Healer's Touch (42 page)

Hisham’s brows drew down, then lifted as comprehension dawned. “Shit,” he said, sitting back. His mouth hung open for a moment as he calculated. “But you can’t heal them both. Jonas alone would just about drain the whole of Turhmos. Unless you catch some people in there, and he won’t want that.”

Llew’s heart sank, remembering the devastation she felt after killing the girl in Aghacia, the children at Braph’s, and her own pa. And Jonas’ reaction. No, he wouldn’t want to come back under those circumstances. He would hate her for doing it. But she would risk it, she would let him hate her to have him back.

And then a white tree at the edge of a forest flashed into her mind, and she knew the answer.

“What if there was a way that wouldn’t kill anything else?”

Hisham cocked his head, sceptical. “Well, I’d say go for it.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“There’s a tree. It healed me from a cut from Jonas’ knife.” She held Hisham’s gaze and gave a small, determined nod.

He took just a moment to process what she was saying.

“Llew,” said Alvaro. “Please. You gotta save Cassidy.”

“How far is this tree?”

Llew shrugged. “A day. Might be longer if they can’t ride.”

Hisham deflated. He looked up to the darkening sky. “We don’t have that kind of time. Time’s already runnin’ out. If you don’t heal one of them soon, and I mean in minutes, they’re both dead.” He held her gaze. Neither he nor Llew wanted to play favourites, yet they both knew who they wanted to save. But in reality Cassidy was the only choice, since his recovery would come at the lowest cost. Hisham broke eye contact and started to stand.

“Wait.” Llew grabbed his arm. “What if I could keep them alive, just enough to get them to the tree. You think I could heal them then? Both of them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Help me try.”

Hisham nodded.

“Help me move them off the road.”

“What’s going on?” asked Alvaro.

“You heard her. Move them off the road,” said Hisham.

Not convinced that he understood, Alvaro did as he was told, lifting Cassidy by the shoulders and dragging him to the side of the road. Hisham went to help Llew with Jonas, but she brushed him off. She was strong enough, if temporarily bruised, while he was still bleeding from his shoulder.

Llew knelt between Jonas and Cassidy, her trouser legs pulled up so her bare shins sunk into the cool, damp forest undergrowth. She sent Alvaro to help Hisham patch up his shoulder on the road, fearful she might drain them if they stood too close, and then she gathered up a limp wrist in each hand. So far, when she’d healed herself or others it had just happened. This time, it had to be different. She couldn’t afford, and Turhmos couldn’t afford, for her simply to let things happen. Healing two at once was an enormous risk, but she didn’t want to chance the life of one over the other. If either failed to recover, it had to be because it simply wasn’t possible, not because Llew made the wrong choice.

She hoped she hadn’t already made it.

With all her might, she concentrated on not healing. She held both men’s wrists and nothing was happening. She told herself it was because she was succeeding, and not because she was already too late. She couldn’t be too late.

She opened the imaginary flood-gate just a fraction, and she felt it. Both hands tingled, and so did her shins. She accepted the success, but didn’t allow herself a celebration, for they weren’t back, yet. Slowly the tingling spread up her arms and along her legs and through her core. Her heart hammered under the effort, but it didn’t falter, and a warmth settled in her belly. Eyes closed, one part of Llew’s brain was totally focused on the rate of the ghi flowing through her, while another part concentrated on the feel of the wrists in her hands, sensitive to the slightest change, waiting for a pulse . . . or two.

Sweat sprang to her brow, and between her breasts and thighs. She clenched her teeth against the strain. She wouldn’t open the gates; she wouldn’t. It was working, but it couldn’t work too well.

She puffed under the exertion, and then re-doubled her effort. It was too hard, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she relaxed for just a moment: the ghi would flow, jump-starting their hearts, and then she could just let go. As she relaxed her will, her fingers dug into their wrists. It was involuntary; she had no control.

