Ten mounds of earth disturbed the courtyard of LuciePs keep where Lord Tavarre had once lived. It overlooked the town, perched on a cliff that plunged hundreds of feet to the jagged rocks below: small fortress, invisible from the town below. Its simple, stone curtain wall surrounded a stable, a granary, and a two-storey manor, which had housed a dozen people, before the plague came.
Ilista hesitated as she emerged from the manor’s upper doors, standing on a bridge that led to the battlements. The baron had given the keep over to her and Beldyn, and to Sir Gareth and his Knights as well. He himself refused to sleep within its walls any more, and Ilista couldn’t blame him. There were too many ghosts there, for the ten mounds had once been his household, of whom only he and his man Vedro remained. The rest were victims of the Longosai, from its earliest days. Most were servants and retainers, but two graves stood out among the rest, marked with stones where the others were bare. In one lay Ailinn, once baroness of Luciel and Tavarre’s beloved wife; in the other, his son Larris, who would have been ten years of age that summer.
The baron stood before the mounds, his head bowed, as Ilista made her way down to the courtyard. His shoulders shook, and though he heard the First Daughter’s tread on the stairs, he did not turn to greet her.
No wonder he took to the hills, she thought as her eyes flitted to the mounds. She thought of the others that filled Luciel’s graveyard and of the scorched patches of earth where pyres had burned. No wonder they all did. If only…
If only what? a voice asked in her head. Symeon may have ignored the plague, but even if he hadn’t, what could have been done? The Mishakites couldn’t have stopped it. No one could-or so she would have said, not long ago. Now things were different, though. Now there was Beldyn.
The monk was not at the keep right now, but rather stayed in Luciel, as he had every day since they’d come to the town. It was slow, healing all who suffered from the Longosai, but finally he was nearing the end of the task. A dozen men and women had remained ill this morning. By nightfall they would be half as many. When the morrow ended, the plague would be gone.
After that, Ilista didn’t know. Symeon’s death and Kurnos’s coronation had surely changed the situation, but she didn’t know how. She had tried repeatedly to contact Loralon, but to no avail. No matter how many times she spoke the Emissary’s name, the crystal orb remained dark, empty, her own reflection mocking her from its depths. Something had changed to keep Loralon silent, and not knowing what it was infuriated her. Tavarre had sent out riders to learn what news they could. Now, seeing the leather scrollcase tucked in the baron’s belt, she knew one had returned.
He straightened, signing the triangle, and though he did his best to blot them, tear-tracks still glistened on his scarred face when he turned to face her.
“Efisa,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Your Honor,” she replied, then faltered, seeing something in his eyes, beneath the sorrow-a deeper unhappiness as his gaze met hers. “What’s wrong? Is it Beldyn?”
He shook his head, pulling forth the scroll-case. “I’m sorry.”
Ilista took the scroll-case from him and undid its lacing to remove a sheet of parchment. The wind tried to snatch it away, but she held on, unfolding it with trembling fingers. Something’s happened, she thought. To Loralon? Was that why he’d turned silent?
That wasn’t it. It was much worse, and as she read her skin turned cold.
There were three degrees of censure in the Istaran Church. The first, Bournon, was a simple reprimand for minor sins, easily lifted wifli an atonement tithe and three nights of fasting. The second, Abidon, was an official reproach and not so easily removed. It took a patriarch or a hierarch of the Great Temple to do so. The church bestowed it upon those who committed some great affront to Paladine, and while it was in effect, the condemned could receive no sacraments, nor could he set foot on consecrated ground. The clergy declared hundreds of folk Boumon each year, and perhaps a few dozen Abidon.
The third degree was different Foripon was a full declaration of anathema casting the condemned out of the church. Often it led to inquisition and death. Only the Kingpriest himself could revoke such a denunciation, and none had ever done so. In her years at court, Ilista had only seen Symeon cast out a single man, a soldier who had pissed on a roadside shrine and refused to do penance for it.
Kurnos’s reign was only days old, and he had already doubled that number. Written on the parchment were two names- hers, less the title of First Daughter, and that of Brother Beldyn. For black heresy and consorting with traitors, it declared-and beneath their names, a promised reward of a thousand gold falcons.
