The children followed him all the way back to the camp. Koth stood to shoo them away, but Venser frowned. “Leave them be,” he said.
Koth glared at the children before sitting down next to Venser. The little girl stuck her tongue out at Koth, and then the children began to run after one another.
“You see the dark patches,” Venser said.
“Phyresis,” Koth said.
“Many show the sign,” Venser said.
“Yes,” Koth said. “It’ll take them all.”
Venser suddenly understood the loxodon’s cryptic words from earlier when he described the occupants of their current shelter as “gone to shadow.”
From inside, Venser heard Elspeth chanting. He stood and went into the shelter, which was open on two sides. He placed his full canteen next to Elspeth and then returned to sit next to Koth.
The children, having seen where Venser went, skirted around and poked their heads into the other entrance of the shelter. They stood and watched Elspeth chant. After a time, all the children ran away but the girl with the large blotch on her arm. She inched closer and closer until she was sitting at the head of the fleshling.
Venser could not see what was happening in the shelter, but he heard Elspeth stop chanting. There was talking in the shelter.
“Why are you shunned here by these people,” Venser said.
Koth said nothing at first. “For caring about Mirrodin,” he said. “I disappeared, and my own tribe spoke against me. Their words echoed. Now my name draws harsh words.”
“And you think you can gain their trust back by leading them against the Phyrexians?”
Koth nodded. “I know I can.”
Venser heard the little girl’s voice rise, as though she were telling a story.
“If I can show them that I am still a vulshok,” Koth continued. “A Mirran that did not leave his mother and family to the nim and Phyrexians.”
Venser forced away the images of Koth’s mother in her hut. The terrible way her body jerked, controlled like a puppet by a Phyrexian. “There are other ways, you know,” Venser said. “To show that you are not a coward.”
The vulshok’s eyes flashed at the word coward. “What would an artificer know about it?” Koth said, suddenly defensive.
“Nothing,” Venser said.
They sat staring at each other. Suddenly the little girl in the shelter screamed.
Chapter 12
Venser was up and to the entrance of the shelter in an instant. He met the girl as she virtually exploded out of the right side of the lean-to. One of the largest smiles Venser had ever seen was spread across her face. She stopped and held up her arms. The dark blotches were gone. The place where the phyresis had corrupted her flesh was nothing more than a pink patch.
Venser shook his head.
From behind, Venser felt Koth shove him out of the way. “What is all this now?”
When the vulshok saw the girl’s arms, he drew back as though she were infected worse than before. “What madness is this?”
Venser went into the small shelter. Even in the low light, he could see Elspeth staring down at the fleshling, who was lying on her stomach, with her cheek resting on her forearm. Elspeth looked up at him as he entered. The expression on the white warrior’s face was impossible for Venser to read: a combination of absolute wonder and shock.
“What just happened?” Venser said.
“I’m still not completely sure,” Elspeth whispered, her eyes still on the fleshling. Venser looked too. She was lying with her head turned. Her blue eyes were wet, and she regarded them calmly from the ground.
“She began to glow,” Elspeth said.
“Glow?”
“The girl was telling us about her parents dying, and the flesh Mirran began to glow from her eyes.”
“The fleshling?” Venser said. He felt strange calling the woman ‘the fleshling’ but he would have felt stranger calling her Melira, for some reason.
“This human woman,” Elspeth said, gesturing to the fleshling, “began to glow from the eyes. Her eyes filled the room with light. It was bright for a time and then the girl screamed.”
“And the little girl was healed?”
“The phyresis disappeared. Before our eyes.”
“It can’t be,” Venser said. Nobody had ever been able to cure phyresis, and many great healers had tried, and on many different planes. It was the most virulent contagion known to any plane anywhere, and it was spreading. If it was true, then the fleshling could stop the spread. And suddenly Venser began to understand why Tezzeret had insisted that they take the fleshling with them. He understood Tezzeret calling her ‘a gift.’
But he doubted very much that she was able to cure when he gave her to them. And Elspeth had mentioned her eyes glowing. Hadn’t her eyes started glowing after their last teleport? Then it struck him. The blinkmoths. It must have been the blinkmoths that imparted in her the capacity to share her natural ability with others. He did not know that for sure, but it stood to reason.
Later that day, there was a line outside the small shelter. Every person in the settlement with the beginnings of phyresis was queued and waiting patiently, and some not so patiently. Some of the vulshok were shifting their weight from leg to leg and exhaling in exasperation.
Koth stood next to the tent, keeping a close eye on all that entered, lest one be an agent for the Phyrexians. To his general amazement, many of the people waiting in line smiled at him. Some even congratulated him on his return to Mirrodin. It was quite a different reception than he had gotten even hours before.
“They saw you and Elspeth leading the fleshling into camp,” Venser said to Koth’s bewildered expression. “You are the reason they are being cured.”
Ezuri appeared early the next morning, though he showed no taint of phyresis. He stood in front of the shelter smiling beatifically, as though the cure was facilitated by him and him alone.
Venser stayed near the entrance of the shelter. He had quickly come to understand that the fleshling’s cure had its drawbacks, especially to the fleshling.
It had happened the first time by accident. But every time after took tremendous amounts of concentration on her part. She was recuperating from the injury on her back, and yet spent all her waking hours focusing most of her energies on curing every stranger that walked in the door.
Ezuri had been the first to suggest that they find a way to bottle the fleshling’s cure. Venser was sure that the elf wanted a bottle for himself from which he could dispense doses at will. For the right price, of course.
Ezuri could not figure out a way to bottle the cure, and the fleshling, Venser knew, would never have consented even if he had.
“She will heal any who come to her,” Venser had said to Ezuri. The elf had not liked it, as Venser knew he wouldn’t, but what could he do?
The fleshling healed all who came to her, and ended her days exhausted.
The line’s end was in sight when Ezuri walked to where Venser stood, almost knocking over a sylvok who did not move out of his way fast enough.
“Well,” Ezuri said. “The new day has turned out to be a good day.”
“Yes,” Venser agreed.
“Will you stay here with us?”
“No,” Venser said. “We will continue our search.”
But Ezuri’s eyes were not on Venser as he spoke. They had strayed to the darkened entrance of the shelter, and the fleshling within. “And that amazing creature? Will she stay?”