Fall of Angels

CXII

When Nylan woke, he was lying on his lander cot bed. The light from the windows, while dim, burned through his eyes. He turned his head slightly, eyes slit, and a sledge smashed across his temples. Whiteness and blackness washed over him for a time, and he lay motionless, eyes closed, until the hammering and the knives that slashed at his eyes subsided.

Slowly, without moving his head, he eased his eyes open.

The gentle creaking of the cradle seemed more like the rumbling of a mill beside his head, and Dyliess’s breathing like a high wind that whipped through the tower.

Ryba sat in the rocking chair, one arm bound tightly in a sling, the other rocking the cradle. The left side of her face was scraped and blackish blue, with thin red lines running across her cheek.

“You …” rasped Nylan. His eyes still burned.

“I know,” she said. “You look almost as bad. They had to pry your fingers out of your poor mount’s mane.”

Nylan tried to move his fingers. They were stiff, sore. His head throbbed even with the attempted movement.

“You don’t look that wonderful,” he said after a time.

“It’s not too bad. It was only dislocated, but badly. Istril has some of the healing talent. It must go with the silver hair.It’s a good thing, too, because whatever you did to that wizard backfired all over both you and Ayrlyn. Last time I looked she was flattened like you.”

“No …” Nylan tried to moisten his lips. “I got … through the wizard. It was the killing. Killing’s hard on me, hard on healers.”

“The killing was the easy part,” said Ryba, as though she had not even heard Nylan’s last words. “Getting guards trained is the hard thing, and making sure they do what they’re supposed to. These women, half are scared to lift a blade against a man. Got to change that.” She coughed, wincing.

“Sore ribs, too?”

“I don’t notice you doing much moving.”

“If I did, my head would fall off,” Nylan admitted.

“Denize, she froze, just sat there on her mount,” Ryba continued, again almost as though she had not heard Nylan. “They hacked her apart, and I couldn’t reach her in time. Desain, Miergin, and poor Nistayna, they did their best and it wasn’t enough. The wizard got Jaseen and Berlis, too.” Ryba shivered, then stopped rocking the cradle. “Killing’s easy. Too easy for men.”

Nylan closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like arguing. Maybe killing was easy, but feeling the deaths of those you killed wasn’t. Yet what else could they have done? He could feel himself drifting back into darkness, and he let it happen.