The Inillo caravan marched forth under the ceaseless summer sun, staying well ahead of the pursuing smoke clouds. They had left behind their homes to escape the blight rising from the shell of the Holy City, and hoped to make new lives and find a new patron in the great and ancient city of Anthusa.

Outside of the yeoman Remiro and the village priest Andrea, none of the villagers had ever made the weeks-long journey. Now everybody, young and old had to make it together. Just a few days into their journey, the villagers were already exhausted. They had passed numerous other villages on the road, but many of these were either already abandoned like Inillo or were uniformly hostile to the great mass of strangers a quarter mile long passing through their homes. It was a fortunate stop that could yield them a few loaves of bread or vegetables.

Oxen, flocks of sheep and sounders of pigs trudged alongside wagons and wheelbarrows for mile after mile. Only at the front of the caravan did a handful of heads rise taller than the rest.

Remiro and Andrea rode on the only horses Inillo had to offer, and while the priest preached endlessly to keep up the villagers’ morale, Remiro rode ahead and watched for trouble.

Also near the front of the caravan was a curious vehicle, cobbled together from the remains of an old wagon and a shed. No fewer than eight stout men carried it aloft on their shoulders with poles, like the world’s most hastily constructed palanquin.

Inna watched the great mass of humans and beasts from near the back, herding stragglers from the flock. Her elderly sheepdog Silver, who had more than a passing resemblance to a grouchy old man, kept the herds in line with enthusiastic and well-practiced technique. Just days earlier, it had felt like the world was ending. Or at least, Inna and Myshkin’s world had been. They had never been all too welcome in the village, and less so anywhere else. Left to fend on their own from a young age, it had been Inna, her brother, and Silver against the world for years, selling wool and mutton for just enough to keep a rickety shed over their heads, patch their old clothes, and light the odd candle on feast days. It had been a tough life, to be sure, but in retrospect far from a terrible one. So close to the Holy City, the village had never suffered any serious shortages, and they had always been safe from banditry.

Their safety, from the other villagers and from strangers, was built on the strength of their former lord, the eighteenth Baron Inillo. It wasn’t that he was especially virtuous, or cared very much for them, but his land was his, and nobody caused a ruckus or endangered his people. He and a couple dozen armed and armored warriors, all advanced in their cultivation and capable of feats the villagers could never dream of, had carved a zone of peace and obedience around Inillo in which a pair of penniless shepherds could go about their days without all that much worry.

With the destruction of the Holy City, that life went up in very literal smoke. The baron and his men, except for Remiro, were paying obeisance there when the Demon Sultan’s immortal army fell upon it. He, and the many powerful lords and priests to whom he owed fealty and received protection in turn, had been exterminated in one night. As the black blight spread from the city’s burning shell, everyone in the village had hoped against hope that he might return by some miracle. But he never did. Whoever survived the disaster had flown away and given no thought to a little village on the outskirts.

But another miracle did come. He floated right down the river to arrive at their door. It was like all the wonder and magic from the Holy City had chosen to reveal itself to Inillo. In fact, Cato had first revealed himself to her. Though the villagers now saw Remiro and the priest Andrea as Cato’s assistants and closest supporters, she and Myshkin had been the first. It was something she would brag about until her dying day: she had been the first to look upon Inillo’s living saint.

If not for him, the wealthier and stronger villagers would have left first. The yeoman, the smith, the tailor. The priest might have stuck around for a while longer. It would have emptied slowly, everything of value stripped away, and two young shepherds with a mangy old mutt wouldn’t have been welcome in anyone’s wagon.

But two days after he appeared, the whole village set off together. Nobody was left behind: that was his demand.

For the first time in years, people looked at her with something more than a vague contempt. Mothers didn’t glare when their children came over to pet Silver, and the young men didn’t turn up their noses when Myshkin asked for a stick of jerky.

A leader who looked out for everyone and healed the injured with a touch. A living saint come down the river. He had changed all their lives in such a short time just by being there.

The caravan came to a halt. Inna could hear the confusion ahead of her as the palanquin-bearers at the front laid down their charge and dashed off into the thick trees and brush off the road.

Silver barked and rushed off in the same direction. Inna spared no time in chasing after the old hound, though her tunic got tangled and ripped in the thorns. Silver ran out of sight, but she could still hear his barking. What’s more, she could now hear the screaming.

