Valor of the Healer

by Angela Highland

  Then her knees wobbled, and she had just enough presence of mind to lower her hands from Julian’s head before she fell. His hand caught one of hers; his other arm looped around the small of her back, keeping her from pitching to the floor. Raw and full of shock, his single eye’s gaze raked over her.

  “Faanshi,” he said, and his voice sounded strange, as if he’d never seen her before.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered. Memories of old pain so strong she could almost see them resonated behind her eyes, but not quite strong enough to show her what she sought.

  His features twisted, his stare going dark with something she thought was fear. “You don’t know? I thought your magic told you things about those you healed.”

  “I know only that...” Faanshi hesitated. Then she laid two fingertips against his cheek, just beneath his destroyed eye. “That someone hurt you, and that I wish they had not.”

  Julian’s hand closed around hers and drew it down away from him. “Then you know enough,” he said as he let her fingers go. “Don’t ask me for more than that. Not yet.”

  “Will you tell me someday?”

  “Perhaps.”

  That he didn’t say no surprised her. It was still too new and strange that a man might give her something because she asked for it, but it gave her a tentative hope. “For now, then, will you tell me what message you’ve sent to the elves?”

  Julian sighed, rubbing his hand across his face. “I’ve asked them to meet us in a place their scouts know, and I’ve mentioned a little of why. More than that wasn’t safe for Rab to write, even in Elvish. We’ll stay here until they reply.”

  “What will we do then, or if they tell us no?”

  “You’re full of questions tonight, girl. I have no answers for you.” He reached for the bottle, and it was as though someone had wrapped a korfi around his face, for she could no longer read what his features held.

  That gave her a pang of odd, sharp disappointment—and of confusion. He was a taker of lives, and that went against Djashtet’s holy ridahs. Yet all she could think of was the look in his eye. It seemed like pain, but none that she knew how to reach, with or without her magic.

  “Go to bed. Pray if you want. We’re as safe as we’re likely to be, so now’s the time.”

  “As you wish.” She didn’t want to leave, but she knew a dismissal when she heard one, and could think of no reason to stay. As she stepped to the door Julian tipped the bottle to his lips for a pull from its neck, and he didn’t look as though he would welcome her any longer. “Djashtet be with you, Julian.”

  He didn’t answer or watch her go, and that night her prayers to the Lady of Time brought no comfort.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Worry. Confusion. Fear. The emotions struck out of nowhere, in blows he couldn’t dodge. Between one breath and the next, Kestar was overwhelmed—and elsewhere. Hands pressed against someone’s bowed head, shaking with the echo of years-old agony—

  They weren’t his reactions, and part of him knew it, surging up to defend against the onslaught. To no avail, for Faanshi’s power was as tangible as her panic, and his own hands clenched in a blind attempt to soothe a hurt he couldn’t actually reach. Heat pulsed in his chest, spreading through his frame till he could think of nothing but setting it free.

  Sleep was no refuge. He could still taste the last posset the doctor had made him drink, hot milk laced with wine and flavored with cinnamon and cloves, and the laudanum fog it wrapped around his thoughts was as much of a threat as the reactions invading him. Between them, he was trapped. When he tried to flee both heat and fog, he found no escape save deeper within, to the sunlit meadow he’d built within himself.

  She was waiting there.

  “I’m sorry, akreshi.”

  Kestar was all too glad to take in the texture of the grassy earth beneath his prone form, the scent of heather on the wind, and most of all the absence of pain in his chest...until he heard Faanshi’s voice. Even before she’d finished speaking, he was on his feet and whirling to face her. Much more slowly, unsurely, the healer girl rose to stand beside him.

  Her humble Tantiu slave garb was gone, replaced by clothing of green, gold and brown, hues that could hide her in forest shadow. Her hair too was changed, short now, a wind-tousled and almost boyish mop that served only to accent the fragile structure of her face. Most of all, with signs of strain haunting her features, she looked every bit as weary as he felt.

  With a frown, he said, “You were healing someone else.”

  “A little while ago,” she agreed. “I’m asleep now.”

