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The babe's face was as white as milk, tinged with a pall grey.
The mother looked up, and moonlight shone off the tracks the tears made, flowing down her plump cheeks. "Please help her, kere'ki. Do something, anything. Please." She had a face made for joy, not grief, yet grief held her now, tight in its iron clutches.
"Get her inside," Zachariah replied. He stepped back from the heavy oak door, and ushered the weeping mother in. He'd seen few cases as bad as this, where the child had still survived.
He led her to the low altar; a sandstone slab, hewn from a windswept cleft on a desert cliff, hauled to the monastery by a small army of able-bodied men, who took it in turns of three to manage its ponderous weight.
"Set her down," he ordered, while turning to the shelf behind him. He slowly and methodically picked up various vials and jars, preparing himself mentally, sorting his mind, as he should have done his shelf. He turned back to face the mother, and placed the implements on the slab, above the child's still head.
"How many days since birth?" Zach went to work, checking pulse and breath rate.
"Three weeks, kere'ki," came the mother's shaky voice.
"Three weeks? How long has she been like this?"
"A day, no more. As soon as she began to show the symptoms, I traveled here, like you said to."
"Three weeks..."
"Is she going to make it? Is my baby going to live?"
Zach had never seen it come on at three weeks, and the grey was spreading, even as he watched. It looked bad.
"It looks good," he lied, damning himself for it. "I don't think I'll have time to pray, though; the grey is spreading a little too quickly for my liking." No prayer. A babe to save from grey death, and he had no prayer.