Valor of the Healer

by Angela Highland

  “Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, Crone of Night,” Faanshi whispered. “Almighty Djashtet, Lady of Time...”

  “Alarrah Tanorel,” corrected the other. “Have you never seen an elf before?”

  “I saw others in the glade. And you. They fought—I felt—Julian!” Alarm pushed Faanshi to scramble off the bed, but with hands no bigger than her own, Alarrah Tanorel took her by the shoulders and stopped her before she went two steps. “What have you done with Julian?”

  “Before I answer that, child, tell me, is the Rook a friend to you?”

  Warmth flowed into her at Alarrah’s contact, entirely familiar, yet unexpected from the hands of another. It coaxed the panic from her limbs, just enough for her heart to slow and her own fractious power to subside. “You’re a healer too. You put me to sleep.”

  “I am. I did.”

  “Did you do that to Julian? I beg you, akresha, tell me where he is!”

  “He isn’t your captor?” Alarrah pressed. “He hasn’t harmed you?”

  Only then did the questions sink in, and Faanshi had to draw in deep breaths before she could accept the relaxation the elf woman’s power offered. The magic was subtler than hers. Unless she concentrated, she couldn’t tell it was there at all. Yet it persisted, and as it did its work, she heard her voice shake. “No! He is my friend. But I don’t think he’d like it very much if I called him that.”

  With that Alarrah’s expression relaxed. “I thought as much, but had to be certain. Julian is nearby. He’s sleeping, and he’s well. Tembriel did him no great—”

  Before she could finish, Faanshi darted out of her grasp and through the vine-patterned curtain. Beyond that was a room like the one where she’d slept, though different patterns of trees and hills were etched upon the walls and the bed bore sheets of white and blue. Julian was sprawled atop the sheets rather than beneath them, his body turned toward the curtain. Relief at the sight of him stopped Faanshi cold. His features were haggard; he slept, but without peace.

  “I’ve healed what little harm he took,” Alarrah said from just behind her. “He’s safe here in Dolmerrath. As are you.”

  Gratitude squeezed Faanshi’s eyes shut for a moment and called up a prayer of thanks. Then, as she looked at the other woman fully at last, her gaze locked on her unmarred ears. That’s what they’re supposed to look like was all that she could think. Yet to say so seemed foolish, and so she said instead, “Dolmerrath?”

  “A hidden haven for my people.” Canting her head, Alarrah studied Faanshi. “And yours.”

  At that simple observation, words crowded Faanshi’s throat, all jostling to be voiced at once. Not even her okinya Ulima had ever called her one of her own people, and here was this sober-eyed stranger doing exactly that. “Then Julian’s kept his promise,” she said, releasing the last of her tension in a long, deep breath. “But why did the others come to fight with us? Did we sin against your gods?”

  The ease in Alarrah’s face faded. “You committed no sin. There was discord among us. Tembriel and Jannyn thought the assassins wished only to sell you to us as a slave.”

  “Julian wouldn’t do that!” The words came out louder than Faanshi intended, and she froze, abashed, as the assassin stirred on the bed nearby. When he failed to awaken she went on more softly, “But Rab might. He isn’t happy that Julian took me from the church.”

  “Will it please you, then, to learn that Rab took his leave of the Rook?”

  “But they’re companions. They travel together.”

  “Apparently not when you’re concerned.”

  “Then—” The thought wouldn’t finish, at least aloud, but it stung Faanshi’s mind even through the echo from the Hawk. That means he’s alone. She hadn’t forgotten that the men had argued about her—their parting must have been bitter. And she’d glimpsed enough while healing Julian to know what such a parting from Nine-fingered Rab would cost him. Her eyes swam with dampness she couldn’t suppress, and of their own volition her feet carried her closer to where Julian lay. She had no conscious thought of what she might do. There was only a need, as strong as any command of her magic, to make amends for what she’d brought about.

  When she was within two paces of the bed he snapped awake. His hand blurred, drawing one of his blades in a hiss of leather against metal. The sound triggered something in her, making her whirl away, out of the reach of the knife. It had almost hit her, she realized in dread, where Rab’s knife had hit the Hawk. As if guided by Kestar’s hand, her own had flashed again to her side where no weapon hung.

