by Loren Elias
CHAPTER 9
Dark eyes shot up with a start. A knock pummeled upon the door. Dust rose as the Healer slammed the heavy book closed. What words had he just read? He could not even say. He had been so lost in thought. Who knew what hour greeted him? He could only gauge it by use of his exhaustion coupled with a wide-eyed inability to think of sleep. “Enter.” He said as the door’s abuse began again.
As Lieten entered, the Healer rose, drawing a bit of dried turkey to his teeth and pulling away with some ferocity a tough bit.
Torchlight danced across Lieten’s sharp features which seemed to mimic the unyielding outcroppings of solid rock that formed the caves of the Jagged. Only long, hanging tapestries dared to cover them, to block the chill as far below the surface, the cool glistened upon both rounds and angles. He did not speak. A loose shirt revealed the presence of scars whipping a solid chest, as he surrendered a low bow.
Jabari returned the gesture, followed by a hard swallow. “Thoughts?”
Disinterest demarcated Lieten’s face as he lifted dark eyes to meet the Healer’s steady yet gentle stare. He spoke. “She is young.” The guard's face remained firm with brow low, lips uncurled. He spoke simply, concisely. One could expect no more.
Jabari thought a moment on the statement, as simple yet meaningful as it was. He offered a bit of dried meat to his guard.
Lieten waved a foregoing hand and closed dark eyes before speaking. “We can mold her into anything we desire.”
“It seems an easy task, doesn’t it?”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.” Lieten’s cheek rose into what might have been, by some, considered to be the burgeoning of a smile. But Jabari knew his guard better than that.
“Yes, Vengeance holds her tight like a suckling babe. That soldier pronounced all over town that he’d seen a Clavras. She’d be one for sure had they taken her life. Vengeance like that doesn’t let go, even in death.”
“At least this way you have time to save her. We can show her a better way.”
Jabari sighed, meeting Lieten’s glare. “No one is truly saved, who does not save himself. A better way cannot be shown; it must be learned, internalized. It must become a part of her as it has all of us. I fear…”
“Don’t say that.” Lieten stepped a hard left back leaving the right foot forward and crossed tight arms at a solid chest. “We’ve faced greater challenges than an impetuous child bent on revenge.”
“Indeed. But I’ve feared from the moment I looked into the eyes of the daughters of Ren’o, one is no more gone from this place than the other.” Jabari thought on that look in the child’s grey eyes. A frightening stare. A cynical sideward glance. He knew she would stop at nothing to see her family avenged. Had she not the right? How could he explain to a child who lost everything the destruction that awaited her should she choose the path of blind vengeance? How could he make her understand, when he himself could not put the thought from his unsettled mind? An evil tyrant he knew Ruric to be. He would not deny it.
“It troubles you.” Lieten pulled the Healer from vexing thought. “Why then? Why bring her here into our refuge. We have never been of a mind to welcome destruction. I’ll drag the both of them to the swamp. There is no reason that we should prolong it. Let it worry you so.”
“No, I’d do it myself if I thought she’d bring us harm. We owe it to Ren’o to try to reach her.”
“We owe it to ourselves to keep our haven a safe one.” Lieten leaned forward, placing wide hands upon Jabari’s great desk.
“Indeed, we do. But we can’t stay hidden away from the world in our impenetrable fortress, not when there is so much suffering in Aletheia.” Jabari’s mind sailed across images of the things he had seen, they had seen, over the Haerfests past. The fighting, the slaughter, the deception. When he had seen so few Haerfests, training at his father’s feet, learning the power of the leaves and roots of the land, he never could have imagined that fulfilling the charge an E’epan, a Healer, Teaching and Healing would mean being accompanied at all times by a small army, fighting their way through those who would perpetuate the loss of life, the loss of hope. “We cannot turn our backs on our people. A truth more apparent with each passing day. No more can we turn our backs on this child. We will provide her full guard training.”
“No.” Disbelief shaped Lieten’s face.
“Yes. She will one day be of our Guard. I have already decided.” Jabari crossed fatigued arms in resolve.
“You would put your life in her hands? I would have to advise you otherwise.”
“We must give her focus. She must have a goal.”
“Then put her in charge of gardening, or cooking, or mending. There are many tasks in the Jagged for her. Many valued tasks that do not include making that one a guard.”
“Many, yes. But this one will be of the Healer’s Guard. The strongest, the fastest, the most trusted. Those in whose hands I lay my life.”
“I don’t know what you see in her. What did Lady Gwendoline say?”
Jabari thought a moment on the words of his wife. “It is not important.”
“Master, it’s very important. The Lady saw something, didn’t she? When have you not heeded her warning? One does not keep a Dreamer at arm’s reach, only to go his own way at her forbidding.”
Jabari knew that Lieten spoke the truth. Only a handful of times had he so shunned her advisement. This would be one of those times. Gwendoline had not pulled her knife upon first meeting the newcomer. In that, he found hope. “She will become a guard and You will be her trainer.”
“Master. I am not a trainer. I’ve no patience for...”
“Then maybe you will have something to teach each other.” Jabari spoke with some force. “You must give her focus. The spirit of our art, Pin Hi, must become a part of her. Help her abandon her vengeful spirit. Help her learn our ways. A life without purpose will quickly crumble. A life driven by vengeance will be consumed. Death by Swamp would be a gentler fate.”
“When has the Healer been known to take the easy way out?”
“Precisely. I expect you and Nakali will do a fine job with her. You and Nakali are to train her body and spirit and when the time comes Gwen and I will take on that mind of hers. Believe me that will be the hard part.”
“Kali know about this?”
“Of course. Ren’ai’s training has already begun.” Jabari opened his book and took hard seat.
Torchlight met Lieten’s back as he turned and left Jabari there.
Jabari knew that Lieten could never imagine the reckless child becoming a guard some day, but then again Jabari could not say that he could truly believe it. Could she break the hold that King Ruric had on her life by her thoughts of vengeance. With all that they had seen, could any of them break that hold. And sadly he knew that she had experienced thus far only a fragment of the wrong perpetrated upon Aletheia day after day. He could not shield her from it. He could only assure that by his imperfect hands and the hands of his most trusted guards this frightened yet determined little girl, the daughter of Ren’o would be shaped into a woman who could face the reality of the world they lived in.
