Valor of the Healer (2 page)

“Shall I presume that something went awry with the plan?” Even with his voice pitched to a whisper, even as he looped Julian’s right arm over his shoulders and levered him up out of the gorse, Nine-fingered Rab sounded sardonic. For Rab, sarcasm was normal. Particularly as a cover for worry.

A spot above his left knee shrieked a protest at his body being pulled vertical, and Julian’s vision went red with agony. “
Bugger
the plan!”

Rab’s arms tightened around him, keeping him upright. “Where else are you hurt?”

“L-leg.” Bones shifted in his thigh, almost driving Julian into unconsciousness. “Broken.”

Rab swore. “You won’t get far on that. Where’d you put the
òrennel
?”

The pouch their elven employers had given them didn’t hold much, just a handful of bits of innocuous-seeming bread rolled into compact spheres for easy carrying, easy eating—and easy hiding of the paste of charmed herbs in the center of each one. It bore just enough healing power to grant an injured man stamina and strength to reach a safe haven. Rab had taken one look at the pouch and point-blank ordered Julian to be its bearer, though the Rook was the leader, Rab the follower. Julian had grumbled but acquiesced. He couldn’t deny that he was the more physically vulnerable of the pair of them. Slumping broken and bleeding in his partner’s arms drove that lesson home with unmistakable force.

“Right side,” he muttered in woozy disgust. “Can’t move my blasted hand to get to it.”

Rab leaned him against the wall of the Hall and reached into the pouch for two of the
òrennel
spheres. The Rook clenched his teeth to keep from howling at the movement, but then the younger man’s hand found his mouth despite the dark and fed him the bread.

Julian chewed, swallowed and almost retched at the earthy, prickly sensation that fell like a landslide through his chest, as though he’d gulped down a fistful of mud and twigs. For an instant he envisioned exactly that, the night blurring into unreality around him, till he saw himself pitching facedown into the dirt of a forest glade and choking as he inhaled—

“You won’t like the taste, human,” Alarrah’s voice informed him in the swirl of dazed memory. “But humor me and take it. Consider it my contribution to your success—”

Then watery coolness sluiced across Julian’s awareness, opening an unsteady core of clarity within the fog. The pain retreated to the borders of his thoughts. He half-fancied it circled him, looking for an opportunity to lunge at his throat.

Focus
,
man
.

It still required effort, but to his amazement, Julian found that he could. Light-headed, he peered up at Rab. Like his own, Rab’s face was streaked with ash, his telltale fair hair hidden beneath a black woolen cap. Even up close, very little of Nine-fingered Rab could be discerned in the darkness. But at least now the Rook could begin to make him out.

“Is it working?”

“A little. I can think. We’ve got to move.”

“Only if that leg can hold up.”

“Clean break,” Julian grunted. He’d broken bones before, and while his leg pulsed with undeniable fire, it lacked the exquisite pain of bone piercing outward through flesh. Or so he hoped. The
òrennel
gave him clarity, but it also distanced him from his battered body, and he didn’t trust his own perceptions. “If I can’t keep up, you keep moving.”

They’d had this argument before. But this time Rab held back his usual sallies—“I’d abandon you with a ready heart, but you still owe me fifteen quid” or “Leave you in the midst of such a lively engagement? And miss the quadrille?” As his partner hobbled away with him into the night, uneasiness shot through him. Had Rab seen something about his injuries he couldn’t sense himself?

Best not to think about it. They had horses hidden, ready and waiting for their escape. But to ride them, they had to reach them. Julian narrowed his focus till nothing remained but the need to get to those mounts.

It wasn’t enough.

Blood staining his garments from the bullet wound, his damaged leg trembling alarmingly, he collapsed just before they reached the terrace where Lomhannor’s southeastern wing joined its heart. Rab fed him two more of the
òrennel
spheres, but as Julian swallowed them down he could tell that his second rally wouldn’t be as great as the first. His haven of clarity grew smaller by the instant, fog lapping at its edges, broadening the distance between him and the world. Pain pulled farther away, but so did conscious thought.

