The whole process had taken far longer than I had expected. I shoveled earth in the darkness, working to cover her coffin more by feel than by sight. When I stood beside her grave to offer a simple prayer to the good god on her behalf, I realized I didn’t know her name. The sergeant had not give me a list. I cursed him for his callousness. Then I added a prayer for myself, that no matter how many bodies I buried, I would remain properly respectful to the dead.

Shovel on my shoulder, I went back to my cabin. The light leaking out from the shutters was a welcome beacon as I trudged past the freshly mounded graves. I wanted to put this day behind me, to rest, and then find strength to move forward through the dismal days ahead of me.

I planned to go inside, wash my hands, and then use one precious sheet of my journal paper to carefully make a record of the folk I had buried that day. I decided I’d record the woman as “unknown woman victim, blonde hair, of middle years, delivered to cemetery by Sergeant Hoster along with the bodies of Scout Buel Hitch and the barber whose shop was by the west gate.” If anyone came looking for them, perhaps the date of death and that brief description would be enough. I realized I faced a long winter of making grave markers.

I wondered if I dared try to sleep that night. No. I feared I’d dreamwalk again if I did. And I had to guard Hitch’s body. My heart sank as I considered his death. I’d lost a true friend. I took a breath and closed my heart to the grief that tried to hollow it. I needed my strength for the next few weeks. Later I could give way to mourning. I pushed open my door.

In the same moment that I recalled my cabin should have been dark, I saw Hitch sitting beside the little hearth fire he’d lit. I froze where I was. He turned to me and grinned apologetically. His face had lost flesh from the plague, and there were dark hollows under his eyes. His voice was hoarse. “Come on in and pull up a chair, Nevare. We need to talk.” The foul smell of the plague, familiar to me from my own experience with it, wafted to me on his breath.

I took two steps backward. Then I turned and ran to the two coffins I’d left by my tool shed. The lid from Hitch’s had been kicked aside. It was empty except for a rumpled sheet in the bottom. I went back to my cabin. At the door I hesitated, then resolutely shook my foolishness away. He hadn’t been dead. That was all. Dr. Amicas had been aware of such incidents; plague victims sank into comas so deep they were mistaken for death. The doctor had insisted on bodies being held overnight to prevent anyone being buried alive. Spink and I had both been “dead” for a time. I pushed my superstitious fears aside. “By the good god’s mercy, Hitch, I’m so sorry. I thought I was imagining you there.” I hurried past him to my water cask and began filling my kettle. “We all believed you were dead. It’s only the sheerest luck that I didn’t bury you tonight. I’m so sorry, man. Do you feel all right? I’m making coffee. Do you need water, food? To wake up in a coffin! What could be worse?”

“Not to wake up at all, I suppose. But worst of all is to have someone waste a man’s last bit of time with idle chatter. Be quiet, Nevare, and listen. I’m here as a messenger. You were expecting me, weren’t you?”

Olikea’s angry words echoed in my mind. “It will send you a messenger you cannot ignore.” Cold emanated from my spine and spread to every part of my body. I barely managed to set the kettle on the hob without spilling it. I was suddenly shaking, my teeth chattering with it. His grin grew wider, a merry death rictus. “Are you cold? Sit down by the fire, Nevare. I don’t have much time. Listen to me.”

“No. No, Hitch, you listen to me. Back at the academy, Dr. Amicas said some of the plague victims seemed to die but then they revived. That was why he wasn’t letting the orderlies take the bodies out of the wards right away. You’ve just been in a very deep coma and now you’ve come out of it. You’re disoriented and confused. You need to rest. The same thing happened to me and to my friend Spink. We both lived. Let me get you some water, and then I’ll ride for the doctor—No, damnit, they stole Clove. But I’ll go on foot. I’ll get help for you. You just rest.”

He shook his head slowly. “There isn’t any help for me, Nevare. I made my choice a long time ago, or rather, the magic made its choice when it took me. After that, I had no choices. That’s one of the things I’ve come to tell you. You have to understand this. You don’t have choices when it comes to what the magic makes you do. It can turn you against your own people; it can make you do things you’d be ashamed to whisper to a demon. Sit down, Nevare. Please sit down.”

I knew that I should insist on getting help for him immediately. Instead, I slowly sank into my chair across from him. He smiled at me, and for a moment he looked more like his old self. Then he looked down at his feet. They were bare, I suddenly noticed. They’d sent him to his grave without his boots. He spoke without meeting my eyes. “I’m going to tell you one of those things I wouldn’t whisper to a demon, Nevare. Because I think it may be the only way to convince you that you have to do what the magic demands of you. And it’s the only way I can clear my conscience. You’ve been resisting the magic, haven’t you?”

“Hitch, I truly don’t know what you are talking about. Olikea says the same thing. So does Jodoli, and so did Tree Woman. They all tell me that I’m supposed to do something that will send the Gernians away. They act as if I know what it is I’m supposed to have done by now. But I have no idea what they are talking about. If that’s what the magic wants, then it should give me some clue of how I’m supposed to accomplish it. Because I don’t think there is any action one man could take that would suddenly cause King Troven to give up his road to the sea and the Kingdom of Gernia to retreat from its frontiers. Do you?”

He slowly shook his head. “Well, I don’t know of any. But then it isn’t my task. It’s yours.” He gave me a ghost of his old grin. “I’ll tell you one thing that was true of the magic for me. When it wanted me to do a thing, I knew clearly what it was. And I did it. It always seemed the most obvious choice to make. It made me want to do it more than anything else in the world. Even if it was something wrong, something that went completely against the grain, the magic made it easy, even desirable. Nothing ever made me feel better than just doing what it wanted me to do.” He coughed a dry little cough and added, “I’ll take that drink of water now, if you please.”

His request comforted me. I’d been toying with the idea that I’d somehow slipped into dream travel and was only speaking to him on that “other side.” To have him ask for something as simple as water made me more confident that we were still in my real world. I rose and went to fill my cup from my water barrel. When I brought it to him, he took it and drank it in long, smooth swallows. He lingered over that water as if it were nectar.

I spoke as he drank. “Your fever’s broken, Hitch. Let me find you some food. If you drink a lot of water and eat some bland food and get some good rest, you’ll be fine. You’ll live. I know how vivid fever dreams can be. But you’re back in the real world now. You’re safe. You’re going to live.”

As he handed the cup back to me, our eyes met. He looked sorrowful. “Thank you, Nevare. And not just for the water, but for hoping I’ll live. I won’t, not in this ‘real world’ of yours. In that other world, well, yes, I expect to live for a good long time. In fact, it has been promised to me. Especially if you do the task the magic has given you. But my time here is ticking away, even now. So let me talk while I can.

“You’re a good man, old son. You’d have been a good soldier, and I suspect you’d have been a damn fine officer, given the chance. But then, so would I, if the magic hadn’t taken me. I hope you’ll understand that what I did, I did because I didn’t have a choice. Soldiers kill in times of war, and sometimes they do even worse. They’re under orders. And everyone understands that a man under orders does things he wouldn’t otherwise do. When you think of me after this, think of that, please. ‘Hitch was under orders.’ Will you do that for me?”