Mortalis

Master Bou-raiy had offered to send several younger brothers with De'Unnero on his journey, but he had flatly refused, both because he didn't need any of Bou-raiy's lackeys reporting back on his every move, and because he desired speed.

And Master De'Unnero knew how to travel fast. He fell into the weretiger, became a great cat under the glow of Sheila, and covered the miles more quickly than he might have even if he had been riding a fine horse. All those traveling hours were a trial for the monk, though, as every scent of every type of prey, of conies and deer, of cattle and sheep-and mostly of humans-drifted his way. He knew that to give in, to feast even upon the flesh of a squirrel, would defeat him, would allow the great feline spirit that had found its way into his corporeal form to take over his sensibilities: he would hunt down and devour a squirrel, and before he awakened again would find himself covered in human blood. He knew it, and so he fought it. And De'Unnero, so strong of will, again conquered the spirit of the weretiger.

He used the form of the great cat for transportation only, and in that guise covered as much as seventy miles in a single night. His first destination, on order of the masters of St.-Mere-Abelle, was to be St. Gwendolyn by the Sea, an important abbey, the fifth largest of the Abellican Order and the one housing the only women in the Order, the Sisters of St. Gwendolyn, named for a relatively minor martyr of the third century. De'Unnero's plan was to remain at St. Gwendolyn for as short a time as possible, then to catch a sailing boat out of the abbey's docks along the Mantis Arm coast, sailing south for Entel and St. Bondabruce, the residence of powerful Abbot Olin. De'Unnero was confident that he could get more cooperation and alliance from the man than from anyone at St.-MereAbelle, and so he was anxious to get there before Olin sailed for the College of Abbots. He thought he could make it if he could find seaborne transport at St. Gwendolyn. After a week of hard travel, when he at last came in sight of St. Gwendolyn by the Sea, a white-walled abbey of soaring minarets, Master De'Unnero abandoned his plan, and knew from the scene about the abbey that all future plans would also be altered.

Inevitably.

For there, spread about St. Gwendolyn's grounds, De'Unnero saw the truth of Honce-the-Bear's future, saw the sickly masses huddled under torn tents in dirty robes, all the area about them full of waste and refuse and dead bodies.

That first image of the tarnished fields about St. Gwendolyn burned into the heart and soul of Master Marcalo De'Unnero, assaulted him as the worst, the very worst, sight he had ever witnessed, a prophecy of abject doom and despair, the proof positive that God had altogether abandoned his land and his Order.

No, the master thought. No, God had not deserted his Church, but his Church had surely deserted the ways of God. This foolishness with Avelyn, the murderer, the thief; this insistence-even by those who did not believe in Avelyn or Jojonah, or in the humanistic, sympathetic, and pathetically weak message that was being attributed to them-that the former, and perhaps the latter, as well, would be canonized! This ascension by Braumin and his cohorts to positions of almost dictatorial powers in the Ordervoices they earned only because they happened to be on the right side when the secular forces of the kingdom destroyed the figurehead of their opposition! This general belief that the Abellican Church had to become a great nursemaid to the populace!

Yes, that was it, De'Unnero understood. The new Church leaders wanted to become as nursemaids, and so God was now showing them the folly of their beliefs, the weakness of their softened hearts. De'Unnero knew the old songs and children's rhymes. Like every brother indoctrinated into the Abellican Order, he had learned of the efforts of previous generations to try to heal those afflicted with the rosy plague, knew that only one in twenty could be healed, and that monks seeking such miracles would contract the disease and die, on the average of about one in seven attempts.

"Would Avelyn Desbris be among those running out with soul stone in hand?" De'Unnero asked himself, and he knew the answer wellknew that Avelyn, if he were alive and at St. Gwendolyn, would be out in that field even then, working tirelessly to try to save someone, anyone. Avelyn would be too ill to continue his efforts within a week or two, and he would be dead soon after. "Yes, Avelyn, and when you had died in such a manner, when they had thrown your body on the pyre so that your rotting flesh could not pass the disease to others, would they then call you a saint or a fool?"

In that moment, up on that bluff overlooking the field of wretches, Marcalo De'Unnero saw things very clearly, saw the foolishness that had invaded his beloved Order, the selfishness of Pride and Arrogance, among the most deadly of sins, that had come into the seemingly generous hearts of those brothers calling for humanistic reform.

That was not the Church that Markwart had envisioned or had striven toward as father abbot. And though, in truth, Marcalo De'Unnero had been no enthusiastic supporter of many of Dalebert Markwart's visions, thinking them limited in scope, he recognized that the man had at least attempted to keep the Church on its rightful and righteous course, a path toward leadership, not friendship, toward instruction and not hand-holding.

