Liar's Oath

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re going,” said Seri. Aris looked up from the scroll he’d been studying, Seri looked as she always did when she’d pulled off some mischief.

“And who’s to be my guardian?”

“I am.” She sounded as smug as she looked.

“You? But you’re—”

She pointed to the badge on her tunic. “A Marshal-candidate in good standing, of known good character, approved by the Council. So we can leave whenever you like, and stay as long, and—”

To be free again—to ride out the gates, with Seri at his side, and no one to argue with him whether this one or that needed his healing more, no one to suggest he must conserve his power for greater needs—he felt a childish glee of his own, to match the sparkle in her eyes. “Tomorrow?” he asked, not really believing it.

“Good choice.” said Seri. “I’ll tell the cooks, and get our things ready. You finish that miserable compilation for Luap, and—I suppose you do have to tell him?”

“I should.” Aris sighed. “But surely he knows—he was at the meeting, wasn’t he?”

Seri rolled her eyes. “Meeting? What meeting? Can’t a few Marshals get together and discuss minor matters without holding a formal meeting?”

“But then are you sure it’s—”

“Raheli, the Autumn Rose, Cob, and Garis: is anyone going to argue them down? And they had discussed it with others—not all the others, admittedly, but enough to justify it. My directors agreed—in fact they had brought it up before I had And Rahi did suggest we go on and leave now—quickly—before the decision caused comment.”

Her look said even more: it usually did. “I could leave within a glass or so,” he said softly. “I could leave Luap a note. We don’t need that much—”

She clasped his shoulder, and leaned close. “Even better. We’ll take an afternoon ride.” She waved her hand, “I’ll go get the horses ready.”

Aris turned back to the scroll. He couldn’t concentrate on it; he had read it before, and knew that nothing on it would help him. He rolled it carefully, slid it back into its case, and the case back into the rack. He rummaged on the desk until he found a scrap of old parchment, scraped many times and fraying, to write his note to Luap.

He felt slightly guilty for not taking the trouble to find Luap, rather than leaving the note in his office, but he did not want to discuss his plans with the Archivist. More and more, in the past year or two, he had felt uneasy around Luap, and he could not explain why. Seri, he knew, felt the same way. He put the note where Luap could not miss it, then went to see if Seri had left anything behind. His pack, rolled neatly, lay on his pallet, and his box held only what he himself would have left behind. When he ran his hand into the center of the pack-roll, he felt the hard edges of coins—so she had thought of that, too.

With his pack under one arm, he didn’t look like someone out for an afternnoon’s ride—but then if anyone asked, he had permission to leave for longer than that. He remembered a Marshal saying once that an innocent heart was the best disguise, and on his way to the stables, no one seemed to look at him. Seri had both horses saddled, and her own pack strapped tight. Mischief lighted her eyes; her horse, catching the excitement, jigged sideways.

“I am hurrying,” said Aris, to both horses as much as to Seri. His own snorted, as he snugged the pack straps, and mounted. He didn’t have to ask which way—they would start as they often did, riding west and north into the meadowland beyond the city.

By sunset, they were out of sight of the city, beyond the range of their earlier rides in this direction. They had passed one village to the east, but now saw nothing, not even sheep, to indicate that another was near. Still, they felt safe; they could walk back to the city in one day if the horses pulled loose in the night. But the horses did not escape, and they rode off the next morning in high spirits. All that day they moved into country new to them, rolling land covered mostly in grass, with scattered groves in hollows and along streambanks. In the last span before sunset, they chose a grove near water to camp in.

“It’s almost like being children again,” said Seri. “When we used to go and make houses in the bushes, remember?”

“Yes, but now we know how to do it right.” They had blown fluff from a seedhead for camp chores: tonight Seri had to dig the jacks, and Aris had to take care of the fire. Not that it mattered to either of them, Aris thought, but Gird’s training held to the tally-group system, and it had come to feel natural. With the horses watered and fed, their own waterskins full, and their camp laid out properly, they settled in by the fire to talk.