She felt as though she were floating, yet she could still feel the ground beneath her legs. Her vision filled with light, though her eyes were closed. Ghi rushed through her, and she felt it firing through her shins, up her body, more shooting down the arm that held Jonas’ wrist than the one that held Cassidy’s. She’d never channelled so much before. Not only was Jonas Syakaran, but while Cassidy had the one wound in his chest to heal from, Jonas had the chest wound, a gut wound and a multitude of lacerations, bruises and who knew what else under the surface. Llew struggled to believe she could heal so much damage. But the ghi flowed through her and into both men. She was merely a channel.

She was knocked forward, her grip broken, and she collapsed to the ground, vaguely aware of Hisham’s momentum carrying him past her. She lay on the ground with ghi still trickling across her skin.

She sat up to see Hisham crouched between her patients, wrists gripped between his fingers. There was a slight smile on his lips.

“They’re breathing,” he said.

Llew let out her breath.

“They have pulses.” Hisham beamed. “You did it.”

“She saved them?” Alvaro approached cautiously.

The ground around them was dead as far as Llew could see. She looked up into the leaves of the trees above and her face fell. After touching the white tree, and feeling its immense power, it saddened her to drain trees. She had an understanding, now. They could be huge and ancient, but they only contained a thin layer of life within. Merely bringing life back to Jonas and Cassidy had cost several – eight, maybe ten – trees, as well as the ground cover around them.

“They’re alive,” said Hisham, watching Llew.

He was right. In that moment, there was nothing more than the fact that Cassidy and Jonas lived.

“What’s wrong with them?” asked Alvaro.

“I said they’re alive. Llew brought them back,” said Hisham. “Now we have to find this tree of hers.”

Llew stared at him for a moment, then back up to the trees around them, realising what she could be risking. What if the tree couldn’t do it? It, too, only had a thin layer of life within. Could it bring back a Syakaran? She swallowed and nodded.

Hisham took over, directing Alvaro to move Cassidy back to the road, then helping Llew up and aiding her as she dragged Jonas. Then he and Alvaro set about making pallets from newly dead branches and the patients’ own bedrolls. Llew cleaned Jonas’ and Cassidy’s wounds as best she could and tied strips of material the boys had brought with them around her patients’ chests, wishing she had the first aid provisions Emylia had thought to bring on their journey from Cheer. Blood seeped through both bindings within seconds.

Standing from her ministrations, she looked down the road.

“Where’d he go?”

“Who?” Hisham came up beside her. “Oh.”

Braph’s body was gone. Only a dark smear of blood indicated where he’d lain.

“He’s not dead,” said Llew, despair and disbelief jostling for attention. “And he’s got Jonas’ knife.”

Hisham put an arm around her shoulders. “He had it for years and never gave it to Turhmos.” Before Llew could ask why Braph would hand his family’s knife to Turhmos, Hisham gave her a squeeze. “But Jonas is alive, for now.” He smiled at her. “Don’t let Braph make you lose sight of that.” Llew gave him a small, grateful smile in return. “And Braph’s got to heal yet,” Hisham continued. “His magic’s based on yours, and you stabbed him with a Syakaran knife. I don’t know what that means for him,” he admitted, “but if anything is gonna slow him down, it’d be that.”

They pulled the injured onto the pallets, which they hitched through the stirrups of Jonas’ and Cassidy’s horses. Finally the group was on the move.

They stopped regularly to check on their patients. Cassidy tried to die on them once. He wasn’t hard to revive, though he wasn’t quiet about the process either. Jonas remained stable, but unconscious.

They hadn’t begun the return journey until dusk and they couldn’t travel at the speeds she had been running. It frustrated Llew to have to stop for the evening, but they were all exhausted and Hisham convinced her that Cassidy and Jonas needed real rest to do some healing on their own. Once again she was reminded that people survived without her gift all the time. They would be fine.

Though hungry, no one could eat. The evening was cold, and Cassidy’s and Jonas’ best chance lay in them being kept warm. They changed the bandages and Hisham helped Llew fit Jonas into her bedroll beside her, and then helped Alvaro with Cassidy before climbing into his own.

