The Bonemender's Choice

by Holly Bennett

  “Never mind, I don’t want to—”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Stop now. Is no need for making that red face more red. I win much gold from him in reneñas. I offer it back to him if he let me out harbor gate.”

  “The harbor gate?” Derkh hadn’t noticed another gate.

  “Yes, is gate at harbor side. Not for travelers. For ship’s cargo. Is always locked except for loading times.” Her look was stern now. “I have much trouble to return here. I circle around far from stronghold to escape searchers. Very rough country in darkness. I think, I never reach Niz Hana in time, you leave without me. Then when I find road again, what do I see?”

  Derkh made a sudden guess, darted a look and saw in her brilliant smile that he was right.

  “A broken cart, some dead men. Not you dead, is good sign. And then not much farther, I find horse, all ready for a rider.”

  They sat in silence for a bit, close now to the heart of what had happened between them.

  “There is something else I find.” Yolenka spoke so softly, her face veiled by a down-sweep of hair, that Derkh could barely make out the words. “You are not on the ship.” Her voice was wondering.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I wasn’t.” He waited while she hooked the sheet of hair behind her ear and raised her head to meet his eyes.

  “I was ready to go back and find you,” he said. “I love you. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. I want to be your man.” And then, because it was Yolenka and because of what he had endured in the past week, he thought he had better be perfectly clear. “Your only man.”

  “You are my only man,” she said, and for once there was no hint of teasing in her tone, but a low fierce passion. And she twined her arms around his neck, and right there on the busy deck he kissed her, and he didn’t let her loose until the whistle finally called them to eat.

  The black water closed over her head and poured cold and oily into her mouth. It cut off all air, all light, and pushed her deep below the surface. She sank into utter blackness, drowned. At the bottom, Luc waited for her, his white throat gaping and closing in the current like gills.

  With a harsh rasp Madeleine sucked at the air, pulling it through the painful swollen flap of her throat and sobbing it out again. She was weeping, and the more she gasped and cried the more her throat clenched shut. It was her dream all over again, only without any water.

  “Maddy, easy now.”

  Aunt Gabrielle. Madeleine felt the woman’s arms about her, felt her warm calm presence enter her.

  “I can’t breathe!” She heaved, heard the breath rattle grudgingly into her lungs. “I can’t—”

  “Nice and slow, love. Try like this.” Gabrielle adjusted Madeleine’s position, tipped her head back just a little in the crook of her arm. Something seemed to relax in her throat. “Little soft breaths.”

  She needed more than little breaths, needed great rushes of air to chase away the dream, but Gabrielle breathed with her and as she grew calmer the air flowed back. Panic softened to confused sorrow.

  “I’m dying,” she murmured. “Like Luc. His throat opened up, and he died. Because of me. My throat is closed up, and I’ll die too. Like Luc...”

  “No, Madeleine.” Gabrielle’s voice was firm, like her mother’s almost. “You are not going to die. We are going to keep your throat open, and you will live.”

  Madeleine didn’t know if that was true. She knew she had never been so sick, that “sore throat” didn’t remotely capture what was wrong with her. She thought if she drifted back to the dark, not-quite-sleep that filled her mind with bizarre dreams and bright wheeling colors, she might not awaken. She tried to hang onto her aunt’s voice, but she was so tired. And her throat—she could not endure the sensation, not just the pain but the horror of it, her own tender tissue become monstrous.

  Gabrielle’s voice faded away, but Madeleine felt the warm bright light flooding into her and knew her aunt was with her. Here was a better place to go than the dark dreams of her illness. She hung on until she felt cradled in Gabrielle’s warm presence, and then she gave herself up to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  YOLENKA TAPPED ON THE CABIN door and pushed it open.

  “Gabrielle?”

  It was dark in the little room, just one wall lamp casting a small pool of light. Yolenka could make out Gabrielle’s form sitting close by the girl’s bed. She was hunched over her patient, head drooping.

  Fallen asleep, thought Yolenka. Like Féolan. Not used to staying up all night.

  She laid down her tray and lit another lamp. Then she crossed the floor and laid a hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder, shook it gently.

