Valor of the Healer (21 page)

Chapter Seventeen

With Julian’s name a howl in her throat, Faanshi hurtled out of slumber with a speed that left her system crackling with thwarted magic. Her hands shone as she bolted upright, and the right one curled down to her side, reaching for a nonexistent sword.
Kestar’s
sword. She’d never seen it—she’d noticed nothing but Kestar himself once his blood had been spilled at the church—yet she knew how her palm would fit the hilt, how the blade’s weight would pull at her arm. Part of her mind shrieked to unsheathe the weapon along with her power.

It took her long moments to realize that no one was fighting or in pain around her, and after that, that she had no idea where she was. She sat upon an odd round bed among green linen sheets, old and faded, though more finely woven than she was used to. The chamber too was oddly shaped, its walls curving as she’d never seen walls do, with patterns worked along them in charcoal and paint in the shapes of trees. Three candles in holders nestled in the midst of crafted branches. Around these, dozens of fragments of metal and polished glass embedded in the walls reflected the illumination, until it seemed to Faanshi as if she’d awakened in a glade of light.

Movement seized her attention. The chamber had no door, only a hole in which hung curtains patterned like vines. These parted, and through them stepped a woman more startling than the otherworldly room.

“Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, Crone of Night,” Faanshi whispered. “Almighty Djashtet, Lady of Time...”

“Alarrah Tanorel,” corrected the other. “Have you never seen an elf before?”

“I saw others in the glade. And you. They fought—I felt—Julian!” Alarm pushed Faanshi to scramble off the bed, but with hands no bigger than her own, Alarrah Tanorel took her by the shoulders and stopped her before she went two steps. “What have you done with Julian?”

“Before I answer that, child, tell me, is the Rook a friend to you?”

Warmth flowed into her at Alarrah’s contact, entirely familiar, yet unexpected from the hands of another. It coaxed the panic from her limbs, just enough for her heart to slow and her own fractious power to subside. “You’re a healer too. You put me to sleep.”

“I am. I did.”

“Did you do that to Julian? I beg you,
akresha
, tell me where he is!”

“He isn’t your captor?” Alarrah pressed. “He hasn’t harmed you?”

Only then did the questions sink in, and Faanshi had to draw in deep breaths before she could accept the relaxation the elf woman’s power offered. The magic was subtler than hers. Unless she concentrated, she couldn’t tell it was there at all. Yet it persisted, and as it did its work, she heard her voice shake. “No! He
is
my friend. But I don’t think he’d like it very much if I called him that.”

With that Alarrah’s expression relaxed. “I thought as much, but had to be certain. Julian is nearby. He’s sleeping, and he’s well. Tembriel did him no great—”

Before she could finish, Faanshi darted out of her grasp and through the vine-patterned curtain. Beyond that was a room like the one where she’d slept, though different patterns of trees and hills were etched upon the walls and the bed bore sheets of white and blue. Julian was sprawled atop the sheets rather than beneath them, his body turned toward the curtain. Relief at the sight of him stopped Faanshi cold. His features were haggard; he slept, but without peace.

“I’ve healed what little harm he took,” Alarrah said from just behind her. “He’s safe here in Dolmerrath. As are you.”

Gratitude squeezed Faanshi’s eyes shut for a moment and called up a prayer of thanks. Then, as she looked at the other woman fully at last, her gaze locked on her unmarred ears.
That’s
what
they’re
supposed
to
look
like
was all that she could think. Yet to say so seemed foolish, and so she said instead, “Dolmerrath?”

“A hidden haven for my people.” Canting her head, Alarrah studied Faanshi. “And yours.”

At that simple observation, words crowded Faanshi’s throat, all jostling to be voiced at once. Not even her
okinya
Ulima had ever called her one of her own people, and here was this sober-eyed stranger doing exactly that. “Then Julian’s kept his promise,” she said, releasing the last of her tension in a long, deep breath. “But why did the others come to fight with us? Did we sin against your gods?”

The ease in Alarrah’s face faded. “You committed no sin. There was discord among us. Tembriel and Jannyn thought the assassins wished only to sell you to us as a slave.”

“Julian wouldn’t do that!” The words came out louder than Faanshi intended, and she froze, abashed, as the assassin stirred on the bed nearby. When he failed to awaken she went on more softly, “But Rab might. He isn’t happy that Julian took me from the church.”

