Disclaimer: I do not own Lodoss nor do I own the
established characters thereof. I do
own Veris and the town of Vesper. And
as always, if you like it or hate it – please tell me what you think! ^-~;
Chapter Seven: Ash
They were silent
as they rode out of town. Garn seemed
lost in thought, and Veris found herself thinking about the man sprawled in the
cart behind her. Occasionally she would
glance over her shoulder at him, but he remained completely unconscious, head
lolling and bouncing with the motion of the cart over the bumpy wagon
path.
He had
recognized her Kanon accent. She was
not sure how he had known, for it had been many, many years since she had lived
in Kanon. Yet he had commented on it
immediately, before falling flat on his face in the dust. That had given her quite a shock. Not that there was anything wrong with being
from Kanon, but it had been years since she had thought of herself as a
Kanonite, and she certainly had never expected anyone to place her accent as
being from that country.
Kanon. It had been a beautiful country, once,
before the Dark Emperor of Marmo decided to take it in conquest. Veris stifled a sigh. It was no use thinking of things that no
longer existed; the Kanon she once knew was gone, occupied now by an extensive
Marmoan army that had efficiently and thoroughly taken over the southern-most
country in Lodoss. She found herself
gazing sidelong at the pale form slouched in the cart measuringly, and wondered
if he were truly a Marmoan.
Even a small
village like Vesper had suffered losses in the war against Marmo. If the stranger turned out to be Marmoan,
did she owe the villagers an explanation for why she had to heal him? Veris glanced over at Garn, who was frowning
to himself.
"Healer, you're
right," he said at last. Veris raised
her eyebrows at him.
"Right?" She
asked. "What about?"
"About him,"
Garn said, gesturing with his chin towards the cart. "It doesn't matter where he's from, of course. I'm sorry." Veris smiled.
"You don't need
to apologize to me," she said forgivingly. "I don't like Marmoans any better than you. I simply do what a Healer must do."
"Lira mentioned you'd
fought in the wars," Garn said, looking at her sideways. Veris nodded, half-smiling, recognizing his
comment was a gentle prod for information.
"I did," she
confirmed. "I was recruited for my
Healing skills in Valis to be a Healer for King Fahn's army."
"Is that where
you learned to fight?" Garn asked curiously.
"Partly," Veris
answered, shifting in the driver's seat to a more comfortable position. She looked over at Garn. "What is this, my interrogation?" She asked it with a smile, however, which
took the sting out of the mild rebuke. Garn grinned, looking unapologetic.
"Well, you have
to admit you don't volunteer information freely," Garn said, wiping some of the
grime off of his face with the back of his hand. "Even though you've been in Vesper almost two years, we don't
know much about you."
That was true,
Veris reflected. She had always been
close-mouthed about her past, and in Vesper it never seemed necessary to tell
anyone her life's story. She shrugged.
"Did you get the
sword in the war, too?" Garn asked after a moment persistently, and Veris gave
him a wry grin. His good-natured
curiosity was hard to resist.
"No, that was my
father's," she said. "I got it from him
when I was about ten. It's actually the
only thing of my parents I have, besides this Healer's robe."
"They've…passed
on, then?" Garn asked, surprisingly gently for him. Veris nodded.
"They did," she
said. "A raiding party of army Orcs came through our village and burned it to the
ground. My father was an excellent
swordfighter, but even he couldn't have hoped to stand out against so
many. My mother was a Healer, and all
she knew was Healing magic." It was
funny, Veris thought, that after so many years the horror of her parents' death
could still haunt her. When she closed
her eyes, she could still see the flames, bright and high against the night,
and hear her mother's panicked voice telling her to run and hide herself.
She no longer felt such sorrow when she spoke about it, however, and her eyes were dry and her voice steady as she spoke.
"I'm…sorry to
hear that," Garn said. "I think I've
made as big an ass out of myself today as I'd like to, Healer, so I'll stop
being so nosy." He gave her a rueful
grin and Veris laughed.
"I don't mind,"
she replied. "Everybody's got a
history, only some happen to be more uplifting than others, that's all. If you're truly interested, Garn, I'll tell
you some day."
