Valor of the Healer (11 page)

“Don’t fight me, girl.”

She felt Kestar’s senses spinning, everything going black for him save one last glimpse of light—and then she was Faanshi once more. As her power drained away, all her resistance ebbed with it. Her vision blurred and then refocused through hot, exhausted tears, showing her the pair of ash-smudged faces looking down at her in shock and dread. From what seemed an immeasurable distance away she heard her own voice babbling, once more in Adalonic, this time through her ears alone.

“I didn’t mean to, forgive me, I heal on his command, I heal on his command...”

“Dear gods,” breathed the younger of her rescuers. “Julian, what she did to you didn’t look like
that
.”

Murderer
assassin
intruding
on
the
church
—
no
,
he’s
here
to
set
me
free
jangled through Faanshi’s mind, but the name anchored her in the storm of doubled perceptions. Julian. The one-eyed stranger was Julian. Faanshi seized on that—and on him, with all her remaining strength, pressing her eyes shut and her face against his shoulder. “Take me from this place,” she whispered.

“We will,” he said, a certain hollow numbness to the tenor voice that spoke just above her hair. His stance changed as he ordered his companion, “Tie this feisty one and lock them both in the cell. We must get moving—and they’ll be the first to track us. If she’s got this kind of power—”

“Gods and goddesses, if she’s got this kind of power they’re going to kill her on sight, and us along with her.”

A tremor shot through Julian, palpable to Faanshi against her own shuddering form, and then emerged in a soft bark of sardonic laughter. “The last I checked, we’re already wanted men. What’s one stolen girl weighed against everything else we’ve taken, including lives, eh?”

“Confound it, Julian, I detest it when you have a point.”

“Then get our two friends bedded down for the night, and hurry.”

The light continued to fade, dwindling to a weak yellow wash across the darkness. But it was enough for her to see. Julian eased her down at the foot of the stairs, shifting her weight against the arm with which he’d grabbed her. He turned her chin up toward his face and stared down into hers. “Gods. What are you, then?”

She’d heard disquiet like that in his voice before. That was no surprise, but the way he held her was. There was strength in it, enough to still her struggles. Yet it felt almost gentle, like comfort, and it soothed a part of her that had been scoured and flayed—for how long, she couldn’t begin to tell. But it didn’t banish the ghostly feel of another’s frame and form imposed on her nerves, or the sense, bypassing her sight and hearing alike, of a body that didn’t belong to her being dragged along the cellar’s stone floor.

“Kestar,” she groaned. Her head twisted without her willing it toward Julian’s companion, and the limp shape he was pulling into the cell. Before she could stop it, the name burst out of her again, high and thin and laced with another’s pain. “Kestar!”

“Never mind him now,” Julian commanded. “Tell me what he is to you after we’re out of here.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know him,
akreshi
, I don’t—”

And yet, she did.
Kestar
Eyrian
Vaarsen
glowed like a star within her being, twin to the star he wore on a silver chain about his neck, and flashes of him burst in rapid succession through her thoughts. Concern for her fear. Horror at the way she cringed before the duke. Pure righteous wrath that Kilmerredes and Father Enverly had sinned against the gods and the Anreulag. Something shining deep within him, answering the light in her. Her head whirled at the barrage, and she whimpered aloud. He was a Hawk. Why didn’t he want her dead?

“Bloody hells, girl, stay on your feet. Can you move or can’t you?” came Julian’s frustrated growl as she swayed at his side. Then over her head he bellowed, “Rab!”

His fair-haired companion emerged from the cell and, with a metallic clink, flung the door shut and locked it. “All is secured, Rook,” he said, tossing the key away into a far corner of the cellar. “Let’s take flight with our little dove.”

Phantom pain bloomed in Faanshi’s chest at the sight of him; alarm, real and potent, clenched every muscle in her frame.
He
stabbed
me
. With that thought came rage, so strong that it astonished her. In its grip she began to lunge, and only when fear that felt far more
hers
flared did she stop and stumble. Despite Julian’s bracing arm, she nearly collapsed.

“Not me,” she protested. Her voice sounded strange, too weak even for her breath to stir her veil. “He stabbed Kestar, not—”

“Save it,” Julian bade her, and without warning he plucked her off her feet.

The motion dizzied her. For a few moments she couldn’t tell whether she was being carried away, or whether she lay in an ungainly heap on a floor of stone. Faanshi squeezed her eyes shut, struggled not to retch on her rescuer’s shoulder and thought desperately of the open air, of sunrise. Past that she couldn’t focus on much, neither the faint stirring of air that betrayed Rab’s passing nor Julian’s swift, light footsteps as he bore her up the stairs and out of the cellar.

