Tragedy (Forsaken Lands)

by Cooper, Sydney M.

  Aia nodded slowly, thoughts churning over in her head. She wished that Nixx had forgotten her name and never spoken with the governor and governess; turning back time not being an option, she was presented with a clear choice between her own best interest and that of a young man of more social value than she would ever have. Son of a high priest? He might as well have been a prince of the old kingdom.

  “I suppose you don’t want him to stay here,” Aia reasoned out loud. “Better send the Followers of Shelm after me than bring them to the University.” Even without reading their minds, she knew it was true. She was a guildless healer who lived in Layvin’s Embrace far from anyone else. If the patient was killed and they took her down with him it would hardly be a loss.

  “You will be well compensated,” Lenna offered meekly.

  Aia chuckled. “I was never worried about that.” She leaned back, planting her feet on the floor. They were letting her think about it, but she doubted they would tolerate it for much longer. “And what if I refuse?”

  “I don’t think you want to refuse,” Alteas replied calmly.

  “You think that I’m willing to risk my life for your problems just for the money, or the land, or whatever you’re offering me. I guess I’ve made my reputation by selling my services at a risk, but this is one hell of a risk.”

  “I’m not offering you money." Alteas flashed a fleeting smile. “Not just money, that is. I’m offering you a position. If you will heal his wounds and get the answers we need from him, I will find you a healer’s job anywhere. Guilded or not.”

  Get the answers we need from him. She dove right in after that thought and came up with the most unnerving answer yet. “And who told you that I read minds?”

  Lenna and Alteas exchanged glances, at once pleased and bewildered. Alteas smirked. “So they were right.”

  “They who?="+0">– who?=

  Suddenly their internal conversations went scattershot, much like they had been in the ballroom. Aia couldn’t catch up fast enough to understand what it meant, except that it involved the clergy. Only four people in the world had ever known that she was a reader. Someone had told, and if she had to bet she would bet on her mother. Even from the grave, the bitch still hurts me.

  “It doesn’t matter. Do you accept?” Alteas held out a hand for her to shake.

  Aia looked from Lenna to Alteas and back again. As much as she would have liked to believe that the decision could go either way, she knew herself better than that. Service was in her bones.

  She shook Alteas's hand.

  “His name is Teveres,” said Lenna, expertly using her energy to switch the control of the conversation. “He will be waiting for you when you get home. We sent two Justices to assist you.”

  Aia was fairly uncomfortable with how much planning had gone into the conversation and how much they knew. The very fact that she was sitting in the lobby having a serious chat with the leaders of the world was too much by itself. Although they were sending the patient to her home as a sort of bait, Aia was glad that she wouldn’t have to spend more time than necessary in their presence.

  “Is he ill?”

  “He’s been capped and beaten. The wounds were extensive. We don’t know much more than that.”

  ‘Capping’ was a slang term for using weaponized kelspar on a gifted individual. Weaponized kelspar could stun any person for an hour or so, but someone who was gifted could be severely damaged by a liberal dose of the stuff. It emitted what could only be described as a discordant resonance; it could fundamentally change the frequency at which a person’s mind functioned. Being gifted made a person far more sensitive to such interference. Aia had never been capped, but from the patients she saw in the University it was a unique and occasionally fatal kind of painful.

  "And when do you want him back?

  “We will send for you when he is needed. Until then the Justices will fetch anything you want. You will need to stay at your home.”

  “I see.

  * * *

  Aia was among the last out of the University after her meeting with the leaders, trotting down empty streets to the stable. Even in the dead of night Nivenea was still brilliant, well-lit paths winding through tall stone buildings. Once she thought she might purchase one of the houses in town - once she planned to be a professor at the University. If Alteas was being truthful, that future might be possible for her again.

  No use dreaming, of course. Dreams only hurt her in the past. Better to be surprised by a windfall than hang hopes on a doomed dream.

