No Deadly Thing

by Tiger Gray

  "Do you have any direct relatives here? Might as well get it all out of the way at once." She plucked a pair of spectacles from the desk and sat them on her upturned nose. He could have sworn she didn't need them, but if the old horn rims made her happy, well. Talasi liked to do the same thing and he wondered if it was a gnomish thing. She ruffled through a stack of files next to where the glasses had been. "We're having a lot of trouble identifying everyone; every single one of my trauma rooms is packed full, plus the human hospital up above. Still, if you have reason to suspect, we might be able to track them down for you."

  "Don't think so." He noticed a few strands of hair escaping from the confines of her nurse's hat, and his palms went cold and clammy. He had the impression that, under anything but the most dire of circumstances, she never would have let a single hair out of place. Her hands had the slightest tremor when she gestured, hard edged movements that gave her words a thick authoritative underscore. "Thought my wife would have Waygated through by now though."

  Raietha had once told him tales of how Fae could simply tear a hole in the astral and travel wherever they liked on the smallest whim, but his wife had never seemed like she could muster that much power. Every time she tried, her headaches got so bad she had to stop. Cora made a chopping gesture, telling him it couldn't be done.

  "I've got a single Waygate up and running and it goes right to Emergency," she said. "Can't do more than that. It's either have the mages power the hospital or operate Waygates. You can guess which one we chose."

  He thought about the craziness right outside their relative sanctuary, the jangle of gurney wheels, the constant beeping, the whoosh of Lord only knew how many ventilators. The crush of doctors and nurses, some running beside patients being wheeled into surgery so they could keep hearts and lungs going on the journey. Power had gone out all over the state and only mage magic could approximate it. Bad news for people who needed help, maybe, that they'd have to wait on the Waygate, but without the machines up and running there'd be no help for them anyway. He sure wasn't going to question Cora's choice.

  "No one without an emergency comes through," Cora said, and he thought he detected some relief that he hadn't judged her for having to make the hard choices. He fumbled in the moment of silence that came next. He wanted to ask about Ashrinn, but his throat closed and his chest tightened. Jesus, what the hell? Was he having a heart attack?

  Cora plucked a file from the stack at her elbow. She'd hardly had to look to find the right one. Mal found himself impressed, through the fog of surreality trying to wrap itself around him. She opened it on her lap and scanned it. When she looked up her expression was sober, like a church lady at a funeral.

  "Well, Malkai. I don't want to lie to you. Your friend is in bad shape."

  He didn't miss the pause on the word friend.

  "Tell me what happened," he said, though he wanted to tell her in no uncertain terms that he and Ashrinn were nothing but friends, thank you, married men both.

  "I was told he ran afoul of a dragon. A man came in at the same time in equally poor condition, mage by the name of Daniel."

  "Daniel Cartwright?"

  "That's the one, according to the werewolf. What's her name? Jericho. She and Lizbet the dryad brought them. Daniel ought to be all right, at least. He had temporary paralysis for the first two days, but lucky him that it was only spinal shock. He has a number of broken bones, however, and some internal bleeding, so he'll be here for a while yet."

  He got the sense she wasn't avoiding telling him about Ashrinn, exactly, but that she wasn't really in love with having to do it, either.

  "As for Ashrinn, I need to talk to you about a DNR."

  His lungs seized and he thought for a long moment that maybe he just wouldn't be able to get another breath. Could he pass out like that? One minute sitting here pretty as you please, the next keeled over because he couldn't seem to make his body obey him?

  "Do not resuscitate? Why wouldn't you talk to his wife about that?" He tried to focus on that, how weird it was that he'd be asked to make any legal call for Ashrinn in place of Kir, rather than the implications of what Cora had to say.

  Cora fixed him with a stare, like she couldn't decide if he was pulling her leg. She took her glasses off, folded them primly, and set them on the file. "Malkai, you have power of attorney. How can you not know that?"

  "What?" That thing people sometimes said, about hearing their own voices from very far away under stressful situations, proved true. He tried to listen to what Cora said next, but the words slipped from his grasping hands.

