Valor of the Healer

by Angela Highland

  “First you must tell me of your condition. Whatever made you near kill yourself to get to me can wait long enough for me to ensure you won’t die while you’re here. I changed your bandage, so I’ve seen the wound, and I found an empty bottle that smelled of laudanum in your pockets, so I know you’ve taken something for pain. You have no fever. I’d like to keep it that way. So tell me, and tell me truly, if you’re hungry or thirsty or in pain now.”

  Urgency warred in him with filial obedience, but the former won out. “Starved, and I ache.” He didn’t remember downing the rest of the laudanum, though he supposed he must have. Traces of its fog still lapped at his thoughts. “But Mother, it can’t wait. I have to know.”

  Ganniwer sighed softly and pulled a chair closer to the bed. Into this she settled with careful grace before fixing a stark gaze upon him. “Why your amulet glows—and whether you have elven blood? Let me be perfectly clear. You do.”

  Two short words—words a deep part of him already knew were no surprise—and yet every thought in Kestar’s head staggered to a halt. He could do nothing but stare at his amulet in his hands, and even aside from the ghostly echo of the girl along them, they were suddenly the hands of a stranger. “How long have you known?” he asked when he found his voice.

  “I suspected from the moment I brought you into this world.” His mother’s face was ashen. “What else could I conclude, when the Bhandreid ordered your father and me to bring you before the Anreulag for your purity to be judged, and then to give you up to the Church? But I never knew for certain. Not until today.”

  “Then that’s why...” He trailed off. There was too much to absorb, too much weight to the pieces falling into place in his mind and memory, impacts that shattered the truth of his world.

  “Why we didn’t raise you with us? Why you grew up with the Order rather than here in your proper home?”

  Kestar nodded, struggling not to tremble, striving to take in what he had heard. “You took me to Her?”

  “Yes, Kescha. It was a fortnight after you were born, and the High Priest sang the Rite of the Calling in the palace chapel. When She stretched forth Her hand to your little brow, I thought I might die from the glory of Her light. She called your father Her good and loyal servant, and She smiled at you. I’d never seen anything like it. I’ll never see anything like it again.”

  “She touched me with Her own hand,” Kestar murmured. The trembling took him in earnest, as if that one concept was too immense for his battered frame to contain, and he wondered numbly if it might shake him apart. Wound or no wound, he lurched up out of the bed. He had to move, to pace, anything to let him regain his footing in a world that had tilted dangerously askew. “Why didn’t She smite me?”

  “Kestar...son...” His mother stirred, but before she could rise, he pivoted back to face her.

  “Does it come from you or Father?”

  She didn’t do him the discourtesy of asking what difference it made; Ganniwer had never been a woman to ask foolish questions. Instead she sat ramrod straight, every inch the baroness. “Did you never wonder why your father wasn’t made Baron of Bremany until after the Battle of Riannach? He had to prove himself so loyal, so far above reproach, that there’d be no doubt that he was fit to serve the Anreulag and the realm—despite the taint upon his blood.”

  The world tilted again, figuratively and in truth. Kestar gritted his teeth and held on as dizziness threatened to drive him to his knees. “But if She found him worthy when I was born...”

  “Surely you know by now that we poor mortals all too often don’t see so clearly as the Blessed One.”

  She had a point. “Some of us willingly look away,” Kestar said. The face of Shaymis Enverly stole through his mind. In a daze, he wondered what it meant that the Anreulag had allowed him to be one of Her Hawks, as his father had been before him, even with elven blood in his veins—and then set him against a priest who had not only turned his eyes away from Her, but perhaps even away from the gods themselves.

  Faanshi is more godly than he. All at once he had to sit again. Shakily he dropped down on the edge of the bed. “I want...I need to see. But I’m lost and blinded.” Blinded by sunlight in my blood.

  Ganniwer rested a freckled hand on his knee and looked straight and steadfast into his face. “See this first then, dear one. It made no difference to me with your father. It makes no difference to me with you.”

  “Mother, those words could get you branded a heretic.”

  “Nirrivans have been arrested for less ever since Adalonia took our land, and you’re my son.” Her tone was crisp, but her eyes gentled. “There’s nothing greater to me in my life.”

