The wind changed through the night, and the dawn brought warmer air from the southwest, but also more clouds, behind which the morning sun sulked. After several recent days of rain, mutters went around the camp that it might do so again.

Inloth admired the shrine his pilgrims had erected overnight. The tent was large enough to seat about a score of men on the six plank benches hammered together overnight. Fires in small brass braziers offered light and heat. Crates covered with embroidered clothes had been arranged opposite the main entrance, and curtains strung behind the makeshift altar created a small private area in which to store necessaries and prepare for daily services. The statue of Belenos, handsome and strong, was of weathered bronze and stood upon the altar. “A bit more to the right, Finntonn… Ah yes, that looks very good! And now the Arm. Get the Arm, please, there’s a good lad.”

Finntonn pursed his lips as if about to speak, then shook his head and went behind the curtain.

While he waited, Inloth thought back on the previous evening. So… The Lady Eithne. King Ardgar had let her slip through his fingers, and she’d disappeared into the festival grounds. No matter. She can’t hide long. She has a wedding to attend, if her hedge-king lives. The rumors King Dafyd had collected from his spies were dubious about Eowain’s chances.

Inloth had been careful to guard his words with Eithne. It was true that he’d known her before, years ago, when she was just a young child. He’d been raised some two days from her home of Dolgallu. Even been to that backward, clannish place once, to preach the reformation with his master.

Old anger smoldered in his heart. His master was only the Drymyn of Dúnperedur and Coinnire then, and not yet Great Oak, but his zeal for reform had already effected change throughout the Five Kingdoms.

But those damned Sárán-Gwynn… Their bastard clan held a small village at the farthest edge of Ivearda, under the imposing Meirion Mountains.

The Meirions were haunted mountains. The villagers of the hamlet at their feet said that. They’d warned of vengeful ghosts who led men astray, demons that could appear as wolves and owls, dragons that could take Mannish form.

Inloth’s master had scoffed at such superstitions. “The men of Dolgallu simply want no visitors.” Indeed—if Men they were; the villagers had their doubts—they turned away all inquiries. Only twice each year, the hamlet left salt and tea and the small things they needed, with small gifts—fruit in season, a few good apples or pears, or fresh vegetables—at an appointed place. Because fear of the men of Dolgallu drove away bandits. And that was the only commerce with the outside world the men of Dolgallu allowed themselves.

The trail from the hamlet was broad and friendly and sunlit down in the valley when Inloth and his master had set out. But it soon dwindled to a track under the glowering gaze of Mount Ydrys, and finally to a narrow slot among the rounded boulders and tree roots of the forest, winding through steeper and steeper climbs into the mountains. The sun sank and threw the path beneath the trees into deep shade. Inloth and his master, with their stout ponies, had climbed in forest shadow, struggled in the clutch of branches, until the scent of smoke and horse came on the wind and the shape of rustic buildings showed in the twilight.

From the forests, men in hides and furs with spears and old iron swords had emerged. They brought Inloth and his master roughly to Lord Ciaran and his family. Eithne was but a little girl then, her eyes clear green, her skin fair as milk and dappled with freckles, her hair as copper as autumn and unruled by combs.

But it had been a short mission. Eithne’s father had cursed Inloth’s master and the reforms, and the men of Dolgallu had driven them back down the mountain in a disgraceful parade of shorn heads, boiling pitch on bare skin, and feathers strewn across pitch-covered bodies.

Inloth scratched at the remembered itch of that long-ago humiliation as he poured himself another cup of altar wine.

A self-satisfied smirk crossed his cracked lips. It pleased him no end that it was Ciaran of Dolgallu’s own daughter at the center of his plans with the Fiatach kings. She’ll make Yochy’s son a fine bride, once he breaks her to the saddle.

Inloth’s assistant returned with a wooden box cradled in his arms. Finntonn knelt and lay the box on the ground, put his hands together under his bowed head, muttered a prayer, then unlocked and opened the lid.

From the wood-shavings and cloth packing, Finntonn drew out a vessel, nearly a foot and a half long and shaped like a mannish-arm, surmounted with a closed fist. The core of the vessel was made of yew wood, polished and stained with age, and ornamented with elaborate bronze panels decorated with the curvilinear interlacings of abstract animals, highlighted with inlays of silver. The fist was cast in bronze, similarly decorated with notional patterns of beasts and leaves, and the fingernails emphasized by inlaid silver plaques.

Inloth murmured a prayer as well, then took the vessel from Finntonn and held it up to admire it in the firelight.

The Arm of Moelrhonos. A reliquary containing the arm bone of a particularly holy drymyn and gardener who’d been murdered more than eight hundred years earlier during a time of persecution. Tales of the reliquary spoke of miracles. Bountiful harvests. Fiery symbols for the persuasion of unbelievers. Prophetic visions and divinations from the Gods Themselves.

Reverentially, he placed the Arm in a place of honor beside the statue of Belenos, then stepped back and bowed to honor it.

