by Keith Ahrens
“I befriend no one, save drunk old Sidhe,” she says with a sly grin.
Osmanthus chuckles. “Lies, Lass, but often the truth is not as interesting. Regardless, we both know that humans, with their short, intense lives, live more fiercely than any ten immortal Fey. And it pains me as much as ye, if not more, to see them used as fodder and pawns for our games of power. Therefore, I propose a solution to your loss of House and the future loss of your human friends.”
“There are no solutions, nor answers to my troubles! I am trapped here, alone, save but for you. There is no helping the humans and Gnolls, the sprites, and pixies. They are all under the cruel thumb of Dullahan or others just like him!” Tears fall freely, yet full of anger, from her soft glowing blue eyes.
“No, Lass, ye must listen to me! In a fortnight’s time, the Veils become thin, and the two worlds align for three nights, as it does every full moon. We have time to plan a breakout, a mass exodus of the prisoners, human and Fey alike.”
“But go where? I have nothing and nowhere to go!”
“Ye have friends and your own natural magics! And I still have contacts from my years in exile to the human realm! Don't ye see? We could be free, safe, and living in luxury far away from these cruel tyrants!”
“This is nonsense and fantasy; your own exile was over a hundred years ago as humans measure time. No mortal could remember you. Your plan borders on the insane, and I fear you may be delusional from the drink.”
“Well, now. I never said my contacts were mortals, my dear.”
As comprehension began to dawn, she stares open-mouthed at Wylde, unsure of what to say. She is saved from having to reply when the air suddenly fills with the blaring call of a loud horn. The sound of distant chains pulling on rusted hinges, as the large gates finally open, carries to them through the open window. Thorn rushes to the window and looks down to the courtyard below.
“They've opened the gates. Os, I must get to the cells and attend the wounded!” She stands on tiptoes and kisses the older elf on the cheek. “Thank you, Old Father, but I have to go!” She grabs her satchel and almost sprints from the room.
“Think on what I've said, Young Daughter! There is always hope! Remember, an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all!” He finishes his sentence to an empty room.
Thorn makes it almost down the hallway when a nagging sensation takes hold of her and doesn't let go. Osmanthus’s parting words had struck a sour chord with her. Glancing fretfully toward the field, she makes a decision.
On near-silent feet, she creeps back to Osmanthus’s door. The drunken old fool has left it ajar. Listening intently, she views an odd scene of an elf with much to hide.
Osmanthus slumps down on his bed with a heavy sigh, upending the bottle of wine into his mouth. When nothing pours out, he frowns at the empty vessel and tosses it aside. Leaving the comfort of his bed, Osmanthus Wylde pulls a fresh piece of parchment from a drawer. He considers it with a frown, pen poised, deep in thought. A moment passes then he begins to write neatly and at length.
When he finishes, he holds both hands above it and begins to chant. The thick paper starts to glow, as if a small bit of sunlight is trapped within. A moment passes and the paper quickly folds itself into the shape of a small songbird.
The paper bird shakes itself as the glow fades. It chirps once and hops to the windowsill, launching itself into the air. It begins to whistle as it soars off, as if it were a real bird.
Osmanthus starts a new chant, and the paper bird fades from sight as if flying on swift wings to the north, its song fading into the distance.
He takes up another paper for a second letter but pauses to gather his thoughts. Thorn decides she has seen enough and hurries away to do what she can to help the humans on the field. New questions, and maybe some doubt, are turning in her mind, but she pushes them away.
9
The first thing I notice as I come floating back to consciousness is that everything hurts. My sense of smell kicks in before I open my eyes, and I wish it hadn't. The scent of burnt hair and skin is thick in the air. I cough, and my head feels like its splitting open from my forehead to the back of my skull. I open my eyes up to the sight of the stone ceiling of the tunnel. The light is dim, but I can see multiple forms lying near me as I sit up. Glancing at my wrist, I see much more black than I’m comfortable with, but at least I’m upright and alive.
