“There’s quite a story to this boy’s life,” Marney remarked as she settled him back on the pillow. “Do you know it all?”
Ellynor shook her head slowly. “Almost none of it.”
“But he’s worth something to you.”
“I love him.”
“Worth everything then.” Marney hesitated. She was still perched on one side of the bed, but her hands were in her lap; she’d done what she could. Ellynor sat on the other side, patting Justin’s face, his hands, the newly wrapped bandages. Checking, just checking, to make sure everything was secure, that he was still breathing, that his heart was still beating. “I’ll watch him for a few hours. There’s a room right next door, and I’ve made up that bed, too. You get some sleep and I’ll take care of him.”
Ellynor didn’t even look up as she shook her head. “No. I’ll stay with him.”
“I thought you’d say that. But you’ve had a hard night already and you must be at your very limit. I promise I won’t leave him.”
Ellynor gave the other woman one quick, fierce look. “If I leave him, he will die.”
“I can’t believe he’s not dead as it is,” Marney said, her voice compassionate. “I don’t want to lie to you. I think every breath will be his last.”
Ellynor nodded. “I know. He should be dead. But he’s not, and I won’t let him die. That’s why I have to be the one to stay with him.”
“You think you’re some kind of mystic, who can heal a man with her touch?”
“Yes,” Ellynor said slowly, “that’s exactly what I think I am.”
A startled little silence for that. Marney was clearly remembering that Ellynor had arrived at her house wearing the white robes of a novice from the convent. Not the place you would expect to find a mystic. She obviously decided not to ask, for she came to her feet and said, “Let me know if there’s anything you want.”
“There is,” Ellynor said. “I need food—lots of it. Milk and meat and bread and potatoes. Cheese. More than you’d think one person could eat. I’ll go through it all. Blankets. And enough fuel to keep the fire going all day.”
“All right,” Marney said, and turned for the door. She paused with a hand on the knob. “You really think you can save him?”
Ellynor was pulling her legs up onto the bed and stretching them out alongside Justin. She arranged her borrowed skirts so they did not bunch around her knees. “I know I can,” she said.
CHAPTER 30
FOR the next five days, Ellynor stayed beside Justin and gave him her life.
Whether she was lying beside him, half asleep, or whether she sat next to him, feeding herself from the banquet that Marney supplied, she kept one hand always on his chest. He became an extension of her, a limb, an appendage. Her heartbeat drove his pulse, her lungs pushed air into and out of his body. If he were to open his eyes, he would see only what she saw; if he dreamed at all, it was only what she was dreaming. They were a single creature animated by a single will.
With such simple needs. Eat. Breathe. Maintain a certain rhythm in the blood.
Those first few days, Ellynor was ravenous. Marney brought enough food to feed three men, and Ellynor consumed it all. Marney brought more. Even so, Ellynor could feel herself burning quickly through all the fuel she supplied her body. There was so much need for warmth. Justin had lost a great deal of blood; he could not, on his own, generate enough heat to sustain his life.
So Ellynor fed him her own heat, poured the life and energy from her body into his. She could feel the difference in temperature between his skin and hers, for her fingers lay like slender icicles on his warm chest. She wrapped herself in two quilts, in three; she requested that Marney build up the fire even more; but she did not pull away from Justin. She did not conserve her strength. She flattened her hand with more pressure on his ribs, and she felt him steal away her energy.
And she was glad.
“Look at him—face all rosy,” Marney murmured the afternoon of the third day. “He was so pale when you brought him in, too, I thought there was no way he—but there. You’re looking awfully peaked, Ellynor, I wish you’d let me sit with him for a while.”
Ellynor just shook her head. She knew that she was the only thing keeping Justin alive.
IN the middle of the night, after the third day, she felt the infection begin to build in his body.
She woke, suddenly too hot in her cocoon of blankets, to find that Justin’s skin against her palm was warming of its own accord. So far, the fever was minor, but she needed to pay attention; she needed to change her strategy. She pulled the blankets off, one by one, and pushed them down to her feet or over the side of the bed to the floor. Then she turned on her side and snuggled back against Justin, testing the temperature of his body with her own.
She remained awake the rest of that long night, watchful and afraid to sleep. Sure enough, toward dawn his fever suddenly spiked; heat lanced through his bones. Ellynor shifted her hold, lay the whole length of her arm across his chest, hiked up the edge of her dress so that her bare leg pressed against his, flesh to flesh.
