by sun sword
"I am Askeyia a'Narin," she told the woman gently. "And I'm—I'm about to start my day at the Mother's temple in the thirteenth holding." It was absolutely true. "If you'd—if you'd like, you can accompany me." She held out her arms again.
This time the woman seemed to break; her feet left the cobbled stones as if she'd yanked them free. "It's my boy—he's hurt my boy—Healer, my boy—"
This close, she could see the blood that trailed out of either corner of the child's mouth. He was young; no newborn, but not yet crawling. And as she touched his face, as she concentrated, calling upon the talent that was bane and boon both, she knew. Ribs, thin and flexible, had been crushed with enough speed and force to pierce lungs; blood filled them, even now. He was dying. Not so close to death as to threaten her should she attempt the healing, but not so far that his mother had the time it would take to walk to the Mother's temple and wait for the healer to arrive.
Not so close to death?
He's only a child, she thought. He's only a child. And children aren't so costly to call back. Everyone knows that.
She did not look over her shoulder again. She did not wonder where Jonas and Mercy were. She held the life in her hands, and the life was almost everything. It was why a healer couldn't freely touch the injured or the dying at her level of skill; the call was almost impossible to ignore. Not that she would have ignored it; she was, as Levec had said, the softest free towner that he had ever met.
She brushed a stray strand of limp, dark hair from the curve of her cheek; it was shorn by fire, the candle's kiss—one she'd been too tired to completely avoid. With care, she took the child from the arms of his mother.
He's only a babe, she thought. It won't cost much.
Babies were need defined, but their needs were simple; eating, sleeping, physical comfort. Askeyia felt the warmth leave her hands in a rush as the baby's thoughts, inarticulate pictures, smells—the smells were strong— images of a face, smiling, joyful, tearful, tired, and sometimes angry filled her vision. She could not recognize this woman in the woman who stood in such desperation, beneath the trees in the Common; this woman was safety. Had this child known loneliness? Not yet; not yet.
He was 'Lesso; a diminutive, Askeyia told herself, although it was a struggle to find the word. When he was hungry, he called for his mother, and she came; she was warm when he was cold, she was sound and sight and smell.
'Lesso thought that Askeyia was his mother, and when she called him, when she held out her arms, he came with ease and joy—or rather, he wailed the louder for the sound of her voice bearing his name in the shadows of .the foothills that led to Mandaros. She called him again, and again he wailed, louder; one last time, and she was there, he was there; she picked him up and held him tight against her, within her, bringing him back to himself.
And all about her, too strong to be memory, too visceral to evoke that naive yearning, the things by which a young babe knows a mother. By which, in turn, a young mother knows her child. And this was her child, this 'Lesso, this babe; this was hers, to protect and heal and comfort. He fell into the cradle of her healer-strong arms and rested there as if those arms were made to do no more than hold him.
Really, as she'd told Levec a hundred times, a thousand times, healing babies was no risk at all.
Really.
But she couldn't explain the tears that coursed down her cheeks as the world returned to her eyes—to her adult eyes. Couldn't explain the way her arms tightened around the swaddling cloth, the way she pressed the babe tight, too tight, to her chest.
She spoke phrases, things meant to separate the healer from the healed—but words offered no separation.
The screaming, thin and terrible, did.
Turning, sloping groundward with the sudden disorientation of motion, she saw 'Lesso's mother—his terrified mother, his strong, his happy, his angry mother—chalk white, white as snow on mountain peaks.
"Healer!" she cried, pointing to a place beyond the vulnerable healer's back.
Askeyia spun again, lighter on her feet, surer now that the pounding of heart was without question her heart, not his. And as she gazed at a man who was moving from the center of the Ring beneath which she stood, she remembered what 'Lesso's mother had said.
He's hurt my boy—
No healer had ever come out of the call with such speed, such terrible urgency. Was it 'Lesso's fear? Her own vulnerability? The weakness of a healing? She turned, handing the child to his mother, to his other mother, and then turned again, a single word having passed between them: Run.
He was well-dressed, but not so well-dressed that he needed guards or a palanquin; she thought him a Southern noble, some minor clansman, not the valley Voyani whose descendants now crowded many of the hundred holdings in their attempts to make roots—a place for themselves that their Southern compatriots neither wanted nor claimed. His hair was dark, and his skin quite pale; his shoulders were broad and his hands unblemished. His teeth—rare enough in a man his age—were perfect, as was his brow; he had the look of power about him.
He carried no obvious weapon, wore no visible armor.
In the light of day, he should have looked like just another man, another foreigner.
But the light of day shunned him.
She glanced once over her shoulder, just once, to make sure her child had escaped, and then she, too, ran.
Light, as distinct as a bird call, she heard his chuckle cross the Common as if nothing at all separated them.
Askeyia a'Narin was good at running. A life of relative luxury and indolence had not robbed her of the skill—or the instincts that had honed it. Air crested her open lips and slid down her throat in a rush. The cobbled stones beneath her feet were hard and solid; they provided an even ground with no treacherous dips or holes, no unseen roots or branches.
As a healer, she had a value.