  Then Alarrah was beside her, pulling her back. “That’s no greeting for one who was most anxious to make certain you’re well.”

  “Alarrah.” Recognition stole into Julian’s gaze as it flashed over the elf woman, and then to the girl before him. With care he sheathed his blade and sat up. “Faanshi. Be careful how you wake an armed man. It can get you hurt.”

  “You were hurt,” Faanshi pointed out. “The akresha Alarrah said Rab left, and so I wanted to see you...” Her heart pounded at the near brush of the knife, and she found herself fighting to relax out of the Kestar-stance that had seized her limbs anew. “I was worried.”

  Something of the shadow on Julian’s features lightened. But then he affirmed, “Rab’s gone,” and his voice went dull and flat, like a hammer’s strike upon wood and iron nails.

  He’d pledged he wouldn’t beat her, but Faanshi felt like flinching nonetheless, and her cheeks flushed red with no veil to hide them. “I’m very sorry, Julian. Please forgive me.”

  “It’s not your fault, girl.”

  “But it is! He didn’t want you to take me from the church, because it would make the Hawks look for you as well as me.”

  “If the Hawks weren’t seeking us already, they would have been for our attack on the duke.”

  “An attack at our behest,” Alarrah said. “The Hawks are always seeking us, but this can only whet their interest.”

  Faanshi frowned. It should have been easy to accept their reassurances in this quiet place of tree-patterned stone and candlelight, but even here she couldn’t forget the presence in her blood and bone. “I made Rab angry. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have left you. Julian, he loves you! And Kestar doesn’t want to come after us—he told me in the dream—but he will because he must, at least, if they let him out of the cell—”

  She might well have pulled one of Julian’s knives and struck them both, for elf and assassin alike jolted at her outburst. “Faanshi,” Alarrah asked, “who is Kestar?”

  “A Hawk,” Julian said. “He tried to stop us from taking her out of Camden six days ago. She healed him.”

  “I had to—I couldn’t hold back the magic. And he would have died if I had.”

  “You healed a Knight of the Hawk of a mortal wound?” Alarrah cried, seizing Faanshi’s shoulders. “And you haven’t seen him since, nor sent him any message? Yet you know what’s befallen him? You’ve spoken with him in dreams?”

  New panic rippled through the girl. “Two times now. Kestar begged me to make it stop but I don’t know how—please, akresha Alarrah, if you can command the magic, tell me why I see him in my mind.”

  “I’ll go one better,” Julian said. “Can he see you in his?”

  All color drained from Alarrah’s features, and she beckoned for Julian to follow them as she tugged Faanshi toward the curtained archway on the far side of the room. “Please, both of you come. I’d thought to do this when you were better rested, but now—”

  “Kindly tell us where we’re going,” the assassin bade her.

  “I must tell Gerren and Kirinil of this at once,” Alarrah said, and as it came back to Faanshi her gaze was frightened.

  “Will this mean I can’t stay here?”

  “We’ll do everything in our power to avoid that. Everyone in Dolmerrath will want you to be safe among us.”

  “Naturally,” Julian said. “She’s the most powerful healer any of you have ever seen.”

  “Sh
e’s an elf.” Alarrah’s voice resonated with an assurance that should have bolstered Faanshi’s spirits. But she heard the fear and worry lingering underneath it, and her heart sank. It reminded her of Kestar.

  And it made her wonder if she was safe at all.

  * * *

  From the sleeping rooms Alarrah guided them out into larger chambers with the same simple furnishings, renderings of trees upon the walls, and countless candles and lamps and mirrors reflecting illumination back and forth until every room was filled with light. Like the walls all the floors seemed formed by some other agency than man, rising and falling in gentle slopes, and they too were decorated. Carvings of leaves tracked along the passages the trio followed, so intricate that once or twice Faanshi feared she’d stepped on a living plant.

  “Caves,” Julian told her. “The sea made them, long ago. The elves merely moved in.”

