Andacanavar cleared his throat.
"The second, then," Jilseponie corrected, for the ranger certainly had tasted the blood on his first visit to the Barbacan. "But the first of your people who was not raised and trained outside Alpinador. Go to the hand and accept the covenant, of free will. Then you will know better how to guide those who followed you here."
Andacanavar started to translate, but Bruinhelde held up his hand, motioning that he had understood the words well enough. He took a deep breath then, his massive chest swelling, and he strode past Jilseponie and the other two, right up to the upraised arm.
He dropped to one knee before the arm, studying it intently, even sniffing at the bloody palm.
Jilseponie came up beside him. "Kiss the palm and you will understand," she promised.
Bruinhelde looked up at her suspiciously.
"How can you properly guide your people if you do not know? " she asked innocently.
The barbarian stared at her long and hard, and then he bent low and, with but a single quick steadying breath, he dipped his head and tasted the blood.
His expression showed surprise, and then…
Elation.
He looked up at Jilseponie again.
"You are the same man, with the same God," she said quietly, "but now the plague cannot touch you."
And so it went, throughout the day, the barbarians of Alpinador finding salvation at the hand of a soon-to-be Abellican saint. They stayed in the Barbacan for some time, celebrating; and when they left, Bruinhelde promised Jilseponie that he would spread the word throughout his homeland, that other Alpinadorans would follow.
And she promised him that they would be greeted as friends.
As predicted, the swarm of pilgrims began again in the early spring, flowing endlessly out of Palmaris, filtering through the city from points all across Honce-the-Bear.
Jilseponie and Bradwarden watched them from their mountain perches, taking heart again that Avelyn's promise would be fulfilled, that the rosy plague would be washed from the land.
From the wooded trails far below the line of the Barbacan, another watched the procession, but with very different emotions.
For Marcalo De'Unnero, the nocking of all the world to Avelyn Desbris was like a dark mirror held up before his wretched eyes, a reminder of his own mistakes and failings.
He was a beast now as often as a man, consumed by the power of the tiger's paw gemstone that had somehow become a part of his very being. He understood it now to be a curse, and surely no blessing, for no longer could he control the urges of the hunting and hungry cat. He survived by killing, pure and simple. Deer, rabbits, and, when he could find no alternative, feasting on the flesh and blood of humans.
He knew that he was sinking, that the creature was consuming him, mind and soul.
But not in body. Nay, it seemed as if another gemstone, the hematite ring he had taken from a merchant in Palmaris, had also found its way to De'Unnero's wretched being. He should have died from the wounds he had received on that day when he had been chased out of Palmaris, for several of the arrows had struck him in vital areas. He had spent days pulling out the arrowheads, the extraction on several occasions followed by a gush of blood that had left him weak and even unconscious.
But every time, he had reawakened, his wounds healed. The soul stone would not let him die!
And truly, at that time, all that Marcalo De'Unnero wanted was to die, to be released from the bonds of the weretiger, to be freed of this hellish prison his own body had become for him.
He had even considered going to the shrine of Avelyn. He didn't fear the plague-nay, he knew somehow that it could not affect him-but he wondered if this covenant he had been hearing repeated excitedly by every person going to or from the Barbacan, this gift of Avelyn, might extend to the curing of his present condition.
In fact, De'Unnero had even started toward the Barbacan on one occasion, but had become sidetracked, for a woman in the caravan on the road north of him had strayed out from the revealing light of the campfire one calm and quiet night.
After his gory feast, De'Unnero understood that he could not continue, that there would be no salvation for him from the likes of saintly Avelyn Desbris.
So he melted back into the forest, back to the west and the wilder lands, where deer were more plentiful and human flesh harder to find.
It went on through the seasons and the years, until the spring of God's Year 834. The previous spring had brought only thin lines of pilgrims-so few, in fact, that Abbot Braumin had returned to his duties at St. Precious and many of the monks along the northern road had been dismissed back to their respective abbeys-and by all the reports coming out of the southland, fewer still would make the journey this year.
The plague had been beaten, it seemed, and so, with mixed emotions, Jilseponie and Bradwarden left their post at Mount Aida and returned to the lands they knew so well, the Timberlands and Dundalis.
Jilseponie lingered a long time at Elbryan's cairn before going into the town. She went to Oracle there, and found that Elbryan's spirit was with her. For the first time in years, she was not Jilseponie but Pony. Just Pony: the girl who had grown up in the region beside Elbryan, who had taken such a strange and roundabout journey to get to this place in her life.
She stayed with the spirit of her lost husband for a long, long time, and it was late into the evening when she at last emerged. Bradwarden was nowhere about, but she could hear his piping distantly on the evening breeze.
So reminiscent of those long-ago days.
She found Dundalis larger than when she had left it, with many of the pilgrims deciding to remain there rather than march all the way back to their southern homes. The other towns of the region-and all along the south road to and including Palmaris-also boasted of many, many newcomers, so many, in fact, that Palmaris' population was now estimated as larger than it had been before the plague had begun to claim victims there.
Fellowship Way in Dundalis was a bustling place now, always full of patrons; and the cheers that greeted Pony when she walked through the door that spring night resounded as loudly as any she had heard at the previous Fellowship Way, one of Palmaris' busiest taverns.
She found Belster behind the bar along with Roger. Dainsey was working tables-whenever her toddler son was asleep enough for her to slip out to the front of the establishment and do some work.
"Can you take a break from the work?" Pony asked the trio after the greeting and tearful hugs.
Belster nodded to a couple of patrons, who quickly stepped into place serving the customers, and Pony led the three into the back room.
"Good to have ye back," Belster remarked.
"For a short while only," Pony replied, and she let her gaze drift from person to person. "I am going to Palmaris," she announced, "to accept King Danube's offer."
"Baroness Pony? " Dainsey said with a great and joyful laugh.
"Baroness Jilseponie," she corrected.
"What about yer Church friends?" Belster asked. "They're busy makin' Avelyn a saint now-should be done this very year-and are hopin' to open a new chapel in Caer Tinella. I'm thinkin' that Braumin's wantin' ye to head that chapel, girl, or at least to join with him in his Church."
Pony shook her head throughout the speech. "They will understand," she insisted. "I can do more good for the teachings of Avelyn as a secular leader than if I went into the Church, where I would have to fight every day for my survival in any position of power merely because I am a woman."
She looked to Roger mostly, for support, because he, above all others except for Bradwarden, knew her the best. And he was nodding and smiling.