A cough behind him drew his attention. Red-haired Tnúthét in her dark blue robe curtsied and fingered the bronze-studded scourge cinched about her waist. Her eyelids fluttered up at him. “Your Reverence?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Some of the local farmers are here. They say their calves and lambs are afflicted.”

Inloth furrowed his brows. “Well, let’s have a look then. Afflicted livestock are no good to anyone.” Farming was a particular concern of his god, and Inloth was often consulted on such matters.

But when he followed her from the tent, he stopped cold and his heart sank. A dozen people had gathered, each with sickly animals in their care.

And as he moved among them, examining each animal in turn, the pattern that emerged concerned him. Coughs, labored breathing, panting, watery discharge from the nostrils, runny eyes, lethargy. The farmers complained as well that the beasts lacked appetite for their morning feed, and the affliction was not limited to calves and lambs. Adult cattle and sheep showed similar signs.

He took a sip of his wine and turned to the three weyward sisters. “Tnúthét, Bándígal, Trebithu, I saw you with the farmers and shepherds last evening, preaching the good word. You saw no evidence of this?”

The three blue-robed women shook their heads. “No sign at all, Your Reverence.”

“Their stock were healthy only yesterday.”

“Truly, it’s a mystery, Your Reverence. Perhaps a curse, even.”

Inloth rubbed at his cheeks as he considered the beasts. It’s rare for such an affliction to emerge so suddenly among so many beasts. Often there are warning signs, one or three animals afflicted over the course of a few days. Not whole herds and flocks overnight.

But his doubts quickly fled. The flagellants were trusted friends, after all, their words to be heeded. If they said they’d seen nothing, then there had been nothing to see. The deed is done, in any case. Perhaps a curse, even…

Inloth sent Finntonn for parchment and ink, then spoke aloud as he held up the head of first one month-old calf, then another. “The sputa expectorated is of a blond or livid color, or likewise thin, frothy, and florid. A pleuritic affection, it seems to me.” Finntonn scribbled down his words, a record of the affliction for future generations.

Inloth primmed his lips as his probing fingers discovered an unusual mark on the calf’s flank. He smoothed aside the stiff-bristled hairs, and his eyebrows crawled up his forehead. A wound?

Indeed, a deep prick in the flesh, perhaps a knuckle deep, as if from a razor or— A fang? Were they bitten? He thought of the swarms of bats he’d seen in the previous night’s sky. But the bite of a bat would be much deeper. A fox or a dog, perhaps? But any bite should appear in pairs…

He made a note of the injury for Finntonn, and found similar marks on many of the other animals. He inquired among the farmers for dogs, cats, foxes, wolves, bats or any animal with similar symptoms, or that showed signs of madness.

None had seen any such thing.

How strange…

Inloth sent for his fellow priests and their acolytes as he preached to the farmer before him. “Belenos tells us, ‘The wild spirits of Kârn ever seek to destroy the organizing works of men and return him to a savage state.’”

The stoic farmer’s weather-worn face was grim. “Ain’t there nothin’ to be done, Yer Reverence?”

“I’ve had some success with prayer in Larriocht, when a similar affliction arose there.” He brought the calf into the tent and brought the farmer’s attention to the reliquary of the Arm. “And we’ve the aid of the holy drymyn Moelrhonos, a bloody witness to our faith.” He pressed the farmer’s arm and reassured him. “We’ll find a cure for this affliction, I’ve no doubt.”

He lit incense and swung the censer over the calf, smudged it with healing vapors. His fellow drymyn-priests mixed powdered comfrey root, horehound, nightshade, and pleurisy root into a bowl of mullein oil. Inloth handed the fuming censer to one of them, put his hands in the bowl until they were coated with the mixture, then laid his hands upon the breast of the first calf and smoothed the oils into the thin, bristled hairs.

“All-waldands ond arma-hairts Belenos,

at mahts thaírh Izwar ana-bûsns,

us-dreiban af sa stiur alls saúhts

ond un-háili un-hultha…”

The warm smile of Belenos fell upon Inloth—I feel it!—the energy of His presence moving through him.

But the Gods, They are forgetful.

Inloth felt the resistance within him, the negligence of Gods toward the plights of men. He pressed against the weight of that dereliction, chanted on and on, drew the vigor of the Sun-Lord into himself from the æther-world until it swelled within him, squeezed his heart, clenched at his lungs, threatened to overwhelm him—

Like a bolt, the rush of energy coursed down his arms, out through the veins and sinews of his hands.

The indolent animal bleated and scrambled to its feet, to the surprise and delight of the farmer.

Inloth’s head grew heavy. Red and purple flecks crowded his vision. The muscles in his back ached.

The farmer led his revitalized calf from the tent and the crowd gathered there cried praise and wonder for the virtue of Inloth and his Belenosian magick.

An afflicted lamb was brought to him, word began to spread, and the gathering outside grew.

Nor were the local farmers alone anymore. As the morning drew on, merchants who’d brought livestock for trade soon came to him.