Valor of the Healer (28 page)

They’d reached the library, and Ganniwer was extolling the virtues of the volumes amassed by the Vaarsens over the years, when he realized that one of the guards had vanished. He did his level best to pretend he didn’t notice while he injected occasional remarks into the conversation, just enough to prove that he was listening. The banalities he uttered must have served, for Kilmerredes’s affable mask remained in place as Ganniwer led them out onto the grounds. Celoren knew the duke’s party well enough to know that his guards watched over him in pairs and traded off with one another at irregular intervals. Yet one lone man called Taarklig continued to shadow them, and he’d been on duty for hours. Where were his comrades?

He had no chance to find out, for the dinner hour came all too quickly, leaving him only time enough to change into his extra, less travel-worn uniform. A table for five had been laid for them, with Ganniwer at its head, the duke at her right hand and Father Enverly at her left. Follingsen, captain of the duke’s guardsmen, took the seat beside the priest; Celoren was left to take the chair at Kilmerredes’s side.

Dishes laden with food were set before them, but Celoren had no idea what they ate. Ganniwer, elegant in a gown of midnight blue velvet, adroitly guided her guests through conversation, though he forgot his own words the instant he spoke. Kestar was fleeing for his life, sick, wounded and possibly mad, while he sat in a fine chamber consuming a sumptuous meal with two men his partner didn’t trust. And somewhere in the middle of the longest dinner he’d ever had the misfortune to eat, when a servant stepped into the room to whisper into Ganniwer’s ear, he knew in a surge of dread where the rest of the guards had gone.

So did Ganniwer, he could tell, even as the servant withdrew and she turned to the duke. “I’ve just received word, Your Grace, that your men have returned and are waiting to make their report.” The last word wasn’t a question, but her eyes held a query nevertheless.

“Mr. Follingsen, if you please?” Kilmerredes said to the captain, who pushed back from the table and excused himself from the room. As he left, the duke smiled at Ganniwer over his wineglass. “A thousand pardons for neglecting to inform you, my lady, but I sent most of my men out to patrol the area.”

“I see.” Ganniwer’s gaze darted, too sharply, to Follingsen as he stepped back into the room.

“Olefsen reports we have a lead, Your Grace.”

“Excellent.” The duke gestured for the captain to reclaim his seat, as though he himself sat at the head of the table. “We’ll set out as soon as we’ve finished this excellent repast before us.” He inclined his head to Ganniwer. “Please convey my compliments to your kitchen staff.”

“You’re too kind, my lord,” she said, her smile growing strained. “But the hour’s surely too late for your party to take to the road? Vaarsen Hall would be honored to give you lodging for the night.”

Kilmerredes waved a negligent hand. “I won’t hear of imposing upon you more than we already have. And after such a restful day, I’ve energy enough for a few more hours yet.”

In desperation Ganniwer implored the priest, “We have babies, Father, who would benefit from your holy blessing if you would consent—”

“Already done,” Enverly said, savoring the last of his wine. “I baptized two charming little cherubs while you were showing His Grace and young Sir Valleford your fine home.”

“There is however one thing you could do for us before we set out again,” Kilmerredes said.

Don’t
tell
him
, Celoren wanted to cry, but he was rigid in his chair. The gods or perhaps the Anreulag had struck him dumb, dooming him to witness the closing of this trap.

“You have but to ask,” Ganniwer replied, the mask of her poise remaining, her gaze dark with horrified comprehension. And the duke smiled as he took her at her word.

“Where is your son going, Lady Vaarsen?”

* * *

It was a miracle Kestar could attribute only to the mercy of the gods that he made the journey to Arlitham Abbey with his mind still intact. He couldn’t stop wondering what had prompted the burst of fear and power he’d sensed from Faanshi on the road out of Kilmerry. But the unshakeable certainty that she yet lived was no comfort, for she burned at his consciousness over the next three days, gentle but inexorable, subsuming him in light. She surged across his mind just as he stopped to ask for aid in finding the village of Arlitham, and the fright of forgetting his own native tongue drove him to seek the least traveled byways he could once he left the startled merchant who’d helped him.

