Entry for 20 August - Zahne, Part 2



The first night that Zahne was in my home feels like some sort of dream now. When I think back on it, it is a blur of weariness, exhaustion, fear. One of the village guards helped me carry him from Jack’s saddle to the bed in the guest room. And then I was left alone with him, to try and preserve his life.

He was a wretched sight. Not only from the wounds suffered in the fire, but...ah, forgive me, Zahne, for speaking these things. He had so clearly been neglected and abused in his helpless state. The sheer number of bruises and scars spoke of many misfortunes over many months. Where his missing eye had been, there was...it is hard to describe now. It seemed perhaps some lump of scarred flesh, but the tissue was an odd color, and seemed to “crawl” over his face and around to the nape of his neck, like tendrils of some otherworldly parasite. I could only assume it was perhaps a festering wound, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. He was a large fellow, quite tall, and it was easy to imagine he had once been strong and sturdy. But now he was withered and frail, grey-haired, a face full of untended whiskers. And he smelled of a man who had not been bathed in a long, long time.

My foremost concern was for the burns he had suffered, but what he complained of most (still only able to communicate with me through the blinking of his solitary eye), was the curious and troubling lump of tissue that trailed from his face to the back of his skull. And so, after a very brief and restless bit of sleep, I hurried back to town to find a healer. I suppose my disheveled and soot-covered appearance worked in my favor, for when I knocked on the door in Bree, and a strange man peered out at me, his eyes went wide and he immediately ran for his medicine bag.

The hours that followed, I hesitate to recall. They were not pleasant. Even now, the memories of what I saw that night make me shudder in horror. The burns were tended quickly and with the ease of a physician who knew his trade well. But then the healer turned his attention to the socket where Zahne’s eye once was. To that strange lump of flesh that seemed so alien and peculiar, even to my untrained eyes. It is too terrible to recount in detail now, though I will never forget the sight of the man poking and prodding and tugging at it with his tools. And the way the putrid chunk of flesh peeled away from Zahne’s face, and…

I will write no more about that! Suffice it to say that when the physician left, Zahne seemed far more at ease, despite the terrible night he’d endured. And to my great shock, as the sun rose and my weariness threatened to overwhelm me, he spoke his first words to me. Then came the slow understanding that his affliction, his paralysis, his muteness, had been caused by whatever dark and sickly thing had been growing on his body. He could speak now, and move a little, but he was utterly helpless still; weak and fragile and devoid of strength.

With his life no longer in immediate danger, I turned my attention to less urgent needs. He needed water, food, rest. And a bath.