman again, and both turned curious gazes over Presso.

  "The manner of delivery brings me as much worry as it does you, my friends," Presso said, trying not to be mysterious. "Open it, I pray. I'll stand back, on my word, but if the news is grave, and if it concerns Pireth Vanguard or Prince Midalis, then you must inform me immediately."

  That seemed fair enough, and so Abbot Haney, with Brother Dellman coming up right beside him, broke the seal. "Promotion to master for you? " Haney wondered aloud, smiling at his friend and close adviser.

  Dellman smiled, too, but both of the men turned their lips down quickly into most profound frowns when Haney unrolled the parchment.

  "Grave news," Warder Presso said, seeing it clearly from their expressions.

  Abbot Haney was trembling as he handed the parchment to Presso, who took it, thinking that perhaps their dear friend Agronguerre had died.

  When he read the words, a warning about the rosy plague, the warderwho was a friend of Agronguerre's and admired the man greatly-wished that his initial fears had been correct.

  "I trust that you will be discreet with this information," Brother Dellman remarked. It struck Presso from the look that Dellman gave Haney that he wasn't pleased that his abbot had so readily turned over the letter. "If we are too quick to spread this grave news, it could cause panic."

  "And of course, only King's men and Church members should be so privileged," Warder Presso said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  "That is not what I said."

  "But is it not what you meant? "