The Thirteenth Scroll Page 36

  Around her, the men cringed at the sound as they went into fighting stance. The old one still had not moved. He just kept smiling.

  “Lay aside your weapons now,” he said, “and ye shall suffer no injury. It is your last warning.”

  “No,” Aurya screamed. Even as the first of the soldiers’ swords rang out in contact with his attackers, she drew her dagger and lunged, plunging it into the chest of the old one. His body crumpled while the swarm of creatures crashed in upon them.

  * * *

  In the cave where she was waiting, Lysandra screamed. Sitting with Selia she was using her Sight to watch the cavern and Eiddig. She saw the sudden frenzy of Aurya’s attack, her dagger rise and plunge into Eiddig.

  Once again, what she saw was blood and death.

  Lysandra was no longer aware of the young woman sitting next to her, whose hands she had been holding. She was only aware of the bloody horror she was witnessing.

  Though hopelessly outnumbered, Giraldus, Aurya, and their band of soldiers would not give up. The number of Cryf coming at them only spurred them to greater destruction. Swords and daggers met picks and axes, turned aside pikes. The Cryf, though strong, were not trained to fighting. Swords cut and stabbed, sliced and parried. The hard-packed earth of the cavern floor soon became soaked with stains of blood.

  Blood was everywhere. It filled Lysandra’s Sight. It ran from swords, dripped from axes and pikes. It gushed from wounds, mortal and glancing. It flew in great drops through the air, sent flying by swords raised to strike yet again and pooled beneath the bodies of the fallen.

  The soldiers would not give up. One of them fell, then another; their wounds only made the others fight harder. It was a scene from hell, both pitiful and horrific.

  Although screams welled in Lysandra’s throat, they did not again pass her lips. She was struggling to see into the melee, to find Talog and Renan, and to know they were yet all right.

  The Sight before her, within her, seemed to move in slow motion. The fallen of both sides were being trampled by the vast numbers of the onslaught. Giraldus’s band could not win; they must know that. Give up, Lysandra’s mind urged them. Let the killing stop.

  He could not have heard her—yet seconds later, the Baron raised his weapon in surrender. Beside him, Lysandra saw Aurya turn on him, screaming her frenzied demand for more bloodshed. She raised her bloody dagger to him, but Giraldus disarmed her before she could strike, throwing her weapon to the ground.

  Hatred distorted Aurya’s beautiful face, twisting it into a mask that looked barely human. Lysandra had never witnessed such hatred, with eyes of her body or of her mind.

  Only three of Giraldus’s party still stood: Giraldus, Aurya, and one other—a soldier whose years and experience showed on his face. They were held fast while ropes were brought to bind them.

  Lysandra stood. “I have to go to the wounded,” she said to Selia. “Stay here until—“

  Just then, Renan burst through the entrance of the cave. He was disheveled and dirty, covered with sweat and blood. But most of the blood was not his own. He bore one wound in his left arm, where the point of a soldier’s sword had caught him, but bleeding had already stopped.

  “It’s over,” he told them breathlessly.

  “We know,” Lysandra replied, standing very still. She wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and assure herself that he was truly all right. The intensity of the desire shocked and frightened her.

  But Cloud-Dancer had no such hesitation. He ran to Renan, nearly knocking the man over with enthusiasm. Renan laughed. Lysandra could hardly believe her ears… after all that her Sight had just witnessed, this man was able to laugh.

  But the laughter died quickly. “The Cryf need both of you. Lysandra, the Elders have asked for you to come care for Eiddig. They fear he may not survive. And Selia, for you they have waited a long time.”

  “For me?” Selia said, her voice filled with new uncertainties. “But I don’t know what to do.”

  Lysandra reached out and took the young woman’s hands, holding them as she had all those miles ago in Caerryck. Their minds touched, opened, merged. They were Wisdom and Prophecy. Just as Wisdom had brought Prophecy forth, now Prophecy helped Wisdom to understand that they were both called by a Power far greater than themselves.

