Healer's Touch (38 page)

Jonas was the one who could do it. And if he wouldn’t, she would pester him until he snapped. If she couldn’t kill herself, then Jonas had to. He just had to.

She re-emerged into the clearing where her father lay, that hand still pointing to the sky, and knelt by him. Once again she scanned the area around them, but not a hint of life remained, probably not for miles. She reached for his hand, but it wouldn’t move under her light touch and she feared breaking him with more. She closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Pa.” She pressed her fingers to her lips and then to her father’s cheek. “I love you.” She made to move and found she couldn’t leave. She knelt by her father and wept again. It wasn’t fair. Her father had loved her more than any man ever had, ever could, and she’d gone and killed him. And now she had to leave him. She had no spade, no way to bury him properly. She had no horse, no way to take him with her.

She straightened his dirty, old, grey shirt over his waist and ran her hand down it, smoothing its rumples. She could do little for him now except leave him looking his best. She ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing it. And then she was combing it with both hands, parting it nicely, styling it. He had gone grey since she’d seen him last, but he still had a full head of hair.

She sat back, puffed out a sigh, wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hand and sniffed back the next wave of tears. “I won’t let you down, Pa.”

* * *

She stumbled through the trees, away from the morning sun, hopeful that she was heading towards Brurun, and barely able to see through her tears. Then she noticed something. She wasn’t just running. She was running faster than she’d ever run before. She was fast. She didn’t know how, but she was super-fast. She kept running into trees. After only a couple hours of sleep, fatigued by grief, vision blurred by tears, her brain simply could not deal with the speed at which obstacles came at her. But with every bare-footed step, she simply healed each bruise and graze. Llew ran on.

After half an hour or so, she crossed the border from death into a living landscape again. Half an hour of super-speed running: the area must have been huge. As heartbreaking as it was to fly past the dead bodies of a hundred or more animals, from rabbits to hedgehogs to birds, it was a relief not to see another dead person. She fought back the niggling feeling that she’d only seen a small fraction of the destruction she had caused. She had to run. If she was caught, how much more killing would happen, either at her hands or as a result of the power obtained from her?

She ran for several days, mostly under forest cover. The sun-starved floor offered enough bare ground that her trail of death wouldn’t give her path away, and she didn’t have to worry about running into (literally, the speed she travelled) other people as she might have on the roads. As the evenings encroached, she selected the barest patch of ground and cleared it of all living material, even pulling out shallow roots that might be linked with others beneath the surface. It was impossible not to leave signs of her passage, and either she left patches of death or wide clearings where she slept.

She lost count of the days since she’d left Braph’s, but she was sure that was because she was hungry and tired, not because Braph had control of her. It felt different. Still, her hand went to the knife handle. She would risk it all not to return to Braph’s.

As yet another evening set in with her racing across the Turhmos back country, she was not only hungry and tired, but very, very thirsty. She had drunk at a river about a day out from the city, but nothing since. Each step was an effort. One more step and she tripped on her own feet, falling face-first into the grass. She had to keep going. A patch of dead grass spread out from her.

She was still hungry and thirsty, but her muscles no longer suffered the effects of fatigue. She picked herself up and forged on, until before her there stood a farm house, in the front yard of which was a well. She rubbed her eyes and it was still there. She pushed herself forward, running for the sweet water.

The house seemed quiet. She climbed the fence and went straight to the well, dumped the bucket over the side and watched the rope unwind violently behind the plummeting weight. It stopped and she waited, allowing the wooden bucket to fill with enough water to weigh it down, then she hauled on the rope, scooped up the bucket and drank deeply.

“What’re you doin’ there?”

Llew nearly choked on the water.

“Technically, that’s thievin’, that is.”

She put the bucket down and wiped her mouth, slowly turning to face the speaker. He was middle-aged and wore overalls that clung snugly to his round belly. If he had been a woman, he might have given the impression of being pregnant. He was balding, and the hair on either side of his head was grey, almost white. Despite the fact that he was holding a large pitchfork, he didn’t look threatening.

And he’d said ‘technically’”. He knew the difference between out-and-out theft and survival.

“I’m sorry, mister. I was just so thirsty.” Llew wiped her mouth again and then wiped her hands on her dress.

“You look more ’n thirsty. Come on, the missus is about to put dinner on. You should come in, have somethin’ to eat.”

Llew stared at the man. Was he being serious? He was inviting her to stay for dinner. She eyed him suspiciously, Braph’s visit to her room still very fresh and very raw.

The man turned for the house, leaving her to decide whether or not to follow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Llew entered the farmhouse kitchen and nearly burst into tears. It was homely and small, with a central table surrounded by work benches and a range that was surely always well-banked at this time of year. The house was warm and fit exactly into her idealised memories of her early life in Quaver. If she’d been hoping to find safety within the borders of Turhmos, this is what it would look like. She didn’t drop her guard, though. Every kitchen knife, every pot and pan was scrutinised. They all could be turned into weapons; who converted them would be a matter of reflexes.

“Well now, who’s this?” The woman bustling amongst the cupboards looked round when Llew entered. She didn’t seem at all surprised by the appearance of the girl at her door. She was a fine featured woman, and lean; the homely women Llew had encountered around Cheer tended toward portliness. Her hair was still dark and she had it tied back in a bun. Her blue eyes were piercing, bringing Cassidy to mind.

“I found her taking a drink at the well.” The man leaned the pitchfork outside on the porch and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

If anything went wrong, now she had a door to worry about, too.

“She’s in need of a good meal.” The man patted his own stomach in demonstration.

“You are a kind man, Ard, which is why I love you.” The second part barely sounded tacked on. The woman’s smile was not unkind, but hinted that her husband may have made a habit of bringing in strays. To Llew she said, “Come, you must wash up.”

