He'll be like the others soon. . . .

His one human eye locked on her face. An ocean of terror flooded the blue orb, while the other was as flat and empty as space. There was only one treatment left for him.

"Please. . . ."

Grace clenched her teeth, then reached for the poker.

It grew warmer as they journeyed east.

222.

Shortly after dawn the heat began to creep from the moist, sun-warmed ground until Grace could see it hanging on the air like gold mist, throbbing in time to the drone of insects. Evaporative cooling was impossible, given the humidity, but her sweat glands did not know this and continued to produce great, useless floods of salt water, until her eyes stung and her riding gown was heavy and sodden.

the river. Grace knew, as well as the density of the vegetation; eastern Calavan was far more wild and overgrown than the heart of the Dominion, which had been tilled for centuries. Here, slender conifers stretched skyward even as entangling vines throttled them and pulled them back to the forest floor. In all, Grace had not been in a place so rank with life since medical school in North Carolina. There all objects had had the uncanny power to mold instantaneously. She kept checking her dress for the first blotchy, telltale signs.

Last night, the travelers had ridden in silence from the farmhouse near the ruins of Tarafel. Grace spoke to no one of what she had done inside,and Durge had not seen her actions. However, she knew she would never forget the weight of the iron poker in her hand, or the resistance she had met when she pressed the tip against the man's obsidian flesh and found it far too hard to penetrate. Then a glint of sapphire had caught her eye, and she had known there was only one soft place left on his body.

His scream was short, dry, and horrible. Durge rushed to her, but by then the blanket was on fire, and flames licked up the tinder-dry walls of the hovel. The two burst out the front door, and by the time they reached the others the entire farmhouse was an inferno. What had become of Yaren's wife they did not know. The others saw her stumble out of the farmhouse moments before Grace and Durge, then run in the opposite direction, disappearing into trees and gloom.

Darkness fell, and the six spent a miserable night huddled inside the only structure in sight still standng--a rickety shed that, in its most recent incarnation, had housed chickens. They did not sleep, and they set out again at first light, only too glad to be away from the place.

T'l, "-- . 1 .1JJ1, 223.

218 mark anthony had become of Yaren's wife. It was Durge who found her body, crumpled in a shallow stream at the bottom of a ravine. Evidently she had not seen the edge in the dark as she fled. Or had she seen it after all? Grace remembered the woman's terrified scream and shuddered. Kalleth and Meridar dismounted and scrambled into the ravine. The knights pulled her body onto the bank and covered it with a cairn of stones. Then the party continued on its way.

As they rode through the heat that day, Grace tried to comprehend what had happened. What sort of disease was this Burning Plague? Was the agent virus or bacillus? Was it airborne or transmitted by fluid?

However, she knew these were useless questions, that this was no disease like she had ever dealt with at Denver Memorial. Despite his grotesque appearance, Yaren hadn't been dying. All her instincts as a healer told her that. But if medicine couldn't offer an answer, perhaps biology still could. A caterpillar could undergo metamorphosis inside its cocoon-- why not a man?

But if that's the case, then what was he becoming^ Even as she asked herself the question, an answer followed.

Kiondiim. The Burnt Ones.

She could still hear the woman's shriek. But what did it mean? She asked the others if they had ever heard these words, but no one had. Only one thing was for certain. Whatever these krondrim were, Yaren's wife had been afraid of them enough to run into the dark and, whether intentionally or not, fling her body off a cliff. As they rode, Grace tried not to think of what else the woman had said. . . . when the others come again . . .

She still had her mission--and Travis--to concern her.That night they camped in a hollow beneath a 224.

219.

and Durge said they would be fortunate to reach another by the end of the next. They ate a meager meal, less for lack of foodstuffs than for lack of will to build a fire, then the women made beds on the ground while the knights took turns standing watch some distance away.

Grace lay atop her blanket on the lumpy ground, eyes open long into the still, hot night, watching as meteors shot across the sky. She had never seen so many falling stars in her life. For a time she played a game, counting her heartbeats after seeing a meteor. However, she never got to more than eight or ten before another bright needle of light pierced the black veil above. The last thing she remembered was the new, red star rising above a ragged line of treetops, casting its own crimson gauze upon the world.