“I wonder if we should take turns as guard,” Seri said. “I know there’s no war, and this is settled territory, but it’s good practice—”

“Mmm.” Aris leaned back. He had not ridden so many hours in a long time, and he knew he would wake stiff. “I don’t sense any dangers.”

“Nor I. But it’s the right way to do things. I’ll take first watch.”

“All right.” He looked at the fire for awhile, listening to Seri’s footsteps on grass and stone. She went down to the spring, up the slope to the edge of the trees, and came back to the fire.

“Nothing now.” He could feel her tension as if it was his own. In a way, it was his own tension, reflected like firelight. They both knew why they had needed to get out of Fin Panir, why they had needed to travel alone, but the years in the city made it hard to return to the easy communication of their childhood, when idea and response had flowed between them without barriers.

Seri sat back down with a sigh. In the flickering light, her face looked much older, and as heavily stubborn as Gird’s had been. “Remember after Father Gird died?” she asked. Aris nodded. Because they were then training in separate granges, they had been able to talk for only a few minutes now and then—but they had had the same dream in the days after the funeral. “I always felt close to him,” Seri went on. “From the first day we came. It was like having a grandfather of my own. Not that I didn’t respect him, but—”

“It was much the same for me,” Aris said. They had talked of this before; it was as good a way as any to ease into the real problem. “If I had been able to choose a father, I’d have chosen Gird.”

“And then he died,” Seri said. “Like any other father or grandfather, except it wasn’t.”

Aris looked at her. They had each tried to talk to the Marshals about it, and had had the blank looks given to those who have said something outrageous. They had learned not to talk about it, not to mention what was, to them, the most salient point of Gird’s death. “I think,” he said softly, “that they don’t quite remember it. They know they felt better afterwards; they know they couldn’t quite remember why they had been so angry—but I think they don’t actually remember what happened.”

“Luap does,” said Seri. “Or he did, but that’s not what he’s put in his Life of Gird. He’s made it a monster.”

“How did you find out?” Aris had been wanting to see the Life for several years, but Luap gave him no chance.

“I heard from someone who heard Rahi complaining about it. She said he was trying to make it more like one of the old tales from the archives, one of the kings’ lives tales.”

Aris snorted. “That wouldn’t fit Gird, no more than a crown would have.”

“Rahi said he couldn’t make clear what really happened, so he made up the monster so that people would understand. Only they won’t, because that’s not what it was.”

“I wish he’d let me help,” said Aris. “It could be written the right way, the way it happened. It wouldn’t be easy, but that would be better than making up a false tale.”

“Rahi said Luap can’t see that—he thinks a false tale that makes sense is better than the true one no one will understand.” Seri poked a stick at the fire, until sparks flew up. “Aris—do you ever feel Father Gird is still around?”

“Really? In person? Or just—feeling that he’s there when he’s not?”

“I’m not sure.” She faced him directly. “Aris, those dreams we had after he died—those aren’t the last ones I’ve had.”

He wasn’t surprised. Those hadn’t been his last dreams of Gird, either. He nodded, and said, “Tell me about them.”

“I can’t, exactly. It’s—it’s as if he wanted me to do something, and I’m not sure what. If he were alive, he wouldn’t be happy with Luap, that’s certain . . . Luap’s ruining it all.”

That was the core of it, what they had needed to talk over far away from Fin Panir’s many curious ears. Aris felt a cold chill down his back, as if someone had run a chunk of snow down it “I know. And I don’t think he knows what he’s doing . . .”

“How can he not!” Seri had finally let go her anger, and now it blazed in his mind as brightly as the fire she poked into brilliance. “He’s a scholar; he surely knows if he writes truth or falsehood. He was Gird’s helper so long, he surely knows what Gird would have wanted. Gird wanted mageborn and peasant living in peace, one people. Luap swore oaths that he would obey Gird and follow Gird’s will, yet he’s doing everything he can to push mageborn and peasant apart.”

