Death of a Darklord

FOURTEEN

Averil knelt by her father. It wasn't until she knelt that Elaine realized the girl wore no shoes. She had run over the snow in her stockinged feet. Her bare shoulders were blue with cold, but her hands were very steady as she searched for her father's pulse. She undid his shirt and pushed her hand over his heart.

She glanced at Konrad. "His heart beats strongly. His color is good. She said he was ill." Averil glanced up at Elaine. Her eyes were accusatory.

"Keep your hand over his heart, and you will feel it flutter," Konrad said.

"Flutter? What do you mean?"

"The pulse is steady most of the time, but every few minutes the heart hesitates. The problem is growing worse, happening more often."

Averil shook her head. "I feel nothing."

Randwulf and Fredric were sitting to either side, covers tucked round their bare bodies. "He has never had a problem with his heart before," Fredric said.

"No," Averil said, "he hasn't." She kept her hand over his heart, but her liquid gold eyes were growing angry. After only a few hours, Elaine was finding it easier to read her expressions rather than just staring at the strange color of her eyes.

They waited. Elaine found herself willing his heart to falter, which was obscene, but she didn't want Konrad to seem a fool. Besides, she had felt it herself. It was there.

Averil stiffened. A small gasp escaped her lips. She fell utterly still, even holding her breath. Finally she let it out in a long sigh. "Yes, you are right."

She slipped her hand off his heart. Her hand lingered to cares his cheek. The movement was so gentle, so intimate, it was painful to see. "I don't understand this. He was not injured in the heart at all. Why would this be happening?"

"Could it be a strain from raising the dead?" — Konrad asked.

Averil shook her head. "Mo, healers have the ability to heal their own bodies as well as those of others. His heart would mend itself before it got to this point."

"Yet," Konrad said, "something is wrong with his heart."

"I know," she said, her voice harsh. She looked down at her father, then up at Konrad. "I'm sorry. I have no right to snap at you. This is just so inexplicable. It should not be happening."

She opened her backpack and began rummaging in it. There was a soft clink of glass, and heavier duller sounds, like pottery. She extracted a small glass bottle. It was familiar, somehow.

Her vision. She had watched Averil force some liquid down Silvanus's throat in her vision. The girl unstoppered the bottle and raised the elf's head just a little.

"He's unconscious and may choke," Konrad said. "I'll stroke his throat and get him to swallow it." "He could still choke." "I've done this before when the need was great."

She looked at Konrad, her liquid eyes full of such sorrow that Elaine had to look away. Konrad did not. Elaine fought the urge to make him look away. Some pain was too private for a stranger's eyes.

"Lift his head for me, Fredric."

The paladin moved forward, cradling the elf's head in his lap. The gold hair mingled with the fur, framing the too-thin face in soft textures. Fredric, who earlier would barely let Elaine look at his bare chest, now was mostly naked to the waist and didn't seem to care.

Averil forced her father's mouth open.

"I'll hold his jaw while you pour," Konrad said.

Averil looked at him a long moment, then nodded. Konrad's strong fingers held the elf's mouth open, and Averil trickled the smallest of doses into it. "Let go now, healer."

Konrad let the lips fall together gently. Averil firmly stroked the elf's throat. He convulsively swallowed.

Moments passed. Silvanus's eyes fluttered open. He blinked up into Fredric's face. The paladin smiled down at him, big hands cradling his head.

"Good afternoon, old friend," Fredric said.

Silvanus smiled. He looked around at the gathered faces. When he found Averil sitting beside him, the smile deepened. She took his remaining hand, holding it in both of hers.

Elaine stared open-mouthed. Konrad made herbal potions, but nothing like this. This was as wondrous as the laying on of hands. A sip, and a badly injured man awoke smiling. She knew Konrad couldn't lay hands, but could he make such potions if he knew the ingredients?

"How do you feel, Father?"

He seemed to think about the question, more than he should have. "I am not sure."

"What do you mean, Father?" She leaned over him, face and voice demonstrating her concern. She touched one hand to his forehead. "I feel no fever."