It was over by the time she arrived, only a few moments ahead of the palanquin-bearers. A pair of children sat weeping at the edge of a brook amid the splinters of a broken pail. Across from them, dead at the foot of a great and sturdy oak, lay a colossal bear, over a thousand pounds at the least, covered in dark, foul pustules. Silver was growling at the corpse, as if daring it to come back to life.

Between them stood Cato, the bear’s dark blood soaking his hands. He washed them off in the brook and then took the children in his arms. Slowly, their crying stopped, and the cuts and scrapes on their arms and legs healed over.

Cato gestured to the palanquin bearers. “Get them back to Flora.” She blinked. It had been months since she’d seen little Teo and Ana. She almost didn’t recognize them.

“Inna, come here.” She leapt to his command.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Argo was with them, but ran off when they saw the bear. He’s not injured, so I need your help to find him.”

“My lord, you know-”

“I know. I promise, nobody else has to know.”

She gathered herself and closed her eyes. Cato knew that she practiced witchcraft. She had even tried to use it on him. Yet instead of casting her out or exposing her to the village, he had kept it secret. Now she could use it to help.

Breathe, in and out. It was difficult, in a new place, with the stench of blood and Silver’s yapping nearby. She reached out for the magic, but it eluded her grasp.

“Easy. Let me help.”

She felt her lord’s warm palm on her forehead, and energy flowed through her. The connection that felt like trying to grab at fog became solid and abundant. With a push, she opened her inner eye, and saw her surroundings.

“Good. Just relax and follow me.”

It was the strangest sensation, to have her inner sight guided by someone else. She flew through the thorns and brambles, across rocks and ravines, and found the shape of a young boy curled up in a rocky nook, silently panicking.

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“I found him!”

Cato was already gone, rushing through the dark forest like a ghost.

A few minutes later, the four of them rejoined the caravan. Argo was holding onto Silver like an oversized stuffed animal, and the old sheepdog was having the time of his life playing protector to the little boy.

Inna would never forget his mother’s cry of joy when she saw him, and the expression of pure thanks as she took her baby up in her arms again.

What more was there to say?

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Cato sat in the dark silence of his palanquin as the caravan marched into the evening. At first he had considered the vehicle ridiculous. After a good night of rest and a few square meals, he was in better physical condition than any of the villagers. He wanted to walk alongside them, not be held above their heads like a king.

The villagers had insisted. Remiro advised him to split the difference. Yet as the days went on, he wound up spending more and more time inside it.

This was partly because of the book. The night after he arrived, Inna and Myshkin snuck into his room and gave him a grimoire, clasped and bound with blank metal plates. The shepherds were eager for him to know it wasn’t theirs, not really. It had belonged to Agatha, the witch who used to live in a hut near Inillo, the same one that had taught the pair their magic tricks. When they found her hut abandoned, the only things left in it were this book and a note addressed to the two of them, instructing them to read it and continue practicing what she taught them.

Though they hadn’t said as much, it was clear that their abilities, and this book, landed somewhere between illegal and treasonous just to have, never mind use. They were desperate to hand it over, as if he’d know better than them what to do with it.

He’d opened it up on a whim, and found that the contents were extremely familiar. From the moment he arrived in this world, which he gathered was named Vintal, and was just one of several inhabited planets—Cato was almost disappointed at how little impression that made on him now—he had been able to read and speak the local language without difficulty. It clearly wasn’t English, or anything else he had ever heard of, but it came to him fluently. With a little introspection, it became clear to Cato that he wasn’t even thinking in English anymore. It just became natural as soon as he woke up in the river.

Even more curious, the shepherds associated him with House Gulphay because of the golden lions, and the other villagers did the same because the Gulphay crest was on the crossguard of his dagger.

The one that someone had stabbed him with.

But only Andrea, the village priest, was able to read the script on the blade which actually spelled out the name ‘Gulphay.’ It wasn’t written in the common script that the people of Inillo used, but in an ancient and sophisticated tongue used by the church. This metal-bound book was written in the same script, and reading it gave Cato a severe sense of deja vu. As he read on, each word came more easily, until he was reciting it faster than he could read, like a song he knew by heart. Yet despite knowing every word, its meaning eluded him, as the text seemed to be written in pure metaphor and riddle.

The previous day, Andrea had been resting in the palanquin with him, and caught Cato reciting it under his breath. Cato had panicked, but Andrea was delighted. It wasn’t a book of witchcraft at all, but the Book of Zevon, an esoteric scripture describing the true nature of God. The priest had recognized it by its opening verse, and kept coming back begging Cato to recite it for him so he could learn.