“Not quite everything,” Aris pointed out. “If he really knew he was doing it, he could do worse—”

“Not without the Council noticing. He’s just being sneaky.” She glared at him. “Or have you gone over to them as well?”

He stared at her, shocked and horrified. “Seri! I couldn’t!” Tears filled his eyes; if Seri thought he would turn into another like Luap, he wasn’t sure he could bear it.

“You spend so much time with them,” she said, her voice hard. “You do what Luap tells you; you hardly have time for anyone else—”

“I’m here,” he said. “I left Fin Panir in the turning of a glass, on your word—how can you think I like all that, you of all people!”

“Then don’t defend him,” said Seri, “when you don’t believe what you say. D’you think I can’t tell what you really think? But if you won’t say it, even to me, even alone in the dark wild, how is that different from him?”

Aris struggled to control his voice. “I have tried to be fair,” he said. “Tried not to . . . to make hasty judgments. I saw—I see—Luap and the other Marshals, all quick to say what someone meant, and sometimes I know that’s not what the other meant. So I look for the chance that someone like Luap, doing something I would not do, has at least a good reason, in his own mind, for doing it.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “But—you’re right—I don’t like what he’s doing, and I haven’t liked it, and I haven’t been able to do one thing about it. I’m too young, and I’m mageborn, as he is—”

“And half the distrust you meet is for him,” Seri said, now less fiercely. “They’re afraid you’re another Luap. When you were younger, and you were out and around more . . .”

“Which is another thing,” Aris said. “I want to do more healing myself; I want to go more places, and it’s the Council—yes, and Luap—who insisted I stay close and try to train other mageborn to heal. It isn’t working, and I don’t think it will, but they won’t listen to me.”

“Why not?”

“Why won’t it work? I’m not sure. The Autumn Rose says the healing magery was rare anyway; it failed first, when the mageborn were losing their powers. I’ve found only one who responded to the training—”

“Garin—”

“Yes. And he exhausts himself when he closes a cut; the one time he tried to heal a broken bone, he fainted partway through and slept for a week.”

“You did that, when you were a child—”

“Yes, when I’d worked with all those sheep. But he’s a man grown, older than I am. The Autumn Rose found a girl said to have healed her family members of headaches and the like, but what she was really doing was charming them—they didn’t feel the pain as long as she was there. That’s not a bad use of charming—I’ve taught her to use it on more serious things—but it’s not healing. You remember that Gird wanted me to work with peasant healers to learn herblore, and with the granny-witches to learn hand-magicks. I’ve learned a lot more about herbs, and most of the women with a parrion of herblore say if I were a girl they’d trade my parrion, though they don’t think much of a man learning it. The grannies have watched me heal, and I’ve watched them lay pains on a stone, and neither of us learned how the other did it. Whatever they do is not in their power to explain, or mine to learn—and the same for what I do. They don’t sense the light of health and the dark of fever or injury the way I do, but they do feel the prickling in their hands.”

“I suppose that’s something,” said Seri. She frowned. “So you don’t think you’ll be able to teach anyone?”

“I don’t know. Some child, perhaps, will be born with the talent, and I can help train it. But it’s not like reading or writing—it’s not something everyone can learn more or less well—and since I didn’t have someone to train me, I really don’t know what the training should be like.” Aris leaned away from the fire as a gust sent smoke into his eyes. “Nobody wants to hear that, though: Luap is still convinced I could teach other mageborn to heal, and the other Marshals still hope I can work with the granny-witches. They don’t want me to be the only one—and I wish I weren’t.” He struggled with the sorrow that always came when he thought of that, of being the only one who knew what he knew. He could share his skills by using them, but he had no one who could understand what his life was like, what it felt like to hold that power in his hands and pour it out.

“We can’t let him ruin it,” Seri said. For a moment he didn’t know what she meant. She nudged him with her elbow. “Luap, that is. We can’t let him ruin what Gird wanted.”