  Are you ready now? Lysandra asked her.

  Will I ever be? Selia answered.

  Yes, Lysandra told her. I did not think I would be, but now I understand. Trust the Wisdom within you, Selia. It is your Truth, and in your Truth is Life.

  Lysandra felt rather than heard the younger woman’s acceptance. Together they followed Renan back to the Great Cavern and the path that had begun and awaited them there.

  In the silences of the convent, Selia’s habit of silence had been received as the assumption of true vocation. But she had known herself for a coward who sought the life of a Religious as an escape from the world.

  She still felt like a coward as she walked beside Lysandra—the blind woman who had risked everything and traveled the length of a kingdom to find her. For her sake, for the sake of all those who believed in her though they did not know her and now had fought to keep her safe, she would try to be something greater than she had ever thought herself to be.

  The scene when they entered the cavern was far more terrible than Selia had imagined. Although Lysandra had told her what her Sight revealed, the descriptions did not prepare Selia for the agony that was reality.

  The smell of blood and death was everywhere, filling her lungs with each breath. The whimpers of the dying, the cries of the wounded, filled her with a pity that made bile gush up in the back of her throat. She turned and spewed the contents of her stomach on the cavern floor.

  Shaking slightly, she followed Renan and Lysandra to the center of the cavern floor, where Giraldus, Aurya, and the remaining soldier stood bound amid the assembled Cryf. Healers were moving amidst the bodies of the fallen, closing the eyes of the dead and ministering to the living.

  The Cryf parted to let Selia and the others through. Lysandra gave a cry, then hurried over to the body of Eiddig, the old Guide who had greeted her arrival with such joy. Remembering his solemn touch upon her forehead, the expression in his ancient eyes that went far beyond welcome to the wonder and elation of faith fulfilled, Selia felt anger rising within her, filling her the same way that nausea had just moments before.

  She turned on Giraldus and Aurya. Truth—the first of her gifts and the grounding of her Wisdom—revealed them to her in all their greed and ambition. She saw the blackness of their hearts and of their intentions.

  The light of her Truth touched it all. She understood, finally, what Lysandra had meant when she said to trust the Wisdom. With the first absolute certainty of her life, she spoke.

  “You had best pray that the old one lives,” she told the prisoners. “You have brought this destruction here and if he dies, you die.”

  “And who are you,” Aurya snarled when the others remained quiet, “to think to pass judgment on me?”

  Selia drew herself up, looking into the eyes of this woman who had sought a child she could use and control.

  “I am the Font of Wisdom,” Selia said. In that single moment of true acceptance, clarity descended and embraced her, and she truly became what she had finally declared herself to be.

  Chapter thirty-five

  Lysandra had Eiddig carried to his chamber. The Cryf Healers rushed to have everything waiting for her. They settled their Guide on his sleeping shelf and stepped back to let Lysandra work. She found the audience disconcerting, but as she knelt by Eiddig’s side, it was the fear of failure that momentarily overwhelmed her. This was not like setting an animal’s bone or soothing the cough of a crofter’s winter cold.

  Eiddig’s wound had been temporarily staunched. Before Lysandra removed the dressing, she turned to the array of medicines on the table next to her. Using her senses of touch, smell, and taste, she began to arrange everything the
way she needed. She feared the wound would bleed again once she removed the dressing. She did not want to chance the old one becoming too weak from loss of blood to recover because she had to grope around to find the right herb.

  Finally satisfied, she was ready to set to work. But first she laid her hand on top of Eiddig’s, which was gnarled and twisted with age and reminded Lysandra of some of the trees they had seen in Rathreagh. But though Eiddig’s hands might appear misshapen, to Lysandra they were beautiful, for they were hands that had been used in faithful service. Remembering the gentle touch of his palm on her forehead, Lysandra silently promised both herself and Eiddig that she would try to live her life and use her hands only in the same way.