Some bodies are still smoking from the burns; others are smoldering where plates of armor seared into their skin. A few move weakly. Not far from me, I watch a man whose mouth is open in a moan or a scream. That’s when I realize I can't hear anything. The harder I pay attention, the more I discover that I can only pick up on a muffled high-pitch ringing noise.
Des must have noticed that I'm not dead because he comes over to me, stepping with care around the people strewn about the tunnel. I get to my feet and sway as a wave of dizziness hits me. Shit. Another concussion? This can't be healthy.
Des steadies me by my shoulders, and I see his lips moving as he tries to tell me something. I put a hand up to get his attention and interrupt, “How long was I out?”
He flinches back and says something else, so I repeat my question louder, “How long was I out?” He puts his hand over my mouth and raises a finger to his lips as he seems to repeat what he just tried to say.
A lightbulb goes off in my mind, and I realize he's trying to tell me to stop shouting. I attempt to speak much quieter (at least, I think I do) and say, “Des, I think I'm deaf. How long was I out? It’s important!” I never really realized how hard it is to control your own volume, much less talk out loud when you can't hear yourself speak. I look around at the people strewn about us.
Tapping my shoulder, Des nods his head and holds up two fingers and then forms a circle with the same hand. He repeats the gesture, and I get it. “Twenty minutes?” I gasp.
He holds his hand, palm down and waggles it side to side, pantomiming 'approximately.' I nod again as I continue to glance around. It’s pretty much too late to do much for most of these people. Lightning strikes, at least the regular kind, cause massive burns, but also cardiac arrhythmias and respiratory arrest. In other words, your heartbeat is disorganized, and you can't breathe. In most folks, you have between four and six minutes to restart their heart or get them breathing again before irreversible brain damage and death happen.
Like I said, twenty minutes is way too long. Fourteen to sixteen minutes is still too long.
I kneel by the first body closest to me and put my fingers to his neck. No pulse. I move to the next. Same. I shift to another and feel a faint pulse at the carotid artery. I tilt his head back and wait for a spontaneous breath. It happens, but it is weak. I glance down and see most of the chainmail on his legs and abdomen have fused to the charred skin underneath. Massive burns, probably reaching the internal organs as well. For the most part, he's already dead, not much I can do for him. I shuffle over to the next victim. There are plenty of them, and some make small movements here and there.
I ask Des to go get the freshest water he can find and any bandages he can rustle up. I do a fast headcount as he goes to gather supplies. Thirty-two bodies all lay out on the cold, dirt floor. And all I have for medicine and equipment are rags, a bucket of water, and damaged bits of armor. I've had nightmares more cheerful than this. Deep breath and on to my next patient.
The concept of triage is ingrained deep in me from years of training and experience. Triage means doing the most good for the most people in a limited time. This requires you to pronounce people dead and try to move on to someone else you can help. It takes a certain mindset to do this while continuing to function at a useful level.
I press on, checking each person, triaging as I go. Of the thirty-two people, eighteen are already dead. Another five or six won't last the next few hours. The last fourteen have bad burns to their legs or faces, preventing them from walking around. Most of us are deaf to one degree or another, a f
ew almost completely deaf and blind. I guess I'm luckier than I thought. Except for this damn headache. I think (or hope) the deafness is temporary, but time will tell if my eardrums are ruptured or not. Can't worry about that now.
Des indicates there are another twenty or so that were caught in the shock waves of the electrical currents, but they have minor injuries compared to the others. All of them are alive, but most have some broken bones or bad burns. These casualties have been moved to their own cells to make room around the tunnel entrance for the more severe injuries.
I get to work trying to set bones and apply crude splints with whatever armor pieces or sticks of wood I can scrounge up. Jesse and Des step up to help, but I can tell they are trying their best not to vomit or cry. Not everyone is built to deal with this kind of shit. But the important thing is, they're doing their best to lend a hand. A few of the more mobile ones wander around, checking on friends. Here and there, I see tattoos being activated. I count more skulls than I wish to see.
