by Joe Jackson
“Sharyn?” Sherman croaked, trying to get into a fetal position so he could at least reach his wounds to put pressure or bandages on them.
“I am all right,” the hybrid beast growled from several feet away. “She did not hit anything vital.”
Sherman groaned. “I don’t think she hit anything vital on me, either, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
“Hold tight,” she managed. “I should heal enough to help you in a few minutes.”
“They won’t let us back into the city, though,” Sherman said.
“Heal yourself, and then we will camp until sunrise. Then we can take a riverboat south to Newport, and then perhaps head west by ship from there,” Sharyn suggested.
It was the most sensible plan under the circumstances. Sherman listened to the dying cries of his mount, and blew out a long sigh. He was able to at least stanch the bleeding with his own healing power, but the elestram’s blades had bitten deep, and the wounds would take some time to heal without proper tending by a priest. Out of immediate danger, he surrendered himself to the will of the gods and waited for Sharyn to heal enough to come over near him. At the very least, that massive, furry form would keep them both warm through the night.
*****
Kari sat by the bedside, too nervous and emotionally distraught to sleep. Grakin still had not woken, and the priests of Tigron had no idea how long it might take. They seemed confident he would, but they couldn’t give Kari a time frame. They assured her the wounds to his head and neck were superficial, a side product of falling when he lost consciousness. The real issue, they had explained, was his Dracon’s Bane.
Many of Kari’s memories of her past life were still walled up behind her willpower, but she could recall bits and pieces. Dracon’s Bane had killed her, and it had taken twenty-seven years to do so. Grakin was more than a decade older than that, so while he still looked pretty good for a dying man, Kari understood the damage was extensive. She could recall the many times she’d vomited or defecated blood as her body destroyed itself, and she wondered if those things were happening now to Grakin, and he was simply hiding it.
Movement outside the door of his room roused Kari fully, and she glanced over. One of the priests was standing there, and he beckoned for Kari to come out into the hall. He introduced himself as Brother Thomas, and led Kari down the hall to a private office. Though it had a desk in the corner, it was a more intimate office, with four deep chairs set in a square for discussions. Brother Thomas gestured toward one of the chairs, and Kari sat down. He then poured her a glass of water and took the seat across from her.
“First, Lady Vanador, let me say that nothing I’m about to tell you is meant to upset you or make you angry, so please try to understand the nature of this meeting,” he said.
“Just call me Kari, please,” she responded, but then she nodded to his words.
“I understand you died of Dracon’s Bane yourself, yes?” Thomas asked.
Kari sighed, sat back, and took a sip of her water. She held the glass in both hands in her lap. It was sometimes still amazing and disconcerting to talk with people about her death, and frankly shocking how easily many of them accepted the fact that she was resurrected. “When I was twenty-seven,” she answered.
The priest bobbed his head. “So you lived an exceptionally long time for someone with the disorder. Then I expect it is no mystery that your husband – or mate, excuse me – has lived even longer than you did.”
“How long?” Kari asked, looking away.
Brother Thomas leaned forward and laid his hand on her knee. “Kari, please look at me,” he said, and he waited until she met his gaze again. His eyes were full of compassion and, if she wasn’t mistaken, hope. “We who follow Tigron do not believe in pronouncing death sentences. Your mate will eventually perish of Dracon’s Bane; that is something I’m sure you both have long since accepted and made your peace with. But it’s vitally important that you not lose hope or spend the remainder of his days wondering which will be his last. Take each day as it comes, and as a blessing. Hope, faith, and courage can add years to the life of the sickest individual.”
“I don’t ever remember this happening to me, though,” Kari told him. She hesitated a moment, then continued, “I can remember throwing up blood sometimes, particularly in the last few weeks of my life, but I don’t ever remember losing…consciousness for long periods of time.”
“You probably did, and simply don’t remember it,” he returned, but he dismissed his own words with a placating gesture. “But your mate hit his head when he fell; that is the reason he still has yet to wake up. He seems in fine condition otherwise, Dracon’s Bane notwithstanding.”