  Kestar stared at her, conscious of the wraith of a long-gone twelve-year-old boy within him. The boy had grown into a Hawk, and yet his uncertainty had remained. Part of it lingered even now. “Aiding me could get you hanged.”

  “I repeat, you’re my son. Tell me what’s happened and what help you need.”

  * * *

  It was strange beyond measure to trade his Hawk’s uniform for less distinguishable clothing, comfortable old garments he hadn’t worn since his last visit home. It was stranger still to hide his amulet in a tiny pouch of soft suede, worn round his neck in the amulet’s stead. A wiser man would have hidden it better or abandoned it entirely, but Kestar couldn’t bear to set it aside. It felt wrong not to carry it even if he was no longer certain he had the right.

  But he wasn’t foolish enough to keep from hiding its light, and neither could he take Celoren’s sword and horse any farther. There were other weapons and other horses at Vaarsen Hall, though this didn’t ease his guilt for having stolen what belonged to his partner. The guilt gnawed even as he armed himself with sword and pistol and slipped down to the stables under the veil of midnight so that no one would see him go.

  Ganniwer waited for him, not in the stall where a trim little mare was saddled for his riding, but rather with Pasga. She was drawing a currycomb over the chestnut’s muscled back, murmuring soothing nonsense at him while he sleepily flicked his tail, but she looked up at Kestar’s approach and stepped aside to let him join her by the horse’s head. “I figured you’d want to tell him goodbye,” she said, offering the currycomb.

  Kestar gratefully took it. He didn’t know Pasga’s favorite spots for grooming as well as Celoren did, but he knew enough to coax a pleased snuffle out of him as he went to work on a spot along his withers. “Take care of him, Mother. Cel will be here for him eventually.”

  “We will.”

  “He may not be alone. Father Enverly may be with him. Or guardsmen, or the Duke of Shalridan himself.”

  “So many,” Ganniwer murmured. “So many for one man.”

  “They think I’m mad.” Kestar didn’t pause in the currying, for he wasn’t ready to leave Celoren’s horse, but he met his mother’s eyes nonetheless. “They’ll know I’m desperate. They’ll know I came here.”

  Waving a hand in dismissal, Ganniwer said, “Let them come. I’ll tell them all the truth they need to hear. My son came to me in dire straits. I tended his wound and gave him the horse and arms and clothes he asked for, of course, for not only is he my son, he’s a Knight of the Hawk upon a vital mission.” Deadpan, she finished, “For the good of the realm, he declined to inform me of his destination.”

  He almost smiled. “I don’t know my destination myself,” he said, only just then realizing that was true. Faanshi’s presence tugged within him, but he didn’t yet know where it would lead.

  “If this girl who saved your life is still in Adalonia, she’d be very foolish to go anywhere but to the elves.”

  “If the Order knew how to find the elves, Mother, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

  “If you don’t know how to find the elves, son, you must find someone who does.” At his startled look Ganniwer smiled a little, nodding toward the waiting mare two stalls down. “You need more answers than I can give you, Kescha. When you ride out on Grann
a there, check your saddlebags in the first safe place you reach. I’ve packed you something you really ought to read.”

  * * *

  Half an hour’s ride east of Vaarsen Hall, without warning, something ignited such a blaze of fear in Kestar that he fell off his borrowed horse in his haste to confront a threat he couldn’t actually reach. He hit the ground with force enough to make his wound flare with pain, and in that instant, his mind flooded with the echo of white, blinding light.

  Faanshi!

  Kestar couldn’t see her, but he didn’t need to; she was far beyond the range of his weapons, and as close as his own breath. As one her magic and her fright drowned him. Heedless of all else, he leaped upright as fast as he could manage, gun and sword drawn. His hands burned, so much so that he could barely hold either weapon, much less use them on the indistinct shadows that were his only possible source of such terror. Still, that didn’t stop him from swinging the blade—but the lash of new, phantom pain across his head did.

  Stunned, breathless, he collapsed back to his knees, and only by driving his sword’s point into the packed earth of the road did he keep himself from falling further. For far more minutes than he could begin to count, the world spun. To his relief, however, the wave of...whatever it had been...did not return.

