“Indeed,” the elder answers, displaying angry, horrified grief.
“Very well, then,” Niksar says solemnly. “The laws are clear, if it was given to her by the soldier. There should be no confusion, no ‘mystery.’”
“There should be none,” Arnem replies, esteeming his aide’s respectful manner, and matching it. “But we have two additional and unfortunate facts to consider, for they lie behind the actions of the young pallin’s comrades — and, more importantly, those of their commander. Both the soldier and his maiden insisted, even unto their deaths from the sickness, that they had engaged in no—” The commander attempts to find a gentler word, but cannot: “No fornication. Only innocent trysts.”
Niksar, however, has fixed his mind on the first of Arnem’s revelations: “‘Their deaths’?”
“Indeed,” Arnem says. “For the pallin also died, soon after the girl.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Arnem sees Visimar’s wandering gaze and attention fix on the great stone structure that they are approaching: it is a reaction of the sort that the sentek has hoped to provoke. “Ignis Sacer,” the cripple murmurs. “The Holy Fire …”
“Elder,” Arnem calls, as the horses reach the litter. “May I assume that the two deaths, while they may not have occurred at the same time, were of the same—variety?”
The elder seems somewhat uncertain of the meaning behind this question, and he hesitates; at which the fearfully fascinated Visimar, perhaps unwisely, steps in: “Of course they were, Sentek. In both cases, death was preceded by a fever that seemed to come and go, each time returning with more force. It was eventually accompanied by small red sores across the back and stomach, as well as the chest and the throat.”
“Our own healer,” the elder says, “then thought it to be rose fever, which was cause enough for alarm.”
“Indeed, Father,” Visimar says, nodding and glancing at Arnem as the latter starts at the mention of rose fever. “But very soon, it degenerated further, into a madness that destroyed their minds, as well as an unspeakable rot that ate their bodies away.”
The elder’s face darkens. “I have never seen its like. Kafra’s wrath is terrible, especially when it ravages such young and healthy forms.”
Already making Arnem nervous with his apparent inability to choose his words carefully (or silence himself altogether), Visimar presses forward with his description: “Yes — a ravaging sickness, perhaps too fearsome to be accurately described by words, and consuming first their minds and then their beauty: it turned their admirably pale skin — particularly that of the girl’s delicate hands and feet — a deep, sickly yellow, then the color of plums, and finally black, after which first the toes and fingers, and then perhaps entire extremities, simply … fell away. And the stench …”
Ignoring the warning look that Arnem has fixed upon him, Visimar seems to puzzle with his own comments: “And yet …” A series of unusually deep wrinkles enter Visimar’s brow: “And yet — there is something incorrect about it all, Elder …”
“Incorrect?” the elder says, distrust sharpening the word.
Arnem attempts to patch the momentary breach: “I am certain that my comrade meant only to say that there is something amiss, Elder.”
The elder, however, is unappeased: “Of course there is something ‘amiss,’ Sentek Arnem: the entire business is—”
“Perhaps, perhaps, Honored Father,” Visimar says, still lost in thought. “But if the illness were a pox of some horrifying variety, as you claim, what you describe would be its final stages. Yet you have intimated to us that the couple knew each other only a short time; that the soldier’s interest was but carnal and temporary, whatever his or the girl’s claims to the contrary. Yet — even assuming that their trysts were so base — it would take months for any known pox to manifest such monstrous symptoms.”
The elder’s expression darkens, suddenly and considerably: a moment before he had felt unexpected satisfaction at the appearance of the noted Sentek Arnem and his officers, and at the justice he had begun to feel that they had brought with them; now, his blood begins to heat with familiar yet disappointing resentment: “I might have known …,” he murmurs.
But Arnem has already lifted a conciliatory, if warning, hand. “Hold, now, Father, I beg you. This old man has been my surgeon in the field for more years than I care to count, and I will admit, he has become somewhat addled in his thinking and loose with his speech, due to all that he has seen.” Arnem gives Niksar a quick glance, finding in his aide’s face at least some comprehension of his ruse’s necessity; and then he tries to warn Visimar once more with his eyes that he must keep silent. Yet the elder’s indignation only seems to support the old man’s contentions, and if Arnem is able to divine as much, so should Visimar be. Yet despite the cripple’s behavior, the dangerous situation must be handled deftly: “If he has spoken mistakenly,” Arnem continues, “or simply more bluntly than he should have, you must accept my apology — our sole desire is to establish the truth, not to insult either you or your loyal community.”
“Fine words and sentiments, Sentek,” the elder says, his voice more controlled, yet no less suspicious. “And if that is, indeed, your desire, then you must descend with me to the deepest vault beneath our largest granary. There, the temperature is always cool, even uncomfortably cold — and we have kept the bodies of the dead couple there, lest anyone question our actions or our demands in regard to the garrison’s commander.”
“You have preserved the bodies?” Visimar says, suddenly shocked. “You have not buried or burned them? But—”
“Anselm.” Visimar finally silences himself at the harsh way in which Arnem says the name. The sentek then turns a kinder expression on the elder. “Of course you would have had to preserve them, Honored Father.”
“Indeed,” the elder replies. “For in such cases, as you doubtless know, Sentek, the commander of the town’s garrison, if he attempts to shield the offending soldier, is, by law, as guilty of misconduct as the soldier himself. Yet after the girl died, and we learned of the youth’s illness, the commander would neither yield the boy up until he was dead, nor put himself into our hands for trial.”
By now Visimar is staring at the large stone granary, as if the mere sight of it held answers. “But if this be the entire extent of the matter, Father,” the old man murmurs, “why, I pray you tell, have you experienced more outbreaks of the unidentified pox? For you have, have you not? And why have you not told us of them? Surely you are not suggesting that this one pallin was behind every death in Esleben?”
At these words, everyone present is suddenly seized by different forms of dread: Arnem recognizes that Visimar is not merely speculating, but is certain of his accusations, whereas Niksar is consumed by a new confusion that causes him to grip the hilt of his sword in preparation for a fight; the elder’s litter bearers, meanwhile, suddenly release their burden, which hits the ground with a sharp slamming of wood against hard Earth as their faces fill with fearful astonishment. Yet Visimar does not move, as the elder fairly leaps from his conveyance and thunders in accusation:
“Who is this man? I demand you tell me, Sentek!”
Matters only worsen when the elder’s bearers begin to murmur the dreaded word: “Sorcery … it must be sorcery …”