  “Not the one who tried to kill me?” It wasn’t really a question, and Kestar couldn’t keep resentment out of his voice.

  Nor did Faanshi seem surprised to hear it. Distress flared in her eyes, and for a moment she thrust out her hands, only to pull them back before she could touch him in the first sign of restlessness he’d seen from her. “Julian, not Rab. And it wasn’t a proper healing, since he isn’t hurt now. It was just the old hurt done to him, you see, his eye and his hand. My magic must have sensed that when I healed him before.”

  Unfamiliar pain lanced across Kestar’s mind, not his or even hers, but an echo that reached him through her memory and magic. “Holy Father and Mother,” he whispered, starring himself. He didn’t want any reason to feel kinship to the man who’d led the attack on him and Celoren, the man he should have been chasing even now. The realization that the girl’s magic was still expressing itself—and exhausting her in the bargain—was uncomfortable enough. “Maiden, you can’t do this. Whatever you’ve done to link us like this, to put your thoughts into mine—”

  “I don’t know what I did, I swear to you!”

  “They think you’re going to drive me mad.” The words were pebbles in his throat. He could barely utter them. “Cel thinks I am already. The priest has almost won him over. They think I haven’t noticed, because of the drugs, but gods!”

  “Father Enverly is very clever,” Faanshi said, with a trace of bitterness beneath her gentle tone. “And very dangerous. I’m so sorry I’ve frightened you and put you in peril. I don’t mean to.”

  Wetness gleamed in her eyes, and Kestar couldn’t face it. He whipped around on his heels, shoving a hand up through his hair and squeezing his eyes shut. “I know. Blessed gods, I know, but maiden...Faanshi...” Against his better judgment, he let himself say her name, let himself turn back round to her. “I can’t let this stop me from coming after you.”

  “I know.”

  “It’ll be better for both of us if you undo this.”

  Her face fell; her gaze dropped, shamed, so like her cringing posture at Lomhannor Hall that it made Kestar wince to see it. “I would if I knew how. To make you less frightened. Forgive me, akreshi.”

  “You know my name.” It wasn’t wise, and Celoren would surely howl in protest, but he had no other consolation to offer her. “I don’t mind if you use it.”

  Faanshi’s head snapped up again, and though sadness lingered in her eyes, her mouth curled into a frail smile. “Thank you, Kestar. You honor me.”

  “And you have a strange sense of honor. If I find you, Faanshi, I may well be your death.”

  “You might not find me. I’m going to hide.”

  Regret twisted through him at the thought that initiative was kindling within her, that she’d be acting to defend her freedom even as he hunted her to take it. Yet something sang within him at that knowledge. “Good,” he said, and though he knew he shouldn’t, he smiled a little. “Use your time. Please. I’m...not in good shape, and I don’t know how I’ll get free of Father Enverly. They’ve been doing something to me, even beyond the drugs. It may be days.”

  Sadness flashed out of the maiden’s face, giving way to alarm. “Has he taken your blood?” she demanded. “He’s done that to me. Why, I don’t know, but when he does it, when he prays over me, it makes me ill. Don’t let him do it!”

  She couldn’t tell, he realized, bec
ause his memories of the past several hours were muddled. Before Kestar could stop her, Faanshi lifted an anxious hand to his brow—and at her touch, her recollections overwhelmed his own. Through her eyes, he saw the old priest slicing open her palm, clutching the wounded hand and holding it high, while he intoned words that sounded almost familiar to the Hawk’s ears.

  “Merciful Mother. It—it sounds like the Rite of the Calling.” Fright choked him as he uttered the words, too strong to be his alone. Not all of it, though, was the maiden’s. In between the glimpses from her he saw Enverly again, and this time, the bleeding hand the priest held was Kestar’s own.

  “This isn’t something a priest should do.” Faanshi’s voice was uncertain, but her eyes were sure.

  Kestar slowly shook his head. “No. Dear gods...no.”

  “What does it mean? It isn’t the Cleansing?”

  “It means...” He had to force himself to admit it, for her fear of what the Church would do to her was already powerful, and he was loath to make it worse. “It means he’s trying to summon the Anreulag. It’s forbidden for all but the High Priest, and the spell shouldn’t even work for him. It’s protected, none who hear it should remember it! But if you felt...if I felt...”