They were the brothers of Saint Abelle, the mouthpieces of God, those whose concerns had to be the souls and not the bodies, whose compassion had to focus on the afterlife, not the present life. People suffered and people died every day, and in every conceivable horrible way. But that was not important, in De'Unnero's vision. Preparation for inevitable death was a process of cleansing the soul while the body rotted away; and this new vision of the Church, these hints that the errors of Avelyn would be ignored, that the man might be made a saint, this notion that the sacred gemstones were not exclusively the province of the Abellican brothers, that they were meant to alleviate the suffering-the physical and not the spiritual suffering!-all of it, screamed at Marcalo De'Unnero that his beloved Church had not only turned down the wrong fork in the road but also had turned completely around and was walking the path toward the demon dactyl and not toward God.

Marcalo De'Unnero knew at that moment of epiphany what he had to do, or at least, what he had to fight for. But how might he begin to bring it about?

He looked more carefully at the scene spread before him, at the scores, no hundreds, of huddled wretches, and at the long bed of various flowersa tussie-mussie bed, it was called-that had been planted in front of the gates of St. Gwendolyn. The scholar brothers and the secular healers of the day, and of generations past, had come to the conclusion that the plague was spread mostly by the rotting smell of its victims; and the scents that could most effectively block that deadly odor were certain combinations of the various aromatic flowers.

De'Unnero glanced behind him, to the road that led to the main square of Gwendolyn village, which he saw nestled in a dell north of the abbey. He could picture the scene along Gwendolyn village's avenues, people walking with nosegays, smaller versions of the same floral combinations. People walking about with that telltale look of despair, of utter terror.

He kept his human form now, but De'Unnero ran full out down that road and into Gwendolyn. He purchased a nosegay from a market, flourishing despite-or actually, because of-the pall that lay over the town. Then he ran back to the bluff overlooking the field. For the first time since he had left St.-Mere-Abelle, De'Unnero wished that he had taken some gemstones, something to help get him by that desperate crowd, or to clear the way before him. Lacking that, the master fell into the tiger yet again, grimacing with the pain as his lower half transformed into the shape of the great cat, with muscled, powerful legs that could propel him away from any danger in an instant.

He checked the folds of his robes to ensure that the transformed limbs could not be seen, then went with all speed down onto the field, trying to circumvent the rabble. They came at him, the pitiful things, shuffling and wailing; but De'Unnero outran most, and when some circled to block his path to the monastery, the monk leaped on tiger legs, clearing them easily, landing lightly and running on, toward the tussie-mussie bed.

"Hold fast!" came the cry from the wall, and De'Unnero paused long enough to see several crossbowmen leveling their weapons his way. " None to cross the posies!"

"I am Master De'Unnero of St.-Mere-Abelle, you fool!" the monk roared back, and he charged on, right through the flower bed.

He heard the archers cry out again, to a couple of peasants chasing him, and then, to his satisfaction, he heard the click of their crossbows and the agonized cries behind him. At last, he thought, brothers with the courage to do the right thing.

The main gate of St. Gwendolyn swung wide and the portcullis beyond it cranked up, up, and De'Unnero skittered through, his smile wide, prepared to congratulate the brothers of St. Gwendolyn for their vigilance and willingness to do that which was right.

But he paused, stunned, for the scene inside the abbey courtyard nearly mimicked that without! Several brothers and sisters were stretched out on the ground under makeshift tents, moaning, while others peeked out at De'Unnero from various doors and windows or looked down upon him from the parapets. The portcullis behind the master slammed down.

"Where is Abbess Delenia?" De'Unnero barked at the nearest apparently healthy brother, a crossbowman on the parapet beside the gate tower.

The young monk shook his head, his expression grim. "We are without our abbess, all of our masters, and all but one sovereign sister," he explained. "Fie the rosy plague!"

De'Unnero winced at the grim news, for St. Gwendolyn had not been thin of high-ranking monks, as were some of the other abbeys. At the last College of Abbots, Delenia had brought no fewer than five masters and three sovereign sisters with her, and she had told De'Unnero personally that she had three more sisters nearing promotion to that rank, the equivalent of master. "We unafflicted number fewer than fifty," the monk continued. "The plague caught us before we understood its nature."

"And how many have gone out to try and cure those diseased upon your field?" De'Unnero demanded. Though he was wounded by the nearcomplete downfall of St. Gwendolyn by the Sea, he transferred that pain into anger and neither sympathy nor sadness.

