"Yes," Vasen said. "Crows."

The wind picked up, carrying the caws of the birds, the distant sound as faint as a whisper. He and Orsin moved back to the column.

"What is it?" Byrne asked.

"Carrion birds," Orsin said.

"Something has died," Elora said, and put her hand to her mouth.

Vasen resurrected a smile and put a hand on Elora's shoulder, pleased to see no shadows dancing from his skin. "Take heart. It could be the carcass of a beast. Crows out here will swarm a dead deer."

Elora looked doubtful, her eyes worried in their nest of wrinkles. She put her hands protectively on Noll's shoulders. The other pilgrims, too, seemed uneasy, sharing concerned glances, whispering among themselves. A few looked up into the dark sky, perhaps fearing Sakkors itself would materialize out of the darkness, perhaps fearing another Shadovar patrol would happen upon them.

"Be at ease," Vasen said to them all. "There's nothing to fear."

He pulled Byrne aside. He felt Orsin's eyes on him all the while.

"There's a village on the other side of that rise."

Byrne chewed the corner of his moustache and nodded. "I know. Fairelm, it was called."

"It is called Fairelm. I'll go ahead and have a look. Keep the pilgrims here for now."

Byrne took Vasen by the arm and pulled him around. "Perhaps we should just avoid it. I don't want to compromise the safety of the pilgrims, and the doings of Sembia are not our concern."

"True," Vasen acknowledged with a tilt of his head. "But if something has happened to the village, someone there could need help. Our calling is more than just escorting pilgrims, Byrne."

"A light to chase darkness," Byrne said softly. His hand fell from Vasen's arm. Distant thunder rumbled, as if the sky disputed Byrne's sentiment.

"A light, indeed," Vasen said. He thumped Byrne on the shoulder.

"I still dislike putting the pilgrims at risk."

"As do I," Vasen said. "Take them over to that wood." He pointed at a nearby stand of broadleaf trees that swayed in the wind, leaves hissing. "Do what you can to put their minds at ease. I'll return quickly. The light keep you."

"And you, First Blade." Byrne turned and started gathering the pilgrims.

"Come, folks," he said, filling his voice with false cheer. "Rain is coming. Let's get under those trees and take a meal . . . "

As Byrne shepherded the pilgrims toward the wood, Vasen hefted his shield, turned, and found himself face to face with Orsin.

"Gods, man. You move like a ghost," Vasen said.

"I'll accompany you," Orsin replied. "Not hungry, I suppose?" Vasen asked with a smile.

"No," Orsin answered with a grin. "Not hungry."

"I'll be grateful to have you." Vasen signaled to Byrne that Orsin would accompany him. Together, the two of them hurried toward Fairelm. Orsin dragged his staff behind them, carving a temporary groove into the whipgrass and mud. The caw of crows pulled them onward.

Vasen smelled the faint, sickly odor of death before he and Orsin reached the edge of the rise.

They crouched low, and looked down at the village, maybe a long bowshot away. Small plots of farmland surrounded a core of single-story, sturdy wooden buildings, themselves built around a central commons and a large pond fed by a small stream. Several ancient elms stood here and there throughout the village, a dozen maybe. Vasen imagined the trees predated the Spellplague; they appeared to have come through unchanged. Two small rowboats bobbed on the wind-whipped water of the pond.

"There are many dead here," Orsin said, his voice a somber whisper.

A child's swing hung from one of the nearest elms, swaying eerily in the breeze, as if ridden by a ghost. The elms' canopies whispered in the wind.

"I see them."

Pieces of bodies lay scattered among the buildings. Vasen could make out heads, arms, torsos, the bloody flotsam of a slaughter. He noted the twisted forms of women and children, even livestock had been torn apart. Blood pooled in dark puddles on the road, stained the grass, spattered doors and the sides of buildings.

"What happened here?" Vasen whispered.

Orsin said nothing. He simply stared, as still as a statue, as still as a corpse.

Crows gorged on the feast, their cries a grotesque accompaniment to the quiet of the dead. Now and again a few would take to the air, cawing at one another, before they again alit and feasted.