  “Gabrielle, wake up! I bring dinner.”

  She felt the other woman start under her hand. Gabrielle straightened. She looked bleary.

  “Sorry to wake you. Féolan asked me to make sure you ate.” Yolenka smiled. “Is good. Captain get fresh stores at Niz Hana market.”

  “Well...” Gabrielle seemed reluctant, her gaze turning back to Madeleine. “Yes, I guess I had better, at that. Thanks.”

  She ate, as they all had, with the steady indiscriminate efficiency of the very hungry. Neither of them spoke while Gabrielle loaded in the first restorative mouthfuls.

  “Where’s Féolan?” Gabrielle asked.

  “He say he is very tired and is going early to his bed,” answered Yolenka.

  Gabrielle’s spoon paused on its way to her mouth and her brows creased, but she said nothing. Yolenka shrugged. “We will all join him soon. My bones are wanting death.” She guessed from Gabrielle’s startled glance that the expression hadn’t translated very well into Krylaise. My bones long for the grave, meaning heavy with the need to rest. Oh well.

  “How is the girl?” she asked gently. Death was, perhaps, not the best word to use in a casual expression right now.

  Gabrielle shook her head. “She lost a lot of ground during that ride. The membrane on her throat is really big now. It’s making it hard for her to breathe.”

  Yolenka nodded. “Yes, I have seen that,” she said softly.

  “I was thinking...” Gabrielle’s features were wide awake now, her green eyes dark and intent in the lamplight. “That membrane—it could suffocate her, couldn’t it?”

  Yolenka gave a reluctant nod. “It happens sometimes.”

  “Do your healers ever remove it? If it impedes the patient’s breathing, I mean? Could I not peel it away like a scab?”

  Yolenka was shaking her head so hard her hair swung across her face.

  “No! No, you must not!” Every child knew this. “You cannot pull aside the Veil. Beyond the Veil lies Death.”

  Gabrielle stared at her. “But why? What happens? Is it because of the bleeding?”

  Yolenka tried to think. It was folk knowledge in her country, not something she had ever seen done. What had her mother told her? “There is bleeding, yes, but that is not the problem. Whenever it has been tried, the patient dies soon after,” she said. “They say the Veil is angry and sends an evil spell on the patient, but that is just...”

  Gabrielle didn’t know the Tarzine word Yolenka resorted to, but she thought the phrase “country nonsense” might be close.

  “But the danger is real,” Yolenka insisted. “The patient loses his muscles, he shakes, his heart stops. He dies.”

  “His heart...” Gabrielle stared into space, her face still and closed. The remains of her dinner lay forgotten on the tiny side table. Long moments ticked by so that Yolenka wondered if her presence had become an intrusion. She had just reached across to gather up the tray, when Gabrielle spoke again.

  “Yolenka, could you stay just a bit longer? I think I am close to understanding something here.”

  Yolenka sat down. She didn’t know what Gabrielle thought she could do—children either recovered from the Veil or they didn’t, and there was little the most skilled healer could do about it—but if Yolenka’s sketchy knowledge could be of help, she wou
ld share it.

  “You say when the Veil is removed, the patient’s whole body collapses? His heart stops, his limbs...”

  “Yes, is like the sickness that was in his throat goes all through him.”

  “Like a poison,” suggested Gabrielle.

  Yolenka had a vivid uncomfortable memory of Turga convulsing at her feet. What would this gentle woman think of what she had done? But her idea was right.

  “Yes,” she said, “I have seen poisoning. Is like that.”

  It was remarkable the change that had come over Gabrielle. All signs of fatigue were gone. Her face was excited, eager even.

  “I need to get to work now, Yolenka,” she said. “Thank you—for the food and even more for your knowledge. If my idea is right, and I pray it is, you may have just saved Madeleine.”

  Strange woman, thought Yolenka, as she eased the door shut. Gabrielle was slumped over the girl’s bed again, to all appearances fast asleep. A ghost-chill ran up Yolenka’s back. Not asleep. Yolenka wasn’t sure what Gabrielle was doing, but it was something very different from sleep.

