The younger healer stopped. "Alowan," he began, his voice gentle. "You—"
"I know. But it will be over soon enough."
"I never understood why," he said. "You were, of all the masters I've ever had, the master of my choice—and yet you did what you warned us against; have done it, in her service, again and again."
"And you seek to question me?" The old man's laugh was hollow. "Then question me when I have an answer to give you." They walked together into the infirmary in which Jewel ATerafin now lay. Angel was gone; Avandar remained.
"Her den," Alowan said, before Devon could ask, "are with Angel. He needs them; he understands what I knew; that Jewel ATerafin is dying, and that his life was bought at the cost—he feels—of hers. He is remarkable, Devon. I have rarely met a man who can be this close and come from it to the world so little changed." He looked down at his feet, his expression shifting in a way that was oddly reminiscent of Angel. Devon had not thought to see it there, so obvious. "I do not think he will survive her death, if she does die; perhaps the choice I made was the poorer one."
"Why is she so special?" Levee said suddenly. "To him. Why? Why, if she's so special, did you heal the boy instead of the girl?"
"Why? Because I understand the girl well. Levee. Had he died, now, she would not become what she must become. She was not born to the patriciate and its games; she was not even born to your beloved free towns. She was born to a Southern mother, a Northern father, in the twenty-fifth holding; they died when she was a girl, and she was forced to the streets. There, instead of becoming a part of the street, she made the street conform to her, even then—even at that age: she found her den, formed it."
"She belonged to a street den."
"Yes. They did what they had to to survive, but not more; she's particularly proud of that."
"You've said you understand her."
"Yes."
"Will you allow me to examine her?"
"I do not think it necessary. I can tell you what—"
"Let me."
"If her domicis will permit it."
He touched her face.
Avandar's breath was a slightly pungent wind that crossed his cheek, but Levee was not offended; the domicis seemed to be the only man in the room who dared to draw breath. Certainly Alowan did not.
It pained him, to see Alowan so weary who had once been so full of fire, so full of both himself and the ideals which had been held so dear. Who, of all of his teachers, would he have chosen to emulate in his youth? Alowan, of course. Always Alowan. Was this how heroes ended?
I'm getting old, he thought. And he was. Too old for the school. Too old for the hopeful young faces that gradually acquired the dimness and scars of experience. He loved the hope, and hated it, because he hated to watch it die.
Who had told him, a decade ago, to look on that hope as a flower and a blossom; to see it as spring's natural renewal, to see its death not as death, but as wisdom, experience, the profound effect of life? Alowan, of course.
Levee bowed his head, closed his eyes.
"You were the strongest healer I've ever taught," Alowan said, unexpectedly interrupting the reverie. "And I think, although I have no spies in your house, no students who are there to tell me of your behavior or misbehavior as I once did, that you have only grown stronger." His voice hardened. "Take what you need. Levee—but do not take more."
Levee looked up. Nodded. He saw Devon ATerafin's face darken, but that was his problem; he wasn't very fond of the patriciate, and Devon ATerafin typified it.
But a girl who grew up in the twenty-fifth, and somehow made her way here to help save a city, a girl who inspired the loyalty of both Angel, the unknown man, and Alowan, the healer, did not. Or so he suspected. He felt hope; it stung. Perhaps she was the one, this girl, perhaps she would be the key.
If a healer's power was strong enough, he could touch more than just the body when he touched at all; he could come close to a person without the weakening of barriers that death brought. Could read, not just their thoughts—for often, they were beyond thought—but the things that lay at their heart, hidden, as it must be, from others.
Levee was a powerful healer.
He let himself walk the ways that were Jewel ATerafin. Jewel Markess. Jay. He knew who Angel was to her, the space he occupied, the feel of his companionship; he knew what lay beyond sight, and beyond specific event, specific experience. Heart. He knew, then, why Alowan had made the choice he had. Wondered if the older healer had touched Jewel as he touched her now, drawing, from her, feeling stripped of word, of specificity, but not of personality, not of self.