  She might have asked more, for the sea was another thing she’d had never seen, but there was no time to think of much past what presented itself to her startled eyes. Alarrah led them into the largest cavern yet, and Faanshi had to gape at all it contained. Here too were the trees and hills on the walls and the leaves on the floor. But unlike the lesser rooms, this one held living trees—and delicate tree sculptures as well, so intertwined with their living cousins that it was hard to tell where growing wood left off and stone began. Light washed down from a high ceiling, caught and cast out again by the fragments of glass and stone and metal all over the walls, until it seemed that the radiance came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Scents of flowers, pine needles and herbs filled the air, and every so often, borne in on drafts that wafted through the corridors, a brisk taste of salt.

  The sea, she thought, but it winked out of her as soon as she beheld the people scattered all around the chamber. Slim, graceful beings like Alarrah were everywhere, working, sitting and talking in low, liquid voices. The work was familiar—mending clothing, weaving, spinning—all tasks Faanshi had done with her own hands. But in this chamber each one seemed new and strange, as shocking as if the Lady of Time herself had sat down at a spindle. Snatches of music transfixed her, periodic voices that lifted up in harmony with the sweet trilling of someone’s flute. She’d never heard music in the kitchens of Lomhannor Hall.

  “I know you want to go down to them,” Alarrah said softly, which made Faanshi start; she’d forgotten for just a moment that she wasn’t alone, and she’d trailed to an astonished stop. “I wish I could take you. But right now I fear we don’t have the time.”

  “I see humans.” Faanshi spied an old woman rocking a child in her lap in time with the music, and a stocky man with close-cropped dark hair welcoming an elf woman into his arms.

  “A few live among us. Some are beloved of our folk. Some spoke out against our oppression, or their own. Some are the children of the land of Nirrivy from before Adalonia consumed it. But they are all friends.”

  Faanshi turned to see Alarrah giving Julian a thoughtful regard. But the assassin said only, “Don’t get her hopes up if you can’t keep her here.”

  “The Rook is right,” she said, and took a small pleasure in keeping any tremor from her voice—and in Julian’s surprise as she used his other name. “Forgive me for delaying us. Please take us where we must go, akresha.”

  Alarrah nodded once and gestured them onward. “Come.”

  They walked down another corridor, toward smaller rooms curtained off from casual view, and at last to a more ornate curtain than the others Faanshi had seen so far. This one bore richer hues of green and brown shot through with threads of gold and silver, worked into the pattern of a tree with a moon and stars in its branches. Lamplight flickered around its edges, and beyond it two voices rose in the same flowing speech that the people in the caverns had used. But the cadences were agitated, and they abruptly ceased as Alarrah called out. Then one of the voices spoke again in Adalonic.

  “Bring them in, Alarrah, please.”

  At that, their guide beckoned them through the curtain to the room beyond. To Faanshi’s daunted eye, it didn’t stand out much from any of the other caverns. It was a little bigger than most of the others, and a fragment of tapestry hung upon its walls—a frayed rectangle of cloth with colors that had faded with immeasurable age, yet which shimmered like the memory of the finest of dreams. But chairs, a table and shelves stacked high with rolled parchments and battered books, hiding much of the stone walls behind them, imposed a greater sense of order and purpose than the other rooms put forth.

  So too did the faces of the two who rose from their seats to greet them. Their garb wasn’t much different than Alarrah’s or any of the other elves, just simple shirts and breeches, and the short dark hair of one of the pair was loose and tousled. If Faanshi hadn’t seen their tapered ears and the agelessness of their faces, she might have thought them workmen. Something in the carriage and speech of the dark-haired elf proclaimed him anything but.

  “Welcome to Dolmerrath.” He turned eyes the deep fathomless blue of a sky beside a sunset to Faanshi and Julian. “I am Gerren, and this is Kirinil, my brother.” His companion inclined his silver-haired head to them. As he cleared parchments from part of the table in the center of the room to give them places to sit, Gerren considered Faanshi. “I hadn’t expected to see you quite this soon.”

  Had he meant to address her first? Faanshi started and glanced to Julian, who’d taken no place at the table and instead stood in the doorway, with the others in the room all in his line of sight. He was no help, for his expression was unreadable as always, and he eyed her steadily, clearly expecting her to speak.

