Chasers of the Wind (25 page)

“I’d like to know that myself. He’s been following us since the first day.”

“I can’t say that this worries me all that much, dear.”

“You’re right. He could have attacked us a while ago, if he’d wanted to. The first three nights all of us slept like logs. The man’s had a heap of chances.”

“You noticed how experienced he is. Those idiots didn’t even look at the tracks, but did you see them?”

“Well…” I paused. “Let’s just say that, from what he left behind, you could say he’s not an ordinary man. There were almost no prints on the ground. It’s not the first time he’s worked in the forest. And he fled from my arrows with ease, while I would have shot down almost any other. He knows the forest well. But if I’m honest, he concerns me far less than what happened in the village. You don’t want to speak mentally, but maybe now that we’re alone you can explain everything that happened to me.”

Layen smiled understandingly and dropped another berry into her mouth. Her expression became surpassingly melancholy.

“You really don’t understand anything, do you?”

“What don’t I understand?”

“Ness,” she said sweetly. “I ‘don’t want’ to speak with you in mental whispers only because I can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to. You note the difference?”

My expression was undoubtedly quite foolish, and my sun sighed in disappointment.

“Hmmm … Those who use the Gift call this an attenuation of the spark. The sorcerer’s khilss required all my capabilities. It almost drank me dry. The staff constantly requires vital and magical power. It feeds on them; otherwise it will decline to obey. And then that woman came—”

“Who was she?” I interrupted.

Layen looked at me searchingly and ate another berry without replying. She wiped her hands, stained red from the juice. She imperceptibly shook her shoulders.

“She was very strong. So strong, in fact, that I assume that she is one of the Damned.”

I didn’t realize immediately that this wasn’t a joke.

“A Damned? That’s ridiculous! She wouldn’t have died so easily!”

“Who said it was easy?” Her piercing gaze sent a shudder traveling through me. “I can only call it a miracle that we were able to face her at all. She didn’t take us seriously, and we caught her off guard.”

For some reason it was beyond my comprehension that one of the Damned could have crossed our path. While they frighten you with such tales in your childhood, you stop believing in them after you grow up.

“You think this is nonsense?”

“Just a bit,” I replied unwillingly. “You have to admit, it’s very hard to believe that not a few days ago, I sent one of the Sextet to the Abyss with my own hand.”

“As you will, dear. I can’t make you believe. If it’s easier for you, you can just consider her a very strong sorceress and that’s all. Without any names. But she was strong, that’s the truth. In case you didn’t notice, I lost good and proper when I came up against her.”

“On the plus side Shen managed quite well,” I said, changing the subject of the conversation.

Layen twisted her mouth as if I’d presented her with a cup of vinegar.

“I’ll say. He definitely managed.”

“What is our mutual friend?”

“A Healer.”

“I know that.”

“Don’t confuse the concepts. He’s not a doctor, he’s a Healer. More a shaman than anything else.”

“Why? Is there a difference?”

“A vast difference. Healing is one of the rarer aspects of the Gift.”

What an idea!

“Hmm. In other words, the lad is similar to you?”

“Yes and no. He has a spark, but it differs from mine. And from the sparks of the Walkers. And from the Embers. And from the necromancers. I can’t say that it’s very strong in him; if anything it’s the opposite. It doesn’t shine very brightly, so he doesn’t have very much potential just yet.”

“Not great? He dealt with that minx effortlessly. Thwack! And that’s that!”

“That was nothing more than chance,” she replied tranquilly. “Healers are very rare in our world. One out of ten thousand who possess the Gift carry such a talent within themselves. You can count people like him on the fingers of one hand. Plus, he’s a man! As far as I can recall, the Sculptor was the only man who possessed such talents. All the other Healers are women.”

“I don’t understand how the ability to heal people with magic would aid building.”

“Everyone with the Gift can heal with magic. Even the necromancers. But no one has the ability to do it quite like the Healers. Their Gift is focused specifically on healing. So much so that they can return the dead to life. The flip side of necromancy, if you will. The result is not an empty, vicious shell, but a real living person. And the abilities of the Sculptor surpass our understanding. That’s why no mage today can duplicate his creations, or even come close. The Gates of Six Towers, the academy of the Walkers in the Rainbow Valley, the eight Spires, the palace of the Emperor, the Tombs of the Fallen, not to mention the Paths of Petals.”