But when Rab rasped a warning at the very top of the steps, when she heard cold words bellowed somewhere ahead in the corridor, new fear burst through the haze of her exhaustion. She recognized that voice. “Halt in the name of the Father and Mother, Son and Daughter, and the Anreulag who is Their Eternal Voice!”

Father Enverly. The priest who’d come to the
akreshi
duke’s hall to take her away.

Faanshi writhed, but the arms around her tightened, and Julian barked in her ear, “Be still!”

New light like the amulets of the Hawks rose to blot out the last few flickering gleams of her power, streaming out from the priest’s robed form. In that brilliance Rab pivoted sideways, his hands blurring too fast for her to follow, and the last thing she remembered seeing was the blades that leaped as if of their own willing accord into his fingers.

The last thing she remembered hearing was his playful, airy chuckle. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Father. Perhaps I’ll just have to become an atheist.”

And the last thing she felt was the piercing of sharpened steel into aging flesh, setting off a flare of relayed pain through nerves already overburdened with sun-bright magic. Faanshi had no time to shriek. Her body thrashed a single time in Julian’s grasp.

Then her mind fled in retreat and sent her plummeting into a pool of starlight waiting in the center of her soul.

Chapter Nine

He remembered lurching to his feet, every fiber of his body screaming to defend Celoren—and the girl—from the attackers who’d violated the holy sanctity of the church. He remembered raging agony spearing into his chest. Thought, strength and breath all vanished; he collapsed despite the vital need to keep fighting. Then hands touched him, and incandescence swept through every corner of his being, engulfing him, until all that made up Kestar Eyrian Vaarsen buckled beneath its weight...

* * *

He was small and frail, his form swathed in garments to hide him from the eyes of men, as his very existence affronted those he served. The voices of those he could never look in the eye told him over and over again of the taint in his blood, but all he could sense inside himself was the magic. It choked him in a merciless wave, pulling his helpless hands to the injury and sickness it demanded to mend.

His master locked him in darkness. The sky, wind and trees were denied him, and in the cellar’s confines, the only light was the glow of his hands as he was commanded to use his power. When it failed to rise as bidden, the
akreshi
seized him, and with a shining blade cut both his ears.

Terror strangled him, given form not by the duke’s tawny hair and powerful frame, but rather by the hunger behind his golden eyes. It sought to devour him, to make his magic its own. And he had no choice but to obey, for if he didn’t his master would turn him over to be put to death by the Anreulag and Her Hawks—

I
am
a
Hawk
. He tried to shout the protest, to surface from beneath the flood of light.
I’m
Kestar
,
son
of
Dorvid
—
son
of
Ganniwer
—
Kestar
Eyrian
Vaarsen
—
I’m
—

Panic erupted through him at the tide of recollections that weren’t his own. Craving release, his mind wrenched away from the gloomy prison of that tiny cellar and toward the first things that spoke of freedom to his soul. Open air. High, clear skies of a matchless blue. A breeze that tasted of heather and firs upon the hilltops, wafting over a meadow high in the Brannaligh Hills, a thousand feet above the village of Hawksvale.

Kestar hadn’t seen that meadow since he was a boy, a cadet in the Order of the Hawk. But it was something from the past that was rightfully his, and in frantic, stubborn determination he built it in his mind, detail by detail, until he felt himself sprawling in its grasses. The earth’s sturdy solidity was beneath his back. Clean air braced his lungs with each grateful breath. Sunlight streamed down like a blessing upon his face, warming him, soothing away the blind rush of fear.

Wait
a
minute
—

Sunlight.

His eyes snapped open, and even in his shock he was somehow not surprised to find the girl kneeling in the grass beside him. At first he made out no more of her than a slender form. As he sat up, however, she came into better focus. Everything around him glowed, not just the girl. It gave his surroundings an air of unreality, of insubstantial translucence.

“I’m asleep. I’m dreaming.”

“I think,
akreshi
, we both must be.”

She looked different than she had in Lomhannor Hall or the cell in the church. No veil hid her face, and the top of her sari hung in loose folds about her shoulders, baring coal-black hair to the all-pervasive light. Delicate features that could only have come from elven blood but which were a golden brown met his sight. Her eyes, green as spring leaves, were wise, innocent and sorrowful all together. Marveling, too, gazing at him with the same wonderment that overwhelmed him now.

