Valor of the Healer

by Angela Highland

  “You’re too kind, my lord,” she said, her smile growing strained. “But the hour’s surely too late for your party to take to the road? Vaarsen Hall would be honored to give you lodging for the night.”

  Kilmerredes waved a negligent hand. “I won’t hear of imposing upon you more than we already have. And after such a restful day, I’ve energy enough for a few more hours yet.”

  In desperation Ganniwer implored the priest, “We have babies, Father, who would benefit from your holy blessing if you would consent—”

  “Already done,” Enverly said, savoring the last of his wine. “I baptized two charming little cherubs while you were showing His Grace and young Sir Valleford your fine home.”

  “There is however one thing you could do for us before we set out again,” Kilmerredes said.

  Don’t tell him, Celoren wanted to cry, but he was rigid in his chair. The gods or perhaps the Anreulag had struck him dumb, dooming him to witness the closing of this trap.

  “You have but to ask,” Ganniwer replied, the mask of her poise remaining, her gaze dark with horrified comprehension. And the duke smiled as he took her at her word.

  “Where is your son going, Lady Vaarsen?”

  * * *

  It was a miracle Kestar could attribute only to the mercy of the gods that he made the journey to Arlitham Abbey with his mind still intact. He couldn’t stop wondering what had prompted the burst of fear and power he’d sensed from Faanshi on the road out of Kilmerry. But the unshakeable certainty that she yet lived was no comfort, for she burned at his consciousness over the next three days, gentle but inexorable, subsuming him in light. She surged across his mind just as he stopped to ask for aid in finding the village of Arlitham, and the fright of forgetting his own native tongue drove him to seek the least traveled byways he could once he left the startled merchant who’d helped him.

  Out of his uniform, he didn’t cut a striking figure. Yet he couldn’t risk loitering at any other markets or taverns. He could change his clothes and horse, but he could do nothing for his injury, or his increasing drifts between Adalonic and Tantiu—all of which made him too memorable for comfort. Thus he stopped only when he or Granna could go no further without food or water or rest. He met few strangers, for which he breathed prayers of relief, not trusting himself to speak with anyone else for long.

  Not when Faanshi overwhelmed him so thoroughly that, for a few brief moments, he lost all track of where she ended and he began.

  He had to stop when that happened, pulling Granna to the side of the road on a horseman’s instincts alone, and tumbling from her saddle rather than anything so purposeful as dismounting. Then he wrapped his arms around her neck and wept hoarse and ragged tears into her mane, till Faanshi subsided enough to make his limbs and mind his own again.

  Even then, all the way to the abbey, she never entirely left him. Her perceptions colored all he saw, turning the everyday details of his world alien and alarming. The roads of his home province should have been as familiar as his own name, yet now everything seemed too open, too lacking in places to hide. Nor could he fathom whether his panic sprang from the girl haunting him like a ghost, or from the fact that he, like her, was now a fugitive.

  Nor did he want to think of how he wanted those terrifying moments of unity back again.

  When at last he reached the abbey’s quiet glen and saw summer hawthorn and clover in bloom rolling down to the holy place’s walls, he stopped his mount once more. The sight shouldn’t have been odd, for dales all over western Adalonia blossomed so in the month of Jomhas. Yet he gaped in fascination, and only after a few moments did it come to him—his captivation was because of her.

  Kestar rubbed his face, struggling to marshal his thoughts, and nudged the mare onward. His destination was at hand. Faanshi resounded through his bones, but he couldn’t afford the sympathy blooming in him like the hawthorn at her wonder at the beauty of this place.

  Three women in acolytes’ robes were out among the clover as he rode down the road to the abbey, gathering choice plants to fill the baskets on their arms. They waved as he passed, and offered directions to the abbey’s courtyard. Wonder shifted toward humbler awe when he dismounted at the gates, and that, prompted by memories of Hawk training, was as much his as Faanshi’s. The restlessness that frayed his nerves, however, was his alone.

  “Blessings of the gods be upon you, traveler,” a voice called. “May I be of assistance?”