  By the time she reached the stables and paid her fee, Torvid's moon was well beyond the horizon. Hopping onto Chloe, Aia goaded her up the rarely-used trails towards their home. Chloe practically knew the way; she rarely travelled anywhere else.

  Aia felt the change on the air brush up against her as soon as she caught the glimpse of her cottage roof over the hills. There was no light in the windows, but in front of the kitchen window was a small tent lit from within by a candle. She could sense the two Justices and the man in her house. She kicked Chloe lightly, urging her to slow the pace.

  Aia closed her eyes to calm her mind. Her thoughts were an extension of herself - she reached with them, brushed against other thoughts, felt the chill of change on the soul's wind. She touched inside her home, groping in the dark for the source of the disturbance. The mind she encountered was akin to a mountain stream, mobile but too gentle to carry her away. She recognized the sensation as one of an unconscious human. It was hard for her to reach within the mind when a person was unconscious. She could only feel thoughts in motion, those which are occurring either consciously or unconsciously. Reading a sleeping mind was akin to reading a book with the pages all out of order. There was information, but none of it remotely useful.

  Hopping off of Chloe, she led the dark horse into the garage without tying her up. Aia wanted a quick escape available if she needed it. Two Justices, a male and a female, approached her seemingly from out of nowhere. The woman was remarkably short, hair cropped close to the head and her skin a darkened hue. The male was as average as they came, wearing a hood to protect against the wind. They nodded at her.

  "You are Aiasjia?" The man asked.

  Aia nodded back. "And you are?"

  "I am Devian," said the woman. "This is Heller."

  "The patient is inside?"

  "He is. We can accompany you."

  Aia waived them off, "Not necessary."

  "We were told that the prisoner could be dangerous." Heller's displeasure was far from subtle.

  "Is he conscious?"

  "Not yet, but-"

  "Then this is not a discussion. He's a patient. He is allowed privacy." Although she had a rational fear of treating a prisoner of questionable loyalty, it would not be the first time she had worked with danger. In their wandering consciousness, the blight-touched could be highly unpredictable and violent; Aia's training taught her to heal through any situation, no matter how personally dangerous. It was an imperative she took very seriously.

  Devian gat sp; Devive an unconcerned shrug. Aia smiled. Devian's mind was deliciously simple. If Aia was determined to put her life at risk, Devian saw no reason to fret over the matter. Devian did not believe that fools deserved the benefit of her worry.

  Heller was not nearly as sanguine, but he seemed inclined to follow Devian's lead. He bowed his head. You can always change your mind."

  "I appreciate that. Let me know if you need anything." Aia said, pushing past the officers.

  Opening her creaking door didn't cause the prisoner's consciousness to stir. Even when she lit her dining table candle, bright enough to illuminate most of the room, the man on her sickbed was still.

  Rather than attempt to awaken him directly, she crept closer to observe him. He looked to be around her age - 24 or 25 - with an athletic configuration of lean muscles developed from spending a great deal of time outdoors. She imagined that his skin, now dusky from accumulated dirt, had more of a warm honey col
or to it underneath. His clean-shaven face showcased sharp, hawkish features. His hair was conspicuously dyed black, with natural blonde-brown roots peeking up from his scalp. Though his clothes were in poor repair from his many troubles, but they were well-tailored and of good materials. The pants were made of thick, durable cotton dyed a deep navy color. His black shirt was looked as if it had been made for him. He might be rather handsome under the thin layer of grime and bad dye job.

  Looking at him from a healer's perspective, there were bruises on his face and arms from the losing end of a fist fight, as well as a deep knife wound on one shoulder. A poorly-constructed cloth bandage covered the wound, overwrought with blood. His pulse was slow, but strong. Though she hesitated to leave him alone in such a state, he was at least stable enough to allow her time to change into working clothes.