  "Malkai."

  When he focused again Cora was standing in front of him, a steadying hand on his knee. He felt damn dizzy.

  "When's the last time you slept?" she said, peering at him in a way that told him he better not lie.

  "Don't know," He thought he'd probably dozed off while Serwin had healed him. Luckily he hadn't broken anything going over the bridge, though he'd swallowed a lot of filthy water. Cora had her hands balled on her hips again.

  "Young man, I don't know if you should even be here."

  He mustered all of his lessons about doing well under pressure and without physical resources, trying to perk himself up enough that she wouldn't bar him from seeing Ashrinn. He had power of attorney, after all. She couldn't keep him out, could she?

  Why wouldn't Kir have it? He would have had to change it special.

  "Have to see him."

  Cora returned to her chair. "I suppose. No one else has been in for him, the poor thing."

  "What? Cora, he's married. He has a kid. Neither of them? Are you sure?"

  Cora looked taken aback too, thick pink eyebrows doing a pretty good job of climbing into her hairline. "Not unless they came when I wasn't here, and no one told me. But like I said, access is very restricted unless you have an emergency." She gave him the side eye. "Or you bully my staff until they're forced to let you in."

  He let it slide. He deserved that.

  "As for Ashrinn and the dragon. From what I gather he and a small group of other magicals ran afoul of the thing. They battled it for a while. That's how Daniel got hurt. He met the business end of the dragon's tail. It breathed fire on Ashrinn. Ashrinn tried to throw up a shield, and the shield died intermittently as the fire hit."

  She dug a page out of the file, a diagram showing the sexless outline of a human body. It was covered in notes and marks. She tapped the diagram's chest, on the right side. "This would be where the shield failed first. His armor melted. Suffice to say he would have lost that arm if it hadn't been for Lizbet and Serwin. You should thank that divine of yours for sending Serwin along when it did, or even Lizbet's magic wouldn't have been enough."

  His sense of surreality didn't improve, faced with that cold diagram. He couldn't connect it to his friend, such a vibrant and energetic guy, even though over the past few years a lot of his youthful enthusiasm had guttered and gone out.

  "He had third degree burns over most of his body. The dryad magic helped in one way --- it healed a number of those --- and hurt in another: a few of those burns are now second degree and consequently hurt terribly. He's drugged deep enough that's he's basically comatose. There's just no way to work on him otherwise, with that kind of pain. I think because of Lizbet we have a good chance of sending him out of here with hands and face mostly intact, at least. Not to mention Serwin. Lizbet kept him alive long enough to get him here, but if Serwin hadn't been waiting..."

  She drew a deep breath. "But Malkai, that's assuming he lives. I have to be honest, he is burned over ninety-five percent of his body and he has a lot of hurdles yet, even with magical healing. Magic is just another tool, and burn injuries can be very complicated. I can't even promise you he won't get an infection and die from that. I know paladins are very resistant, but a burn patient is very vulnerable, so I can't guarantee anything. Not to mention all of our medical supplies are now critically lacking. The war isn't going to make it easy to keep this
hospital running. We're doing everything we can, but so much is at a premium."

  He tried to speak and the words stuck in his throat. He wanted to rage at her, tell her that Ashrinn deserved everything she had, every bandage and medicine, but he strangled the urge in its bed. He couldn't do that, not with so many people here needing help. He couldn't do that because he was just Ashrinn's friend. If he showed that much concern, well, he didn't know what Cora would think.

  "He wouldn't... I mean... " He thought for one horrifying moment that he might cry, and only the deep sense of mortification at the very thought kept him from doing it. "If he's going to be crippled or something, I don't know if he'd want that."

  He thought about how his friend had deteriorated over the past years, how he'd gone from so sure of himself to shaking and scared. When they'd met Ashrinn had been almost too self-assured, arrogant and rich, trading on those good Persian looks to get into as many beds as he could. Now it was like he jumped at every shadow. Mal remembered with terrifying clarity the time Ashrinn had roused the whole barracks, screaming like he'd seen the end times. He'd tried to shake him awake, coaxed, demanded, and finally Ashrinn had gone from screaming to broken weeping in his arms.