“How can we stop him, if the Council of Marshals can’t? And it’s not all his fault. Remember what Rahi and the Autumn Rose were like before you worked on them?”

Seri ducked her head. “They should be friends; they should have been friends all along. You know that.”

“Yes, and I know they weren’t. That started before we came, a long time back, from all the tales. What I meant is that it’s not only Luap who has strayed from Gird’s dream. It’s a lot of them, even Rahi. They never saw it clearly, maybe.” Aris wondered again why not, when it seemed so obvious to him. They were older; they had known Gird in the war. Why couldn’t they all have seen that what he wanted was good? A swirl of night wind brought flames snapping higher from their fire, and a gout of sparks lifted into the dark. Aris tried to keep his mind from following them, from the trance of light, but remembered that only Seri was here. He need not worry. He lifted his hand, in one of their childhood signals, copied badly from the huntsman, and let himself go.

Sparks flying on a dark wind . . . he felt the glittering heat, the potential fire, in each spark, and its frightening vulnerability. So small against the cold, the dark, and yet so bright, so hot. Were there sparks of darkness as potent? Could darkness spread, as fire spread, from its sparks? He let that thought go, and rose instead with another gout of sparks, high above the starlit land. Most sparks lit no fires; most died to ash in the cold wind, and most that fell found no fuel.

He came back to himself slowly, slipping from trance to the ordinary musing of any mortal around a fire. The ideas that had seemed so definite against the dark slipped out of his mind. The fire crackled, hissed, murmured. Behind him, one of the horses stamped and blew. He felt his skin tighten all over, fitting itself to him again. Where had he been? Only a thin blue flame danced above the coals; he could not at first remember why he saw the fire from below, why he was curled on the ground instead of a bed. Then he felt Seri’s hand on his shoulder, solid and warm, as if she were the hearth in which a great fire burned. He took a long breath in, smelling the leather of her boots, the wool of his own shirt, the firesmoke, the horses nearby, even the wet herbs near the tiny creek. When he looked up, the stars seemed like a scattering of sparks . . . but sparks that would not die, that would never go out.

“And what did you bring back this time, Ari?” Seri’s voice was almost wistful. He had never told her a story she liked better than one from his earliest childhood, and he had never been able to tell that story again. Like all the visions that came with light, it existed only in the moments of the trance itself, and his memory faded more quickly than a meadow flower.

“The sparks,” he began, letting his tongue wander free. “If Gird’s wisdom brought light, then the sparks flew out . . . but not all minds held the fuel to kindle them. Some would burn bright, but quickly die. Some would catch no spark at all. Many would come to the fire for warmth, but fear the sparks flying, lighting in themselves. . . .”

“But I feel it,” Seri said. He turned over to look at her. He could see it in her, as he could feel it in her touch.

Aris pushed himself up. “You’re right. You do.”

“And so do you!” She sounded almost angry.

“I hope so. I used to think so, but—”

“But you’ve been listening to them. To him.”

Aris shook his head. “No—it’s not that. I think—I think Father Gird saw things from his own side—as a peasant—and so for peasant-born it’s a little easier to catch his vision. It all fits. When I try to think like you, I see it clearly, but when I try to see it like Lady Dorhaniya, or Luap, I see other possibilities. Gird didn’t have any reason to trust magery; even with me, he wished my healing would work some other way. He had no place for magery in his mind, no place it would serve the dream and not harm it. He agreed my healing was good, but he would not have agreed that being able to lift stones by magery was good. He would think how they could be used to hurt people. What I know is how much the magery hurts if you don’t use it. Again, he understood that about my healing power, but I don’t think he realized that it’s true of any magery. It’s like—suppose someone said to you, ‘Don’t lead. Don’t learn. Don’t question anything.’ ”

Seri had been scowling, but at the last her face changed expression. “No one could tell me that! I have to, it’s the way the gods made me—”

“Yes, and the mageborn who have magery are that way, just as you are eager to learn, curious about everything, quick to lead. Remember our childhood? You got whacked with a spoon often enough for being—what did the old cook say?—nosy, bossy, always asking questions. You couldn’t help it, but what do you think it would’ve felt like if you’d tried to change?”

