by Nunn, PL
He couldn’t rest for the annoyance of being trapped here. He couldn’t stop the growing resentment for the human men that had bartered him away for the promise of information that might or might not be of value to them. He wanted nothing more than to go home. To properly mourn the loss of the friend Bloodraven’s men had taken from him.
Yherji. Yhalen had not thought of him in a long while, too wrapped up in the web of his own misery.
Yherji had died and Yhalen had run like a deer startled by a forest cat, too caught up in its own fright to give thought to its fellows. If he’d stayed, the reasonable part of him insisted, he’d most likely have shared Yherji’s fate. It’d have been an honorable death, if such a thing existed. Death was death, after all, no matter what the elders said the Goddess promised afterwards. And she was most likely put out with him at the moment, so he had no wish to rush to her embrace.
Foolish and selfish, Grandfather would say. But, though Grandfather was wise beyond measure, he was also pious in the way of the Ydregi and Yhalen had not lived enough years to share in that all-consuming faith. Nor had he lived long enough to have the wisdom of the old. He had ample fear though, and anger at his predicament, as well as the fickle fate that had led him to it. Anger too at Bloodraven and his ilk, at the human lords who sat in their keep above, drinking their wine and eating their feasts as they idly decided the fate of others as though they had the right.
He sat down finally, on the thin rug in the center of the floor, and stared morosely at Bloodraven on the pallet across the room. Bloodraven was crafty and hid the extent of his patience behind the barbaric trappings of his people. Bloodraven spoke very little and thought a great deal, and Yhalen ought to warn Lord Tangery that he wasn’t to be trusted as far as a man could throw him, which wasn’t at all. But then, Tangery had proved no great ally to Yhalen himself, though he supposed, grudgingly, that the man was honorable in his way. Forthright enough, as long as the welfare of his people wasn’t at stake.
The rattle of the locks on the door roused him out of his sulk. Yhalen rose hastily as the door was opened. Cautious guards surveyed the safety of the room, crossbows ready in hand, before allowing a serving man to enter as far as the threshold. The man’s arms were burdened with thick blankets, fresh linens, what looked to be clean clothing and a wooden bucket filled with various personal necessities.
The lady Duvera had been true to her word at least, in providing a few more niceties to make this makeshift cell more accommodating. Yhalen took the armful from the nervous servant, catching awkwardly at the man’s sleeve before he could back out and make his escape.
“There are a few healing herbs that would help, if you have them. Hallow leaf and cairrib and fresh water when you return.” He indicated the bucket of fouled water that he’d used to cleanse Bloodraven’s wound.
The man snatched it up and left, the guards giving Yhalen a dark look before shutting the door and latching it from the other side. Yhalen frowned darkly himself, overburdened with Duvera’s offerings.
He deposited them upon the table and sorted through the things in the bucket. Soap and a bone handled brush and comb were chief among them. There was a clean tunic for him, and a much larger one that had to have been hastily sewn. It looked to be about Bloodraven’s size. There were trousers of an equal size to the tunics, made of good serviceable cloth. The lady was thoughtful in her offerings, and Yhalen idly wondered if she’d send down an oversized barrel for Bloodraven to bathe in, since she seemed to have a care for his comfort.
He glanced over his shoulder at the halfling, but Bloodraven had not moved. Yhalen frowned, surprised that he’d not stirred, for little effort had been made to be quiet in the exchange at the door.
Perhaps Bloodraven really had fallen into the deep sleep of the deathly ill. It was more than possible, considering his wounds.
Yhalen knelt carefully on the edge of the pallet, reaching out a hand and tentatively touching the skin of one bare shoulder. He drew his hand back in surprise, shocked by the heat. Bloodraven had not been so fevered when he’d treated or fed him. He was burning now with it. Yhalen sat back, a helpless panic overcoming him. He wasn’t a healer. He wasn’t his mother. The most he could do was clean a basic wound, not deal with the onslaught of deadly fever. And it was deadly. A fever this hot could fell the largest of men and animals.
