Robert Salvatore - Mortalis

"I will go out to them," Abbot Braumin explained, "to Duke Tetrafel, bearing the stone of healing."

"To what end?" a horrified Viscenti asked.

"To try," Braumin replied. "If I go to him and try to help, perhaps they will relent their attacks upon our walls."

He started to leave, but Viscenti jumped in front of him.

"They will not!" the nervous little man insisted. "And when you go out and try to heal Tetrafel-only to fail, likely-you will be adding more fire to De'Unnero's dragon breath. He will claim that if God were really on your side, your attempt to heal the Duke would have been successful."

"But he claims the wisdom of the true God, yet does not heal," Braumin reasoned.

"But he does not claim that he can heal," Viscenti replied without hesita; tion. "He says only that the plague will continue as long as the Church remains astray."

Abbot Braumin shook his head. "I will go to Tetrafel," he announced to Viscenti, and to Talumus and Castinagis, who had just arrived outside of his open door. "Perhaps I will fail, but I will try, at least."

"Because you are a coward," Viscenti said forcefully behind him. Braumin stopped short, stunned by the uncharacteristic outburst from the normally timid man. The abbot slowly and deliberately turned, but the expression he found staring at him was unyielding.

"You are," Viscenti growled.

Braumin shook his head, his expression incredulous. He was about to go out of the abbey, after all, and confront the rosy plague. How could this man construe that to be an act of cowardice?

"You go to Duke Tetrafel, though you know it to be wrong, because you are afraid that he will send his soldiers against us, or at least that he will not stop the peasants from a full riot against us."

"They will not get through!" Brother Castinagis declared. "Not if all the city converges at our front gates!"

"But that is the fear, do you not see?" Viscenti went on, hopping excitedly right up to Braumin. "You are afraid of the very measures you determined that we must take to defend the abbey. You would not preside over such a slaughter! No, not that!"

His sarcastic tone set Braumin even farther back on his heels.

"But when you go out and fail, they will come anyway," Viscenti went on, "led by De'Unnero, if not the dying Tetrafel, and then we will have to fight on without your leadership. You are a coward," Viscenti repeated, and he was trembling with every word. "You know what we must do, but you'll not have the blood on your hands."

Braumin glanced back curiously at Castinagis and Talumus, to find them staring at him coldly.

"And it will only be worse for us, then," reasoned Viscenti. "For how shall we justify our refusal to come out and help them, all of them, if you have broken ranks to go to the Duke? What words shall we use against the peasant curses when you have, by your actions, told them that we who remained within the abbey are merely cowards?"

That struck Braumin to his very core, as poignant a reminder of the reasons behind Church doctrine as he had ever heard. He surprised the three onlookers then, because he started to chuckle-not a mocking laugh, but one of the purest helplessness. "So you have shown me the error of my ways, my friend Viscenti," Braumin remarked. "I cannot go out to them, to him." He shook his head helplessly as Viscenti sprang forward, wrapping him in a great hug.

"But we'll not aggressively deter our attackers," Braumin instructed. "We shall hold them back as we must, but with limited magic only. A stunning stroke, perhaps, but not a killing one, if that can be avoided."

Castinagis didn't seem pleased with that, but he nodded his agreement.

Shamus Kilronney came into Caer Tinella to find the place infested with plague, but also to find, to his surprise, an aura of hope and determination about the common folk. These were not people preparing to die, Shamus Kilronney realized, but ones preparing to fight. To his continued surprise, Shamus saw that those afflicted with the plague were not being ostracized and told to leave but rather were being embraced by those seemingly unafflicted. While this generous compassion touched him, he honestly wondered if the folk of Caer Tinella had all gone crazy.

He met with Janine of the Lake, the appointed mayor of the town, soon after.

"Got it meself," Janine explained, and she rolled up her blouse sleeve to show the telltale rosy spots, all over her arm. "Thought me time o' living was growing short."

"Thought?" Shamus echoed skeptically, and he instinctively recoiled from the diseased woman.

"Thought," Janine said firmly, fixing the man with as determined a stare as he had ever seen. "Now I'm knowing better, knowing a way to fight back and to live."

Shamus continued to match her stare, his skeptical expression hardly relenting.

Janine gave a great belly laugh. "Thought!" she said again. "But then Pony-no, she's wanting to be called Jilseponie now-came to us and showed us the truth."

Shamus winced, thinking, perhaps, that his old friend Jilseponie might have seen too much of the dying and the suffering, that she, like the Brothers Repentant, might have discovered some false insight into the causes of the rosy plague.

"She cured Dainsey Aucomb, she did," Janine insisted against his unrelenting stare. "Took the plague right out o' her."

Shamus didn't blink. He knew that a person could be cured of the plague with the gemstones, but he knew, too, that such cures were rare indeed. While he was glad to hear that his friend Jilseponie was still alive, he did not dare to believe that she had become all-powerful with those gemstones. No, Shamus knew of the fate of his cousin Colleen, who had died in Jilseponie's arms. He knew better.

"And she has cured you, as well? " he asked.

Janine gave another laugh. "She chased the plague back a bit," she explained, "but not cured, no."

"Then you are still sick."

Janine nodded.

"But you just spoke of a cure," the increasingly frustrated man blurted.

"So I did, and so Jilseponie found one," Janine quietly and calmly explained, "but not here. No, here she can give ye a bit o' rest from the fighting, but to get yerself truly cured ye must be walking, me friend, all the way to the Barbacan and Mount Aida, to the hand o' the angel and the healing blood. We're readying for just such a journey-the whole town's going north-and the three Timberland towns're already on the road to Aida."

"What?" Shamus asked helplessly, shaking his head and screwing his expression up into one of pure incredulity, as if the whole thing sounded perfectly preposterous. "Where is Jilseponie? "

"Went to Landsdown to help 'em out over there and to get them ready for the road," Janine replied.

Shamus was on the road in a few minutes, riding hard for Landsdown, the sister village of Caer Tinella, a cluster of houses but an hour away.

When he entered the town, he saw a great gathering in the central square, where a tent had been hastily erected. A line of plague victims had formed in front of it, while other people, apparently healthy, rushed about, loading wagons with supplies.

Though he certainly had no desire to go anywhere near the plagueridden victims, Shamus suppressed his revulsion and his fear and walked along the line until he could see the front of it, where a woman, a familiar face indeed, worked on them, one by one, with a magical gemstone.

Shamus moved up beside Jilseponie, who was deep into the magic, working on a young boy, and patiently waited. A few minutes later, Jilseponie opened her eyes, and the boy smiled widely and ran off. The next sickly plague victim shuffled forward.

Jilseponie glanced to the side, and her expression brightened considerably when she saw her old friend. She held up her hand to motion the next victim to wait a moment, then stood up-with great effort, Shamus noted-and came forward to offer a friend a hug.