Healer's Touch (43 page)

“Al, we need you.” Llew gripped a rein, but Alvaro yanked it free, his horse throwing its head up at the mistreatment.

“Cassidy and I came to your rescue just as much as he did. And it weren’t us put you in any danger in the first place. You should’ve saved him, Llew. You didn’t. You should’ve saved him.”

He turned his horse, kicked it to a gallop and disappeared down the road back to Brurun.

Llew stared after him for a long while, then she turned back to where Hisham was checking on Jonas. But feeling his temperature and looking at the infected flesh wasn’t going to make him better. They didn’t have any more bandages, and they had no way to deal with the fever.

“Let’s go,” she said and began bundling up Alvaro’s bedroll – he would have several cold nights on his way back – and then Hisham helped her hitch Cassidy and Jonas on their pallets behind their horses. “He deserves to be farewelled by those who loved him,” she said when Hisham questioned whether they should just bury Cassidy. Besides, they didn’t have the means to do a good job, and Llew wasn’t going to do Cassidy that kind of disservice. She’d had to leave her father to the carrion; she wouldn’t do it now with Cassidy.

Their camp packed away, they headed out, Jonas crying loudly at every bump in the road. They pulled up each time he went silent. One of those times was nearly terminal, but Llew would be damned if she was going to lose him as well.
To hell with Turhmos.
She’d drain it all for one success. Of course she didn’t mean it, and she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she left a trail of dead children behind them. And neither could Jonas.

At a cost to a few more trees, she brought Jonas back to a semi-conscious state.

“Please, no more,” he muttered, his head rolling.

“Shut up, you. You’re coming back with me.”

They were nearing the white tree when a pair of Turhmos men approached from the other direction. Llew’s heart leapt into her throat. She couldn’t be captured, she just couldn’t. But while they might take her into custody, if they recognised Jonas they would certainly kill him. Again. She could heal him, but only if the soldiers didn’t take his body, and she suspected they would in the interests of proving their success.

Hisham put on a relaxed demeanour as the men approached. He, too, would be in grave danger if they realised what he was. Kara didn’t enter Turhmos on peaceful missions.

Llew jumped down from her horse and made a show of ministering to Jonas. She placed his hat so he could breathe, but otherwise covering his face. If he remained silent, they could pass both men off as dead, but in his feverish state there was no guarantee Jonas wouldn’t say something. In a moment of either sheer brilliance or stupidity, Llew tried something.

She fished inside the bedroll and took Jonas’ hand, gripping it firmly, and then she did what she hoped she would never have to do again: she killed him.

“This better work,” she muttered under her breath. And the men from Turhmos had better move on again quickly, or Jonas would be gone just like Cassidy.

Looking at her hands in disbelief, Llew panicked that she’d just done something incredibly stupid; with the Turhmosians, who looked suspiciously like soldiers, right in front she couldn’t risk undoing it now. But she had just done something she’d never done before: she had drained without needing to heal. She hoped that meant she stored the ghi.

At the realisation of what she’d done, with no notion of whether or not it could be undone, the tears rolling down her cheeks were genuine. She was surprised she had any left.

Hisham explained to the men that Cassidy and Jonas worked on a family farm and a fatal accident had befallen them, so he and Llew were taking them to be buried in the family plot some miles down the way. One of the riders came to the back to observe the bodies. He dismounted beside Cassidy and touched him.

“He’s cold,” he said.

“Of course he’s cold. He’s dead.” Llew brushed the tears off one cheek, and stood defiant.

The man lifted an eyebrow. “Sweethearts, were ya?”

“Don’t be daft. He’s my br– cousin.” She’d almost said brother, but thought better of it, doubting she and Cassidy looked much alike.

“Well . . . I know this one couple. They’re cousins. Married soon as she flowered, they did.” The man looked sly. In fact, he looked like he was eyeing Llew up.

“
He
was my sweetheart.” She pointed back at Jonas. “And I’d like to mourn before I give my heart to another.”

“I weren’t thinkin’ ’bout your heart.”

“Heart. Bed. All the same, innit?” She folded her arms and scowled at the man, the power of her expression no doubt diminished by the trails of tears down her cheeks. His eyes narrowed and he stepped around Cassidy, past Llew, and in beside Jonas. He lifted the hat.

Llew tried not to look worried, but she couldn’t control her eyes. They kept looking at the man, trying to see if he recognised the body, then flicking away to avoid him seeing her looking.

He saw her looking. And he took another look at Jonas.

Llew swallowed.

“Come ’ere.” He motioned his companion over. “This one look familiar to you?”

The other Turhmosian studied Jonas, raised his eyebrows, then pushed back the bedroll and pulled open Jonas’ shirt, revealing the top of the gryphon tattoo, and the festering hole in his chest.

“You Syakaran?” the first one asked.

“No,” Llew said, as though it was the most stupid suggestion she’d heard.

“Karan?”

“No.”

“Then you ain’t his sweetheart, are ya? You brushing me off, aye? Without gettin’ to know me first?” His companion nudged him with an elbow. He was wasting time. “Is he dead?” Now,
that
was a stupid question.

Llew nodded.
And if you don’t hurry up, he’ll stay that way.

“How?”

“The magician Braph killed him in Brurun, but he had somewhere to be. I got family in Turhmos and was bringing my cousin back to be buried, so he asked me to bring the body to Duffirk as proof.”

“He’s not cold,” said the second man.

“He was killed by a magician. Don’t ask me what he did, or how it works. I’m just doing as I was told.” It was surprising how easily the lies flowed. She supposed telling a half-truth made it easier. “Braph wants him in Duffirk day after next.”

“You’ re headed the wrong way.”

