The underground chapel of Fort Karst was cold, damp, and smelling of dried lavender, boiled willow bark, and the faint, sweet decay of healing wounds.
Thirty animal fat candles flickered in wrought-iron wall sconces along the limestone pillars. He cast long, peaceful shadows across the fifty straw pallets where the wounded refugees slept. Near the eastern nook, little Clara, her breathing now deep and untroubled after Brother Ren’s miraculous body absorption of her sulfur lung-rot, slept with her wooden doll clutched tight against her chest. Her mother, an exhausted weaver from the lower valley, sat beside the pallet, her head resting on her knees in deep, dreamless sleep.
Beside the black marble altar, Brother Ren sat cross-legged on the bare dark rock flat stone slabs, his frayed burlap monk’s habit pulled tight around his scarred shoulders. He hadn’t slept in four days. His hands were clasped over his cracked lead purification basin. His lips moving in was silent, rhythmic prayers for the dying and the living alike. His scarred neck and chest, raw from the chemical burns he had absorbed during the morning triage, glistened with pale honey ointment. But his hazel-grey eyes were bright with quiet, rock-steady peace.
Across the nave, Mira stood near the hearth fire bowl, her charcoal shawl wrapped tightly around her frame. With her left hand, she was stirring an iron kettle of boiling water steeped with dried willow bark and dried mint. She poured the steaming brew into an earthen pitcher to clean fresh…
