The Shadow Saint
Page 61
Arothk. The only cure to pock-black disease.
“That is my grandfather’s journal,” Jonathan said when Devin glanced up with a sour expression on his face. “He was a good man, and a good mayor. He told no wild tales, and he was known throughout his life as a man of honesty.”
“A faery tale?” Devin said, snapping the book shut. “I traveled all this way from Londheim to help you find a faery tale?”
Jonathan’s face flushed bright red.
“You insult my grandfather,” he said. “This is no faery tale. It is real, and it saved the lives of each and every person who had succumbed to the disease. Keep reading. He passed through the forest to the bald mountain, and at its base he met with Arothk, a creature of stone that gave of its own blood to cure the darkness.”
“Enough,” Devin said. “Why not send someone else? One of your hunters could have made the trip and back a dozen times before my arrival.”
“Because we need your skill with those,” Jonathan said. He pointed to the long, thin blade sheathed against Devin’s left thigh and the hammerlock pistol holstered against his right. “Twice I have sent hunters into the woods, and neither time did they return. That forest is a cursed place now; anyone who steps inside can sense it. Help us, Soulkeeper. People I love and care about are dying. I may be desperate, but only because the solution is before me and I lack the strength to reach it. This is not some trumped-up tale told around a campfire. This is real.”
Devin opened the book again, glancing over several more lines. It started with the goddess Lyra visiting the grandfather in a dream and ordering him to travel through the nearby forest to the base of the bald mountain. She’d told him that a creature from a time before mankind would await him there. From it, he would receive his cure.
“Jonathan, please, listen to me,” he said. “The Sisters created the Cradle for us. Humans. They did not create monsters or faeries or whatever this Arothk creature supposedly is. We are their children, their only children. Whatever stories you’ve heard are not true, they were never true, and I will not risk my life and the lives of those here because of the ravings of a dead man’s journal.”
The mayor fell silent. Devin didn’t blame him. In many ways, he’d just pronounced a death sentence for much of the village.
“I will do what I can to ease the burdens of the ill,” he said, putting up a callous front. “For your sake, I’ll not report your real request to the church.”
“Your herbs and bandages are like pissing on a wildfire,” Jonathan said. “At least you’ll be here for the reaping rituals. Anwyn knows there will be a lot of them.”
Devin slammed the journal down upon the desk.
“Do not belittle my coming here,” he said. “I swore an oath to aid Dunwerth and its villagers, and I did not take it lightly. I would put your lives above my own, yet what options do you give me, Jonathan? Forget silly tales in hidden journals. What would you have me do?”
“There is but one thing I would have you do, and you lack any faith or trust in me to do it.”
It hurt having a man so desperate and afraid look upon him, judge him, and find him wanting. Devin rubbed his eyes as his mind whirled. Forget the stories of this Arothk creature. What was the truth hidden in the faery tale? If he pried away the fanciful retelling of dreams and ancient creatures granting cures, what might be left to explain the events that occurred? “Your grandfather went to this… bald mountain, and he came back with a cure for the same disease you’re suffering from now,” Devin asked. “Is that correct?”
“More or less.”
These people were clearly in need. Every fiber in his body wished to help them in some way. He could ease their pain with roots and herbs, but that was like massaging the shoulders of a man awaiting the fall of the executioner’s axe. It wasn’t a cure. Worse, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear of what would happen if the disease spread from this little remote village to some of the larger towns, or Goddesses forbid, Londheim itself. The need for a cure would be dire…
“Let me rest for a few hours,” he said. “My journey here was long.”
“So you’ll go?” Jonathan asked. Cautious optimism bubbled into his voice.
“I will go, but not to spill blood from a stone. Some weed or mushroom saved your people years ago, and I pray Lyra guides me to it now. As for your forest, I have no fear of lingering ghosts. Souls reside in the hands of Anwyn, Mayor, and she does not lose track.”
Jonathan’s dire smile gave him chills.
“You dismiss much,” he said. “Keep your heart and mind open, Soulkeeper. Here in Alma’s Crown we have learned to trust what you in the east dismiss as children’s tales. We are the edge of the known world, and you soon walk into lands beyond. Tread carefully.”
By Gareth Hanrahan
THE BLACK IRON LEGACY
The Gutter Prayer
The Shadow Saint