"No time," Pony said again grimly. She tossed blanket and saddle on Symphony, tightened the girth, and mounted.
"Goblins killed Elbryan's uncle Mather," Bradwarden said suddenly. "As fine a fighter as-"
"He did not have these," Pony replied, jingling her purse ofgemstonesand she put her heels to Symphony's flanks and the great stallion leaped away.
She wore the cat's-eye circlet around her forehead and so had little trouble seeing in the dark. She followed the lone trail available and soon noted movement among the branches of a tree: a pair, at least, of goblins doing sentry duty for the campsite in a small clearing beyond.
Pony hit the tree with lightning, the resonating thunder shaking the stunned and blinded creatures from the limbs.
Pony rode right by them, into the clearing. "Begone from this place!" she cried. Symphony reared as she pulled Defender from its sheath-though, in truth, her other hand clutched the weapons, serpentine and ruby, that she intended to use.
"Begone! Begone!" she cried again in warning.
Goblins howled and shouted, ran all over and screamed curses at Pony, who was now, along with her horse, glowing blue from the serpentine fireshield. And then one of the miserable creatures rushed out from the side and launched a spear Pony's way.
The woman ducked and parried it with her sword, barely deflecting the missile harmlessly high. But the goblins gained confidence from the bold attack and came on, howling.
Pony loosed a fireball, the concussive force blowing goblins from their feet-charring some, setting others ablaze to roll roaring in agony and terror. Those not injured by the fire blast scrambled back to their feet: some running off; others standing still, confused and terrified; and still others stubbornly charging at the woman again.
Pony lifted her hand, her magical energies wrought of rage, and altered the magic of the gemstone, now shooting a line of fire at the nearest creature, engulfing it in flames. A shift of her arm and another goblin became a living torch.
And then a third, and now most of the goblins who had been charging skidded to a stop and wheeled about, running, screaming, into the forest night.
When Pony got back to her encampment, she found Bradwarden still standing on the edge, keeping watch over poor Dainsey.
"Subtle," the centaur remarked, for even here, Pony knew, her display had been visible.
"Effective," she promptly corrected. "You can go and scout out the northern road now."
Travel was easy the next day, with not a sign of goblins-living goblinsanywhere to be found. Pony rode Symphony into the foothills before dark and found a campsite among a tumble of boulders.
Bradwarden caught up to her sometime later, though he remained far away.
"Are you to go ahead again this night?" she asked.
The centaur looked to the steeply inclining trail doubtfully. "Too many rocks, too many hills, and too many little ravines," he answered. "I'd walk right by a host o' the creatures and never see 'em. And I'm not for the climb," he added, "nor should ye be bringin' Symphony-he'll slow ye down more than help ye."
"Wait here, then," Pony replied, "with Symphony. I'll take Dainsey alone tomorrow."
"Long way for carrying," Bradwarden remarked.
Pony nodded. So be it. They were long gone before first light, earlier than Pony had planned, for the night had been difficult on poor Dainsey. She was restless now, clawing at her clothing as if trying to escape somehow from that which she knew was coming.
And coming fast, Pony understood. She had seen people die-far too many people-and she realized after the turn of midnight that Death had come calling for Dainsey. And so she had set out, first on Symphony and then, when the trails became too difficult for the horse to serve any purpose, Pony turned him loose. She hoisted the woman onto her back and trudged on, forcing step after step as the minutes became an hour.
On she went stubbornly, pausing only for short rests. On one such break, she lay Dainsey down gently, thinking the woman asleep.
But then Dainsey's eyes opened wide.
"Dainsey? " Pony asked, moving close, and she realized that Dainsey was not hearing her, was not seeing her. She waved her hand right before those eyes-oh, those eyes!
Nothing. Dainsey did not see her at all.
The woman began to thrash about, her arms waving.
"No, no," Pony said. "No, damn you, Death, you cannot have her! Not now! Not after all this way!"
