It would burn off his tongue. He would never speak again.
The ground shifted under him. Hands gripped him and hauled him away over the rocky ground, then let him drop onto the hard ground as voices exclaimed in fear and excitement.
“It was a demon!”
“Nay, it was an angel, you fool!”
“It was a phoenix! Are you blind?”
“Not so blind that I don’t know lightning when I see it! That was no creature at all.”
“Gah, gah, gah,” he said, but no words came.
“Is he safe?”
“He is stung, Sister.”
They conferred, but he could only stare up at the heavens where light burned just as it burned across his skin. He shivered, so cold. So cold.
“The old one says there is no cure for the sting of the monster?”
“So he says, but I am not so willing to give up on a brave man.”
When had it become so foggy? A haze drifted before his eyes. Yet those words blazed: a brave man.
Those words gave him heart.
“What do you suggest?”
“I am the only one skilled in healing among us. We will remain here while I do what I can.”
“We have no time for such luxuries, Meriam. In any case, the creature is wounded, but not dead. It may return.”
“Even if we go, you will still be in danger.”
“Perhaps. It is easier to protect one man than an entire retinue. You know I must change my plans because Brother Lupus deserted us. I can bide in Qahirah until Sister Anne sends a brace of soldiers to guard me, if that is necessary.”
“Soldiers cannot defeat such a monster.”
“Enough! You and Elene and your party must leave at dusk tomorrow.”
“Will you abandon him to death after he saved the life of my granddaughter?”
“Nay. He can be our messenger to Anne. He can still serve us, and in serving us may serve himself….”
The wind’s moan tore away the rest of Marcus’ words. Sister Meriam had called him a brave man.
It was better to die bravely than to live with shame.
It was better to die, but he lay there not precisely in pain but unable to move or see, with his skin on fire and yet not really hurting. He lay there and felt the sun rise, although the touch of light hurt him. They shaded him with a lean-to of cloth, and he lay in that shade while Meriam coaxed a bit of honeyed water down his throat, but the smell of honey nauseated him. That stench of honey-carrion that pervaded the monster welled up in his memory, in his throat, and he threw it all back up.
Elene sat beside him, staring at him with solemn eyes. “I didn’t look at him,” she said to her grandmother. “I thought him beneath my notice. How strange that God should act through such a common, ugly, dirty man.”
“Even a cringing dog can bite, Elene. Look more closely at humankind. The outer seeming may not mirror the inner heart.”
“I know! I know!” said the girl impatiently, as though she had heard this lecture a hundred times before. “That isn’t what I meant! He just didn’t seem to matter.”
“Neither did the mouse spared by the prisoner, who later gnawed through her ropes and thereby freed her.”
The shade drew a line across the girl’s tunic as she smoothed it down over her knees; she had her head in the sun and her legs in the shadow. “I’m afraid, Grandmother. I don’t want to go into the wilderness. You don’t know what we’ll find on the other side of the gateway. What if there are monsters there, too?”
“We must be strong, Elene. We have been given a task. I alone can speak the language of those who bide in the desert country, so I must go. So be it.”
“So be it,” she breathed, bowing her head.
“Gah,” he whispered, but the sound vanished in the trickling tumble of grains of sand down the sloped cloth lean-to as a wind blew up from the flats.
His body was ice, his thoughts sluggish. Somehow, the lean-to came down and he was rolled onto a length of cloth and dragged over the bumpy ground to be dropped again, left lying with a rock digging into the small of his back.
There he lay. A haze descended, and for a while he heard faint sounds, none of them distinct enough to identify. A drop of moisture wet his palm. Through the haze the sun shone as it sank low into the west, but its glare had the force of ice, creeping into his limbs.
He drifted. It was getting harder and harder to see people; they seemed so tenuous and insubstantial set against the pale hills and the darkening sky, which were older creatures by far, populated by ancient spirits that stalked the shadows. Light winked in the heavens; a star bloomed. Figures moved outside the circle, raising and lowering staffs and murmuring words too softly for him to hear or understand.