demanded.
The man didn't answer.
'Chezru?' the master asked, naming the deity of the Behren yatols. 'Do you fall to your knees to worship Chezru? '
The man didn't answer, but he was trembling visibly now, as De'Unnero walked around him, slowly, scrutinizing his every aspect.
'Deny him,' De'Unnero instructed the man when he came around to face him squarely once again. 'Publicly denounce Chezru, here and now, as a false idol.'
The man didn't answer.
'If you'll not do it, then you have already answered my first question,' De'Unnero said slyly. 'Denounce Chezru, I say! Name him as the betrayer of souls.'
One of the other Brothers Repentant rushed up, as if to tackle the man, but De'Unnero held him back.
'We see the plague growing in our lands,' the master explained to the frightened dark-skinned man. 'We know its source: the errant course of worship. Denounce Chezru now, I warn you, else you reveal yourself as a heretic and, thus, a sire of the plague.'
That last statement seemed to bolster the poor Behrenese man. He took a deep breath and looked evenly at De'Unnero. 'You beseech me to abandon my soul to save my flesh,' he said in his thick Behrenese accent. 'That I cannot do.'
'Hang him!' came one cry, but De'Unnero stifled it, and all subsequent ones.
'Where are his people?' the master asked loudly. Then he had his answer; and he was pleased to learn that an entire enclave of Behrenese were living on an old farm just outside Juniper.
'Bring him,' he instructed his Brothers Repentant, and the Behrenese man was dragged away. On went the procession, through the night, torches in hand. They encircled the large farmhouse and saw the frightened facesold folks and children included-peering out at them through the windows.
De'Unnero ordered the Behrenese out of the house, but they refused.
'Who is your God?' he called to them. 'Do you serve the Abellican Church or the Chezru chieftain of your homeland? '
No reply.
De'Unnero signaled to two brothers flanking him, each brandishing blazing torches, to approach the house.
'You will answer me or we will burn your house down around you!' De'Unnero roared. 'Which Church do you serve?'
The door slid open and an old, weathered, dark-skinned man walked out, moving slowly but steadily toward the volatile monk,
He looked to the Brothers Repentant holding the other Behrenese. 'Let him go,' he demanded. They ignored him, and he followed their gazes to the ringmaster.
'Begone from here,' the old man said to De'Unnero. 'Our home is this, fairly taken and rebuilt. No explanations do we owe you.'
'You are yatol,' De'Unnero accused, for that was the religion of the southern country, and he knew from the dark-skinned man's accent and inflection that he had not been long in Honce-the-Bear.
The old man squared his shoulders.
'Name the Abellican Church as your Church,' De'Unnero demanded. 'Accept St. Abelle as your savior and our God as your God!'
'Our faith we will not renounce,' the man said proudly, lifting his gaze so that he could address the crowd. But then he was down on the ground, suddenly dropped by a heavy punch delivered expertly by Marcalo De'Unnero. And then he and the other man were sent running, chased by Brothers Repentant brandishing whips. Those angry monks chased the two Behrenese right up to the house, cracking their whips, forcing the darkskinned men to seek refuge inside.
'Burn them in their house,' De'Unnero instructed, and the rest of the Brothers Repentant surged forward with their torches, setting the house ablaze on all sides, taking care to quickly engulf any potential exits.
The screams soon followed, pleading and begging, but the Brothers Repentant did not heed those cries and shed no tears for the heathen Behrenese, for they, like the followers of Avelyn, were to blame for delivering the rosy plague upon the land. They, with their sacrilegious ritualswhich De'Unnero insisted included the sacrifice of kidnapped fair-skinned babies-were not innocent. Nay, by the cries of De'Unnero, whipping all the gathering, even the secular peasants, into a fury and a frenzy: the Behrenese were akin to minions of the demon dactyl.
De'Unnero called up all the rumors of Behrenese horrors, relentlessly condemning the dark-skinned southerners. His moment of highest triumph came shortly thereafter-the house burning wildly, smoke billowing into the nighttime sky-when one Behrenese woman somehow managed to elude the fire and run out, only to be hunted down by the folk of Juniper, the crowd stirred by De'Unnero's tirade. They caught her and dragged her down, beat her and kicked her, and carried her back to the inferno. Howling with rage and glee, ignoring her pitiful screams, they threw her back into the fire to be consumed.
The Brothers Repentant left Juniper a torn and battered place the next day, moving out across the rolling fields of southern Honce-the-Bear. Behind them, they left fifteen dead and scores maimed and scarred. And yet, to some at least, they left as heroes, as the holy brothers who would defeat the rosy plague. Indeed, the number of Brothers Repentant grew by four that day, young, strong men of Juniper wanting to join in the war against sin, against the plague. Men willing to accept the responsibilities of mankind's sins onto their own shoulders. Men willing to suffer. And to kill.
'She is with child again,' Abbot Je'howith announced to King Danube and Duke Kalas on the day after the autumn equinox, after his examination of Constance Pemblebury. 'Another son.'
King Danube smiled; Kalas laughed out loud. 'Thus the heir and the spare,' the Duke said.
Danube looked at him directly. His first instinct was to lash out at his rather callous and blunt friend, but he held the words in check. Duke Kalas had a right to be questioning the status of the children, Danube realized, given that he had not yet publicly announced the Denial of Privilege for Merwick, his first son with Constance, now nearly seven months old.
'We will see if that is to be,' the King replied, and calmly.
Kalas paused, and pondered the reply carefully. 'You have invoked Refusal of Acceptance before,' he reasoned, 'but not with one as close as Constance. Do you plan to marry her? '
Now it was Abbot Je'howith's turn to laugh, a cackling sound that turned both sets of eyes upon him. 'Indeed, my sovereign,' he said, 'do you plan to marry Lady Pemblebury? As your adviser in matters spiritual, I have to inform you that these conceptions, unless immaculate, do not set such a fine example for the rabble.'
All three had a good laugh at that, and Danube was glad for the dodge. He knew that he had to make some serious decisions, and soon, but truly he was torn. He did care for Constance, and dearly, and did not want to bring her pain in any way. But still, that image of another beautiful and spirited woman stayed bright in his mind.
They let it go at that for the time being, and Je'howith skulked back to his abbey, while Kalas escorted Danube on their daily ride across the fields, enjoying the luxuries his by birthright, the pleasures that accompanied exalted station.
Those pleasures would prove short-lived.
The news of the summer riot in the hamlet of Juniper and of similar outbursts along the farmlands between Ursal and Entel didn't reach Castle Ursal until the next week, ironically, the very same day that the first victim of the rosy plague was confirmed within the city.
The mood in Danube's audience hall-where Danube, Duke Kalas, Constance, and the baby Merwick, awaited the arrival of Duke Tetrafel and Abbot Je'howith-was somber, a far shift from the carefree revelry among the nobles throughout the previous season. Suddenly the world seemed a darker place, and whatever reprieve the nobles of Danube's court had experienced after the fall of the dactyl and its minions and the shake-up within the Abellican Church, seemed fast diminishing. None of them had experienced the rosy plague before, of course, but they knew well the histories, the devastation the sickness had wrought upon their kingdom on several occasions in centuries past.
'It is the plague!' came the cry, and Duke Tetrafel entered the room, out of breath from his long run through Castle Ursal. ' It is confirmed, my King. The rosy plague!'