Tavarre reacted quickly, rushing to catch her as her knees buckled, but he couldn’t stop the parchment from dropping from her hands. The wind caught it, sending it soaring over the keep’s walls. She watched it spin away.
“No,” she murmured. “It has to be a mistake.”
The baron didn’t reply, but his grip tightened. It was a familiar gesture, one of kinship. They were both outlaws, now. She shuddered at the thought.
Then another occurred to her. “Beldyn. Does he know?”
“No, Efisa.”
She nodded, then took a deep breath, and pushed away from Tavarre to stand on her own. “Come on, then,” she said, turning. “We’d best-”
A sound rose, eerily filling the air as it echoed among the hills: the mournful howl of a wolf. Hearing it, Tavarre stiffened and muttered a curse.
“What was that?” Ilista asked as the howl died away.
“A signal,” the baron replied. “The sentries have returned.”
He whirled, his cloak flapping, and hurried up the steps to the battlements. Ilista followed, hardly breathing as she looked down from the keep into the vale below. In the distance, two frothing horses were galloping along a trail to the village. One was a bandit, cloaked and leather-clad, but the midday sun’s light glinted off the other’s armor, and she knew it was Gareth, come back early from his sojourn to the highroad.
Ilista swallowed as the riders charged toward Luciel. Already she knew what they were going to report, and she saw her knowledge mirrored in Tavarre’s pale face as well. The Foripon seemed silly now. War had come to the highlands.
They met down in Luciel, and gathered inside the tavern- Cathan and Gareth, Tavarre and Vedro, Ilista and Beldyn. Caked in road-dust, the Knight drank a flagon of raw wine to moisten his throat, then told what he had seen. Cathan nodded breathlessly as the others stared in shock.
“Well,” Tavarre said when he was finished, and sighed.
“Perhaps they won’t come here,” Ilista said. “This is a small town…”
“They’ll come,” Vedro growled.
Everyone looked into the room’s corners, trying not to meet one another’s gaze. In the end, it was Beldyn who coughed softly and spoke.
“We must leave, then,” he said. “All of us.”
Tavarre looked up, meeting the monk’s burning gaze. After a moment, he nodded and turned to Cathan. “Did they see you?”
“No, but they’ll find the bodies of their men,” Cathan replied, “and we left tracks.”
Vedro cursed, slapping his thigh in frustration. “It’ll have to be tonight, then. They’ll send riders ahead and have our heads if they find us here.”
“Where can we go?” Gareth asked.
“Govinna,” said Tavarre, running a hand through his dark, curly hair. “Ossirian will take us in-and he has to be told the army’s in Taol.”
Dista cleared her throat. “You’re all forgetting the Longosai” she said. “Beldyn, how many still have to be healed?”
“Only eight,” he replied.
Vedro swore again, and the others slumped, looking defeated. They looked at one another hopelessly, and Dista could tell they were all sharing the same terrible thought The sick couldn’t make the journey, but sunset was only three hours off. Already Beldyn looked tired, and wisps of holy light clung to him like clouds to the peak of a mountain. His strength was leaving him. No one wanted to say the words that flashed through their minds, though it was the only choice left. They had to leave the eight sick people behind, if the rest of Luciel were to live.
Beldyn’s mouth hardened into a line, however, and he pushed away his mug of wine, untouched. “Bring them,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What?” Ilista asked as everyone turned to look at him. “Beldyn, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have the strength right now-”
He glared back at her, and her voice failed her. There was something terrible in his gaze, a ferocity she hadn’t seen before.
“I said I’ll take care of it,” he declared. “We’re not leaving anyone.”
Dista wanted to protest, to talk sense into him, but the blaze of his eyes stilled her tongue. It was a fanatic’s look, and it made her uneasy.
Glancing around the room, she saw the rest of them watching her hopefully. They wanted to believe-and who was she to deny them? Looking back at Beldyn once more, the fierceness in his eyes, she could only nod and sigh.
“Very well, then,” she said. “Do as he says.”
The rest of the day passed quickly. From the wall of keep Tavarre winded a long brass horn, sending its clarion blare ringing out across the vale. Men and women came running, emerging from houses and shops throughout the village. The bandits and Gareth’s Knights took control of the situation, gathering the villagers in Luciel’s central yard, sending runners to fetch food and blankets and fill skins with water from the town well. The scant survivors of the plague, barely two hundred in all, looked around nervously, not sure what was happening.