  LIKE A POISON. Gabrielle had always felt there was some ominous power to this disease that she was not touching. What if it was a poison? What if that membrane, the Veil, was not only infecting Madeleine’s throat like any other illness but making a poison that spread throughout her body? It would explain why Gabrielle made so little progress as she worked. It would explain why removing the membrane was deadly—maybe that released the poison in a great flood, and the open wound on the throat absorbed it all at once. The poison would rush through the bloodstream and enter all the vital organs...

  So, she could not pull aside the Veil. But she could look behind it. She would go there and discover the secret that lay behind its protective skin.

  She calmed her own urgency, let her breath come slow and steady and weightless as thistledown. She let the little room fade away, let herself float on the swell and fall of the ship. She let the healing light fill her until it seemed the glow of it could brighten the darkest deepest crevice in the ocean floor. Then she let that light pour into her niece, taking her inner vision with it.

  SHE HAD IT NOW. This illness, this Gray Veil, made a double attack. Madeleine’s throat infection was real and aggressive, and Gabrielle’s fight to push back its spreading inflammation had not been useless. But it had not been half enough. For the hateful membrane on Madeleine’s throat was also making a powerful toxin. Even knowing what to look for, it was barely discernable in the infected tissues—like looking for a glimmer of candlelight in a room full of lamps. But as the membrane grew, so did the quantity of poison that oozed from behind its leathery surface. And like a dead pigeon in a well that taints the drinking water and sickens a whole village, the poison seeped into Madeleine’s blood, causing harm everywhere it traveled: heart, liver, kidneys—no wonder she had sickened so quickly!

  But she was young and strong, her own body fighting hard against the invasion. There was no lasting damage yet. And Gabrielle knew what she was fighting now. For the first time in two days, she was confident that Madeleine would live.

  The membrane was held at bay, and her circle of light would hold for a time. Madeleine’s breath was slightly obstructed and uneasy, but not to the point of true suffocation. All of Gabrielle’s power now could be trained on the evil alchemy taking place on the underside of the membrane.

  The night ahead would be long—her second without rest. No sense wasting energy holding herself upright. She climbed into the narrow bed beside Madeleine, wrapped her arm around her niece’s waist and sank into a deep trance. Gabrielle looked up with a start as someone entered the room, confused by the sudden pull back to the world. Normal comings and going didn’t usually disturb her, so what...?

  Féolan stood in the flickering lamplight. Why does he have a scarf wrapped around his neck, she wondered vaguely, noting the bulky silhouette he made above the shoulders. It’s a warm night...

  “Sorry to disturb, love.” Féolan’s voice was a husky rasp.

  “Féolan!” Gabrielle sat up in alarm, tearing free of the cobwebs that lingered from her trance. He wore no scarf, she realized. That was his neck, swollen to monstrous size right up to the ears.

  “Whatever this Gray Veil is, it seems Elves are all too susceptible,” said Féolan. He lay on the other bed, and Gabrielle saw how his legs buckled as they lowered to the mattress. “I woke up like this. I’ve come here to protect the others, but—” He held up a hand as Gabrielle scrambled to his side. “You stay with Madeleine. I felt her weaken with every mile of that journey. She needs you now.” He closed his eyes and fell silent, as though that short speech had used up his strength.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PANIC WHISPERED INSIDE HER, and Gabrielle thrust it back. She could not stay the tears, though. Even by lamplight she could see that Féolan was failing before her eyes, barely hanging on to lucidity. Her eyes winced away from his swollen neck, the skin stretched and purpled, and rested on his flushed cheeks. Her hand reached out, and she felt the heat before her fingers settled on his forehead. The brilliant Elvish eyes, those eyes she loved so dearly, were dull now with pain and fever.

  How could he have succumbed so quickly? In her years among the Elves, Gabrielle had seen few illnesses and rarely anything life-threatening. Most Elves had at least a touch of healing ability themselves, enough to keep at bay the coughs and fevers so common among Humans. But what if this was a completely new illness, something unlike anything they had ever been exposed to?

  Gabrielle lay a hand on Féolan’s chest and closed her eyes. It was hard to calm the turmoil in her mind enough to let the inner vision come to her. Precious moments ticked by as she worked on calming the ragged breath that wanted to sob rather than flow.