Then she used herself as a wick to draw the fever from his body into hers.
For the next day and a half, his temperature raged, dangerously high, but it never had a chance to harm him. Ellynor absorbed every extra degree. Her skin felt like it was burning, her mind grew jagged and incoherent, but she would not let go of Justin. She would not pull back. Marney came by almost every hour, worried and fussing, and Ellynor let the older woman do what nursing she would. She was sure Marney dusted Justin’s infected wounds with some kind of herbal mix. She knew that, several times a day, Marney washed the faces and shoulders of both patients with cool water. Ellynor tried to drink when Marney held a glass to her mouth, but she had no interest in food. It would only make her hotter.
Now and then she caught snatches of whispered conversations. Marney and Faeber, perhaps, though she wasn’t sure and didn’t much care.
“He’s still alive, though? Never would have thought it.”
“Yes, but I think she’s in danger now—can’t explain how— body is hot, when he’s the one who’s infected—”
“Some kind of mystic? But that’s—”
“Mustn’t have guessed at the convent—”
“You think she could die?”
“I can’t convince her to leave him. I’m afraid if I force her—”
“Don’t want him to die, either—”
“Nothing to do but let her be.”
Ellynor rested her hot cheek against Justin’s shoulder and let her eyelids close, glad when the voices faded and the door shut again. A moment’s tension had tightened her muscles, forced her eyes open, when she understood enough of the conversation to realize that her hosts were debating separating her from Justin. But no one had disturbed her; she decided hazily that no one would. Nothing to do but let her be. She was so tired. Time to sleep again.
THE fever broke about noon on the fifth day. Ellynor, drowsing beside Justin in the bed, felt it as a distinct sensation beneath her hand. One moment a spiraling crescendo of heat, coiling from his body directly into hers. The next, a film of sweat against her palm, a sudden shutdown of that overworked furnace. She lifted her head, though it made her senses swim, and tried to determine if this was good news or bad. Had Justin’s body finally given out, succumbed, lost all power to fight? Did the drop in body temperature signal an even more dangerous stage?
But no. No. She could see the color in his face, paler than it should be but reassuringly normal. His breathing was even and, for the first time in days, completely untroubled. He shifted against her, something he had rarely done while they lay embraced, as if trying to get comfortable. As if trying to wake up. She watched his face eagerly, hoping his eyes would open, hoping he would try to talk, but he was not that far recovered. He gave a small sound, like a sigh, like a whisper of contentment, and fell asleep.
Ellynor realized that Justin’s body was finally beginning to
mend itself. It was as if she could feel the skeins of veins, the masses of muscle, shaking themselves free of lethargy and beginning to take stock. Wound here. Bruise over there. Hard pressure on the lung. Knit this up. Disperse this clot. Cool down. It was as if, beneath the stolid surface of the skin, a great invisible activity was under way. Justin was busy healing.
That was her cue to raise her hand, push herself away from him, set herself free. He would be like a ravening predator now; he would snatch up any source of nourishment. Hold soup or water to his mouth and he would gulp it down. Fan air in his direction and he would suck it into his lungs. All this time, she had forced her own energy into his body, but he was strong enough now to steal it for himself. And he would—he already was. She could feel the greedy pull of his wakened desire for life. Her fingers tingled as if blood was trickling from the tips. The sensation traveled through her palms, across her wrists, up toward her elbows. In the direction of her heart.
She could not pull away.
Exhausted, she lay back against him, her head on his pillow, her arm still draped across his chest. Let him have it all then. She would gladly give him her life. It was what she owed the goddess, anyway, for keeping Justin alive. She leaned forward just enough to kiss his cheek, and fell asleep with her head against his shoulder.
TWO hours later, Ellynor was wakened by commotion in the hall. She was too tired to lift her head but she listened as closely as her dreamy state would allow. Voices—shouting— heavy footsteps on the stairs. Names she didn’t recognize. Nothing to do with her.
The door burst backward and two women strode into the room.
Ellynor didn’t have the strength to sit up or even feel astonished. She just slitted her eyes open and watched them march purposefully to the bed. One was tall and severe; she wore men’s clothing and styled her white-blond hair very short. The other was smaller, golden, and beautiful, dressed in flowing blue. It was the golden woman who came close enough to lean over the bed, laying one hand on Ellynor’s cheek and one on Justin’s. She gave a small exclamation of dismay.
“Wild Mother watch me! She’s completely drained. Another hour or two and I believe she’d be dead.”