We cool the worst of the burns with soaked rags and the water we normally drink. Some of the wounds are horrific. Sightless eyes, hazed over from the heat of the lightning, gaze at nothing. Metal has liquefied and fused with melted skin. Jagged bone fragments have torn through skin, bright white sitting in the bloody flesh. The air remains thick and stale with sweat, burned hair, and smoldering skin.
I'm glad to be deaf for now and unable to hear the men and women scream as I force bones back to their original places. It hurts, and I empathize, but it must be done. Though I can't hear their cries, I know they are there. They echo in my head, even in my eerily silent world.
After what seems like hours, I feel a small hand on my back. I glance over my shoulder, and after my double vision resolves, I recognize Thorn. As usual, she's wrapped up in her usual blue ensemble. I sigh in relief, very happy to see her. I think she smiles back, but it’s difficult to tell from beneath her veil and in the dim light. She nods and moves off to the people I haven't made it to yet.
Reaching into her bag, I watch as she pulls out a small jar and dips two fingers into it. Thick, yellow paste sticks to her fingertips. She stoops down to apply the paste to someone’s burnt face. The man immediately seems to relax, and the look of pain slowly fades from his expression. She then wraps his wounds in a loose, clean bandage.
She looks over her shoulder to me, and I think she says something, but damned if I can hear. She tosses me another small jar of the yellow cream.
I manage to catch it, despite my blurred vision, and take her lead, beginning to use the salve to soothe the worst of the burns I can find. We work for a long time, exhausting ourselves and Thorn’s supply of medicines. After a long while, we run out of patients. My head is still pounding, and I’ve tried to move slowly so the dizziness doesn’t knock me out.
With nothing left to do, I drop the empty jar on the dirt floor and stumble my way back to my pallet in my cell. As I flop down to go to sleep, I find it more comfortable now than it ever has been. Yet, the stench of burnt skin stays thick in my nose.
Seconds or hours later, I am jarred awake by a powerful heat in my head and ears that travels down through my chest and flows into all my limbs. The heat intensifies, and I struggle to sit up. Strong hands hold my shoulders and legs down; I fight them as much as I can but to no avail. I have no leverage and not much strength left. The heat crescendos to a raging fever as the ringing in my ears changes pitch and gets louder and louder until a loud POP, and I can finally hear myself shout in pain. The heat recedes like a bonfire quickly doused, and I lay panting for air.
Amid the fog in my head, I hear a voice, quiet and weak, “No one told me the Stupid One was hurt again.”
I look over past Jesse, who's holding my shoulders down, and see Thorn collapse, eyes rolling back in her head. Haynes, standing right behind her, catches her and lays her gently down on his cot.
I slip back into a much more comfortable sleep, though not entirely by choice.
After an indeterminate amount of time, soft voices pull me from my involuntary slumber. Yup, voices! It finally registers that I can hear again! I open my eyes and realize the cell is very dark. The only available light is coming through the small barred window in the door.
“Why is it so dark in here?” I ask, my throat dry and my voice cracking.
A pause and then, “Well, well, well, he has arisen again! You gotta learn to duck on occasion, Hoss. This here's becoming a pattern.” Des laughs but keeps his voice low, his drawl a comfort to my ears.
“Sorry to be so predictable.”
“The pixie died,” says Haynes in a quiet voice, the first words out of his mouth.
“Huh?”
“You asked why it was so dark in here… I said, 'The pixie died.'"
“Still not getting the connection. What pixie?”
“The pixie that was trapped in the crystal in the ceiling. The pixie that lived on ambient magic. The pixie that died when Thorn drained all the magic in the area after she healed your sorry ass,” whispers the angry Sergeant.
