Orsin nodded at Vasen's chest.

It took Vasen a moment to realize what Orsin meant. The chain on which he wore Saint Abelar's holy symbol was broken, its unlooped length hung up on a ridge of his armor.

His heart fell and he cursed. "I have to find it!"

He started to rise, remembered Orsin's leg, remembered his duty.

"After, of course. This may hurt, Orsin."

"May?"

"Will," Vasen acknowledged. "Ready yourself."

Using the symbol of Amaunator enameled on his shield as the focus for his power, Vasen gently laid the shield over Orsin's leg and intoned a prayer of healing. The shield glowed softly and warmth flooded Vasen's body. He focused the warmth in his hands, his palms, and placed them on the shield. The power passed through to Orsin's flesh and the deva hissed through gritted teeth as bones reknit and bruises faded. Vasen slung his shield and pulled the deva to his feet. Orsin tested his weight on the leg.

"Good?" Vasen asked.

"Good. Your symbol?"

"It must have fallen off in the fight," Vasen said, looking hopelessly at the ground around him. "It's . . . important to me."

"A silver rose," Orsin said.

Vasen was surprised the deva had noticed. "Yes. It belonged to the Oracle, and Saint Abelar before that."

"I'll help you find it."

They slowly walked the area where they had fought the shade. Neither of them found the symbol. Eventually both of them got down on all fours, feeling through the grass, Vasen berating himself for his carelessness. He should have had it tucked under his mail shirt, not hanging free. He should have been more careful. Nine Hells, he could have lost it in the battle or he could have lost it while crossing the river.

"Vasen," Byrne called from across the river.

"I know," Vasen shouted over his shoulder, running his hands over the grass, hoping to feel the metal rose under his hands. Orsin stood, put a hand on Vasen's shoulder.

"I think it's gone," the deva said.

"I know."

"We should go."

Vasen hung his head. How would he explain to the Oracle?

"The pilgrims, First Blade," Byrne called.

And that was the word that dispelled Vasen's self-pity. The pilgrim's safety was more important than any holy symbol. He sighed, angry, sad, and stood.

"Thank you for helping," he said to Orsin.

"Of course."

"The lines on your skin? What exactly are they?"

Orsin looked down at his hands, covered in lines and swirls. "The story of my life."

"The story of your life can be read on your skin?"

Orsin nodded. "Much of it. Where I've been, at least. But the point of the story isn't to read it. It's to write it. A man writes his story in the book of the world, Vasen. Or so I tell myself."

"Well, that's a good story," Vasen said, and Orsin chuckled. "Very good. A good story, indeed."

Byrne, Eldris, and Nald already had the pilgrims geared up and ready to set out. Vasen and Orsin sidestepped down the river bank and waded into the water.

"You'll not jump it this time?" Vasen said to him, smiling.

Orsin smiled in return.

"How did you . . . manage such a feat?"

Orsin's eyes narrowed with puzzlement. "How do you cause your blade to shine?"

"You know the answer to that. With faith."

"And so it is with me. Your faith manifests as light. Mine . . . does not."

"But your god is . . . gone."

"Yes, but my faith is not."

"Well enough." They waded into the water. "You are a strange man, Orsin."

"I think you said as much once already."

Vasen chuckled. "I thought maybe you needed a reminder. Maybe you should write it on your skin?"

Orsin laughed. "Very good. Very good."

As they emerged on the other side of the river, Orsin adopted a more serious tone. "When there is time later, let's discuss some things."

Zeeahd's satiety unnerved Sayeed almost as much as his appetite. Having spat his pollution into the young girl, Zeeahd seemed almost giddy. He whistled as they plodded over the plains, saturated by the rain. The cats seemed gleeful, too. Their bloodlust temporarily sated, they fairly pranced around Zeeahd, tails held high.

For his part, Sayeed could not rid himself of the foul taste of the devourer's flesh, the memory of the girl's screams of terror, his brother's wet grunts as he expelled the evil in him.

"Her name was Lahni," he said to himself, not understanding why he felt the need to say her name aloud.

"What'd you say?" his brother asked, looking back, his voice high-pitched, irritating.

"Nothing," Sayeed said, knowing Zeeahd would not understand. "Protesting the rain."

The cats eyed him suspiciously, their fang-filled mouths more devilish than feline.

Zeeahd held his hands out, palms up to the sky. "I like the rain. Renews the spirit."

Sayeed said nothing. He feared he had no spirit to renew. He feared the Spellplague had stripped him of his soul and left a moral vacancy filled now by only his brother's ambition and his own resignation. He lived, but he did not live. And so it would go, forever. He swallowed down the despair evoked by the thought.

Zeeahd stopped. "I smell wood smoke."

The excitement in his voice made Sayeed nauseous.

Sayeed smelled it, too, the faint hint of a chimney's exhalation. Breakfast fires, maybe. Once, the aroma would have made his stomach growl with hunger. Now, he barely tasted the food that passed his lips. To the extent his senses let him perceive anything with acuity, it was invariably something foul. Like devourer flesh.

"Come, come!" Zeeahd said, and picked up his pace. "A village is near." He chuckled. "Perhaps Lahni's village."

Hearing his brother speak the girl's name sharpened Sayeed's irritation. He stared at his brother's cloaked form, Zeeahd's soul as distorted as his flesh, and wondered how it was possible to love and hate the same person so much. He flashed on an image of his sword driven through his brother's back, the blade exploding out of Zeeahd's chest in a spray of blood or whatever foul ichor now flowed in his brother's veins.

"Come on!" his brother called.