  An older priest, near Enverly’s age, approached him. But this man lacked a Hawk’s erect military carriage, and there was no haughtiness in his sun-reddened features. No ornate trim decorated his robes, and the serenity of his bearing seemed genuine. Kestar almost sagged in relief, a lapse of his guard that let Faanshi stream back across his consciousness—and for an instant, he couldn’t remember what language he was supposed to speak.

  “Good day, akresh—I mean—Father...” His voice came out weaker than he wanted, rough with his fraying concentration and his pain. “I’m looking for the abbot, or abbess...?”

  “I’m Father Grenham, abbot of Arlitham,” the priest said, his brow furrowing as he took the young Hawk’s elbow. “And you’re hurt, or ill. Let me help you. Brother Iain!” he shouted, toward a nearby doorway through which a younger priest’s inquiring face appeared. “We have a visitor! Please attend to this man’s horse.”

  As the other priest hurried out, Kestar began, “If there’s somewhere we could talk in private...”

  “Of course. Right this way.”

  The abbot led him across the courtyard to a pair of unadorned pine doors that led into an empty chapel. In the middle of the day, Kestar supposed, the rest of the abbey folk were occupied with their daily labors. Gratitude washed over him at the quiet of the place; that alone was a blessing, and he scarcely noticed or cared what other features the chapel might offer a worshiper. Had he found the sanctuary he sought? One which, if he’d read Merringly’s journal rightly, had been sought by one of his blood before?

  “Do you need to sit?” Grenham gestured to the double line of pews that led forward from the doors. “Water, or a healer?”

  He needed all these things, but Kestar didn’t let himself accept them, not yet. “Let me state my purpose first, Father,” he pleaded. “I...I’ve come seeking one who may have sheltered here a very long time ago.”

  “Many have taken sanctuary here over the years.”

  “I seek one in particular. I don’t know her name or how long ago she was here. But I hope...I pray...that you might guide me to her. It’s vital that I find her.”

  Grenham’s eyebrows rose, pale silver against his browned and weathered skin, and his gaze sharpened as he searched Kestar’s face. “What’s your name, my son?”

  Straightening to his full height, Kestar answered, “I’m Kestar Eyrian Vaarsen, son of Dorvid Vaarsen, son of Devlin...who married Honnah Merringly.” He swallowed, prayed he wasn’t about to doom himself, and went on, “I’m looking for Honnah’s mother.”

  With his last few words the abbot’s expression changed. “Her name,” he said, blowing out a breath, “is Darlana.”

  “She’s alive? She must be ancient!”

  “She’s almost a hundred years old. And you’ve come just in time, Kestar Vaarsen. Sister Darlana is dying.”

  * * *

  She reposed in one of the guest wing’s more comfortable chambers, though it was so humbly furnished that it might as well have been a priestess’s cell. Her bed stood against the far wall so that she might look out the window to the west. She lay doing just that, a distant smile on her withered lips, her gaze misty and unfocused as though she beheld some view she alone could see. As the abbot and the Hawk slipped into the room, she turned her snow-white head on her pillow, and before Grenham could greet her, she spoke.

  “Have you come to say my final rites, young Cortland?”

  The abbot smiled, though his mien was solemn. “Not yet, Sister Darlana. I’ve brought you a visitor.”

/>   Eyes turned a milky green with advanced age peered toward the two men before their gaze settled at last upon Kestar. “I don’t know you, boy.”

  Her voice was reedy, a quavering remnant of what must have been a vibrant soprano in decades past, yet it captivated him. It brought her alive, this woman who held answers to so many questions that he couldn’t begin to count them. It made her real.

  “My name is Kestar,” he offered, stricken, shy and desperate all at once.

  A wrinkled hand emerged from beneath her knitted blanket, beckoning. “Come here then, Kestar,” she bade him. “My eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were. Let me see you.”

  He went to her bedside without hesitation, pain and weariness forgotten, though he flushed at her piercing regard. “Is that better, Sister?” he asked, manners dictating the query, though the change in her expression was answer enough.

  “Blessed gods...” The words were a whistling exhalation, and she raised one hand toward Kestar’s face. “You’re almost his image. Who are you?”

