Valor of the Healer

by Angela Highland

  “As you wish,” the elf woman replied. Her hands were the last things he saw before she wrapped his world in silence.

  * * *

  The second time through was easier, though that meant little to him. A dagger through the heart delivered more mercy than poison in the blood, yet both led at last to death.

  Memories flayed his thoughts even as he braced for their attack. He was eighteen again, his arm screaming with the sundering of his wrist—his skull, with the heat of the iron thrust into living flesh. Through it all Cleon’s implacable sentence boomed and, through it all, Julian felt his own broken body still demanding what it had been denied. Worse, he saw contempt in Dulcinea’s eyes as she spurned him and sealed his fate. These recollections, though, were ones he’d fought before, and he struck back at them with vicious will.

  How long he wrestled against the frenzy of the Wards, with Morrigh’s motions beneath him his only anchor, he didn’t know. Yet this time, just as he began to falter, the horse lurched violently and hurled him off his back.

  Instinct overrode astonishment and pain, making Julian roll till he could spring to his feet and rip the blindfold from his face. With his ears still stopped, the wood around him was swathed in ghostly silence, eerie and stark against the magic that lit the night with sharp-edged brightness. Morrigh was bolting, and just behind him came the elves’ two horses, both without riders. He ignored the beasts, for in the heart of that light was Faanshi.

  Fire cloaked her from head to foot, pooling in embers of gold where her eyes should have been. She broke out of the hold that the elves had on her arms, too swiftly and smoothly for a slave girl untrained in combat, though no combat Julian had ever witnessed meted out pain at mere physical contact. Kirinil and Alarrah grimaced and staggered back from her. Faanshi spun with preternatural grace and speed to track them, the knife Alarrah had given her held high in her blazing hands.

  Galvanized, not stopping to consider what any of the others might be shouting beyond his noiseless shell, Julian leaped. He couldn’t risk seizing Faanshi when her power was awake, and something in him shied back from the thought of engaging her with an actual weapon. That left him no other option. With his false hand he struck her, praying to Tykhe that he’d judged the blow aright to stun her and nothing more.

  Instantly her magic’s glow faded, and the knife dropped from her fingers as Faanshi crumpled. Julian stooped, not bothering to spare his hand to claw the wax from his ears, so he could catch her before she hit the ground. “What the bloody hells just happened?” he snarled, though he could mark the words only as a roar in his throat.

  Her face bloodless in what little light remained, Alarrah cleared his ears for him. “You saw me put her to sleep to cross the Wards,” she panted as soon as he could hear. “Kirinil tried to shield her—”

  “Tried,” Kirinil emphasized, his features tightening in pain as he flexed his hands. “Keep them moving, Alarrah! I’ll get the horses.”

  For one blind, blank moment his words made no sense to Julian. Then, when Alarrah seized his shoulders, he realized he’d straightened with Faanshi in his grasp and was already trying to stumble away. The Wards. We haven’t cleared the Wards.

  That spark of clarity nearly drowned beneath the panic that rolled over him, the unreasoning suspicion that the elves might tear Faanshi straight out of his arms. “Guide me!” he commanded Alarrah, bellowing it so that he wouldn’t burst into wild laughter instead. Of course the jealousy had come back, to try to strangle him in its fury, when his defenses were down.

  But now he had its measure. He drove it to the bottom of his mind, blocking it and all else with the need to let the elf woman herd him through the trees. Distance and direction and even terrain were immaterial—and at any rate he couldn’t mark them, not before his head was clear. Still Alarrah pressed them on, until the terror ebbed from his frame and his knees began to ache with the effort of carrying the girl at an all-out run.

  At last, when he thought he might not make it another step, his companion let him halt. “Here.” Her hands pushed him at a new angle, into the open space of a tiny glade. “We’ll rest here for the night.”

  Trees he could barely see, much less name, ringed the clearing. Julian knew only that one of them had roots with moss-carpeted hollows between them, large enough to give him a place to collapse with his burden. Once off his feet, a wide trunk at his back and his chest heaving with the need to haul in air, he bit out, “What. Happened?”