  At last she was with him, and what she found confirmed her worst fears. The gray plaque spread deep into his throat, burrowing greedily into blood vessels and tissue. And the poison that had taken days to seep into Madeleine’s system was already coursing through Féolan’s body.

  He was dying.

  “Gabrielle.” Was it his voice or his mind that called to her? He had called her once from the very brink of death, pulled her back from the last threshold beyond which there is no returning. Now it was he who wandered toward that same threshold, and still he called her.

  “Gabrielle, leave me.”

  Never. Could I leave my own heart and soul? But even as she denied it, raged against it, she understood the choice before her. She had two patients. Neither was likely to survive without her help.

  She would work on both at once. She had done it before with the twins. She would...

  No. That was the healer’s voice, the one that was not swayed by grief or love and thought only of the patient’s chances. The twins were alike as two peas. Healthy, except for their wounds. And even so, it was difficult. These two could not be more different.

  And had it been possible, she hadn’t the strength left to do it. That was the stark brutal truth. She was exhausted.

  She was weeping now, fatigue and fear and helplessness leeching the courage from her. How could this be asked of her, to leave the man she loved to die alone?

  “Nay, love. No despair. It is what we all agreed.”

  “What do you mean?” She choked the words out between sobbing breaths. Féolan’s hand stirred. He found and covered hers, the grasp weak but steady. He spoke aloud now too, though the raspy whisper must pain him.

  “We came to save the children. We would all have died in a fight to rescue them. This is no different.”

  She felt his resolve. Even if she tried to heal him, he would use the last of his strength to shut her out. And he was right. To turn her back on Madeleine now was unthinkable.

  Gabrielle laid her head on Féolan’s chest and wept, her hand twined in his.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Brave Wings,” he said. “Now you must fly alone. Save her, Gabrielle.”

  Brave W
ings. The memory was a bright piercing sorrow. The words were from a wedding song Féolan had written for her, strange and beautiful and understood, as so many Elvish songs were, more in the heart than from the sense of the words:

  She is brighter than the stars above,

  And needs no wind to paint her brave wings.

  But the memory gave her strength too, as Féolan had intended. She and Féolan had found such joy together. Maddy would have that chance too. Slowly Gabrielle sat up. She held Féolan’s hand in her two. It was so hard to leave him all alone.

  “I’ll stay with him.”

  A strong blunt hand covered hers and gently freed Féolan from her grasp.

  Startled, Gabrielle looked around. Derkh’s face was tracked with his own tears, but his hand on her shoulder was firm.

  “I won’t leave him. I promise.”

  She had to do it now, or she never would. She gave a tiny wretched nod and turned away.

  THE NIGHT CREPT ON, and Gabrielle fought for Madeleine’s life. The barrier she had built around the plaque to hold back its spread along the surface of Maddy’s throat did nothing to prevent the poison from penetrating through the fragile inflamed tissue behind the Veil. For that, she needed a blanket of light, a dense pool to surround the entire growth. From within this healing glow, she painstakingly sealed off the damaged flesh, pinching each tiny torn vessel closed and pushing back the dark fingers of infection. Slowly, the secret seeping pathways of the poison were blocked until Gabrielle was satisfied it was contained in a pocket behind the Veil.

  That was only the first step, but she allowed herself to stop to check on Féolan. He lived still, that she knew. His life’s presence was her constant companion; she would feel his death through the deepest trance. She sat on the edge of his narrow bed and tried to send him strength—Hold on, love. Hold on till I can come to you. But she did not dare let her mind stay with him for long. His pull was so strong; if she lingered, she might never tear herself away.

  Madeleine, deep in the sleep that so often blessed Gabrielle’s patients when she worked on them, drew breath in a long rattling snore. She had been gasping through that hateful growth for too long. Gabrielle smoothed Féolan’s brow, kissed it, and filled his throat with light. Just a little longer. Two steps took her back across the tiny cabin to Madeleine. Gabrielle eased Madeleine onto her side and placed a folded towel under her cheek. She didn’t want Madeleine swallowing either the plaque or its poison when the Veil came away.