Peril & Profit

by M. H. Johnson

  "Strangely, though, his blood loss appears to be minimal. Neither Villa nor I see any trace of further blood loss, when by rights his wound should have unleashed a pool of it by now. One can only hope that by some miracle this spear somehow missed his kidney, though how such a fierce weapon could tear into a man without cutting any life-giving artery or organ at all is beyond my comprehension."

  Lieberman nodded hopefully at this, though how they could tell to what extent Sorn was bleeding considering that his body entire was coated with the blood and gore of the soldiers they had fought was beyond him.

  Salrie's voice grew even graver when she continued. "What troubles me most is the bubbling gas even now emanating from his wound. Your Majesty," She said turning and genuflecting toward the king, "would there perchance be a private grove or garden nearby wherein my sister and I could perform our administrations? We need a place of privacy and quiet to work our more delicate magics, as you know, Your Majesty, and we dare not ensconce ourselves in a sealed room with the vapors even now emanating from this poor youth's wound."

  "Of course," the king said, his voice gruff with emotion. "Whatever you need, it's yours."

  With a single clap bringing all his men to attention, the king very quickly arranging for a man to escort Salrie to the very gardens Elissa had favored earlier that evening. Lieberman couldn't help but notice the grave concern in the king's red-eyed gaze as he looked upon Sorn's terrible wound.

  "Now if several of your men would be so good as to prepare and carry a stretcher, we shall do what we can for him."

  At Salrie's words the king made a second curt gesture, and half a dozen knights, weary but bright-eyed, immediately came to the king's call. Though exhausted, they were eager to do what little they could on behalf of their fallen comrade who had risen like a figure from legend to lead not one but both of their desperate charges against Caverenoc's mortal enemies this night. Hanz and Fitz, however, were the first to come to their cousin's side as the stretcher was brought forth.

  "If it pleases Your Majesty, we would happy to do this on behalf of our cousin. For he knows us, and we will be gentle." Fitz said, and after only a moment's surprise at the pair of pre-adolescent youths declaring their intention to carry some three hundred pounds of flesh and steel several hundred yards, the king nodded his head in acquiescence. Few of the onlookers failed to be impressed by the ease in which the identical youths oh-so-gently lifted their faintly gasping cousin to the stretcher laid out for him. The king and most of the knights present, however, recalled the surprising display of arcane and martial prowess by which the brothers had managed to free king and healer both from the band of Empire soldiers only minutes before. Indeed, many had seen firsthand the terrible displays of frenzied strength that their cousin had demonstrated just a short while ago. The palace corridors were, in fact, absolutely coated with said evidence.

  With Hanz and Fitz carefully carrying their gravely wounded cousin, Lieberman by the healer's side, they quickly made their way through numerous corridors. They passed both those corridors which had so recently hosted the terrible battle, strewn with broken bodies and gore, as well as through elegantly appointed corridors both pristine and perfect, as if belonging to a different world entirely.

  All seemed to speed by in an anxious blur that Salrie knew the boys felt just as keenly as she did. Soon enough they found themselves gently placing Sorn's stretcher beside a bed of fragrant flowers, the healers giving a quick look about them and nodding solemnly to each other before Salrie turned her gaze to the brothers and addressed them once more.

  "All right, boys, this will be the tricky part. We need you three to remove his armor and move it some ways away from this spot. And lastly, we will need you to remove his backplate as gently and carefully as possible. The moment you do so, you must move with all haste out of the garden, so that we may work our arts to greatest effect."

  Salrie's eyes were positively luminous, Lieberman couldn't help noting, as the first flickers of sunlight touched the garden. "Now I will warn you all now, you will no doubt hear your cousin groaning as we remove his armor, and he may well scream when we remove his backplate. Yet it is imperative that you not allow yourselves to be distracted, for his life could well rely on how quickly we are able to commence our work, free of all adverse influence. So, no matter what you hear, you must work as quickly as you can and stay away until one of us calls for you, understood?"

  The three brothers nodded in wide-eyed acknowledgment of the gravity of the situation. "Of course, my lady," an oddly solemn Fitz said. "For the sake of our cousin, we will do whatever you say."

