What he saw turned his skin to gooseflesh.
A woman ran across what was likely once a thriving marketplace, screaming. Flames swept up her legs, torso, and chest. She was chased by a man brandishing a torch. He caught her, slamming it into her back. She fell, and he landed atop her, the flames sweeping over him in a rush as a stiff gust of wind hit them.
Another man, shirtless, his muscles bulging, wielded a blacksmith’s sledge. He was swinging it wildly at anything and anybody that moved. Dead chickens, hogs, and humans lay strewn about him. “Devils!” he roared with each swing. “Devils! Devils! Devils!”
Other afflicted townsfolk were committing equally horrifying atrocities. A flock of children, their mouths contorted in fierce snarls, surrounded a man who seemed remarkably lucid, trying to hold them off with a metal frying pan. The children threw sharp stones, pelting the man’s face and body, blood pouring from each wound. “Help!” the man screamed, to no one in particular. If there were any other people not taken by the pox, they were ignorant to his cries.
We’re too late, Roan thought.
He began to back away from the carnage, even as Gwen sprang forward. Roan tried to grab her arm, but she was already gone, moving with blinding speed through the square, dodging flames and blunt weapons swung by delirious hands.
Roan was frozen in place, only able to watch as she leapt the circle of stone-throwing children, grabbed the man around the waist, and retreated. The maniacal children gave chase, slinging stones, most of which bounced harmlessly away.
Gwen reached Roan a moment later, laying the man at his feet. The man was still gripping the frying pan tightly, a glazed fearful look in his eyes. He was covered from head to toe in flat red spots. Mottle.
“Heal him,” Gwendolyn commanded.
“What about you?” he asked, but she was already gone, off to find another victim who could still be rescued.
Roan looked at the man, who was suddenly staring at him as if he were a monster, his eyes dark, his mouth an angry growl. “Get away from me!” he screamed. With a wicked swing, he slammed the metal pan into Roan’s head. Spots danced before Roan’s vision as he went down.
The memory crackled through his mind like flames. The girl with the broken leg. Healing her. The smell of burnt flesh. Charred corpses. So small. So heart-wrenchingly small.
His vision cleared and the man screamed again, launching himself toward Roan. Roan tried to roll, but the pox seemed to strengthen his adversary, giving him supernatural speed. He clamped claw-like hands around Roan’s throat, digging into his soft flesh. Roan’s lifemark flared, healing his skull and his neck simultaneously, sapping his strength. He knew he could help this man, who was clearly not himself.
But all he could see in the man’s face were those tiny, charred corpses. All he could smell in the air was burning flesh. He remembered his guardian’s warning, that if he healed someone marked for death then he would die in their place. All he could do was heal himself and—
He bucked his body like a wild horse, throwing the man off. He kicked him hard in the face and took off, running through the square, heat rushing through his veins. WhereissheWhereissheWhereisshe?
There! He spotted Gwen fighting to wrench a screaming child from the grip of two women who appeared to be trying to rip the little girl’s arms off. Behind Gwen, there was another form closing in, waving a torch, lighting houses and people afire with each step.
The crazed torchbearer reached for Gwen.
Roan opened his mouth to warn her, but before he could another figure streaked out from the cover of one of the intact structures, tackling the man with a heavy thump.
Roan raced forward and grabbed one of the women from behind. She kicked and screamed and bit Roan’s hand, but he wouldn’t let go until he’d dragged her well clear. With only one delirious woman to contend with, Gwen broke the child loose and carried her away, shouting, “Healer! With me! With me!”
Gwen wasn’t aware of what had transpired behind her, how close she’d come to death. Roan looked back at the figure who had saved her, a strange creature that was now on fire, swaying and stumbling as he tried to escape the town’s boundaries.
It was Bark.
Acting purely on instinct, Roan ran for the man with the rough skin, simultaneously ripping off his own cloak and wrapping it around him. He could feel the heat of the flames through the fabric, but refused to give them air, forcing them to die down to smoke and ash. He slung Bark’s wood-like arm over his shoulders, and helped him stagger through the square. Twice they were accosted by pox-afflicted villagers, and twice Roan was forced to throw Bark to the ground to fend them off with well-placed kicks.