It was Alowan who brought him back, catching both of his hands and pulling them away from the sides of her face, gently but in a way that brooked no resistance.
"Will you heal her?" he said.
Levee ran his hand over his eyes; they were wet. "Do you know what you have here?" he asked softly.
"I know," Alowan said. "Without what you've seen, I still know it." He paused. "Will you help us, Levee? We have no other choices. I cannot go where she has gone; I have neither the strength nor the courage."
"Do you know," Levee said, as if he hadn't heard the question, "how vicious this war is going to be?"
Alowan was silent a moment. "You mean the House War," he said at last.
"Yes."
"I… have some idea."
"And you think she can somehow survive it?"
"Given what she is, yes, I do." He was quiet. "I value this House. I know that you don't understand that. But it stands for—it has stood for—things that I admire. Not all power is evil, Levee."
Levee was silent. At last he rose. "I do not do this without misgivings," he said gruffly. "But I believe we may help each other, you and I."
Alowan nodded, almost serene. "I thought as much."
The younger healer's eyes narrowed. "You know."
"I… have friends in the healing house."
Levee bowed. "I will send for the boy."
"He is hardly a boy, Levee."
"You think of her as a girl, and she is hardly that. We all have our foibles when we think of those who've wormed their way into our affections."
He returned with a young man. It took the better part of two hours, and Devon and Avandar stood in the room as if pacing was beneath their dignity but the desire for if was fierce. Finch came and went; Carver came and went: Jester came and went. Arann, oddly enough, did not; he stayed, unmoving, apparently unmoved.
Alowan knew well why; Arann, of all of them, could understand Angel's loss, the pain that came with being only physically whole. The old healer was glad that Kiriel had returned to her unit; he did not like the girl, although he did not know why, and it shamed him.
His young aide came into the room in a rush and a bow. "Healer Levee," she said.
"Alone?"
"No. There is a young man with him."
"Good. Send them in."
He watched, waited. A young man entered the room. He was taller than either Levee or Alowan; he was as fair in coloring as Dantallon, the Queens' healer, but he was grimmer in look, colder in bearing; his presence was not unlike that of the domicis, Avandar.
Not a healer by avocation, merely by birth.
Except, of course, that was impossible. Alowan bowed.
"I am Alowan," he said.
"I am Daine," the younger man replied, bowing stiffly. "Healer Levee holds you in regard." •
"And I him. Come in."
Levee followed, silent. He made his way between the twin sentries of Devon and Avandar, demanding by presence alone that they give the bed in which Jewel lay a wider berth. They did. "This," Levee said to the stiff young man, "is the girl."
"You want me to heal her."
"Yes."
The young man stared at her a long time. He sat, stiffly, in the chair by the bed. "And if I do not want to do this thing?"
"She will die." Levee shrugged. "I will not force you, Daine. You have suffered th
at once."
Alowan closed his eyes; turned away. The rumor was true.
"Then I will not do it."
"But," Levee continued, "I believe that you will find a way back from death that will free you from the last journey, if you choose this one." He took the younger man's hand; Daine stiffened but did not pull back. "I ask it, Daine, but I cannot command it."
"And if I don't do it, what will you do? Revoke the protection of your House? Leave me vulnerable to the demands of the patriciate?"
"No. I will leave. You will leave with me. I ask it, Daine, but I will in no way compel it." He was quiet. "You were born in Averalaan, if I recall correctly."
Daine snorted. "You know damned well I was born here. It's the free towners you fawn over." Only when those words left his lips did he look his age; younger than Jewel ATerafin or her den, with the exception of its newest member.
"Then you were alive during the Henden of 410."
Daine nodded grimly. "We all were. And we all thought we wouldn't see First Day."
"If not for her, we wouldn't have."
