An older woman, bent and nearly choking on her own phlegm, came up and offered to take the child from Merry, but Merry refused, explaining that she'd tend this one.
The child died that same night, and Merry gently put her on the cart that came by to collect the bodies.
'She was the one ye should've tried to save, ye fools!' a frustrated and furious Merry yelled at the abbey walls a short while after that. She stood behind the tussie-mussie bed, shaking her fist at the silhouettes of the monks up on the parapets. 'Ye fix the children, and they'll heal, body and soul. Ye don't be wastin' yer time with the likes o' me, ye fools! Don't ye know that I've got hurts yer stones canno' find? Oh, but where are ye, then? Ye've not been out o' yer walls in days, in weeks! Are ye just to sit in there and let us all die, then? Are ye just to stand on yer walls and shoot us dead if we come too close? And ye're calling yerself the folk o' God-bah, but ye're just a pack of scared dogs, ye are!'
'Who is the hag?' De'Unnero asked one of the other brothers, the trio standing atop the abbey gate tower, looking out over the field.
'Merry Cowsenfed of Falidean town,' the young monk answered, 'the only one saved by Abbess Delenia and the others.'
'And no doubt at the cost of Delenia's own life,' De'Unnero quipped. 'Fool.'
Raised voices from the courtyard behind and below turned the pair about.
'The sick brothers are not so pleased,' the young monk remarked.
'They are without options,' De'Unnero replied, for at the meeting of those still healthy within St. Gwendolyn, the master from St.-Mere-Abelle had forced some difficult but necessary decisions. All of the sick monks were to leave the abbey ground, to go out on the field beyond the tussiemussie bed with the other diseased folk. De'Unnero had offered to bring the tidings to the sick monks personally, but several of the remaining sisters had asked to do it. Now they were down in the courtyard, carrying their warding posies before them, telling their sick brethren that they must be gone.
The argument continued to swell, with more and more of the diseased monks crowding by the sisters, shaking their fists, their voices rising.
'Surely you see the reason for this,' De'Unnero called down to them, turning all eyes his way.
'This has been our home for years,' one brother called back at him.
'And the others of St. Gwendolyn have been your family,' De'Unnero reasoned. 'Why would you so endanger your brethren? Have you lost all courage, brother? Have you forgotten the generous spirit that is supposed to guide an Abellican monk? '
'The generous spirit that throws sick folk out into the night?' the monk answered hotly.
'It is not a duty that we enjoy,' De'Unnero replied, his voice calm, 'nor one that we demand lightly. The salvation of the abbey is more important than your own life, and to that end, you will leave, and now. Those who can walk will carry those who cannot.'
'Out there, without hope? ' the brother asked.
'Out there, with others similarly afflicted,' De'Unnero corrected.
There was some jostling in the crowd, a few shouts of protest; and the sisters who had delivered the tidings fell back, fearing a riot.
'I will offer you this one thing,' De'Unnero called down, and he pulled a gemstone from the small pouch in his robe, a gray stone he had just taken from St. Gwendolyn's minor stores.
'Take this soul stone out with you and tend one another,' De'Unnero went on. He tossed it down to the closest ailing monk. 'You will show it to me each night, and inform me of its every possessor, for I will have it back.'
'When we are all dead,' the young brother reasoned.
'Who can speak God's will?' De'Unnero replied with a shrug, but it was obvious to him, and to all the others, that this group was surely doomed. They might find some comfort with the soul stone, but never would any of them find the strength to drive back the rosy plague. 'Take it and go,' De'Unnero finished, and his voice dropped low. 'I offer you no other choice.'
'And if we refuse?'
It was not an unexpected question, but the master's response certainly caught more than a few of the onlookers by surprise. He reached over to one of the nearby young brothers and pulled the crossbow from the man, then leveled it at the impertinent diseased monk. 'Begone,' he said calmly, too calmly, 'for the good of your abbey and your still-healthy brethren. Begone.'
The monk puffed out his chest and assumed a defiant pose, but others near him-correctly reading the grim expression on Master De'Unnero's face, understanding beyond any doubt that the fierce master from St.-MereAbelle would indeed shoot him dead-pulled the man back.
Slowly, without enthusiasm and without hope, the ailing brothers and sisters of St. Gwendolyn collected those who could no longer stand, gathered all the warm blankets and clothing that they could carry, and began their solemn procession out the front gates of the abbey.
'The walk of the dead,' the young monk standing on the parapet beside De'Unnero remarked.
All the monks expelled from St. Gwendolyn were dead within the week, their demise hastened, De'Unnero regularly pointed out, by their feeble attempts to alleviate the suffering of one another. 'It is akin to diving into the mud to help clean a fallen brother,' De'Unnero explained to all of the healthy brethren at one of their many meetings, 'Better would they be if they found healthy hosts that they might use the soul stone to leech the strength.'
'But how many peasants might then become ill?' one of the sisters asked.
'If a hundred peasants gave their lives to save a single brother, then the reward would be worth the cost,' De'Unnero insisted.
'And how many brethren sacrifices would suffice to save one peasant? ' the same sister asked.
'None,' came the harsh answer. 'If one Abellican monk saved a dozen peasants but forfeited his own life in the process, then the cost would be too high. Do you place no value on your training? On your years of dedication to the highest principles? We are warriors, do you hear? Warriors of God, the holders of the truth, the keepers of the sacred stones.'
'Beware the sin of pride, brother,' the sister remarked, but before she had even finished the sentence, the fierce master was there, scowling at her.
'Do you believe that you can save them all, sister? ' he asked. 'Do you so fear death that you must try? '
That set her back a bit, as she tried to sort through the seeming illogic.
'We will all die,' De'Unnero explained, spinning away from her to address the entire gathering, the remaining monks of St. Gwendolyn. 'You,' he said to one young monk, 'and I, and he and he and she and she. We will all die, and they will all die. But we bear the burden of carrying the word of God. We must not be silenced! And now, when the world has gone astray, when our Church has wandered from the holy path, weyou brethren and I-who have witnessed the folly, must speak all the louder!'
He stormed out of the room, full of fire, full of ire, stalking through the courtyard and calling for the portcullis to be lifted and the gate to be thrown wide.
Outside, he found Merry Cowsenfed wandering about the flower bed, like some sentinel awaiting the arrival of death.
'With all them other monks dead, have ye and yer fellows decided to come out and help us again?' she asked hopefully when she spotted De'Unnero. 'Ye got to help Prissy first, poor little one-'
'I came for the soul stone and nothing more,' De'Unnero replied sharply.
Merry looked at him as if she had been slapped. 'Ye can't be forgettin' us,' she said, her voice barely a whisper. 'The abbess and her friends-'
'Are all dead,' De'Unnero reminded her. 'Dead because they refused to accept the truth.'
'The truth, ye're sayin'?' Merry questioned. 'Is it yer own truth, then, that I should be dead and buried? The plague had me thick,' she said, raising one bare arm to show the master her ring-shaped scars.
'The soul stone,' De'Unnero insisted, holding out his hand.
'Ye got more o' them things inside, more than ye could need,' Merry argued. 'We're wantin' only the one.'
'You could not begin to use it.'
'We'll find one that can, then,' said Merry. 'If yerself and yer fellow monks aren't to help us, then ye got to at
