So familiar with the forest about Dundalis, so at home out here on a warm night, Pony found her way toward the centaur easily enough-until the music abruptly stopped.
"Bradwarden? " she called, for she knew she was close to him.
She waited a few moments but received no answer. She reached into her pouch and sifted through the gemstones Braumin had given her, finding a multifaceted, perfectly cut diamond. She called out the centaur's name again and brought up a tremendous light, filling all the area.
"Ow!" came a yell from the brush to the side. "Well, there's a good one for me eyes, now ain't it? " Bradwarden added.
Pony focused on the voice, and finally managed to sort out the silhouette of the centaur's human torso lurking in the shadows.
Pony smiled and decreased the light, and started to move toward Bradwarden. But so too did the centaur move, one step away for every one Pony took toward him, and she sensed immediately that there was something terribly wrong here.
"What is it? " she asked, and she stopped, turning to get a better angle to see her friend.
"Twenty strides away, that's the rule," Bradwarden remarked, "centaur strides and not yer little baby human steps."
Pony considered the words for just a moment, her face screwed up in confusion, but then she got it. "The plague," she said evenly.
"Thick in the south, I'm hearin'," Bradwarden confirmed.
Pony nodded. "Palmaris is in turmoil," she explained. "So is Ursal, by all reports."
"Dark days," the centaur remarked. "Can't be runnin' to Aida to blow up this enemy."
Pony increased the diamond's light again subtly, trying to get a better view, concerned suddenly that her friend might not be well.
"The plague's not found me," Bradwarden explained, catching on.
"I do not know that it can affect a centaur," Pony said.
"Oh, but it can!" Bradwarden replied. "Nearly wiped away me folk time before last, and so we found the rule: twenty strides and not a step closer."
"From anyone who has the plague," Pony finished.
"To anyone at all," the centaur corrected firmly, "except the horse, o' course. Horses can't catch the damned thing and can't give it to others."
"But if someone is not afflicted-" Pony started to say.
"How're ye to know? " the centaur demanded. "Ye can't know, ye know. Ye might have it, or ye might not. Ye'U not know for sure until ye sicken or ye don't."
Pony paused, sorting it all out. "So you are saying that you will not come within twenty centaur strides of anyone at all? " she asked. "Of me? "
"It's the way it's got to be," the centaur answered. Pony caught the slight quaver in his voice, but just a slight one, and one that did little to diminish his firm resolve. "Have you joined the Abellican Church, then? " Pony asked sarcastically. "They lock their doors and hide in their abbeys while the world outside dies."
"And if one o' their own gets it, they send him out, not to doubt," the centaur added.
"They do," Pony answered. "Cowards all!"
"No!"
Bradwarden's tone surprised her, as straightforward and determined as she had ever heard from the typically blunt centaur.
"Ye call 'em cowards, but I'm thinkin' them wise indeed," Bradwarden said after a short pause. "What're they to do, then? Come out and die? Wallow in the misery until the misery grows in them? "
"They could try something!" Pony insisted. "Anything! What right have they to hide themselves away? "
"Not a right, but a responsibility, I'm guessin'," said the centaur. "Ye don't know, me friend-ye can't know, for yer type o' folks don't keep so long a memory. Not long enough, anyway. Do ye know the tidin's the plague will bring? Do ye know the riotin' and the fightin' and the dyin'? "
Pony straightened and stared at him, but had no answer.
"Yer friends open their abbeys and half o' them'll die from the plague, and doin' no good in the process," Bradwarden remarked. "And the other half'11 likely die in the fightin', for the folk'll blame them monks afore long, don't ye doubt! Happened before and will happen again! They'll blame 'em and they'll burn down their abbeys and they'll stake 'em up. God's not with them now, they know, and so they'll blame them who think they speak to God."
That set Pony back on her heels a bit, for she realized that she hadn't really considered all the implications here. She hated Braumin's choice, the Church's choice, but was there a logical, even necessary reason behind their seeming cowardice?
Suddenly Pony felt very much alone in a very large and dangerous world, a place that had grown beyond her ability to manipulate, even to under- stand. She looked at her distant friend plaintively. "Play for me," she bade him, her voice barely a whisper.
"Aye, that I can do," the centaur replied quietly, and he took up his pipes and began a soulful melody, a quiet, melancholy tune that seemed to Pony to cry for all the world.
Braumin heard the rumble of thunder, and thought it curious, for the sky beyond his little window seemed bright and sunny. Even as he began to catch on to the truth, he heard the cries from a brother in the corridor.
Braumin rushed out, nearly colliding with the man.
"Fighting in the streets!" the young brother cried. "Brothers and peasants! Call out the guard! Call out the guard!" Braumin rushed by the frightened young brother, through the corridors of St. Precious, across the inner courtyard and to the front wall, where he found Talumus and Castinagis on the ramparts, gemstones in hand. Flanking the two were several other brothers, all holding crossbows.
Braumin Herde scrambled up the ladder to join his friends. He heard another thunderstroke before he even got up there, followed by screams, both angry and agonized.
"There!" Brother Talumus cried, pointing down a long avenue to a group of about a score of robed brothers hustling toward St. Precious, waving gemstones, a host of peasants pursuing them and flanking them along other avenues.
"From St.-Mere-Abelle? " Brother Castinagis asked, for none of St. Precious' brethren were out of the abbey at that time.
"Raise your crossbows!" Talumus cried, the running brothers and the pursuing throng closing in.
"No!" said Abbot Braumin, and all eyes turned upon him. "We'll not kill the folk ofPalmaris," he declared.
"They will overrun the brothers!" Talumus argued.
But Braumin remained adamant. He noted that Talumus held a graphite gemstone, and he took it from the man and marked the approach. "Open the portcullis and have brothers ready to swing wide the gates," he ordered Talumus.
Master Viscenti joined them then, carrying an assortment of stones, graphite among them.
"We have to defeat the flanks," Braumin explained, pointing to the avenue that ended in the courtyard to the left of the abbey. "Kill none, but strike the ground before them to hold them back."
"Run, brothers!" Castinagis cried to the approaching group. Both Braumin and Viscenti began falling into their gemstones then, exciting the magical energy. Three lines of people came rushing toward the abbey: the central, led by the running brothers, and ones on either side, curling in to seal off their escape into St. Precious. Those flanking lines turned the last corner and began the last run to spill into the courtyard before the gates.
Abbot Braumin loosed his lightning bolt to the right, followed by Viscenti's lesser strike to the left. Braumin's bolt struck a building, a farrier's shop, rattling the windows and sending several horseshoes flying wildly. Viscenti's bolt hit the cobblestones of the road and ricocheted up, catching the leading peasants squarely in the face and hurling them to the ground. Viscenti could only pray that he hadn't harmed any too badly.
"The doors! The doors!" Castinagis screamed a moment later. St. Precious' front gates swung wide, and Brother Talumus and a dozen other brothers rushed out to escort the line of running brothers into the abbey.