by Alexey Pehov
“Everyone with the Gift can heal with magic. Even the necromancers. But no one has the ability to do it quite like the Healers. Their Gift is focused specifically on healing. So much so that they can return the dead to life. The flip side of necromancy, if you will. The result is not an empty, vicious shell, but a real living person. And the abilities of the Sculptor surpass our understanding. That’s why no mage today can duplicate his creations, or even come close. The Gates of Six Towers, the academy of the Walkers in the Rainbow Valley, the eight Spires, the palace of the Emperor, the Tombs of the Fallen, not to mention the Paths of Petals.”
“Umm…” I paused, taking in the list. “Why have I never heard anything about Healers?”
“I told you, people with that kind of spark are born very rarely. And they don’t go running around the cities and villages hoping to heal as many people as possible. The last Healer was a Mother of the Walkers. Five generations ago. Since then, no one has been born with such a Gift.”
I preferred not to ask how Layen knew all of this.
“But let’s return to my question,” I reminded her. “What does healing have to do with injuring someone?”
“Every spark has its reverse side.”
“Those words mean nothing to me.”
She narrowed her dark blue eyes thoughtfully.
“The idea is the same in regular healing. Say you take a tisane of bloodroot for a cough. If you drink too much, instead of curing of your illness, you get the complete opposite result instead. Your lungs will collapse and you’ll drown in your own blood. It’s the same here. Who ever said that a doctor can’t kill?”
“Well, if he’s a quack,” I said, chuckling.
“Not necessarily from ineptitude, dear. You must admit that an experienced doctor knows the human body so well that should the desire take him, he could easily send anyone he liked to the Blessed Gardens. It’s exactly like that with the magic of the Healers. To stop the heart? To burst the blood vessels? To send pestilence? If he can repair a broken spine, then why wouldn’t he be able to break it? It’s a unique battle magic that has nothing in common with the customary canons of the academies of the Walkers and Sdis. Not Life and not Death. Beyond that. Completely different. If a person turned a Gift like that to evil, he could cause such calamity that he’d be remembered for centuries. You don’t need to go very far for an example. Leprosy, one of the Damned, is a Healer.”
“Hey! According to legend, half the south died because of a disease she sent.”
“That’s exactly right. I think you can imagine now what an experienced Healer is capable of. No,” she said, guessing what I wanted to ask. “Shen can’t do that. Yet. I told you that his Gift is not yet developed. Like I said, it was nothing more than an accident. The boy was lucky that he could overpower the khilss. It was even more lucky that when Shen passed his Gift through it, his spark was not burned out. When Life encounters Death they usually kill each other. But Shen’s magic is different. When it tangled with the necromancer’s magic, it behaved in an inconceivable way. I’ve never heard of anything like it. A purifying, scalding light. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. Even the Damned didn’t suspect anything. She erected a shield so strong that most Walkers wouldn’t be able to break through it. But the shield did not save her because of what resulted from the intermingling of the spark of the Healer and the magic of Death. Frankly, I’m not sure if there’s even a way to combat such a spell.”
“Is it really possible that neither you nor that girl nor the necromancer sensed who our Healer is?”
“It is. We didn’t sense it. Not every bearer of the Gift is able to sense another’s spark. And if it’s skillfully hidden … The White didn’t have the experience to catch me out. But about the Gift of a Healer. The temperature of his spark differs radically from the majority of sparks you come in contact with. You can only sense a Healer when he is exhibiting his abilities. Not before then. So that’s why neither I nor the Damned nor the Sdisian suspected anything about the talents of Mols’s friend until the very last moment.”
“Speaking of…” I hesitated, but then I said it anyway. “Of the Damned. If you’re right and it was … Which one was it?”
“Hmmm,” she pondered, pulling her knees up under her chin and circling her arms around them.
I waited patiently.
“Initially there were more than twenty rebels in the Council of the Towers, but only eight of them survived the Dark Revolt and those are the ones known as the Damned. Delirium and Cholera died during the War of the Necromancers. Six were left. Two of them are men. That leaves four women. Only two of them fully match the characteristics we saw. So it was either Rubeola or Typhoid we came up against.”
I shivered. But I still couldn’t believe that we had seen one of those who had fomented the Dark Revolt and triggered the War of the Necromancers.
“What would a Damned want with a place like Dog Green?”
“The answer is obvious, my dear. Me. Or rather, my Gift. Of course, one might think that she came there out of pure curiosity or with the hope of enticing me to her side, but I don’t really believe that. A few of the strongest mages have the ability to fuse others’ sparks to their own Gift and become stronger.”
I saw that this subject was disagreeable to her and refrained from pursuing it. I turned the conversation to something else. “So why did Mols send a Healer to us?”
“Are you positive that he knows about Shen’s Gift?”
“No,” I replied after a brief reflection. “But if that’s so, then I really don’t know what would cause him to send a common healer with Giiyans.”
“What or who?” Layen’s expression turned cunning.
“Are you insinuating that it was Joch?”
“I don’t know. When do you think we’ll get to the road?”
I estimated the distance we’d traveled.
“The day after tomorrow, if we keep the same pace and nothing happens.”
