Malachai's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

Malachai walked the forest path with Deborah in his arms. The temple lay behind him, doors open, dead inside. He did not look back. He knew what came next. Word travels fast when a church fills with bodies. By first light, riders from the nearby town would find the black stone temple. By noon, every village would know a priest had let his flock kill each other. He reached the cabin before dawn. It sat deep in the trees, clean and quiet, hidden from any road. He shouldered the door open and carried her inside. He laid her on the low bed by the hearth. Her shirt was stiff with drying blood. Her breath rattled. He worked fast. He barred the door. He shuttered the windows. He stripped her boots and cut the shirt away from the wound in her side. A blade had gone in under her ribs. She should have been dead already. Behind his eyes, Diablo waited, warm and close. Malachai heated broth on the hearth and spooned it past her teeth. She swallowed. He wiped her mouth with his sleeve. "Not yet," he said. "You do not go yet." He placed his palm flat over the wound. He spoke his master's name under his breath. Heat gathered in his hand. The skin under his palm knit. The bleeding stopped. Deborah's back arched off the bed. She gasped and did not scream. Her color came back slowly. Her breathing steadied. She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling beams, then at him. "You are mine now," Malachai said. "Do you understand?" She nodded once. "Sleep. When you wake I will show you the work." Her eyes closed. Her hand stayed curled in his coat. He stood at the shuttered window and listened. Somewhere far off, a horn. Then another. The knights from the town had reached the temple. He pictured them stepping over the bodies. He pictured the survivors, the ones who had crawled to a wall and lived. He knew what they would say when the knights knelt to help them. He had built that in them himself. They would not curse him. They would praise him. They would call for him. And the knights would carry those words back through every village between here and the sea. His name was leaving the temple now, faster than any horse. He could not walk a market, a road, a chapel. Not for a long while. The count still sat under a thousand. He was far from done. He looked at the sleeping woman on the bed. Her wound was closed. Her hands were still stained with the four she had killed. He could not go out and gather souls now. So the souls would have to come to him. And she would be the one who brought them. Malachai sat by the bed and waited for her to wake.