“Then why are you...?” He couldn’t finish the question for the absence of pain struck him, and he pawed at his chest. No wound rent his flesh. No blood stained his uniform shirt. Fear slashed through him, right where the assassin’s knife had pierced him, and he realized he was trembling. “I remember magic. What did you do to me?”

“I healed you.” The girl leaned forward, an anxious flush darkening her cheeks. “Please don’t be frightened. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She hadn’t. Kestar saw it as clearly as he’d seen her—as he’d felt her—in the cellar’s darkness, flinching from the knife of Holvirr Kilmerredes.
Blessed
Mother
,
no
wonder
she’s
terrified
of
the
duke
. Another memory flickered across his thoughts, of that nobleman calling her by name, and of a stern-featured old Tantiu woman doing the same. Faanshi. He couldn’t utter it. Whatever bond had risen between them pulsed through him with every heartbeat, promising to seal the instant he spoke her name.

But what could he call her?
Akresha
was a title of honor among the Tantiu, but she was a slave; she’d reject it. No other form of address seemed to fit her, here in this otherworldly meadow. “Maiden,” he began, “you know what I am...”

“A knight of the Order of the Hawk. And you’re supposed to take me away and let the priests Cleanse me, because my father was an elf and because I have magic.”

There was no accusation in her voice, which left him thunderstruck. “Magic unlike any I’ve ever seen,” he admitted. “Yet you healed me. You knew what I am, and you healed me.”

But the magic hadn’t given her a choice. He knew this too, and as he stared at her, wide-eyed, she gave him a wistful smile. “You were in pain. That’s the way of it. I’m sorry I couldn’t finish, and that I couldn’t heal your friend.” Tears dampened Faanshi’s eyes, though oddly her smile grew larger. “I didn’t know what it felt like to love someone as a brother; I’m glad to know that now. And I’m glad I healed you. I didn’t know either that this could happen when I heal someone.”

“Glad,” he echoed, agape. “You know what I am, you know what I must do, and you’re glad?”

She lifted a hand by way of reply, and as her fingers neared Kestar’s amulet, the silver glowed along with everything around him, including himself. He blinked down at one of his own hands, and then unthinkingly drew it close to the maiden’s. His was pale, hers bronzed, but each bore such a luminous sheen that Kestar wondered if the glow that suffused this all-too-real dream emanated from them both.

Faanshi’s fingers curled around his. “Your mind is full of light,” she murmured, tears trickling down her cheeks unchecked, without dimming the quiet joy in her eyes. “If you must come after me and take my magic, then I’ll remember this gift Almighty Djashtet has given me, and know that you’ll treat me with mercy. Thank you for that.”

The sight of her earnest smile drove through Kestar’s chest just as his attacker’s dagger had done, with an almost greater pain. “Of course I will,” he rasped, horror gripping him. Others in his Order would grant no mercy to a girl considered anathema by two different nations. But he could never abuse her as she’d been abused in the memories he’d sensed, and for the first time since he was ordained he shied back from his own duty. Sworn to the Anreulag though he was, the thought of Her holy fire destroying this maiden made him ill. “I couldn’t hurt you. I don’t
want
to hurt you. But I must come after you, I’m sworn—”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “You’ll do it because you’re commanded. I do know about that. It seems to me,
akreshi
, you’re like me in more ways than one.”

Then the healer raised her hands to his head, cupping her palms gently against his ears. They prickled sharply in reply, and for an instant Kestar could think of nothing but a knife striking. But that thought dissolved as something in him surged in reaction to that touch. And around them the glow began to brighten, till everything turned a dazzling white...

* * *

Shaymis Enverly woke to pain and panic. His head throbbed where the intruder’s blow had struck, his shoulder where the knife hurled at him through the glare of his amulet lodged. He remembered ordering the figure emerging from the cellar to halt. A mocking reply. Then, oblivion.

Dread eclipsed the fire in his shoulder, though, as he regained consciousness. His amulet had roused with a force he hadn’t felt in over forty years, throwing forth both light and heat, nearly singeing his skin even through his robes. Wielding a cudgel and the short sword he still kept out of the habit of Hawk training, he’d come running from his cottage behind the church, right into an ambush. As his body screamed at its wounds, his mind shot to the only possible conclusion. Armed strangers in the middle of the night could only have come for the duke’s pet healer—which meant he was doomed unless he retrieved her. Never mind the punishment he’d suffer if the Church ever learned that he’d hidden the presence of an active mage in his parish. If he didn’t recover Faanshi, all the use he’d made of her to further his lord’s goals would be in vain. The blood he’d drawn from her this night would serve him, but only just, and it wouldn’t be enough to set their work in true motion.