And then, abruptly, they were out of the chaos, screams and cries fading behind them.
He found Gwendolyn curled up in a ball beside the child, who was crying. “Hush, child,” Gwen kept repeating, even as red spots erupted from her own skin. The Orian’s eyes were slowly closing, but flashed open when Roan and Bark staggered and fell beside her.
“Bark? How did you…? What are you…? What happened?”
“He saved your life,” Roan gasped, his lifemark staving off the pox. “You didn’t see, but he did.”
Bark’s blackened skin twitched as he tried to speak. “My hero,” he rasped. “At long last, my debt is paid.” He collapsed, his eyes closing.
“No!” Gwen screamed, which made the little girl cry harder. “Save him. Roan! Save him!”
Roan was exhausted, and he was using his lifemark to stave off the pox, which was slowly draining what little energy he had left. Plus, all three of them were marked for death now.
If he healed any of them, he would die. He hesitated for only the barest of moments. This is it, he thought. This is my purpose. To save these lives. To sacrifice myself for something good.
“You first,” he said to Gwen, determination coursing through him.
“No!” she shouted, grabbing him by the collar. She shook him, commanding him to save Bark, to save the little girl, but nothing she did could stop Roan from using his power on her, a stream of white light arcing from his chest and into her skin.
The red spots faded, and then disappeared entirely. Weariness flooded Roan, and his vision grew fuzzy around the edges. I’m dying, he thought. He didn’t care, because he’d saved her. He’d done what he couldn’t do for that little girl all those years ago.
Gwen slapped Roan, hit him in the chest, and he flinched, his eyes widening. “Not me, you fool!” she screamed. “Bark! Save Bark!”
Roan wondered whether he had enough strength left to save another, to make his death count for even more. His hand shaking, he reached out and touched Bark’s burnt flesh, shocked at how hot it still was. His lifemark probed the man, feeling nothing. He was already gone. “I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s nothing to be done.”
Gwen shook her head, tears sparkling in her golden eyes, which were full of anger and regret. “The girl,” she growled. “It’s not too late.”
Roan turned his attention toward the little girl, whose midnight hair was full of natural ringlets. She’d stopped crying and was staring at him, her eyes full of a mix of rage and fear. “Demon,” she breathed.
She tried to swing her tiny fist at Roan’s face, but he caught it, his lifemark burning up his chest, giving this poor child everything he had left.
When he had nothing left to give, he collapsed and the world faded into nothingness.
Roan awoke with a gasp, the pain in his chest like a burning fist repeatedly punching him. Where am I? Is this where souls go? Do I even have a soul?
At first all he saw was a gray, cloud-filled sky, but then—
A pair of big brown eyes, framed by tiny black ringlets of hair.
“Unnnh,” he groaned.
“He’s alive!” a tiny mouth shrieked.
I am? But how? He’d saved the lives of two other people. He should be dead.
“The Southroner must be part ore cat, for he has more lives th
an good sense,” another voice said. Prince Gareth. “First dragons and the plague, then a stab to the gut, and now pox. The Great Orion smiles upon you.”
“Of course he’s alive,” a gruff voice said. King Ironclad. “The royal healer’s skills are unmatched.”
“I didn’t do anything,” another voice said. The royal healer, presumably.
Roan blinked to find a kindly face pressing in beside the tiny sprite of a girl with the dark ringlets. “Wha—what happened?” he asked.
“You survived the pox, that’s what happened,” the man said. A healer, the king had said.
Of course I did, Roan wanted to say. The pox was no issue. But how had he survived healing Gwen and the girl? The little girl in front of him looked familiar.
Yes. She’d lunged at him, called him a demon. She’d had the pox, too, and he’d used his mark to heal her.
Images sprang up, unbidden, slashing across his vision like a hot knife. Burning flesh. Wisps of smoke. A pit of ash. “Please,” Roan said. “Don’t. Don’t hurt her.”
