Pony found Colleen in bed, feverish and delirious, calling out for her cousin Shamus. The woman tending her, another plague sufferer, just shook her head when Pony entered the building, even telling Pony that she should not be there.
'Ye're just to kill yerself for mercy,' she said.
Pony sighed and pushed past her, going to her friend. She wiped Colleen's brow and whispered calming words into her ear.
Not words about letting go, about going to the other side, though. Pony wasn't ready to quit fighting just yet. She had little privacy, for there were three other plague victims in the same room, all near death, and in the other rooms of the house languished more people in various stages of illness.
Pony pulled open the sack and gently dumped the gemstones on the floor before her, rolling them, sorting them. She took up the serpentine first, considering the shield the gem allowed her to bring up against fire. Might that shield also defeat the intrusions of the plague? For Pony honestly believed that if she could do that, if she could keep the little plague demons away from her own body and spirit, and could thus concentrate wholly on attacking the disease within the victim, she would have much better results.
She held the serpentine and the soul stone. It didn't seem like the answer to her, for she understood the nature of the fire shield and didn't believe that it would stop anything other than fire, just as sunstone could block magic but nothing else. Still, she looked at Colleen, at the shine of sweat on her forehead, the redness in her half- open eyes, her swollen tongue, and knew she had to try.
In she went, serpentine first and then hematite. And then out of herhopefully-protected body, her spirit went into the green muck of the plague within poor Colleen.
Five minutes later, Pony was on the floor, exhausted and frantically slapping her arms, hoping that none of the plague demons had managed to get into her.
The serpentine shield had done nothing at all.
Pony prayed for guidance. She used the hematite, not to go back to Colleen, but to find a deeper level of concentration, to find the spirit of Avelyn, seeking near-divine guidance.
An image flashed in her mind of that upraised hand at Mount Aida, and for a moment she thought the spirit of Avelyn had come to her and would Guide her, would show her the gemstone combination to defeat the rosy plague.
Her spirits sagged a moment later, though, for there was nothing-no answers, no hope.
She fiddled with the stones again, arranging them in various groups and trying to figure out a combination of magical properties that would defeat the plague. She tried serpentine again with hematite and ruby, the stone of fire, wondering if there was some way she could bring up some type of spiritual fire that would burn at the green morass.
Again, she wound up on the floor, desperate and even more exhausted.
And on the bed, Colleen continued to deteriorate.
She went at Colleen a third time an hour later, this time using hematite and a warm and bright diamond.
Nothing.
Colleen Kilronney died later that night, in Pony's arms, though she didn't know that Pony was holding her. Watching that final agony, followed at last by peace, Pony knew in her heart that there was no magical combination ofgemstones.
She knew, too, however, that she would not allow herself to run behind tussie-mussie beds and locked gates, as had Braumin Herde and all the Abellican Church.
She stayed with Colleen all through the morning, until the cart man passed by the house, ringing his bell and calling for the dead.
She found that the doors at St. Precious would not open for her. Abbot Braumin came down to the gates, and in truth, he could not bear to keep her out and offered to let her enter.
But Pony refused, understanding the complications for her friend, not wanting to trade on her friendship with the man to force him against Church edict, no matter how mistaken she believed that edict to be.
'Fare you well, my friend,' she said sincerely to Braumin. 'Perhaps we will meet again in this life, in happier times, that I might argue your present course.'
Braumin managed a smile at her generous words, for her disappointment was not hard to see on her fair face. 'We will meet again, if not here, then in heaven, with Avelyn and Jojonah and Elbryan. Go with my blessings and my love, Jilseponie.'
Pony nodded and walked away, having no idea where she might next turn. She wanted to go back to Dundalis, but worried that such a journey might prove too difficult at that time even for mighty Symphony.
She found herself wandering near familiar places, avenues she had known through her teenage years, and then again after her return to Palmaris. It all seemed strangely quiet to her, as if the people were hiding in their homes, afraid of the rosy plague. One place in particular caught her attention: the Giant's Bones, a tavern built on the location of her longtime home. Fearing her own emotions but unable to resist, she entered the place, to find it, like the streets, nearly empty, with the notable exceptions of two very familiar and very welcome faces.
Roger and Dainsey nearly knocked her over in their joy at seeing her, Dainsey crying out her name repeatedly and hugging her so tightly that she could hardly draw breath.
'You decided to follow me here,' Roger remarked, a smug smile on his face. 'And now, with winter settling in, you're stuck here for months!'
That made Dainsey grin excitedly, as well, but Pony's reply erased their smiles.
'I brought Colleen into the city because I could not help her,' Pony explained. 'She died this morning.'
'The rosy plague,' Dainsey reasoned.
'The city has the smell of death,' Roger added, shaking his head. He moved over to Pony then, offering her another hug, but she held him back and took a deep and steadying breath.
'Come with me to the north,' she bade Roger, 'back home, where we belong. Both Symphony and Greystone came south with me.' She paused as she noted Roger's look over at Dainsey, and then it hit her. It became quite clear to Pony that these two-Roger and Dainsey! — were more than just friends.
'How long? ' she started to ask. 'How…' But she stopped and moved closer to Roger, granting him that hug then, truly glad to find that her friend had found such a worthwhile companion as wonderful Dainsey Aucomb.
But her happiness for Roger lasted only the few seconds it took for her to remember the circumstances that had left her walking the empty streets of Palmaris.
Chapter 28
It was spring in Honce-the-Bear, but hardly did it seem like a time of life renewing.
Francis leaned heavily on the stone wall of St.-Mere-Abelle, needing the support. Beyond his shadow, beyond the window-which was no more than a rectangular opening in the stone-he saw them.
Dozens of them, scores of them, hundreds of them. Ghostly figures walking slowly through the morning mist that blanketed the field west of the abbey, huddled under blankets and rags against the chill that still bit hard in the springtime night. So beaten and battered were they, so emaciated, that they seemed like skeletons, this collection of pitiful souls outside the abbey seemed like a gathering of the walking dead.
And the brothers of St.-Mere-Abelle could do nothing for them. Oh, the monks threw some coins, clothing, blankets, and food, mostly as payment for work performed by the plague-ridden sufferers. On Master Bou-raiy's suggestion, Master Machuso had hired the gathered plague victims to plant this year's huge tussie-mussie, a massive flower bed that would continue on and on as far as the victims could plant, that might span the mile of ground fronting St.-Mere-Abelle's western wall.
Francis watched some of them, those with the strength remaining, laboring along the base of the wall, digging in the ground with rotting fingers, The monk bumped his head against the unyielding stone, not hard, but repeatedly, as if trying to thump the frustrations out of his skull.
