Mortalis

before her.

'Tell me your tale,' she bade the one-eyed woman, for she knew that this one had somehow survived the plague and had, subsequently, come to be the leader of this tent city.

Soon after, while she tended yet another in the long line of plague sufferers that Merry Cowsenfed had ordered for her, the great gates of St.-Mere-Abelle swung open. In the archway across the tussie-mussie bed stood several brothers, flanked, Jilseponie noted, by monks armed with heavy crossbows. She motioned for Merry Cowsenfed to join her.

'Keep them quiet and in line,' she explained. 'I will be back soon enough.'

'I seen them that ye healed,' Merry started to spout, so obviously thrilled.

'Not healed,' Jilseponie quickly corrected, 'no, not that. That will come later, as I told you, and from one much greater than I.' She patted the woman on the shoulder, then motioned for Dainsey to follow her and strode over to her side of the tussie-mussie bed.

'We have heard much of your good work, Jilseponie Wyndon,' greeted the largest man there, an older monk who seemed to Jilseponie as if he could be Belster O'Comely's father. 'I am Father Abbot Agronguerre, formerly of St. Belfour. It pains my heart gready to learn that you are with plague.'

'Not I,' Jilseponie replied immediately.

'But you tend to the victims,' the Father Abbot reasoned.

'And soon to find the same fate as Francis, no doubt,' the one-armed monk beside him remarked.

'The plague cannot touch me,' Jilseponie replied, 'for I have tasted of the blood of Avelyn's covenant. Thus I can tend them with the soul stone without fear that the plague demons will attack me, and thus am I more effective in the tending.'

'You will heal them all?' the one-armed monk asked, his tone half skeptical and half sarcastic.

'I will heal none, likely,' the woman replied, 'but I will make many strong enough for the road, for the journey they must now undertake.' She paused, trying to measure the level of interest as it crossed all their faces. 'To the Barbacan, to Avelyn,' she explained. 'There they will be healed.'

The one-armed monk snorted and started to respond, but Agronguerre put his arm up before the man, silencing him.

'It is true, Father Abbot,' Jilseponie went on, staring at him. 'This woman-' she pulled Dainsey forward '-is my living proof. I took her to the Barbacan. She was no better off than was Francis when I came upon him on the field. I thought her death imminent, but then-'

'But then I kissed the bleeding palm,' Dainsey interrupted, 'and it was like all the angels o' heaven came down and burned the plague from me body.'

'Francis is dead,' the one-armed monk remarked. 'You did not save him.'

'He could not make the journey,' Jilseponie replied. She turned and looked back to the hundreds at the tent city. 'Nor will many of them,' she admitted. 'But many others will, and there they will find healing. And those who go though they have not yet been touched by the plague will find armor against it.'

The monks didn't immediately respond, and when Jilseponie turned back, she found the Father Abbot stroking his chin pensively.

'You wished to speak with me, and so I assume that you believe that we have a role to play in this,' he said. Again, the one-armed monk snorted.

'Preposterous,' he muttered. 'No doubt you wish us to come out on the field beside you, to work our sacred stone magic to help the peasants, that we might all die of the plague together.'

'I wished to tell you of the miracle at Aida,' Jilseponie explained to Agronguerre, again trying very hard to ignore the unpleasant one-armed monk. 'You and all of your brethren must make the pilgrimage there, and with all speed, to enter the covenant. Only then can you truly begin to help the plague sufferers. Before you make such a journey, I would not even want you to try to tend the sufferers, for your brethren will prove vital in the long battle we must wage against the plague.'

Agronguerre didn't immediately reply, but Jilseponie saw his emotions clearly. He didn't believe her, but how he wanted to!

'Take not my word for it,' she said sharply, even as the one-armed monk started to jump in with another negative remark. 'Go out with your soul stones. To Palmaris, where you will learn that the whole city is on the march to the north, Duke Tetrafel's soldiers and your brothers of St. Precious with them. Go out farther to the north, and see the lines of those living in the towns in and about the Timberlands, well on their way to that most holy of places.'

She paused, just to see if the monks would try to interject anything, but she saw from their dumfounded expressions that she would not be interrupted.

'Go all the way to Mount Aida with your gemstones, Father Abbot,' she finished. 'See that holy place for yourself, if you must. Go and be convinced, and then send your brethren, all of your brethren, there in body that they might taste the blood of Avelyn's covenant and know the truth. Your aid will prove critical in healing the world.'

'You ask much of us,' Agronguerre remarked quietly.

'I tell you the truth and pray that you will choose correctly,' Jilseponie replied.

'This is nonsense,' claimed the one-armed brother. 'Your friend survived the plague, but so have others. The ugly scarred woman on the field with the sick so survived. We did not cry miracle and send the whole world marching to the spot where she happened to be when her illness relinquished its grasp upon her!'

Jilseponie shrugged. 'Believe what you will, or close your heart to the possibility of miracles and hide behind your walls,' she said, and she gave a chuckle as the irony of her own words hit her. 'I can do no more than tell you the truth and then pray that your faith is a real thing and not some mask for you to hide behind.'

The one-armed monk scowled.

'For if you do not believe in the possibility of miracles, then wretched creatures you are indeed for hiding within abbey walls.' And she turned and walked away. Dainsey, after a helpless chortle, followed.

'Those gemstones you carry!' the one-armed monk cried after her, and Jilseponie wheeled about.

'My gemstones,' she said.

'They are the province of the Church,' the monk corrected.

Jilseponie narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. 'Come and take them,' she challenged, and when he made no move toward her, she walked away.

She almost expected to take a crossbow quarrel in the back.

But nothing happened, and Jilseponie moved back to the line of patient sufferers again and went back to her duty, working tirelessly with the soul stone. Merry Cowsenfed directed the procession to Jilseponie and then to work gathering supplies.

They left in small groups, feeling better than they had in weeks, and moving with all speed for Palmaris, and for the north. If all went well, Jilseponie explained to them, they could expect to find soldiers guarding the road north and monks ready to give them more healing all along the way.

'At least we'll no longer need suffer the wails and the groans, and the stench,' Fio Bou-raiy said to Glendenhook as they watched the spectacle of the thinning crowd. More sufferers continued to stream in, of course, but Jilseponie continued her work, and Merry sent them right on their way.

'Perhaps there is value to Jilseponie Wyndon after all,' Glendenhook replied.

'Her words were correct,' said Father Abbot Agronguerre, coming over to join the pair. His arrival made Bou- raiy and Glendenhook shuffle embarrassedly, given their previous callous remarks. 'All of Palmaris, it seems, is on the road to the north.'

Fio Bou-raiy threw up his hand in disgust.

'Suppose she is right?' Father Abbot Agronguerre asked. 'Suppose there is a miracle to be found and we are too cynical even to look.'

'And if she is wrong? ' Bou-raiy came back. 'Are we to send out all the brethren, as she bade us, only to have half of us die on the road and the other half return to St.-Mere-Abelle ridden with plague?

'

'Her work with the gemstones seems nothing short of miraculous,' Agronguerre remarked.

'She is not curing them, by her own admission,' Bou-raiy reminded him.

Agronguerre turned and walked away.