“Step away from that woman!” Vasen said, slowing to a walk and advancing.
The man’s head snapped around and his eyes fixed on Vasen and Orsin. His mouth twisted with rage in the nest of his beard. He stood.
“Shadovar! You brought this down on my home!”
Before Vasen could respond, the man had drawn and fired an arrow with startling speed. At almost the moment he released it, Orsin dived in front of Vasen and hit the ground in a roll. Vasen feared he had been struck, but the deva came up in a crouch, the arrow clutched in a fist.
“He’s not Shadovar,” Orsin said to the man, who had already nocked and drawn another arrow and sighted for Vasen’s chest.
Vasen held his shield up, with its sun and rose, as evidence. He could see that the man was a victim of what had happened in the village, not a perpetrator.
The man walked toward Vasen, arrow still aimed at his chest. Circles darkened the skin under the man’s eyes. A large, purple lump marred his brow near the hairline and blades of grass stuck out of his hair. His nose was crooked, and dried blood was caked in his beard and mustache. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.
Orsin tensed, as if he might launch himself at the man, but Vasen signaled for him to be still.
Moving slowly, as he might to calm an excited animal, Vasen dropped his blade and lowered his shield. The glow went out of both of them. As his anger dissipated, the shadows curling around his flesh subsided. He stood before the man, exposed, vulnerable.
The man kept his eyes on Vasen’s face and walked up to him until the point of the drawn arrow touched Vasen’s breastplate. Tears had made tracks in the filth and blood covering the man’s face.
“I’m not Shadovar,” Vasen said. “We came to help.”
The man studied Vasen’s face and Vasen imagined how he must appear, with his dark skin and yellow eyes.
“You’re not Shadovar,” the man said, the words empty. The bow creaked against the tension of the drawn arrow.
“We’re here to help,” Vasen repeated.
“To help,” the man repeated. He seemed dazed. Tears welled in his eyes and he audibly swallowed.
Holding the man’s eyes, Vasen reached up, slowly, and closed his fingers around the arrow’s tip. “To help.”
The words finally seemed to penetrate the man’s haze. He looked down at the sun and rose on Vasen’s shield.
“You’re a priest?”
“I serve Amaunator,” Vasen answered.
The man’s eyes overflowed but he seemed not to notice. Desperate, pained hope replaced the tears and sought validation in Vasen’s eyes. He released the tension in the bowstring, dropped the bow, and took Vasen by the shoulders, shaking him in his distress.
“Help her, man. Please.”
Before Vasen could respond, the man fairly collapsed into Vasen’s arms and began to sob, as if whatever tension had been holding him upright had just been released.
“Please help my wife. Help her.”
Vasen let the man’s emotion run its course while Orsin looked on, sympathy in his eyes. After a time the man pulled back, stood on his own two feet, wiped his nose and face, obviously embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I just. I need. Just help her.”
He pulled Vasen toward the elm, toward the man’s wife.
“What’s her name?” Vasen asked, kneeling to examine the stricken woman.
“Elle.”
“And your name?”
“Gerak.”
“I’m Vasen, Gerak. This is Orsin.”
The woman’s long red hair hung over skin as pale as snow. Vasen leaned in to check her breathing and recoiled at the stench of her breath. “What is it?” Gerak asked. “What?”
Vasen shook his head. He removed his gauntlets and took her face in his hands. She was warm, feverish. Her eyes were open but rolled back in her head. He opened her mouth, wincing at the stink, and saw the remnants of a black film sticking to her teeth and tongue. Worry rooted in his gut.
He took her hand in his, channeled some of Amaunator’s power, and with it took the measure of her soul. He instantly cut the connection when he felt the growing corruption there. He tried to keep it from his face.
“What are you doing?” Gerak said.
“I’m trying to help her,” Vasen said. Using his shield as a focus, he held a hand over Elle and prayed to Amaunator. When the shield glowed and his palm warmed, he took Elle’s hand in his own and let the energy course into her, but he could see it changed nothing. When he was done, she remained feverish and unresponsive. He thought he knew why. Not even a more elaborate ritual could help her. She was beyond his arts. Maybe the Oracle could help her. Maybe.
“How long has she been this way?” he asked Gerak.
Gerak cleared his throat. “I don’t know for certain. Hours. Did it work? What you did?” He kneeled and took his wife’s hands in his own. “Elle? Sweets, come back.”
“Let’s get her inside,” Vasen said, sharing a meaningful look with Orsin. The deva took his point and sighed.
“Yes, of course,” Gerak said, and pointed. “There’s our home that way. Come.”
Gerak averted his eyes from the dead and led them into a one-room cottage that smelled faintly of vegetable stew. A large carpet covered the wood floor and modest, homemade furniture afforded seating.
While Orsin started a fire, Vasen and Gerak placed Elle in the bed and covered her to the chest in a quilt.
“You’re home now, Elle,” Gerak said, and smoothed her hair. He bent and kissed her brow.
Gerak pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat. Vasen remained standing, conscious of his shadow thrown on the wall by the fire.
“What happened here, Gerak?” he asked.
While holding Elle’s hand, Gerak told them his story: how he had left Fairelm a few days earlier to hunt, how he had been attacked by a creature that had been Lahni Rabb.
“You mean she had been transformed into something?” Vasen asked, eyeing Elle and making connections.
Gerak swallowed, nodded. “A horrible, twisted form. The poor girl.” “Go on.”
Gerak explained how he had hurried back to the village to find almost everyone slaughtered, save his wife. He told them of the two men, one deformed and scarred, the other huge and unkempt. He told them about Minser, about the cats.
“Cats?”
“Yes. Lots of cats lingered around him. They weren’t from the village. They looked feral, larger than normal. I had an arrow on the skinny one but the bigger one took me unawares, gave me this.” He indicated the purple bruise on his brow, the ruin of his nose.
Vasen took it in, turned the information over in his mind.
“Why?” Orsin asked. He sat in the chair with his hands crossed in his lap.
Gerak looked at him as if he had spoken another language. “Why what? Why did they do it? I don’t know. How could I know?”
“Men always have reasons,” Orsin said.
“Men could not have done this to the village,” Vasen said.
“Not alone,” Orsin agreed.
“Her fever is not breaking,” Gerak said, indicating Elle. “How long before she improves?”
Vasen stared at him, saying nothing, saying everything.
“She. . will improve?” Gerak said, haltingly.
Vasen spoke in a low tone. “I don’t think her sickness is one of body. It’s in her soul.”
“Her soul? What are you talking about?”
“Gerak, I believe they put something inside her. . ”
Gerak might have surmised what Vasen had already guessed. He shook his head. “No, no, no.”
“I felt it. And. . it’s growing. . ”
“No, no.”
“. . and I fear that what happened to Lahni. . ”
Gerak’s voice grew louder and he slammed his palm into the arm of the chair. “No!”
“. . will happen to Elle. I can’t stop it.”
There was silence but for the crackle of the fire and Gerak’s heavy breathing. He stared at Vasen for a time, wide-eyed, as if stricken dumb by the words. He shed no tears. Perhaps he had already shed all he had. He pressed his hands together, as if in prayer, and placed them under his chin. “Not my Elle,” he said, as soft as satin.