But she knew. The end was upon Dainsey. Pony glanced all about desperately; small sounds escaped her throat, feral and angry, for they were but a hundred feet or so from the break in the mountain pass, and from that spot, she would be able to see Mount Aida and the plateau that held Avelyn's mummified arm. How could Death, how could God, have been so cruel as to let them get this close, a mile perhaps, from their goal?
"No, no," Pony said over and over, and hardly thinking of the movement, the woman tore at her belt pouch violendy. Gemstones fell all about the ground, but one did not escape Pony's grasp. A gray stone, a soul stone.
She went into it, flew out of her own body, and charged into Dainsey's battered form. The plague was all about her, then, the stench and the images of rot.
Pony attacked, and viciously, her rage preventing her from even considering her own welfare. She tore at the soupy morass, slapped it down, scraped it from Dainsey's lungs. She fought and fought, throwing all her strength fully against the tiny demons.
And then she was done, sitting to the side, crying.
Dainsey was still alive-Pony had bought her some time, at least. But how much? And how could she hope to go on, for she could barely lift herself off the ground?
She did get up, though, and she went to Dainsey and, with a growl, lifted the woman into her arms, half carrying her and half dragging her, up, up, until she reached the summit of this pass, breaking through the ring of the Barbacan. There before her loomed Mount Aida, a mile perhaps to the plateau and Avelyn's arm. Only a mile! And with several hundred miles already behind her.
But she couldn't hope to make it, not now; and already Dainsey was showing signs that Death had come calling once more, that the reprieve was at its end.
"Malachite," Pony whispered, and she looked all about, then realized that the gem must be on the ground with the others back down the path. She set Dainsey down again, and turned to get it, but stumbled, exhausted, and went down hard. She started to rise, so stubbornly, but understood that it was over, that even if she could find the gemstone quickly, she'd never find the strength to use it to any real effect.
It was over.
Chapter 36
The Ghost of Romeo Mullahy
They walked through the streets as unobtrusively as possible, making the daily run for supplies down to the dock section before the sunrise. This day, though, they had learned of the riot in that area, of many Behrenese beaten, even murdered, and all at the hands of this strange cult, the Brothers Repentant.
The five monks had lingered longer than they had planned and now understood, to their alarm, that they would not get back into St. Precious before daylight. They moved with all speed in their flower-sewn robes, like walking tussie-mussie beds. They moved to each street corner carefully, peeking around, making sure that they would not rush onto the next lane into a host of plague victims. Those folk of Palmaris weren't pleased with the Abellican Church at that time.
Brother Anders Castinagis, leading the group this morning, breathed a little easier when the wall containing the secret back entrance of St. Precious at last came into view. He could have brought his brethren around in a wide loop to avoid being seen by the host encamped before the abbey, but Castinagis figured that such a delay might prove even more dangerous. He led them, then, across the boulevards to the side of the square.
Cries rang out behind them, but Castinagis wasn't overconcerned, for he had known before this last expanse that they would not make the run without being spotted. But he was confident, too, that he and his four companions could get through
the back door before any of the roused plague victims got anywhere near them.
They hustled off, trotting along the wall toward the door, glancing back confidently.
They should have looked ahead.
Coming around the corner at the back of the abbey, running fast and with obvious purpose, came a host of black-robed, red-hooded monks.
Castinagis skidded to a stop. He saw the crack of the concealed door-a portal that would not be noticed by anyone who didn't know it was thereand measured the distance immediately against the speed of the approaching band.
He dropped his supply-laden pack, crying for his brethren to do the same, and sprinted away, calling out for the door to be opened.
And it was, a crack, and Castinagis could have gotten there ahead of the approaching Brothers Repentant, but his companions could not, he recognized, and so he burst right by the door, meeting the charge of the leading red-hooded monk. "Get in!" he cried as he went.
Anders Castinagis was a fine fighter, a big and strong man with fists of stone and a jaw that could take a punch. He had trained well at St.-MereAbelle, was graduated from the lessons of arts martial near the top of his class.
He did not know that now he was about to battle his instructor.
