The Third Scroll (25 page)

“As long as it has a true Guardian,” the Guardian of the Cave added.

“Why do you stay hidden?” I asked them the question burning in my mind. “If you have the powers of the First People, you could do such good in the world.”

“We have little of the power of the First People, but even for that, our ancestors were hunted without mercy,” said the Guardian of the Scrolls. “Other nations came to try Dahru before the Kadar and Shahala settled here. Some of those nations used the island as a resting place on their way to other destinations; some sought to conquer the Seela and stay here.” He fell silent for a moment, and I knew he had more tales of those dark times, tales he did not care to share.

His frail body shuddered as if wanting to shake off his interloping thoughts the way furry land animals shake off water. He rubbed his knee and went on with the tale. “The wind of centuries blew away the conquerors. They died of wars and diseases, hunger and treachery. We feared that soon the Seela too would perish, so we hid ourselves in the mountains and swore to protect the last of our people so we could go on preserving our ancient knowledge.”

I thought about Talmir and how he had been kidnapped by the Tezgin mercenaries because they thought he had special healing powers, and how he had been sold into slavery. Had the Kadar not protected our island, I wondered where the Shahala would be by now.

I found a strange irony in that, for the Kadar themselves had slaves and would accept a Shahala slave if sold to them, although they would never attack the Shahala to take slaves and would indeed defend our nation as a whole from being enslaved by others.

We talked about that for some time, and about the First People, until the Guardian of the Gate pushed himself to his feet with effort. “The High Lord is returning. We should not hold the mist much longer.”

I had wanted to see my mother’s grave again, so I stood with some disappointment but said farewell, even to the Guardian of the Scrolls, who did not seem to notice I was leaving. I hurried back to the palace after a brief glance at the path that led south through the mountains. Freedom still awaited there, but many warriors would be coming home from battle who would need my help with their injuries. I found I could not desert them.

I reached my chamber unnoticed, just as the light of morning broke through the disappearing mist. I left the door open behind me to allow in clean air and held my breath as I dipped the glowing tip of the sleeping stick in water. I changed into my gossamer nightrail, lay upon the bed, and pulled the cover over me.

Leena’s eyes fluttered open after a short while. I closed mine and listened to her move about the room, readying my clothes for the day.

I must have fallen asleep, for I woke to the sound of the horns proclaiming Batumar’s return. Leena barely had the time to help me dress and arrange my hair before the High Lord sent his summons.

She fed me a few bites; then we rushed down the corridors, Leena clinging to the single charm hanging from the belt she wore only when Batumar was out of the palace.

My stomach clenched as her anxiety spread to me. Had he been injured? If so, I prayed to the spirits the injury would not be beyond my abilities.

I pushed open the door of the High Lord’s antechamber, leaving Leena outside. I did not need escort when I was with Batumar. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw him and closed the door slowly, allowing Leena a glimpse.

He sat on one of the ornately carved chairs in his antechamber while one of his stewards stood before him with a scroll in hand, giving his report. Batumar’s gaze cut to me when I entered, but he did not interrupt the steward. I bowed, startled by his appearance. Like a stranger was he, in clothes stained and soiled beyond recognition, most of his face covered by a generous growth of beard, except the jagged line of his scar.

His obsidian eyes shone with intensity, his large frame, even slumped in the chair as he sat now, radiated true strength. His dark hair, longer than when he had left, hung in the thick braid some Kadar preferred for battle. He looked as if a warrior of old had come to us from the legends.

The steward droned on about supplies stored for the eventuality of siege, while the voices of servant women filtered from the sleeping chamber. I skirted around the men and walked in there, not wanting to disturb the report.

Two servant women poured water into a wooden tub, the largest I had ever seen. They bowed as I entered. They were palace servants, assigned to someplace other than Pleasure Hall, so I did not know their names. I helped them lift the heavy pails despite their protests. They were older than Leena, and besides, I always welcomed exercise. A healer had to have enough strength to lift or turn her patients if needed.

