She wanted to say that she couldhow she wanted to tell Roger that! — but she knew that false hope could be a more devastating thing than no hope at all, and she could not lie to Roger.
'I will try,' she promised, turning to slip down the side of the wagon.
Roger grabbed her by the arm, and she turned to see his desperately pleading face.
'This is the rosy plague, Roger,' she said softly. 'I have had no luck at all in battling it thus far. None. Everyone I have attempted to heal is dead. But I will try.'
Roger sucked in his breath and stood, wavering, for a long moment. Then he collected himself and nodded.
True to her promise, Pony brought Dainsey into her private room above Fellowship Way, gathered her hematite, and went at the disease with all her strength and determination. As soon as her disembodied spirit entered Dainsey's battered body, though, she knew that she had no chance. The plague was thick in the woman, thicker than Pony had ever seen it before, a great green morass of disease.
She tried and she tried, but inevitably wound up fighting the wretched stuff away from herself and gaining no ground at all in actually helping Dainsey.
She came out of the gemstone trance a long while later and slipped off the side of the bed. Her legs wouldn't hold her, so exhausted had the battle made her, and she slumped heavily against the wall, then slid down with a thump to the floor. She heard Roger call out to her, and then he was there, beside her.
'What happened? ' he asked repeatedly. 'Did you defeat it? '
Pony's expression spoke volumes. Roger slumped to the floor, fighting hard against the sobs.
Pony gathered her own strength-she had to, for Roger-and went to him, dropping her hand on his heaving shoulder.
'We do not surrender,' she assured him. 'We will use the herbal poultices and syrups on her, as many as we can make. And I will go back to her with the gemstone. I promise I will.'
Roger looked at her squarely. 'You will not save her,' he said.
Pony could not rightfully disagree.
They huddled on the field before St. Belfour as they huddled before all the other abbeys in Honce-the-Bear, the pitiful plague victims praying for help that would not come. For the rosy plague, in all its fury, in all its indifference to the screams of the suffering, had come to Vanguard.
Inside St. Belfour, the scene was no less one of distress. The plague hadn't crept into the halls of the abbey yet, but for the brothers of St. Belfour-gentle Brother Dellman and all those trained under the compassionate guidance of Abbot Agronguerre-witnessing such horrendous suffering in their fellow Vanguardsmen was profoundly upsetting. After the initial reports of the plague in Vanguard had filtered into St. Belfour, Abbot Haney and Brother Dellman had huddled in Haney's office, arguing their course of action. The two had never truly disagreed, yet neither had they been in a state of agreement, both of them wavering back and forth, to help or not to help. They knew Church doctrine concerning the rosy plague-it was written prominently in the guiding books of every Abellican abbeybut these were not men who willingly turned their backs on people in need. And so they argued and they shouted, they banged their hands in frustration on Haney's great desk and thumped their heads against the walls.
But in the end, they did as the Church instructed; they locked their gates. They tried to be generous to the gathered victims, tried to persuade them to return to their homes; and when that failed, they offered them as many supplies as they could spare. And the crowd, understanding the generosity and much closer to the brethren of the region than were the folk of many southern cities to their abbeys, had complied with Abbot Haney's requests. The gathered victims had formed two groups, with a distinctive space in between them so that the monks could go out on their daily tasks, mostly collecting food-much of which would be turned over to the plague victims.
Still, for all the cooperation and all the understanding on both sides of St. Belfour's imposing wall, Haney and Dellman remained miserable prisoners, sealed in by the sounds of suffering, by their own helplessness. Every day and every night, they heard them.
'I cannot suffer this,' Dellman advised his abbot one morning. He had just come from the wall, from viewing the bodies of those who had died the previous night, including two children.
Abbot Haney held up his hands. He had no answers, obviously; there was no darker and more secluded place to hide.
'I will go out to them,' Brother Dellman announced.
'To what end?'
Now it was Dellman's turn to shrug. 'I pray that you will afford me a single soul stone, that I might try, at least, to alleviate some of the suffering.'
'Ye're knowin' the old songs, I trust,' Abbot Haney replied, but he was not scolding. 'And ye know where the Church stands concernin' this.'
'Of course,' Dellman replied. 'The chances are greater that I will become afflicted than that I will actually cure anybody. I, we, are supposed to lock the gates and block our ears, sit within our abbeys-as long as we do not contract the plague-and speak of the higher aspects of life and of faith.' He gave a chuckle, a helpless and sarcastic sound. 'We are to discuss how many angels might kneel upon our thumbnails in ceremonies of mutual prayer, or other such vital issues.'
'Brother Dellman,' Abbot Haney remarked, before the man could gain any momentum.
Dellman relented and nodded, understanding that his friend was as pained by all this as he was.
They stood facing each other quietly for a long while.
'I am leaving the abbey,' Brother Dellman announced. 'I cannot suffer this. Will you give me a soul stone? '
Abbot Haney smiled and turned his stare to the room's only window. He couldn't even see out of it from his angle, for the opening was narrow and the surrounding stone wall thick; and even if he could have seen through it, the view was of nothing but the trees of the hills behind St. Belfour. But Haney didn't actually have to see outside to view the scene in his mind.
'Do not leave the abbey,' he said quietly.
'I must,' said Dellman, shaking his head slowly and deliberately.
'Ye canno' suffer this,' said Haney, 'nor can I. Don't ye leave the abbey, for we'll soon throw wide our gates and let the sufferers in.'
Dellman's eyes widened with shock, still shaking his head, even more forcefully now at this unexpected and frightening proclamation. 'Th-this is something I must do,' he stammered, not wanting to drag his brethren down his own chosen path of doom. 'I did not mean…'
'Are ye thinkin' that I'm not hearin' their cries? ' Haney asked.
'But the other brothers…'
'Will be gettin' a choice,' Haney explained. 'I'll tell them me plans, and tell them there's no dishonor in takin' a boat I'm charterin' for the south, for the safety o' St.-Mere-Abelle. Let them go who will-they'll be welcomed well enough by Abbot Agronguerre in the big abbey. And for St. Belfour, we'll make her a house o' healin'. Or oftryin', at least.' He rose from his seat and came around the desk, nodding his head for every shake that Dellman gave of his. When he got close to the man, Dellman broke down, falling over Haney and wrapping him in a hug of appreciation and relief. For Holan Dellman was truly terrified, and Haney's bold decision had just lent him strength when he most needed it.
'You should not be here, my friend,' Prince Midalis said to Andacanavar when the ranger arrived unexpectedly at Pireth Vanguard. 'Our fears have come true: the plague is thick about the land. Run north to your home, my friend, to the clean air ofAlpinador.'
'Not so clean,' Andacanavar said gravely, and Midalis understood.
'I have no answers for you,' he replied. 'We have recipes for salves and the like that will ease the suffering, so it is said, but they'll not cure the plague.'
'Perhaps the winter, then,' Andacanavar said. 'Perhaps the cold of winter will drive the plague from our lands.'
Prince Midalis nodded hopefully and supportively, but he knew the grim truth of the rosy plague, and he suspected that the fierce Alpinadoran weather would only make the plague even more terrible for those suffering from it.
She went at the plague again, and was again overwhelmed. She tried different gemstone combinations-and