Once the caravan stopped somewhere more peaceful, Cato fully planned to run Andrea through it line by line and quiz him on the meaning of each one.

Which just made him feel like more of a fraud.

He had thousands of people relying on him now. They thought he was powerful, in control, many thought he was an actual saint. They thought he was wise and knowledgeable. But he wasn’t any of those things. They thought he took care of each and every one of them because he was benevolent, when in reality he was only doing this to avoid suffering.

The people of Inilo had placed their faith in him, and it was only a matter of time until he broke it.

On top of that, he had underestimated how big a deal the shepherds thought he was. House Gulphay was far, far away from here, but they were closely linked with the Holy City, and their prince had been kidnapped by the Demon Sultan when the city burned. Nobody in the village had ever met any representatives of the house, nevermind actual members, but everybody knew their symbol and the fact that they were accompanied by golden lions. Their symbols and heraldry were recognized throughout the universe, and they meant the same thing on every planet: this person is too important to offend, period.

Did this body belong to a member of House Gulphay? The golden lions certainly looked the part, but even Remiro knew that the technique was sometimes taught to the House’s allies and those who cultivated with their elders. It might just mean he was trained by them.

And as for the dagger… what were the odds some other member of the House had tried to kill him?

And that brought him back to the second reason he was spending more and more time in the palanquin, the reason that made his blood run cold.

His pain was coming back.

Ever since he was a child, he’d lived with a constant background of pain. Sometimes it flared up and sometimes it went dormant, and it migrated throughout his body unpredictably. On the rare occasions he had been able to see a doctor, he’d be diagnosed with a whole array of different conditions. Hormone imbalances, arthritis, fibromyalgia. Lyme disease kept coming up, though he’d never been within a hundred miles of a deer tick. Sometimes it was just ‘chronic pain,’ the great medical shrug.

When he had woken up in this body, it was gone. For the first time in his life, he knew the absence of constant, miserable pain.

And now it was coming back. It was exactly the same, but now he knew what it was.

He felt an ache in his knee when the old smith fell and scraped it. He felt a sting on his back when the baker’s daughter got hit with a stray lash.

And he felt a cold terror in his stomach when three children who split off from the caravan to fetch a pail of water were attacked by the bear. He’d gotten lucky. They had injured themselves trying to escape, but the bear hadn’t actually gotten to them before he arrived. It hadn’t been trying to kill them. It hadn’t even been defending its territory. The beast was out of its mind.

It had gotten sick.

It had gotten the kids sick too. In the hours since they returned to the caravan he had felt a tickling in his lungs. At first it was light, almost unnoticeable, but as evening fell it grew stronger. He had sent for the children, he’d healed them, and he felt the pain dull, but it didn’t go away.

They had gotten others sick.

Whatever disease the bear had, it was spreading through the caravan at high speed. Nobody even knew they had it yet, but Cato could feel the whole village in aggregate. Maybe a third had been infected already.

“My lord, we have reached the river.”

That was why they had waited until now to stop for the night.

The palanquin dropped to the ground and Cato stepped out. The faces of three thousand tired, haggard villagers stared back at him, not angry, not frustrated, but full of hope.

Whatever the consequences for himself personally, he wasn’t going to let that down, though it might very well kill him.

He needed to heal everyone in the caravan, and fast. If he told them they were sick, they would panic. It would be harder. He didn’t even know if this disease worked like a virus. Any advice he gave might be completely off the mark.

So he would baptize them instead.

Under Remiro’s direction, a handful of men gathered wood and set up bonfires by the riverside. The rest of the village set their clothes downstream, where they would be washed. One by one, until well past nightfall, they came to him, washing themselves in the water, and he drew the illness from their bodies, the young and the old, large and small, from the shepherd to the yeoman and priest. They dried themselves and their clothes by the bonfire, and slept.

When Cato felt the last of the pain leave his lungs, he breathed a sigh of relief. The people of Inillo wouldn’t understand what he had just done. But they were welcome to misunderstand, if it made their lives any easier.

Cato watched the stars until dawn, four varicolored suns lighting the sky. It hadn’t been by his choice that he came to care for these people, and they might never understand him. But he would keep doing it anyway.

Was that love?

A clear and sparkling breath whispered in his ear, and he slept.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Not so far away, at the center of a smoking crater, somebody new woke up to an unfamiliar sky.