  Alarrah knelt at his side, and her hands cast forth a glow barely brighter than the stars as she ran her fingers over the unconscious girl’s head. “She must have dreamed as we crossed the Wards. She cried out, and then her power awoke and frightened the horses.” Her gaze slid sideways to the Rook. “The rest you saw. Kirinil’s shielding must not have been enough.”

  “Clearly!”

  Before Julian could say more, Faanshi stirred and whimpered, horror flickering across her countenance. All at once he grew conscious of the shape of her, of the press of her slight form against his own, and that at some point during their headlong rush her hat had gone missing.

  “Carefully, girl,” he warned when her eyes opened.

  “Julian?” Her voice was thin and broken, and as her gaze shot up to his face she said his name again, with prayerful relief. “Julian!” Then she threw her arms around him, buried her face against his shoulder, and sobbed.

  In consternation he froze, aware of something going loose and tender within him. After a moment his arms eased their grasp and shifted, as if of their own accord, to better hold her. “Tykhe,” he muttered. “Don’t cry.”

  “I don’t mean to be a burden. Please don’t leave me.”

  Hadn’t he promised to do just that on the run past Tolton, if she slowed him and Rab down or proved a danger? “I won’t,” Julian said nonetheless, that loose place within him broadening, threatening to rise into his throat, to cut off his speech. “I won’t leave you, Faanshi. It’s all right.”

  When had he changed his mind?

  Faanshi sobbed harder at his assurance, though not louder, as if even now she fought to choke back her tears. Discomfited, Julian wrestled down the impulse to stroke her hair. Alarrah’s hands were already there, shining, and at any rate the girl had curled against his left shoulder. His hand was pinned.

  “Shelass, valannè,” Alarrah whispered. “Elvi a divar.”

  A shudder racked Faanshi’s body, and then she relaxed against him, tension draining from her frame. As the elf woman lifted her hands away, Julian said, “Well?”

  “I’ve given her what peace I can.”

  “I’m sorry,” Faanshi put in. “I’m me again...I think.”

  Julian stiffened, unsurprised by her whisper, and grateful for the impetus it gave him to shift so they both had no choice but to sit up. Keeping her at arm’s length was wiser. “What the nine hells happened?”

  Wetness lingered in Faanshi’s eyes, a gleam of misery even his poor night vision could spy. “It was the magic.” Her voice began to shake. “Mine, the Wards, I can’t tell—merciful Noonmother, he’s so afraid—”

  “I think,” called Kirinil out of the surrounding dark, “that we’d do well to focus on our own fears this night. And defending against them.”

  His voice was strained. Behind him, the three horses plodded, less eager to enter the glade. Morrigh’s head was down, and that was enough to drive Julian to his feet along with Alarrah, to help with the beasts. The black stallion shied as his rider neared him; Julian instantly gentled his approach. “Hush now, easy, mate,” he murmured, reaching the horse’s head. More loudly he added to the others, “He’s not going another step.”

  “Neither am I.” Faanshi hadn’t risen, but she lifted her head straight toward him, giving him the uncanny sense that, half-blood or no, she saw in the dark just as well as the elves who’d hauled her right back out of the refuge he himself had promised her. “I’m sorry. I...it’s too much. Please, may we...”

&nbs
p; She didn’t finish, though she didn’t need to. Defeat dulled her voice to the apologetic monotone she’d used the first time she’d touched him. It made Julian wince. Despite the foolishness of touching her again, he moved back to her, as swiftly as he could without frightening his still-skittish horse. Even in the scant light, his hand found her hair.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” he said.

  The girl straightened as he’d hoped she might, and her slight gasp told him that she recognized his words.

  That she, too, remembered.

  * * *

  They camped there in the glade once Kirinil wove his Ward around the place, one more powerful than Alarrah could create, though only a shadow of the magic that shrouded Dolmerrath. Julian needed little sight of their faces or the set of their slim frames to gauge that the elves were as tense as he. It was plain enough in what few clipped words they said to him, and to each other. Nor did their mood diminish even when the Ward was up. No one seemed willing to utter more than necessary to set up a minimal camp and rounds of watches.