  “Eshallavan, akreshi.” She offered a nervous bow as she sat, deeper than what she’d accorded the rag-and-bone man. It seemed required. Gerren had offered no title, but the others looked to him as they might a leader. “Please forgive me if we come too early. The akresha Alarrah thought we should, because of the Hawk.”

  “Hawk?” Gerren demanded, while his brother pulled himself up sharply. “What Hawk?”

  The looks in their eyes, the surprise tainted with fright, shot bolts of distress through Faanshi. Without her willing it her gaze shot back to Julian, who made no move toward her, but who caught her eye as soon as her head swiveled in his direction. “Tell them what you told Alarrah and me,” he said.

  There was no reassurance in his voice or face, but his presence was reassurance enough; he was something familiar in a world that had turned new and strange all over again. She nodded, drew in a deep breath and sat up as tall as she could in the hopes that it would help her look braver.

  “I’m not sure how to begin.” She inched her way through the tale of the battle in the church nevertheless, the memory of it dropping across her thoughts like a blanket of ice. “And when I healed Kestar, it was as though Almighty Djashtet took my soul and poured his into its place. I’ve seen him twice now in my dreams. As it is for me, so it is for him.” Her fingers rose in search of something that wasn’t there—his amulet. She felt its weight around her neck even now, and she had to grasp the cloth of her stolen shirt to keep her hand from fidgeting. “I don’t know how to make what happened to us stop, and he’s in peril now because of me. I swear to you that he’s a good man.”

  Kirinil let out a low whistle, and then spoke up for the first time. “I never thought I’d hear those words spoken of a Knight of the Hawk in this place.” His voice was smoother and quieter than his brother’s, and more thoughtful.

  “He is a good man! He doesn’t want to come after me, he’ll only do it because he’s commanded—”

  “Which still means he’ll come after you,” Julian said.

  Gerren’s face had gone pale, his frame rigid. He offered the Rook no agreement as he came round the table to stand before Faanshi’s chair—but neither did he argue. “Alarrah, I presume you’ve scried her,” he said, all inflection drained from his voice.

  “Before we crossed the Wards. She leaks badly, but I thought it was her power.”


  “It is.” Kirinil too came to stand before Faanshi, and at his words a prickling of new and unfamiliar magic rushed across her nerves. “But only in part. Something else is all over her. Her Hawk, I think. I can almost see him.”

  “Bloody fucking—” The assassin cut off his own oath, and then, with more anger than she had ever seen him express, thrust his hand at Faanshi. “I made this girl a promise. Are you telling us that even after all the trouble of getting her here, you’re going to boot her back out the way she came?”

  Both the other elves glanced away, their faces troubled, and Gerren himself blew out a long breath. “Very well then.” He met Faanshi’s eyes. “Valannè, I’ll speak plainly. Much as we need you in Dolmerrath—and power like what Alarrah says you carry could be the difference between life and death for us—if this Hawk of yours can use this link between you to find you, we can’t let you stay here. You’d bring death to us, not life. You’d bring the Anreulag.”

  “Then I can’t stay.” No one looked shocked as Faanshi rose, fighting down her disappointment. If anything, the elves’ faces grew bleak, and Julian’s was already starkest of all. “I’ve already endangered Kestar. I won’t allow more.”

  “Surely we can find a way to shield her!” Alarrah cried, throwing a glance from Gerren to Kirinil and back again. “To keep the Hawk from tracking her, or to break the link?”

  “I can teach her to shield herself,” Kirinil agreed, “but Lady help me, not in one night. It could take weeks for a new mage, perhaps longer.”

  “Then I can’t stay,” Faanshi repeated. “Akresha—” She caught herself, and amended, “Alarrah, would you guide—”

  Julian’s hand clapped down on her shoulder and spun her around to face him. “Girl, we’ve had this conversation. If you go anywhere else in Adalonia, you’re dead. You can’t control your power. Your features are too memorable. And even if that good, honorable Hawk of yours fails to track you, there are dozens more to pick up where he leaves off. Tykhe! If you’re that anxious to die, I’ll put an end to you right here!”