So long as Stasi maintains a fast pace, however, down the stone and back onto the trail that brought the three to this place, Keera does not question the old man’s strange speech, nor any other aspect of his behavior. Neither does she trouble her mind more than a little over a brief glimpse that she caught, as she swung back over that pool’s outlet, of a flash of shining white: a fleeting glimpse of a human bone, being washed quickly through the waterway. She has no cause to let it worry her, she assures herself as she runs: after all, where was found one dead, decaying man whose legs were severed, there would likely be an abundance of such bones, from long ago. And if this one in particular appeared too small ever to have resided within the body of a full-grown human, whether Bane or Tall, well … Certainly, it is of no importance to the affairs of the moment; thus, although she knows this explanation to be inadequate to the peculiar sight, she tucks the memory away in the back of her distracted mind and fixes her thoughts upon reaching Okot …
{viii:}
Before Okot, however, must come the arranged meeting with Veloc and Heldo-Bah at the Fallen Bridge. Keera finds, as she does her best to keep pace with Stasi during their morn-to-noonday run, that the memory of their terrible discovery cements the particular bond that the three of them — tracker, scholar, and panther — have from the first been inclined to feel, somehow confirming the full and terrible importance of the journey upon which they have embarked and the purpose that they are now serving; and this sense of importance, the tracker knows, outweighs anything that could have propelled even Heldo-Bah’s and Veloc’s steps. Keera is not altogether surprised, therefore, when — as the stench of the rotting soldier’s body begins to cause her nostrils to flare in renewed distaste soon after the enormous, moss-draped form of the Fallen Bridge comes within view some distance down the deep, rocky riverbed — neither of the male foragers are anywhere to be seen. She surmises aloud to Caliphestros that their own speed may have been sufficient to have allowed them to outstrip her usual companions, who cannot always be counted upon to give their fullest effort or to follow instructions precisely once they are out of both the hearing and the reach of her personal commands and exhortations. For his part, Caliphestros wonders if the two Bane men have not met with some mishap; but Keera assures him that her heart is not vexed by such worries, for Veloc and Heldo-Bah know this stretch of the Cat’s Paw only too well; and since neither she herself nor Stasi have smelled the fresh blood that would characterize such violence, she suspects that her brother gave in to the lazy exhortations of Heldo-Bah, once they had run for a good part of their journey and their usual taskmaster was well out of sight, and slowed his pace to accommodate the added weight of Caliphestros’s books. Keera therefore suggests that Caliphestros and she inspect the diminished corpse of the soldier while they wait for the two to appear, an activity that proves to take little time: the seemingly sorcerous old fellow is able to judge, even by the maggot-infested mess that the soldier’s body has become, that he died of the rose fever alone, that he was not killed by the priests of Kafra (as the golden arrows that seemed to have pierced his body indicated), but was made to appear as if he had been so dispatched, and that the remains are no longer a danger to other living creatures, if indeed they ever were.
“But how can you make such judgments, my lord?” Keera asks, her voice rising over the eternally roaring waters of the Cat’s Paw, “when the body itself is so very decayed?”
“Most of my conclusions are the result of simple observation,” Caliphestros replies. “Keera, have you ever tried to loose one of the Tall’s golden arrows from your bow?”
“We have never had reason or opportunity,” the tracker answers. “When we discover such valuable items, they are always in the bodies of similarly executed outcasts from Broken, and our Groba insists that they be brought back to decorate that council’s Den of Stone, in order to increase the mystical power of that place.”
“Well, then,” the old man continues, “perhaps now you might examine at least one more such shaft from a practical point of view?”
Bemused, Keera steps toward the mass of decay on the ground; but then she pauses, seeking reassurance. “It—will it be safe to touch them?”
Caliphestros smiles gently in admiration. “While I should not be surprised if your healers and other wise men and women were unable to divine the cause of his death immediately, now that you, Keera, know it to be the rose fever, I will wager what is left of my legs that you know its chief properties.”
“I — believe so, Lord Caliphestros,” Keera answers. “As you have said, the rose fever, unlike some similar diseases, seems to lose its threat with the host’s death.”
“Indeed,” Caliphestros replies. “Although when my assistant brought my arrow to me”—he quickly takes the flower-entwined example that he displayed to the foragers on the previous evening from within his smallest, lightest satchel—“I was forced to take extra precautions. Only when you told me your tale did I realize they had been unnecessary, for both myself and my … messenger …”
As Keera makes her first informal estimate of the weight of the shaft she took from the soldier, she says, with affected disinterest, “Yes, your messenger—messengers—I wonder if we may not discuss all the creatures who do your bidding, ere we rejoin the others, my lord …” She moves quickly from the body a final time, using the seemingly inconsequential moment required to study and clean bits of decayed flesh from the arrow. “For it is the only thing that you have yet to—”
“Clever, my girl,” the old man answers, with a light laugh. “But let me retain one small secret for now, eh? Now, to the business at hand. What do you note about the arrow?”
Keera’s face fills with disappointment as she lets the arrow rest upon her finger. “The balance is wretched. You could not loose this shaft from more than a short distance with any chance of accuracy. And these flights — there is no question of their being able to steady its course, even could you launch it further.”
“Just so,” Caliphestros judges approvingly. “And what, then, would you guess the likelihood of the best Broken archers killing a man with such arrows to be, even were the condemned close by?”
“Small, my lord,” Keera replies. “If it exists, at all.”
“Indeed, Keera,” Caliphestros says. “These arrows are intended to thus deceive Broken’s enemies. And to attempt to spread a disease that the priests of Kafra were unaware could not be spread after death. They no doubt thought it identical with the Holy Fire, the pious fools …”
“Whatever their thinking, they pressed the deadly heads into the softer parts of his flesh,” Keera says, “after he was already dead.”
“Excellent.” Caliphestros urges Stasi a little closer to the corpse, glancing at it again for as long as he can tolerate the stench. “Thus we can, indeed, conclude that the fever had killed him before he was pierced by such precious ritual weapons.”
“Then when we were at that wretched pool upriver,” Keera says, “you were adamant about our not touching any creatures, the dead along with the living, because we could not say just what affliction had killed which creature, particularly from a distance.”
“Well reasoned, Keera,” Caliphestros answers. “Would that I had been able to teach the Kafran priests and healers such logic. My quickly increased alarm was due to my detecting the presence of what you call Moonfire; for after the victims of that disease — call it what you will, Holy Fire, the Ignis Sacer of the Romani, or the name other Christ-worshippers use, Saint Anthony’s Fire — die, their bodies release a type of evil vapor or bad air,† one that the illness seems to use, to carry itself on to other living beings.”