“Aye, and he’s all the stronger because Duke Kalas ran off last winter, back to Ursal,” Colleen replied. “Me cousin Shamus sent word to me. He’s back in the city, workin’ with the man who’s holding court as baron. They’re lovin’ Abbot Braumin in Palmaris.”
“It will be good to see him again,” Roger remarked.
“Ye’re passin’ through, then?” Colleen asked.
“Roger is, but I came to see you,” Pony replied.
“Good timin’ for ye,” Colleen said to Roger. “There’s a caravan goin’ out for Palmaris tomorrow.”
“I had hoped to visit longer than that,” said Roger.
“But they’re sayin’ a storm’s comin’ fast,” Colleen answered. “Ye might want to get on with that caravan if ye’re lookin’ for a safe road to Palmaris.”
Roger looked to Pony, and she shrugged. They had known from the beginning that this moment would soon be upon them, where they parted ways, and perhaps, by Roger’s own words, for a long, long time.
“Ye go and see Janine o’ the Lake,” Colleen instructed. “She’ll get ye fixed up with the drivers.”
They chatted a while longer, and Colleen set out some biscuits and some steaming stew. Then Roger hustled away, following Colleen’s directions to the house of Janine of the Lake.
“Why are you still ill?” Pony asked bluntly, as soon as Colleen closed the door behind Roger.
Colleen looked at her as if she had just been slapped. “Well, ain’t that a fine way to be saying hello,” she replied.
“An honest way,” Pony retorted. “When I left you here before, you were ill, but it seemed easily explained, with the recent fight against Seano Bellick and with all that you have endured these last years. But now … Colleen, it has been a year. Have you been sick all this time?”
Colleen’s frown withered under the genuine concern. “I had a fine summer,” she assured Pony. “I don’t know what’s come over me of late, but it’s nothing to fret about.”
“I would be a liar, and no friend, if I told you that you looked strong and healthy,” Pony said.
“And I’d be a liar if I telled ye I felt that way,” Colleen agreed. “But it’ll pass,” she insisted.
Pony nodded, trying to seem confident, but she rolled her hematite through her fingers as she did, thinking that she might find need of the soul stone before she left Caer Tinella.
Roger left with the caravan the next day, for it was the last scheduled caravan of the season and many of the farmers were predicting early snows. The young man tried again to convince Pony to go with him, to no avail, and then he fretted about her getting caught here in Caer Tinella by early winter weather.
But Pony told him that she wasn’t overconcerned, that she and Greystone could get home whenever they decided it was time to go. And then, remembering well Bradwarden’s words to her about why Roger had needed to leave, she bade the young man to be on his way and made him promise to give her fond greetings to all of her friends back in Palmaris.
Truly, Pony had no intention of leaving anytime soon. Her original plan was to accompany Roger here and spend a couple of days, and then return to Dundalis; but with Colleen looking so fragile—even worse, Pony believed, than the previous year—she simply could not walk away.
As predicted, winter did come early to the fields and forests north of Palmaris, but by that time, Roger and the caravan were safely within the walls of the port city on the Masur Delaval.
He went straight to St. Precious when he arrived in the city, though the hour was late; and it was good indeed to be back beside Abbot Braumin and Brothers Viscenti and Castinagis. They laughed and told exaggerated tales of old times. They caught each other up-to-date on the present, and spoke in quiet tones their hopes for the future.
“Pony should have come with me,” Roger decided. “It would do her heart good to witness the turn in the Abellican Church, to learn that Avelyn’s name will no longer be blasphemed.”
“We do not know that,” Master Viscenti warned.
“The brothers inquisitor will arrive soon to question us concerning the disposition of Avelyn and the miracle at Mount Aida,” Abbot Braumin explained. “Their investigation will determine the fate of Avelyn’s legacy within the Church.”
“Can there be any doubt?” Roger asked. “I was there at Aida beside you. As pure a miracle as the world has ever known!”
“Hold fast that thought,” Brother Castinagis piped in. “I am sure that the brothers inquisitor will find your voice in time.”
They talked easily all that first night until they drifted off, one by one, to sleep. And then they spent the better part of the next day together, reminiscing, planning, and again long into the night, until Abbot Braumin was called to a meeting with Brother Talumus and some others.
Roger went out alone into Palmaris’ night.
He made his way to a familiar area and found, to his delight, that a new tavern had been erected on the site of the old Fellowship Way, the inn of Graevis and Pettibwa Chilichunk, Pony’s deceased adoptive parents.
The place had been renamed The Giant’s Bones, and when he entered, Roger understood why, for lining the walls as macabre support beams were the whitened bones of several giants. Huge skulls adorned the walls, including the biggest of all set on a shelf right behind the bar. The lighting, too, reflected the name: a chandelier constructed of a giant’s rib cage.
Roger wandered through, studying the creative decorations and the unfamiliar faces wearing all too familiar expressions. The tavern, this place, The Giant’s Bones, was very different from Fellowship Way, he thought, and yet very much the same. Roger listened in on a few conversations as he made his way to the bar, words he had heard before, in a different time.
They seemed happy enough, these folk, though Roger heard a few of the typical, predictable complaints about taxes and tithes, and he heard low and ominous murmurs at one table about some plague.
But, in truth, the more he listened and the more he looked, the more Roger felt comfortable in the tavern, the more it felt like home.
“What’re ye drinking, friend?” came a gravelly voice behind him.
“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’s 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 yerself to 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’ll just get yerself kilt!”
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 Collee
n, 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.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 43