At home, I had roamed the woods and climbed numaba trees all day long. At the House of Tahar, I worked alongside the servants. But since I had come to Karamur, I had barely done more than walk from Pleasure Hall to the kitchen. Climbing the cliff made me realize how soft I had grown. The effort strained me more than it should have.

When I finished with the last pail, I moved out of the women’s way and caught sight of Batumar watching me from the doorway. A good fire roared in the hearth, its heat touching me as if I stood right next to the flames.

The scent of freshly split wood filled the air, coming from the armload that must have been carried in recently. The servants noticed the High Lord too, at last, and fell silent, bowing to him as he strode into the chamber.

I had forgotten how tall he stood, how imposing, how mismatched we were in strength. I swallowed and glanced away. Perhaps I should have run while I had had the chance, while I had the advantage of his absence. A quick bolt of panic dashed through me from head to toe. Had I doomed myself by remaining?

The bed groaned under his weight as he sat and stretched his feet toward the fire. The women immediately set to undo his boots and strip off his clothes. His armor of leather, worked nearly to the hardness of metal, already lay in the corner.

One of the women removed his doublet, and I caught my breath at the sight of fresh blood on his tunic. I had hoped the blood stains on his outer garments were the blood of the enemy. I watched his face to see if the movement of any limbs caused him pain, and searched from afar for the site of the injury.

I found it as soon as they pulled the tunic over his head—a gash in his side where he had caught the tip of a sword. I could not see how deep the cut went, as dried blood covered most of the wound. I searched his body for other injuries but did not find any, although the women had tugged off the last of his clothes, and he stood before me naked.

Even tired, dirty, and wounded, his body looked more powerful than any warrior’s I had seen, and I had healed many. He did not have that lean look of youth—he had daughters probably not much younger than I—but instead he was built with solid muscle, his skin covered in scars. Decades of battles had shaped the man, his body having conformed to fight as if it had been made for it.

He stepped to the tub and sank into the steaming water, closing his eyes the moment his head came to rest on the edge. As the women washed him, I picked up his discarded clothes to set outside the door. Then, having nothing else to do, I waited for him to be ready for my healing.

The women washed him without gentling their touch as they scrubbed around the cut. Oh, for the spirits’ sake… Had their eyesight weakened with age and they mistook the wound for grime? I stepped forward. The water had turned red too fast. Too hot, I guessed, making Batumar’s blood flow faster.

I walked out to the antechamber, moving to the corridor where Leena waited should I have need of her.

“If you could bring clean cloth for bandaging, and lavender for cleaning, chamomile and hyssop for infection, and ruhni powder too, I think. I have a small bundle of shlunn hulls. Please bring all of it. He is not injured badly,” I added as she wrung her hands, her eyes clouding with worry.

Then I went back and sent the servant women away with instructions for more water. “Warm, not hot. Comfortable to the touch.”

I disliked the look of that soiled water. I wanted him out so I could clean and close his wound. The women had done a fair job of washing him, so I had not much left to do.

“Your hair, my Lord.”

He sat up so I could loosen his thick braid. I combed the tangled strands with my fingers as they fell over his shoulder to the middle of his back. When the women returned with water, Leena followed them, bringing strips of white linen and my herbs. I set those aside, not ready for them yet, and reached instead for the small jar of powdered soaproot on the floor next to the tub. I dipped a handful and lathered it into Batumar’s hair.

He closed his eyes and kept them closed, even as he dismissed all the servants.

The fire crackled in the hearth, the only other sound in the room the soft, oddly intimate squishing noises as I worked the suds into his hair and beard. His hair was rough textured, almost like the manyinga’s fur, but I liked something about the way the thick strands slipped between my fingers.

I stepped back. “Ready to rinse, my Lord.”

He stood and reached for one of the pails by the tub, then poured water over his head, then another pail and another. I busied myself with carrying out the empty pails as he finished rinsing and walked to the bed.

I had seen and healed many naked men, but now a sudden desire to run from the chamber grabbed hold of me.