"This isn't the work of an animal," Orsin said.

"No," Vasen said.

"The Shadovar, then?"

Vasen shook his head, shadows curling around him. "When the Shadovar wish to teach a lesson, they do so with magic and leave no doubt of their involvement."

"What, then?"

Vasen didn't know. There were many predators that prowled Sembia's dark plains, but this, this was something else . . .

Whatever had attacked the village had reveled in blood, in murder. He looked back to Byrne and the pilgrims. He could barely see them, huddled as they were under the broadleaf trees. A soft light flared-Byrne's holy symbol, light in the darkness. Perhaps he was leading them in prayer.

Vasen stood and drew his blade. Anything to be done in the village would require hard steel, not soft prayer. The weapon's edge glowed faintly in the shroud of Sembia's shadowed air.

"Come on," he said, and started down. Shadows gathered around him, a reflection of his anger. To keep himself centered, he concentrated for a moment and put his faith in his shield until it began to glow. The soft, rosy light warmed him but did nothing to dull his anger.

"If the attackers remain, they'll see your light," Orsin observed.

"Let them see," Vasen answered.

They walked through fallow barley fields, under several of the towering elms, and into the bloody streets. Somewhere a loose shutter or door slammed repeatedly against a window sash, like a pulse, like the dying heartbeat of a dead village.

The crows took wing, cawing in anger, as Vasen and Orsin neared the first of the bodies-an elderly man pressed face down in the mud. They kneeled beside him and flipped him over. His abdomen had been ripped open, his throat shredded. His wide, terrified eyes stared up at the dark sky.

"The claws and teeth of something large," Orsin said. "But he is not fed upon except by the crows."

"Just murder, then," Vasen said. He removed his gauntlet, placed a hand on the elderly man's brow, and with his other hand held his glowing shield over the man's face so that its light reflected in his eyes.

"Whomever your patron, let Amaunator's light help guide your way to your rest."

The other bodies and pieces of bodies they found on the outskirts of the village showed similar wounds. Vasen's heart ached over the dead children, who had spent their final moments in terror and pain. He prayed over everyone he found.

He and Orsin made slow progress, checking the bodies for signs of life, checking the interior of cottages for someone who might have hidden from the attackers. They found nothing but blood and the dead. Livestock had been slaughtered in their pens, cows flayed. Chicken feathers floated here and there in the wind like snowflakes.

Neither Vasen nor Orsin called out for survivors, although it would have made sense to do so. Breaking the quiet seemed blasphemous somehow.

He looked for tracks, some clue about the identity of the attackers, but the rain had washed them away. By the time they neared the center of the village, Vasen had resigned himself to finding neither survivors nor perpetrators.

"Ages turn, the world changes, but there is always horror," Orsin said.

"And sometimes beauty," Vasen said.

"But none here," answered Orsin, his eyes distant.

A shout shattered the quiet, a rage-filled roar that originated from somewhere ahead, the commons, perhaps. The sound summoned Vasen's anger. Shadows exploded from his flesh.

"Move!" he said to Orsin, and ran for the village center, blade ready. He channeled his god's power as he pelted through the mud, empowering his blade and shield. Both glowed white. But the shadows around his flesh remained. Light and shadow coexisted in the air around him.

"Wait," Orsin said, but Vasen did not wait.

When they reached the commons, shaded by the canopy of one of the large elms, they saw a woman slouched against the bole of the elm, her mouth slack, her eyes open. She looked alive. A man crouched beside her, head bowed, one hand on her shoulder, the other around a longbow. A sword hung from his belt. He had not noticed them.

"Step away from that woman!" Vasen said, slowing to a walk and advancing.

The man's head snapped around and his eyes fixed on Vasen and Orsin. His mouth twisted with rage in the nest of his beard. He stood.

"Shadovar! You brought this down on my home!"

Before Vasen could respond, the man had drawn and fired an arrow with startling speed. At almost the moment he released it, Orsin dived in front of Vasen and hit the ground in a roll. Vasen feared he had been struck, but the deva came up in a crouch, the arrow clutched in a fist.