  So that her fingers might reach him, Kestar sank down to one knee, biting back the grunt of the effort it cost him to do so. “Your great-grandson, I think.”

  Darlana’s hand faltered as it reached his hair, as though she hadn’t expected him to have physical form. With utmost trepidation she pushed the disheveled strands back from his brow. Her fingers tracked down the edge of his face, past his temple and cheek, and to the side of his head. There the old woman’s gaze lingered. “Not like his,” she croaked.

  When her fingertips touched his ear, Kestar understood. “My father’s wife is human,” he said, though it felt surpassing odd to put it into words. Odd, too, was the contact of those ancient fingers. Light as it was, it grounded him back in himself for the first time in days, and so he held himself as still as possible for fear that that fragile peace might break. “So was his mother’s husband.”

  “My little girl.” Wetness gathered in Darlana’s eyes. Her hand fell back, its strength spent, but her stare lost none of its intensity. “Sweet Honnah. They wouldn’t let me keep her.”

  “Because her father was elven?” It seemed foolish to say it when Kestar already felt the answer where Faanshi had closed his damaged flesh, where part of his soul craved sunlight and the wind’s clean, cool breath. But he needed to hear the words.

  A wraith of a smile crept across Darlana’s features. “Riniel,” she crooned. “Riniel Radmynn.” Then her chin jutted forth, a stubborn gesture that like her voice seemed a faded remnant of her youth. “Not supposed to love him. But I did. Still do. Ninety-eight years old, boy, not about to change my mind now. If you came to tell me to repent of my sins, go away.”

  “That isn’t my place, Sister.” With a heavy sigh Kestar reached beneath his collar for the suede pouch that held his amulet. As he drew it forth, blue light played along the silver, and Kestar set his jaw at the abbot’s sharp intake of breath. “I’m a Knight of the Hawk, the Anreulag’s eyes to see, Her sword to strike. But the weighing of the hearts and souls of men and women is for the gods alone.”

  “Dorvid Vaarsen’s son,” Father Grenham said. “The son of the Deliverer of Riannach.”

  “Yes,” Kestar said. His father’s deeds had always dragged at him like shackles of gold, accomplishments he had never believed himself worthy—or able—to emulate. Now they made a terrible new kind of sense. If the man who’d quelled an entire elven uprising in the eastern grasslands had himself borne elven blood, it explained much. Why Dorvid and Ganniwer had sent him away, why he’d been raised within the Church.

  A hard glower settled across Darlana’s features. “Son of one who’s oppressed his own blood. Don’t think I didn’t hear, boy, because I’ve lived here all these years! Come to seek forgiveness for your papa? Ought to do it himself.”

  “My father’s dead,” Kestar barked, more vehemently than he intended. It forced him to step back a moment, coughing. Grenham reached for him, his brow furrowed, but Kestar waved him back. “And that isn’t important, Sister. Please...I came to ask you how to find the elves.”

  Darlana cackled, hoarse and harsh. “Not telling. Wouldn’t tell Randal or young Cortland here. Won’t tell you.” Her tears welled up again, streaking down her withered cheeks. “His people suffered enough already because of me.”

  Her resistance shouldn’t have surprised or disturbed Kestar. But it did. He hesitated, torn between arguments to put forth, none of which held much strength against the old woman’s resolve. Faanshi’s presence in his awareness was one potent case he might make—except he couldn’t bring himself to tell Darlana that a young woman’s life was at stake when he was its greatest threat. “Will you at least tell me if my...my great-grandfather is still alive?”

  That seemed to reach her, if only to redouble her tears. Kestar thought of his mother; this woman’s unrepentant weeping might have been Ganniwer’s, when she’d received the word of her husband’s death. He fumbled through his pockets till he found a handkerchief, rumpled but clean. Awkwardly he offered it, for it would have been forward to dab at her face himself. Darlana didn’t thank him, though she did take the kerchief, pressing it against each eye. Then she looked up once more.