Wanting to believe the best of these people – desperately in need of some human goodness in the world – Llew followed her to a pantry in which stood a basin and jug of water on a shelf.

“Oh, dear. What happened there?”

Llew froze, her hands half raised.

Turning her hand to look at it properly, for perhaps the first time in a couple of days, Llew saw what the woman had seen: the cut was inflamed, and wept a milky pus. She’d never had an infection before.

The woman reached out, and Llew snatched her hands back.

“It’s okay. I– I’m fine. I’ll just be on my way.” She backed out of the cupboard and toward the door. It was just the two of them in the kitchen. Ard had disappeared into the adjoining room, trusting Llew with his wife. Stupid man. She was dangerous, especially with a wound inflicted by a Syakaran knife.

The woman looked at Llew properly for the first time, and gaped.

“What are you running from, child?” The woman’s tone was soft and unthreatening, but Llew couldn’t tell if it was genuine.

“Nothing.” She was nearly to the door. She turned to face it and reached for the door handle.

“My best friend was a Syaenuk.”

Llew froze.

The woman knew what Llew was. What in hell would she do now?

“Her family was free, unknown to the Turhmos authorities for generations. They never crossed the border for fear they would be found out if they tried, and instead they settled to farming life. But when she was a young girl, she fell in love.”

Llew turned as the woman went to a drawer and pulled on a pair of gloves. She returned to the cupboard and poured some water from the jug into a small saucepan, which she settled on the stove.

“Her eye was caught by a young Aenuk soldier, who passed this way a few times during training exercises. One day, we helped him escape. He stole away under cover of the forest, and we helped him hide until his squad was well away. Her parents weren’t happy at all. But they could hardly turn this boy away now, could they?” The woman smiled at the memory, stirring the water absently. “They lived as cousins for a while. I think they nearly managed a year. But, eventually, they couldn’t wait any longer, and eloped.” The woman fished a clean cloth from a cupboard and sunk it in the water as the first boiling bubbles broke the surface. “I would get letters from all over, even Quaver for a time. The last I heard, she was still in Quaver with her husband and young daughter. But that was a long time ago, more than a decade . . . ”

The familiarity of the woman’s tale was overwhelming Llew.

“What was her name?”

“Orinia.”

Llew gaped at the woman. “My mother . . . ” She’d figured that, but now she knew.

A smile crept onto the woman’s face. “My, it is a small world. Come, child. Let me clean that wound, and then you must stay for that meal Ard promised.”

Though still wary, Llew let her guard ease. She sat at the table and tentatively held out her reddened hand for the woman to examine and sponge clean with hot water.

“And how is it that you come to have a Syakaran knife? The one that inflicted this wound, would be my guess.”

“It–” Llew decided there was little point lying to these people. “It belongs to a friend of mine.”

The woman’s eyebrows shot up. “Friend?”

Llew nodded. “Syakaran.” She’d said it before she considered whether or not it was safe to mention in the heart of Turhmos. She watched the woman closely for a reaction, some sign that she didn’t like what she’d heard. Llew didn’t think the woman’s eyebrows could go any higher, but there they went.

“And, yet you live . . . ” The woman looked awestruck. “A powerful friend to have.”

Llew had thought they would view Jonas with distaste. All she had heard about Turhmos was how they loved their Aenuks and loathed Jonas for what he had done. But these heartland folk, these farmers, simply recognised the power of the Syakara and Syaenuks without judgement.

“I’m Merrid, by the way.” The woman smiled warmly.

“Llew.”

“Llew? Llewella, wasn’t it?”

Llew smiled in return. Then the smile faded. “They have her,” she said. “Turhmos has my mother.”
And I killed my father
. She blinked back the tears that threatened and Merrid gave her a sympathetic look, but said nothing. They settled into silence as Merrid concentrated on flushing out Llew’s wound and then strapping it up, her gloves keeping her safe from connecting with Llew’s skin. With the hand bandaged, Merrid placed a glove-encased hand on Llew’s wrist.

“Of course you want her back, it’s only natural.” Llew looked up into the woman’s eyes. “You clearly have friends in high places, and that gives me confidence that you will succeed.” Merrid’s words brought the start of a smile to Llew’s lips. “But you won’t get her back on your own, and if there’s one thing your mother would want me to say to you, it is this: get out. Get out of Turhmos.”

Llew shrank back from the intensity in the woman’s eyes. She nodded.

“I don’t know how I can thank you.”

“Rest here tonight, and then you must get out of Turhmos. It’s what Orinia wanted for you. She never wanted you here.”

Llew nodded again. Still, with her father dead, and having experienced what her mother must have gone through in her years with Braph, never mind what she must have been going through while a captive of Turhmos itself, Llew wanted her back more than ever.

They shared a solid, simple meal of stew and roasted vegetables, and after dinner and clean-up, Merrid sat Llew back down at the table and brought out the letters Orinia had written to her between escaping Turhmos and disappearing in Quaver. The letters from Quaver had always taken a long time to arrive, there being no direct mail system between the two countries. Everything had to go through intermediary addresses in Brurun.

Llew valued the chance to relive her memories of her mother, and so many of her own experiences were written down, in her mother’s stylish handwriting, for Merrid to share. She blinked back tears all night. At one point, Merrid even drew her into a warm hug and Llew allowed herself the indulgence of fully accepting comfort and support. It had been too long since she had been mothered like that.

She wondered if she should turn down the offer of a bed. It would cost her time, but the chance to sleep in a real bed was just too enticing to forgo. Besides, it wouldn’t leave a patch of death for Braph to trace.