  "Good." Salrie nodded approvingly, sparing a single compassionate glance for Lieberman's injured hand carefully held to his side. It was unbandaged, and she could make out the rough stump where he had lost his finger. Had it been any other time, with the finger intact, in all likelihood she could have restored him whole. Yet the boy was otherwise hale and healthy, and she would need all her energies if she was to have the faintest hope of saving their cousin. Her heart went out to these boys who had gone out of his way to save her own family, securing her safe passage from this city which she so dearly loved, yet feared would soon be destroyed despite their valiant efforts this evening.

  "Then if you lads will commence with these buckles and straps, we shall begin."

  In very short order, Sorn was free of almost all his armor. His cousins, unskilled as they were in the donning and removing of armor, had resorted to simply using their mithril blades to slice through all the leather straps and buckles, as there was little time to waste. Soon enough there was only the back plate with the terrible siegebolt still sticking straight out, the metal rod firmly wedged into the now cracked steel plate.

  With a slow nod of reassurance from Salrie, the three worried youths very gently lifted the back piece from their cousins tortured back, wincing visibly as they had to apply greater and greater pressure to force the bolt back up through Sorn's resisting flesh. With a strangely weak cry from Sorn, they at last managed to pull the bolt free with a small spurt of blood, at which point Salrie immediately pressed her hands to the sides of the gaping wound, seeking to staunch the flow.

  "Very good. Now you must go immediately, so we can do what we must for your cousin!" Salrie said the last sharply, as if trying to get through their pale-faced shock, stunned upon having seen how gravely wounded their cousin truly was.

  Salrie's words served to shake off their momentary stupor, as she had intended, and they quickly headed back to the entrance to the castle, sparing more than one glance back at their cousin's supine form. Their looks were grave, and though they squeezed each other's shoulders for comfort, they said not a word as they headed back inside.

  Salrie's sad gaze could spare the three dispirited youths only a momentary glance to make sure they were backing out of range before turning once more to Sorn, only to be distracted by the surprised gasp of her sister healer.

  "By all the spirits," Villa whispered, "The lad's wound, it's closing on its own!" Salrie immediately tore her eyes from Villa's surprised countenance to focus once more upon the sight of the terrible gaping wound, where her hands pressed so tightly. She gave an involuntary gasp upon seeing the flow of blood from the jagged puckered hole that had been torn into Sorn's back slow to a trickle before her very eyes, then stop completely. Blood had been spurting from that terrible wound but moments before, indicating the gravest of injuries, and yet now there was nothing.

  The look on Villa's face made it plain that she was as caught off guard by the feat as was Salrie. Tentatively, incredulously, Salrie lifted her hands away. Not only did the jagged hole cease to pump out more blood even without her applying pressure, but more amazing still, the sides of the ragged wound began to seal itself before their very eyes.

  Salrie's gasp of disbelief was mirrored perfectly by her sister.

  "Salrie!" Villa spoke with sharp urgency. "Your gloves. Look at your gloves!"

  Gasping in surp
rise, Salrie flipped over her supple kidskin gloves, noting the faint streamers of smoke emanating from the fingertips, as traces of Sorn's caustic blood ate its way through. Frantically, she ripped off her gloves, sighing with relief to find that her fingers remained untouched.

  Apparently, the seigebolt had been laced with a poison so vile that mere traces of it were caustic enough to eat through leather, yet despite this, Sorn lived still. Catching her sister's shocked expression as she looked from the gloves back to Sorn, Salrie knew that her fellow healer was thinking the same thing.

  "I have seen nothing like this without a woman's channel before," Salrie whispered, so awed was she by what had just transpired. "We don't know how his insides fare, however, which is where the most terrible injuries are likely to be. Thus we can only hope that this is a beneficent sign indicating that he may well pull through, despite the gravity of the wound.

  "Come, my sister, let us do what we can for him." Salrie gently placed her bare hands atop her sister's gloved ones, pressing them ever so gently upon Sorn's shoulders, a place bare of any traces of blood, and slowly began to channel their energies through Sorn's supine form.

  What Sorn's cousins had taken absolutely no note of, and which Salrie and her sister only just noticed as they gently laid their palms against their patient's forehead, was the terrible pallor of Sorn's skin. Salrie could clearly recall the light olive hue to his complexion that bespoke of good health as much as it did his heritage. Yet before her now under the first rays of dawn, Sorn's flesh had taken on a ghastly pallor. She instinctively stroked his hot sweaty brow in sympathy with her free hand as she channeled her and her sister's healing energies into him with her other.