She woke to damp, gray light, clammy and shivering. At first she feared fever and clamped a hand to her forehead, but her temp was not elevated.

It was a combination of sunburn and the chilly predawn dew, that was all. She climbed stiff and aching from her makeshift bed to find Lirith and the knights already awake, then moved to rouse Aryn from a sound sleep. After displaying a temporary horror at the burnt village, the young baroness had grown cheerful again yesterday. Even the prospect of camping in the open had not daunted her.

As the group broke bread, Grace mentioned the meteor shower. "Is it usual for there to be so many shooting stars in Lirdath?" she asked Durge.

It was Kalleth who answered. "No," the knight said in a sharp voice, "it is not."

The lump of bread Grace had been chewing stuck in her throat. She glanced up and, although it was dim against the horizon, could just make out a crimson spark sinking in the sky. Was the red star connected 220 mark anthony 225.

And what about the Burning Plague, Grace Is that related to the star as welU She dismissed the question. Coincidence was not causation, and right now she had no evidence that suggested the Burning Plague was related to anything. For all she knew it was an isolated incident, and not a pandemic at all. She packed the breakfast things while the others broke camp, and together they set out just as a chorus of insects greeted the dawn.

It was midday when they came upon the charred remains of a small group of houses. Grace did not see them at first. She had dropped back a bit, lost in thoughts about the burnt man in Tarafel. Just ahead, Lirith and Aryn spoke in low voices, then the young woman laughed: a cool sound.

Grace jerked her head up as Aryn's laughter fell short. At first shefeared some sort of sudden attack, like the bear. Then she reached the top of the slope up which they rode and gazed down into the valley along with the baroness and the witch. Durge was already riding among the ruins. Around him were the blackened stone foundations of several houses.

It would not have been enough to qualify as a village--a small collective of farms was more likely. Otherwise, it looked exactly as Tarafel had. The destruction was complete. None of the houses had survived. Nor, Grace saw as she guided Shandis down the slope, had any of the people.

"There are no signs that the fires spread from house to house,"

Meridar said. "The ground is not burnt between them. I fear these fires were set by intention."

Durge scratched his stubbled chin. "But why, Sir Meridar?"

Plague, Grace wanted to answer. Fear. Purification. But she could not give sound to the words. She 221.

226.

black as coal, shriveled limbs twisted in final poses of agony. So much for Tarafel being an isolated incident.

"We have to leave here," Aryn said, her voice half whisper, half shriek.

"We have to leave here now!"

Lirith laid a hand on the baroness's left arm, her dark eyes intent.

"Steady yourself, sister."

Aryn swallowed, then nodded, and her trembling eased a bit.

Kalleth spat on the ground. "Her Highness is right. There is nothing for us here."

No, Grace tried to say. No, we have to look. There could be evidence in the ashes, something that might let them know the origin of the plague--and the direction it was moving. Had it struck Tarafel first? Or this place? They had to know if they were riding away from it ... or toward it. However, fear locked her jaw like tetanus. Shandis followed after the other horses. Grace could only hold on as they left the scorched shapes behind.

They did not stop to eat a midday meal, and no one spoke as they rode along a track that led among rolling fields and vine-tangled trees.

Grace wished they could have pushed the horses into more than a fast walk, but there were many more leagues before them on this journey, and they didn't dare exhaust the horses now.

After a time, dark clouds pressed from the west, and thunder rolled across the land. Grace hoped for cooling rain, but it did not come.

Instead the air grew still and oppressive as the clouds built.

Finally, Grace clenched her teeth, certain that if the pressureincreased another fraction she would scream. Aryn's enthusiasm had vanished again, replaced by tightlipped silence. Even Lirith looked wan, and the knights wore grim miens. Sweat poured down their faces, and their mail shirts exuded a sour, metallic reek.

227.

All ^t