The numbing of his thoughts undid him. Julian never remembered afterward what happened, whether he’d put weight on his left foot or if the broken bones shifted enough to hit a nerve. All he knew was that in one moment he was striving to keep moving—and in the next his leg was convulsing.

Thundering pain tilted the world on its axis, hurling him, and Rab along with him, down to the earth. Fragile branches of another bush snapped as he fell through it to a wall beyond. There was a hole too, a window perhaps, right at the level of the ground. Blind with agony, he registered the opening only by the absence of stone in that part of the wall, by the musty air that wafted through it, and by the iron bars against which his body collided.

Somewhere outside the fog Rab breathed a frantic curse, and his hands swept over him, searching for further hurt.

Then another hand entirely reached through the window and closed upon his wounded shoulder.

A voice whispered, “I beg your forgiveness,
akreshi
, but I have no choice.”

And everything vanished in lightning.

Chapter Two

Faanshi had no warning. Fire ignited in her shoulder and leg, throwing her so violently out of the calm of meditation that she fell sideways onto the cellar floor. For a few heartbeats she thought she’d been dreaming, that she’d dozed off kneeling there upon her tattered prayer cushion—but no. Her entire left side was awash in pain and, with a mewling little moan, she saw her power roaring in response. A nimbus of light bathed her hands. Her palms were hot, the skin pulled unbearably taut, as if threatening to split from the pressure of what roiled within them. Through this, there could be no sleeping, only a brief frantic prayer to Djashtet, and panic that drove the air from her lungs.

Then a body fell across the bars of the cellar window, and she knew that the fire’s source had reached her.

Blood’s sharp scent punctuated the aches she could sense in that flesh, and inexorable need urged her up to put her hands on that pain and let the fire surge forth to obliterate it. In her terror Faanshi barely marked the second figure beyond the bars, leaning over the fallen one, for the energy flooding her was a merciless lash. It goaded her to her feet and to the empty crate beneath the window. Up onto this she climbed, almost slipping before she found her balance on her perch.

One of her hands caught the window’s rightmost bar, while the other connected with the black-clad form sprawled on the ground, little higher than her head. Magic rolled through her palm, leaving her scarcely enough strength for an apology before it began to consume the pain and her consciousness with it.

“I beg your forgiveness,
akreshi
, but I have no choice,” she gasped out into the night.

A storm of dizzied thoughts overwhelmed her own.

They
were
dead
,
Rab
,
you
idiot
,
get
out
of
here
,
gods
,
no
not
his
other
hand
too
—
new
pain
in
his
leg
—
dear
gods
,
his
leg
was
convulsing
—
old
pain
at
his
wrist
why
could
he
feel
it
his
hand
was
gone
—
fire
blazed
in
his
skull
like
the
poker
that
had
taken
his
eye
—
I
didn’t
do
it
,
Cleon
,
I
swear
I
didn’t
do
it
,
don’t
,
brother
,
don’t
!

Golden flame engulfed the form beyond the bars, drowning the convulsions of the shuddering leg, mending the sundered bone. It coursed along the shoulder where a bullet had struck, and there too bone smoothed out as splinters and fragments rejoined the whole. Flesh followed bone, rippling and settling beneath torn cloth, and strength flowed out of her with the fire. Helpless to stop it, Faanshi regained a minute corner of herself only with a second, desperate prayer.

Almighty
Djashtet
,
forgive
me
,
I
can’t
keep
it
in
!

The fire erupted back upon itself in twin bolts of pain. Her left eye seemed to turn to ash within her head, her right hand to disintegrate in a halo of flame. Faanshi heard herself shriek, and her hand jerked back as though true fire raged through the stranger along with the magic. Her legs buckled, slapping her body into the cellar’s wall. Before she could slump to the floor, a hand shot between the bars, seizing her by her rough woolen sari and the
choli
she wore beneath.

Her power fluttered. In its wavering light she saw the stranger’s face, pale skin peeking through a coating of dark ash in streaks of sweat. One blue eye stared down at her, thunderstruck. A dull black patch hid the other from her view.

“What the devil are you, girl?” the stranger whispered.