“Will it please you, then, to learn that Rab took his leave of the Rook?”

“But they’re companions. They travel together.”

“Apparently not when you’re concerned.”

“Then—” The thought wouldn’t finish, at least aloud, but it stung Faanshi’s mind even through the echo from the Hawk.
That
means
he’s
alone
. She hadn’t forgotten that the men had argued about her—their parting must have been bitter. And she’d glimpsed enough while healing Julian to know what such a parting from Nine-fingered Rab would cost him. Her eyes swam with dampness she couldn’t suppress, and of their own volition her feet carried her closer to where Julian lay. She had no conscious thought of what she might do. There was only a need, as strong as any command of her magic, to make amends for what she’d brought about.

When she was within two paces of the bed he snapped awake. His hand blurred, drawing one of his blades in a hiss of leather against metal. The sound triggered something in her, making her whirl away, out of the reach of the knife. It had almost hit her, she realized in dread, where Rab’s knife had hit the Hawk. As if guided by Kestar’s hand, her own had flashed again to her side where no weapon hung.

Then Alarrah was beside her, pulling her back. “That’s no greeting for one who was most anxious to make certain you’re well.”

“Alarrah.” Recognition stole into Julian’s gaze as it flashed over the elf woman, and then to the girl before him. With care he sheathed his blade and sat up. “Faanshi. Be careful how you wake an armed man. It can get you hurt.”

“
You
were hurt,” Faanshi pointed out. “The
akresha
Alarrah said Rab left, and so I wanted to see you...” Her heart pounded at the near brush of the knife, and she found herself fighting to relax out of the Kestar-stance that had seized her limbs anew. “I was worried.”

Something of the shadow on Julian’s features lightened. But then he affirmed, “Rab’s gone,” and his voice went dull and flat, like a hammer’s strike upon wood and iron nails.

He’d pledged he wouldn’t beat her, but Faanshi felt like flinching nonetheless, and her cheeks flushed red with no veil to hide them. “I’m very sorry, Julian. Please forgive me.”

“It’s not your fault, girl.”

“But it is! He didn’t want you to take me from the church, because it would make the Hawks look for you as well as me.”

“If the Hawks weren’t seeking us already, they would have been for our attack on the duke.”

“An attack at our behest,” Alarrah said. “The Hawks are always seeking us, but this can only whet their interest.”

Faanshi frowned. It should have been easy to accept their reassurances in this quiet place of tree-patterned stone and candlelight, but even here she couldn’t forget the presence in her blood and bone. “I made Rab angry. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have left you. Julian, he loves you! And Kestar doesn’t want to come after us—he told me in the dream—but he will because he must, at least, if they let him out of the cell—”

She might well have pulled one of Julian’s knives and struck them both, for elf and assassin alike jolted at her outburst. “Faanshi,” Alarrah asked, “who is Kestar?”

“A Hawk,” Julian said. “He tried to stop us from taking her out of Camden six days ago. She healed him.”

“I had to—I couldn’t hold back the magic. And he would have died if I had.”

“You healed a Knight of the Hawk of a mortal wound?” Alarrah cried, seizing Faanshi’s shoulders. “And you haven’t seen him since, nor sent him any message? Yet you know what’s befallen him? You’ve spoken with him in dreams?”

New panic rippled through the girl. “Two times now. Kestar begged me to make it stop but I don’t know how—please,
akresha
Alarrah, if you can command the magic, tell me why I see him in my mind.”

“I’ll go one better,” Julian said. “Can he see you in his?”

All color drained from Alarrah’s features, and she beckoned for Julian to follow them as she tugged Faanshi toward the curtained archway on the far side of the room. “Please, both of you come. I’d thought to do this when you were better rested, but now—”

“Kindly tell us where we’re going,” the assassin bade her.

“I must tell Gerren and Kirinil of this at once,” Alarrah said, and as it came back to Faanshi her gaze was frightened.

“Will this mean I can’t stay here?”

“We’ll do everything in our power to avoid that. Everyone in Dolmerrath will want you to be safe among us.”

“Naturally,” Julian said. “She’s the most powerful healer any of you have ever seen.”

“She’s an elf.” Alarrah’s voice resonated with an assurance that should have bolstered Faanshi’s spirits. But she heard the fear and worry lingering underneath it, and her heart sank. It reminded her of Kestar.