"He's not Shadovar," Orsin said to the man, who had already nocked and drawn another arrow and sighted for Vasen's chest.

Vasen held his shield up, with its sun and rose, as evidence. He could see that the man was a victim of what had happened in the village, not a perpetrator.

The man walked toward Vasen, arrow still aimed at his chest. Circles darkened the skin under the man's eyes. A large, purple lump marred his brow near the hairline and blades of grass stuck out of his hair. His nose was crooked, and dried blood was caked in his beard and mustache. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.

Orsin tensed, as if he might launch himself at the man, but Vasen signaled for him to be still.

Moving slowly, as he might to calm an excited animal, Vasen dropped his blade and lowered his shield. The glow went out of both of them. As his anger dissipated, the shadows curling around his flesh subsided. He stood before the man, exposed, vulnerable.

The man kept his eyes on Vasen's face and walked up to him until the point of the drawn arrow touched Vasen's breastplate. Tears had made tracks in the filth and blood covering the man's face.

"I'm not Shadovar," Vasen said. "We came to help."

The man studied Vasen's face and Vasen imagined how he must appear, with his dark skin and yellow eyes.

"You're not Shadovar," the man said, the words empty. The bow creaked against the tension of the drawn arrow.

"We're here to help," Vasen repeated.

"To help," the man repeated. He seemed dazed. Tears welled in his eyes and he audibly swallowed.

Holding the man's eyes, Vasen reached up, slowly, and closed his fingers around the arrow's tip. "To help."

The words finally seemed to penetrate the man's haze. He looked down at the sun and rose on Vasen's shield.

"You're a priest?"

"I serve Amaunator," Vasen answered.

The man's eyes overflowed but he seemed not to notice. Desperate, pained hope replaced the tears and sought validation in Vasen's eyes. He released the tension in the bowstring, dropped the bow, and took Vasen by the shoulders, shaking him in his distress.

"Help her, man. Please."

Before Vasen could respond, the man fairly collapsed into Vasen's arms and began to sob, as if whatever tension had been holding him upright had just been released.

"Please help my wife. Help her."

Vasen let the man's emotion run its course while Orsin looked on, sympathy in his eyes. After a time the man pulled back, stood on his own two feet, wiped his nose and face, obviously embarrassed.

"I'm sorry. I just. I need. Just help her."

He pulled Vasen toward the elm, toward the man's wife.

"What's her name?" Vasen asked, kneeling to examine the stricken woman.

"Elle."

"And your name?"

"Gerak."

"I'm Vasen, Gerak. This is Orsin."

The woman's long red hair hung over skin as pale as snow. Vasen leaned in to check her breathing and recoiled at the stench of her breath. "What is it?" Gerak asked. "What?"

Vasen shook his head. He removed his gauntlets and took her face in his hands. She was warm, feverish. Her eyes were open but rolled back in her head. He opened her mouth, wincing at the stink, and saw the remnants of a black film sticking to her teeth and tongue. Worry rooted in his gut.

He took her hand in his, channeled some of Amaunator's power, and with it took the measure of her soul. He instantly cut the connection when he felt the growing corruption there. He tried to keep it from his face.

"What are you doing?" Gerak said.

"I'm trying to help her," Vasen said. Using his shield as a focus, he held a hand over Elle and prayed to Amaunator. When the shield glowed and his palm warmed, he took Elle's hand in his own and let the energy course into her, but he could see it changed nothing. When he was done, she remained feverish and unresponsive. He thought he knew why. Not even a more elaborate ritual could help her. She was beyond his arts. Maybe the Oracle could help her. Maybe.

"How long has she been this way?" he asked Gerak.

Gerak cleared his throat. "I don't know for certain. Hours. Did it work? What you did?" He kneeled and took his wife's hands in his own. "Elle? Sweets, come back."

"Let's get her inside," Vasen said, sharing a meaningful look with Orsin. The deva took his point and sighed.