"What happened? " he asked repeatedly. "Did you defeat it? "
Pony's expression spoke volumes. Roger slumped to the floor, fighting hard against the sobs.
Pony gathered her own strength-she had to, for Roger-and went to him, dropping her hand on his heaving shoulder.
"We do not surrender," she assured him. "We will use the herbal poultices and syrups on her, as many as we can make. And I will go back to her with the gemstone. I promise I will."
Roger looked at her squarely. "You will not save her," he said.
Pony could not rightfully disagree.
They huddled on the field before St. Belfour as they huddled before all the other abbeys in Honce-the-Bear, the pitiful plague victims praying for help that would not come. For the rosy plague, in all its fury, in all its indifference to the screams of the suffering, had come to Vanguard.
Inside St. Belfour, the scene was no less one of distress. The plague hadn't crept into the halls of the abbey yet, but for the brothers of St. Belfour-gentle Brother Dellman and all those trained under the compassionate guidance of Abbot Agronguerre-witnessing such horrendous suffering in their fellow Vanguardsmen was profoundly upsetting. After the initial reports of the plague in Vanguard had filtered into St. Belfour, Abbot Haney and Brother Dellman had huddled in Haney's office, arguing their course of action. The two had never truly disagreed, yet neither had they been in a state of agreement, both of them wavering back and forth, to help or not to help. They knew Church doctrine concerning the rosy plague-it was written prominently in the guiding books of every Abellican abbeybut these were not men who willingly turned their backs on people in need. And so they argued and they shouted, they banged their hands in frustration on Haney's great desk and thumped their heads against the walls.
But in the end, they did as the Church instructed; they locked their gates. They tried to be generous to the gathered victims, tried to persuade them to return to their homes; and when that failed, they offered them as many supplies as they could spare. And the crowd, understanding the generosity and much closer to the brethren of the region than were the folk of many southern cities to their abbeys, had complied with Abbot Haney's requests. The gathered victims had formed two groups, with a distinctive space in between them so that the monks could go out on their daily tasks, mostly collecting food-much of which would be turned over to the plague victims.
Still, for all the cooperation and all the understanding on both sides of St. Belfour's imposing wall, Haney and Dellman remained miserable prisoners, sealed in by the sounds of suffering, by their own helplessness. Every day and every night, they heard them.
"I cannot suffer this," Dellman advised his abbot one morning. He had just come from the wall, from viewing the bodies of those who had died the previous night, including two children.
Abbot Haney held up his hands. He had no answers, obviously; there was no darker and more secluded place to hide.
"I will go out to them," Brother Dellman announced.
"To what end?"
Now it was Dellman's turn to shrug. "I pray that you will afford me a single soul stone, that I might try, at least, to alleviate some of the suffering."
"Ye're knowin' the old songs, I trust," Abbot Haney replied, but he was not scolding. "And ye know where the Church stands concernin' this."
"Of course," Dellman replied. "The chances are greater that I will become afflicted than that I will actually cure anybody. I, we, are supposed to lock the gates and block our ears, sit within our abbeys-as long as we do not contract the plague-and speak of the higher aspects of life and of faith." He gave a chuckle, a helpless and sarcastic sound. "We are to discuss how many angels might kneel upon our thumbnails in ceremonies of mutual prayer, or other such vital issues."
"Brother Dellman," Abbot Haney remarked, before the man could gain any momentum.
Dellman relented and nodded, understanding that his friend was as pained by all this as he was.
They stood facing each other quietly for a long while.
"I am leaving the abbey," Brother Dellman announced. "I cannot suffer this. Will you give me a soul stone? "
Abbot Haney smiled and turned his stare to the room's only window. He couldn't even see out of it from his angle, for the opening was narrow and the surrounding stone wall thick; and even if he could have seen through it, the view was of nothing but the trees of the hills behind St. Belfour. But Haney didn't actually have to see outside to view the scene in his mind.
"Do not leave the abbey," he said quietly.
"I must," said Dellman, shaking his head slowly and deliberately.
"Ye canno' suffer this," said Haney, "nor can I. Don't ye leave the abbey, for we'll soon throw wide our gates and let the sufferers in."
Dellman's eyes widened with shock, still shaking his head, even more forcefully now at this unexpected and frightening proclamation. "Th-this is something I must do," he stammered, not wanting to drag his brethren down his own chosen path of doom. "I did not mean…"
"Are ye thinkin' that I'm not hearin' their cries? " Haney asked.
"But the other brothers…"
"Will be gettin' a choice," Haney explained. "I'll tell them me plans, and tell them there's no dishonor in takin' a boat I'm charterin' for the south, for the safety o' St.-Mere-Abelle. Let them go who will-they'll be welcomed well enough by Abbot Agronguerre in the big abbey. And for St. Belfour, we'll make her a house o' healin'. Or oftryin', at least." He rose from his seat and came around the desk, nodding his head for every shake that Dellman gave of his. When he got close to the man, Dellman broke down, falling over Haney and wrapping him in a hug of appreciation and relief. For Holan Dellman was truly terrified, and Haney's bold decision had just lent him strength when he most needed it.
"You should not be here, my friend," Prince Midalis said to Andacanavar when the ranger arrived unexpectedly at Pireth Vanguard. "Our fears have come true: the plague is thick about the land. Run north to your home, my friend, to the clean air ofAlpinador."
"Not so clean," Andacanavar said gravely, and Midalis understood.
"I have no answers for you," he replied. "We have recipes for salves and the like that will ease the suffering, so it is said, but they'll not cure the plague."
"Perhaps the winter, then," Andacanavar said. "Perhaps the cold of winter will drive the plague from our lands."
Prince Midalis nodded hopefully and supportively, but he knew the grim truth of the rosy plague, and he suspected that the fierce Alpinadoran weather would only make the plague even more terrible for those suffering from it.
She went at the plague again, and was again overwhelmed. She tried different gemstone combinations-and many of the previous ones-and was again and again overwhelmed. They used the salves and the syrups and their prayers, all to little or no avail. Pony quickly came to realize that she would not save Dainsey, and also strongly suspected that this infection, so brutal and complete, would be the one to get her, that her attempts with Dainsey would spell her doom. And yet she understood that she could not stop trying. Every time she looked at Roger's heartbroken expression, she knew that she had to try.
One evening after her latest miserable attempt, the exhausted Pony rode Greystone out of Dundalis to the north, to the grove and the little hollow she used for Oracle. She was going to Elbryan this night, as much to inform him that she believed she might soon be joining him as to garner any particular insights. She just needed his spirit at that moment, needed to know in her heart that he was close to her.
Such a dark night was coming on by the time she got to the hollow that Pony had to set a candle just outside the opening, using its meager light to give her enough of a view of the mirror to recognize the shadowy images within that other realm. She sat back and half closed her eyes, her focus solely on the mirror, her heart leaping out in a plaintive call to her Elbryan. And then she was comforted, for he was there, in the cave with her.