They arrived at
the Healer's house before Garn could say whether or not he would take the
Healer up on her promise, somewhat to Veris' relief.
"Alright,
Healer," Garn said, as Veris slipped out of the driver's seat and tied the mare
to the fence. "Where do you want him?" He thumbed in the direction of the man in the cart.
"Let's bring him
into the infirmary," Veris said. "There
should already be a bed ready. I'll get
his feet."
"Right," Garn
said. The young man put his hands under
the unconscious man's arms and dragged him off of the cart. Veris picked up his feet, and struggling
with the man's deadweight, they hefted him and carried him into the house.
Veris was
extremely proud of her infirmary. It
was rather small, even though it took up the first floor of the house almost
entirely. She kept it spotless and neat,
with all her herbs in their proper jars along the wall. There were only two beds, in case of an
emergency, for most often she made house calls. Only once or twice had she ever had someone spend the night in
the infirmary, and she had never needed both beds at once. Sunlight streamed into the infirmary now,
making it look bright and welcoming. The smell of dried herbs and clean linen filled the place, and Veris
could not help but be satisfied with
the cozy room.
Together, she
and Garn laid the man flat on one of the infirmary beds. Against the white linen, he looked even more
deathly pale, the black clothes he wore like an interment shroud.
"The man's
dressed for his own funeral," Garn muttered, echoing her own thoughts, taking a
close look. "Do you even think he'll
last through the night?"
"Depends on
what's wrong with him," Veris replied, trying to sound cheerful. "Thanks for your help, Garn. Now shoo. I've got work to do." She
grinned, and Garn laughed.
"Yes ma'am!" He
said, offering her a mock salute. "I'll
just put the mare in her stall, shall I?"
"That would be
extremely helpful," Veris admitted. "Don't let her get you in the sights of her hind legs. Oh, and take a loaf of apple bread from the
kitchen on your way out. Lira's mother
made a basketful for me, and as much as I love apple bread…even I can't eat a
mountain of the stuff." Garn chuckled.
"Be happy to,"
he said, and made himself scarce.
Alone with the
unconscious man, Veris looked down at him, and sighed.
"Alright, man,"
she said, noting that even though he was tall and pale enough to be Elven, his
ears were lacking points, "let's see what's wrong with you." Perfunctorily, she checked his pulse again. It was still constant, although no stronger. She felt his forehead and realized he was
warm, although his cheeks were wan as ever.
Frowning to
herself, Veris pulled back the man's shirt. Her eyes widened at the sight of the bony ribcage, stretched with taut
muscle fiber like cables, and crisscrossed with several deep, angry red wounds
that were distinctively lash marks.
"Hmm. Somebody didn't like you much," Veris
observed, bending down to inspect the wounds. They were inflamed and some of them looked as though they were infected.
"Let's get this
shirt out of the way…oh, for the love of Marfa, why don't you use buttons like
a normal person?" Veris demanded of the unconscious man, realizing the black
tunic would have to be pulled over his head. For a moment she contemplated cutting the tunic off of him – it would
certainly be easier. Then she decided
whoever he might be, cutting his clothes to rags would probably not be very
considerate.
Struggling to be
gentle with the man's unwieldy deadweight, Veris managed to pull the shirt over
the man's head. When it was off, she
folded it carefully and placed it by the bed beside his cloak.
Going over to
the pitcher of water she kept in the infirmary, Veris poured a little water
into a basin. Rolling back her sleeves,
she washed her hands thoroughly with a bar of lavender-scented soap one of the
farmers had made for her. She dried them,
and went over to her shelf of herbs and various assorted medicines. Humming to herself, she pulled several down,
and returned to the bedside.
Veris sat in a
chair by the bed and examined the man. He looked as though he had not eaten well in several days, and he was
probably also dehydrated. Still, even
considering that and the whip wounds, Veris was not sure they were enough to
affect him strongly enough to send him into such a heavy unconsciousness. She frowned at the dark bruises hiding in
the hollows of his ribcage. There were
also dark bruises ringing his throat. He also was wearing a pendant of some kind around his neck, and Veris
leaned forward to get a better look. It
looked strangely feminine, and Veris recognized it almost immediately as
something Elven. Veris wondered what
the man was doing with it, when he obviously had nothing else of worth. Even the knife Veris had kicked away from
him, she remembered, had been a standard issue knife, a simple thing that a
foot soldier or a sailor might have carried.