“Umm…” I paused, taking in the list. “Why have I never heard anything about Healers?”

“I told you, people with that kind of spark are born very rarely. And they don’t go running around the cities and villages hoping to heal as many people as possible. The last Healer was a Mother of the Walkers. Five generations ago. Since then, no one has been born with such a Gift.”

I preferred not to ask how Layen knew all of this.

“But let’s return to my question,” I reminded her. “What does healing have to do with injuring someone?”

“Every spark has its reverse side.”

“Those words mean nothing to me.”

She narrowed her dark blue eyes thoughtfully.

“The idea is the same in regular healing. Say you take a tisane of bloodroot for a cough. If you drink too much, instead of curing of your illness, you get the complete opposite result instead. Your lungs will collapse and you’ll drown in your own blood. It’s the same here. Who ever said that a doctor can’t kill?”

“Well, if he’s a quack,” I said, chuckling.

“Not necessarily from ineptitude, dear. You must admit that an experienced doctor knows the human body so well that should the desire take him, he could easily send anyone he liked to the Blessed Gardens. It’s exactly like that with the magic of the Healers. To stop the heart? To burst the blood vessels? To send pestilence? If he can repair a broken spine, then why wouldn’t he be able to break it? It’s a unique battle magic that has nothing in common with the customary canons of the academies of the Walkers and Sdis. Not Life and not Death. Beyond that. Completely different. If a person turned a Gift like that to evil, he could cause such calamity that he’d be remembered for centuries. You don’t need to go very far for an example. Leprosy, one of the Damned, is a Healer.”

“Hey! According to legend, half the south died because of a disease she sent.”

“That’s exactly right. I think you can imagine now what an experienced Healer is capable of. No,” she said, guessing what I wanted to ask. “Shen can’t do that. Yet. I told you that his Gift is not yet developed. Like I said, it was nothing more than an accident. The boy was lucky that he could overpower the khilss. It was even more lucky that when Shen passed his Gift through it, his spark was not burned out. When Life encounters Death they usually kill each other. But Shen’s magic is different. When it tangled with the necromancer’s magic, it behaved in an inconceivable way. I’ve never heard of anything like it. A purifying, scalding light. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. Even the Damned didn’t suspect anything. She erected a shield so strong that most Walkers wouldn’t be able to break through it. But the shield did not save her because of what resulted from the intermingling of the spark of the Healer and the magic of Death. Frankly, I’m not sure if there’s even a way to combat such a spell.”

“Is it really possible that neither you nor that girl nor the necromancer sensed who our Healer is?”

“It is. We didn’t sense it. Not every bearer of the Gift is able to sense another’s spark. And if it’s skillfully hidden … The White didn’t have the experience to catch me out. But about the Gift of a Healer. The temperature of his spark differs radically from the majority of sparks you come in contact with. You can only sense a Healer when he is exhibiting his abilities. Not before then. So that’s why neither I nor the Damned nor the Sdisian suspected anything about the talents of Mols’s friend until the very last moment.”

“Speaking of…” I hesitated, but then I said it anyway. “Of the Damned. If you’re right and it was … Which one was it?”

“Hmmm,” she pondered, pulling her knees up under her chin and circling her arms around them.

I waited patiently.

“Initially there were more than twenty rebels in the Council of the Towers, but only eight of them survived the Dark Revolt and those are the ones known as the Damned. Delirium and Cholera died during the War of the Necromancers. Six were left. Two of them are men. That leaves four women. Only two of them fully match the characteristics we saw. So it was either Rubeola or Typhoid we came up against.”

I shivered. But I still couldn’t believe that we had seen one of those who had fomented the Dark Revolt and triggered the War of the Necromancers.

“What would a Damned want with a place like Dog Green?”

