Chapter 36
The cool of dawn was his favourite time of day. The obscuring night was gone and the days' concerns still distant. It was, arguably, the only moments of peace he'd see that day.
"Got room?" Cydris still sounded sleepy, but the tea in her hands would remedy that.
"Of course."
She settled in beside him, savoring the hot tea. The chill air walked goosebumps up her arms.
Kyminn shrugged off the blanket he'd wrapped around himself and draped it over the two of them. She shifted over to fit beneath it, blanket and Kyminn providing welcome warmth.
"So? Have you…"
"Checked on the Herald? Yes, she's fine. I'd like you to look at her, of course."
"I was going to," he could hear the smile in her voice. "How's…"
"She's doing well. Delassia and I will have to devote some serious time to bone healing over the next few days, but she'll make a full recovery. By the way, we finally found out who they are. I guess the information came in overnight. The Herald is Herald Rosen, the Companion is Zayle."
"The name is familiar to me, but I've never met either. There aren't very many Heralds who were Chosen from a travelling faire. If the rumours are to be believed, she's quite an astonishing juggler."
Kyminn grinned over at her. When they sat like this, they were eye to eye. He liked that. "A juggler, hmm? Good preparation then, for the life of a Herald!"
It was nice, sitting here like this, calm and quiet, Cydris tucked in beside him. It was, of course, all too brief though, as the awareness of the days tasks prodded them off the bench.
"I think Delassia is going to task me to remain here, with the Companion Zayle. I'll leave the dogs and Avi with you then." A brief pause, then, "Be careful." It was redundant – Cydris was always careful, but something made him say it anyway.
She turned to look at him, caught by his phrasing. "Kym? Foresight?"
"No. Nothing like that." He was quick to reassure. "I just don't want to see anything happen."
A faint smile flickered across her face. "I will." A mischievous grin followed it. "I'd never leave you to face Delassia on your own, that would be cruel!"
They were both still chuckling as he regretfully folded the blanket and began their day.
SCENE BREAK
"Alright Zayle, let's loosen these straps and see how stable your hip is. I'm going to ask you to hold your leg still while I do this, alright?"
Four mornings since the attack and Zayle was making good progress. Since Kyminn's Gift did not serve human patients, he directed all his energies towards the Companion. Delassia joined them for sessions in the early morning and late in the day, but the majority of her strength was reserved for patients with two legs. In other circumstances, she would have directed all her efforts solely to the Companion, but that was simply not a luxury they could afford. That didn't prevent her from overseeing all aspects of Zayle's care, however, although she admitted Kyminn was doing well enough on his own.
The Companion held her leg stock still, tolerating the awkward position in a way no horse ever would have. She had bent her head around, gimlet blue eyes supervising the Healer's technique.
Kyminn closed his eyes, letting his senses reach out, twining together with the life beneath his hands. His heart beat in time with hers, his slow breathing in lock-step with hers. A tiny sliver of consciousness held them separate, man from not-man, Healer from Healed. No one had had to tell him that it was all too easy to lose oneself in this, to wander so far from one's own selfness that you never found your way back.
There, the wrongness in the bone, the disunion of what should be compared to what was. Kyminn poured power into the wrong, shaping it, telling it "This is what you should be", using the power to make the body create new bone, to turn wrong into right. It was a slow, painstaking process, for it drew not only on the power of the Gift, but also the power and resources of the patient's own body. Even a Companion, astonishingly strong in so many ways, is not without limits.
A hair's width at a time, new bone is cleaved to old, the fracture healing, a fraction at a time.
PAIN! An intolerable agony, a wrenching of the very breath from his lungs. The entire world shatters, fragments of selfspinning away into the darkness.
There are no words as his very soul is rent in two. A woman's voice screams and he flings himself after her, reaching – grasping - groping in the abyss. There! There she is! Falling, spinning, tossed in a swirling chaos of torment. He could reach her, he knew he could! Just a bit farther, just a bit deeper! He follows her, that white shape flickering in the shadows, his ears filled with a sound so dreadful it could never be called a scream.
PAIN! He feels this too, the sickening crack of a broken bone splintering, tearing, membranes rupturing. This pain, the pain of a shattered body, is trivial, a welcome, redundant agony.
"Healer!" Kyminn doesn't hear the shouts. He is Zayle and she is lost in the darkness. She is their consciousness.
He doesn't see the white body lunging out of the splintered frame, rearing, screaming, flailing in insensate grief.
He doesn't see the shovel, wielded by a desperate Guardsman, that smashes him on the side of the head, sending him into a different kind of darkness, separating him from the Companion, from the abyss.
Most of all, he doesn't feel the weight of the Companion, the blow that smashes his knee when the body collapses, the valiant heart failing as she follows her Chosen into the Havens.