Veris placed her
hands an inch or so above the man's chest. Closing her eyes, she chanted a non-intrusive examining spell, probing
with magic to see where the man's real wounds lay.
Veris opened her
eyes a moment later, frowning with puzzlement. Something – or someone – had attacked this man with a dark spell that
was far beyond her capacity to decipher, but she had no doubts as to the power
of the spell. The man lying in her
infirmary should be dead, of that she was certain. However, he was obviously not dead – and here was something here
she did not understand. Something had
come between this man and death, had kept him from sliding over the edge into
eternity. It had not healed him, but it
had kept him from dying.
She sensed
something at work that was far beyond her experience. She doubted she could heal the man completely, but she would do
what she could. Closing her eyes again,
she began chanting the most inclusive Healing spell she knew. The warmth of the spell gathered in her
hands, and she could almost feel them glowing. Laying her hands gently on the man's chest, she felt the warmth of the
spell spread to his chilled skin.
A few moments
later, Veris opened her eyes again, feeling drained. Working spells always left her that way. She had healed the man's internal injuries
to the extent of her ability, but the whip wounds still needed tending to. Carefully, she cleaned them and treated the
infections with salve. She removed the
man's boots and set them by the bed. She pulled the covers up over the
sharp-angled body, and left the man to sleep.
* * * * * * *
Veris came back
several times as the day waned to check on the man. He slept on, oblivious. Occasionally she woke him up enough to get him to take some water,
although she doubted he was ever truly awake for his long black eyes never
focused and he fell back into sleep soon afterwards.
He slept
silently and hardly moved, save that one hand crept up to cover the pendant
lying in the stark hollow of his throat. She saw that it was important to him and realized that he had not stolen
it. Perhaps it had been a gift.
When night fell
she made him a clear broth that had no meat in it, only liquid. If he had been starved long enough, his
stomach would reject the meat. Sitting
by the bed, she tried to rouse him by shaking his shoulder. It was hard to pull him out of sleep.
"Oi," she said
sharply, at last, and at that he looked up at her groggily. She saw his eyes were as jet as his hair,
although they were flat and blank and seemed not quite conscious. They were bloodshot and bleary and he looked
up at her as if he could not completely focus his gaze on her face.
"You need to eat
this," she said more gently, and brought a spoonful of liquid to his lips. She thought he would take it, but he turned
his head away, lying back on the pillow.
"Come on," she
urged, trying to sound friendly, but he refused to be fed. Trying not to feel exasperated, she set the
broth by the side of the bed to try again later, and went to make supper for
herself.
When she came back
almost an hour later, the man was fast asleep again, head lolled back on the
pillow. The cup of broth was lying
exactly where she had set it, save that it was completely empty. Veris shook her head in bemusement, and went
to go build a fire. Night was coming,
and the Spring evenings were still chilly. She would check back on the man when evening fell.
* * * * * * *
Night had fallen
when Veris returned to the infirmary to check on her patient. The lamp she carried cast long shadows in
front of her. As she approached the
man's bed, the lantern lit up his skin warmly and she could see there was some
color in his cheeks again so that he no longer looked halfway through the
threshold of the Forever Dreaming. His
breathing was almost soundless; so quiet that could she not see his chest
rhythmically pushing the sheets up and down evenly with each deep breath she
would have guessed him to be beyond her aid.
She set the
lantern down on the table by the bed, and went to light another one. With two lanterns flickering warmly, the
deep-shadowed room looked quite cozy and was light enough that she could see
what she was doing. She put the second
lantern by the other side of the bed,
and rolled up her sleeves carefully.
