No One's Chosen (65 page)

She would need to test the disguise and she could
think of no better test than a walk through the barracks proper. A
quick one, no doubt, as she would make directly for the exit. She
followed the hall and found that the stair sat mercifully at the
end. It would not do for her to appear to not know her way, not now
at least. She made her way down the first flight of stairs and then
the second. As she made the landing at the bottom a rotund woman in
an apron ran into her. The elf was tall and fat and smelled of
spiced meats.

She smiled down at Aile. "Mair! Off to Temple late
again, I see?"

Aile nodded and walked past.

The woman turned and spoke as she walked away. "Be
sure you apologize proper to the others, else you'll be skipping
dinner again." The large elf waved a dismissive hand as Aile
trotted off down the hall. It had worked well enough.

She passed a large, plain entry hall with bright
light peeking through the edges of the doors and she turned and
made for it. The doors pulled open and ahead of her was the
barracks square in all its green splendor. A few robed elves moved
around the yard but even as she made her way toward a stone bench
they paid her no mind. And why would they? No one would be in the
square who did not belong.

She was invisible here. And when the sun had traveled
across the sky, she would make her way to the Bastion.

The sound of a mortar and pestle grinding woke her.
When Socair realized that she was hearing, she sat bolt upright in
the bed. The pain hit her in disparate shocks all over her body and
the waves radiated out from there. The hurt caused her stomach to
cramp and turn and she leaned over the edge of the bed she was on
to vomit. What hit the wooden floor below was a mix of green and
brown medicines and blood.

She laid back down. A bed? Why was this here? Where
was here? What had happened? Socair sifted through the fog of her
mind for the last memories she could find. The ruined corpses of
her lovers passed through and her throat tightened. She expelled
the contents of her stomach again over the edge of the bed.

Socair could not say which pained her more deeply but
she did not have long to consider it. The sound of a door opening
forced her to rise again. The pain shot through her but Socair
gritted her teeth and prepared to face down whatever might walk
through. Her mind made an accounting of what she had to hand to
deal with the threat. She was naked entirely and there was nothing
in the room save a wash basin and the bed. There was a light sheet
over her body but it would provide little more than a distraction.
Socair forced her wounded arm to try and move and found that it
did, but barely, and that the wound on her shoulder screamed in
protest at the action.

An frail old man entered the room carrying a wooden
bowl. He looked as though he could die at any moment. There was a
ragged grey beard under a bony face and his fingers were absolutely
skeletal. A grey robe was draped loosely over his thin body. He
smiled when he saw her sitting and looked to the floor to see where
she had vomited.

"Good, good." He approached slowly, speaking the
words in a gentle voice colored with age. "If the medicines will
not stay down, you are fit to eat. I will see to the wound at your
back when I regain some of my color."

Socair calmed a bit. The old man was no more like to
do her harm than the wound at her back. He looked ready to break
under the weight of his own body as it was. "Where is this? What
week?"

He placed a cold hand on her shoulder and turned her
gently to inspect the wound. "It has not festered." He took some
salve from the bowl and rubbed it over the wound. It burned at
first and then washed over with a cool numbness.

When he was done, the old man stood and looked at
her. "We are some miles east of Drocham in the Mire. This is my
home. And the week…" He looked up, trying to remember. "The
fifteenth week of Saol, I believe. Though I have little use for
calendars here." He chuckled and walked from the room.

Nearly two weeks. Had she really slept so long? And
her body had healed precious little during the time. She took a
deep breath and found that her ribs and lung had been healed. Her
leg, as well, she found when she ran a hand over what the axe had
cut. There was still pain in the muscles and they were weak from
disuse. She forced herself to turn on the bed and place her feet on
the ground.

The man returned holding a robe to match his own. "I
apologize, but this is all I have. I am no hand at mending clothes
and the ones you wore when I found you needed to be cut free that I
could get at your wounds without worsening them." He handed over
the robe. "Ah, and your shoulder. I have mended the tendons but the
flesh is still very much torn."

She took the robe from the old man and struggled to
stand. He helped pull her to her feet and held her steady as she
donned the robe.

"Your name?" Socair asked when she had dressed.

"Most call me Liath now. I was a healer once, and I
was called another name then, but that life is a memory." He
smiled.

"I am Socair. I serve the Treorai."

"A Bearer?"

Socair nodded.

"Then I am pleased to have served the Deifir a last
time in some small way." With that the man turned and left the
room. He called out to Socair. "Come and have some food. Herbs and
medicines will keep you alive but they never do sate the
appetite."

She took a tentative step and then another. As the
weight shifted from one leg to the other, her muscles groaned and
ached and threatened to cramp. She was careful to shift her weight
as best as she could to avoid it.

It took all of five minutes to cross the small room.
The main room of the house was as barren as the bedroom had been. A
short wall separated the cookfire from a wooden table and chairs
that acted as a dining area. The dining area was a part of the
small square room which had only a rocking chair and a small table
in front of a singular window. Behind the chair was a bale of hay.
Socair looked around but found not one door other than the exit.
The old man had given her his bed.

She sat at the table. It was roughly finished,
perhaps sanded a single time over, and not sealed with any sort of
wax or oil. She ran a hand over the surface, enjoying the texture
of it.

A kettle sat over the fire and was coming to a boil.
From what Socair could tell of the ladle, it contained a cream
stew. He laid a thin sheet of metal over the top of the kettle and
put a pair of fish fillets on the sheet. When they had cooked
through he put them on plates, ladled some of the cream stew over
and brought them to the table.

The smell only hit her when he sat the plate down in
front of her, but when it did her stomach let go a loud rumble in
response. The old man laughed kindly and bid her to eat as much as
she liked.