  “Does he seek to call Her because of you?”

  “Me, or you, if he’s been conspiring with your master to keep you and your magic hidden. This is what I needed to know, Faanshi. This is why I came back to question you.”

  She lowered her hands, as anxiously as she’d lifted them, and stared up at him. “Then you’re in danger, just as much as I.”

  He’d known that, of course; they both had. Yet to hear her say it—the girl who’d saved his life, when she should have been the target of his Hawk’s sword and sight—drove it home with cold finality. “I don’t know what I can do.”

  None of the worry eased out of the maiden’s face, yet despite it, she offered him a smile. For just a moment, before the light took her away, Kestar thought he even saw a kind of humor in her eyes. “If you lack the strength to win your freedom by force,” she suggested, “perhaps you should try being harmless. It seems to have worked for me.”

  * * *

  The words of Faanshi’s warning faded with her into the fog, yet their urgency remained. And so, the next time someone came for him, Kestar was awake and waiting.

  Two, perhaps three, days had passed, as near as he could guess. With no window through which to track the sun’s passage and no chance to see Celoren’s watch, he’d had to seek other means to count the hours. The echoes of the church bell, pealing out morning and evening services, had reached even down into his cell. Twice daily the doctor had come to tend his wound, bringing meals of fresh fruit, porridge and tea to sustain him. But she’d also brought the laudanum, laced into either the food or his water—or both. Robbed of his volition by the drug, he’d lost hours on end to dreams both sleeping and waking.

  He was sure, though, that the priest had come to him. No more than an ominous sense of a presence in the room remained in his conscious memory; nothing more was needed. Not when a fresh bandage swathed his left wrist and hand, protecting an injury he hadn’t sustained fighting Faanshi’s assassins.

  Dazed as Kestar was, he was unsure whether the sound of his cell’s door opening was real or imagined. Thus he held himself still, wrestling against the haze across his thoughts, until there was no mistaking the voice of the woman who’d come to see him.

  “I know you’re conscious, my lord, so you might as well open your eyes and let me have another look at you.”

  Kestar grimaced. “I’m here,” he muttered, opening his eyes with an effort. They felt weighted shut with stones.

  Doctor Lannedes sat on the edge of the cot beside him and took his wrapped wrist in her hands, prodding the bandage with cautious fingers. As if she hadn’t truly expected him to answer, she raised her eyebrows. “Good. Then you can tell me whether this hand of yours hurts. And if you please, move your fingers.”

  “I don’t remember how I hurt it.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You’ve been less than aware. Fortunately, your range of motion doesn’t appear to have been affected, though I’ll warn you, I’ll need you to remove your shirt so that I can look at the far more serious wound. Please take care doing so.”

  Kestar’s wits lurched at Doctor Lannedes’s request, and before he knew what he was doing, he was fumbling at his throat for his amulet. Before he could find it and hide it behind his head, or in his hand or hair, she intercepted his wandering fingers.

  “Calm yourself, Lord Vaarsen. I’ve been tending you for the last four days. You’ve no secrets from me, certainly none I intend to tell.” That gave him enough pause that he ceased resisting her, and she released his hands. “That’s better. Now tell me, how severe is your pain?”

  “I couldn’t say, Doctor,” Kestar said as soon as he could speak through the whirling in his head. “Perhaps I could better gauge it if you didn’t drug me into dreaming.”

  “I’ve been given a strict regimen for your care. If you would oblige me with the shirt, my lord?”

  Her manner was entirely impersonal; she touched him with a physician’s hands, addressed him with a physician’s voice. And yet something about her demeanor, a hint of prim disapproval lurking within her tone, prodded at the Hawk. Though he didn’t know what part the doctor had to play in his imprisonment, he saw no choice but to confront her. The possibility that she might not be in league with Father Enverly, however slight, couldn’t be discounted. As he hauled himself upright upon the cot, marshaling every scrap of his concentration to untie his shirt’s laces, his heart skittered nervously beneath his bandages. It almost hurt, and he had to fight to maintain his calm.