Veris pulled up
her chair and sat by the man's side. She gently pulled the sheets back, hoping not to wake him if she did not
have to, and looked down at the lash wounds. Meticulously, she daubed them with more healing salve, the familiar,
slightly pungent odor wafting up from between her fingers as it was warmed by
the man's skin. Under her hands the
man's chest rose and fell evenly, muscles expanding and contracting with each
breath. She paused thoughtfully,
noticing the definition of his arms and shoulders, the lean expanse of his
chest. Beside the fresh whip lashes,
she could see a few pale, thin scars that were obviously very old crisscrossing
his ribs jaggedly. This man was a
fighter. She'd seen so many patients
with the same long, spare muscles and
similar scars not to recognize the build when she saw it. She guessed he was – or had been – a
soldier. But for which side?
Veris screwed
the lid back on the jar of salve and set it on the bedside table. Rubbing her hands together to disperse the
pungent balm still on her fingers, she looked down at the man. Dark, uncombed hair snarled on the pillow,
surrounding the pale angles of his face and spilling over his shoulders. The lamp light flickered off the pendant
resting in the hollow of his throat, and Veris could not help but be fascinated
with the simple gold ornament. She
could not remember ever seeing anything like it before, and she wondered where
it had come from. She reached out a
careful finger to it, the small fringe of gold beads hanging off of it chiming
faintly under the pressure of her touch.
Fingers closed
around her throat suddenly, like a vise. Veris looked down to see narrow dark eyes looking up at her, flickering
lantern light reflected in their depths.
Her hand went
for her sword instinctively; his hand tightened painfully before loosening
again, but the grasp stayed determined.
"Don't," he said
in a low voice that verged on being inaudible.
She went very
still. The grip was not enough to cut
off her breath nor yet to bruise her skin, but she could feel the strength in
the fingers despite the man's infirmity. Adrenaline made her heart beat painfully fast, and she could feel her
pulse ticking strongly in her throat. Veris forced herself to be calm. Locking gazes with the man, she waited.
"What is this
place?" The man asked. The pale length
of his arm stretched between them, muscles taut. Veris did not answer. He
asked her again, in the same low tone.
"I refuse to
talk to you until you remove your hand from my throat," Veris said
crisply. There. That didn't sound like fear talking at
all. She hoped her racing pulse did not
give her away too much.
The fingers
tightened. Any more and she would have
to struggle to draw breath.
"What is this place?"
He repeated. There was no change of
expression in the flat, cold eyes that were vivid in his wan face.
"Alania," the
Healer said unwillingly. "The village
of Vesper." She could feel anger rising
in her, the burn of it replacing the first cold rush of adrenaline that had
washed through her.
The man seemed
to pause and consider this, not taking his gaze off of her. Even more disconcerting was that he didn't
seem to blink.
"Who are you?"
The man asked after a moment.
"You see, of
course, the grey robes I'm wearing," Veris said dryly, arching an eyebrow at
him. "Unless the Healer's Guild has
gone and changed the color of our office, grey is still the Healer's color, I
believe, man." Anger made her
cocky.
"You carry a
sword," the man pointed out, sounding completely unruffled by her rising
ire.
"How nice of you
to notice," Veris replied. "I don't
usually use it on my patients although in this case I may be forced to make an
exception."
"How did I get
here?" The man said, looking past her briefly, eyes scanning the infirmary,
before coming back to rest on her face. If she had been more easily intimidated, she would have been alarmed by
the intensity of his gaze on her face. She knew it was a fighting trick and ignored it, paying it back in kind
as she studied him.
"I suppose you
know better than I," Veris said. "You
were found weaving through town, muttering to yourself and brandishing a
knife. You collapsed at my feet and I
had you brought to my clinic to see if you could be salvaged." There was a moment that seemed to last
forever, and then, finally, the man blinked.
"And?" He
asked. Veris frowned, puzzled.
"And what?" She
demanded. His thin lips curved upwards
briefly, looking grim.
"Can I be
salvaged?" If she didn't know better,
she would have thought he was joking with her. It was her turn to blink, bewildered.
"Unless I cut
your hand off and you bleed to death, you'll live," she said after a moment,
looking pointedly at his arm. How easy
it was to fall back into the blunt, no-nonsense speech patterns she had
developed on the battlefield!