“What about Justin?”
“I’d need to do a more thorough exam, but from just a quick look I’d say he’s mending. I can’t feel a fever in him, at any rate.”
“Cammon said he was out of danger.”
“Well, Cammon didn’t say anything about this one. Look at her, Sen—look at the way she’s lying here—it’s like she’s transfusing him with her blood. Except there’s no blood.”
A momentary silence. “Yes, that’s a Lirren trick,” the white-haired woman said softly. “She must be one of Maara’s healers.”
“What?”
“Never mind. What do we do now? If Justin’s well enough, I think we’d better separate them.”
“I can stay with Justin, but, Senneth, I think she’s in even worse shape than he is at the moment. Can you—?”
The other woman had a laugh in her voice, though nothing she said sounded funny to Ellynor. “Oh, I think I can. I don’t think she’ll enjoy it much, though.”
“Let’s get her into her own room first. Has Tayse calmed our hostess? I give her credit for trying to protect her patients most ferociously.”
“I think she sent for her husband. I would guess that very soon Tayse will be pulling out his lions to reassure everyone.”
Which, Ellynor thought mistily, made no sense at all. Lions? In a house? Who were these people? They knew Justin, though, that much seemed plain. Knew him and cared about him. Some of the burden was to be lifted from her.
Good. She was so tired. She could not carry it all by herself any longer.
The golden-haired woman was leaning over Ellynor now, very gently disentangling her fingers from their clutch on Justin’s shirt. “Time to let go, I think,” she said in a soothing voice. “You’ve done a most excellent job, but I’m a healer, too. I can take care of him now. You’ve kept him alive—let someone else do some of the work. Let go. That’s right.”
It felt so strange to release him. So odd to take a shallow breath, because she was only breathing for one. Her heart pattered too hard for a moment, not used to the easier task of driving only a single pulse. Her body felt light as one of those discarded quilts.
She might float up from the bed, disembodied as air. She could feel her hair spread out on the pillow, unwinding from the braid she’d made five days ago. It would dangle behind her as she drifted up toward the ceiling—and out the open window —
“Sen! Help her!”
Ridiculous. She didn’t need help to float away. She tried to say so as the tall woman sat next to her on the bed, gathering Ellynor’s hands in one of hers, laying her other hand right over Ellynor’s heart. The golden girl moved away, circled around the bed to appear on Justin’s other side.
The woman with white-blond hair bent over Ellynor, trying to catch her wandering attention. Her eyes were a strange color, ashy gray, serious. “This might feel uncomfortable,” she said, and tightened her hold.
Fire arced through Ellynor’s body in great rolling balls. She gasped and tried to scream, but her throat was raw, her voice burned away. Another shock of fire—another. She felt every artery, every hidden estuary of vein, run with an individual flame. The hair on her skin crackled and stood on end; her whole body flushed with heat. She had been languid before, exhausted, sucked clean. Now she was charged with adrenaline, a living conflagration.
“Who are—what did—stop that!” she gasped, and both of the women laughed.
“My name’s Senneth. That’s Kirra. We’re friends of Justin’s,” the white-haired woman said. “Oh, and by the way. We’re mystics.”
Mystics. Kirra. Ellynor remembered that name. Her momentary stab of jealousy was replaced by a sense of profound relief that rolled over her like cooling water, extinguishing Senneth’s sprays of flame. “Can you save Justin?” she whispered.
“You’ve already saved him,” said the one called Kirra. Justin had said she was beautiful, but Ellynor hadn’t envisioned anyone quite so attractive. “You’re the one I’m worried about now.”
“It doesn’t matter about me,” Ellynor said. She was feeling remarkably alive after those jolts of power from the mystic’s hands, but she was still exhausted. She wanted to sit up, exclaim, check on Justin, get a better look at Kirra’s face, but she couldn’t. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for a week.
“Oh, I’m guessing Justin believes it matters very much about you,” Senneth said. “Stay here a moment. I’m going to see if I can find the room our hostess has set aside for you.”
“I don’t want a room,” Ellynor said drowsily. “I don’t want to leave Justin.”
“He’ll be here when you wake up,” Senneth said. “I can’t imagine, after all this, he’d leave you behind.”
CHAPTER 31
IT was nighttime when Justin woke, opening his eyes to a sudden and complete sense of consciousness.
Nighttime. In a place he did not recognize. And great burning Mother, he felt like fifteen different kinds of hell.