He looked at her, then, as if seeing her for the first time. The ice stiffened in his eyes a moment, and then his resolve faltered. "If you're lying to me," he said softly, "I'll know it. I'll know it when I heal her." He frowned. "Why is she dying? Is it the House War?"
Levee didn't answer.
Avandar did. "She was hunting the kin in the streets of the city. She found one, but he was more powerful than any of us expected; more powerful than we were prepared for. You've heard of the bodies discovered in the fifteenth holding, no doubt."
Daine nodded his slender, pale face. Youth there, now, for a just a moment.
"They weren't killed there. She and the mages have hunted them once; they were doing it again, upon the orders of the Kings."
"We've heard none of this."
"There are too many people alive now who were alive in that Henden; it will cause panic, and the panic will serve not our interests, but the interests of the demons."
"Enough, Avandar," Devon said. "You tread too fine a line. Remember that your service requires secrecy."
"He needs to know it," Avandar replied.
"That is for the Kings to say. Not a domicis."
"We are not in Avantari, ATerafin, but in Terafin; it is for The Terafin to decide."
"It is now moot," Alowan said, more curtly than he intended. "Daine, she is worthy of your gift. I have seen her in this House the past sixteen years and more, and she is worthy of mine."
"You didn't heal her," he said pointedly.
"No."
"Why?"
"Two reasons. Briefly: Her companion was also dying: she feels responsible for him, and had she lived at his expense, it would have broken her. Second, because I am far too old. I cannot guarantee that I could walk a death for Jewel ATerafin and separate myself from her afterward. Not for Jewel.
"Angel is different enough from the things I admire and the things I desire to protect; I know where I begin, I know where he ends, and I—I have just enough of myself not to want to remain where I don't belong."
He had not yet been as bluntly honest as this; honest enough that Levee would understand it, but not so honest that either Devon or Avandar would. It was hardest, always, to separate oneself from a person one could trust, could—under normal circumstances, love. "I have enough of her companion in me now that I am not above begging you, if that is what you require."
But Daine had already pushed Levee aside; had taken his place beside her. "She—she wears a Council ring," he said. Alowan thought he detected a tremor in the words, a fear.
"Yes. Therefore you must judge the truth of all of our words for yourself. The ring, she earned by her actions. Not her birth, Daine. Not her ruthlessness; she has precious little of that. Not, we fear, enough—but it is not ruthlessness alone that rules the world. Think of the Kings."
"The Kings are god-born."
"Yes. But we all come from a beginning that knew gods, or else there would be no healers. No bards. No young women like Jewel."
Hands, shaking now, touched her face, much as Levee's had done. "I will—I will try this thing. For you, Alowan. For Levee." His smile was ghostly, thin. "For myself, I think. I remember that Henden. I remember that First Day—it was, the first First Day, for me. It marks them all. The screaming and then the silence, the dawn. A miracle." He closed his eyes. "I remember the darkness, Levee. I'm so tired of darkness." All arrogance was gone, all ice, although he struggled to speak the words as if against himself, his better judgment.
And Levee said softly, "I know." He looked away, and there were, Alowan thought, tears in the folds of his eyes. He was stubborn, proud; they wouldn't fall.
The healing began.
"Will he be able to let her go?" Alowan asked quietly.
"I—I don't know."
"Who was it? Who forced him to this act?" There was no worse thing one could do, to a healer—but only a healer understood the truth of that; those without the power, those who did not and could never pay the healer's price, could not conceive of the violation.
"A member," Levee said bitterly, "of this House."
"Who?"
"It is not of concern," he replied.
"Does he live?"
Levee tendered no reply. It was reply enough. They watched for a while. "Daine is—he was—a soft-headed, soft-hearted idiot."
"You're fond of him."
"I'm always fond of the stupid ones. It's my worst failing." Levee's jaw locked. "They caught him using a child as bait. Makes me wish children had never been invented. They threatened to kill her if he did not heal the man they wished healed; they… injured her. The noble was dying. The girl was screaming. Daine— what other choice did he have? He's stupid."