  Drawing a deep breath, Lysandra carefully lifted the dressing away from Eiddig’s wound, trying not to cause him any more pain than she must. Mercifully, the old one had lost consciousness before he was moved, but even so he moaned slightly as Lysandra gently examined the inside of the wound with her fingers and her Sight.

  Aurya’s dagger had missed his heart, nor had the blade cut any of the main blood vessels leading into or away from that central organ. Lysandra considered that to be nothing short of miraculous. But the wound was serious, mortally serious if Lysandra could not stop the blood now oozing from the secondary veins. If it continued, it would fill his chest cavity until his heart could not beat and his lungs could not expand with breath.

  She took only a few seconds for her examination. Her hands shook slightly as she reached for the first of the medicines she had laid within reach. Although all living creatures shared some things in common, there were also differences in treating their ills. Praying that she had made the right choices and that she could work quickly enough, she washed the wound with a strong infusion of agrimony, burdock, and juniper—the best herbs to clean a wound of the dangerous humors that could bring infection. Then, into a decoction of shepherd’s purse, she added finely ground milfoil and mountain daisy, herbs that stopped bleeding.

  Eiddig moaned again as Lysandra applied this mixture as deeply into the wound as she could. Then she reached for the one thing that had come from her own possessions rather than the Cryf’s stores. It was a small folded wallet of carefully collected and preserved spider’s silk. This was Eiddig’s best chance. The adhesive properties of the spider’s silk would bind the bleeding edges, filling in the wound and slowly dissolving as healthy tissue grew again.

  Once that was done, Lysandra quickly slathered a salve of purple coneflower onto the outer area of the wound, to fight both the pain and the possibility of putrefaction. Only then did she apply an outer dressing. It, too, was made from Cryf supplies. The inner layer was of that wondrous soft material she had never before encountered, the same material that covered their beds and turned hard stone shelves into nests of comfort. It was then bound in place with strips of sturdy, tightly woven cloth that Lysandra was certain would not shift or stretch.

  There, she thought as she sat back, I have done all that I can.

  But she knew that was not yet—not quite—true. There was one more thing she could try although, briefly, her mind recoiled from the thought. She told herself that the Cryf probably had medicines within their stores, white willow bark or pain-in-poppy, that would help ease pain; as a healer, Lysandra knew that pain could be friend, warning a body of danger or forcing the stillness necessary for healing to occur. But pain itself, especially in the aged, could also be an enemy. If severe or prolonged enough, it could weaken the body’s reserves and prevent healing.

  Would the Cryf medicines be enough for Eiddig? Of that she was not so sure. She knew so little about the Cryf—and she had never before encountered a being as old as Eiddig. The Cryf Guide was one hundred forty years, by his own reckoning, and even if the work she had just done healed the flesh, the prolonged pain of the injury might well be enough to kill the old one. She knew she had to try to do for Eiddig what she had done for Talog the first time he saw the sun; she had to try to take the old one’s pain.

  It was not easy to make herself so vulnerable. But, she asked herself, how could she not do this for Eiddig when he and his people had risked their lives to protect her and Selia? And how could she ask Selia to give herself, her gifts, to save the kingdom if she was not willing to do the same to save one being?

  Lysandra laid her hands once more on Eiddig’s chest, covering his wound gently. Once more fear coursed through her. What if she had failed? What if she found that all her efforts had come to naught and Eiddig was dying beneath her hands? How could she live with that knowledge?

  It is better not to know, her fear whispered. Turn away now. You’ve done enough.

  But of all the truths she had learned by this journey, the greatest was that fear was the ultimate enemy; fear was the enemy of life, of growth, of hope. It must be fought at every turn—and the greatest weapons against fear, the only weapons, were faith… and love.

  Fear would not hold her captive again.

  Slowly, Lysandra reached out with her Sight. Second by second, she deepened her focus upon him; layer by layer, she let her mind open, dropping the guarded veils that separated them. The fingers of her mind reached out to touch each nerve, each vein, each particle of injured flesh and wrap them with the energy of her healer’s touch, the way the outer flesh was now bathed in healing herbs.

