The healthy dead

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Imid Factallo, foreman of the work crew relaying the cobbles round back of the Wall, was struck unconscious by a collapsing wagon, and so became a saint. His fellow workers, their faces smeared in dust, stared down upon him in wonder as he blinked open his eyes. The sky behind those mundane visages looked indeed the resplendent residence of the Lady of Beneficence, the Goddess of Wellness, into whose finely boned arms Imid Factallo felt himself on the verge of falling. If, of course, one could indeed fall upward, plunging clear of the heavy, laden earth, and dive with keening joy into the vast blueness overhead.

But the glorious ascent never arrived. Instead, runners had set out to the Grand Temple and were now returning, this time leading worthies, their pink shirts and pantaloons bound at the joints, arms and legs filled out with padding to infer to any and all onlookers the musculature of vigorous health, their drawn faces painted in flushed tones. And joining them, three Well Knights, white-cloaked and clanking in the highly polished, silver-etched armour of their exalted rank-and Imid saw, foremost among these three, none other than Invett Loath, Purest of the Paladins, who needed no rouge to colour his square-jawed, large-nosed face, which was very nearly purple, so thoroughly blooded the veins and arteries beneath the only-so-slightly spotty skin. Imid knew as well as any other citizen that one might, upon seeing Knight Invett Loath for the first time, assume the very worst-that the Paladin was far too fond of ale, wine and the other forbidden vices of slovenly living-but this was not the case. Invett Loath could not be preeminent among the Knights were he such a fallen soul. In fact, nothing untoward had passed his lips his entire life. At least inward.

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