  But then he thought of how Ashrinn had started to get better, at least a little, when he'd formed the Storm. That light had come back into him some, and he was like his old self every now and again. Mal thought of his friend standing in the sunlight at the training grounds, laughing at one of Gerolt's jokes so that his white teeth showed and the barest laugh lines collected at the corner of his big green eyes.

  He thought maybe Ashrinn wanted to live.

  "If he's got a brain injury or he's not getting any better, then we'll talk," He said, pitifully grateful that he got to make the decision instead of Kir, though he didn't know why. "Until then, well. He's a tough son of a bitch. He might make it." He needed to believe that, anyway.

  Cora nodded and closed the file. "We'll do what we can."

  "Cora? If his wife does turn up, I'd appreciate you not telling her about those legal matters."

  "Why?" She went from zero to suspicious in under five seconds.. He felt uneasy, the way he often did around Kir or when she came up in conversation.

  "Reckon she won't like it." He could see Cora trying to figure it out, whether he and Ashrinn were lovers, or if there was some other kind of daytime soap opera family secret at work. He thought normally she would have questioned him more; she had stubborn enough look that she reminded him of a mean old bulldog, though what she thought he wasn't telling her, he didn't know.

  "We'll just hope she doesn't ask," Cora said. "Would you like to see him? I think I have some of his personal items for you too, if you don't mind waiting."

  "No, I don't mind." He stood. It didn't seem so bad now. Ashrinn sounded like he'd been hurt pretty bad, but second degree burns didn't seem too serious even if he had a lot of them, though Mal had to admit he didn't know much about being burned. His field medic training tried to surface, to remind him of how devastating that kind of injury could be, but he pushed it aside.

  He let Cora lead him out of the room and down the hall.

  * * *

  There was a weird thing that happened when people tried to prepare you for bad news. You were so sure you could handle it, and you always had the private smug sense that the people trying to warn you were being just the slightest bit melodramatic.

  Standing outside of Ashrinn's room Mal knew that in this case the reverse was true. What he saw through the observation window was so much worse than he'd imagined. Ashrinn had a tube down his throat and of all the things he was hooked up to, somehow that horrified Mal the most. It was so vulnerable somehow.

  The nurse in the room with Ashrinn, gloved and gowned to an inch of his life, reached in past the plastic sheeting around Ashrinn's bed and starting unwinding one of the bandages on his arm. That arm was not only a mass of blackened, partially debrided flesh, but was held together by nothing more than pins and prayers. It was a swollen, mangled mess that barely resembled a limb.

  He greyed out for a second, stumbling back as his bile rose. That couldn't be his friend, that mess of flesh. The fact that the healing had made Ashrinn's face relatively normal just upset him more. Some kind soul had taken the time to cut what remained of Ashrinn's hair, the braid he was so proud of reduced to a fringe that barely touched the back of his neck. Somehow it was the little details that made Mal feel the worst.

  He was surprised to find himself practically pressed to the glass of the observation window, trying to find some sign of life. There were deep bruises under Ashrinn's eyes and around his mouth. He found himself staring at those half open eyes even though he knew Ashrinn couldn't see him. He prayed fervently that Ashrinn would orient to him, at least look at him, but nothing happened. Ashrinn had survived being shot, stabbed, and having a grenade explode ten feet away, and now it was going to end like this? He had trouble believing anyone could survive injuries like these.

  "Do you want to go in? I'd have to gown you up, but..."

  "No," he said too quickly. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't, not with Ashrinn like he was. He felt ashamed of himself but at least Cora didn't reprimand him.

  Instead of dressing him down for not giving his friend any comfort, she said, "I think you should have these."

  He turned and looked down at her. She was holding a plastic bag in her chubby hands. He couldn't remember her leaving and coming back at all, he'd been so focused on Ashrinn. Inside, a half-melted golden band glinted in two neatly cut halves, next to a coil of cloth.