It was beyond money, although money was paid for it. Untrained, unknown, and unregistered, she was worth half of the naval fleet's best ships to the right man, if he could catch her and remove her from view before he could be stopped. It was, of course, completely illegal; the punishments for kidnapping and forced indenture were almost as harsh as those for murder. But murder didn't stop, either.
Askeyia knew how to keep her wits about her while she ran. It was a strength, and time and again, it had proved her salvation. And the running itself cleared her mind; the depth of the breathing, the ache of her lungs, kept her firmly in the here and the now. It was harder to panic if she was doing something.
And it was hard to do something with the press of bodies grown so thick at the height of day. In the summer months, the height of day was the emptiest time in the Common, but in Henden, what with the cool breeze and rains, it was the most crowded. She had no time to apologize, although she heard the curses at her back and to either side. She hoped that none of the men or. women were foreign, and that none of them had tempers, because she couldn't afford to be called to task for the clumsy, horrible run. She had to find—
There. Authority guards. Armor gleaming ostentatiously in a day that was cool enough for it. Their helms were down; the metal bridges that followed the line of the nose usually made her think of sculptured birds.
Not today. Her feet slowed their stride as they responded to the giddy relief she felt at arriving, untouched, before the men who kept the Kings' Order in the Common. Safety, here, although in her youth she'd been raised to distrust Imperial authority. A free towner's daughter, but not a free towner at heart. Beneath her chin, the medallion she wore caught the light, bending it, scattering it, and holding it as she caught her breath.
"Healer?" A guard who Askeyia thought wore the insignia of a Primus said, eyes widening slightly. Her medallion wasn't a common sight in the open streets.
"I—I'm being followed," she said, drawing a harsh breath—a series of harsh, quick breaths. "Foreigner."
The guard—a man she vaguely recognized—frowned as her words and her medallion made cl
ear what the threat was. He turned at once, waving his three companions forward. She huddled behind the mass of their armored bodies, feeling the safety of their height, their obvious weight, and especially of the arms that they were even now unsheathing in a rough scrape of metal against metal.
The stranger walked into view. Walked. Yet he followed no more than twenty seconds behind her; less, if she were a capable judge. He was completely unruffled, as finely turned out—in a city sort of way—as he had been when she'd first set eyes on him.
And the shadows that the trees cast still flowed from the edge of his cloak, bleeding into the stones like a thick, rich liquid. He smiled, glancing between the guards as if he could see through them.
The safety she felt vanished then, as if she, too, could see through armor and arms and simple physical strength as the illusions they were. Had her eyes widened? Had she made a noise—any noise other than the simple and unavoidable rhythm of drawn breath? She thought she must have, because he smiled. Winter on the mountain had been just as cold and just as deadly as that smile for a healer-born girl who didn't understand what the word storm meant.
And she was a healer-born girl, with all that that implied. All of it.
"Primus," she said, standing forward, the heart beneath her rib cage telling the tale of the fear that she forced, with so much difficulty, from the lines of her face.
"I'm a Sentrus, Healer," he said, as the stranger drew closer. There was a smile in his voice, a friendly correction offered to a woman who had seen enough of the effects of a sword, but never seemed to know enough to recognize the rank of the person who wielded it.
"I—I think I've made a mistake."
He looked back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing.
She swallowed, pale in the fading day, the weariness replaced by the giddiness of too much fear.
"Healer—are you certain?" He didn't believe her, of course. Askeyia a'Narin was a terrible liar. Especially when the lie was forced out of her by an instinct that she only barely controlled: the desire to preserve, at any cost, the lives of those around her.
Because she knew, without knowing why, that in seconds, these men would lie aground, dying just as surely as the babe had been, but with no one to come and rescue them all. No one to come for even one.
All healers learned to hide from the instinct; to deny it. There wasn't enough power in the world to stop death from coming to those who heard the call; not enough power in the world to save every man, woman, and child who was worth saving. But there was guilt enough to destroy a healer, and a healer's life.
And if not guilt, there was the call itself. To guide a man back from death was the most harrowing journey that either the dying man or the living healer could make. Or so she had been taught.
But she didn't believe it, not now. Because she saw the death in the stranger, writ across the living shadow in his face, and she could not imagine that anything could be harder than this: to swallow, to smile, to force a foolish young expression across her face instead of huddling behind swords and armor, or better, fleeing and gaining the moments each guard's death would take.
The stranger had stopped completely; he still looked at her, through the guards, but his expression lost all smile, all edge of expensive pleasure.
"Askeyia a'Narin," he said, and she saw that his eyes had no whites. "I am Isladar."
She wanted to run, but the guards wouldn't—couldn't it seemed—quite leave her, and she knew that the moment she unleashed her struggling fear, the moment her feet hit the cobbled stones, they would fulfill their duty.
And wasn't that what they'd trained all those years for? Wasn't it what they swore their oath to do? Wasn't it what they—say it, Askeyia—risked daily, with full knowledge? Ah, she wanted to listen; the words were the strongest they'd ever been. But she stayed. Because she was healer-born. Because she knew now that 'Lesso's injury had simply been the trap that had closed around her; this man had injured the babe to catch her out, and a man who could do that, could do anything.