"He did it."
"Yes. They would have killed him afterward, but the man forbade it." Levee closed his eyes. "And it scarred my boy. He has seen murder, and far, far worse, and has had to live with and through it to call the man who has committed all of these atrocities back from the Hells."
"Will he hold her too tightly?"
"I think—I think he is stronger than that," Levee said.
He was lying. Alowan heard it in his voice, but said nothing. What was there to say? There were few enough who would risk the walk to begin with; she did not, in his opinion, have the time to wait until they found another, Avandar's magic and Meralonne's containment notwithstanding.
But he knew, then, that the man whose servants had forced the healing must have been Corniel ATerafin. The only man who had died far enough away from the Terafin manse that his body had not been brought to the healerie. Alowan had not regretted his death then; he did not regret it now.
But he bowed his head a moment, in prayer to the Mother that he might not feel such a vicious, such a terrible, sense of triumph at another man's murder.
He was tired, so very, very tired. Angel burned him; he could not separate his fear for Jewel from the younger man's. I misjudged you, he thought, not for the first time.
They watched the boy.
Avandar interrupted Alowan's reverie three times, and each, to ask—by gesture alone—if he might somehow interfere. He understood the risks of a healing, to both the healed and the healer. Each of the three times, Alowan shook his head: No.
Alowan understood, then, why Levee cultivated such a dour, grim appearance; no one noticed, who did not know him reasonably well, when it was genuine and when it was not. Today, it was genuine. He kept putting his hands behind his back, pulling them away, wringing them, pulling them apart. It was odd; he was a big man, a man who projected a certain strength, a force of immovable will. The gestures themselves, unconscious, suited him ill.
He heard Finch, as if she were her namesake, fluttering and whispering in a high voice. Thought he should tell her that lower voices carried less of a distance.
And then he heard it. Over the mutter, the questions, the whispering between members of Jewel's den,
over Levee's heavy step, Devon's light one, and the merciful stillness of the man whose calling it was to watch and to harbor, the domicis.
"Jay."
They started, all of them. The voice was so labored it was hard to tell who of the two had spoken: Jewel ATerafin, or Daine of Levee's House.
Interesting, Alowan thought, slightly surprised. Jay. Not Jewel.
"Jay," the name came again. Stronger this time. Definitely Daine's voice. She did not respond.
They drew breath then, collectively; they had become, in the intensity of their observation, one person, with one hope.
"Jay."
Too late, Alowan thought, almost numb with the certainty of it. Aware that it was his risk, that he had taken it, as a gambler might. He bowed his head; there was enough of Angel in him, would always be enough of Angel in him, that he knew either way—Jewel or Angel—there had been no way to separate the choice made, the cost of failure.
"Jay—I'd let you stay where you're safe," Daine said, his voice low, intense. "I'd stay there with you myself, and gods be cursed, healers be damned.
"But you know what you have to do. And I know it. You know what was done to me. Death doesn't change it."
Alowan began to cry. It was not loud; indeed, it was completely still, and the tears were lost in the folds of his skin, lost to light, lost to discovery.
"I won't leave you," he continued, his voice hoarse. "But I can't leave you there. Kalliaris curse you, Jay—I've been there. I've been there with Corniel ATerafin. I've been living with him for two months. I've been mad with it. I am mad with it. You want to die? Tough. Tough shit.
"Come home."
He had never heard a calling so violent. Never heard a calling so angry. And he had never heard a calling so fraught with respect and intent and purpose. But he thought, as he listened to the tenor of the young man's voice, that he might have heard the last of these three things if he had listened to his own voice on a cool, sea-heavy day, over thirty years ago.
Her eyes opened slowly, separating lash by lash into the harsh glare of light, any light. She saw the man who had called her, and she did not shrink from the anger in his voice; instead, she reached up, she reached up to where his hands were gripping her face so tightly her skin was white beneath his fingers.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 31