  She drew simple pants and a tunic from the drawers beneath her bed and changed quickly in her bathing room. When she returned, she pumped water into a bowl and set about collecting her materials from her kitchen cabinets. Much unlike a normal kitchen, Aia's was stocked to the brim with mismatched medical tools, alchemy supplies and bandaging material. A minority of the kitchen space contained actual food. She selected her single vial of cheragga root serum to quicken the heart, a syringe soaked in alcohol to inject it, salve and bandages for the wounds. She rarely worked with wounds of his kind, and had very little knowledge of capping. It was rare for her to treat a gifted person to begin with; the last one she knew of was Derran, and he had died. The memory failed to bolster her wavering confidence.

  Aia moved swiftly to set up a table and stool beside the bed. She rolled up his sleeve to expose the vein in the crook of his elbow, buried deep from dehydration. Although it had been more than a year since the last time she had to perform an injection, her hands moved with practiced precision. The serum entered his vein seamlessly. She held his wrist, waiting for the reassuring pulse change.

  A moment went by, and none came. His pulse remained suspiciously slow. Aia frowned, taking a small sip of the serum from the bottle. It was most certainly cheragga with the characteristic sour taste. She injected nearly e frted neanough serum to rouse a man from a coma, and yet his body didn't appear to respond at all. If the capping didn't respond to the serum, it was unlikely to respond to any of the weaker concoctions she had on hand.

  She glanced out her front window. Devian stood next to the door, staring out over the city. Heller was out of view. Aia pulled the curtain and placed her hands on Teveres's chest.

  Adequately hidden, Aia allowed herself to tap into her ability to heal, the core of her being which she kept buried most of the time. Most healers blessed herbs with their divinity, which increased a plant's innate function or added new abilities. Aia had never met another healer who could heal without an herbal vector, as she could. She also never met a healer for which healing was painful. Those who witnessed the way she healed with only her hands were typically suspicious, if not hostile towards her.

  Aia could sense the off-balance vibration of Teveres's resonance around her, on every inch of her skin. It was like a chord played in a lovely symphony with a single note displaced. She concentrated on that note, tempering the resonance until it molded to her will. The vibration slowly came into balance, a joyous harmony. It excited her, even as a throbbing pain shot from her spine to her limbs and back. She hung on through the waves of shuddering pain, fine-tuning the vibration.

  Forest green eyes shot through with gold sprung to life. Her guest jerked out from under her hands, pushing himself back against the wall as far from Aia as he could get. His breath came quickly, his heartbeat surely racing. Stunned by the sudden recovery, Aia nearly toppled off her stool, visually searching him with a clinical eye. It looked as if the cheragga root had suddenly kicked in.

  He cursed under his breath and muttered, "I don't want to hurt you." His voice was rough with fatigue, but underneath the frayed edges it had a firm, mild tone. It was eerily familiar, like a voice whispered which she had heard before. It was comforting.

  "I don't want to hurt you, either. It's okay. I'm a healer."

  Her calm demeanor perplexed him. The tension in his muscles began to ease, even as he glanced apprehensively towards the door. "A healer."

  "That's what they tell me." She stood up slowly, the way she'd stand in the presence of a spooked cat. Her whole body ached from the healing, though fortunately it was not as intense as she expected it to be. "I suggest you stay inside. There are Justices outside that door and I don't think you're in any shape to outrun them."

  His eyes darted back and forth as if to read through his options. She would wager that he hadn't had a real conversation with another person in quite some time.

  "What's your name?" he demanded.

  Aia leaned up against one of the support beams, casually resting a hand on her hip. "Aiasjia, from Seldat. They call me Aia." She gestured towards the window, mindful not to move too suddenly. "I'm not from here, you see."

  "Right." His breathing was starting to slow. The adrenaline from sudden waking and the serum in d the swere beginning to mellow.

  "You don't look like you're from here either." She started probing his mind, softly at first, testing for overt aggression. The aggression which was there didn't seem to be directed towards her. "Are you a traveler?"

  "You could say that."

  She smiled, just a little, making an effort to look as comfortable as possible. She touched his mind a little deeper, searching for his internal dialogue.

