Elder Race(22)
“What was your crime?” she asks.
Allwerith flinches but faces up to her. “Theft, more than once. And I won’t tell you of starving children or the like. I stole precious things because I didn’t have them and others did. I won’t make it out to be a noble business.”
“Will you take us towards Farbourand and the demon?”
A muscle tics in his jaw. “Lynesse Fourth Daughter of Lannesite, you ask much of a poor man.”
“I ask much of a bold man, even if he was once a thief. Did you steal in Farbourand?”
“Less than most.”
“Then serve me in this, and I shall vouch for you, and so shall Jerevesse Third Daughter. You shall have a pardon and a station.”
I consider that he will not get his fingers back, and for a moment I almost promise him that as well, because if I can get him back to the outpost then the medical facilities there could grow fresh tissue from the stumps. I have been sufficiently unprofessional already, and I cannot face the looks on their faces as they mouth Magic to each other, and so I say nothing.
But fingers or not, there are tears in Allwerith’s eyes. The very permanency of his punishment shows that men such as he are condemned forever without any prospect of rehabilitation. What Lyn has promised him is more than he could ever have hoped for.
I speak with him later. He is plainly in awe of me, even though I am doing absolutely nothing to foster anybody’s delusions. The horns, alas, do not help. I ask him about this “demon” and how it manifests. Has he ever seen the thing itself? He saw something, his cords and circles and whatnot, but he thought perhaps it was the demon’s house, or a gate to the world where demons dwell. He saw neither man nor monster that might have been the demon in the flesh, only those unfortunates turned into its servants. How did he know those servants? The mark of the demon was on them, eyes and crystals and stuff like rot on a tree—which in this world means scaly growths like flaking eczema or peeling sunburn. He claimed they acted all together, people and animals, in attacking settlements, so he knew that a demon moved them all.
Possibly it is some mind-affecting poison, something like the ergot that once grew on wheat. I may be able to send back to the outpost via the satellite, for a rudimentary chemical analysis. Perhaps that will lead to a cure, or at least some vaccination to stop the business spreading. I may yet be able to do some good, even though I am no magician and there is no demon to be slain.
I show Allwerith the claw that Esha obtained, and he confirms with a flinch that, yes, it is a thing of the demon. The base material is the mandible of a shreeling, which are common around Farbourand, but the greenish-black encrustations are the demon’s mark. The next night, some way west of Watacha as we camp, I do my best to dissect the nasty little thing and find some organic material under the scales and plates of the infection. There seems to be nothing, though. I force my eyes to a higher magnification than their specifications recommend, and find no internal structure in any of it, just solid pieces as though the whole mess had been glued onto the mandible as a practical joke or a bizarre craft activity. None of this is exactly something I was trained in, anthropologist second class as I am, and eventually I give up on it. A living specimen will obviously be necessary to get anywhere.
*
Two more days of good progress through the forest; little conversation; Esha and Allwerith—no, Allwer the others call him now, which I think is an indication of his changed status—ranging ahead much of the time. We came near two small communities of forest people, both nominally within the fiefdom of Watacha. The first was on high alert, with archers and spears at the palisade wall. The people there said they had seen sign of the demon’s creatures in the trees. I expected Lyn to tell them the same line about bringing her magician to fight the demon, but she glanced at me and simply said we were here to see what we could do. I fear that many of the watchers saw me and drew their own conclusions anyway, but at least I was not knowingly being oversold.
The second community we came to was abandoned, though there was no sign of violence nor of any evident infection. The locals had obviously gone to that large camp about Watacha. Or else, as per Allwer’s cheer-inspiring suggestion, the demon had simply taken them all, all at once and without the chance to fight.
I ask him questions to try to determine a kind of vector of infection, in case we are dealing with some novel plague. How does this “demon” select and take over its victims? Allwer says many of those who went close to the demon’s place near Farbourand were chosen, as were others who had been injured by demon-tainted fauna and flora. But some simply fell to it, exhibiting the marks of its influence without obvious prequel. Similarly, others had exposure but never took up the infection, including Allwer himself. I take the liberty of extracting a sample of his blood, which he is unhappy about but too wary of supposed magical retribution to refuse. It is possible that he has a resistance that can be spread through the population. Again, I lack the tools, but I send information to the satellite and await more data.
The same day we passed the empty settlement, we see the mark of the demon.
There is a kind of creature the locals call a vermid, which is a direct descendant of the old Earth English word “vermin” and suggests that they were an unintended escapee from the early colonial breeding programme. They are augmented rodent stock, very at home in trees, about half the length of a human arm plus twice that in prehensile tail. Their mélange of artificial, Earth and native biochemistry makes them voraciously omnivorous, a pest in multiple ways.