Levec would be angry, when he learned how she'd let herself be caught.
"Isladar," she said, turning the word around in a dry, dry mouth. "W-what do you want?"
He offered her his arm; she reached out, hesitated, and then let her hand fall limply to her side. She couldn't touch him. She could not.
He stared at her, his eyes narrowed, his lips a slender line in his pale face. Then he smiled, and this smile, unlike the other, was, if not friendly, benign. "Let us," he said, withdrawing his arm, "walk. I have so little experience of the healer-born."
She swallowed, took a step forward, stood near enough that he might actually catch her in the circle of his arms. But he did not touch her; instead, he smiled more deeply. "Your fear," he whispered, "is so strong. I am almost surprised that you remember how to walk."
So was Askeyia.
He did not wish to injure her, but he could not quite bring himself to say this; there was no gentleness in his nature, nor could there be. He was First-born, he had Chosen, and he resided in a place of power among his kin: Kinlord. Demon. Kialli. Isladar.
Months had gone into the careful watching and studying of the houses of healing on the isle. The healing houses were notable for the security of their walls, the profusion of guards that protected the students within them, and the personalities of the people who claimed to own them. He studied them, but always at a distance, he would cause an injury, pay for its correction, and then take the information from the mind of the man or woman so healed. Time-consuming.
Yet in the end, he had settled upon the house of healing owned by a man named Levec. Healer Levec. Taciturn, sharp-tongued, and more possessive by half than the next man who undertook the running of a house of healing, he had caught Isladar's attention. If he had a family name— as most of the mortals did—it was not one that Isladar could find easily, and the various records of the Authorities were open for his inspection. In all of his dealings, he was simply Healer Levec, and he was known to any man of power who made his home on the Holy Isle.
That isle was no home to him, and he did not cross the bridge that separated Averalaan Aramarelas from the rest of Averalaan happily, but he knew what he sought when he left his Lord's side, and knew further that it was upon the isle, and nowhere else, that it could be found.
He chose Levee's House, and from there, his intense personal scrutiny began. Levec, of course, was not useful in the grand scheme—but Isladar believed that a man of Levee's temperament was prone to foster those who were. He was not completely certain; the younger healer-born students did not have a Kialli's way of measuring the depth of mortal affection, and they took his words, often, as words that held all of his many meanings.
His smile folded into a line; his face grew remote, as it often did when he contemplated the plans that lay, stone by carefully placed stone, ahead. Always ahead. If he was honest, and in the silence of his own thoughts, he could afford to be little else, he had chosen the House of Levec for one other reason: Levec was a man who would be… injured by the loss of one of his students. Even one.
And so we prove ourselves, again and again, true to our nature.
There were many healers who fit the kinlord's needs in a purely emotional way, but they were more often than not young men, and for his particular plan, a young man was out of the question. Yet in the case of a house such as the house Levec ran, the young women were often more guarded—in both senses of the word—and it was not until he found Askeyia a'Narin that he knew, with as much certainty as it could be known, that he had found the one.
Narrowing the scope of his search had been simple, and following her had proved instructive, although what he said remained true: healers were almost beyond his ken.
"Askeyia a'Narin," he said, as he brought her to one of the standing rings. "I have been waiting many months for this opportunity." He reached up, caught the underside of a leaf, and followed its veins up to the thin stem that fixed it to a branch. With a quiet
snap he pulled it free, turning it over in his palm as if that, and nothing else, had been his purpose.
"What do you want?" she said again, the fear thickening her words less. "Why have you—why did you—"
It was hard not to frighten her; she was so close to the brink of hysteria he had only to speak the right words and she would fall over the edge. In truth, he greatly desired it, but that was the visceral, and Isladar was known for the control that he exercised over base impulse. Over any impulse. He handed her the leaf, taking care to cause no contact between her flesh and his.
Shaking, she took it, pressing it unconsciously between the palms of her hands as if it were a flattened glove. The leaves very much resembled wide, oddly colored hands.
"You are about to become a part of history, Askeyia. It falls to you to begin the greatest empire that the world has ever known."
She was mute; she stared at the leaf, as if meeting his eyes was painful. He pondered a moment, wondering if she could see his true eyes. A rare self-annoyance troubled him; of course she could see them. What other reason could she have for her terror? The healers saw much that he had not expected. He reached out to touch her, and pulled away as her nostrils widened. The sun was falling; the shadow was growing.
"Askeyia," he said, his voice soft and neutral, "I do not intend to frighten you." .
At that, her eyes flashed. "You're lying," she said evenly.
"Am I?"
"Yes." Pause. "No."
He laughed, although he knew she would find the laughter unpleasant. "You speak truth. And it is thus with my truth: that opposites are in equal measure valid." He frowned, fell silent. He had not intended to say as much.
It annoyed him.
"What do you want from me?"
"Everything," he said gravely, "but not for me." Her fear was as strong as any fear he had tasted in this domain; he had, after all, been cautious and infinitely human in his interaction with other mortals. But this one, this girl—she would see much more than a simple Kialli indulgence before her life ended.