The monk shrugged and started to look away.

"How many, brother?" De'Unnero demanded, and a twitch of his legs lifted him up the twelve feet to the parapet, to stand before the stunned man. "That is how it entered your abbey, is it not?"

"Abbess Delenia ..." the man stammered, and De'Unnero knew that his presumption had hit the mark perfectly. Never had Abbess Delenia failed in matters of sympathy, a weakness that De'Unnero considered general in her gender. She could debate and argue with the best minds in the Abellican Order, and she had been a friend to Abbot Olin; but De'Unnero had always considered Delenia sympathetic to Avelyn and even more so to Jojonah, for she had shown no stomach for watching the heretical master burn at the stake in the village of St.-Mere-Abelle.

"Convene all the healthy brothers and sisters in the abbess's audience chambers," the master instructed the scared young monk. "We have much to discuss."

Merry Cowsenfed walked past her stunned, sobbing companions to the body lying in the tussie-mussie bed, a man who had come to the field outside of St. Gwendolyn only three days before. He had lost his wife and two of his three children to the plague; and now his third, a young daughter, had begun to show the telltale rosy spots. Thus the desperate man had ridden hard, and then when his horse had faltered, had run hard, carrying the child nearly a hundred miles to get to St. Gwendolyn.

He wasn't even afflicted with the plague.

How ironic, it seemed to Merry, to see the healthiest one of the bunch of them lying dead on the flowers. She bent down and turned the man over, then spun away, dodging the flying blood, for the crossbow quarrel had broken through his front teeth, tearing a garish wound through the bottom of his mouth and into his throat.

Then Merry heard the cries, the pitiful screams of a child barely strong enough to hold herself upright. She came at the body then, barely five years old, half walking, half crawling, begging for her da. Merry intercepted the child, scooped her in her arms, and carried her away, motioning, as they went, for some others to go and collect the body.

"There ye go, child," Merry cooed softly into the frantic girl's ear. "There ye go. Merry's got ye now and all'll be put aright."

But Merry knew the lie, as well as anyone alive. Nothing would be put aright; nothing could be put aright. Even if the remaining monks-that new one who ran through the field, perhaps-came running out and offered a cure for them all, nothing would be put aright.

How well Merry Cowsenfed knew the awful truth! She looked down at her bare arm, at the scars left over from her fight with the rosy plague. She had been the one in twenty who had been saved by the monks and their work with the soul stone. Abbess Delenia herself had tended to Merry.

"One in twenty," the woman said, shaking her head. The monks had come out to tend dozens, dozens, yet only Merry had survived thus far. And so many of those brave and generous monks were now dead, the woman mused. Delenia and the sovereign sisters who had used their magic to help those from Falidean town. All dead, every one.

Delenia had pronounced Merry cured, and there had been great cries of rejoicing from the abbey walls, and Merry had been invited to go inside and pray. But the battered and weary woman understood the ridiculousness of the abbess' claims that she was healed, knew that nothing could be farther from the truth. Her body had survived the plague, perhaps, but her heart had not. She refused the invitation, preferring to stay out on the field with the rest of the group that had come in from Falidean town.

They were all dead now, Dinhy and Thedo and all the rest, dead like her Brennilee, and not even in the ground with a proper coffin. No, just burned on the pyre-the first ones who had died, at least, for the pitiful folk had later run out of wood. The more recent deceased had merely been rolled into a hole in their dirty clothes, food for the worms.

Merry looked about the field now, at the empty eyes, the pleading expressions, at all of those who wanted so desperately that which Merry had found. They wanted the monks to come out and tend them, to take the disease away, because they thought that then everything would be put aright.

It would not, Merry knew, not for her and not for them. The rosy plague had come and destroyed her world, had destroyed their world, and nothing would ever be the same.

An older woman, bent and nearly choking on her own phlegm, came up and offered to take the child from Merry, but Merry refused, explaining that she'd tend this one.

The child died that same night, and Merry gently put her on the cart that came by to collect the bodies.

"She was the one ye should've tried to save, ye fools!" a frustrated and furious Merry yelled at the abbey walls a short while after that. She stood behind the tussie-mussie bed, shaking her fist at the silhouettes of the monks up on the parapets. "Ye fix the children, and they'll heal, body and soul. Ye don't be wastin' yer time with the likes o' me, ye fools! Don't ye know that I've got hurts yer stones canno' find? Oh, but where are ye, then? Ye've not been out o' yer walls in days, in weeks! Are ye just to sit in there and let us all die, then? Are ye just to stand on yer walls and shoot us dead if we come too close? And ye're calling yerself the folk o' God-bah, but ye're just a pack of scared dogs, ye are!"