"It is not fever," he said. He coughed, a great racking sound that doubled him over.

"Raise him up," she said.

Fredric did, cradling the elf in his strong arms. He held him against his bare, scarred chest until the coughing eased. Silvanus's voice was a harsh whisper. "Water."

"Elaine," Konrad said.

She broke the thin skin of ice on the bucket and dipped the wooden cup into it. She handed the water to Konrad, but Averil took it from her. No one protested.

Silvanus took a sip of water. It set him coughing again, but not so badly. He kept sipping water until he could drink without coughing, then he lay back in his friend's arms, exhausted.

"Oh, Father, what is wrong?"

"I'm not sure. I have raised the dead before. I feel so strange."

Averil turned to Konrad. "You are a healer. What is wrong with him?"

Elaine knew the answer; Konrad didn't. He took a deep breath as if trying to decide what to say. "I believe it is a reaction to his healing of the others."

"But he has healed me many times," Fredric said. "He has not been like this before."

"Yes," Randwulf said, "he is a cleric. They heal; it is what they do. It would be like my shooting an arrow and having it harm me. It's ridiculous."

"Perhaps, Randwulf is closer to the truth than he knows," Elaine said softly.

Everyone turned and looked at her. Even Silvanus's strange eyes were upon her face.

"Go on, Elaine," Konrad said. His expression was neutral. It didn't seem to bother him that she was usurping his territory. Konrad always wanted to hear what others had to say, if it would save lives.

Elaine licked her lips and took a shaky breath. Suddenly she felt silly. What if she were wrong? She looked round at their expectant faces. Silvanus's face was very patient, gentle even. What if she were right and did not speak up?

"Gersalius and Thordin say magic healing does not work in Kartakass. Not even laying hands on a wound will work here. But Silvanus has raised the dead. What if he can still heal, but it harms him as it helps others?" Spoken aloud, the idea sounded farfetched, the barest conjecture. She felt heat crawl up her face as they all continued to stare at her.

"That is ridiculous," Averil said. Her voice held the scorn Elaine expected.

"No, Daughter," Silvanus said, voice harsh with coughing. "Hear her out."

Hear her out, Elaine thought, that was it. That was all the theory she had. Averil's face was set in disapproving lines, but she waited. They all waited for Elaine to go on, but there was no more.

Silvanus took his hand from Averil's grasp and held it out to Elaine. The hand trembled slightly. She took it. The skin was cold, or perhaps it was her own hands. She almost apologized for not warming her hands first, but something in his eyes stopped her. She was babbling in her own head, trying desperately to think of something useful to say.

"Do not try so hard," the elf said softly.

What did he mean? "I'm not trying at all."

"Ease your mind. Empty your thoughts. Feel."

It was something Gersalius would have said and just as inexplicable. "I don't know what you mean."

His gold eyes seemed larger than they should have been, great molten pools of glittering metal. The dying light that beat against the tent walls glimmered in those eyes. That glimmer pulled her down. His hand in hers held her up, or she might have fallen.

"You are hurt," she said. Her voice sounded very faraway, even to her own ears. But with the words, Elaine knew she was right. "I feel something around you, in you, mingling with my skin … I…"

"Life-force, Elaine, you sense my life-force."

She nodded. Of course. His hand tightened around hers, squeezing until she gasped. Then he slumped back, hand almost limp in her grasp. His life-force pulsed and fluttered along with his heart. The heart was steady, but the life-force, that invisible something, was weaker.

"There is nothing wrong with your heart," she said.

"Of course there is. We felt it." Averil's voice was startling. Elaine jerked and turned to look at the girl. It was almost a shock to see those eyes so like what Elaine had just seen, but so unlike, as well.

"Elaine," Silvanus said. That one word brought her back to him. She was not lost in his eyes anymore, but something was happening. Something was growing between them. It held that same slow building of power that she had sensed when Silvanus raised Randwulf.

"If my heart is not injured, what is wrong?" His words were careful, leading her like a string of words through an unfamiliar maze.

"Your life-force is hurt. Something feeds on it."