  “Riniel is gone,” she rasped. “Your Anreulag killed him. Slaughtered him before my eyes along with others of his people, for no crime save wanting to live and be free. You want to hunt him in Her name, you’re too late.” Her voice was stark, hollowed out by old pain and filled in again with bitter venom undiluted by the accumulation of her years.

  Kestar kept from flinching under its lash, but only just. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “You should be. Now leave me, boy. Let me die in peace.”

  With that Darlana closed her eyes and turned her face back toward the window and the sunlight on the hawthorn trees outside. The young knight glanced out through the panes of glass, and for a moment could think of nothing but a meadow’s glow within his dreams.

  Father Grenham’s hand settled on his shoulder. “Come now,” the abbot murmured. “We should let her rest, and I think you could stand to rest a while yourself.”

  Kestar’s head felt too full, his heart too heavy within his aching chest to argue. Dully, he let the older man lead him out of the room. Rest sounded all too tempting. The thought of climbing back onto a horse, even plodding little Granna, made him hurt from head to toe. Yet scarcely a few steps down the hall he stopped short, a protest mustering at last.

  “This allows me no haven here, Father,” he said, holding up his amulet, his fingers wreathed with its damning light.

  Unfazed, Grenham answered, “For over seventy years we’ve sheltered one who consorted with elves, my son, and I’m not about to turn you away just for the sake of the blood she gave you. You’ll be safe here tonight.”

  It was far more than Kestar had expected or hoped for, and he wasn’t certain he’d heard the other man correctly. But Father Grenham’s features held no duplicity, nothing save steadfast concern. His weary thoughts frayed, and he had to fight to keep from swaying. “But...why? Why aren’t you Cleansing me this instant?”

  The abbot gave him a sad and solemn smile. “You’ve trusted me with a dangerous secret about yourself, and so I’ll ask you this in return. What gods do you think we worship here?”

  Blearily Kestar peered at him, and only then did his understanding dawn. Nothing obvious had struck him as out of the ordinary. Everyone’s robes looked as traditional as custom dictated, each holy symbol what the eye expected, at least if that eye belonged to the Church of the Four Gods. But he had yet to hear the abbot, or anyone else he’d seen so far in this place, swear by Father or Mother, Son or Daughter, or even the Anreulag.

  “You’re Nirrivan,” he whispered, and Cortland Grenham inclined his head.

  “We are among the last adherents to the Nirrivan gods left in this country, and we are very, very good at pretending otherwise. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have been able to shelter Sister Darlana all this time.�
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  “Who is she? Is she truly one of your sisters?”

  The abbot sighed, glancing back to the chamber they’d just left. “She never took vows. But we began to call her that after a time, to offer her a place among us if she wished it. She doesn’t like to be reminded of it anymore, but she was once Darlana Araeldes—the niece of Dunchadh Araeldes.”

  “The Bhandreid’s father?” Kestar’s thoughts frayed further; once again, things made a terrible kind of sense. Not even royal blood was supposed to be immune to the laws of the Church and the realm. Yet here in a Nirrivan abbey, hiding in plain sight, there was a gulf between what was supposed to be and what was in fact true.

  His expression sorrowful, Grenham nodded and took his arm once more. “If you won’t sleep yet, Kestar Vaarsen, then come with me. I have a long tale to tell you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “We must do it again, Julian. I don’t have it right yet.”

  By all rights, Faanshi should have buckled under days ago. Julian had taken her on one hard journey out of Camden already. Now they were on the move again, at a pace that even a soldier might find grueling, and at the girl’s own insistence. She had only the barest beginnings of woodcraft and horsemanship, never mind knowledge of the world at large. On this ride, though, he saw she’d gained something on the way out of Dolmerrath—purpose. It hadn’t honed her, not yet. But he could tell now where her blade’s edge would eventually be.

  What Kirinil was doing to teach her mastery of her power was beyond Julian’s knowing. All he could tell was that it didn’t require them to stop for food or rest, and that under the mage’s guidance, Faanshi rode with her gaze so sharply focused that she might have been seeking out the oldest secrets of existence, or listening to the voice of her threefold goddess. If her efforts were successful, that too was beyond his ability to tell, past what he could glean from the conversations of the others.