  As she worked, she prepared herself for the flow of pain that would travel back from Eiddig into her. She had braced herself now and was ready for it, willing to feel whatever she must for the old one’s sake. She could see the red and throbbing aura of pain beneath her mental fingers—but, seconds turned to minutes and still the pain did not come.

  Instead, all through her mind, down her arm, and out the fingers of her hand that rested so lightly atop his bandaged wound, Lysandra felt a radiant warmth begin. It tingled with health and life. Slowly, it began to glow—golden at its heart, slowly shading to purest white. Then she saw the Light pouring into her, though its source was far beyond anything her Sight could touch. It grew stronger, brighter, and she saw it filling her, channeling down through her into Eiddig’s torn body.

  She was filled with an emotion that went far beyond wonder, far beyond awe. She felt she could bask in this golden white Light forever.

  But that, it would not allow. It urged her to a thought that, like the Light, came from something outside herself, bringing a possibility she would never before have dared to consider. It compelled her to deepen her touch still more, to open her mind, her heart—her soul—to the gift the Light was still waiting to impart.

  She did not act at once, but explored the thought hesitantly. How could she dare? Yet in that same instant she knew she had to try. Drawing a deep breath, she let it out slowly. Once more, she drew air in, held it—and let go of that last guard behind which she held herself. As the breath slowly left her body, she opened her innermost mind and heart to the Light, to become the instrument of whatever it chose.

  The Light pouring through her hands grew brighter, almost too bright for her Sight to look upon, and yet neither could she look away. Her thoughts reached out and touched the piercing depth of Eiddig’s wound.

  Still urged and guided by this great and unknown force, Lysandra dared to picture true healing taking place. As her mind conjured forth the picture, her Sight looked upon the reality. Beneath her hand and within her Sight, she watched in awe as Eiddig’s body responded.

  With the speed of her thoughts, the brilliant Light went where she directed, touched and surrounded, filled and permeated Eiddig’s wound. Lysandra saw and felt, used, and was used by, the Light until the oozing of blood completely stopped, until severed blood vessels were made whole, throbbing nerves soothed and rejoined, tissue drew together, healed.

  Slowly, the warmth in her arms and hands began to fade. The Light dimmed. It did not leave her, but rather seemed to grow smaller and smaller, contracting into a tiny seed no bigger than a grain of sand. Just as the Light had begun at a place far beyond where he
r Sight could reach, so now it entered and planted itself as a seed within her soul.

  Humbled and amazed, she could hardly think what this might mean. Would this new and wondrous occurrence ever happen again, or was it a gift granted for the sake of Eiddig and the Cryf? Did she dare to hope… to believe… that it might be part of what she had felt awaken within her at the moment when Wisdom and Prophecy had touched?

  Then, like a silent benediction, the Light that was now within her whispered again. The Truth enfolded her in preternatural arms, and she knew.

  Eiddig was healed—and finally, after ten years of grief and guilt and silent sorrow, so was she.

  She lifted her hands from the old one’s chest. A wave of fatigue washed through her, reminding her that no Gift comes without a cost. But even as it closed in with sudden, nearly crushing severity, she knew that no price was too great to pay to be able to truly heal.

  As she worked, Lysandra had forgotten about the others in the chamber. As she fell back on her heels, her arms limp at her sides now, the healers came forward in a rush to aid her. She was grateful for the strong hands beneath her elbows, helping her to stand again, then keeping her from falling as yet another wave of weariness overwhelmed her.

  What had they seen? she wondered. Had the Light and warmth, so much a part of the inner Sight of her experience, been visible outside her body?

  If it was, the other healers said nothing. Through their silence, Lysandra could feel their anxiety.

  “Eiddig-Sant will be well,” she assured them. “All he needs now is sleep.”

  They began to speak quickly to one another in their own language. Then the one who appeared to be their leader stepped forward. She was an older female whose reddish brown hair bore two long streaks of white that began at her temples and ran all the way past her waist.