He curled his fingers in the blankets, cursing Bloodraven for his stubbornness in not drinking more water. Cursing him for asking for Yhalen to begin with. Cursing him for being caught and injured and putting them both in this situation. Why hadn’t the fool simply returned to the north with the remnants of his party and accepted his loss?
He pushed himself off the pallet and fetched the bucket of clean water and a strip of linen. Settling next to the halfling, he dipped the cloth in cool water and pressed it against Bloodraven’s dry forehead. Not a twitch. No flutter of lashes. Again he damped the cloth and wet Bloodraven’s face, his throat, his slowly rising chest. The infection around the wound in his side had spread beyond the bandages covering it. That was what was killing him. That was what, Yhalen discovered when he gently laid fingers against it, was sucking the vitality out of Bloodraven. The taint of it seeped like a silent poison into his awareness through the touch of his hand, coming upon him unawares, like a voice out of the shadows.
He pulled his hand back in surprise, breathing gone shallow and harsh. He’d always heard his mother speak of the connection she as a healer had with the bodies of her patients. Was this what it felt like when an illness talked to her? Did she feel the very blackness that threatened to engulf an ailing body?
He drew a breath and pressed his palm to the bandage, feeling heat through the cloth and wishing the source of it gone. Wished he had the skill of his mother this once to borrow life from the world at large and channel it into a source of healing. But even if he’d had that skill and that knowledge, there was nothing here to borrow from. Nothing but stone walls.
“Damn you,” he whispered, hands shaking and stomach churning.
Why should it matter if Bloodraven died? Why should he feel nauseous at the prospect, save that the Ydregi despised useless death. You killed only what you needed to survive. You didn’t kill fellow men…even half-men that had treated you badly. Yhalen shuddered in a bout of half hysterical laughter.
As if that should matter to him. As if the killing of ogres would make him break a stride or blink an eye.
As if he’d not already taken a path that his mother would be devastated at, that his grandfather would condemn him for. Why should Bloodraven’s death bother him at all, when it was so richly deserved?
But it did and it baffled him and filled him with desperation. He shut his eyes and thought that perhaps there was something to draw upon after all. There was himself. He’d seen his mother give of herself in small matters many a time and come out of it no worse for wear after a nap and a decent meal. He knew he had the talent, a fact made abundantly clear by the healing of his own injuries, it was simply a matter of using it willingly instead of simply out of survival instinct.
It wasn’t so easy as he’d supposed, the giving of one’s strength. Willing it didn’t make it so. Finding the core of it was something that took many, many years of training and dedication. Controlling it was a matter of practice and only with much practice and guidance could a healer exercise her art in safety.
So Mother always said.
Practice wasn’t an option and there was no one here to guide him, no one to share decades old wisdom. There was nothing to do but force the issue and overcome the blockage that prevented the sharing of strength. When it came it was like nothing so much as the release of a bladder, held full too long and unstoppable once the flow started.
Almost it was a relief at first, the satisfaction of success. He could feel, so very clearly now, the core of Bloodraven’s physicality. The essence of his strength, so tried and tested by the invading infection.
And that infection was a ragin
g thing, grown so out of hand by mistreatment and the filth of the dungeon cell that it threatened to overcome even an ogr’ron’s great endurance.
But Bloodraven’s will to live was tremendous, and perhaps it was that very will that grasped at the tendrils of Yhalen’s vitality and suckled at it like a desperately starved pup feeding at its mother’s teat. Yhalen gasped, pulled in further than he’d intended, weakness invading him even as strength poured into Bloodraven, unable to break the connection once he’d initiated it, unable to jerk backwards and sever physical contact. He felt with an intensity that took his breath, the pain of a mortal wound in his side, slowly sucking his life away, despite all his body’s stubborn insistence to fight it. He felt the lesser pains of torn flesh and muscle at his shoulder, of various other minor hurts that dwindled to nothing against the consuming heat and agony of the poison at his side.