He relaxed his grasp, and his hand fell limply on the bed between them. His eyes drifted closed briefly, opened, and closed again, and Veris could see the strength of his fingers had been more willpower and bluff than actual strength. She let out a long, quiet breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
This man is
disturbing, she found herself thinking. Maybe Garn was right…
"What is your
name?" The man asked, his eyes still closed. His voice was low and rough, grating over lassitude.
"Veris," she
said, rubbing her throat. "And
yours?"
"Ash-" his voice
seemed to catch in his throat suddenly as if someone had cut him off. "It's Ash."
"Ash," Veris
found herself repeating dubiously, and the man's eyes opened to look up at her
face incisively. She did not think it
was his real name, of course. She
wasn't stupid. She returned his gaze
coolly.
"Well, Ash, I
think your introduction style leaves something to be desired," Veris said after
a moment. She meant to sound
prickly.
"A Healer with a
sword," he said musingly, his voice faint. " My dreaming and my waking have been…disordered. I mistook you for a soldier."
Is that
supposed to be some kind of apology?, Veris thought, but the anger had
fled. In truth, she herself knew that
feeling very well, and she couldn't help but feel some sense of pity – despite
herself – for the man. Face it Ver,
she thought to herself, if you couldn't be empathetic, you wouldn't be in
this job.
She opened her
mouth to say something, but realized that the man – Ash – had fallen
asleep. His head was lolled against his
shoulder, lamplight shining on his closed eyelids.
Veris nearly
smiled to herself wryly, and carefully pulled the blankets over him
conscientiously.
…And hell of
a job it is, too.
Blowing out the
infirmary lantern, she took the other one up and, in its sputtering light, made
her way to bed.
She
locked the door to her room carefully.
* * * * * * *
When the Healer
was gone, Ashuram opened his eyes. The
room was dark; she had taken the lamp with her when she left. In the next room he thought he could see the
glowing red embers of a dying fire banked for the night; it gave little light
and provided only enough of a red glow to remind him somehow of the hungry red
pit that had waited for him beneath the deep chasms in the earth in Marmo. He surprised himself by shivering suddenly
as if a cold breath had blown across the back of his neck.
His eyes grew
used to the darkness slowly and he looked around the clinic with sharp
eyes. It was a small clinic, the
shelves full of jars of varying sizes, and herbs hung from the ceiling to
dry. In the darkness it appeared clean
and neat, if a little cluttered. It was
a far cry from the makeshift Healers' tents he had gotten used to seeing during
the war with Valis.
The Healer had
been in the war, of that he felt sure. She carried herself like a fighter, and he had no doubts the sword she
wore at her hip had seen its share of use. Her calm, malachite eyes had shown nothing but anger – and that coolly –
when he had caught her by the throat. She had not flinched away from his basilisk gaze, which even Lord Beld
had been forced to look away from every now and again. She had looked very young – reinforced by
her wide eyes and short stature, although half-Elves always looked younger than
they were, and he guessed she might be his age, if not older.
Pirotess had been older than he, but time to Elves was not comparable to Human time. Pirotess had been alive many of his lifetimes before she had come to join the Marmoan army.
Pirotess. He reached up to touch her pendant, his eyes
closing. He felt so far away from her
now, the feeling of loss muted and dull. He had been through so much since she had gone, it almost seemed as
though he had been another person then. Yet at the same time, he longed to see moonlight caught in the silver of
her hair once more. If I have dreams
tonight, let them be of her, he thought to himself with a sigh, stirring
gently beneath the sheets.
Ashuram settled
down into the pillow and the blankets, breathing in the smell of clean laundry
and pungent herbs comfortably. He felt,
for the first time in a long time, safe. Even though he knew the Healer was suspicious of him and would
undoubtedly be shocked to know to whom she was ministering to, he also realized
that by the Healer's code she was bound to Heal him, even if he were the Devil
himself. Which, he thought with dark
humor, considering the Demon's power that had brought him back, might be close
to the truth.
Yet he knew
there would be no one to slit his throat in the night should his wariness
falter, and he let his eyes drift closed with something close to a contented
sigh. He hadn't been exaggerating his weariness with the Healer
when she had pulled the blankets up around his shoulders and left. Sleep reached for him, and he let it take
him without a struggle.
* * *