“I suppose . . . I’d have felt trapped, like a wild animal tied in a barn. Ugh!” She shivered. “Why did you have to say that? I don’t like to think about it.”

“But when I tried not to heal, you said you understood. . . .”

“I knew you were unhappy, and I knew you would never do anything wicked, Aris, but I didn’t imagine—gods forgive me, but I didn’t really think what it might be like. I was thinking of the people who needed you, that you could heal.” She leaned against him, as she had in childhood. “I’m sorry, Ari. It just never occurred to me.”

“It’s all right.” He leaned back, comforted by her presence, by the familiar warmth and smell of her. “But can you try to understand, now, why it’s so hard for the mageborn who have those talents to leave them unused?”

“I suppose.” The doubt in her voice had no real solidity; he knew he had won his argument. He waited. In a few moments, she spoke again, slowly, thinking it out aloud. “And I suppose it’s as bad—or worse—for Luap. Is that what you’re saying? He’s a king’s son by birth, but he never got to be a king’s son. They didn’t know he had the magery; he never had training in its use. Yet he has it, and it’s as restless in him as your healing is in you, or my curiosity is in me. I wonder if the royal magery would be stronger?”

“Arranha says it is, that when it comes it either comes in full or not at all—and that Luap has it. I don’t think Gird ever knew how hard it was for Luap, or recognized how determined Luap was to be loyal to Gird.” He felt Seri shift against his side, and then relax again.

“I suppose,” she said again. “I would think that for Gird—but then, Gird never asked me to do anything but be what I am.”

Aris snorted. “Except the time you were playing those tricks on your Marshal.” He could feel her suppressed chuckle; it finally erupted into a gurgle of laughter.

“Yes . . . well . . . even then he didn’t ask me to be different, just reminded me that I was too young to know all the background, and too old to get away with it.”

“I’ve always wondered—what did Father Gird do to you?”

Seri laughed again. “What do you think? Gave me a couple of smacks and told me to be glad he hadn’t used his full strength. Told me to behave myself. If I wanted to be a leader, I’d have to set a better example to the junior yeomen—and that was true. It took me longer than I like to remember to straighten them out. They were a lot wilder than I was. ‘Think you’re clever now, lass,’ he said to me, ‘but what’s to come of them if there’s a real danger, and you’re not there, and they won’t trust the Marshal, eh?’ Made me think, it did. He left me there another half-year, then put me in that grange down near yours.”

“Good for both of us,” Aris said.

“He thought so. You’d be a steadying influence on me, he said, and I’d be sure you didn’t walk off a roof in a trance.” Aris felt the twitch of her shoulder. “Come to think of it, he never did believe you could take care of yourself, any more than I do.” As if on cue, Aris yawned, a great gaping yawn he could not smother before she turned and saw it. “And you can’t,” she said. “You were off there wherever you were, and you’re half asleep now. Go on. I’ll wake you to watch later.”

Aris wrapped himself in his blanket, and slid into sleep as comforting as a hot bath, just wondering if Seri would wake him, or sit up all night thinking. The grip of her hand on his shoulder woke him to dark stillness; her other hand came across his mouth, warning. Before he moved, he felt some dire magery nearby. He slid a hand free of the blanket, and touched hers, tapping a message. Her hands left him, and he reached down and slid his own knife free. Where had he left the sword? Where was the danger? And from whom?

It felt like nothing he knew, no mageborn he had ever been near, not even his mother’s last lover. Cold, ancient malice, a bitterness no love of life could touch . . . iynisin. Of the timbre of the elves who had so delighted him in Fin Panir, but of opposite flavor, this magery mocked all he had admired.