Vision began to spot with dancing lights, his head began to spin haphazardly upon his shoulders, seeming suddenly a separate thing from his body. He slumped, strengthless, as images of the dead forest flashed in his mind. Could he do that to himself, out of his own misguided attempts to heal Bloodraven?
Panic did what simple desire could not. It lent him a burst of strength to jerk backwards—it lent him the will to cease the flow of vitality from one body to another. He sprawled, half off the pallet, legs bent awkwardly and head on the hard stone of the floor, shivering from a cold he hadn’t truly felt before. Side still throbbing in time with the beat of his pulse. He hadn’t the energy to move. Hadn’t the strength to do anything but lie there and let the room spin around him. He managed to turn his head, staring warily at his out flung arm, dreading to see the shriveled flesh of a limb sucked dry of all its vitality. But it was as it had always been, firm and smooth, if unusually pale. He shut his eyes, breathing a sigh of relief.
It would be a very long time before he opened them again.
Bloodraven was thirsty. His mouth was dry as brittle bones, with much the same taste lingering on his tongue. That discomfort drove him out of slumber and he lay for a moment, instantly awake once sleep had withdrawn, and no little disoriented by the state of his surroundings. The walls were of stone blocks, not hewn out of the rock itself. There were four walls and a stout door instead of three and a daunting wall of rusting bars. A pallet that was well stuffed with goose feathers, and pillows and blankets instead of hard stone floor and a spattering of moldy straw. There were no stifling chains.
Ah, he remembered now. The climb up those narrow stairs under a ceiling so low he’d had to bend to avoid scraping his head. A miserable climb, with his legs so weak they’d threatened to give out under him, and only his pride in the face of human observation had kept him from giving into the weakness. The pain in his side had been excruciating. Strange, now, that it wasn’t. Strange that it plagued him not at all. He sat up, warily scanning the room for enemies and found none at all. He found only the sprawled form of Yhalen at the edge of the pallet, limbs twisted, and his frayed braid snaking across the stone floor.
Bloodraven frowned, leaning forward cautiously, expecting a pulling stitch at his side. Again, no pain assaulted him, merely a twinge of what seemed healing flesh and muscle. His hand hesitated in its path towards his human, curiosity over the state of his own wounds overcoming him. The bandage at his side was stained with blood, but it was well dried and old. He pulled it off gingerly, recalling well the ugly gaping wound that Yhalen had painstakingly cleaned and stuffed with healing herbs before he’d stitched. The stitches were still there, fresh and blood crusted, but the flesh they pierced looked weeks healed, the mouth of the wound sealed together and pink with healthy flesh.
Bloodraven stared, fingers trembling just a little, a hair’s breadth from the miraculously healed wound. Had he wasted away in fever sleep so long that weeks had passed without him knowing it?
No. No, he’d have sensed it. Would have felt it in the stiffness of a body gone too long without activity.
He’d suffered injury before that had kept him off his feet for many days, and he remembered the time well. Remembered only too acutely the weakness of recovery. A body didn’t wake up refreshed and vital after such an ordeal. There was pain and weakness and suffering to be endured and hidden from the speculative eyes of one’s brethren.
Warily he pulled the bandage from his shoulder, only to find that wound also well on its way to becoming a forgotten scar. Even the annoying little throbbing points of discomfort in his ears where rings had been torn out, either in the fight that had ended in his capture or by his captors stealing the gold loops from his ears, seemed to have dissipated.
Magic had been worked upon him, there was no question in his mind and it sent a thrill of fear through him that an army of human men with arrows and spears could not. The ogre shamans who wandered the mountains, seeking refuge and food from each tribe they passed, practiced no such magic. Ogre magicks consisted of ranting chants and wild-eyed predictions, herbs thrown into fires to make clouds of stinking smoke and dire claims of curses and condemnation from the warlike gods who dwelled deep within the most inhospitable parts of the northern ranges, if their representatives on the mortal plane were not treated with due respect.