The healer frowned. “He looks awake, but he appears to be having a waking nightmare. He needs to rest.”
“No,” Roan said, squinting when Prince Gareth sidled beside the healer, his metal armor reflecting blades of sunlight.
“Good, because we need to move on before the Orian tries to charge into Glee again.”
“Gwendolyn?” Roan said. He remembered healing her, but had he done enough to stave off the disease?
“She saved me,” the little girl said. “And then you saved me. You’re my heroes. I’m Fria and the prince let me water his horse and I ate three bowls of soup. When can I go see my ma and da?”
Roan’s head was spinning and he was struggling to keep up with the girl’s rapid changes of topic. “Your parents?”
“Come, Fria,” the healer said, ushering her away. “Roan needs to rest.”
“But I—”
“You can speak to him later.”
As she was pushed away, Fria looked back at Roan and grinned. He couldn’t help but to mirror her smile. “Where are her parents?” he asked, when she had gone.
“Dead,” Prince Gareth said. “Along with her brothers and sisters. She had two of each.”
Roan’s abdomen constricted. He remembered the horrific scenes from Glee. The violence. The killing. “Survivors?”
Gareth’s face was as somber as Roan had ever seen it. “Only Fria. Unless you include you and Gwendolyn.”
Roan took a deep breath. He’d saved two people. They were alive. His guardian was dead—he wasn’t going to rise from the grave and burn Fria and Gwen. As much as he knew it to be true, he couldn’t stop his heart from hammering in his chest.
And he was alive, despite what his guardian had told him. A lie, he thought. My guardian lied to me so I wouldn’t use my mark to save anyone.
Then he remembered one other. “Bark?”
The prince shook his head. “He was badly burned. His body was already weak from his own affliction.”
“He saved Gwendolyn. Not me.”
A flash of silver flared in the corner of his eye. Gwen appeared, her eyes stormier than he’d ever seen them. “Yes. Bark saved me. Yet you wouldn’t save him.”
“I tried,” Roan said, feeling a pang in his chest when he remembered how lifeless the man had been when he’d touched him.
“Not hard enough. Bark bore no mark, had no magic. Yet he came when no one else would.”
Roan could hardly bear the anger in the Orian’s eyes, but he refused to look away. “He was a hero,” Roan said.
Gwendolyn spat in disgust. “That word,” she said, “is meaningless. People love to throw it around like a badge of honor. Bark was a hero, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the man he was. He would’ve saved the entire town if he could have, even if it meant his own death. You, on the other hand…” She shook her head. “You are no hero, no matter what the girl says.”
The words were meant to injure, but Roan felt nothing but numbness. He knew he could tell her he thought he would die if he saved her, and yet he did it anyway, but did that make him a hero? No, he knew. It made him tired. It made him human. But not a hero. He would never tell her the truth, not even if she tried to torture it out of him. He didn’t want credit, not when he’d wasted so many years avoiding the suffering of others. Suffering he could’ve relieved. “I agree,” he said.
Gwen raised the edge of her lip and glared at him one last time. Then she stalked off.
For once, the prince didn’t laugh at Roan. “For what it’s worth,” he said. “I think you did everything you could.”
The prince left, and Roan noticed another, larger form lurking nearby. Beorn Stonesledge approached, making no effort to mask his footsteps. “There is great fear in you,” the warrior said, casting a shadow across Roan’s face. “Why?”
Roan didn’t know how to respond, so he asked a question of his own. “Why do you wear a symbol of your mark around your neck?” he asked, eyeing the chain dangling from the man’s thick throat.
“Because else none would know I was marked.”
The concept of flaunting a mark was so foreign to Roan he was at a loss for words.
Beorn explained: “I am a warrior. A battle is almost always won or lost ’fore it begins. The first volley is fear, and when men see the sign of me mark they piss their britches. I am victorious without ever landing a single blow.”
That’s why he mentioned the fear he saw in me, Roan realized. He thinks I’m weak.
