“Weelll,” Janx said, “if the maggot-sick are holy, and we’re going to the Holy Place, what do you think we’re gonna find there?”
Avery received little sleep that night, and he woke up to bad news.
“The convoy was attacked,” Layanna told him over breakfast—beans and goat meat without spice, as the only spice available was infected. “Something killed all the soldiers along the road and burned their vehicles.”
“Damn,” said Hildra.
They and the soldiers with them had a cook-fire to themselves; for good or bad, the locals were giving them space. The soldiers had obviously already heard the news, and they listened in silence, staring into the flames.
“Lt. Mailos sent a runner to them,” Layanna elaborated. “When he came back, he said they were all dead.”
“The bird-men, right?” said Hildra. “The Nisaar. Gotta be.”
“That means they’re on the warpath again,” Janx said. “And we’re stranded.”
Avery tried not to think about the men and women he’d gotten to know over the last few days butchered like hogs on the road and burnt to a crisp. “We must leave quickly, then. Go north, into the Holy Place.”
“No roads go there,” Layanna agreed. “Having access to the vehicles wouldn’t change anything.” She took another bite of her meal, and Avery winced; alone of their party, she ate diseased food, a pustulant-looking meat dish, with over-long, purple beans that made a whining, electric noise every time she bit down. “When do we leave?”
“We don’t go anywhere till we get Xarris out of that godsdamned hall,” Lt. Mailos said, and his soldiers nodded. “He’s one of us, and I’m not leaving him here to fucking Become. Whatever that means.” His soldiers muttered darkly and shot the villagers unpleasant looks; for their part, the villagers had never stopped gazing at the outsiders with what Avery perceived now as open malevolence. The gratitude they’d shown at first had dissolved.
“I agree,” Avery said. “And, as the private’s doctor, I would consider it going against my oaths to leave him.”
“We might have to, Doc,” Janx said quietly. “Remember, the birdies are on the move.”
“And they’re working with Octung,” Layanna added.
Hildra watched Avery. “With her.”
“I don’t think ... I mean, she can’t be everywhere,” Avery said. “In any case, the lieutenant is right. We can’t abandon Private Xarris.”
“He’s coming with us,” Mailos said.
“If he’s infested with something, that might be a bad idea,” Layanna said. “I don’t mean to sound uncaring—”
“Never,” said Hildra.
“—but that is the situation.”
Mailos eyed her sternly. “We may be here because of you and your lot, miss, but this is my man we’re talking about.”
“We need to leave immediately,” she pressed.
“Then I guess we’d better see to Xarris.” Mailos climbed to his feet. To his soldiers, he said, “Let’s go get him out of that fucking hole.” Without another word, he marched up the hill toward the Hall of the Chosen, and his people followed, clutching their guns.
“You shouldn’t have provoked him,” Avery told Layanna.
“It couldn’t be helped. We must settle this issue one way or another, and now. We must leave. The Nisaar could show up at any moment, and we won’t be able to pick them off at long range this time.”
Avery watched nervously as the soldiers approached the long wooden structure, villagers throwing themselves between the outsiders and the Hall of the Chosen. Avery hurried over, not knowing what he could do but hoping a calming influence might prove helpful. Mailos shouted in the villagers’ own language, gesturing with his gun; his soldiers raised their weapons, too, not aiming at the villagers exactly, but making the threat clear. In response, villagers rushed to arm themselves with lances, bows, machetes and even a couple of rifles.
“Don’t do this,” Avery pleaded with Mailos. “They won’t let you in, don’t you see? Forcing the issue can only end badly.”
To make his point for him, priestesses appeared in the Hall’s main doorway and glowered at the soldiers over the heads of the shouting villagers. Intricate tribal tattoos covered every inch of the women’s flesh, or what could be seen of it. They wore clothes fashioned of broad leaves and flowers had been woven in their wiry hair, if they had hair. Some had horns or shells instead.
“Oh, they’ll let me in,” Mailos said. He sneered and shouted something else at the headman, who stood on the steps of the hall just below the woman who must be the high priestess, the same one who’d taken Xarris originally.
The headman only shouted back at Mailos, spittle spraying around his tusks, and the crowd surged with renewed fury against the soldiers, one of whom fired a burst into the air. The crowd drew back, but only a little. Looking over his shoulder, Avery saw Janx and the others arrive. Layanna’s eyes had gone hard, and she glanced from the soldiers to the villagers and back again.
“Don’t bring your other-self over,” Avery said. “We don’t want to kill all these people, and they will attack you if you reveal yourself.”
“Enough of them are infected that they would sustain me through a long session in that form,” Layanna said, and she sounded almost as if this appealed to her. She sounded hungry.
“Please don’t. There’s another way.” Quietly, he said, “Come with me.”
He slipped around the side of the hall, leaving the pandemonium at its entrance, and came on the rear door, smaller and unguarded. Whoever had been posted here had been drawn away by the impending violence out front.
“Janx, come with me. Layanna and Hildra, guard our backs.”
Not pausing to see if they obeyed, he pushed his way through the doorway, and Janx followed. Immediately they were surrounded by darkness and the smell of rot and strange chemicals, perhaps herbs and poultices. Avery had to give his eyes several moments to adjust; the Hall contained no windows. Only a few small candles on holders lit the interior, which seemed to be composed of a network of medium-sized rooms. Around Avery stretched rows of pallets on the floor with shapeless forms wrapped up in thin, hand-woven blankets.
“Does it smell as bad as it tastes?” Janx said, spitting.
The reek was cloying and nauseating, but Avery merely said, “Come.”
He moved down the aisle between pallets, checking each prostrate form. With the low light, it was hard to be sure, but each one looked gray and wan, eyes rolling, foam gathered at the corners of their mouths, which were all open and, as Avery was at last able to discern over the sounds of commotion from the front, all emitting a strange noise, one that did not sound human at all, somewhere between the hiss of radio static and the chitter of a cricket. It was the same noise the maggot-infested man had been making on the road, the one that had infested Xarris. The same noise the priests of the Restoration had made.
Avery stopped and stared at the sick ones, unnerved by the noise rising all around him, threatening to carry him with it into white mists of insanity.