Out of his uniform, he didn’t cut a striking figure. Yet he couldn’t risk loitering at any other markets or taverns. He could change his clothes and horse, but he could do nothing for his injury, or his increasing drifts between Adalonic and Tantiu—all of which made him too memorable for comfort. Thus he stopped only when he or Granna could go no further without food or water or rest. He met few strangers, for which he breathed prayers of relief, not trusting himself to speak with anyone else for long.

Not when Faanshi overwhelmed him so thoroughly that, for a few brief moments, he lost all track of where she ended and he began.

He had to stop when that happened, pulling Granna to the side of the road on a horseman’s instincts alone, and tumbling from her saddle rather than anything so purposeful as dismounting. Then he wrapped his arms around her neck and wept hoarse and ragged tears into her mane, till Faanshi subsided enough to make his limbs and mind his own again.

Even then, all the way to the abbey, she never entirely left him. Her perceptions colored all he saw, turning the everyday details of his world alien and alarming. The roads of his home province should have been as familiar as his own name, yet now everything seemed too open, too lacking in places to hide. Nor could he fathom whether his panic sprang from the girl haunting him like a ghost, or from the fact that he, like her, was now a fugitive.

Nor did he want to think of how he wanted those terrifying moments of unity back again.

When at last he reached the abbey’s quiet glen and saw summer hawthorn and clover in bloom rolling down to the holy place’s walls, he stopped his mount once more. The sight shouldn’t have been odd, for dales all over western Adalonia blossomed so in the month of Jomhas. Yet he gaped in fascination, and only after a few moments did it come to him—his captivation was because of
her
.

Kestar rubbed his face, struggling to marshal his thoughts, and nudged the mare onward. His destination was at hand. Faanshi resounded through his bones, but he couldn’t afford the sympathy blooming in him like the hawthorn at her wonder at the beauty of this place.

Three women in acolytes’ robes were out among the clover as he rode down the road to the abbey, gathering choice plants to fill the baskets on their arms. They waved as he passed, and offered directions to the abbey’s courtyard. Wonder shifted toward humbler awe when he dismounted at the gates, and that, prompted by memories of Hawk training, was as much his as Faanshi’s. The restlessness that frayed his nerves, however, was his alone.

“Blessings of the gods be upon you, traveler,” a voice called. “May I be of assistance?”

An older priest, near Enverly’s age, approached him. But this man lacked a Hawk’s erect military carriage, and there was no haughtiness in his sun-reddened features. No ornate trim decorated his robes, and the serenity of his bearing seemed genuine. Kestar almost sagged in relief, a lapse of his guard that let Faanshi stream back across his consciousness—and for an instant, he couldn’t remember what language he was supposed to speak.

“Good day,
akresh
—I mean—Father...” His voice came out weaker than he wanted, rough with his fraying concentration and his pain. “I’m looking for the abbot, or abbess...?”

“I’m Father Grenham, abbot of Arlitham,” the priest said, his brow furrowing as he took the young Hawk’s elbow. “And
you’re
hurt, or ill. Let me help you. Brother Iain!” he shouted, toward a nearby doorway through which a younger priest’s inquiring face appeared. “We have a visitor! Please attend to this man’s horse.”

As the other priest hurried out, Kestar began, “If there’s somewhere we could talk in private...”

“Of course. Right this way.”

The abbot led him across the courtyard to a pair of unadorned pine doors that led into an empty chapel. In the middle of the day, Kestar supposed, the rest of the abbey folk were occupied with their daily labors. Gratitude washed over him at the quiet of the place; that alone was a blessing, and he scarcely noticed or cared what other features the chapel might offer a worshiper. Had he found the sanctuary he sought? One which, if he’d read Merringly’s journal rightly, had been sought by one of his blood before?

“Do you need to sit?” Grenham gestured to the double line of pews that led forward from the doors. “Water, or a healer?”

He needed all these things, but Kestar didn’t let himself accept them, not yet. “Let me state my purpose first, Father,” he pleaded. “I...I’ve come seeking one who may have sheltered here a very long time ago.”

“Many have taken sanctuary here over the years.”

“I seek one in particular. I don’t know her name or how long ago she was here. But I hope...I pray...that you might guide me to her. It’s vital that I find her.”

Grenham’s eyebrows rose, pale silver against his browned and weathered skin, and his gaze sharpened as he searched Kestar’s face. “What’s your name, my son?”