“You know that as soon as we get to the road they will become too dangerous for us. I can’t vouch for Midge.”
“And I can’t vouch for any of them. I happened to overhear a conversation between our firewood collectors last night.”
I briefly recounted Midge and Bamut’s conversation.
“Maybe we should try to get rid of them today?” I suggested.
“It will be tricky,” Layen said reluctantly. “I’m not sure that I can fight against even one of them. Plus, who knows what Shen will throw at us if we pin him to the wall.”
“But I’m not asking you to brawl. Your Gift is far more useful than your knife.”
She looked at me for a second in surprise and then sighed heavily. “I thought you understood.”
She was silent for the longest time after that. Then she whispered quietly, “I cannot use my Gift.”
I thought I had misheard her.
“You … What?”
“I can’t use my Gift!” she screamed, losing control of herself, and then she buried her face in her hands.
For a short time I watched, stunned, as she sobbed soundlessly, and then I gathered her into my arms.
“Shh, hush. It’s all right,” I tried to console her. It helped a bit. The sobbing turned into quiet hiccups.
“I can’t … I lost … I can’t … That’s why I didn’t reply to your mental calls. I simply didn’t hear them. I was planning on telling you today. I started but then you asked about the Damned and I couldn’t go on.
“I told you already about the attenuation of the spark. The sorcerer’s khilss drained me. Then the Damned’s spell bound what remained of my magic. My spark has faded so much that I can’t invoke my Gift.”
“But you created that little ball of light yesterday for Shen.”
“It needed doing, even if it required the last of the power I’d regained. Midge had to see it.”
“So your Gift hasn’t left you forever?”
“Of course not. My spark hasn’t gone out. Bu
t quite some time will be needed to restore it.”
“How long?”
“I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, so I can only guess. Two weeks. Perhaps a month.”
I had to bite my lip to keep from swearing. I hadn’t thought everything was this bad. We didn’t have two weeks to rest; we didn’t even have two days. Without my sun’s magic backing me, I would be hard-pressed to deal with our three intrusive companions.
With an outraged shriek, a dappled bird flew out of the thick brush about fifteen yards away from us. Right away I was on my feet, ready to shoot. Layen jumped up as well.
“Something spooked it,” she said.
There were no suspicious movements or sounds. If someone was hiding there, he was being extremely quiet. We stood there for several minutes, tensely listening to the sounds of the forest.
“It’s useless,” said Layen. “If there was someone there, he’s long since made himself scarce.”
“Or he’s still hiding,” I said, disagreeing with her. “He could have heard us.”
“I don’t think so. It’s far enough away.”
“Some people have excellent hearing,” I objected again and cast up my bow.
Twang!
The arrow flew to the place from which the bird had just flown. I waited another minute and then I took my axe in my right hand and a long dagger in my left, and went to scout it out, not all that hopeful that I’d managed to wound someone.
Just as I assumed, the arrow had hit the ground. I put it back in my quiver and examined the ground. The grass all around was undisturbed, but one of the branches of a raspberry bush was broken. A few ripe berries had fallen to the ground.
This could mean much.
Or it could mean nothing.
* * *
“Oh, Al’sgara!” sighed Bamut dreamily as he pillowed his arms under his head and stretched out on the leaves. “Damn.… Who would have known I’d miss it this much!”
“Long walks are good for your health.” Layen pensively poked at a coal of the dying fire with a branch. An entire flock of sparks rushed up into the night sky.
“Anything but that for me! I think I have the spirit of the Green City in my blood.”
“Thinking is bad for you, my friend,” said my sun softly. “As you well know, too many thoughts can lead to a whole heap of troubles. Pass me some water, please.”
Bamut sat up and stretched so that his joints popped. He did anything that was not part of his work at a leisurely pace. I could see how his laziness was enraging my wife.
“Take mine.” Midge threw her his flask. “A century will pass by before he gets moving.”
“Don’t bad-mouth me.” Bamut huffed as he stretched out again. “There’s no rush.”
I stepped out of the gloom where I’d been standing this whole time.
“Is everything all right?” Midge asked after clearing his throat. My appearance had caught him unawares.
“So it seems,” I answered him vaguely. “It’s quiet for the second day. It seems like they decided to leave us alone after all.”
“Glory be to Melot,” said Shen as he tossed a log onto the fading fire. “Spending every watch just waiting for something—”
“The longer you wait, the safer you’ll be.” Layen took a sip from Midge’s flask and frowned. “Ugh! Where did you get this water?”
“From a stream.” The runt was clearly not expecting such a question.
“You found a bad stream. It’s bitter.”
She spat and dumped out the flask.
“Hey! Hey!” Midge cried out. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t whine,” I advised him. “Is there nowhere to get water? Every day there’s two or three springs on our path. You won’t die.”
Still spitting, Layen tossed the empty flask to its owner.
“I’d have given permission, if only she’d asked,” he said grumpily as he twisted the lid back on. “We’ll get there tomorrow, right, Ness?”
“Who said?” I asked dryly.
“Well, that’s the way it looks. We’ve been walking in a straight line recently. We’re headed west. In the evenings the sun beats down right into my face, especially when we’re tromping through a field. If you count the days, we should already be there.”