Bloodraven had never held much treaty with the gods, much less their wild-eyed shamans. Their magic was nothing so much as herb lore and a canny knowledge of how to spook the volatile members of the mountain clans. He’d never seen a shaman steal a body’s youth and vitality with a touch—though he imagined it would be a much coveted skill. Certainly no ogre shaman would waste his time or energy with a magic that could heal a body of grievous wounds. That spoke of things arcane and treacherous and not to be trusted. That spoke of things voiced of around fires at night, things meant to frighten children and amuse wary adults.
That magic had been aimed at him was appalling, and though his body was a great deal stronger than it had been last he’d been awake, he still entertained the superstitious notion that the shroud of the black arts had tainted him. Of untrustworthy human magicks. He felt like a child again, beguiled by the tales of the clan elders, shivering in his spot around the fire, seeing things in the darkness around the ring of light that in all good reason were not there and never had been there.
He stared at Yhalen, at this small boned human so easily broken, and found it difficult to equate him with the childhood fears of the poison of dark magicks. To harbor fear of him would be humiliating at best. Ridiculous, considering that he’d cast no dark spell onto Bloodraven yet, and had good reason and many an opportunity. He’d chosen instead to heal. And he’d done a rather good job of it, considering he claimed to be ignorant of the magic he obviously used with appalling frequency.
Baffling.
Bloodraven touched the healing wound at his side again, fingertips catching at the knots in the stitches. Those would have to come out, or they would drive him to distraction. Without a knife, he doubted his large fingers would be much good at picking loose the tiny knots. Yhalen’s smaller hands could do it…if he dared let the human touch him again. He frowned at that brief moment of superstition, annoyed that the wariness lingered. He reached for Yhalen in the face of it, determined to prove his own courage, and was vastly relieved when he felt nothing but slack human limbs and smooth human skin when he pulled the young man fully onto the comfort of the pallet.
Yhalen was all dead weight, head lolling and body entirely tractable in Bloodraven’s hands. His skin was cool to the touch, as if he’d just come in from a cold winter’s day. Colder than death. This gave Bloodraven momentary pause and a small thrill of worry, until he saw the slow rise and fall of Yhalen’s chest. Alive then, but very deeply enthralled in the grip of unconsciousness. He pulled Yhalen into the warmth of the spot he’d himself just vacated, dragging a soft, human-spun blanket up to cover his slight body.
“Wake up,” he demanded, gently patting Yhalen’s cheek. No response at all. He ran a hand down the length of Yhalen’s braid, fingering the soft silkiness
of its weight, considering as he did so what had thrust Yhalen into this demanding sleep. Pondering things Yhalen had said to him in that cell, of his magicks that borrowed from the forest and the things that lived within it to heal. There was no forest here. Nothing but stone and stone, and yet more stone. What miscalculation had his human made to heal his wounds? More curious yet, why had he bothered?
He stroked down the length of the braid again, then back up to the tousled mass of hair that framed Yhalen’s face. Yhalen moaned, eyes moving behind the shield of his lids and body contorting suddenly in some bout of pain, his hands curling under the blanket to clutch at his side. Had he taken a wound that Bloodraven was unaware of since the cell? If that narrow-faced little lordling had dared to lay a hand on him, Bloodraven would pull him limb from limb.
He pushed the blanket aside, catching Yhalen’s wrists and easily drawing them up to his chest so that he could lift the tunic and see what damage there was. But there was none, only smooth, perfect flesh. Bloodraven passed fingertips across it, shivering as he realized it was the exact spot of his own wound, which pained him not at all. Had Yhalen taken that pain, along with the infection and weakness?
The unconscious bout of ghost pain had left Yhalen shivering, his cool skin gone goosepimply.
Bloodraven pulled him up, holding him close against his chest and sharing his own generous warmth.
He leaned back against the wall and cradled his human in his lap, as he imagined a human mother might do for her child. Gods knew ogre mothers had no such tenderness.
He dragged the blanket up, arranging it, and sat there afterwards, with his eyes flickering around the environs of this new prison. He recalled very little of arriving here, the journey up the stairs having consumed the majority of his awareness. He thought that the human woman, the one with the eyes of a hunting hawk, had brought them here.