  "What is it?" he gasped, grateful for the excuse to look away. His emotions shuffled agonizingly along, disoriented and aching.

  "His wedding ring. We had to cut it off because of the swelling. I don't know what the cloth is, but he had it tied around his upper arm. The good arm. It seemed important."

  He took the bag and held it up to the light. The tourniquet strap Ashrinn had used to save his life, the dried blood a mute reminder of the cat construct. Ashrinn had kept it with him this whole time. He'd gone into battle with the reminder lashed around his arm, in secret. Something inside of Mal broke.

  He folded the bag and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat. The ring pressed into his chest.

  It took him a long time to realize he'd sunk to the floor. Cora's hands on his brow, a cool slickness to them that reminded him that she was basically part machine.

  "What...?"

  "You fainted. I'm putting you in a bed, young man, and --- "

  "Don't argue." Mal finished, curling up on the cold floor. "I know."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The battle with the Order of the White Eagle had forced the Cult to move underground as well, copying the Order's tactics, though Liu found she didn't mind so much. Being in these caves made it seem like she could feel the God even more, His slumbering form beneath her feet.

  His earthly representatives, coiled in cages in the deepest tunnels, hissed and slithered. She could tell despite being several floors above them, thanks to the shard of the divine they shared.

  The newly converted bowed their heads to her as she passed, her echoing footfalls signaling her arrival as she rounded corners and marched towards Sarah's rooms. The tunnels had been shaped by the bodies of scavenged school buses and planks of wood taken from lodging houses, left empty after the former inhabitants had been shown the truth. Some of them died, but many more had come back here, carrying supplies and chanting the glory of the Suffering God.

  It gave the compound's tunnels a funny oblong shape, twisting through the earth like a segmented insect's body. Maybe that wasn't so far from the truth, though she scoffed inwardly at those that would call them parasites. She could feel the Peninsula above her, too, as it slowly transformed due to their influence. Soon, all the rivers and pools would run black.

  For once she held herself tall and straight, having shed the human shell her biological mother had forced her to we
ar. Green and gold astral plate moved with her like no mundane armor could, and she'd taken to wearing the signs of the God's favor more often than not. Not just the golden circlet and the soul blade, but letting her black eyes and scaled face and hands show. Maybe her father had seen too much, had tried to hurt her because he couldn't handle the God's message all at once. Even so she wasn't willing to pretend anymore.

  She felt a pang at the thought of her father, but ignored it in favor of the here and now. It had been a high price, but worth it. And when she had Coren, after he came to see the truth --- as she had faith he would --- things would be perfect. He was the son of the Eagle King, the child of the sacrifice, and that made him special, sainted. Maybe one day the God would call for him, too, though she selfishly wished to keep him for as long as she was allowed.

  Maybe she could even engineer a solution with the White Eagle where no one had to die, if they would only see how ordeal and mastery over the same could give one greater understanding. Why couldn't they see that she only wanted to help them, that the God could heal them all?

  "Liusidris." Sarah's voice was warm, affectionate, and Liu realized she'd reached the leader's quarters without conscious direction. "I am glad to see you in your real body."

  Sarah likewise wore her true form, finally obvious to Liu after the months of necessary charade as the school counselor. Sarah was powerful indeed to keep it from her, though Liu reminded herself with a dose of what she felt was excusable pride that she had felt inklings, even then.

  "I think you are ready to see the greatest sacrifice one of our number can make," Sarah told her, and the woman's reverential tone made Liu's spine stiffen in response, "The embodiment of our Suffering God, made spiritually whole through the destruction of the body."

  A nervous thrill vibrated through her, but she would never dream of disobeying. Sarah took her hand and led her from the room. As they passed through the white-halled warren that made up the Cult compound, other devotees dropped their gaze. Liu had been chosen specifically by Sarah to embody the bride of the Suffering God, and to perhaps one day succeed her as Cult leader, and everyone in the compound knew it.