"Who is the hag?" De'Unnero asked one of the other brothers, the trio standing atop the abbey gate tower, looking out over the field.

"Merry Cowsenfed of Falidean town," the young monk answered, "the only one saved by Abbess Delenia and the others."

"And no doubt at the cost of Delenia's own life," De'Unnero quipped. "Fool."

Raised voices from the courtyard behind and below turned the pair about.

"The sick brothers are not so pleased," the young monk remarked.

"They are without options," De'Unnero replied, for at the meeting of those still healthy within St. Gwendolyn, the master from St.-Mere-Abelle had forced some difficult but necessary decisions. All of the sick monks were to leave the abbey ground, to go out on the field beyond the tussiemussie bed with the other diseased folk. De'Unnero had offered to bring the tidings to the sick monks personally, but several of the remaining sisters had asked to do it. Now they were down in the courtyard, carrying their warding posies before them, telling their sick brethren that they must be gone.

The argument continued to swell, with more and more of the diseased monks crowding by the sisters, shaking their fists, their voices rising.

"Surely you see the reason for this," De'Unnero called down to them, turning all eyes his way.

"This has been our home for years," one brother called back at him.

"And the others of St. Gwendolyn have been your family," De'Unnero reasoned. "Why would you so endanger your brethren? Have you lost all courage, brother? Have you forgotten the generous spirit that is supposed to guide an Abellican monk? "

"The generous spirit that throws sick folk out into the night?" the monk answered hotly.

"It is not a duty that we enjoy," De'Unnero replied, his voice calm, "nor one that we demand lightly. The salvation of the abbey is more important than your own life, and to that end, you will leave, and now. Those who can walk will carry those who cannot."

"Out there, without hope? " the brother asked.

"Out there, with others similarly afflicted," De'Unnero corrected.

There was some jostling in the crowd, a few shouts of protest; and the sisters who had delivered the tidings fell back, fearing a riot.

"I will offer you this one thing," De'Unnero called down, and he pulled a gemstone from the small pouch in his robe, a gray stone he had just taken from St. Gwendolyn's minor stores.

"Take this soul stone out with you and tend one another," De'Unnero went on. He tossed it down to the closest ailing monk. "You will show it to me each night, and inform me of its every possessor, for I will have it back."

"When we are all dead," the young brother reasoned.

"Who can speak God's will?" De'Unnero replied with a shrug, but it was obvious to him, and to all the others, that this group was surely doomed. They might find some comfort with the soul stone, but never would any of them find the strength to drive back the rosy plague. "Take it and go," De'Unnero finished, and his voice dropped low. "I offer you no other choice."

"And if we refuse?"

It was not an unexpected question, but the master's response certainly caught more than a few of the onlookers by surprise. He reached over to one of the nearby young brothers and pulled the crossbow from the man, then leveled it at the impertinent diseased monk. "Begone," he said calmly, too calmly, "for the good of your abbey and your still-healthy brethren. Begone."

The monk puffed out his chest and assumed a defiant pose, but others near him-correctly reading the grim expression on Master De'Unnero's face, understanding beyond any doubt that the fierce master from St.-MereAbelle would indeed shoot him dead-pulled the man back.

Slowly, without enthusiasm and without hope, the ailing brothers and sisters of St. Gwendolyn collected those who could no longer stand, gathered all the warm blankets and clothing that they could carry, and began their solemn procession out the front gates of the abbey.

"The walk of the dead," the young monk standing on the parapet beside De'Unnero remarked.

All the monks expelled from St. Gwendolyn were dead within the week, their demise hastened, De'Unnero regularly pointed out, by their feeble attempts to alleviate the suffering of one another. "It is akin to diving into the mud to help clean a fallen brother," De'Unnero explained to all of the healthy brethren at one of their many meetings, "Better would they be if they found healthy hosts that they might use the soul stone to leech the strength."

"But how many peasants might then become ill?" one of the sisters asked.

"If a hundred peasants gave their lives to save a single brother, then the reward would be worth the cost," De'Unnero insisted.

"And how many brethren sacrifices would suffice to save one peasant? " the same sister asked.

"None," came the harsh answer. "If one Abellican monk saved a dozen peasants but forfeited his own life in the process, then the cost would be too high. Do you place no value on your training? On your years of dedication to the highest principles? We are warriors, do you hear? Warriors of God, the holders of the truth, the keepers of the sacred stones."