With Jonas being both unconscious and fully clothed to prevent Llew accidentally being drained by him over night, there was a strange disconnect in being so close to him without touching him. Llew comforted herself by listening to his steady breathing, and soon she was asleep with the man she loved in her arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A groaning, moaning and, now and then, muttering, dragged Llew from her sleep.
Jonas!
Her eyes shot open and she fought to free herself from her bedding, a task made more difficult by his being in there with her.

In the cold light of dawn, Jonas glistened with sweat. Llew put a hand to his brow: he was boiling. No wonder she’d been so warm wrapped up against him.

Hisham kicked his way from his own bedroll and rushed over.

“What is it?”

“He’s burning up.”

With the bedroll open, Jonas trembled and his teeth chattered.

“He’s got a fever,” said Hisham. “He’s fightin’ something.” He pulled open Jonas’ shirt and unwrapped the bandages. The skin underneath was red, and the wounds oozed.

“Llew?”

Alvaro went unheard as the urge to vomit overcame Llew. She scurried away on hands and knees to retch. Her body heaved, but she had nothing to satisfy her need to purge her stomach.

“Llew. I think Cassidy’s . . . You gotta bring him back again.”

Her sickness suddenly gone, Llew rushed to Cassidy’s side. Still bundled with Alvaro in his cousin’s bedroll, he was blue. She reached out to him, and he was cold to the touch.

“Help him, Llew. Please.”

Hisham bundled Jonas back in Llew’s bedroll and joined them. His expression, when he saw Cassidy, confirmed Llew’s gut reaction. Still, she had to try, didn’t she? Hisham held her gaze for a moment, unable to answer her unasked question. She took up Cassidy’s hand and without even trying to control her magic she felt nothing. She couldn’t look at Alvaro.

“Llew . . . ?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. The tears weren’t coming yet. This was Cassidy, funny, sweet, brave Cassidy. She clung to his hand, and still felt nothing but the cold dryness of his fingers. She had to tell Alvaro she couldn’t do it; she couldn’t even do that.

“He’s gone,” said Hisham. Llew felt his hand on her shoulder and let her eyes relax with the relief that he’d stepped in.

“No! Llew can heal him. She’s done it before.”

“He must’ve passed in the night. It’s been too long,” said Hisham, his voice steady, sure, and calm.

“No!” In an attempt to give more power to his words, Alvaro tried to stand, but he was still tangled in the bedroll beside his cousin’s body. He fought his way free. Cassidy rolled unceremoniously from the bedding and Alvaro shook the last bunches from himself. “Do it, Llew. You have to.”

Llew hadn’t let go of Cassidy’s hand. She shook her head and the first tears rimmed her eyes. She still couldn’t look at Alvaro. She could picture the anger and confusion on his face; he wasn’t one to hide emotions. She should have woken in the night to check on Cassidy. They should have all slept closer.

Jonas groaned.

“Of course
he
survived.” That made Llew look, to see Alvaro sneering at Jonas. “You couldn’t afford to waste too much of your power on Cassidy. Not at a cost to
him
.”

“It don’t work that way–” Hisham stood up as Alvaro headed for Jonas. “Al. Don’t do it.”

Hisham could have stopped him. That he didn’t only proved that he, along with Llew, didn’t believe Alvaro would actually kick Jonas. Yet he did. Jonas moaned and muttered something before falling silent again, his breathing fast and shallow, sweat dripping from him, and his body shuddering.

Llew leapt up from Cassidy’s side. Hisham already had Alvaro in a tackle, and Alvaro kicked and twisted to get free. Hisham struggled with his shoulder wound, but he was naturally stronger, and that was enough.

“He was my best friend, my brother! He doesn’t come second to your fuck!” Llew hadn’t thought Alvaro capable of so much anger. “I’ll never forgive you.” At last he stopped struggling against Hisham. “Let go.” His tone was flat and emotionless.

Hisham released him.

Alvaro went to his horse, tightened the girth, released the hobbles and swung aboard.