“Here’s your sword . . .” Seri breathed, barely audible above the pounding of his heart. Aris flung the blanket aside and stood, staring into the darkness. He could just feel the warmth of the banked fire on one leg, but no gleam of coals lit the dark, and the stars’ light seemed feebler than it had. The wind had died; he could hear nothing but felt one cheek colder than the other, proving the air moved. He felt Seri’s movement at his back, a shifting from leg to leg more menacing than nervous. Then her quiet mutter of explanation: “I felt it first, then something dimmed the starlight. The horses aren’t moving. Nothing is. I woke you—”

“I feel it,” Aris said. “iynisin.” Saying the name aloud took great effort, but when it was out he felt less frozen. He bent and folded his blanket, felt around until he located the rest of his pack, and put it all well aside, in case they had to fight.

“The elves said that was a legend.” Seri’s voice wavered; he realized that she was really afraid. Seri? it was absurd; Seri had never been afraid.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Aris moved to her voice, and leaned against her. His hands prickled; he laid one on her arm, and felt the demand of his healing lessen. She could not be sick—was he supposed to heal her fear? He let the power free, and felt it move from his palm to her arm, driving away whatever hindered her light.

Her light. Even as he withdrew his magery, knowing it had been enough, Seri burst into a glow as different from magelight as sun from starlight. Shadows fled away from them; Aris saw his own, black and dire, stretch to the edge of their hollow before he too caught light. His, though he had never seen it before, he knew to be magelight, the same as Arranha’s. It had the quality of lamplight or firelight; he knew without trying that he could kindle wet wood with it at need. But Seri’s . . . Seri’s was light only, the essence of vision, of knowledge, of inward seeing and outward seeing. Aris pulled his mind back from its favorite pastime, and had a moment to think how they must look, two glowing figures on a dark wilderness.

Then he saw the iynisin. All around the hollow, everywhere he looked, the blackcloaks, the beautiful faces eroded by hatred to shapes of horror. He could not tell how many, but he felt the weight of their malice as if each glance were a stone piled on his flesh. As if they knew the very moment of being seen, they spoke—two of them, voices clashing slightly as if they read from a script.

“Foolish mortals . . . you have chosen an unlucky place and time to indulge your lust.” Aris said nothing; Seri muttered, but not aloud. The iynisin went on. “You stink of Girdish lands, mortals; you trespass on ours. As we cursed your dead leader, so we may curse you, if we do not kill you and feed on your flesh.”

This time Seri answered them. “If you think you cursed Gird, you haters of trees, you erred; he died beloved of the gods.”

“And his line died with him.” One of the iynisin came closer; Aris could not see that the others moved. “Only sunlight spared him the full power of the curse, but that much held. And he ventured out only near dawn . . . it is long until dawn, mortals, and no sunlight will save you.”

Aris felt a burst of gaiety, unexpected and irrational. “Then we shall have to save ourselves,” he said. “With the gods’ help, if they find us worthy of aid.”

“You cannot stand against us,” the iynisin said. “See—” He pointed to the cluster of trees around the spring, where the horses were tied. Beyond, on the brow of the hollow, all the iynisin pointed downward. Aris stared: in the light he and Seri made, the trees shriveled, twisting in on themselves; their wood groaned and split. The new green leaves blackened, as if scorched. Under the trees, all the little green things that sheltered there shriveled as well. In the trees, one of the horses made a noise Aris had never heard. He felt Seri’s back shiver against his; his sword felt loose in his grip as sweat ran cold down his sides.

“You call yourself a healer,” another iynisin called. “Heal that, boy.” They all laughed, a sound so close to beautiful that it hurt the ears worse than simple noise. Aris’s hands itched, then burned; his healing magery demanded that he do something. But he could not go to the trees or the horses without leaving Seri, and he would not leave her. Could he do anything at a distance? He flung his power outward, toward the trees, but if it worked at all, it was the flurry of wind that whirled dead leaves from dead stems.

