Kellanved's Reach

She looked him up and down. ‘Well, I see that you are at least rich in faith. What errand brings a priest of Fener to Poliel’s house?’

Heboric lost his grin and slogged onward, his pace slow to accommodate the woman at his side. ‘This plague. It is unlike our sister of sickness. Its touch seems … different. I would ask about that, and other things.’

‘And you expect answers?’

He shook his head, chuckling. ‘Do I look that much a fool? No, I can only ask. That is all we mortals can do – make the effort. Try. The rest is in the hands of the gods.’ He extended a hand to her. ‘And you?’

She lifted her rag-wrapped shoulders. ‘The truth is the island is my home. It is one of the few places I am welcome.’

Heboric nodded at that. Where else might the afflicted go? ‘Yet you would leave it?’

‘I am not yet ready to let go of the world.’

‘I am told none leave the Isle of the Blessed.’

The woman cocked her wrapped head. Only her eyes peered through, brown and large, and Heboric found them very attractive eyes indeed. ‘Well,’ she allowed, ‘that is at least poetic.’

He smiled. ‘Yet isn’t it dangerous for you? I mean …’ Heboric realized he was treading into uncomfortable ground. ‘That is, some people would fear you as a carrier …’

She nodded. ‘Some do throw rocks and garbage to drive me away. Some have attacked me with staffs and rods.’ She shrugged again, conveying equanimity. ‘But they are not the worst. The worst are those who ask how much for sex.’

Heboric coughed into a fist, quite taken aback. ‘Sex? Really? I mean … not that you are no longer … that is …’

She rescued him from his floundering, saying, ‘It is believed in some circles that sex with an afflicted will make the partner immune.’

Heboric nodded his understanding. ‘Ah … I see. But that is absurd.’

‘Yes. Just like the other belief that sex with a virgin will cure various illnesses, or make the partner younger.’

‘That I’ve heard of,’ Heboric commented, shaking his head.

They had reached the island and climbed a shore of black gravel. Here stood ramshackle huts of sea-wrack and hides. A few small cookfires smouldered about. The inhabitants of the huts scrambled away as they approached, limping, some crawling on no more than stumps. Heboric wondered if they were fleeing in shame.

‘Why do they hide?’ he asked his companion.

‘They are frightened of you,’ she answered. ‘You are obviously strong and healthy. They fear you are here to take from them what little they have.’ She gestured ahead with a hand that may have been wrapped in dirty linen but was quite obviously nothing more than a knot of bone. ‘This way to the house of Poliel.’

They climbed a path of beaten dirt. Crude shrines and altars lined the way, no more than piled stones draped in ragged scarves or covered in wax from countless candles. One larger shrine, tall and humped, like a hood, was obviously dedicated to the god of death. Heboric gestured to it, surprised. ‘Hood?’

‘The Grey One is no stranger to this isle,’ she said, passing on.

They came to a narrow gorge between two tall cliffs pocketed by caves. Again the inhabitants scurried away before them, all bent and limping, some on crude crutches of sticks. It was as if, Heboric mused, he carried the plague or some such thing.

‘This is not the reception I was expecting,’ he told the woman.

‘We are not yet at the house. Come.’ She urged him onwards.

Uneasy, but unable to pin down his suspicions, he followed, warily. The path led to a wide valley, cultivated with fields. Workers, perhaps the more healthy of the isle’s inhabitants, could be seen hoeing and scraping the stony soil. Beyond rose a structure of dressed bluish native stone – the Temple of Poliel, goddess of pestilence and illness.

The woman calmly walked on and Heboric was beginning to suspect that he had fallen in with one of the priestesses of the house. ‘I will be welcome?’ he asked. ‘I do not wish to trespass.’

‘All visitors to this isle are welcome. You may make your petition before the altar.’

He bowed to the woman. ‘Thank you. You have some authority here, I take it?’

The woman paused as if surprised. Her liquid brown eyes regarded him with humour. ‘Some.’ She urged him on with the hand that was no more than a stump.

The entry to the Temple of Poliel possessed no door; it stood as an open archway of stone. Shabby ragged figures lined each wall, every one of them hardly more than bundles of sticks. Outstretched arms ending in bone or rotting pus-filmed flesh beseeched Heboric. He could not help but cringe from them as he and his escort passed up the hall between.

Another, inner archway opened on to a broad central courtyard paved in stone. Across its expanse rose the central sanctum, tall and domed, the dwelling of Poliel herself. The woman paused in the archway, gesturing ahead. ‘Here the children of Poliel once congregated, having sworn pilgrimage to her presence. Now it stands empty, awaiting the devoted.’

Sighing, she turned to continue on and Heboric followed. ‘Passage to the isle is difficult,’ he suggested.