“I’m only a slave,
akreshi
, I didn’t mean to, forgive me!” The craven apology was a reflex, as uncontrolled as her magic—Faanshi was conscious only of blurting out the Tantiu honorific, the one word that usually stood between her and her master’s wrath. She drooped low against the wall, all the retreat she could manage. Her hand still clung to the window bar, but she couldn’t make her fingers move or summon the strength to pull out of his grip.

His gloved hand pressed upon the back of her head, swift and light. Through the wool that covered her hair, she sensed the leather on the palm, the fingertips left bare. Through her power’s echoes, even that fleeting contact burned. “You don’t need to apologize,” he murmured, and she looked back up in shock. “Not for this.”

“Damn it, Rook, we’ve got to move,” urged another voice just beyond the bars.

The hand retreated, and the man she’d healed barked as he scrambled to his feet, “I know, I know. Go!”

The hurried exchange gave over to scuffling sounds, which in turn became running footsteps that faded into the night. Faanshi heard nothing more before she pitched sideways off the crate and down into oblivion.

* * *

“Foolish, headstrong child. What have you done?”

Tantiu words whispered in reedy tones called Faanshi back to herself. Hands swathed a damp cloth across her face and throat, and she shuddered as the coolness leached away the heat within her flesh. Faanshi took refuge in the ministration, but with that crumb of awareness came others.

The cellar whose walls bounded her existence took shape in her sight, along with what pitiful furnishings it contained. A short shelf bore what few books were allowed her, all in Adalonic, on the sects of the Church of Four Gods and the known sightings of the Anreulag, their Voice, who carried out their will and hunted users of magic. Beside it, a basket held neatly folded, half-done mending, along with a delicate doily she was painstakingly knitting when time permitted—but no needles, for even the fragile needles she needed for the lacework were forbidden her when she was alone.

She’d been moved back to her cot, and the cloth against her face meant that her veil had been removed. Only one person in Lomhannor Hall would attend her so, and without surprise, Faanshi opened her eyes to find her great-aunt Ulima beside her, visible in an oil lamp’s wan light.

“You shouldn’t have moved me,
okinya
,” Faanshi said. It was a relief to answer in their native tongue. Only to her, in this room, could she speak Tantiu freely. And only in this room could she call the old woman by that word of kinship, rather than the
akresha
that honor and rank would have demanded beyond the cellar door. “I’m too heavy for you.”

Wispy black brows almost invisible against cinnamon-hued skin rose. “Age doesn’t excuse one from the exercise of compassion, child.” Dark eyes in a nest of wrinkles searched Faanshi’s face. “The gift the Lady of Time gave you has been used this night, has it not?”

“I...” Faanshi scowled. She didn’t want to weep, didn’t want to yield to the weakness the magic had left her—weakness was shameful. But her head swam with the one-eyed stranger’s thoughts, and she couldn’t find the words she needed to speak among them.

“You’d best tell me, Faanshi. There is much afoot this night. The duke is roused, and the Hall with him.” Ulima’s gnarled hands remained gentle with the cloth, but her voice held steel. “Who have you healed?”

“The
akreshi
is coming?” Fright swelled through Faanshi, and chagrin followed. She was a slave, casteless by the laws of Tantiulo and Adalonia both, but this meant that she had to work all the harder to uphold Djashtet’s sacred
ridahs
. Panic, too, was shameful. So Ulima had always taught her. Yet she couldn’t keep it in any more than she’d done the magic.

For once her kinswoman didn’t chastise her. “Something has stirred the Hall tonight. Guardsmen are in every corridor. The duke bellows orders and the duchess...” Ulima frowned. “She lies ailing in her chambers. The duke may summon you to attend her. If you have no power tonight because you’ve already healed, he’ll want to know why.”

“There was a man,” Faanshi admitted. “Two, really, but I healed only one. He fell there.” She pointed to the window high on the cellar wall before she grabbed at the blanket Ulima had laid over her. In a choked voice she finished, “His shoulder was hurt, and his leg. I couldn’t keep the magic inside me,
okinya
. I couldn’t stop it—I felt where his body was broken—I had to touch him. I was going to be sick if I didn’t touch him.” Abashed, she scrubbed her hand across her eyes, trying to eliminate the betraying dampness if she couldn’t halt it.