And it made her wonder if she was safe at all.

* * *

From the sleeping rooms Alarrah guided them out into larger chambers with the same simple furnishings, renderings of trees upon the walls, and countless candles and lamps and mirrors reflecting illumination back and forth until every room was filled with light. Like the walls all the floors seemed formed by some other agency than man, rising and falling in gentle slopes, and they too were decorated. Carvings of leaves tracked along the passages the trio followed, so intricate that once or twice Faanshi feared she’d stepped on a living plant.

“Caves,” Julian told her. “The sea made them, long ago. The elves merely moved in.”

She might have asked more, for the sea was another thing she’d had never seen, but there was no time to think of much past what presented itself to her startled eyes. Alarrah led them into the largest cavern yet, and Faanshi had to gape at all it contained. Here too were the trees and hills on the walls and the leaves on the floor. But unlike the lesser rooms, this one held living trees—and delicate tree sculptures as well, so intertwined with their living cousins that it was hard to tell where growing wood left off and stone began. Light washed down from a high ceiling, caught and cast out again by the fragments of glass and stone and metal all over the walls, until it seemed that the radiance came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Scents of flowers, pine needles and herbs filled the air, and every so often, borne in on drafts that wafted through the corridors, a brisk taste of salt.

The
sea
, she thought, but it winked out of her as soon as she beheld the people scattered all around the chamber. Slim, graceful beings like Alarrah were everywhere, working, sitting and talking in low, liquid voices. The work was familiar—mending clothing, weaving, spinning—all tasks Faanshi had done with her own hands. But in this chamber each one seemed new and strange, as shocking as if the Lady of Time herself had sat down at a spindle. Snatches of music transfixed her, periodic voices that lifted up in harmony with the sweet trilling of someone’s flute. She’d never heard music in the kitchens of Lomhannor Hall.

“I know you want to go down to them,” Alarrah said softly, which made Faanshi start; she’d forgotten for just a moment that she wasn’t alone, and she’d trailed to an astonished stop. “I wish I could take you. But right now I fear we don’t have the time.”

“I see humans.” Faanshi spied an old woman rocking a child in her lap in time with the music, and a stocky man with close-cropped dark hair welcoming an elf woman into his arms.

“A few live among us. Some are beloved of our folk. Some spoke out against our oppression, or their own. Some are the children of the land of Nirrivy from before Adalonia consumed it. But they are all friends.”

Faanshi turned to see Alarrah giving Julian a thoughtful regard. But the assassin said only, “Don’t get her hopes up if you can’t keep her here.”

“The Rook is right,” she said, and took a small pleasure in keeping any tremor from her voice—and in Julian’s surprise as she used his other name. “Forgive me for delaying us. Please take us where we must go,
akresha
.”

Alarrah nodded once and gestured them onward. “Come.”

They walked down another corridor, toward smaller rooms curtained off from casual view, and at last to a more ornate curtain than the others Faanshi had seen so far. This one bore richer hues of green and brown shot through with threads of gold and silver, worked into the pattern of a tree with a moon and stars in its branches. Lamplight flickered around its edges, and beyond it two voices rose in the same flowing speech that the people in the caverns had used. But the cadences were agitated, and they abruptly ceased as Alarrah called out. Then one of the voices spoke again in Adalonic.

“Bring them in, Alarrah, please.”

At that, their guide beckoned them through the curtain to the room beyond. To Faanshi’s daunted eye, it didn’t stand out much from any of the other caverns. It was a little bigger than most of the others, and a fragment of tapestry hung upon its walls—a frayed rectangle of cloth with colors that had faded with immeasurable age, yet which shimmered like the memory of the finest of dreams. But chairs, a table and shelves stacked high with rolled parchments and battered books, hiding much of the stone walls behind them, imposed a greater sense of order and purpose than the other rooms put forth.

So too did the faces of the two who rose from their seats to greet them. Their garb wasn’t much different than Alarrah’s or any of the other elves, just simple shirts and breeches, and the short dark hair of one of the pair was loose and tousled. If Faanshi hadn’t seen their tapered ears and the agelessness of their faces, she might have thought them workmen. Something in the carriage and speech of the dark-haired elf proclaimed him anything but.