“We’ve got to make another stop first. Another cousin, you know . . . ”

“Then you better get a move on. We’re four days out of Duffirk.”

“Then you better let us carry on then, hadn’t you? Braph is a powerful man. He can probably read our minds, find out who held us up.” She narrowed her eyes.
Now, bugger off
.

The first man grew suspicious. “Hey, your man up front said they were both family.” He peered back at Hisham, and Llew panicked that he would see the similarity to Jonas.

“’Course he did. You know how many people would try and take that body off us if they knew? Braph’s got plans for it. Needs to present it to the Turhmos King.”

“President,” the second man corrected, eyes narrowing again.

“Hey. My cousin just died. A cousin I loved as a brother.
Not
like that.” She narrowed her eyes back. “I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances. So I forgot who’s in charge. String me up. But
after
I deliver this lot. You wanna see Braph mad? I’ve seen Braph mad. You don’t wanna see Braph mad.” And you better hurry up or I swear I’ll be bringing Jonas back using your ghi, so help me.

The men looked at each other, uncertain.

“This really him?”

Llew nodded, fighting the urge to yell and scream at them to leave them be. Time was running out.

The men smirked at each other, then threw the cover back over Jonas’ body.

“The Syakaran’s dead,” said the first man.

“Braph doesn’t mind if you spread the news, either,” said Llew.
To Turhmos, Jonas is dead
.

Laughing and smiling, the men mounted their horses and rode on.

Watching the men go, she stepped in beside Jonas and touched his cheek. She tried to give him just enough ghi to return to him life, but while her fingers tingled against his skin, nothing happened. He didn’t breathe, and when she checked his throat, there was no pulse.

She bolted around him and to her horse.

“Run!” she yelled to Hisham. “We don’t have much time.”

“He’s dead?” Hisham asked incredulously.

Llew didn’t answer. She kicked her horse forward, dragging Jonas’ horse behind her, begging the pallet to stay attached, and for Jonas to remain tied on it. They couldn’t afford anything else to go wrong – there simply wasn’t time.

They galloped down the road and trotted the horses into the clearing where the tree stood. The grass and the uneven ground bounced the pallets behind the riderless horses. Llew wished she could hear Jonas complain about it, but both he and Cassidy remained silent. The white tree called to Llew, but there was something else there, some trepidation, something like nervousness. Could a tree have such emotions? Or were they Llew’s own?

“An Ajnai tree . . . ” Hisham’s awed voice trailed off as they reined in.

“You know what it is?”

“Turhmos used to be covered in them, until our ancestors – Kara – swept through the country cutting them down. I thought they were all gone.”

“Why?”

“Because we cut them all down.” He looked at her as if she belonged in an asylum.

“No. I meant, why did they cut them down?”

“Oh. To remove the Aenuk source of power, of course. At the time, they didn’t realise Aenuks could use anything to heal from. It was . . . ” He struggled to make the admission. “Probably our greatest mistake.”

Llew didn’t feel inclined to disagree.

She swung down from her horse. “Help me get him to the tree.”

They untied Jonas and lifted him from the pallet.

“You may have noticed the similarity between the colour of the tree and Jonas’ knife.” She had indeed. “The handle and–” He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to see the funny side “–the blade’s core are Ajnai wood.”

No wonder the tree had seemed to withdraw from the knife: it recognised it for what it was. And now she had brought a Karan and a Syakaran to it. She hoped it would accept the task she was about to ask of it.

Standing at its base, she looked straight up into the canopy.

“Please,” she pleaded. “I’ve been through shit. I lost my pa.” She looked down briefly, but she couldn’t tell the tree she’d killed her pa. The admission simply wouldn’t come, though she suspected she didn’t need to make it. She could feel the tree inside her head. Its disapproval bore down on her like a father realising his daughter’s date to the parish dance wasn’t a regular church attendee.

“Please, I ne– I want him. A lot. And I have had the worst couple of days. Can’t I have something?”

She concentrated on all Jonas had done for her, fighting for her, not killing her when he could have done so with ease, comforting her when she didn’t deserve it . . . 

The tree probed back, travelling through her memories since she had met Jonas. Llew remembered a drunken dance, cuddles by the Stelt river, and– Her cheeks flushed. It saw everything. Its awareness moved from her mind down through the rest of her. At first she thought it was looking for an extension of what it had learnt via her memories, as it slid down her body, down, down, but then it stopped at her belly and lingered.

The tree’s consciousness pulled back, and then was no longer inside her. Its attitude toward her was altered, and no longer did it watch with apprehension. It seemed almost to be laughing at her. There was still a wariness as the tree regarded Hisham, though it was balanced by a trust in Llew.

She knelt beside Jonas’ lifeless body and pulled his vest and shirt from him, trying not to look at those weeping wounds. Then she sat against the tree, opened the top buttons of her shirt and pulled him into her so that his head flopped on her shoulder. She wrapped one bare arm across his quivering, infection-riddled chest, and his back pressed against the small V she had exposed of her own chest. She reached the other hand behind her to connect with the tree’s trunk. More ghi than she thought she had ever channelled in her life flowed through her and into Jonas. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even feel taxing. Her body offered as much resistance to the ghi as a sieve to fine white flour.

The holes in his chest and abdomen shrunk; two small metal balls popped out and rolled to the ground; His skin closed; it smoothed, and scars that had been there for years disappeared.

The black sweeps of tattoo wavered.

“No!” Llew gasped in horror. The tattoo settled, untouched.

While the tattoo saddened and angered Jonas because of the events occurring while he had been getting it done, Llew loved it. And, she suspected, Jonas did too on some level. He’d had it done for a reason. It represented family even if he thought it had cost him his.