“Where is your mark?” Roan asked.
“On me arse!” Beorn laughed, a sound more akin to a roar than a chuckle. “Me ma about died when she was bathing me in the firelight and saw it blaze forth.”
Roan wished he could laugh, but couldn’t find it inside himself. Not when he had no memories of his own mother. He used to think he was angry at his mother for abandoning him to the south, for dying so he could live. He used to think his life wasn’t worth it if his own mother had to die in his place. But now he knew those feelings were those of a scared little boy. Realization pressed in on all sides. The only way to make his mother’s sacrifice worthwhile was for him to live the life he was always meant to. A life that mattered.
“Have you ever feared using your mark?” Roan asked Beorn now.
Beorn raised one dark bushy brow. “Every day,” he said, which wasn’t the answer Roan had expected. “Sometimes I’m too strong,” he explained. “I can hurt someone by accident, when I mean to do something else.”
Roan chewed on that for a moment. He understood the feeling all too well. “Have you ever killed someone by mistake?”
“Yes,” Beorn said. “Maybe they deserved it, maybe not. But it wasn’t for me to decide. Not in this particular case. And once, I drove someone away. Someone I loved.”
“Who?”
“A woman,” Beorn said. He looked away from Roan, his expression wistful, radiating memories. “A woman I loved.”
“What happened?”
“She was special. Ida. A good name. A strong name. For a good, strong woman. We got on well, talked all the time. I was sorely tempted to touch her. She seemed to want the same. But when I wrapped me arms around her, me emotions got the better of me and I squeezed too hard. Broke her ribs. Snapped a couple bones in her back. She never wanted to see me again.”
His eyes ratcheted back to meet Roan’s stare, his expression dark and steely. “Love’s not for me. Not anymore. I’m here for one thing and one thing only: War.”
With that said, Beorn Stonesledge lumbered away, one hand playing with his iron necklace.
“Wait!” Roan said, urging his horse forward.
When the battalion had started moving again, Roan had sought out the Orian, but Gwen was already well ahead of the column, galloping toward the ever-darkening horizon. Her eyes were focused forward, as if she couldn’t bear to look back at the plumes of storm-black smoke erupting from the town of Glee.
They’d burne
d the entire town to the ground to ensure the disease was eradicated.
Gwen charged forward, away from Roan. He gave chase, his horse’s hoof beats like thunder on the road, which had become stony and hard.
To his surprise, he seemed to be gaining on her, though she was a far superior rider and her steed normally ran like the wind. He pulled astride, glancing over.
Her intentions registered a moment too late for him to react.
She threw herself from her horse, slamming her shoulder into his chest. He toppled from his mount, grunting as she landed atop him and all air left his lungs. She pinned him to the ground, needlessly—he couldn’t even breathe, much less fight back.
As he wheezed, she said, “They’ll call you a hero because you healed that girl. But you’re not. Nor am I. She was one soul amongst hundreds of innocents. We failed them, you and I. We failed Bark. We failed ourselves.”
Roan tried to respond, but could only issue a ragged wheeze.
Gwen bit her lip and the anger seemed to leave her. Her shoulders slumped and a single tear slipped from her eye, meandering down her cheek. It was liquid silver. She rolled off of him, and for a few moments all he could hear was the sound of her breathing and his own wheezing as he struggled to regain his breath.
When he felt he could speak again, he said, “What happened with you and Bark? Why is he so important to you?”
Gwen’s eyes shot to his, and then darted away. “I’m surprised Gareth hasn’t told you.”
“He said to ask you. He said you saved Bark’s life. That’s why he always called you his hero.”
Gwen laughed without mirth. “I saved Bark’s life, yes, but only after he saved a dozen others. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been a talented blacksmith. Years ago, he had traveled south, to Hammerton, to sell his wares. I was there, gathering information for the king on the war efforts. Not Oren, but his father, Hamworth. At the time, the Phanecians had been pushing across the Spear and attacking Hammerton.”
She paused, and Roan sensed she was gathering her thoughts. He waited patiently.