Page 27 of Malady

I’ve spent most of the day watching Doctor Iscairn tend coughs, change dressings, and examine a half-bitten tongue, waiting for any trace of what I saw last night. Beneath that enormous coat, there’s been nothing except, apparently, a competent physician.

There must be something that explains it—a substance, an instrument, some obscure preparation carried from whatever distant place produced a man capable of drawing light from the dying. And if that explanation exists anywhere within my reach, I would wager a great deal that it’s tucked inside the one possession Iscairn guards more closely than his own face.

Unfortunately, the damned satchel rarely leaves his side, and I have no intention of waiting until it does. If I cannot find my answers in his bag, I must seek them in a place that goes against the very binding of my bones.

The church.

Gideon and the Brothers have hardly left the penitents alone since their arrival, occupied with prayers and whatever other comforts one provides to men determined to remove their own skin in the name of salvation.

Iscairn, meanwhile, is safely at the far end of the village tending to a carpenter who has driven a nail through his palm, which ought to keep both the physician and his satchel out of my way for a little while longer.

As it stands, I may never have a better opportunity to commit sacrilege.

The churchyard is crowded enough that nobody pays the slightest attention when I skirt around the outer wall. The narrow side door is mercifully deserted. I slip inside and pull it closed behind me, leaving the chanting muffled beyond several feet of stone.

On silent feet, I hurry towards Gideon’s chamber. Every available surface has been surrendered to paper. Books crowd the shelves behind the desk and spill onto the floor beneath the window, wedged between bundles of letters and old sermons tied with cord. Even the narrow bedstead against the far wall hasn’t escaped, and I have to turn sideways to squeeze between it and another precarious stack threatening to collapse across the floor.

How does he live like this? More importantly, where does he sleep?

We weren’t raised in hardship. Our childhood beds had feather mattresses, our hearth was always warm, and we never lacked blankets when winter pressed against the windows. I’ll never understand how Gideon grew from that into a man who seems perfectly content to surrender every small comfort he was given, as though a cold stone floor and an aching back might somehow bring him closer to God.

Perhaps suffering becomes easier to admire when one has chosen it.

The first few volumes I pull free are useless. Lives of saints. Accounts of martyrs. Enough theological suffering to keep Gideon busy until spring. I shove them back into place and run my fingers along the next row of cracked leather spines.

Surely a man who has spent most of my life warning me about demons owns at least one book explaining what the bloody things are.

The next shelf proves more promising. Possession. Witchcraft. Heresy. Accounts of unnatural births and monstrous creatures supposedly witnessed in distant countries by men who, judging from the illustrations, had never actually seen a goat, let alone a dragon. One particularly confident bestiary claims a serpent can be driven from a house by burning the left hoof of a white stag beneath a full moon, which seems an extraordinary amount of effort when a broom would do just as well.

This is exactly the credulous rubbish I came here hoping to find. Another hour of it and I’ll be able to go home and blame the blue light on an exhausted mind.

I slide the bestiary back into place and reach for the smaller volume wedged beneath it. The leather is almost black with age and badly cracked along the spine. Whatever title was once stamped across the cover has faded, so I carry it to the small window and angle it beneath the weak afternoon light.

De Natura Daemonum.

There we are. That seems about right.

The first pages are dense enough to make my eyes ache, but somebody—Gideon, perhaps, or whichever equally cheerful soul owned the thing before him—has crowded the margins with notes in English.

A few pages later, the text gives way to illustrations—horned men with tails, winged creatures feasting on sinners, and one unfortunate beast who appears to have acquired an additional face where no face has any business being.

None of them looks remotely like Doctor Iscairn, although I’ve never actually seen enough of him to rule anything out with confidence. He could have a tail tucked beneath that enormous coat for all I know, though horns seem less likely unless they are remarkably small⁠—

My eyes narrow as an image of his ridiculous hat fills my mind.

No. Surely not.

I turn the page and continue skimming account after account until the words blur. These demons ruin crops, sour milk, and drag souls from bodies in agony, carrying them down to Hell while they claw and scream. According to De Natura Daemonum, I ought to have known a demon the moment I met one.

But there’s bugger all about blue light slipping from a woman’s mouth.

Every page gives me something monstrous to look for, and Iscairn obligingly fails to possess any of it. He smells of leather, smoke, rain, and earth. He pulls rotten teeth from frightened children. He carried me home when my leg gave out and never once complained about the inconvenience.

“Ophelia?”

I turn so quickly that De Natura Daemonum nearly slips from my hands. I catch it against my skirt before shoving it behind my back.

He’s stopped just inside the doorway, the hem of his cassock dark with melted snow. The cold is still bright across his cheeks, his mucky brown hair falling in damp waves around his face.