“Fine condition?” Kari repeated incredulously.
Thomas nodded. “Even though he has Dracon’s Bane, he still has a healthy weight to him, his muscles are all in good condition, and his vital signs are steady. He does have a bit of a rugged look to him from the remnants of the second stage, but if I didn’t know he has Dracon’s Bane, Kari, I wouldn’t necessarily guess to look at and examine him.”
“But you said he’ll die from it for sure?” she nearly sobbed. “There’s no possibility he might overcome it as a half-guardian?”
The priest frowned and shook his head. “I don’t believe so, but I won’t say it’s not at all possible. The gods work in mysterious ways at times, Kari. So I won’t say for sure. However, there is more to this than I’ve told you so far.”
“How so?”
“Dracon’s Bane advances in stages. The first stage is fairly innocuous – in fact, one might even argue it’s beneficial. It causes you to become a terra-dracon and grow wings, among the other, less-noticeable benefits of being a terra-dracon.”
“Wait a second, Dracon’s Bane makes you a terra-dracon?” Kari interrupted. “Then why don’t all of my kind have it?”
“They do,” the priest answered. “In most cases, it never advances beyond the first stage. In your case – and in your mate’s – something caused it to advance, and the changes began to overwhelm the body. I could give you a medical thesis on all the theorizing and research that’s been done, Kari, but I don’t know that it would be comforting or useful to you.”
Kari didn’t interrupt again, so Thomas continued, “The second stage, if it advances to the second stage, normally begins in conjunction with the onset of puberty. As the body changes, so does the disorder, and its consumptive nature normally kills an affected terra-dracon before they have even completed puberty.”
“Those lucky enough to advance to the third stage – such as yourself and your mate – may see longevity, as the disorder slows in its consumption and actually allows the body to heal itself fairly extensively, over time. But then the fourth stage arrives, though what triggers it, we cannot say yet. The fourth stage represents advanced consumption, and the disorder accelerates until the death of the individual.”
Kari thought on his words for a minute, and she didn’t even try to stop the tears that came to her eyes. “So you’re telling me Grakin’s reached the fourth stage?”
“I’m afraid that seems to be the case,” he answered. “In the condition he’s currently in, though, and how long he has already lived, the fourth stage may take some time to come to fruition. And as I said earlier, live each day for what it is, and let the end come when it does.”
Kari nodded. “That’s kind of how I lived my first life,” she said. “I knew I was doomed, so I just sort of looked at what was right in front of me, and didn’t live for the future. Well, not for my own future, anyway.”
“The thing you will need to discuss with your mate, Kari, is his nature as a healer,” the priest said. “I’m sure at some point, you’ve seen how taxing it can be for your mate to channel the power of the gods through himself. Now, with his condition accelerating, the consequences of that channeling will become more and more severe.”
“You mean he’s killing himself?” Kari asked. She didn’t need the pries
t to answer. Even if it was true – and Kari had little doubt it might be – she didn’t think she could convince Grakin to stop healing people. It was part of who he was, and she doubted that even the prospect of an increasingly shortened life would make him forsake that path.
“In effect, yes,” Thomas confirmed.
“What about our son?” Kari asked, and the priest put his hand to his chin. “We were told he doesn’t have Dracon’s Bane, but you just told me every terra-dracon has it…does that mean he has it, too? Why did the priests tell us he doesn’t have it?”
“Why don’t you bring your son here while your mate rests, and we will run our tests on him to see what the case may be with him?” Thomas asked, putting his hand on top of Kari’s to try to calm her.
Kari’s other hand dropped down to her belly, and she closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath to try to calm herself. If she gave birth to two children who also perished from the same disease she had, she wasn’t sure how she would deal with losing them and her mate. Was it possible the gods could curse any one person so much? She shook the thought away; like Brother Thomas had said, she had to take things one at a time.
“All right, I’ll be back with my son as soon as I can,” she said.
Worry and doubt nagged at Kari the whole way home, like a pair of annoying stray dogs nipping at her heels. The aches and pains of being pregnant and walking partway across the city hardly even registered, so preoccupied was she with the prospect of her mate and both children dying of Dracon’s Bane. Kyrie and the other priests of Kaelariel’s church had assured her that her son didn’t have Dracon’s Bane, but if what Brother Thomas had told her was true, then they had to be wrong. Unless there was some way for two people with Dracon’s Bane to not have children with it, then Little Gray assuredly had it, and his coming sibling would as well.
When Kari reached the house, she found her mother-in-law kneeling on the floor of the fireplace room, Danilynn comforting the half-guardian priestess. Before them lay a puddle of blood and vomit, and Kari’s breath caught in her throat. It looked as though Grakin had gotten sick, lost his balance, and fallen. It gave a chilling context to everything Brother Thomas had told her at the temple.
“Kari,” Danilynn said in a whisper as she rose to her feet. The fures-rir priestess came and wrapped Kari in a comforting hug.
They were joined a moment later by Kyrie, and the three women simply held tight to each other. Kari tried to keep in mind that her mother-in-law would be losing a son and her only two grandchildren if the worst came to pass; Kari would hardly be suffering alone in any of this. She tried to remind herself that Kyrie was High Priestess of the god of death, and that even with her service to the god of what was sometimes called the “ultimate freedom,” Kyrie still didn’t just accept the deaths of loved ones. All of them would have their faith tested in the days and years to come.
Kari tried to keep things in perspective, reminding herself that her purpose shouldn’t falter or come into question because of losses she suffered. She had parts of two lives now losing friends, loved ones, acquaintances, coworkers, and neighbors, and she had long used that to fuel her inner fire, rather than smother it. She pointedly remembered her memorial for her slain brys friend, Makauric, and how she had made his memory a part of herself to drive her mercy. But she had to wonder: was her faith strong enough to do the same with her mate, let alone her children?
“Where’s Little Gray?” she asked at last.
“Upstairs with Eli and Damansha,” Kyrie said with a sniffle. She wiped the tears from her face, and straightened out before Kari. “I found him sitting next to Grakin…stroking his hair and asking him to wake up.”
Danilynn gave the half-guardian priestess another comforting hug. “I’ll clean up,” she said. “You two take Little Gray over to the temple to see his father.”
“Thank you,” Kari said. She took the stairs as quickly as she could, Kyrie close behind.
Little Gray was in his bedroom with Eli and Damansha, and they had built a fort out of his blankets and pillows. Damansha was catapulting rolled-up socks and handkerchiefs at the boys, and Little Gray was giggling up a storm from behind his downy walls. Eli took a sock off the snout, and that sent all three of them into a fit of giggles until they saw Kari enter the room. Their expressions turned somber, but though a sob preceded it, Kari couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. She tried to imagine finding a similar scene but with Serenjols, Damansha, and a child of their own, and somehow, someway, it drove the darkness out of her heart and mind for the moment.
“Mama!” Little Gray shouted, bursting from his fort to come give Kari a hug. “Is daddy okay?”
She was amazed how fast he was picking up the common tongue. “He’ll be okay, sweetheart,” she soothed him. “We’re going to see him now.”
Kari started to heft him up, but she nearly wet her pants again. Kyrie offered to as soon as she saw Kari’s shocked posture, and Kari was happy to let her mother-in-law take the honors. After a brief visit to the latrine, Kari rejoined them and they got ready to leave for the temple. Danilynn already had the floor mostly cleaned up, and she promised to be along with Eli in a little while, once the family had time to spend together.
Kari sent the others ahead, and lagged behind with Eli and Danilynn for a minute. “I should get going, but I need to ask you two about something,” she said, and they stood before her attentively. “When you recovered the things stolen from Turik Jalar’s tomb…were there any records, or a journal, or anything like that?”
Eli looked at Danilynn. “Not that I remember,” he said, and the priestess shook her head in agreement. They both turned back to Kari. “Why do you ask?”
Kari sighed and glanced at the door, not wanting to keep her mother-in-law and son waiting. “You two knew Jori-an was seterra-rir, right?” she asked, and both nodded. “The War of Purity happened during Turik Jalar’s reign as Avatar, and he had records that were kept secret and apparently buried with him. I was suspicious that those records could have been what the thieves were really after. Or, they could still be sitting in his tomb, waiting for someone to come and bring that truth back into the light.”
“What truth?” Danilynn pressed.
“It’s a long story, and not a good one,” Kari said. “But that’s something the two of you can help me with later. For now, can you send an inquiry to Gnarr and ask if they’re aware of any records being buried in Turik Jalar’s tomb? Whoever put his things back may know. If not, they may be willing to check, if they know I’m the one asking.”
“Of course,” Danilynn said, giving Kari’s shoulder a light shove. “You have other things to worry about. We’ll take care of things here, and then go send a message to Gnarr.”
Kari bowed her head in thanks and joined Kyrie and Little Gray to head to Tigron’s temple. Grakin was awake when they arrived, and he shared long embraces with Kari and his mother.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked breathlessly. “What happened?”
“I am fine, aside from the obvious,” Grakin said, subconsciously rubbing the back of his head. “I remember making some tea and going to read by the fire, and then the next thing I knew, I woke up here.”
“We found you lying on the floor in the fireplace room. You’d been sick, and then it looked as though you fell and hit your head,” Kyrie said, taking his hand and giving a tight squeeze.
Kari took a few minutes to relate what the priests had told her. She could see all of her fears mirrored on the faces of her mate and mother-in-law. Neither of them spoke a single word of protest when the priests came to do their tests on Little Gray, despite what it might normally have said about their own work.
The tests were fairly straightforward, with no bloodletting or anything of the sort. There was a low chant between two of the priests, and a swirling mist around Little Gray that made him laugh and swat at the ghostly vapors. When they finished, the priests assured Kari and Grakin that they would know the results within the hour,
and they took their leave of the family. Little Gray wanted to go play with them, but Kari caught him by the tail and pulled him back in to sit with his father.
Kari related what had happened with Eli and Danilynn’s group while they waited for the priests to return with the results. “This whole situation is getting more and more complicated,” she said. “We did find the mole, but I’m starting to wonder if there aren’t a lot more of them, maybe even including the agent of Sekassus themselves.”
“Perhaps this mole will tell you who the agent of Sekassus is?” Kyrie suggested.
“I’m not sure how much he’ll talk, or how far I’ll go to make him talk,” Kari said in all seriousness. She could still hardly fathom the depth of the betrayal levied against her by one of her own people, especially one who’d worked so closely with her for nearly four years. She had to get answers to her questions to safeguard the lives of her hunters, but she wasn’t sure just how much she was willing to do or order done to see to that end.
“Love justice, but do mercy,” Grakin said, patting Kari’s hand. “Perhaps dangling life or even freedom in front of this mole will get you better results than pain or the threat of death.”
Kari snorted a laugh, but aimed at herself. “Yeah, I should’ve thought of that myself.” She blew out a calming sigh. “Of course, I haven’t really had time to even think about any of it. I only just found the mole before the messenger came and told me to come see you.”
“I am sorry for that, my love,” Grakin said, but Kari shushed him. She kissed him and touched her forehead to his.
The priests returned, and Kari sat transfixed, waiting for their diagnosis. Brother Thomas came and joined them, and after brief glances at the others, it was apparently decided he would do the talking. “Your son does, of course, have Dracon’s Bane,” he said, “just as I explained a little while ago. The good news is that it’s latent, which is why your mother-in-law and mate were unable to detect it. It will never advance beyond the first stage; your son is safe.”