Midalis had not taken ill yet, but Liam was showing the beginnings of the plague.
Holan Dellman headed for his darkened room, wanting nothing more than to fall down into unconsciousness. He had heard the news of Liam's illness that same morning, soon after he had begun his work with the sick at St. Belfour, and that news, more than his efforts with the sick, had taken the strength from him. How he wanted to go to the man and comfort him! How he wanted to focus all his healing energies on that one man, now, early on, before the plague had taken solid hold of him!
But Dellman could not do that, could not place the fate of his dear friend above that of the others. That was not the way of his faith or of his God; and as much as he had come to love Liam O'Blythe during his time in Vanguard, Holan Dellman loved his God above all else.
But that didn't stop his very human misery at the news.
He collapsed onto his small cot, buried his face into the blankets, and tried to block out all the world.
And then he sensed her, and, with a start, he jerked about and he saw her.
Jilseponie, standing in his room, looking back at him.
Holan Dellman bolted upright. "How did you get here?" he asked. "Did the ship-"
Dellman stopped, suddenly realizing that this was not Jilseponie physically before him, was something less substantial. He gasped, trying to find His breath, and retreated across the cot, eyes wide, his head shaking, his body trembling.
"We have found the answer, Brother Dellman," Jilseponie said to him, in a voice half audible and half telepathic.
Holan Dellman understood spirit-walking, of course, but he had never seen anything this extreme. His first thought was that Jilseponie had died and that her ghost had come to him. But now he realized that this was spirit-walking taken to a level that he had never before seen.
"Brother Dellman!" she said to him, more insistently, and he understood that she was trying to steady him, that her time, perhaps, was not long here in Vanguard.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In St. Precious," she answered. Her voice seemed weaker suddenly, and her answer was more a feeling than words, an image of a place that Holan Dellman knew well. So, too, came her next communication-an image of a flat-topped mountain, of a mummified arm protruding from the stone.
"Go there, all the sick and all the well," Jilseponie said. "Go and be healed."
Jilseponie's spirit image vanished.
Brother Dellman sat there, gasping, for a long while. Then, no longer exhausted, he ran out to find Abbot Haney.
"They all must go," Jilseponie said to Tetrafel and Braumin when they met later that day in St. Precious Abbey. "The ill and the healthy, in coordinated fashion and with your soldiers to protect them."
Duke Tetrafel, only then beginning to digest the overwhelming logistics of the proposition, hesitated. "I will send some soldiers," he agreed.
"All of them!" Jilseponie argued, her tone showing no room for debate. "Every man and woman. And you must send word to Ursal, telling King Danube to open the roads to the north, to call out the entirety of his army to wage this war as completely as he would if the goblins had returned.
"And you, Abbot Braumin, must send all of your brothers, as quickly as possible, using all the magic available to you, to the Barbacan," she continued. "Once you have tasted the blood of Avelyn, then you, too, might begin to aid those making the journey to Aida without fear of becoming ill."
"But you cannot cure me," Duke Tetrafel argued, "by your own words."
"But I can help to battle the plague, to push it back long enough so that, perhaps, you will survive the journey to the mountaintop, and there be healed."
"You are so certain of all of this?" Braumin asked somberly; and Jilseponie nodded, her expression serious and grim.
"We must have soldiers and monks lining the road, all the way from Palmaris to the Barbacan," she explained, "supply camps, with food and with bolstering healing, with fresh horses, and with soldiers to guide the newest group of pilgrims to the next site."
"Do you understand the difficulties?" Duke Tetrafel asked skeptically.
"Do you understand the implications if we fail in this?" Jilseponie shot back, and that surely silenced the skeptical, plague-infected man.
" You went to Dellman? " Braumin Herde asked.
Jilseponie nodded. "Vanguard is alerted. For now, they must determine their course."
"And you will similarly go to the Father Abbot at St.-Mere-Abelle?" Braumin asked.
Jilseponie thought on that for a few moments, then shook her head. "I will go in body to St.-Mere-Abelle, along with Dainsey. I will face them directly."
Braumin, too, paused and mulled it over, then nodded his agreement. "They will not be easily convinced," he said, remembering his previous meeting with Glendenhook and understanding well the doubting, cynical nature of powerful Fio Bou-raiy.
"We need them," Jilseponie said. "All of them. All of the brothers of your Church. They must go to Aida and protect themselves, then work tirelessly to aid those who will follow them to that holy place."
"Palmaris first," Duke Tetrafel demanded.
Jilseponie nodded. "Let our work begin, now, out in the square."
And so it did, with Jilseponie working with the soul stone, bolstering those sick plague victims who would head out that very day, while the soldiers and the other healthy pilgrims began readying the many horses and wagons.
While Braumin and the others, on Jilseponie's own orders, could not offer direct aid to the plague sufferers, they did work with soul stones, leeching their own strength into Jilseponie, bolstering her efforts.
She worked all the day and all the night. Several, she found, were beyond her help, were simply too thick with plague for her to offer any real relief. They would not make the journey, could not hope to survive the road, even if she went along with them, working on them all the way. She did not turn them away, though, and tried to enact some measure of relief, at least, upon them.
That very night, magically and physically exhausted but knowing that every minute she delayed likely meant the death of another unfortunate victim, Jilseponie and Dainsey Aucomb set out from Palmaris. Instead of taking the normal, slow ferry across the Masur Delaval, the pair were whisked across the great river by Captain Al'u'met on his Saudi']acintha.
Also that very same night, Abbot Braumin and every brother of St. Precious began their swift pilgrimage to the north, using gemstones to lighten the burden on their horses, using gemstones to illuminate the trail before them and to scout the area spiritually, using gemstones to leech the strength from nearby animals, as some of them had learned on their first trip to the Barbacan.
They meant to get there as quickly as possible and return, stretching their line along the road to offer aid to the pilgrims.
Braumin Herde remained doubtful, though he trusted Jilseponie implicitly, and marked well the seemingly miraculous image burned into the bell at St. Precious. But too much was at stake here for the gentle monk. He could not allow his hopes to soar so high, only to learn that Jilseponie had erred, that there was no miracle to be found or that it had been a onetime occurrence, a blessing for Dainsey Aucomb.
What would happen in that instance? the abbot had to worry. What might the peasants or the Duke and his soldiers do if they discovered that they had traveled all the way to the Barbacan, no doubt with many dying along the road, chasing a false hope?
He shuddered at the thought but reminded himself of the character of the messenger. When he had last seen Jilseponie before her return to St. Precious, he had given her an assortment of gemstones and had prayed that she would again prove the light against the darkness. Now she had returned to him with just that claim, and his own doubts of her had laid his cynicism bare before him.