He finds me curled in a ball and shaking so hard that my teeth chatter together. I have ways to deal with this. Prayers, mostly. I run the beads through my fingers, murmuring prayers in three distinct languages as I try to distract myself from the feeling of my bones breaking again and again, twisting in my body one after another, the seizing of my guts, turning hard and sharp within me, the terrible blurring of my thoughts as time leaks out from every crevice.
I do as I always do. I call to mind the faces. A whole village taken by bone-break fever. Tiny children with pixie faces. Anxious mothers, slick with the sweat of their own fevers while they labor to help their babies breathe, to comfort them through the agony. Fathers collapsed on floors or woodpiles, trying to haul wood and water for their families while the world spins around them.
I was guided here by the God just in time. Most of the village was taken with it, but none had perished yet. I went from house to house, healing the sickest first, but going back afterward to heal all the rest. Not one slipped by me. Not one grave is being dug today. Not one.
I cling to this like a man clings to a faltering sapling as he clutches the edge of a cliff.
I remember it in the cold of night when nothing can warm me, as my stomach twists within me like one of the great boas of the southern jungles I saw when I was a squire supplicant learning at the feet of Sir Augussamana. He’d been a kind knight. Tender in every way. Washed over the side of the ship in a storm, I could not save him. I miss him yet. Miss his wise council. Miss his gift of joking with the young ones. He had a way of slipping sugar treats into tiny palms that made a whole room light up.
Were he here now, he would brew me something for the pain. Something to warm me. Or just say prayers with me, begging for courage, begging for endurance.
I’ve taken all their pain, Lord of Sorrows. I have taken it into myself. I have taken their ills. Bless me with endurance. Put your hand on me. Bless me with faith. I want to die. Give me the strength to live.
I’m not sure how long my visitor is there before I hear him, but he’s not one for compassion. We were called about the same time, we two. Both from high houses. But he was called by the Aspect of the Benevolent God while I was called by the Aspect of the Sorrowful God.
Even so, he knows my name and he says it, and the name itself is a salve.
“Adalbrand. It is you. When the villagers told me some fool Saint had taken all their illnesses at once, I knew of only one so great in pride that the God must humble him.”
“Hefertus.” His name falls from my lips like a groan.
I feel his hand on my head. His fingers dig into my hair like questing worms.
“Father, I beg thee, grant this poor servant of thine the peace to ignore all pain this night.”
“Blessed Saints,” I gasp.
The pain is suddenly gone. The relief is so good it is a physical sensation. Like the feeling of cool water going down the throat after a long run. Like the feeling of a warm bed on a cold night. It births tears in my eyes. I let them fall as my breath gusts out, my limbs unfurl, my mind suddenly clears.
“Hefertus,” I say again, and this time it is the closest thing to a prayer I can make it and still be reverent. “You fool of a knight.”
“Paladin,” he corrects me, turning away to examine the room. “Is that a set of stag’s antlers? Someone has inlaid them.” He makes a hum in his throat. “Gorgeous things.”
“Hefertus, you know the consequences of your pronouncements.”
He waves an idle hand. He’s sitting in the rocking chair by the fire, feet kicked up on the top of a chest, a flagon of wine in his hand. He’s made himself at home.
“Lovely place the chief has here. Wasted on you when you’re like that. I told them as much. ‘Next time,’ I told them, ‘just throw the fool in any hovel. He’s feeling all the sickness he took at once. He doesn’t know he’s ruining your best furs on your only clover mattress.’”
I hope that isn’t true. Furtively, I smell my clothing. I smell like sickness.
“Yes, you’ve a lovely stale scent. I very nearly dumped a bucket of water over you, but I didn’t want to ruin the mattress further.”
“You’ve only given me tonight,” I say, forcing myself to think rather than to sink into slothfulness or relief. “Which means you need something from me right now.”
He barks a laugh and shoves a medallion into my chest.
“We’ve been called,” he said. “And I’d rather get a head start, especially if you’ll be playing invalid most of the way.”
Hefertus is a god of a man, towering at nearly seven feet, his entire body a mountain of muscle, his face bearing a short-trimmed beard, and his hair tawny. He has a smile formed in a way to make women swoon, and his order is not celibate, so he makes use of it readily. He is my opposite in every way.
“We’ve both been called,” he says shortly.
“By the God?” I ask, suddenly breathless.
He shrugs. “Perhaps. By the church, certainly. We must ride and ride hard. I’ll ask these peasants for rope. Go saddle your horse. I’ll tie you on for when the God’s blessing wears off and then lead your horse from there. We ride for the Rim.”
He slaps me playfully on the chest. I try not to take it personally.
“The Rim?”
He quaffs the rest of his wine in one go and then shakes his face with his lips relaxed like a great dog, spittle and flecks of wine flinging out in every direction.
“I’ll explain on the way. Wear the medallion. Gather your things. Get into the saddle. I promised your Bishop I’d get you there no matter what state I found you in, and I mean to keep my word.”
“Is that why you wasted your blessing on me?”
“Not a waste,” he mutters, but his answer is proof enough that he has been at this too long. The paladins of the Aspect of the Benevolent God — Prince Paladins, as the rest of us fondly know them — can’t serve long, or at least can’t serve long on their own. For every favor they beg of the God, he takes from them some of the sense he gives the rest of men. Perhaps he spins it as an alchemist, not by transmuting lead into gold, but by forming sense into something more serviceable and breathing his breath of life into it. That’s how I’ve always seen it, though Sir Augussamana had a different explanation.
“Overweening arrogance,” he’d told me. “If you could speak a word and make it so, you’d be just as bad.”
“But they don’t stop,” I’d argued. “Surely that is a curse.”
He’d laughed. “Doesn’t seem like one to me.”
Perhaps he’d been right. Had he been blessed with the same, he would never have drowned. He could have simply asked the God to make his armor float and not drag him to the depths.
“Any hints on where we ride, Hefertus?” I ask.
“When we get outside, take a good look at the moon.”
