“ Burial, usually. Sinners are dismembered and left in the open to rot.”
“ Sounds fair,” Prince Malcius grunted.
“ Form a party,” Vaelin told Caenis. “Cart them to the base of the mountain and have them buried. The map shows a village five miles to the south of the pass. Send a rider for the local priest. He can say the appropriate words.”
Caenis cast an uncertain glance at the prince. “The usurper too?”
“ Him too.”
“ The men won’t like it…”
“ I could give a dog’s fart for what they like!” Vaelin flushed, fighting down the anger he knew came from his guilt over Alucius. “Ask for volunteers,” he told Caenis with a sigh. “Double rum ration and a silver for the first twenty to step forward.” He bowed to Prince Malcius. “With your permission, Highness. I have other business…”
“ You dispatched your best riders I take it?” the prince asked.
“ Brother Nortah and Brother Dentos. With a fair wind the King’s command will be in the Battle Lord’s hands within two days.”
“ Good. I should hate for all of this to be have been for nothing.”
Vaelin thought of Alucius’s earnest face, red from exertion after another clumsy hour attempting to master the blade. “And I Highness.”
His skin was pallid and clammy to the touch, black hair clinging to his sweat-damp scalp. The regular, untroubled rise and fall of his chest did nothing to assuage Vaelin’s guilt.
“ He will be well again soon enough.” Sister Sherin placed a hand on Alucius’s forehead. “The fever broke quickly, the lump on his head is already diminished and see.” She gestured at his closed eyes and Vaelin saw the impression of his pupils moving beneath the lids.
“ What does it mean?”
“ He’s dreaming, so his brain is likely undamaged. He’ll wake in a few hours, feeling awful. But he will wake.” She met his eyes, her smile bright and warm. “It’s very good to see you again, Vaelin.”
“ And you, sister.”
“ It seems ever your curse to be my rescuer.”
“ If not for me you would never have been in danger.” He glanced around the meal hall Sister Gilma had converted to a temporary hospital. She was by the fireplace laughing heartily at Janril Norin, the one-time apprentice minstrel, stitching a wound on his arm as he regaled her with one of his more ribald pieces of doggerel.
“ Can we talk?” Vaelin asked Sherin. “I would know more of your time as a captive.”
Her smile faded a little, but she nodded. “Of course.”
He led her to the battlements, away from curious ears. In the courtyard below men were busy loading the Cumbraelin bodies onto carts, exchanging forced but lively humour amidst the drying blood and stiffening limbs. From the uncertain gait of some he surmised Caenis had been somewhat free with the extra rum ration already.
“ You’re burying them?” Sherin asked. He was surprised at the absence of shock or disgust in her voice but realised life as a healer made her no stranger to the sight of death.
“ It seemed right.”
“ I doubt even their own people would do that. They are sinners against their god, are they not?”
“ They didn’t think so.” He shrugged. “Besides, it’s not for them. News of what happened here will spread across the fief. Many Cumbraelin fanatics will be quick to call it a massacre. If it becomes known that we showed respect for their customs in caring for the dead it may dull the hatred they wish to stir.”
“ You almost sound like an Aspect.” Her smile was so bright, so open, stirring an old, familiar ache in his chest. She was different; the guarded, severe girl he had met near five years ago was now a confident young woman. But the core of her remained, he had seen it the way she laid her hand on Alucius’s forehead and her frantic pleading behind the gag when she thought he was giving up his life for her. Compassion, it burned in her.
“ We always seem to be at different ends of the Realm,” she went on. “I had the fortune to meet Princess Lyrna last year. She said you were friends, I asked her to send my regards.”
Friends. The woman lies like others breath. “She did that.” It was clear that she didn’t know, Aspect Elera had never told her why they were always so far apart. Abruptly he decided she would never know.
“ Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Mustor. Did he…?”
“ A bruise here and there when I was captured.” She showed him the marks of the shackles on her wrists. “But otherwise I am unharmed.”
“ When did he take you?”
“ Seven, eight weeks ago. Maybe longer. I’ve lost track of time within the walls of this keep. I had finally been called back to the Order House from Warnsclave, looking forward to taking up my old post but Aspect Elera put me to work on researching new curatives. It’s a deadly dull task, Vaelin. Endless grinding of herbs and mixing concoctions, most of which smell quite appallingly. I even complained to the Aspect but she told me I needed to gain a broader grasp of the workings of the Order. In any case I was actually glad when a messenger arrived from my former mission with word of an outbreak of the Red Hand. I had been working on a compound which may offer some hope of a cure, or at least relief from the symptoms. So the local master sent for me.”
The Red Hand. The plague that had swept through the four fiefs before the king forged the Realm, claiming the lives of thousands in the two hellish years of its reign. No family had escaped untouched and no other sickness was more feared. But the sickness had not been seen in the Realm for nearly fifty years.
“ It was a trap,” he said.
She nodded. “I went alone for fear the sickness had taken hold. But there was no sickness, only death. The mission was quiet, empty I thought. Inside there were only corpses, but not taken by the Red Hand. Hacked and slashed, even the sick in their beds. Mustor’s followers were waiting, and they had spared no one. I tried to run but they caught me of course. I was shackled and taken here.”
“ I’m sorry.”
“ There is no blame for you in this. It would hurt me to think that you thought so.”
Their eyes met again and the ache in his chest lurched once more. “Did Mustor say anything to you? Anything that might explain his actions?”
“ He would come to my cell most days. At first he seemed concerned for my welfare, making sure I had sufficient food and water, even bringing me books and parchment when I asked. But always he would talk, as if driven to it, but his words rarely made sense. He rambled on about his god, quoting whole passages from the ten books the Cumbraelins revere so much. I thought at first he was trying to convert me but I came to realise that he wasn’t really talking to me, he cared nothing for my opinion. He merely needed to speak words he couldn’t speak to his followers.”
“ What words?”
“ Words of doubt. Hentes Mustor doubted his god. Not its existence but its reasoning, its intention. I didn’t know then that he had murdered his father, apparently at his god’s behest. Perhaps the guilt had driven him mad. I told him as much. I told him if he thought he could use me to kill you then he was truly mad. I told him you would kill him in an instant. It appears I was wrong.” She looked at him intently. “ Was he mad, Vaelin? Is that what drove him? Or was it… something else? I sense you know more than you tell.”
He wanted to tell her, the compulsion burned in his breast, the need to share it all with someone. The wolf in the Urlish and the Martishe, his meeting with Nersus Sil Nin, the one who waits, and the voice, the same voice he had heard from the lips of two dead men. But something held it back. It wasn’t the blood-song this time, it was something more easily understood. Such knowledge is dangerous. And she has seen enough danger on my account.
“ I am but a brother with a sword, sister,” he told her. “As the years pass I realise I know very little.”
“ You knew enough to save my life. You knew Mustor had no more stomach for killing. I was so sure you would cut him down when you saw he had me… I was proud of you, proud you didn’t. Mad or not, murderer or not, I could sense no evil in him. Only grief, and guilt.”
From below came the sound of a commotion. Vaelin glanced down to see Fief Lord Mustor upbraiding Caenis,