  She could only wonder at how Sorn even managed to survive an ordeal that left his so drained, the blood completely leaving his skin as if his body strove mightily to hoard every remaining drop of vitality his wounds had not claimed. Even his rich dark hair appeared dull and listless, pasted to his hot sweaty brow.

  Her hand froze momentarily however when two things occurred. One, it suddenly seemed near impossible to impart to Sorn any more of her healer’s gift. Whereas normally a wounded person’s body seemed not only to accept her healing energies but to latch onto them, drawing them forth with the same intensity her babes once had their mother’s milk, now it was as if she had slammed herself, all unassuming, against a door that was unexpectedly closed. It jarred her and stunned her both. It was at that moment as well that Sorn's perfectly relaxed face, achingly poignant in its sleeping beauty, suddenly contorted into a rictus of agony. His whole body began to twist and thrash madly as he gave vent to a terrible scream.

  35

  Sorn found himself in a place of warm darkness, like a cocoon, or nestled deep within his mother's womb. So tired he felt, so utterly exhausted. It was easy, at last, to let the delicious languor of sleep slowly wash away all the aches, the pains, the last remnants of the terrible rage that had near destroyed him. He rested so for a timeless moment, relieved beyond words to finally let go. It was as if he was himself a massive pumping heart, a virtual muscle that had moments before been so engorged with blood it had been near to bursting.

  Under such terrible pressure, it was difficult to maintain his life-giving beat at all. And in the fiery madness that had been his psyche, yet more blood was pumped into that terribly engorged organ, until every strained vessel shown a brilliant crimson red, and more. And more. Until at last, finally, at the point of spasmodic collapse, the terrible pressure had finally begun to abate. The massive volume of life-giving blood, metaphor as it was for the life-giving vital essence that had moments before saturated every stitch of his being, to the point that all was at risk of simultaneously rupturing, had at last started to gently ease away. The result was the sweetest state of languorous relief, akin to a hot sauna soothing every aching muscle after the most exhausting, grueling race. Sorn gave in entirely to the all-embracing sense of lassitude, letting himself slip further and further from consciousness, falling ever deeper into the most comatose of states.

  He seemed to float for endless moments in that soothing darkness, only very slowly becoming aware of the faintest glimmer of something else, the faint pinpoint awareness of the presence of another. Ah yes. Elthsiss. A being Sorn had more than a passing familiarity with, considering that on so many levels they were, in fact, one and the same. Yet even in his near comatose state, he still maintained internal awareness sufficient to realize several items of unusual note.

  One was that he had never felt so completely separate from Elthsiss before. When he had first striven to learn this form, he knew he had been of one mind, whatever shape he had taken. Yet as his tentative skill turned to true mastery, it had felt almost as if his point of reference, even his point of view, had also changed along with his shape, no doubt to better facilitate existing in his chosen form. Yet even so, despite their slight differences, those sides of himself had always shared each other’s thoughts, reflections, and points of view to the point that they were as much a conglomeration of one creature’s blended thoughts as they were separate personalities.

  At this moment, however, Elthsiss felt truly separate from him. Sorn was only vaguely aware that Elthsiss was working at something with a keenly focused intensity, whereas Sorn could barely do more than relax utterly, floating in such utter languor that he could hardly summon the energy to continue his train of thought, let alone twitch a solitary finger. He could barely even get a scan of his creator's thoughts… or was it he that had done the creating? Ah yes, he had, but as Elthsiss.

  With a mental shake that was as exhausting as anything else he had done while floating in this timeless sea of darkness, Sorn gently began to link his thoughts to Elthsiss, vaguely curious as to what had made his other self so intently focused, when Sorn himself could barely summon the effort to think in his present state of utter lassitude.

  In that instant he became aware of Elthsiss's intent focus, the traces of terrible anxiety fiercely suppressed and channeled into an abiding awareness, getting a sense as well of Elthsiss's own thoughts. Sorn could sense Elthsiss’s frustration that he could not come forth and manifest himself, that at the moment his own essence was so terribly depleted that he was himself in a dreadfully weakened state, possibly at risk of expiring, if he was depleted any further.