Not that way. The voice in his mind sounded impatient, like a master whose prentice had just done something wrong for the fifth time. I’ve never done this before, he thought back at it. Think! it bellowed. “Father Gird!” Aris said, almost squeaking in surprise.

“He can’t help you,” the iynisin said. The others laughed and sang. “He’s dead . . . dead . . . dead . . .” And on that refrain they came forward, their black shadows streaming away behind them. Aris had just time to think what a ridiculous way this was to die, when he felt Seri lunge away from his back, and he nearly fell backwards into her. That stagger saved him; the blade aimed at his throat missed, and he had his own back up by then. He had not had as much training in weapon skills as Seri, but she had insisted that he go beyond the basics required of all yeomen.

His sword clashed on three; he was too busy to be scared, but a corner of his mind insisted he had no chance against so many. He had no time to remember exactly what he’d been taught. He had to thrust, swing, and thrust again; an iynisin blade slid past too fast for his response and he felt it burn along his side. He sagged to one knee; another blade caught his swordarm, slicing deep; his fingers opened, and the sword fell. He heard Seri gasp, and a dark form leaped above him. He grabbed a boot, and yanked; the iynisin fell, cursing, kicked back then scrambled out of reach. His hands itched, intolerably; he had no strength to withhold the healing magery. It leapt from hand to hand, almost brighter than his mage-light, scalding first his wounded arm, then burning along his bones to reach his wounded side. With an intolerable wrench, his rib reknit itself, and the organs within returned to health. So that’s what Father Gird meant, he thought, reaching for the sword.

Battle had now passed beyond him, for they had Seri backed to the rockface, her sword dancing in her own light, ringing a wild music off her attackers’ blades. Her face had a withdrawn expression, showing neither fear nor anger. Aris ran forward, noticing how his light threw the iynisin shadows back into themselves, caught between the two lights. He thrust clumsily at the first black-cloaked back he saw, wasting no time in challenge. Seri had told him often enough he should spend more time in grange and barton: he would admit she was right, if they lived. This close he could see the blood on her clothes, sense the heaviness in her legs. He did not wait for Gird’s admonition. To send his healing to Seri was the same as healing himself; he hardly slowed his attack on a second iynisin while closing her wounds.

They turned upon him again, but he fought through the ring to her side, taking another slashing blade across his shoulders. This, as he set his back to the rock, repaid his healing of it with a pain the double of its cause. One corner of his mind wanted to think about that: to wonder at the discovery that he could heal himself, to consider why it hurt, when none of those he healed had ever complained of pain. Between him and this curiosity stood the memory of Gird, who would not put up with nonsense in the middle of a fight. First things first, the old man would have said.

“I thought they’d killed you,” Seri said. Then, before he could answer, she said, “Shift sides.” She lunged forward, and he slithered sideways behind her. He had come up on her right, her strong side; she needed him at her left.

“I, too,” Aris said, trying to look sideways and to the front at the same time. He wished he’d practiced whatever it was she’d just done to make an iynisin lose its blade. Something slashed the back of his hand, and he dropped the sword again. His tendons and bones screeched their fury at his clumsiness as the magery pulled them back into place and knit them into strength; in the meantime, the dagger in his left hand had shattered. He snatched frantically at the fallen sword, and got it up just in time to save Seri from a killing thrust to the side.

The analytical corner of his mind decided that the pain was healthy after all; it was the compaction of all the pain normally felt during normal healing. As healer, he had used his magery to lift such pain from those he healed; part of his exhaustion came from absorbing that pain. But he could not do this for himself. Better, the analytical function went on, like a prosy lecturer who does not realize that outside the classroom a riot has started, better to mend the real damage than soothe the pain, if that is the choice.

“ARIS!” Ser’is shout brought him out of that, to see the black-cloaked iynisin fleeing through the twisted trees and over the rim of the hollow. From behind them, above the rock-face, a light stronger than their own held all starlight at its core. It was that, and not their fighting, that the iynisin had fled.