What unfinished sword? he called out over the crowd, but there was no answer.

The sorcerer was already gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

There will be a celebration at the turning of the moon, Lina said, and Nerra smiled. Her friend seemed always to look for bright things in the life of the island.

What is there to celebrate here? Nerra asked, grinding corn with a quern, the heavy stone scraping down upon it as she and Lina walked it around and around. Today, they were working on milling flour to bake with, helping to produce the bread and cakes that their small community needed.

That we are still here, Lina said. That there are still things in life that are joyful.

It was hard to be sad when Lina was around. It seemed that even the most bestial of those with the dragon sickness brightened up as she passed. Nerra wished that she had the same gift, but every second seemed to fill itself with thoughts of the home she had lost, the family that she would never see. Would Lenore be married now? Would Erin have come back from wherever she had run to?

Here, let me help you, Nerra said as Lina started to lift a completed sack from her side. She went over, helping her friend with the weight of it, the two of them taking it toward a pile of similar sacks out in the open air of the village.

Theyd only gone a few steps before Lina stopped.

I dont feel…

Something twitched in her face, the lines of the dragon sickness seeming to shift and move across her skin. Nerra stared in horror as her friends features seemed to move like water affected by a breeze. Lina cried out, fell to her kneels, collapsed.

Nerra felt as though her heart was being torn out as she watched Lina writhing on the floor, her body seeming to twist out of shape even as she watched. One arm seemed to crack and twist, becoming something else, while her eyes stared up in horror, eerily the same as they had been before.

The attack had come out of nowhere. One moment, the two had been working together in the village, the next, Lina was screaming. She was doubled over in agony now on the floor, hands clutching her belly. A few seconds later, and Nerra was staring down at her newly acquired friend, watching her body tear itself to pieces.

Finally, she fought past her shock enough to cry out, to seek help.

Kleos! she called out. Somebody fetch Kleos!

She could already see him from the corner of her eye, running toward this, trying to get there in time to help. All the while, though, Lina was screaming, until even her screams broke into something else, something guttural and strange and twisted.