  Conversely, Sorn's own form had been so overladen with Elthsiss's depleted life-force that every fiber of Sorn's being really had been saturated to the point of bursting. Thus the transfer of so much life force essence from Elthsiss's form to Sorn's own had drained and stressed both forms to a point of utter exhaustion. That such acts had strengthened the bond between their forms was inevitable. That Sorn's form, should it survive and heal, would be that much stronger for having survived the ordeal was also beyond question. Yet it had been at perilous risk, skirting the very edge of oblivion, and the rupture and expiration of both his shapes. Prudence dictated that he never take such risks again.

  Sorn could also sense Elthsiss's puzzlement regarding the burns Sorn had suffered over the entirety of his limbs. All of which had occurred as a backlash as a result of having immolated large numbers of his foes by fire. It was almost as if, already being saturated with Elthsiss's life-force, that his body had suffered another sudden influx of life-force. The resulting flow had been too much for Sorn's essence saturated structure to absorb, resulting in various fibers of Sorn's being having been incinerated to ash. Hence the multiple burns over his body.

  Very quickly, Elthsiss divorced himself from such troubling thoughts. He had, after all, far more immediate concerns to worry about than idle speculation.

  Elthsiss, Sorn could sense, was quite relieved to see that the danger of Sorn’s over-saturated form spontaneously expiring in a rather dramatic fashion was finally, thankfully, passing as Elthsiss's terrible power at last drained back into himself. His true form had finally begun reabsorbing those energies which had not been lost, that which had not boiled off from Sorn's own overstrained
body. And all too much, they both could sense, had.

  Though relieved that his favorite form had not been completely ruptured by Elthsiss's own life-force, Elthsiss was still highly frustrated that the simultaneous weakness of both their forms posed too high a risk for him to dare attempting to transform to his natural state at the present time. Yet Sorn sensed that the majority of Elthsiss's attention was focused upon a different problem entirely.

  Ah yes. The spear. Or seigebolt, if one preferred. It had indeed done significant damage to Sorn's body, having torn not only through flesh and muscle, but severing several major arteries as well, finally embedding itself in his left kidney. Sorn could sense Elthsiss's frustration. Were their roles reversed, and Sorn but a stored construct of thought and power in Elthsiss's mind, Elthsiss could have easily affected the repairs. As it was, Sorn's fragile and near mortally wounded form was their present physical manifestation, the vessel linking them to the mortal realm, and both their forms were far too week for them to change into Elthsiss at that moment. Not to mention that he would end up crushing whoever was around him. Thus Elthsiss's options were rather limited for the nonce, being little more than an ethereal construct of thought and force, and a rather depleted force at that.

  With a steadfast resolve to do his grandfather proud, Elthsiss managed to ignore the faint whispers of panic that would have spelled his doom as surely as anything else, while he methodically devised a way to treat the wound that was slowly killing him.

  First, he knew, he had to stop himself from dying of blood loss, both inside and out. Elthsiss used what power he did have at his disposal to press the edges of his wounds close together, clamping off blood flow as well to the severed arteries and ruptured kidney. The clamping served to stave off the worst of the internal hemorrhaging.

  Having brought himself some critical time, Elthsiss could now work to heal the worst of his injuries. Knowing on an instinctive level the proper placement of every fiber of Sorn's very being, it was no problem to intuitively 'feel' how to line up every torn muscle strand or severed capillary, such that the severed points were in perfect contact with each other once again. It was slightly more effort to firmly press together the torn ends of various severed arteries, however, as he focused diligently in holding them together as best he could. This task became somewhat easier when he sensed the removal of the cold steel rod that had caused so much damage in the first place. He was only vaguely aware of the pain this caused as the faintest tingle of excited nerve fibers, yet this was a small price to pay to finally be able to line up several key arteries as well as his torn inferior vena cava back to their proper alignment. Torn arteries and veins firmly pressed together, Elthsiss allowed for steady blood flow to once again pass unhindered through the majority of his circulatory system. Until that moment, he had only maintained the bloodflow only between heart, lungs, and brain, the most vital organ of all. There was, he was pleased to see, now only a minimal amount of blood leaking from his damaged vessels.