All of which would be moot regardless, for Holvirr Kilmerredes would have his head long before the Church sacrificed him to the Anreulag.

Clenching his teeth, Enverly hauled himself to his feet. He knew better than to try to pull the dagger from his shoulder; it’d keep more of his blood inside him where it belonged until he could summon assistance. The irony of bleeding from a knife wound sustained during the escape of a healer from his illicit custody didn’t elude him, and he smirked as he made his way up the stairs to the church’s bell tower. Even in the night’s smallest hour the bronze bell would be heard pealing all over Camden. With the town watch already on high alert searching for the escaped assassins, a warning ringing from the tower would bring them running to the church in a matter of minutes. He could wait.

The priest dropped to his knees once he’d pulled with all his strength on the bell rope, letting the breeze keep him awake. With one hand he gingerly supported the knife thrust into his flesh. With the other, he reached for his amulet. Only then did he realize it was still alight.

Not so blindingly as when it had jolted him from slumber, warning of active magic, but alight nonetheless. The glow was subtler, hinting at elven blood somewhere nearby, perhaps even within the church.

That gave him a second wind. With the same determination with which he’d climbed the tower stairs, Shaymis Enverly descended them. As his amulet nudged him unerringly back to the hallway where he’d been attacked and wounded, he heard distant voices shouting outside. Hooves thudded. A horse neighed. He paid the sounds of the watch’s approach scant mind, for his strength waned with every moment he remained on his feet, and he needed all his wits to make it into the cellar.

When he got there, he found that the slave was long gone from the little cell that all churches in Adalonia kept for the confinement of mages. But the cellar wasn’t empty.

The two Hawks who should have been in the village of Tolton by now on their continued patrol lay sprawled before his startled eyes. Celoren Valleford was tied hand and foot, a dart protruding from his neck, his rangy form slung across most of the cell’s floor. Covered in blood, one hand fumbling at a ragged hole in the breast of his shirt, his partner blinked with unseeing eyes into the glowing air.

Both their amulets were awake, as active as Enverly’s own, and the young men were the only occupants of the cellar. The priest could spare no strength for a search, but he didn’t need it. His amulet brightened with each shuffling step he took closer to the fallen forms, until it matched the radiance cast forth by Kestar Vaarsen’s. He stopped when he reached him, and even as voices and footsteps announced the watch’s arrival, he stared down at Vaarsen in thoughtful interest.

Ever since the war with Tantiulo, after which he’d retired from field service, Enverly had been a priest. For many years before that, he’d been one of the Anreulag’s holy knights, a servant of the Voice of the Gods. Not a single one of his fellow Hawks, priests or priestesses had ever discovered that he had no true love for, or faith in, the Four Gods.

Only the Anreulag Herself, power incarnate, commanded his respect—and then only because he understood how, with Her at its beck and call, Adalonia and the Church held their dominant place upon the great stage of the world. Elisiya, the lost homeland of the elves, had fallen before them and now lay in ruins to the east. Nirrivy had let herself be subjugated and absorbed into the empire rather than suffer Elisiya’s fate. Only by virtue of its own size and power had Tantiulo narrowly escaped the same domination.

His cynicism and lack of faith, though, had never kept him from learning every nuance of the power of his Order’s amulets. Enverly knew at once what his was telling him now.

Elven blood and elven magic—in a Knight of the Hawk.

* * *

“Easy there, m’lord, don’t try to move. You’ve taken some nasty stuff into you with that dart.”

What
dart
? That was the only thought Celoren could form while his eyes flickered open to find a man in his middle years crouched beside him. The fellow had a face like a hatchet. Its only width came from the whiskers that spread all over his jaw, from one ear to the other, leaving only a pointed nose and a pair of dark eyes to be made out in their midst. But he also wore the bright yellow armband of Camden’s town watch, and when that vivid hue seized his gaze, Celoren’s mind came into clear and urgent focus.

“Intruders,” he muttered, lurching into a sitting position, making everything around him whirl. One of his hands shot to the pain in the side of his neck, while the other reached for the sword that should have been sheathed at his side. The weapon’s absence only magnified his alarm. “My sword, where’s my—”

Only then, as he hauled himself to his feet, did Celoren register everything else around him.

He was still in the church cellar, but someone had moved him into the cell where the mage from Lomhannor Hall had been confined. Three more watchmen were beyond the cell’s open door. One stood guard at the foot of the stairs, while another loomed over a kneeling woman whose hands were moving with brisk efficiency over a body on the floor.