Ulima ceased her attentions with the cloth and pressed it into Faanshi’s fingers so that she might dab at her own face. “What else do you remember of this man you healed?”

Don’t
,
brother
,
don’t
!

His voice crying out in terror and pain, though not at her touch. The memory felt old, though it throbbed like a new wound in her mind, tangled up in agony both present and past that even now itched along her palms. But would her
okinya
want to know these things? How could she begin to voice them?

Before she could say more, the thud of wood against stone resounded outside the cellar. Faanshi froze. She knew that noise, the door crashing open at the top of the stairs that led to the kitchens. Seconds later came the sound that always followed, the steps of large, booted feet striking the floor. Her mind went blank, but her body acted, all too aware of what had to be done when those noises reached her ears.

As she scrambled off the cot and kneeled on the floor, Ulima fastened her veil’s silver chain behind her head. “Courage, child,” the old woman whispered, “and Djashtet will bring you deliverance.”

That assurance was familiar, though Faanshi had yet to believe it. Even before she’d lost what little freedom she’d had on her master’s estate, before her days had become endless cycles of mending and lacework, of meditation and prayer, what deliverance the Lady of Time might have provided seemed as ethereal as dreams. The people of Lomhannor Hall worshipped the Four Gods, and not even Ulima could publicly speak much of Djashtet. Even the Tantiu-born of the estate shared tales of sightings of the Anreulag, and many of the guards, who’d fought in the war between Adalonia and Tantiulo just before Faanshi was born, claimed to have seen the Voice of the Gods with their own eyes. Against such stories, her okinya’s promises had never meant much.

As the door swung open with a grinding of rusted hinges, they meant even less.

Faanshi didn’t look—she was forbidden to look upon the duke without his command. But every part of her was aware of his presence. Her skin chilled. Though she pressed them into her lap to keep them still, her hands shook.

“You look overwrought, my girl,” the duke rumbled. His Adalonic was harsher than Tantiu, lacking its nimble inflections, and Faanshi forced herself to keep from flinching at its sound. He stepped forward, bringing his polished boots into her line of sight. His big hand slipped beneath her veil, caught her chin and tilted it so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes. Pinned by his leonine regard, she didn’t dare to breathe even as his attention slid to Ulima. “Good evening. I trust I do not interrupt?”

“She was having one of her fits,
akreshi
.” Tantiu accents flavored Ulima’s words as she switched to the duke’s language. “Triggered by tonight’s disturbance, perhaps. After attending to your honored wife, I came down to ensure none would suffer the additional burden of the girl’s vagaries.”

Faanshi couldn’t see her okinya’s face, not while the duke held her chin fast, but she saw his. Lamplight flickered across it, pooling in his eyes, transforming them to fire. “I see.” His smile turned disconcertingly gentle, yet she took no comfort from it. It didn’t match the flame in his eyes. “Were you having a fit, Faanshi?”

Memory flared within her, old and dark and strong.

Her
power’s
first
awakening
,
to
the
frenzied
hammering
of
a
stallion’s
hooves
and
an
old
man’s
screams
—

The
duke’s
hand
at
her
throat
,
the
knife
in
his
other
slicing
at
her
ears
—

Fire
in
his
skull
—
don’t
,
brother
,
don’t
—

Her own recollections fractured against those from the stranger’s mind. For a horrified instant Faanshi couldn’t tell which was hers, and the shock of that let her find her voice. “Yes,
akreshi
,” she whispered. Her ears throbbed through the echoes of the stranger’s pain.

“I’m so sorry, my dear. You do remember that this is why you must remain locked away?”

“Yes,
akreshi
,” Faanshi repeated. The words were more difficult this time, squeezing up through her throat. To lie was a sin. But the duke had lied when he said she was mad, and he’d locked her in the cellar, and he hurt her with his hands or his knife whenever she failed to say what he wished to hear. When she failed to obey him quickly enough, he gave her to Father Enverly for punishments of blood, and more than once he’d threatened to give her to the Anreulag Herself. But worse than any of these was the thought that he might hurt Ulima, and that Faanshi couldn’t bear. So she whispered the lie, sour though it tasted in her mouth. “I must be locked away because I have fits.”