  All of them were preoccupied with Faanshi.

  She fell into exhausted sleep where she sat beneath the tree, deep enough that none of their slight noises roused her. Julian didn’t dare move her again, and told himself it was for the best that Alarrah beat him to the task of draping a blanket over her limp form. That he also thought it for the best to set up his bedroll between Faanshi and anything else in the glade was a contradiction he wouldn’t allow himself to consider.

  When he and Kirinil roused from sleep the next morning and Alarrah stood down from her watch, though, the young healer was already awake. With troubled eyes she brought Julian a water flask and a share of their trail rations, and he noted that one of the elves must have found her hat in the night, for it was back in its place upon her head. Perhaps its presence gave her comfort, for her gaze was steady despite its distress, and she gave him a tiny smile as he thanked her.

  “You’re welcome. And I’ll have mine, when we talk.” Her voice rose. “All of us.”

  The elves looked up, Kirinil from the side of his mare, Alarrah from the pack through which she was rummaging for her own meager breakfast. Yet only the elf woman came to face her. As they stood together Julian remembered in a rush what Alarrah had said, back in Dolmerrath, before they’d crossed the Wards.

  Faanshi too must have remembered it, for without preamble she began, “You said I was your sister.”

  Alarrah neither flinched nor frowned, but something shifted in her bearing nonetheless, leaving her strangely open, ill at ease. “There was one of us who fought the humans in his own way,” she said, her voice hoarse. “He stole and sold their precious objects, their gems, their wealth, and brought payment back to us. Until he found a woman he couldn’t steal. A Tantiu woman.”

  Julian kept silent, and a quick glance sideways showed him that Kirinil had paused by Alarrah’s horse, looking their way. They might well have been trees for all the attention the women paid them. Faanshi’s features twisted, which wrenched at Julian, and although he yet sat outside her arm’s reach, he had the uncomfortable certainty that she was shaking.

  “My okinya Ulima never wanted to tell me my father’s name,” Faanshi offered. “But I made her do it. She said he was a thief. That his name was Jord Tanorel, and that the duke cut off his head because he dared to love my mother.”

  A choked noise escaped Alarrah, and she clamped her eyes shut for a moment, murmuring something in Elvish. When she looked up again, it was to proffer the first actual smile Julian had seen upon her face. “Jord Tanorel was my father.”

  Her own eyes growing huge beneath the brim of her hat, the girl sank right back down to the hollow between the roots of the tree where she’d slept, as if her knees had turned to water beneath her.

  “So you have a motive to come out with us,” Julian said, speaking up when Faanshi could not. “And while that’s served us thus far, we should be thinking now of what comes next, eh?”

  “Yes,” Alarrah rasped, flashing him a glance he was certain held relief at his interruption. “Yes. We must decide our options.”

  “And we must start,” put in Kirinil, taking one of his horse’s hooves in hand for his inspection, “with what befell our young cousin last night.”

  Faanshi frowned and glanced off toward the brightening eastward dawn, her eyes longing, as though to seek the counsel of the light. “Dawnmaiden guide me, I wish I knew. I know only that when we crossed the Wards, I...I was Kestar. Until Julian struck me.”

  He studied her haggard face. If the Hawk was somehow infused into the girl, he couldn’t see him. Not right then. He had, he realized in a rush, seen him in her motions when she’d fought against Kirinil and Alarrah. A humble slave girl wouldn’t fight like that, but a Knight of the Hawk—that Knight of the Hawk—would. Julian had every reason to know. He’d seen the man fight. “It’s getting worse for you, then.”

  “It’s funny.” Faanshi bowed her head, a rough little giggle escaping her, though there was no mirth in her eyes. “My master claimed to lock me away because I had fits, and now I’ve had one...” She drew in a long breath, and though her eyes were liquid, she answered him at last. “It is worse. I thought it would fade. Before when I’ve healed and felt these things, they’ve always faded...”