Sayeed came back to himself to find three of the cats sitting on their haunches before him, slit eyes staring at him knowingly. They lifted paws to fanged mouths and licked at the mud on their pads. Their eyes never left Sayeed's face.

"Out of my way," he said, but they did not move and he walked around rather than through them.

The smell of breakfast fires grew stronger with each step they took. And by the time they reached the village, the rain had sputtered to a stop. A dozen or more ancient elms sprouted from the plains, noble looking trees with vast canopies lost to the shadowed air, giants compared to the meager broadleafs that predominated elsewhere on the plains. They must have been saplings when the Spellplague struck.

Within the circle of the elms was a large pond and the village whose breakfast fires they'd smelled. A few dozen single-story wooden homes huddled around a common pasturage. Bark shingles covered the roofs. Smoke rose from several chimneys. Post fences made from stripped broadleaf limbs delineated small fields and gardens. A few rickety wagons sat here and there, small chicken coops, livestock pens. The village was so small Sayeed could have run from one end of it to the other in less than a fifty count.

The overgrown cart path they walked carried them between two of the elms, which formed a kind of natural gate. Sayeed heard voices coming from the village center, the chatter of earnest conversation punctuated with laughter and the occasional jovial shout.

"A collection of hovels," Zeeahd said, eyeing the village contemptuously. His good mood was already fading. Probably his hunger was already returning. "It smells of peasants and shit."

A herd dog stood in the open door of a rain-sodden woodshed, eyeing them, its hackles raised. Zeeahd's cats stared back at it as they walked past and the dog tucked tail and retreated into the shed.

No one seemed to be around. As Sayeed was about to announce their arrival, as was the custom, a boy of maybe ten winters with a too-large cloak thrown over his homespun hurried around the corner of one of the fences ahead. Head down, he clicked at a thin sheep that trailed him. When he caught sight of Sayeed and Zeeahd he froze, ten steps away but a world distant. The sheep, its head down against the rain, walked into him and bleated.

"Ho there, boy," Sayeed said, raising a hand in greeting.

The boy's sleepy eyes went wide. Sayeed and Zeeahd must have looked to him like ghosts stepping from the shadows.

Sayeed tried to look harmless, despite his armor, sword, and wild hair and beard. "There's no need to be afra-"

The boy turned and ran off toward the center of the village, slipping in the mud as he went. "Mother! Mother!"

The sheep trotted after him, oblivious.

"Fly back to the nest, little bird," Zeeahd said softly, and Sayeed knew his tone promised blood. "Predators are afoot."

They followed the boy's shouts toward the center of the village. The few local dogs and cats they saw slinked away as Sayeed, Zeeahd, and their cats drew near. Scrawny livestock lowed or bleated in their pens as they passed.

Ahead, they saw the village center. A raised, planked deck and a bell on a tall post had been built under the canopy of a large elm. It looked like the entire village had gathered there. Women, children, and men sat on stump stools or stood about, their eyes on the deck, where stood a large, fat man with a thick moustache, holding forth about something. A rickety peddler's cart stood to one side, still yoked to a large, graying mule. Some of the villagers were examining the cart's wares, smiling.

The boy Sayeed had frightened stood at the edge of the gathered villagers, a woman kneeling before him, probably his mother. The boy pointed back at Sayeed and Zeeahd while his sheep nibbled the grass.

"See! I told you more travelers had come! See!"

Dozens of eyes fixed on Sayeed and Zeeahd, questions written in their expressions. Eyes widened at the brothers' blades, their unkempt appearance.

The brothers walked toward the gathered villagers. The crowd formed up to await them, shifting on their feet, children hiding behind parents.

The peddler standing on the deck bowed and doffed his cap. "Minser the Seller at your service, goodsirs. This gem of a village is called Fairelm. And if I may be so bold as to speak for these good people, we bid you welcome."

The villagers did not echo the welcome.

Sayeed did not bow in return. His gaze swept the villagers, looking for anyone who might have been other than they appeared. He saw no one of note.

"My name is Sayeed," he said. "This is my brother, Zeeahd."

Their foreign sounding names caused a murmur of discontent to move through the crowd.

"Well met," Minser said. He waited a moment for a return greeting that didn't come, and the brothers' silence seemed to take him aback. He looked around at the villagers, perhaps hoping one of them would speak, but none did. He cleared his throat.

"Oh, yes, well. What has you two walking Sembia's plains under this bleak sky? There are dangers on the plains, although you look like a man familiar with a sword."

"We are merely travelers," Zeeahd said.

"We're just passing through," Sayeed added. "It is custom, is it not, to offer shelter and a meal to travelers?"

No one offered either. Eyes found the ground. The silence thickened. Finally the boy they'd frightened piped up.

"Those are strange looking cats."

Nervous laughter greeted the boy's words.

"Strange looking men," said a man's voice in the back.

Zeeahd stiffened at that, craned his neck. "Who said that?"

Sayeed took his brother by the arm, but Zeeahd shook it off.

No one responded to the question.

"Who spoke so?" Zeeahd said. "It seems the custom in this stinking mass of hovels is to speak rudely to strangers."

Lots of angry looks, but no words, until a woman's voice from off to the side said, "And now who speaks rudely?"

Sayeed and Zeeahd turned to see a tall, strongly built woman with long red hair walking toward the crowd. Sayeed would have thought her attractive had he still felt such things.

The cats at Zeeahd's feet hissed at the woman as she approached, and her step faltered, her eyes on the creatures.

"You mind your tongue, woman," Zeeahd said. "Lest. . . "

Sayeed's hand on his brother's arm halted whatever threat he might have uttered, but the woman took his point and would have none of it. She put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin.