by Shannah Jay
Everyone echoed that phrase several times, and Quall's deep voice was a thread of comfort. Then . .
.
Fiana gasped. She could feel - oh, for the first time since Sen-Sether had ravished her, she was gathering properly. 'Brother, thank you,' she whispered, and allowed herself to sink deep into that perfect peace and communion with the others in the circle.
It seemed to her as if something had come to stand behind her, so she gathered her forces together and tried to focus them on the child. Maybe, just maybe, they could make enough difference to little Hallian. 'Fever fade,' she murmured, as she had heard Sister Healers do so many times. 'Fever fade and flesh be cool.'
'Fever fade,' Quall echoed and the others repeated it after him. Then they all fell quiet, losing any sensation of being individuals, as they meshed into a healing pattern. Light began to flicker around the limp figure on the bed. Every single person concentrated on the child, willing her to recover. And they knew something had indeed happened, something so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes.
After a while, Fiana sighed, reluctant to break the mesh, but she couldn’t stay here like this for ever, so she said softly, 'Come back to yourselves.'
Only when the last member of the group had opened his eyes and smiled slightly at his companions
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did the mother, who’d been waiting by the door, rush to feel her child's forehead. She burst into tears.
For a moment, Fiana's heart lurched. Surely they hadn’t done the child any harm? But the woman's next words set her mind at rest.
'Her fever's gone. Oh, thank you! I don't know how to thank you enough.'
They looked down at the child and each person felt a sense of awe, for Hallian was indeed sleeping normally and her feverish flush had faded. Her cheeks were pale, and she was very thin, but she looked like a child who would mend.
'I didn't know we could do that without a Healer,' one of the young men from Outpost said.
'Nor did I.' Fiana patted the mother's hand and then led her companions downstairs, leaving the woman to sit with her child.
Quall cleared his throat. 'Er - Herra once said I have a Healer's Gifts, so maybe that helped.'
'Something surely did,' said Fiana. 'We'll remember to include you in a circle, Quall, if we need to heal anyone from now on.'
Downstairs they found Drialla waiting for them. 'How did it go?'
'Well. The fever has gone.'
'I'm so glad. Quedras is just getting folk settled outside, but you're to eat in here, with him and Querilla and Quall. I was just waiting to let you know.' She went back outside.
Fiana went to sit on one of the long benches. She felt elated and yet shivery, as if she had exhausted herself.
Quall came and sat down beside her. 'You all right?'
She nodded, then as he still looked concerned, added, 'That was the first time I'd been able to gather for years.'
'Ah.'
She looked at him in puzzlement.
'Sometimes Quequere heals those he takes as his Voice.' He sat quietly by her side and watched her sniff away a few tears and pull herself together. He patted her shoulder awkwardly.
When they went back inside, the table was already set for an evening meal and an old woman was stirring a huge pot over by the cooking hearth, humming quietly to herself.
The father came in. 'How is she?' He didn’t sound optimistic.
'Better, I think,' Fiana said. 'Thanks to our Brother's help.'
He gulped. 'She's better? Really better?' He rushed up the stairs.
When he came down again a little while later, he was a changed man, quiet and helpful in explaining the lie of the land north of his farm.
'I'd forgotten, you know,' he said as he helped them load up some of his cheeses that they'd bargained for the next day. He'd wanted to give the cheeses away, but Fiana wouldn’t let him, for the whole farm reeked of poverty.
'Forgotten what?' Querilla demanded, her attention more on how the food was being loaded than on what her host was saying.
'Forgotten how good the Sisters were - are.'
'Then stop helping the Serpent.' To Querilla, it was as easy as that. You didn't submit to rascals. You stood by your friends. You lived your life honestly.
He looked at her pleadingly. 'They kill you if you refuse to help them.'
She shrugged. 'Then get together with others of the same mind and make sure you kill them first.
Even if you have to work in secret for a while, you can build up some sort of resistance, surely? I wouldn't just give in to rrascals. I definitely would not.'
He stood stock still, looking as if she had physically hit him. 'I - I might just do that.'
She nodded and as the wagon pulled away, she walked up to Quedras and said, 'We can start helping Herra from now on, you know, Queddie.'
'What do you mean?' His mind was more set on preparing for battles.
'Well, if we can set up some little resistance groups as we go,' she grinned nastily, 'then Those of the Serpent won't have such an easy time of it around here.'
'Hah!' He slapped her on the back. 'Good thinking, Quer.'
And so it was done.
***
Thirty days later they were following the Belder River upstream when the deleff stopped suddenly, stepped out of the harness and trampled off into the woods.
One of the scouts who travelled a little in front of the main party came racing back, yelling, 'Armed men!'
'Shut up!' Quedras hissed. 'Do you want everyone to know we're here? Don't you know how far sound carries when the air is damp?'
But it was too late. Voices were calling, 'That way!' and there was the sound of running footsteps coming towards them.
'Battle formations,' Quedras called, his voice crisp, his eyes assessing the situation.
Half of the band immediately went to hide in the undergrowth or behind rocks, wherever they could, a tactic they’d decided on a while back.
Querilla stood motionless, sword drawn, surveying the terrain they’d have to fight over. She’d lost her cheerful look and turned into a cool fighting machine.
Two men rounded the corner, followed by others, half-hidden by the sparse undergrowth in this hilly region.
'A trader's wagon!' one yelled. 'At last! Don't kill 'em. Keep 'em for the shrine.' Then his eyes fell on Querilla and he stopped, holding up his hand. 'There's a woman daring to hold a sword.' Glee was in his face. He clearly didn’t believe a woman capable of fighting. 'If she doesn't stab herself, leave her to me.'
Querilla winked at Quedras and feigned a stumble as she took a few steps forward.
Then battle was engaged. At the rear of the attackers a tall cadaverous man in a black robe began to
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chant, 'Serpent, save your Servants. Serpent, save your Servants,' in a whining monotone, but made no attempt to join in the fighting.
'It sets my teeth on edge, that noise does,' Quedras remarked, rushing forward and cutting down his first attacker before the fellow had time to realise what was happening.
Those from the Sandrims gave a good account of themselves and soon made the attackers lose their confident air.
'Don't kill them unless you rreally have to!' Quedras called, smiling and keeping an eye on his new band at the same time as he and Querilla led the attack, with their usual paired battle style. 'Me and Querilla want to talk to them afterwards.'
There was a shrill trumpeting from the rear of the attackers and one of the deleff who had been pulling the wagon burst out of the woods. It was squealing as if in agony, sound upon sound, screaming until the eardrums rang and folk reeled aside, moaning. It bowled over the Servant of the Serpent before the man could do more than turn to flee. As the transparent wings swept backwards and forwards over his body, he curled up into a foetal ball, yelling with pain. The wing tips touched another couple of people who also yelled and jumped backwards, then, as the wings beat towards them
again, the rest of the attackers turned and fled.
Strangely, one of the men who’d been touched by the wings showed no sign of pain, but moved out of range and leaned against a tree, feigning injury.
'It's their own evil that’s reflected back at them by the wings,' said Fiana. 'It must be. The deleff have no evil in them.'
Quedras was organising the prisoners and Querilla strolled over to the curled-up figure of the Servant and tugged the whip from his belt. She broke its stock over her knee, then pulled out her dagger and cut off the thongs, for good measure. 'No one will use that thing again.' For good measure, she kicked him, but he was glassy-eyed and didn’t respond by more than a whisper of a moan.
'I purely hate these snake-lovers,' she said loudly. 'They set my teeth on edge.' Her eye caught a movement among the trees and she was leaping forward before Fiana had even seen what it was.
But the man held out his hands in a gesture of surrender and made no attempt to fight.
'Wouldn't you like a little bout with the swords?' Querilla coaxed. 'I've hardly had time to get my hand in again.
He shook his head. 'No. Actually, I'd rather join you.'
'What?' She grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him out of the undergrowth, for he was a small man. 'What do you mean, join us?' she roared. 'Do you think we want snake-loving rrascals in our band?'
'I'm not a snake lover.' His voice trembled as he said this and he cast a quick glance over his shoulder, as if afraid of someone overhearing him.
Fiana came up and stopped dead. 'Grivrin!' Her hands clenched into fists and it was a moment before she could speak calmly, so intense was her disappointment. 'I didn't think to find that you had gone over to the Serpent.'
'Those who didn't join the new armies were killed. And I'm not ready to die.'
'But you'd have had to make sacrifice, or they'd not have accepted you.'
'I've never made sacrifice. They're so keen to pull everyone into the army they'll excuse you participation if you declare yourself impotent.'
'You? Impotent?'
He shrugged. 'I would have been if I'd tried to take a woman in that shrine of theirs.'
'Do you know him?' Querilla still had her sword out.
Fiana nodded.
'Vouch for him?'
Fiana stretched out her hand. 'Hold my hand Grivrin.'
He looked puzzled, but obeyed.
'He's not of the Serpent - but he's not,' she hesitated, 'not clean, either. He's been into shrines. The taint clings.'
Grivrin bowed his head. 'It's the incense. It makes you feel muzzy.'
'He wants to join us,' Querilla said, beginning to polish her sword on a piece of rag. 'What do you think?'
Fiana frowned. 'I'm not sure.'
'Hah! That's how I feel exactly.' She turned as a trampling sound heralded the return of the deleff to the wagon. Both seemed upset, but they went into the harness and started pulling the wagon. 'Oh, bring him along! For now. But keep an eye on him.'
'I'll be all right once that my head's clear,' he assured her.
'Yes, but how will you be if you get near that filthy smoke again?' Querilla demanded.
There was a silence broken only by the trampling sound of the deleff's tree-trunk feet.
'I don't know,' he said at last. 'But I'll try not to let it affect me. I'll try my very hardest.'
'Let him come,' Fiana begged. 'He's my cousin.'
Querilla sighed. 'Well, then, you'd better keep an eye on him. We don't want traitors in our midst.'
CHAPTER 19 HERRA'S DREAM
Herra walked slowly out of Northwoods town, turning to gesture with one hand in irritated dismissal when someone tried to follow her. She needed to be alone, to think, to commune with her Brother - and to try to speak to that other intelligence she could sense more and more clearly an unimaginable distance away from her.
As she disappeared into the forest and made her way in the direction of the nearest patch of wildwoods, she set wards behind her to prevent anyone following. They were becoming over-protective, the people of Northwoods, and Davred and Katia were the worst of all. She would not, she decided, tolerate it today. Today, she would take some time for herself, a thing she rarely did.
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The summer sunlight, even filtered as it was by the leaves, made the air warm and pleasant, but she hadn’t enjoyed the winter here in the High Alder. Although she’d been born in Garshlian, where the winters were also cold and where snow fell from time to time, she’d spent most of her long life in Tenebrak, where snow never fell and where there were frosts only in the higher areas. As always, a pang shot through her at the thought of Tenebrak and the temple there. Would she never stop missing it?
She found a trail that twisted its way deep within the wildwoods and sauntered along it for a while, delighted when it ended abruptly at a small pool. This was exactly the sort of place she’d been seeking.
Sitting down on a rock, she hugged her knees to her chest and gave herself over to what others might consider daydreaming.
It was coming closer, the final encounter. She knew that. She was also aware that she wouldn’t see another spring, though she’d said nothing to anyone else. They’d be upset, but she had accepted the idea. After all, she’d had a longer life and a longer Enhancement than anyone in the Sisterhood's history, so she really couldn’t complain that it was nearing a close. She’d especially enjoyed these wonderful years at Northwoods with Davred and Katia.
She looked up at the blue of the sky, laced with occasional drifts of cloud and softened at the lower edges by swaying branches and graceful fronds of foliage. 'Brother, let me understand how best to prepare them for what is to come,' she whispered. 'I can’t leave them unprepared.'
The air seemed to hum around her and she cried out as what she could only think of as pure love rained down on her from the sky, as soft as a summer shower, as warm as a flame in winter, so wide in its understanding and compassion that her soul ached to join it.
'Not yet, Herra,' a voice sang inside her head. 'Not quite yet, dear Sister. First you must meet your foe. '
'Must it come to a battle?' she pleaded. 'Must so many die?'
'Without the struggle, where is the victory?'
'But the price is so heavy, the souls so precious.'
'They will be reborn. And they will be stronger next time, those who fight against evil.'
She bowed her head in acceptance, but still tears welled in her eyes.
Words chimed in her head like bells in a temple. 'Herra, it’s the price of wisdom. '
'What do you mean?' She found it hard to think, hard to see the connections, for although she sensed what was being told her as words, it wasn’t words, but pure thoughts, and thoughts from a being which understood so much more about the universe than she did.
'Dear Sister soon to join us,' the voice said, 'you know in your soul that it’s so. Death is the price of wisdom. If there is no death, life is static and there’s no progress. It’s being reborn, renewed and reworked that brings souls ever closer to wisdom.'
This was almost like speaking to the deleff of the High Council, almost but not quite as difficult, for this being wasn’t as alien as the deleff, even though it too seemed not of her world. 'Who are you?'
'Terraccalliss.'
She drew in a sharp breath of surprise. Could this really be the second Manifestation of the God who had lived many thousand years ago? 'Is that possible?'
'Oh, yes. Quite possible. I'm here to wait for you now, Herra. You’ll be the first soul to rise to the next level of consciousness in long ages. That is such a joy to us. And you’ll not make the transition alone. I shall be there beside you as you cross to us.'
There was a quiver of doubt. She felt that quite clearly, before the being spoke again.
He seemed to realise that she’d caught his doubt. 'At least - you will be the first soul to rise to the next level, dear Sister, if you defeat the Serpent.'
&n
bsp; Silence stretched between and around them, a silence of infinite patience on his part, a silence of dawning understanding on hers.
' If,' she said. ' If we defeat the Serpent. You are not sure of our success, then?'
'No. We can never be sure. There are many paths leading to the future. No one can be sure which we shall tread. And evil has grown strong on your level.'
She raised her head proudly on her shoulders. 'If we fail, it shall not be for lack of trying on my part, Terraccalliss. I shall give everything that is in me to defeat such evil as now destroys our land and give it gladly'
‘I know. Joy be with you, little Sister.’
She caught a whisper of farewell and slowly the sounds of the wildwoods returned to the clearing.
Birds began singing, insects buzzed about their tiny affairs and a small furry creature came out of its burrow to drink delicately of the clear fresh water.
'No!' she cried aloud, sending the small creature fleeing for its life. 'No, I shan’t let us be defeated!' A fire of determination rose within her and brought her to her feet. 'No,' she repeated.
Even as she spoke, the water began to thrash and a shape raised its head, to glare at her from red eyes set slanting in a narrow black skull. The forked tongue began to flick in and out as the shape writhed slowly towards her.
She was shocked that this could happen so soon after her encounter with Terraccalliss. A physical Manifestation of the Serpent! In the High Alder! And they’d thought they were watching all the portals.
All the portals the deleff know of, anyway. This one must be a natural phenomenon.
She summoned up all her forces and willed the Serpent to disappear. Its progress across the pool slowed down, and it began to thrash around, sending water showering in every direction, but it didn’t disappear and it didn’t stop moving closer to her.
Anger filled her then, so that she didn’t even feel the arrival of two deleff, which ranged themselves at her shoulders. 'No!' she called again, more loudly than before, stretching her arms out in front of her to concentrate her will.
She threw her anger at his enemy, and it tossed its head as if in pleasure, sucking the anger in and swelling a little.