Clad in chain mail and a long riding cloak, his sword hanging at his side, Tavarre strode into the midst of his vassals and stepped up on a tree stump, waving for silence. He got it at once, though many darted glances about, searching for Beldyn. The monk had disappeared that afternoon, and no one had seen him since. Now the sky was red, the sun gone behind the distant Khalkists. Night would come soon, and Luciel’s folk whispered fearfully as they turned listen to the baron.
He.’d barely finished explaining about the army and the need to flee when the murmurs turned into a rumble of outrage.
“Leave!” shouted an old man, his bald head wrinkling with worry. “I’ve lived in this vale all my life!”
A young woman stepped forward, shifting a squalling baby on her hip. “Govinna is too far! We’ll never get there with winter coming!”
“What about them?” demanded a stout, severe-looking matron. She stood near a cluster of bodies near the middle of the yard: the plague’s eight remaining victims. They were an awful sight, gaunt and wasted, four men, three women, and one child, coughing and shivering where they lay atop bedrolls the bandits had spread out for them.
“They can’t make the journey!”
Standing near Tavarre, Ilista swallowed, knowing the woman was right. The sick were too many. Beldyn might be able to lay hands on three of them, maybe four, but eight? It was more than he could handle. Though she knew there was no hope, one thing kept her from shouting it out-Beldyn’s eyes, the stubborn ardor shining from them.
He appeared then, even as the villagers clamored and Tavarre tried to calm them down. At first, only a few folk saw the monk, standing at the yard’s edge with his hands folded inside his sleeves, but when he stepped forward the mob grew silent and turned away from their baron to stare in awe.
Beldyn made his way through the crowd, which parted for him gladly. A few people dropped to their knees, while others whispered to one another, their voices tinged with wonder. As she watched the adulation in the borderfolk’s eyes, Ilista had the feeling of having started something she could no longer control. They might balk at Tavarre for saying they had to leave Luciel, but she knew they would follow Beldyn across Ansalon, if he asked. Ilista’s hand strayed to her medallion as the monk stepped up to the dying on their pallets.
Please be right, she thought, not wanting to consider what might happen if Beldyn proved wrong.
“Hear me, my children,” he declared. His voice was stern, the music all but gone from it, leaving cold authority behind. He raised his chin, and his youthful features hardened before her eyes. “I know this is a hard thing, but it must happen. There is no shelter here, and Govinna’s walls will keep us safe. As to these people…”he added, gesturing at the fever-wracked bodies,”… watch.”
As he knelt before the eight pallets, the only sound in Luciel was die ever-present rush of the wind. He looked out upon the bodies, spreading his hands over them. Ilista stopped breathing without realizing it as he closed his eyes and began to pray.
“Palado, ucdas pafiro…”
The light, when it came, grew bright so fast that all around the yard, folk cried out, shielding their eyes against the glare. The chiming noise that accompanied Beldyn’s healing rituals was louder and deeper, filled with strange echoes that came from nowhere. The autumn chill vanished, turning warm as the holy light engulfed Beldyn, then snaked out into the crowd in tendrils of silver fire. Ilista found herself trembling at the monk’s power.
“Be right,” she whispered, clutching her medallion until its sharp corners dug into her flesh. “Merciful Paladine, let him be right…”
At last the glow rippled and began to fade, bleeding away into the gathering night. One by one it uncovered the bodies on the pallets, washing away like a sunrise in reverse. Each time it left a healthy person behind-clear skin, brows no longer damp with fever, breathing easily again as they slumbered. Only Beldyn remained, all but lost amid the radiance, his eyes burning blue through the god’s white light. Ilista also saw the red gleam of rubies-then it was gone, swallowed by the brilliant whiteness.
The villagers who hadn’t already knelt did so now, their faces aglow with belief. Atop his stump, Tavarre shook his head, his mouth crooking into a wry, wondering grin. Ilista stared, fingering her medallion worriedly. Beldyn, gazing out upon the doting folk of Luciel, closed his eyes, smiled, and crumpled to the ground.