“Come.”

I went to him as he had commanded. He needed my healing.

He had tugged on a clean pair of leggings and sat on the bed now with his arm out to the side to give me a better view of the gash.

Even with his gaze intent on my face, I forgot about my misgivings at once, my full attention on the injury, on the blood still seeping down his skin. The cut went deeper than I had thought, its edges dead, the severed muscles underneath infected and swollen.

I kneeled next to him, then ran my fingers around in a circle on his hot skin and drew the pain, then grabbed for the edge of the bed as it slammed into me and throbbed through my veins.

He caught me by the arm. “No.”

I closed my eyes and focused on the pain, letting my spirit fight it, extinguish it little by little like raindrops cool a fire. A hard battle—the infection was the worst kind, and it had gone deep.

“Enough.” He let go of me and pushed to his feet, the movement pushing fresh blood from the wound. “It is true, then. Healing does not just tire you. You give your own life strength to others when you heal.” He stood over me, thunder on his face. “I will not allow it.”

“It is my duty—”

“You speak of duty?” He paced the chamber. “You have left my Pleasure Hall and my palace.”

I hung my head. How could he already know? He had only just arrived. But gossip spread on birdwings in the palace. I had done what was forbidden. He had it within his rights to kill me.

“You entered the House of another. His Pleasure Hall, even.” His voice tightened.

“Lord Gilrem was away, my Lord. I went under protection of your Guard.”

He stopped and turned to me. “You should not be so ever willing to exchange your life for others.”

“I am a healer, my Lord.”

“You are—” he began in a voice loud with frustration but did not finish.

At last I lifted my gaze to his. Dark fires burned in his eyes. Blood seeped from his side. There was a wildness to him that both scared me and made it difficult to look away.

Again, part of me wanted to flee. The healer in me held me in place. I reached for my herbs. “These, at least, my Lord. If you would allow me.”

I had planned to use the herbs, having given my promise to the Guardians to be more careful with my healing spirit, but once I had touched Batumar and felt his pain, everything else had flown from my mind.

After a long moment, he sat down and lifted his arm for me again.

I cleaned the wound thoroughly, then prepared and applied the paste for infection, wishing as I often had for moonflower tears. The ruhni powder reduced some of the swelling almost instantly and also drew the edges of the wound together but not enough. The gash gaped too wide and jagged for ninga beetles, so sending for them would not be of any use, either. I had seen that from the beginning, which was why I had Leena bring the hulls.

Batumar touched his finger to some of the ruhni powder that dusted his side and lifted the finger to his nose. “Do you know poisons as well as you know healing potions?”

I nodded. Not to use, not ever, but so I would recognize the signs if anyone had taken them by accident or will, and could give the proper cure.

“You could kill me.” His voice carried neither fear nor accusation.

“I could not.” I stepped away in haste as if he had slapped me. “It is true I have the knowledge but not the spirit to accomplish such a deed.” Not for freedom, not for any other purpose, not ever, no matter what he might do to me yet.

He nodded.

I pulled my small roll of dried shlunn hulls and selected five, each the width of a finger and about the length of one as well. I had dried the flat leaflike hulls to a rich color of yellow days before and now dipped them into clean water, one after the other.

A sticky paste formed on the underside, and I pressed the strips across the wound. They would hold it together as the water dried and the strips shrank and stuck to the skin. I rolled some bandage over on top of them to make sure they stayed in place and did not get brushed off too early.

I watched Batumar’s face, for I knew the pain must be returning by now. Drawing pain gave but temporary relief if the injury was not healed completely. As I had used herbs instead of my healing powers, the infection would take time to abate, the cut days, if not more, to grow together.

“I have weathered worse,” he said as if sensing my dismay.

I nodded and moved away, skirting the tub that took up most of the room. “I will have the water removed.” Leena would call the servants back for me.

“Another moment.” He stood and drew a small blade from the table, then stepped to the tub where he shaved off his still-wet beard. The hair fell like clumps of fur and floated on the top of the water.