Keera thinks to ask where such “news” could have come from, to one alone in the Wood; but the strangely discomfiting moment is shattered by a sudden scream of pain and terror from one of the stray and dying shag cattle that lie in the small inlet on the pool’s north shore. As if magically, the beast, a once-imposing steer, rises suddenly from the carcasses around it, stands awkwardly upon strangely misshapen hooves, and begins to buck wildly. Caliphestros and Keera both watch warily as the steer’s mad eyes — out of which seep small trails of blood — catch sight of Stasi’s brilliant green orbs, which must appear to it as a signal fire in the morning mist; and a clearly malicious intent abruptly taints the steer’s every breath and movement. Stasi growls in return, the massive muscles of her shoulders and haunches readying for combat; but, just as Keera prepares to lift Caliphestros’s scant weight from the panther’s back, in order to allow Stasi freedom for battle, the old man stays the tracker’s arm.
“No, Keera!” he cries, locking one arm as tightly as he can about the panther’s thick, straining neck, and using the other to cover Stasi’s eyes. “She must not tear the flesh of the diseasèd beast, nor allow herself to be even scratched — your bow, quickly, drop the animal as it charges!”
Keera asks no questions, but lifts bow from shoulder and arrow from quiver, each with one arm and in a practiced set of motions, as she steps out in front of her new friends. She nocks her shaft at once, and then — with the shag steer now bearing down on them in feverish madness, charging through bank, mud, water, and finally over stone — she takes careful aim and lets fly. The arrow finds its way to the animal’s breast, through scant meat and between bone, and finally into the heart. The steer collapses and slides along the stone upon which Keera, Stasi, and Caliphestros stand, its body made slick by its own sweat, blood, and spittle, so that it comes to a halt all too near the brave Bane tracker. When the creature does stop, Keera finally draws breath once more, and for the first time allows herself to realize what has occurred.
“Impossible,” she mutters, as the last rattle of death shakes the pitiable beast before her. “Could the pestilence drive it so very mad?”
“Not the pestilence that you have described to me as afflicting your people,” Caliphestros answers, as he and Stasi come up beside Keera. He nods in acknowledgment of the skill of her shot, then says, “But another pestilence altogether was plain to be seen, as soon as the poor creature rose. Observe the ears, Keera, and then the hooves …”
Keera takes a few steps toward the beast, and sees that its ears have been badly mauled by some sort of combat; but then she realizes the truth, murmuring, “Nay — they have rotted away …!” And so, she then sees, have the hooves, whole parts of which are missing, revealing sickly flesh beneath.
“Oh, great Moon,” Keera whispers, going down upon one knee before the steer, but careful not to touch it. “What can this harmless animal have done to warrant your fire?”
Caliphestros’s head cocks at these words, as Stasi begins to shift to and fro, knowing now that the steer is a mass of disease and anxious to be away from it. But Caliphestros strokes her muzzle and neck calmingly, and asks the tracker, “What say you, Keera—’fire?’ You know of it?”
Keera’s head slowly nods. “Moonfire,” she says. “The fever that maddens and rots …”
“Yes,” Caliphestros says. “Of course that is what you would call it. Moonfire — the fire of Saint Anthony, Ignis Sacer—the Holy Fire …”
Keera stands and approaches the old man, who has again retreated into a world of unsettling thought. “My lord? What are these things of which you speak?”
“All names that are one, in their essence.” Caliphestros sighs deeply, and then glances back up at the decaying body of Yantek Korsar. “So we are doubly cursed — doubly plagued …”
And then, strangest of all, the old man cradles his forehead in one hand — and quietly weeps. It lasts a mere moment, but the moment is enough: “Lord Caliphestros,” Keera says, not at all reassured at the sound of even quiet tears. “Do you not have the skill to face the presence of two pestilences in this place — and perhaps in Okot?”
But Caliphestros, his tears gone, only answers in a tongue that is strange to Keera, and which further disturbs her: “Ther is moore broke in Brokynne …”
“My lord,” the tracker insists, sternly calling him to the moment and its perils. “Has the fire taken your reason, as well, then?”
Holding up a delicate, wrinkled hand, the old man steadies himself and says, “Forgive me, Keera. It was a saying, a small jest, with which the monk in whose company I first came to the great city — Winfred, or Boniface, of whom we have spoken — was wont to ease our cares, in his own tongue, when we came to realize the true nature of the place: ‘Ther is moore broke in Brokynne, thanne ever was knouen so.’† It meant only that, beneath the surface of its renownèd power, Broken was a far more ominous place than either of us could even say with accuracy. But now—” Again with his eyes fixed upon the old soldier strapped between the ash trees, Caliphestros murmurs, “—now, I know the bitter truth of that ‘jest’; and I believe we can begin to see and know the true extent of Broken’s malice and corruption. Certainly, it is doubled, at the very least: twice the peril — two pestilences, as you say, Keera, and perhaps still more danger. For we also have this testament”—he points up to the mutilated remains of the once-proud Yantek Korsar—“to another kind of illness, another type of danger, altogether …”
Keera can only shake her head in frustration, and then cries, “My lord, you must explain these things! I must know if my children—”
“And explain them I shall,” Caliphestros answers, with deep if controlled concern, as he turns away from the ash stand and attempts confident composure, putting a hand to Keera’s shoulder. “Not least for the sake of your children, Keera. And, as a way of atoning for any confusion that I may at times inflict upon you, let me say that all Bane children, at least, should be in no greater danger, from this latest disease that we have discovered; for, although we cannot be certain, the plague you have described as being at work in Okot shares few if any symptoms with the second fever, that which you call Moonfire. That is one thing from which we may take solace. And with that assurance, let us be on our way, and speedily. I have much to explain to your leaders, and on our way to meet with them we might even try to prove why the rose fever alone has struck Okot.”
After Caliphestros has slid onto the panther’s shoulders once more, Stasi approaches the noisy waterway at a quick pace, and then bursts, with the fantastic strength that comes so easily to her kind, in a long leap over the rushing outlet—
And yet Keera, clinging fast to her vine and reaching the southern bank just after Stasi, can hear the old man still murmuring to himself, over and over, as if it were a desperate prayer, now:
“Ther is moore broke in Brokynne …”