  She looked away, and Julian couldn’t tell why—until he thought of her healing him. “Go on,” he said gruffly.

  “You said the Hawk was almost killed,” Alarrah said. “If you healed him of a mortal wound, and you were unshielded besides, this may be why you yet feel him so strongly now.”

  “Have you ever healed someone who would have died?” Faanshi asked, with a glimmer of hope.

  “Once, before I learned how to shield, and it almost slew me to do it. I was very ill for months after, and could heal no one else until I was well again. All the while, I felt the one I’d healed in my thoughts.”

  Julian raised his eyebrows. “Did the one you healed feel you?”

  Alarrah smiled just a little. “Not that he’s ever said.” Then her smile, slight as it was, slid away. “Mind you, it was an elf. You, assassin, are the only human I’ve ever healed, and I sensed nothing from you.”

  “Should that relieve me?” It did, actually—one healer with a window into his psyche was enough—but he saw no need to say that aloud.

  “It should tell you how much more powerful Faanshi is than I. I didn’t know it was possible to form that kind of a link with a human during a—”

  “Wait,” Faanshi interrupted. “If I don’t know how to shield myself, and I heal someone who’s hurt or sick or dying, then that person would make this...link with me?”

  “That’s how the magic works,” Alarrah confirmed.

  “I’ve only healed humans. I felt the akreshi Kennach and my master in my mind, but I don’t think they felt me.” Faanshi straightened where she sat between the maple’s roots, and her gaze came back to him, strange and shy. “You were hurt very badly, Julian, but I don’t think you...”

  Even with her dusky complexion, he was certain she was blushing. He didn’t have to wonder about what she was trying to voice, since it was putting him perilously close to blushing himself. “I haven’t,” he said.

  “Then Kestar’s different.” Faanshi’s eyes went wide as she clapped her hands up to her mouth. “Great Lady of Time—I said it to him myself, in the dream! He’s like me!”

  Alarrah swore, and Julian stared at the girl, stunned. She’d used those words before, and now none of them could miss their import. It sounded impossible, for surely no elf-blooded Hawk would have been ordained in the first place, much less allowed to patrol the realm. But conviction rang through Faanshi’s words, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right.

  “They’re not coming after her yet,” he guessed, “because they’re after him.”

  “He had to break out of the church.” Faanshi’s face fell. “They said I’m driving him mad.”

 
“If he has our blood in him and so strong a link with you, then I daresay you’ll do just that.” Kirinil stepped away from the horses to join them. “And he likewise to you. The question before us is whether we can sever your link before that happens, and before your Hawk comes after you and brings his Order with him.”

  “Or the Anreulag,” Alarrah said.

  To this Faanshi said nothing, snapping her gaze away from them all. Thinking to turn her face back so that he could see her expression, Julian knelt beside her and reached for her chin—but at his fleeting touch, she flinched. He halted at once.

  “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “It’s my fault! The magic is supposed to heal, not drive people mad, isn’t it?” Her attention whipped back to Alarrah. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It should mend, not break. Flesh or blood or spirit, it should make no difference.”

  “Then I didn’t do it right. I tried to heal Kestar and instead I broke him—us. Ah, Lady of Time!” With a fretful energy, Faanshi shot to her feet and began to pace the little glade, rubbing her temples.

  Julian stood to follow her, but Kirinil intercepted her first, taking her dusky hands in his paler ones, looking down at her with critical eyes. “The first thing we must do,” he said, “is teach you how to shield.”

  The girl froze. “Will that help Kestar too?”

  “Child, you can’t make this Hawk your first priority—”

  “Why not? Kestar is in pain and in danger because of me, and the ridahs of Almighty Djashtet say that if I bring a good man to harm, I should set it right. Are there no such laws from the gods of the elves?”

  Silence descended upon the camp. Alarrah and Kirinil eyed Faanshi with Julian’s own amazement mirrored in their faces; after a moment, Kirinil stepped back from her. “Has it not been made clear enough to you that the Order of the Hawk is at war with our kind?” His voice had gone cold, but shame flickered across Alarrah’s eyes.