CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ONE, even two or three, would have posed little problem. Powerful men though they were, the Greffaires could not match Féolan’s Elvish speed and agility in hand-to-hand combat. But seven...they were simply too many. Féolan could fend off several at a time, but it was devilish hard to strike a blow against one while defending against others. Gabrielle’s one bowshot must have struck the studded leather strapping across the man’s chest, for he had fallen back only briefly. Féolan had managed to put one attacker out of action with a slash through the middle and had ruined another’s sword-hand. It was not enough, and he knew it.

He stole another glance at Derkh and Gabrielle. They were holding their own, but he could feel Derkh’s fatigue. After what the boy had been through, his strength could not last long. Once the Greffaires had closed in, Gabrielle had given up the bow and was now doing what she could to aid Derkh with Féolan’s long-bladed knife.

They would die here, all three of them. Regret, as bitter as bile, filled him: to have brought Gabrielle on this fruitless journey. He parried, parried, the endless rain of blows. A clash of steel rang out beside him; he flashed a look to see Gabrielle’s knife blade raised high, braced against a sword-stroke destined for Derkh’s skull, saw Derkh take the opening and thrust. Good, lad! Féolan kicked at another Greffaire moving in on Derkh. It accomplished only a momentary stagger, but it bought the time the boy needed. Gods, he deserved a better end than this. They all did.

The knife as it flew was no more than a flicker in his peripheral vision. Only Gabrielle’s cry told him what he had seen.

NONE OF THEM noticed when Tarkhet fell back from the fray and pulled his knife. To Gabrielle it seemed rather that the blade burst from beneath her skin, some disastrous, inexplicable rupture of her own body. She had fallen back against the cliff face before she knew what was wrong with her. It was her hands, instinctively clutching at the hurt place, that discovered a knife hilt jutting from under her sternum. Tarkhet had thrown it at the exposed sweep of her body while she stretched up to block that last blow.

“I’m all right!” she yelled. Tried to yell. She wasn’t all right, she knew that already, but they mustn’t know it. All would be lost if they came to her now.

Appalling, how her fingers fluttered so uselessly at the blade, how deep and agonizing its bite. How the blood welled into her hands until they lay hidden in a slick pool.

Healer, see to thy own wounds. Her old teacher Marcus’s words were commanding, but Gabrielle’s mind was too frightened and confused to obey. The noise of the fighting boomed and receded in her head. Pain clawed away her thoughts. Focus eluded her.

Gabrielle took a slow, painful breath and another, trying to clear the mist that was creeping into the corners of her vision. She groped for the healing light that had served her so often on behalf of others. She could not tell if she slipped into trance or oblivion, but she was beyond stopping it. Her eyes closed, and the roars and screams of battle faded away.

SO IT WAS that Gabrielle never witnessed the event that Derkh and Féolan could only speak of afterward in halting awestruck words.

Derkh and Féolan stood shoulder-to-shoulder against four men, black-hearted, thinking now only to exact a high price for their lives.

And then it was as if some raging storm flew in among them, a deafening wind that scattered men before it like so many leaves. Their assailants flew like rag dolls into the air, crashing down against boulder and scree. Only one was able to rise again to make his terrified escape.

Féolan’s firm hand restraining his sword-arm was all that stood between Derkh and panic. He did not know, afterward, if he would have tried to flee or attack. As it was, he stood paralyzed, beyond speech or rational thought.

“They are seskeesh, rare creatures of the high mountains,” muttered Féolan. “I do not know why they have come down so far, but they are friends.” The amber eyes that appraised him now did not strike Derkh as especially friendly, and alarm clamored in him as the larger of the huge beasts shouldered past and hunkered down beside Gabrielle. Féolan made no move to stop it (as if anyone could!) but followed to Gabrielle’s side. I forgot about her, Derkh thought, sick now with grief at the sight of her still form.

He watched Féolan feel the pulse in Gabrielle’s neck, smooth back her hair, kiss her white brow. Only when the giant creature laid a hairy finger on Féolan’s cheek did Derkh see that he was weeping. Féolan reached up, laid his hand on the shaggy wrist and spoke quietly in Elvish.

Making the strangest noise, a noise Derkh could only call crooning though deeper than any man’s voice, the seskeesh scooped up Gabrielle’s limp body as easily as Derkh would a baby and strode off.

“Let’s go,” said Féolan. “We’ll get her to shelter first, and then see if there’s anything I can do for her.” His voice was so tight that Derkh didn’t dare ask more. He did his best to master his shaking legs and followed.

THE SESKEESH DID not lead them back to the cleft in the rock where they had first met her, as Féolan expected. Instead, she and her companion led them almost due north into higher country. Fifteen minutes of hard climbing—fifteen minutes that seemed an age to Féolan, anxious as he was to tend to Gabrielle—and they stood before the gaping mouth of a high-ceilinged cave. The two seskeesh strode in, while Féolan and Derkh hesitated just inside the entrance, blinded momentarily by the sudden dimness. The air inside was thick with the musky animal odor of the seskeesh, and something fresher: the resinous smell of evergreens.

Féolan picked his way after the seskeesh. She was about to lay Gabrielle on a pile of balsam branches stacked against the stone wall of the cave. “Wait,” he said. Amber eyes, eerily lambent in the gloom, regarded him. Pulling the cloak from his pack, he spread it out over the branches. “Now.”

His mind raced as he bent over her still form. She breathed still. Her pulse was quick and thready. The knife hung beneath her rib cage. He could not sense the bright mind he loved. Scrabbly disconnected thoughts flickered in Féolan’s mind, and he forced himself to put them aside. I cannot help her if I fall apart.