  Did he have an ally in Elessa Lannedes?

  He couldn’t be certain. Nor could he study her, not when he had to go through the awkward motions of disrobing, and not when the pull of abused muscles in his chest and an answering twinge in his wrist forced his eyes shut in frustration. But she must have seen him wince, for she spoke as he finally tugged the garment over his head.

  “I’m neither priestess nor member of your Order, but I know that a Knight of the Hawk must be unused to inaction and injury...and confinement.”

  When she said that, he was sure.

  Kestar fixed his attention upon her. He could feel himself sweat, but he ignored it along with his amulet’s light, cool and pale against the warmth of the lamp the doctor had brought with her. “Truly,” he said, summoning all his will to keep his voice and gaze steady, “I’m unused to them even now.”

  For a long moment she searched his face. Then something shifted in her own, some thoughtful nuance of her expression that Kestar couldn’t name. Nor did she immediately answer him. He could only wait, in an agony of anticipation, as she reached for the cloth strips that wrapped his chest.

  “Take a deep breath and hold it. Release it slowly upon my mark.”

  “It aches,” he grunted as he obeyed her.

  “And that, Lord Vaarsen, is why it would be unwise for you to forgo the laudanum quite yet. You’re still a wounded man. You may put your shirt back on, however.”

  “Do I require so much?” He slipped the shirt back on over his head. That hurt too, more than before, but he bore it. If anything, the pain chased off some of the fog and gave him the focus he needed to press a direct question. “Doctor, how did I hurt my hand?”

  “As I said, I’ve been given a strict regimen for your care.” Doctor Lannedes rose from the cot, leaning over to retrieve a battered leather bag from the floor. She wasn’t young; though any maiden might have envied her trim figure, she lacked a maiden’s casual grace. Nor was the pursing of her lips the slightest bit maidenly, and the disapproval in her eyes burned clearly now. “A very strict regimen. One which, I fear, I haven’t been able to enact as thoroughly as I’d expect should be the case. How you got that slice in your hand when there have been no sharp objects in this room, only the gods themse
lves know. Or perhaps Father Enverly.”

  His heart thudding harder, he ventured, “Then I’d be most foolish to ignore my physician’s advice if it’s already been compromised at least once.”

  “A sober, rational decision,” the doctor replied, and Kestar thought he saw satisfaction glinting in her dark eyes. Producing two bottles from her bag, she plucked their corks free and poured out a measure of the larger bottle’s contents into the smaller. “My advice therefore is this. Should your pain grow past bearing, use this dose as you must for your release.”

  Elation Kestar didn’t dare express flared within him, for Lannedes had said nothing that might turn on her later—and he had no way of knowing if anyone eavesdropped beyond the door. “Thank you, Doctor,” he breathed. “You’re most gracious.”

  She never stopped moving, setting the stoppers back in both bottles, placing the smaller upon the trunk beside his cot, and returning the larger to her bag. But she cast him one last glance as she departed, saying, “An ailing Hawk can’t be denied the sky if he’s to regain his wings, Lord Vaarsen. Good day.”

  The instant the cell door shut behind her, Kestar starred himself and murmured a grateful prayer. Keys jingled; either the doctor or someone who’d accompanied her was locking the door. He waited until the sound faded, and then, as swiftly as he could manage, shot up off the cot, snatched up the bottle, and poured half its contents into the water pitcher on the trunk.

  Perhaps you should try being harmless.

  With Faanshi’s last few words from his dreams haunting his perceptions, he hid the bottle under his pillow. He didn’t want to think too closely about whatever magic she’d wrought to bind them together from afar. In truth, he didn’t want to think about her at all. Yet she’d offered him a course of action he couldn’t deny. He lacked the strength and the arms to overpower anyone who entered his cell, and he had neither tools nor skill to pick the lock. Yet he couldn’t wait until someone came to set him free or until he’d regained his stamina. Each hour he lay idle was an hour in which his life as he knew it slid further out of his control, and in which Father Enverly might turn his inexplicably shining amulet into a noose for his neck.