  Just as she had started to listen to his active mind, she felt an incredible pain at the very front of her forehead. The extension of herself that she used to read others slammed back into her brain with physical force. She was so dazed that by the time she could open her eyes Teveres's face was inches from her own. The candlelight cast shadows over his face, giving his features an edge of dangerousness. He pushed her against the beam with his body so tightly that she could barely move to breathe.

  Had she known that the capping was the only barrier holding back his strength, she would have given more strategic thought to when she chose to fix him.

  "What were you doing?" he growled, a tight leash on the volume of his voice.

  Dazed and head still pounding, Aia tried to concentrate on his eyes, keeping her gaze steady. It was all she could do to keep from shaking from the impact of her pounding heart. "I'm just a healer," she said softly, as quickly as she could manage. "Just a healer - don't want any trouble - don't know why you're here... don't really care. And... and if I scream, they'll put you down again."

  Her threat to bring the Justices inside was lost on him. It was as if she did not speak. "You..." he said slowly, "you were in my mind. I could feel you there. Why?"

  "I don't know." With what psychic energy she had left, she projected every calm feeling, every kind word she'd ever spoken, willing him to believe her. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was just trying to understand. I didn't know anyone could… anyone had… I thought I was the only reader."

  "Reader?"

  She glanced at the floor, quietly wishing he would let her go so she could continue the conversation without the creeping feeling that he was an inch from ending her life. "It's… it's what I call it. I can feel people. Their minds, I can read what they're thinking and feeling." If he was going to kill her anyway, she had nothing to lose by telling the truth.

  He gave her a strange, cryptic look. The flame in his eyes seemed to die down as he let go of her. She had not been so close to death in many years; it sent her reeling.

  When she was on the ground, he looked her over from head to toe, his energy suddenly dissipated. He frowned. "I'm sorry."

  Aia eyed him warily. She backed up without turning around, blindly drawing a knife from her kitchen dtruer kitcrawer. He didn't as much as glance at it. Her burgeoning headache deterred any further attempt to read him.

  "You stay back, do you hear me? Just... just stay over there."

  There was s
adness in his eyes, but for what reason, Aia could not be sure. He opened his hands palms up, a sign of non-aggression. "You startled me. I... never intended... I thought you were attacking me. I wouldn't harm you."

  Unconvinced, Aia motioned at the bed with the knife. "Sit down before I sedate you."

  Teveres looked her up and down several times more before he made up his mind. He obeyed, sitting cross-legged on the sickbed with his hands under his thighs. "My name is Teveres."

  "I need you to never do that again." Aia's fear safely changed to anger as she returned to full control of herself. "Ever. No one touches me, do you understand that?"

  "I said I was sorry."

  There were a lot of things she wanted to say. He had proven himself volatile, which made her inclined to distrust him from a purely logical standpoint. With the most minimal touch she could feel that he was genuinely remorseful about attacking her. He physically recoiled when she reached out for his emotions.

  "You need to stop doing that," He snarled.

  "I just wanted to be sure that you're being honest with me." Aia tried to normalize the situation, moving to toss some logs into the hearth. She didn't let him out of her line of sight. "Obviously you have no trouble getting me out of your head."

  Teveres withdrew into himself. He was some kind of changeling with his by-the-wind emotional tides.

  "I was told to heal you because the governor doesn't want you tried yet. He trusts you," said Aia. "The Justices were sent as much for your protection as mine. You should be glad I didn't call them in here and have you killed."

  He flashed a most peculiar smile, bowing his head in deference.

  "You're staying with me until they choose to take you away."

  "When did they-"

  "I'm too tired for questions. You may have noticed that someone cut you up pretty badly. It's my job to make sure you don't get infected and die. Are you in pain?"

  She could see that as the intensity of the moment passed he was indeed beginning to feel the pain again. Adrenaline worked wonders as a pain killer, but not for long. As if answering her thoughts, he removed his shirt, revealing several more cuts and bruises underneath. One long, old scar spanned from his collarbone over his heart.