"Beware the sin of pride, brother," the sister remarked, but before she had even finished the sentence, the fierce master was there, scowling at her.

"Do you believe that you can save them all, sister? " he asked. "Do you so fear death that you must try? "

That set her back a bit, as she tried to sort through the seeming illogic.

"We will all die," De'Unnero explained, spinning away from her to address the entire gathering, the remaining monks of St. Gwendolyn. "You," he said to one young monk, "and I, and he and he and she and she. We will all die, and they will all die. But we bear the burden of carrying the word of God. We must not be silenced! And now, when the world has gone astray, when our Church has wandered from the holy path, weyou brethren and I-who have witnessed the folly, must speak all the louder!"

He stormed out of the room, full of fire, full of ire, stalking through the courtyard and calling for the portcullis to be lifted and the gate to be thrown wide.

Outside, he found Merry Cowsenfed wandering about the flower bed, like some sentinel awaiting the arrival of death.

"With all them other monks dead, have ye and yer fellows decided to come out and help us again?" she asked hopefully when she spotted De'Unnero. "Ye got to help Prissy first, poor little one-"

"I came for the soul stone and nothing more," De'Unnero replied sharply.

Merry looked at him as if she had been slapped. "Ye can't be forgettin' us," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "The abbess and her friends-"

"Are all dead," De'Unnero reminded her. "Dead because they refused to accept the truth."

"The truth, ye're sayin'?" Merry questioned. "Is it yer own truth, then, that I should be dead and buried? The plague had me thick," she said, raising one bare arm to show the master her ring-shaped scars.

"The soul stone," De'Unnero insisted, holding out his hand.

"Ye got more o' them things inside, more than ye could need," Merry argued. "We're wantin' only the one."

"You could not begin to use it."

"We'll find one that can, then," said Merry. "If yerself and yer fellow monks aren't to help us, then ye got to at least let us keep the stone. Ye got to at least let us try."

De'Unnero narrowed his gaze. "Try, then," he said, and he looked to another nearby fellow, one obviously quite sick with the plague. "Go and fetch . . . what was the name? "

"Prissy," Merry answered. "Prissy Collier."

"Be quick!" De'Unnero snapped, and the man ran off.

He returned a few moments later, bearing a small girl, two or three years old. Gently he laid her on the ground near Merry, and then, on De'Unnero's wave, he backed off.

"She's near to passin'," Merry remarked.

"Then save her," De'Unnero said to her. "You have the soul stone, so invoke the name and power of God and rid her of the plague."

Merry looked at him incredulously.

"Now!" the monk roared at her.

Merry looked all around, very conscious of the growing audience, the many sick folk looking on from a distance and the many monks now lining the abbey's parapet and front gate tower.

"Now," De'Unnero said again. "You desire a miracle, so pray for one."

"I'm just a washerwoman, a poor-"

"Then give me the stone," De'Unnero said, holding forth his hand once more.

Merry reached into her pocket and did indeed bring forth the stone, but she didn't give it to De'Unnero. She clutched it close to her bosom and fell to her knees beside poor, sick Prissy. And then she began to pray, with all her heart and soul. She invoked every prayer she had learned as a child, and made up many more, words torn from her heart. She kissed the soul stone repeatedly, then pressed it to Prissy's forehead and begged for God to let her and the girl join, as she had done with Abbess Delenia.

Merry prayed all through the rest of the day and long into the night. Tirelessly she knelt and she prayed, and tirelessly did De'Unnero stand over her, watching her, judging her.

The dawn broke and Merry, her voice all but gone now, begging more than praying, still cried out for a miracle that seemed as if it would not come.

Prissy Collier died that morning, with Merry sobbing over her. After a long while, De'Unnero calmly reached down and helped the woman up.

"The soul stone," he said, holding forth his hand.

Merry Cowsenfed seemed a broken woman, her face puffy and blotchy, streaked with tears. Her whole body trembled; her knees seemed as if they would buckle at any moment.

But then she straightened and squared her sagging shoulders. "No, ye canno' take it from us," she said.

De'Unnero tilted his head in disbelief and a wry smile came over him.

"It did no' work with Prissy, but it will," Merry insisted. "It has to work, for it's all we got." As she finished, she felt the sudden, burning explosion as De'Unnero's tiger paw swiped across her face, tearing the flesh. She felt the sharp tug on her arm next, saw her hand fly out and fly open.

Then she was falling, falling, and so slowly, it seemed!

The last thing Merry Cowsenfed saw on the field outside St. Gwendolyn was Marcalo De'Unnero's back as the monk callously walked away.