Reaching for Gabrielle’s pack, he emptied it beside him, identifying each item more by feel than sight. Yes, here a cloth bag full of clean bandaging. Here a smaller bag with packets of herbs. Did she go anywhere without them?

“I need hot water for a poultice.” He spoke to himself, and the hand on his shoulder—a fleeting, shy touch—startled him momentarily. He had all but forgotten Derkh.

“I’ll take care of it,” said the boy, and Féolan looked up gratefully, only to be shocked anew at the extent of Derkh’s hurts. His face was unrecognizable, an angry welt of injury, and even in the dim light of the cave exhaustion was plain to read in his eyes and posture.

“Derkh. You should be getting care yourself. I’m sorry—”

An impatient headshake cut him off. “I’m sore, that’s all. Not dying. I’ll get wood.” And he was gone.

Precious minutes ticked by while Féolan struggled to make the seskeesh comprehend the need for fire. For medicine. For her life. He thought, in the end, she had given permission as long as the fire was outside the cave. He hoped so.

While wood was gathered and laid, and water set to heat, Féolan merely sat with Gabrielle, trying to send strength to her, trying not to be frightened by the eerie sense that she was absent from her own body.

“It’s boiling now, Féolan.” Derkh’s voice was hushed, his own fear now plain. Gathering up the medicine bags, Féolan followed him outside.

“Let’s see...” Flipping through the labeled packets, he pulled out those he recognized. “Comfrey, goldenseal, good. Rattleroot—I don’t know what that is. Willowbark is more for a fever drink, I think. Hawkweed...”

Was it the hawkweed he had gathered with Gabrielle a year ago? He could see the field now, a grassy sky dotted with blazing orange stars. He couldn’t remember what she said it was for, but he would use it anyway. For luck. For love.

Careful to keep the bandage cloths from trailing on the ground, he sorted through until he found one big enough to fold into an envelope around the assortment of herbs. He tied it securely, and handed it to Derkh.

“Put it gently in the boiling water, then take the pot off the heat. When it’s cool enough that you can put your hand against the pot without burning, bring the whole thing in to me.”

There could be no more delays. It was time.

GABRIELLE WANDERED IN a dark, featureless land. She walked directionless, blind, not knowing what else to do. Her home was lost to her. Longing squeezed her heart, but already what she longed for grew vague and shapeless. She was between worlds, she knew: on the journey of the dead.

Gabrielle.

She lifted her head. Had she imagined it?

Gabrielle, hear me. Come back.

Féolan? Féolan, I’m lost.

You are found. Gabrielle, follow me. Come back.

Her feet had stopped their dreary trudging. She turned, almost reluctantly. It was so far. And...she remembered now. It hurt back there, hurt worse than anything in her memory.

Féolan, I’m afraid.

The reply was urgent, almost angry. It set her direction like a beacon light on a foggy coast.

You are a healer, and you are needed! Do not abandon your body before its time. Come back to me!

His mind now was like a thread of light pulling her back. Gabrielle grasped the gleaming thread, and followed.

THE PAIN WAS a fire in her breast, red and raging. It blocked out every other thought.

You are not the pain. You are yourself.

She struggled to rise above the flames that burned within her. New strength seeped into her as Féolan lent his own energy to her effort.

Light careful breaths from the abdomen eased the searing bite of each rush of indrawn air. Gabrielle gathered her concentration. You are not the pain. She felt her mind come back as the familiar ritual engaged her. Diagnose the injury.

She focused in. The blade appeared in her mind’s vision as a black emptiness thrust deep into living tissue. The shock of it—her own body rent so—threatened to overwhelm her. Talons of fear gripped at her. I can’t. I’m too hurt. Too weak. The dark place called: a place, it seemed now, of comfort. Of release.

Attend to the patient! Marcus’s gruff voice was a terse command. Attend to the patient, as you have vowed to do. The old words of the Bonemender’s Oath, words she herself had recited and meant with all her heart, sounded like a trumpet call: To attend to the patient above all concerns, unswayed by the winds of politics or prospect of recompense... The complete oath took shape in her mind, formed in the same elegant script that engraved the pewter vessel Marcus had given her to mark the end of her training. Gabrielle had never abandoned a patient yet. She would not do so now.

Layer by layer, she explored the damage. It was injury to the diaphragm, not her lung as she had feared, that made her breath burn. That would heal. The blade had plunged through the upper section of the liver, angling toward her left side to nick the top shoulder of the stomach, and then—oh, Marcus, help me.

Her life hung by a thread, or rather a knife tip. If it had not been a short blade, the kind designed to lie hidden along a man’s forearm, she would be dead even now. As it was, the tip lay embedded in the lower heart path artery, the great artery running from the heart through the trunk of the body. Though much blood had escaped, especially when the knife had been jarred during the trip to the cave, the blade still made an imperfect plug, holding back the powerful gushes that would otherwise have burst from the wound. A quarter-inch of steel was all that stood between Gabrielle and a quick and bloody death.

FÉOLAN TOOK A deep breath. He had cut away the bloody cloth around the wound and sponged it off as best he could. Derkh kneeled beside him with a pressure pad of bandaging.

Gabrielle. He could feel her presence now, though she felt far away. Far away, working, he hoped. Gabrielle, I’m going to pull out the blade now.

The alarmed reaction was almost like a blow. She leapt into his mind, her urgency unmistakable. NO! Féolan frowned, confused. Was it just her fear? It didn’t feel like fear. And she knew as well as he a knife could not be left in a wound.

She was speaking now, trying to. He bent low, his ear brushing her lips.

The word was barely a breath, but it was clear enough. “Wait.”