  Granna, thank the gods, hadn’t bolted. Kestar missed Tenthim fiercely, but had to admit that the mare’s gentler temperament was a blessing. She was patient enough for his slow, stiff climb back into her saddle, and for his urging her back into motion toward the border of Kilmerry Province.

  He rode as long as he dared, longer than his aching body liked, until dawn at last drove him into the shelter of a rundown inn. Haunted by what had waylaid him on the road, Kestar never remembered afterward what story he gave to the innkeeper, or what pleasantries he might have offered along with his money. All that mattered was the room his coin bought him, and within that, the bed. For the promise of rest alone he would have gladly sacrificed a limb.

  Before he let himself sleep, though, he opened Granna’s saddlebags to see what his mother had given him. Fresh clothing, garments as unremarkable as those he wore, would let him pass for a craftsman or field hand. Two pouches carried shot for the pistol and a modest quantity of coins. A third held a new bottle of laudanum, a bottle of herbs and a scrap of paper with scrawled instructions for a poultice. There were strips of clean, soft linen, rolled into a small, tight bundle.

  And there was a book. It was old, far older than he, its blue leather cover worn thin by time and handling. Sleep beckoned, all too powerfully, but Kestar was loath to disregard his mother’s instructions—and at any rate, it gave him a bulwark against Faanshi’s presence, something to focus on outside himself. Thus he began to read, gingerly opening the book Ganniwer had given him, finding pages turned brown around the edges and threatening to come loose from the crumbling binding. Words in a meticulous hand filled each page with row after row of text.

  The Journal of Randal Merringly was written upon the flyleaf, and that confused him, for the name was unfamiliar. Merringly, it seemed, was a nobleman with a dissolute youth, in which he’d been expelled as a cadet from the Order of the Hawk. That made Kestar read in greater depth, turning the pages with care, until the picture of an older, wiser man anxious to make amends for his younger days formed in his mind.

  Mention of Merringly’s young ward Honnah, whom he’d sponsored in training as a priestess of the Daughter, made Kestar sit up straighter on the bed that was his only place to sit in the cramped room. When he found an entry that spoke of Honnah being courted by a priest of the Son, his exhaustion fell away beneath a rush of shock at the priest’s name. Devlin Vaarsen. His grandfather.

  Gripped by foreboding, he backtracked through the journal’s fragile pages to the earliest entries he’d missed, but found no mention of where Merringly had found his ward or who her parents might have been. Only when he reached the entries at the end, where in a shakier hand Merringly wrote of being stricken by consumption, did he finally locate a line that spoke volumes in its brevity.

  I hope before I die I can return to Arlitham Abbey to see her again.

  When Kestar read that, he knew where he had to go next.

  Chapter Nineteen

  With Alarrah’s help, it took little enough time for Julian and Faanshi to flee the elven stronghold—barely more than it had taken them to come in, so far as Julian knew. The healer led them back to the rooms where they’d slept, and en route fetched supplies to match what few they carried themselves: weapons, a cloak, what small foodstuffs could be borne in pack or pocket. From there they hastened to the cavern where the elves kept their horses, a stable unlike any he’d ever seen, wherein horses wandered freely through an open expanse of space. Some stood clumped together in small, loose herds, munching at bundles of provender. Others rested on beds of hay that ringed the cavern walls. There were no stalls, and he couldn’t fathom how the creatures were kept in check.

  But he had no time to care. Even as they readied Morrigh and the she-elf’s favored mare, Alarrah pinned him with a critical gaze. “Assassin, can you spare no blade to arm her?” she asked, nodding at Faanshi.

  Julian stopped short. He hadn’t wanted to put one of his knives into Faanshi’s untrained hands back at the shrine of Degne, and he didn’t want to now. Yet practicality demanded nothing less, if they had to leave her one refuge inside Adalonia’s borders. “Not really,” he conceded, “but I suspect I can spare an extra more than you.”

  Alarrah’s mouth curled, too grimly to be a smile. “Dolmerrath lacks not in weapons, but in hands to hold them. I’ve brought a dagger that might suit her, but I’d thought she might prefer...” She trailed off, looking between the two of them, with far more meaning than Julian liked.