Straightening to his full height, Kestar answered, “I’m Kestar Eyrian Vaarsen, son of Dorvid Vaarsen, son of Devlin...who married Honnah Merringly.” He swallowed, prayed he wasn’t about to doom himself, and went on, “I’m looking for Honnah’s mother.”

With his last few words the abbot’s expression changed. “Her name,” he said, blowing out a breath, “is Darlana.”

“She’s alive? She must be ancient!”

“She’s almost a hundred years old. And you’ve come just in time, Kestar Vaarsen. Sister Darlana is dying.”

* * *

She reposed in one of the guest wing’s more comfortable chambers, though it was so humbly furnished that it might as well have been a priestess’s cell. Her bed stood against the far wall so that she might look out the window to the west. She lay doing just that, a distant smile on her withered lips, her gaze misty and unfocused as though she beheld some view she alone could see. As the abbot and the Hawk slipped into the room, she turned her snow-white head on her pillow, and before Grenham could greet her, she spoke.

“Have you come to say my final rites, young Cortland?”

The abbot smiled, though his mien was solemn. “Not yet, Sister Darlana. I’ve brought you a visitor.”

Eyes turned a milky green with advanced age peered toward the two men before their gaze settled at last upon Kestar. “I don’t know you, boy.”

Her voice was reedy, a quavering remnant of what must have been a vibrant soprano in decades past, yet it captivated him. It brought her alive, this woman who held answers to so many questions that he couldn’t begin to count them. It made her real.

“My name is Kestar,” he offered, stricken, shy and desperate all at once.

A wrinkled hand emerged from beneath her knitted blanket, beckoning. “Come here then, Kestar,” she bade him. “My eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were. Let me see you.”

He went to her bedside without hesitation, pain and weariness forgotten, though he flushed at her piercing regard. “Is that better, Sister?” he asked, manners dictating the query, though the change in her expression was answer enough.

“Blessed gods...” The words were a whistling exhalation, and she raised one hand toward Kestar’s face. “You’re almost his image. Who are you?”

So that her fingers might reach him, Kestar sank down to one knee, biting back the grunt of the effort it cost him to do so. “Your great-grandson, I think.”

Darlana’s hand faltered as it reached his hair, as though she hadn’t expected him to have physical form. With utmost trepidation she pushed the disheveled strands back from his brow. Her fingers tracked down the edge of his face, past his temple and cheek, and to the side of his head. There the old woman’s gaze lingered. “Not like his,” she croaked.

When her fingertips touched his ear, Kestar understood. “My father’s wife is human,” he said, though it felt surpassing odd to put it into words. Odd, too, was the contact of those ancient fingers. Light as it was, it grounded him back in
himself
for the first time in days, and so he held himself as still as possible for fear that that fragile peace might break. “So was his mother’s husband.”

“My little girl.” Wetness gathered in Darlana’s eyes. Her hand fell back, its strength spent, but her stare lost none of its intensity. “Sweet Honnah. They wouldn’t let me keep her.”

“Because her father was elven?” It seemed foolish to say it when Kestar already felt the answer where Faanshi had closed his damaged flesh, where part of his soul craved sunlight and the wind’s clean, cool breath. But he needed to hear the words.

A wraith of a smile crept across Darlana’s features. “Riniel,” she crooned. “Riniel Radmynn.” Then her chin jutted forth, a stubborn gesture that like her voice seemed a faded remnant of her youth. “Not supposed to love him. But I did. Still do. Ninety-eight years old, boy, not about to change my mind now. If you came to tell me to repent of my sins, go away.”

“That isn’t my place, Sister.” With a heavy sigh Kestar reached beneath his collar for the suede pouch that held his amulet. As he drew it forth, blue light played along the silver, and Kestar set his jaw at the abbot’s sharp intake of breath. “I’m a Knight of the Hawk, the Anreulag’s eyes to see, Her sword to strike. But the weighing of the hearts and souls of men and women is for the gods alone.”

“Dorvid Vaarsen’s son,” Father Grenham said. “The son of the Deliverer of Riannach.”

“Yes,” Kestar said. His father’s deeds had always dragged at him like shackles of gold, accomplishments he had never believed himself worthy—or able—to emulate. Now they made a terrible new kind of sense. If the man who’d quelled an entire elven uprising in the eastern grasslands had himself borne elven blood, it explained much. Why Dorvid and Ganniwer had sent him away, why he’d been raised within the Church.