He came in hard, thinking to knock the leading attacker back, hit him quickly a few times, then wheel back to join his brethren inside.
His surprise was complete when the first punch he threw, a straight right, got picked off cleanly, a hand snapping up under his wrist, catching hold and easily turning his arm over. Castinagis tried to ward with his free left hand as his opponent came forward, right hand positioned like a serpent's head aiming to strike his throat.
But then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the red-hooded monk brought his straight-fingered hand out to the side, then kicked Castinagis' twisted elbow, shattering the bone. As Castinagis moved his free hand down to grasp at the pain, that serpentlike hand snapped in against his exposed throat.
He felt himself falling, but then he was caught, a strong hand clamping tightly over his face, and he knew no more.
Marcalo De'Unnero thought to drop his catch when he noted the fighting by the back door of St. Precious. His brethren had run past him and the monks from inside the abbey, knowing a brother to be trapped outside, had come pouring out to meet the charge.
Also, farther back but closing fast, came the angry mob, throwing stones and shouting curses. And behind them came the clatter ofhoofbeats, of city guardsmen, De'Unnero knew.
It was all too beautiful.
He hoisted the half-conscious monk up under his arm and dragged him down one side alley, and many of his brothers followed.
And so began the impromptu trial of Anders Castinagis, with De'Unnero, Brother Truth, holding him up as an example of the errors of the world, an Abellican monk who, like all the brown-robed churchmen, had fallen from the path of God and had thus brought the rosy plague down among them all. The plague victims wanted to believe those words-needed someone to blame-and they came at poor Castinagis viciously, spitting at him and kicking at him.
Over by the abbey, there came the sound of a lightning stroke, and even more general rioting.
That would have been the bitter end of Anders Castinagis, but then a contingent of horsemen, city guard, turned into the alleyway and came charging down, scattering plague-ridden peasants and Brothers Repentant alike.
De'Unnero thought to make a stand against them, thought to leap astride the nearest horse and kill the soldier, but he understood that this was not a fight he wanted. He wasn't personally afraid, of course, but thus far the soldiers of Palmaris-and thus, implicitly, the Duke serving as ruler of the city-had not hindered the Brothers Repentant from their orations and their occasional attacks on the Behrenese. Better not to make them an enemy, the cunning De'Unnero understood.
He leaped out of the way of the nearest approaching soldier and yelled for a general retreat. There was no pursuit, for the soldiers likewise did not wish to do battle with De'Unnero and his group. No, they were merely acting as the law required them, to protect an Abellican brother.
From the end of the alley, the fierce monk watched the soldiers scoop up the battered form of Anders Castinagis and turn back for St. Precious, forming a tight, defensive ring about the monk and warding the angry peasants away.
De'Unnero smiled at the sight. He knew that while many were dying each day of the plague, the numbers of the discontented, of the outraged, would continue to swell. He knew that he would find many allies in his war against the Abellican Church-no, not the Abellican Church, he mused, for it was his intent to reestablish that very body in proper form. No, this incarnation of his beloved Church more resembled a Church of Avelyn, or of Jojonah.
He would remedy that.
One abbey at a time.
One burned abbey at a time.
"It was De'Unnero," Castinagis, lisping badly from a lip swollen to three times its normal size, insisted. " No one else could move like that, with such speed and precision."
"Rumors have named him as the leader of the Brothers Repentant," Abbot Braumin replied with a sigh.
"Then we expose him to the people of Palmaris," Viscenti chimed in eagerly.
The door of the audience chamber banged open then, and a very angry Duke Tetrafel stormed into the room. "How did you-" Abbot Braumin started to ask.
"His soldiers had just helped us, abbot," came a nervous remark from behind the Duke, from the brother who had been charged with watching the gate that day.
Abbot Braumin understood immediately; Duke Tetrafel had used the leverage of his soldiers' intervention to bully his way into the abbey. So be it, Braumin thought, and he waved the nervous young sentry monk away.