  “I’ll carry whatever blade I must,” Faanshi put in, “but if we must leave, please let us go.”

  “Our young cousin has wisdom as well as power,” said another voice, making all three of them whirl to find Kirinil approaching. A third horse trailed alertly behind him. Like Alarrah, he was clothed in the dappled green-and-brown garments that gave them the look of forest shadows, and he bore his own pack and quiver and bow. “We’d best do as she suggests, before Gerren decides to stop us.”

  Shock as sharp as Julian’s own bloomed on Faanshi’s face, and even Alarrah looked startled—though only briefly, as she spun with Kirinil to load their packs onto their horses. Like the others wandering seemingly of their own volition in this place, the two creatures stood without reins or tethers, and only the lightest of saddles showed that they’d been prepared for riding at all. Next to them black Morrigh seemed hulking and over-geared, which did nothing to improve his rider’s mood. Leading Faanshi to the stallion, he told her, “They’re not just escorting us out of here.”

  “Correct,” Kirinil said. “We’re coming with you.”

  “Don’t mistake my gratitude, akreshi, but why?” Faanshi said, clutching at Morrigh’s mane.

  “Because if your father is who I think he is, valannè, then you’re my sister.”

  Alarrah’s answer was as calm as any she ever gave, yet it surprised Julian anew—and that was nothing against its effect on Faanshi. He’d watched her absorb a barrage of shocks: liberation, running for her life, her magic forcing her to heal the Hawk. Pious as she was, she’d even managed to accept traveling with the likes of Rab and himself. But he hadn’t seen such raw and utter amazement seize her before. The girl froze beside Morrigh, squealing out, “What!” and twisting to gape at the she-elf, and he had to drop his hand on her shoulder.

  “Later,” he told her, his eye all the while on Alarrah, and the pouch she bore—the same from which she’d produced the blindfold and wax to muffle his senses on the way into Dolmerrath. “First we have to get you out of here.”

  “We must get both of you out,” Alarrah corrected. “Faanshi, this means we must prepare you and the Rook to cross the Wards on this place. They aren’t kind to humans, for they’re
all that keep the Hawks from finding us. And if there’s a Hawk behind your eyes, we can’t let him see which way we ride.”

  The girl glanced back and forth between them. “As the Lady of Time wills it, then. What must I do?”

  “It’ll be easiest if you let me put you to sleep again, and if you ride with Kirinil on the way out. He’ll be best able to shield you from the Wards’ effects.”

  To Julian’s relief Alarrah said nothing of how he’d succumbed to the Wards on the way into Dolmerrath, yet that didn’t stop Faanshi from peering up into his face. “What about you? I’m only half human, but you...”

  “I’ll be fine,” he cut her off. “Worry about the Wards. Anything else can wait till after we’re out of here.”

  With a tentative smile, Faanshi turned to Kirinil and repeated, “What must I do?”

  Little more than that was needed. Faanshi’s smile faded as she accepted a green-hilted dagger from Alarrah, and let the older healer show her how to secure its hilt at her thigh. Kirinil, his mask of impassivity lightening a fraction, then helped her onto his horse. Once she was in the saddle, he climbed on behind her in one nimble motion, and Alarrah stepped up to grace her brow with a fleeting touch. Light flared. With a faint sigh, Faanshi slumped back against the elf behind her.

  Irritation spurred Julian onto Morrigh, and only when he was ahorse did he see it for what it was. He was jealous—that Faanshi hadn’t smiled at him or asked for one of his knives, that the elves had cost him command of this entire affair and his partner to boot, that even his wretched horse was behaving with the uncanny ease of the Dolmerrath beasts. Whether it was due to some instinct of his stallion’s or to some mage’s charm he couldn’t tell, and that was the last tiny vexation his temper would allow. As Alarrah turned to do for him what she’d done for Faanshi, he stared her down until she stopped in her tracks.

  “I ride awake.” Let her make of that what she would. It was madness perhaps to subject himself to the Wards again so soon, but by Tykhe’s right hand, this was something he could control. “Just as before.”