“The answer is obvious, my dear. Me. Or rather, my Gift. Of course, one might think that she came there out of pure curiosity or with the hope of enticing me to her side, but I don’t really believe that. A few of the strongest mages have the ability to fuse others’ sparks to their own Gift and become stronger.”

I saw that this subject was disagreeable to her and refrained from pursuing it. I turned the conversation to something else. “So why did Mols send a Healer to us?”

“Are you positive that he knows about Shen’s Gift?”

“No,” I replied after a brief reflection. “But if that’s so, then I really don’t know what would cause him to send a common healer with Giiyans.”

“What or who?” Layen’s expression turned cunning.

“Are you insinuating that it was Joch?”

“I don’t know. When do you think we’ll get to the road?”

I estimated the distance we’d traveled.

“The day after tomorrow, if we keep the same pace and nothing happens.”

“You know that as soon as we get to the road they will become too dangerous for us. I can’t vouch for Midge.”

“And I can’t vouch for any of them. I happened to overhear a conversation between our firewood collectors last night.”

I briefly recounted Midge and Bamut’s conversation.

“Maybe we should try to get rid of them today?” I suggested.

“It will be tricky,” Layen said reluctantly. “I’m not sure that I can fight against even one of them. Plus, who knows what Shen will throw at us if we pin him to the wall.”

“But I’m not asking you to brawl. Your Gift is far more useful than your knife.”

She looked at me for a second in surprise and then sighed heavily. “I thought you understood.”

She was silent for the longest time after that. Then she whispered quietly, “I cannot use my Gift.”

I thought I had misheard her.

“You … What?”

“I
can’t
use my Gift!” she screamed, losing control of herself, and then she buried her face in her hands.

For a short time I watched, stunned, as she sobbed soundlessly, and then I gathered her into my arms.

“Shh, hush. It’s all right,” I tried to console her. It helped a bit. The sobbing turned into quiet hiccups.

“I can’t … I lost … I can’t … That’s why I didn’t reply to your mental calls. I simply didn’t hear them. I was planning on telling you today. I started but then you asked about the Damned and I couldn’t go on.

“I told you already about the attenuation of the spark. The sorcerer’s khilss drained me. Then the Damned’s spell bound what remained of my magic. My spark has faded so much that I can’t invoke my Gift.”

“But you created that little ball of light yesterday for Shen.”

“It needed doing, even if it required the last of the power I’d regained. Midge had to see it.”

“So your Gift hasn’t left you forever?”

“Of course not. My spark hasn’t gone out. But quite some time will be needed to restore it.”

“How long?”

“I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, so I can only guess. Two weeks. Perhaps a month.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from swearing. I hadn’t thought everything was this bad. We didn’t have two weeks to rest; we didn’t even have two days. Without my sun’s magic backing me, I would be hard-pressed to deal with our three intrusive companions.

With an outraged shriek, a dappled bird flew out of the thick brush about fifteen yards away from us. Right away I was on my feet, ready to shoot. Layen jumped up as well.

“Something spooked it,” she said.

There were no suspicious movements or sounds. If someone was hiding there, he was being extremely quiet. We stood there for several minutes, tensely listening to the sounds of the forest.

“It’s useless,” said Layen. “If there was someone there, he’s long since made himself scarce.”

“Or he’s still hiding,” I said, disagreeing with her. “He could have heard us.”

“I don’t think so. It’s far enough away.”

“Some people have excellent hearing,” I objected again and cast up my bow.

Twang!

The arrow flew to the place from which the bird had just flown. I waited another minute and then I took my axe in my right hand and a long dagger in my left, and went to scout it out, not all that hopeful that I’d managed to wound someone.

Just as I assumed, the arrow had hit the ground. I put it back in my quiver and examined the ground. The grass all around was undisturbed, but one of the branches of a raspberry bush was broken. A few ripe berries had fallen to the ground.

This could mean much.

Or it could mean nothing.

*   *   *

“Oh, Al’sgara!” sighed Bamut dreamily as he pillowed his arms under his head and stretched out on the leaves. “Damn.… Who would have known I’d miss it this much!”

“Long walks are good for your health.” Layen pensively poked at a coal of the dying fire with a branch. An entire flock of sparks rushed up into the night sky.