You smart little toad. We should get rid of you. Today. This night. When everyone would be asleep. We no longer required your company.
“Should have doesn’t count in the forest.”
“I think that a child could find the road now.” I really didn’t like Midge’s smile.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“I’m simply happy. I’ll be home soon.” He was still smiling boldly.
Layen and I exchanged furtive glances.
So then. What follows from everything we just heard? Even a child could find the road? Is that to say that he no longer requires a guide? Are they sure that they can get out of the woods themselves? Apparently. The idiots don’t know that there is a swamp in front of us, and we need to turn to the north. They believe they can get out of this scrape themselves. So of course our designation has changed—from dangerous companions to dangerous trophies for which quite a lot of money has been promised. Have they decided to do away with us? Yes, only we’ll do it sooner, boys.
We had to terminate Shen first. I couldn’t care less whether he was a Healer or not. Even if people like our Healer were born once in a hundred or even a thousand years, he was the most dangerous of the three.
“When I return to Al’sgara, I’m going to live it up.” Bamut sat up again. “Damn it.… I’ll buy myself a little house. On the outskirts. By the seashore. Or even better, a nice inn closer to the pier. And what are you going to do with your share, Midge?”
“Me?” The runt was lovingly picking the petals off a small, unattractive flower. “It’s too early to think about that. When I get it, then I’ll decide. Sorens always find a way to be spent.”
“You need to think about it in advance.”
“How are you planning on getting rich, boys?” I tried to enter the conversation casually, but inside I was cringing. “You expecting an inheritance?”
“Something like that.” Midge finished tearing off the petals and tossed what remained of the flower at me. “Here. Feast your eyes on that.”
Bamut suddenly guffawed.
“What is this?” I ignored the laughter.
“Greater Valerian. The key to ten thousand sorens. You still don’t understand? The root of that little flower could make even a horse fall asleep.”
“I never would have thought that you were so at home with forest herbs,” I said, drawing out the words.
“Unlike some upstarts, real Giiyans undergo lengthy schooling.” Midge wasn’t smiling anymore. “Don’t! It’ll be worse for you.”
I couldn’t reach for my bow. Bamut’s crossbow was unambiguously leveled at my chest.
“What should I make of this?” I asked coldly as I slanted my eyes to the right. To my surprise, Layen was sleeping.
“The water in the flask was bitter!” The realization stunned me.
They had outplayed us.
“Excellent!” Midge approved of my guess. “So it was. I don’t rely on it very much, but luck loves me. When the witch awakes—”
“She’ll boil your brains.”
“So we believed as well. I heard that she can’t do anything. Your woman is no more dangerous than a mosquito.”
That means it was him hiding in the bushes. They spied on us, the Abyss take me!
“If she hadn’t swallowed that junk we would have just whacked her over the head.” Bamut edged into the conversation.
“Mols won’t be happy.” I was regretting that Whip wasn’t here like never before.
“With that much money I can spit on both Mols and the guild, Gray.”
“Then I don’t understand why you’re chatting with me.”
“We don’t intend to kill you. What would we d
o with your heads in the forest? They’ll rot ten times over before we get them to the city. Threefingers might not believe us then. So we’ll bring Joch live goods. And whole. We won’t even beat you if you yield.”
“I’m simply thrilled,” I said and dropped sharply to my right side, simultaneously throwing my hatchet with my right hand.
The crossbow gave a loud crack and the released bolt passed over my head. Bamut hadn’t expected something like that from me, and he had fumbled and missed the shot. However, hitting your target when you have a Blazgian utak lodged in your forehead is not very easy.
One down!
Midge roared, leaped up into the air, and crashed into me with all his weight before I had a chance to get to my feet. The blow threw me over onto my back. At the last moment I intercepted his hand, which was holding a knife ready to pierce my hide. The blade froze an inch from my face. Midge was pressing down with all his strength in one direction, and I was pressing up in the other. With my free hand I scratched at his face, trying to get to his eyes.
“Do you need any help?” Shen’s voice rang out lazily.
“Of course! Yes! Idiot!” snarled Midge.
The knife came half an inch closer to my face. Suddenly my opponent shuddered and went limp. Shen was standing over him with a bloodstained skeem. Noticing my bemused expression, he smiled nonchalantly.
“I always disliked him.”
I pushed the corpse off me and stood up. “So what next?”
“Nothing. We may as well get along. I hope to hell that we’ll get to Al’sgara together.”
“And then?”
He looked at me for a very long time; then he put away his skeem and said quietly, “Let’s try to wake Layen.”
* * *
The forest thinned out. The impassable thickets and mighty trees disappeared; little paths emerged; and a multitude of clear springs tumbled out of the earth and flowed into a small lake, which was hidden from curious eyes behind a wall of thick spruce trees. The ground became boggy in places, the black flies and mosquitoes increased. They didn’t leave us be until the weather soured and it began to rain. It became damp, muggy, and nasty. All signs pointed to the fact that the Great Blazgian Swamp lay not far from here. We struck north, in the hopes of sooner or later emerging onto the road that traversed the boundaries of the swamp and the forest.