"What feeds on me, Elaine?" His voice gentle, his hand firm in her grasp.

She could see the others, knew she still knelt in the tent. Elaine was still aware. It was not like the magic that Gersalius had shown her, where she had lost herself in herself. Mow she was aware of power, but only the spark of it was inside her. She stared at Silvanus. "Am I drawing power from you?"

"No, Elaine," he said softly.

"Then where …" Even as she asked it, she knew the answer. She felt the earth under her move, roll like a giant waking from long slumber. "The land." That last was the barest of whispers. She wasn't sure anyone heard, but Silvanus's eyes said he knew. Whether she spoke aloud or not, he knew.

In that one instant, she knew one other thing. The land hated the cleric. The sensation was so strong, it escaped her lips in a soft moan.

"Elaine, are you all right?" Konrad asked. He touched her shoulder.

"Don't touch me!" The fierceness in her voice surprised even her. Hatred spilled through her, scalding. He did not love her. How dare he. Elaine shook her head sharply, as if trying to wake from a dream.

"You are still yourself, Elaine. You gain power, but you never lose yourself in it," Silvanus said.

That voice drove out the hate, let her think clearly again. It was this power that the land, Kartakass, despised. The cleric was stronger, in some ways, than all the land combined.

"Konrad, you must not touch me, not now." Her voice sounded almost normal, but the edge of anger was still there, roughening it, making Konrad's eyes widen.

"What is happening?" Konrad asked. He looked at Silvanus when he spoke.

"She is laying hands on me, to heal me."

"But she cannot do it," Konrad said.

"Oh, but she can," the elf said. His face was utterly serene, confident Elaine could do it. His belief was her belief. Her source was hatred, envy, but she was not. She was still Elaine Claim, who had lived all her life in Kartakass. The land had fed and clothed and held her in its dark arms, forever.

She let those dark arms touch her now, aware for the first time that the very ground was alive with something more than next year's crop. It should have frightened her, but it did not. That lack of fear should have frightened her all on its own.

She felt her own body, beating, pulsing, living. She was aware as never before of the workings of her flesh. Over all that ran a force like water, running over and through her. That water ran into Kartakass and out again, like the source of a spring, though water was just a word to use where no words were sufficient. It was a device to hold in her mind what shouldn't have existed. Water, but it was not water at all.

"Look at me, Elaine. What do you feel?"

She looked at Silvanus, felt his skin, the bones of his hands against her own. There, a flutter in the water that ran round his skin. A patch of darkness that had attached itself to him when he healed here in Kartakass.

Elaine reached out her hand to that darkness, drawing power from the same source that sought to destroy him. She touched not his heart but that force that wove round him. Her hand hovered over his chest because that was the weak point, the place of attack, but it wasn't the heart she sought to make whole. It was his life-force, that invisible water that held him safe. The darkness was like a hole through which the water could seep away until there was nothing but an empty skin left.

But if it had been a hole, Elaine would have tried to plug it; if it had been a stain, she would have cleansed it; but it was more a thing to be plucked off, a piece of darkness attached to suck away life in bits and pieces.

She drew that patch of blackness into her hand, into the invisible force around her own body, and let it flow down her into the ground itself. Kartakass swallowed its blemish back into itself with hardly a murmur.

Then Elaine did lay her hand on his chest. She felt his heart underneath the cloth, the skin. It seemed she could have closed her hands around the heart and squeezed. Instead she poured some of that invisible force through her hand and over his heart. The power itself seemed to know what to do. It mended the damage the blackness had caused, healed without Elaine really knowing how it worked. It was not her hand, her knowledge. She was just a tool.

Silvanus took a deep, shuddering breath. Elaine raised her hand from his chest. He smiled, and she could not help but smile back. She released his hand and knelt back from him, hands clasped in her lap.

She was herself again-alone, aware of that invisible force, but distantly-and she felt the distant beat of Kartakass, almost like music just out of hearing. The sensation drifted away until it was gone, and she was herself again. The last thing she sensed was a vague pleasure. The land was pleased.