"You submitted to the gemstone inspection, of course," Braumin remarked, though he knew well that the Duke most certainly had not.
Tetrafel scoffed at the absurd notion. "If your monks tried to come to me with that stone of possession, my soldiers would raze your abbey," he blustered.
"We are allowed our rules and our sanctuary," Braumin replied.
"And did my soldiers not just allow several of your monks to get back into that sanctuary?" Tetrafel asked. "Your friend Brother Castinagis among them? He would have been killed in the gutter. Yet this is how you greet me? "
Braumin paused for a long while to digest the words. "My pardon," he said, coming around the desk and offering a polite bow. "Of course we are in your debt. But do understand that we have set up St. Precious as a sanctuary against the rosy plague, and to ensure that we must spiritually inspect everyone who enters. Even the brothers are subjected to such inspections, myself included, if we venture out beyond the tussie-mussie bed."
"And if it was discovered that you had become afflicted with the plague? " Tetrafel asked suspiciously.
"Then I would leave St. Precious at once," Abbot Braumin replied without the slightest hesitation and without any hint of insincerity in his voice.
Tetrafel chuckled and stared at the abbot incredulously. " Then you are a fool," he said.
The abbot only shrugged.
"And if I became afflicted?" the Duke asked slyly. "Would I, too, be denied admittance to St. Precious? And if so, would you and your brethren come out to tend to me? "
"Yes," said Braumin, "and no."
Tetrafel paused a moment to clarify the curt responses, then a great scowl crossed his face. "You would let me die?" The soldiers behind the Duke bristled.
"There is nothing we could do to alter that."
"The old songs of doom proclaim that a monk might cure one in twenty," Tetrafel argued. "Would not twenty monks then have a fair chance of saving their Baron and Duke? "
"They would." Again, Abbot Braumin kept his response curt and to the point. "But you would not send them," Duke Tetrafel reasoned.
"No," answered the abbot.
"Yet I risk my soldiers for the sake of your monks!" the Duke snapped back, and he was having a hard time masking his mounting
anger.
"We can make no exceptions in this matter," Braumin replied, "not for a nobleman, not for an abbot, not for the Father Abbot himself. If Father Abbot Agronguerre became so afflicted, he would be cast out of St.-MereAbelle."
"Do you hear your own words as you speak them?" Duke Tetrafel roared. "Could you begin to believe that the lives of twenty minor monks were not worth the gain of saving a duke or even your own Father Abbot? Pray you then that King Danube does not become so afflicted, for if he did, and if your Church then did not come to his aid with every Abellican brother available, then the kingdom and the Church would be at war!"
Abbot Braumin seriously doubted that, for it was not without precedent. Furthermore, while it pained gentle Braumin to watch the suffering of the common folk, Tetrafel's point was lost completely on him. In his view of the world, the life of a single brother, even a novitiate to the Abellican Church, was worth that of a duke or a king or a father abbot. As were the lives of every commoner now suffering on the square outside St. Precious. Yes, Braumin Herde cursed his helplessness daily, but he was glad, at least, that he was not possessed of the arrogance that seemed to be a major trait among the secular leaders of the kingdom.
"I have your words and your thoughts now," Duke Tetrafel fumed. "I see your perspective all too clearly, Abbot Braumin. Understand that I now relinquish all responsibility for the safety of your brethren if they venture outside St. Precious. Exit at your own peril!" And he turned and stormed out of the room, sweeping his soldiers up in his wake.
"That went well," Castinagis lisped sarcastically.
As if to accentuate the point, a stone bounced off Braumin's window, clattering for a second, then falling harmlessly away. All day long, since the near riot at the back door, the peasants had been throwing rocks and curses at the abbey.
"We have lost the city," Abbot Braumin remarked.
"We could send word to St.-Mere-Abelle for help," Viscenti offered.
Braumin was shaking his head before the man even finished. "Father Abbot Agronguerre has his own troubles," he replied. "No, we have lost the hearts of those in Palmaris, and cannot regain them short of going out with our gemstones among the people."
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