“Now, Sarge, that one ain't on him. He had no way of knowing. Thorn pushed herself too hard, that’s all. No one's to blame,” Des whispers, trying to keep the peace. “I felt it, Sarge. After Thorn passed out, I felt her go all weak, like she was fadin' away. Then I felt her reach out, kind of instinctively. She pulled all the magic from the room, that part is true, but she also took just a lil' bit from each one of us. I don't reckon she even knew it.”
The small cell is filled with tension, thick enough to slice and serve on plates. I decide to keep my mouth shut for a change.
Apparently, I am a slow learner and pipe up once more. “So, is she okay?”
“No, she’s not okay! She almost died, you asshole!” whispers Haynes, anger evident.
“I am fine now, Breá,” Thorn's voice sounds muffled from behind him. “But if I'm awakened again by you lot, I may have to kill someone after all.”
“My apologies, ma'am,” says Des.
“Sorry, Thorn, didn't know you were here,” I say. “Um… thank you.”
“Go back to sleep, little one," Haynes says to her, much gentler and reassuring than when he spoke to me. "We'll try to keep it down, but we have a lot to discuss.”
“More than you know,” she mutters sleepily. Straw and fabric rustle as she rolls over and pulls her robe tighter around herself.
We all stay quiet for a few minutes. Then a few more as the lame jailer makes his slow rounds. Step-drag-step-drag. The occasional rattle of the doors reaches us as he checks to make sure they are locked. Thorn snores lightly in her sleep. It’s almost cute. I’m restless and begin to peel at my nails, working at a particularly stubborn hangnail. I've never been good at waiting around and doing nothing. Yeah, sometimes I'm a fidgeter. I admit it.
So… magic. The little of it I'm seeing around here is kind of scary. The lightning attack I can understand. Any time you have more than one person around, eventually someone will figure out a way to kill the other. In the real world, humans keep coming up with more creative ways to kill one another. It just makes sense that the elves have done the same. We developed artillery shells to randomly destroy our enemies, so why wouldn’t the Fey? Magic lightning used as artillery? I guess that makes sense here, too.
But healing that can kill the healer? That’s a scary thought. I've put myself in danger plenty of times. Sometimes without even realizing it. It’s part of my job, my calling. But if I knew that every time I rolled up to a call, there was a chance I could kill myself just by administering medicine, I believe I might have to rethink my career choice.
Life and death are always closely linked. Two sides of the same coin, if that’s not too cliché. The areas I've worked, death is cheap and easy, just like the hookers that haunt the street corners. It only becomes more expensive, more valued, when you have more to live for.
It stands to reason that to use healing magic, the power has to come from somewhere. If I had to guess, that powe
r comes from the healer, from him or herself. The more reasons the healer has to live, the further from death they are. Therefore, the stronger the healer, the further from death they are.
And Thorn almost died tonight. Chew on that for a while.
Des is the first to break the silence. “You still awake?” he whispers.
“Yup." I pause and take a deep breath before I ask, "How many survived?”
Silence for a few moments. “I think about thirty, all told. A few are gonna lose some limbs, and most will be a damn sight uglier. But they're likely to make it. Thorn says you do good work. 'Crude' but good. She went back around after you left and threw a lot of magic around. She was damn near running on empty when she found you. Muttered something ‘bout you cracking your overly thick skull.”
I smile to myself. I would have thought a lot less than that had made it. Guess this magic gig is pretty effective.
“Can anyone learn to use this magic?”
“I dunno. Probably not, or everyone around here would be blowin' shit up. There are things that folk can use that already have magic in them. Kinda like a loaded gun, you'd just have to know how to pull the trigger.”
“Where does the power come from in the first place? Like... I mean, electricity is made by generators, and cars are powered by gas. What powers this magic?”
He thinks for a few moments before replying. “I think it comes from the person using it. Look at what happened to little ol' Thorn. She was just about all used up, and it almost killed her. See, there's a bit of magic everywhere around us. Some places have more than others. Some magic folk can use the magic around them, but it goes quick-like. And I've seen other things, crystals or gems or such that work kind of like batteries so the user doesn't have to drain themselves.”