"It is catfish. Not the best for a stew, but it is
what the muddy waters saw fit to serve up."

Socair shoveled the food into her mouth greedily and
sloppily. She had not realized how hungry she had been until the
food touched her tongue. She hardly tasted the food but it was
delicious and satisfying nonetheless. The old man did not pay
particular mind to the manner of her eating, nor did he chide her.
When the plate was finished, he offered her more. Socair insisted
that she would get it herself. There was no more fish but the stew
sufficed. It had potatoes and asparagus and some leafy green that
Socair could not identify. It was bitter, but she ate it
anyway.

When she could eat no more, Socair sat back in the
chair and let out a sigh. Her muscles ached but the feeling of a
full stomach helped dull the nagging pain. She looked across at the
old man who had just finished his meal.

"How did you find me?"

The old man worked his mouth and wet his lips to
clear away whatever was left of the food. "I suppose in a way wit
might be called coincidence." He leaned back in the chair. "I had
gone to see to a delivery of herbs that had not arrived. I decided
to walk along the boardwalk as the sea air is often pleasant. I
thought it queer that the city appeared empty, but leaving would
not have seen to my delivery. It was enough trouble to hook the
cart up to Shodar, you see. I think it must have been a day before
I found you. All the blood around you had gone brown and dried from
the sun. That does not happen so quickly. Sisters know how you
stayed alive in that state."

Socair said nothing, only looked from the man's face
up to the ceiling.

"I near killed myself getting you onto the cart.
Never met an elf so big. And all muscle besides." He chuckled to
himself and then his face grew serious. "The two beneath you? They
were…"

"Very important," she said without looking at
him.

The old man nodded his head solemnly. "Would that the
gifts were stronger things." He stood and took the plates outside
to wash in a stream that ran by outside the house.

She watched him through the window. It was not a
large enough stream to field fish, but it would provide clean
water. It was peaceful place surrounded by a thick wood. A small
path led away from the house. She assumed it moved to the proper
roads of the Mire.

Liath returned from the stream and stowed the plates
in the kitchen. Socair looked at him from the window and asked a
question, though she worried over whether it was proper.

"Why are you no longer a healer? Why come to this
place?"

The man laughed. "Curious about an old elf, are
you?"

"Ah! If you do not—"

"It is fine, truly." He waved dismissively at Socair.
"I am something of a coward by my nature. There was the most
beautiful boy among my friends when I was young. He dreamed of
being a healer. It was all he spoke of most days. The glory of
Abhainn and her Gift and how it was the most glorious of the
magics." He sighed. "The boy grew to a man and we grew to love one
another. I wished to be by his side always and so I joined him in
the Temples. He was brilliant in his work. Much more than me, hah.
I could hardly mend a simple wound to say nothing of the blood
magics."

The old man moved to the rocking chair and sat. "It
was our duty, he said, to help any who were in need. We had set up
a small shop in Glascroí and one night an obvious cutpurse came in
complaining he'd been stabbed. When the man was healed, he put a
knife in my love and fled." The old man looked at his hand
wistfully. "I can still remember the soft touch of his skin that
night. The knife had pierced his insides and I could do
nothing."

Liath pushed out a ragged sigh and looked at Socair.
"I was lost. I was too scared to move forward and too scared to end
my own life. I moved south to Drocham in hopes of carrying on his
ideal. I wanted to honor him as best I could. I studied and I
practiced. As I did more and more people came seeking aid. I saw
his gentle face every time I mended a wound or cleaned the blood. I
saw his blood. And the fear grew in me that I would heal a soul
that would steal love from another the way it had been stolen from
me. So I fled to these woods."

Socair had leaned herself against the wall while the
man spoke. "So you fled for fear of being the ruin of another love.
There is no shame in it."

The man shook his head. "He would not agree." The old
man smiled sadly and looked at the floor. "What is right belongs to
the person who performs an act. Not in the person in receipt of it.
He said over and over that our responsibility was to heal. Only
that. To save lives. It was always the right thing to do. The doing
of wrong belonged to the person who performed the act."

It was a sort of logic that felt too simple to
Socair, but she could not bring herself to argue it. Neither could
the old man, she sensed. If he had been able to reconcile his world
with the logic of his lover, he would likely have been in Drocham
still. But he was not. He was here. And there was a sort of
compromise to it. If he could not heal in a way that honored his
love, he would not heal at all.

"What of justice?"

"Justice," Liath repeated, laughing. "I don't know
that the word ever passed his lips. Justice is subject to
consideration. Different folk see it differently. He saw healing as
the right to life. Justice has a way of eclipsing rights and
freedoms in the name of a greater good. There was no greater good
to his mind."

He leaned forward and stood. "It was naive, I think,
but I could never see it as anything but beautiful when he spoke
with such passion." The old man's face brightened. He looked to
Socair. "But enough of an old man's ramblings. Deifir is in need
and I am one of her subjects."

He moved to the door and pulled it open. Before he
walked through he looked to Socair. "I expect you wish to go as
soon as you are able. Will you be able to sit a horse?"

Socair stood from her place on the wall and her
muscles reminded her of their state. She winced but nodded. "I
will."

The man walked out into the yard ahead of her. There
was a small shed beside the house. It was as old and rickety as its
owner and likely held the tools he used for fishing. The old healer
put his fingers to his mouth and blew a loud, high whistle. He then
turned to Socair.

"There is a saddle in the shed. I have not used it in
some time, though hopefully the leather has held."

Socair opened the door to the shed. It indeed held
fishing rods and tackle as well as some tools for mending leather
and the roof. On top of a pile of tin sheet was a dusty saddle.
Socair lifted it, grimacing through the pain in her ribs and arms
as she did. There would be little point in leaving if she meant to
let the state of her body dictate what she was capable of.